When a Malkavian says someone's crazy ...

Lottie and Julius discuss theories with Aisling. Lottie removes Aisling's anxiety, because right now, there's a fuckload to be anxious about and she needs a clear head. Is the Prince trying to do something without the Primogen council knowing? Might it involve tunnelling under Central Park? No wonder the werewolves might be a bit miffed. Can we talk to the werewolves?

They also do need to speak to the Prince, but going in there with all their memories isn't a good plan. They need to somehow temporarily remove or edit a number of memories just in case. Fortunately, they have a Tremere at hand who knows just what to do.

Frankie's history lesson from Theo continues, and they also discuss hunting grounds and territory and so on. He also finds out about Hunters and Mages, and that there also seem to be Faeries and Ghosts. All this because he asked if there were other things beside vampires and werewolves he should know about. It's also suggested that if he comes face to face with Ekaterina, he should do nothing except to leg it.

Deliberately breaking the Left Hand Rule

So curse the old guy's sudden but inevitable betrayal. Because Elindra's spider-talking was non-verbal, he didn't notice her doing that - instead he focused on Murmei's knowledge of different languages, and him speaking with the giant in particular, to decide he was a demon and ... battle ensued.

RIP crazy old man.

We found the Tomb of Horrors, or at least the Cairn of someone or other. The door was locked, but we made it unlocked and headed inside. It was full of pit traps. Fortunately (even the spider-weary in the party agreed on this term) Elindra has a pet spider who can crawl on things other than the floor.

Eventually we found a big room with a ritual anvil, so the party decided Murmei was somehow best suited to become a blacksmith and turned an ordinary axe into an axe that makes you blind when you carry it, even if you're dragging it behind you on a rope. He also only narrowly missed out on taking permanent corruption during the forging, and wasn't keen to have another go making another perfectly usable weapon useless - despite both Valgai and Elindra thinking it would be great to have a blacksmith in the party.

It was basically a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, and there's more where that came from!

We beat the plot

We took a different route back to civilisation, Murmei's "great aunt Sandra" a.k.a. the Night Lady in tow. Elindra, out scouting, came across a patrol of Templars, so led them on a wild goose chase while Valgai, Murmei and "great aunt Sandra" sneaked past.

Night Lady delivered to her fanclub, and we proceeded further to Yndaros. Crossing a big river we were subjected to very thorough immigration controls (that's where the latex comment comes in), but managed to get through and boarded the rope ferry.

The Templars caught up with us, but by that time we had already made it to the other side. We managed to burn the rope, halting their progress for what might be a few days, and met up with more of the fanclub. Full payment received, we went shopping, as we were still a bit away from our final destination - Thistle Hold.

An adventuring party? Here? With OUR dice rolls?

In this first proper instalment of the new adventure, we eventually managed to name our airship - The Lady Peregrin (yes, Ladyhawk was a consideration) - and take it to Myth Drannor and when out adventurising we ended up inside some kind of beast. It was okay, we killed it before it killed us. It was admittedly very close, because our dice rolls were garbage most of the night.

We made friends with Viconia, a Drow battle cleric of Kelemvor. We learned about the Silent Forge, and how it's headed by a red wizard of Thay (Elani's favourite people) who is also a lich. Yay, combo bonus!

And we finished off by getting an unsettling dream about three Orc gods who were now among the greater gods. What does this even mean???

#NotAllWizards

The next three months in the lead-up to the actual adventure passed with remembering the name of our wizard friend (or frenemy if you're Elani), huzzah! We put Dominion points into Denethor's continued work on our airship stroke floating pantheon, everyone adding their own special something (i.e. Words) to it.

We found a husband and wife team of Tyr worshippers, one of them being a child of Baal. They helped us with a few things, and even though some might have wanted them dead to begin with, it did appear that they were not there to kill us. Considering they could basically teleport us, that was good. It meant they could take us to north of Icewind Dale where another Tempus-worshipping Godbound was trying to pick a fight with goddess Auril. He was persuaded to stand down, after a special guest appearance by Tempus himself.

Elani was busy trying to keep a couple of our followers on the straight and narrow, because Gruumsh is making his presence known.

The tourney was going great (well, what remained of the participating Tempus and Gunda Paladins ended up having to be disqualified because they got all murdery with each other), until - with impeccable timing - three children of Baal appeared in the middle of the arena just as the finale was about to go down. They asked what year it was and then disappeared. We're puzzled by this, because as far as we were aware the children of Baal were all dead ... save for the guy we met earlier.

Call me salty, but ...

Our Deadlands session was two hours shorter than usual, and we didn't do a whole lot, so there wasn't much written down.

However, we also have a boardgaming session saved up for times like these.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy

After levelling up (level 8, wooh!) we somehow got into a discussion about Cthulhu and tentacle porn and found out that yes, the internet will provide if you do an image search for Cthulhu dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl. Uh. Like you do?

Anyway. In actual gaming terms we went to the market, and most of the party pretended to be slaves belonging to Gorbash, who in turn pretended to be a Rakshasa. We found Alistair and his Shemarrian assistant/slave in a cell down at the slave pens, so that's good. That we found them, that is, as that's what we were there to do.

A couple of brothers, whose other brother we may have previously disposed of, recognised Booker. And then the setting off of explosions ensued ...

Isis Isis baby

So the Egyptian obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle, was guarded by someone who turned out to be Isis, except she didn't know she was Isis.

And then, of course, fighting ensued. Booker spotted one of those Mystic Knights (or Sith Cyber-knights, if you like) and decided to blow up a building. It got a bit hectic for a bit. Turns out they were kind of ... anti-anti Cyber-knights and of an order to do with a white rose. Interesting times!

Are you planning to wrap up the end of the world?

Dungeon crawling continued, although Zolistagol decided to stay back - which, admittedly, was down to the player unexpectedly being absent. We found a tied-up accountant/lawyer who turned out not to be so mundane after all; he was actually a mage. Emphasis on was, because he died suddenly, ahem.

We also encountered a strange spinning room with gargoyles, but luckily only one of them was not a statue but an actual gargoyle. Again, emphasis on was.

Then there was that werewolf again, and Alex bravely sacrificing himself in order to kill it with explosives, so that's another monster dead - or two, seeing as how Alex was apparently a serial killer as a way to unwind. o.O

Then there was a big room with a bonfire that had featured in both Eddie's and Tilly's dreams. There, David Hayes (a.k.a. guy hired to keep Trevor's mad sister safe) was pointing a gun at Agatha (a.k.a. Trevor's sister). Long story short: she started the Burning Days, and since Eddie stood closest to the bonfire, he ended up becoming the Burning Man.

Meanwhile, Trevor was stuck in expanding foam (that he insisted on bringing with us), and Tilly made the mistake of freeing a tied-up Rommel (the person), who promptly knocked her unconscious as she turned her back for a moment. Curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal. Who'd have thought you couldn't trust a Nazi? Basically, he tricked us into starting the Burning Days because he enjoys ethnic cleansing or something ... problem is this time around, it's not Jesus or Richard the Lionheart that's the Burning Man, and there's no new religion or Crusades ... it's a zombie apocalypse. And we, plus what remains of the Nottingham crew, are now Hollow Knights (again in Eddie's and Tilly's case) and saving the world is our job. Insert list of expletives here.

A symbiote is for life, not just for Christmas

First session of the new year, woo! We started by having a chat with Rita, who we found out last time was the goddess Hecate. Or a part of her. Or something like that. She found our party to be very interesting, seeing as how we're such an eclectic mix of people ... and other entities. Booker with his new back parasite, for instance, smelled particularly intriguing.

We brought her along to see Rolf, a.k.a. the guy who hired us to find his "wife" Rita. Booker showed him the list of expenses (which were previously agreed in the contract drawn up on accepting the mission), which was about ten times more than the 100k base fee. After deductions. Well, at least he paid up before Rita killed him.

On the plus side, we made a new friend: a Norse dwarf called Ulmolf, a Runesmith, who is a welcome addition to the group.

Needing to stake out the Crow Bar for a gargoyle called Granite, Booker had apparently misunderstood the instructions for this, so we spent a good long while drinking a concoction which took us to a funky cloud room in the astral plane. This "room" was later destroyed by Baradhi and Gorbash, who tried to find a door out to the normal astral plane. No one has ever been barred from the Crow Bar before, but umm ... we might be the first. Possibly.

We were only meant to stake out the place and wait for Granite to show up, so we could persuade him to give up some information. No need for astral plane stalking. Oh well. While we did that, Gorbash turned into a dwarf and went drinking with Ulmolf and Gorbash. Jayson, who didn't have time to get jiggy with Maria earlier, found some time with her now. Baradhi waited down the road from the bar and when Granite showed up, followed him back to what appeared to be Gargoyle Central. Oops?

Adventurers are the worst kind of people

After having named the goblin hostage Sooty, we continued through the woods with him (her? it?) as a guide. It took us through some dangerous bits, and in one particular place, we encountered a wolf pack.

The wolves (there were five of them) surrounded Rhogar. He went down, and failed the first Death Saving throw. As the rest of the party tried to get the wolves off him, what should have been a fairly easy "we have two rounds to heal him" didn't work out as planned, when Rhogar - after the GM prophesised he'd roll a one - rolled a one, thus instantly failing two Death Saves. As you only get three shots at not dying, Rhogar actually died. The rest of the players seemed more upset about this than Rhogar's own player, who immediately started working on rolling up a new character.

Meanwhile, the party went on to find Cragmaw Castle. We managed to find the boss room almost straight away. In it, we found the boss (King Wossname) and a few of his assistants. We also found Gundren, one of Hematite's missing cousins, and a chained-up elf.

Heroic battle win. Gundren was healed, and the elf turned out to be a rogue by the name Theren Siannodel. How fortuitous, we didn't have a rogue in the party before!

We'll miss Rhogar and his weirdly awesome Russian accent, but the adventure isn't over yet.

How much XP do we get for rolling 0 on initiative?

Having solved the Redbrand problem for Phandalin, we decided it was time to get back to looking for the Rockseeker brothers. Without having really investigated what it was, we went down the Miner's Trail to look for more information.

We found some, and went to follow up on them going down another trail. And then we were attacked a couple of times in the middle of the night, because XP. The first time went pretty well for the party, and the second time ... Hematite the cleric would've died if it hadn't been for the quick-thinking of Malinda, who emptied a healing potion down her neck. "It wasnae the best night ever."

Why are we cooking the goblin?

After much ado, we decided to pick one of the many questing opportunities and try to sort out those Redbrands. Or something.

We entered into a cave system (this is D&D after all) with a rickety bridge over a chasm to kill unweary adventurers. Fortunately, we have a mage in the party, and the mage decided to pick Feather Fall when levelling up. It paid of pretty much straight away. Hooray!

In the cave, we met eliminated a Nothic aberration and some bugbears, and set a goblin thrall free. We're nice that way, but not nice enough to heal the poor fellow's bleeding hands first. We also found a room where a rat looked at us and then disappeared when it was shot at. It's an animagus, I tell you!

Can you abuse the system?

The new edition of D&D is out (sort of), and we're trying the starter set to see what it's like. The 4th edition was a bit hit and miss (mostly miss), but it seems as if they've taken the few good/useful bits of 4th and put on the useful/working 3.5 edition to make the 5th. Anyway.

I won't go into the plot, seeing as how it's the adventure in the starter pack, but it involved missing cousins, goblin ambushes, thickets and caves.

We're using the stereotypes in the box as they are (we might tweak them later when the actual book comes out), so here's the line-up:

• Cade Tealeaf - Halfling Rogue
• Hematite Frostbeard - Dwarf Cleric
• Karak-Dag - Human Fighter (Folk Hero)
• Rinn Moonbrook - Elf Wizard

Getting maimed? Not in the mood!

Well, the Rakshasa were toast and the party survived, so that's good. The group also had a chance to catch up with Booker. Drake went and got his armour sorted, as his player was indisposed.

Booker, it turns out, used to kill innocent people for money before he met us. We daresay it explains a few things. The amulet he bought off a friend (who was a little too eager to get rid of it) turns out to be a symbol of Splugorth, and that's generally not considered a good fashion accessory.

And then we used those red bandannas to infiltrate Rakshasa Raider territory while trying to find that big box full of doom gate, and uh, let's just say we're starting to have a Bad Feeling about this campaign ...

Do you sell disposable shotguns?

We had food again, which Eddie found himself actually enjoying (even though it was a really poncy kebab with green things in it).

We planned.

We got attacked.

At Trevor's mansion decent-sized house, after catching up with Agatha and the woman we kept safely locked up in an upstairs bathroom and sending the latter on her merry way now that she's feeling better, a brain-sucking creature was going to stick its tentacles in Tilly's head, but luckily, Trevor was there to blow most of the creature away and scare off the other one. He needs to find himself some disposable shotguns because every time he uses one, it blows up thanks to the wrath of God.

At Tommy's there was strange writing on the walls and in his wardrobe, a mysterious hat box. With a big stone egg in it that couldn't be knocked over. It was so peculiar that he decided to put it in the bin for safe-keeping.

Eddie called one of his "cleaners" to Tommy's, seeing as how there were some corpses there from last week's session (not to mention this one), and the guys all decided to help - even when the instructions were "here, help me cut up these bodies". Zolistagol appeared to fit into the role of butcher a little too readily ...

Arriving at the rather gory scene, Tilly freaked out so much she went to watch Top Gear on Dave, later uttering things like "the Bugatti Veyron is a good car, apparently".

It's only paranoia if you're playing Delta Green

Meanwhile in Nebraska: Cully went back to North Platte to perform an autopsy. On the way back from Hayden, she was told to go meet a new guy in the hotel lobby. And sure, clutching a copy of the Fortean Times, there he was - FBI computer analyst James McAffe. (He has a driving skill of about 70, so he's the designated driver from now on.) They set off to autopsy the dead girlfriend, but didn't find anything because Cully somehow managed to roll 95 ... out of 90.

Over in Hayden, Bones and Mulligan got a lift out to the radio telescope array where their Sheriff's department driver got attacked by the guard dog they reportedly don't have. There was tazering involved, and then hog-tying.

The staff at the radio telescope array were a peculiar bunch, particularly one of the other computer guys - who seemed to get through his days using a steady stream of JD.

After meeting back up, introducing McAffe to the rest of the party, the four investigators went to the home of the murderer to see if they could find anything. Insects, is the answer, lots and lots of insects. Insects that seemed to home in on Cully. But then, what are improvised flamethrowers for?

As we didn't really find anything at the house, McAffe stayed behind to go through the computer a bit more and the rest went to a tavern to see what else could be got out of the drunken computer guy. In Bones's case, a massive headache ... that can't be a good sign.

Will the real Harry Potter please stand up?

As we unfortunately was a player down due to illness this session, we were going to play something else. I got instructed to bring a game I'd like to play, so I brought Jurisfiction. It just so happens that I've always wanted to do an adventure set in the Harry Potter books, and suddenly, both inspiration and opportunity presented themselves.

Agents Hastings (Agatha Christie) and Van Helsing (Bram Stoker) had to leave their Enid Blyton pet project behind in order to go over to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to investigate a Potions book that had been stolen and replaced with a cheap knock-off. As they dawdled, Severus Snape himself arrived at Jurisfiction HQ to convince them to get a move on.

From there, they ended up force-feeding a Puking Pastille to Fred or George Weasley, charging Snape with assault, admiring off-duty Dumbledore in what can only be described as Rocky Horror Picture Show gear, listening to a PageRunning Draco Malfoy's teenage woes, finding beautiful Fanon Snape snogging his favourite student Hermione over in Fanfiction, and learning that Harry Potter enjoys going on Character Exchange trips to Fanfiction, where he doesn't have to put up with any of that false modesty nonsense, and can be worshipped like the freakin' BookWorld rockstar that he is.

Oh yeah, and Marvin the Paranoid Android occasionally works in the admin department at Jurisfiction HQ. (He doesn't enjoy it, brain the size of a planet, and so on.)

Whatever they did, that copy of the Half-Blood Prince's old Potions textbook, which is just a teeny tiny bit pivotal to the plot, was still nowhere to be seen ...

Killing zombies with cake - possibly

As we had to fill another couple of sessions due to being a player short, we decided to have another go at zombie boardgame Zpocalypse. The first time we played it, it didn't go so well (we didn't survive the end of the first night), because we didn't have a strategy worked out.

By playing the game, we realised what we should have done ... so we thought we'd give it another go, doing all the things we realised we should have been doing in the first place. And sure enough, we survived the end of the first night! And the second! As we still had another couple of hours left, we decided to play on and see how far we could get. Third night went off without a hitch, but on the fourth night, one player's squad got killed just before we managed to take out the last zombies. But in the words of Meat Loaf, two out of three ain't bad.

This game was split over two sessions, as we ran out of time after the first night. However, as there were only a few quotes from each session, the two sessions are collected in this one post instead.

And yeah, at least half of these quotes were snagged from the adjacent Mutants & Masterminds table again, because they're actually roleplaying, and their quotability is higher than our boardgaming ...

Is sugarcane flammable?

This session was going to be the last one, but as luck would have it, combat tends to take longer than expected, so we had to pack up and leave it for next time.

You see, we went back to Manchac. The town had been torched by some bad guys, who had driven up to Morgan Freeman's house (the one Sutcliffe didn't burn down). We requisitioned a vehicle and drove up there, blew up one of the trucks and walked through fields of sugarcane toward gunfire.

On the plus side, we found the dame we'd been looking for, and her brother, and a Voodoo priest.

On the downside, we also found a gang of baddies with a tommy gun.

On the other hand, the invisible monster was also about to show up ...