He can thank me later

We're still in Soul Harvest, that magical place full of reanimated skeletons and corpses. Zombies as hotel bellhops, with cheeks made up to look slightly less dead. Creepy.

Booker's back in the game (being played by the GM last week, we all thought he was acting strangely out of character!) and wasted no time associating himself with someone who seemed important - a vampire, apparently. Didn't try to drink any Château de Booker Dayes, though.

The rest of the party gathered information and were deciding whether or not to get citizenships as well, seeing as how Donna was acting a bit Cyndi Lauper and just to be safe, maybe the rest also should be citizens. May we live in interesting times and all. Interesting, necromancy-infested times.

Pretending we're in Venice and not Baton Rogue

Making our way down the river we eventually reached the flooded remains of Baton Rouge and met the locals, who were rather surprised to learn that a horse had been trained to go outside to take a dump. The locals seem friendly enough. Maybe next time we find out they actually want to turn us into gumbo?

Opening the portal is less epic and poetic than I imagined

Innuendo aside, we went to clean up the abandoned town of Angels. The cleanup was successful. We also found some Shifters who realised that they could open the portal without having to kill people. Soooo ... they opened the portal, avoided activating some very nasty runes, and we went through ...

Scenery was a little less epic than pictured, although we recognised it from visions, dreams and such. Now we just need to find the missing people and get them back through the portal without waking up Nxla ...

We're all about the failing today

After the joinage of a brand new player to the group, the crew of the Arkadius now has an actual played Navigator! Lucius of House Brabazon, a.k.a. Eyes.

Most of the party went down to the planet and talked to people, rolled badly and waded around in mud and that sort of thing, while aboard the ship one of the flight crew - Steve - went missing. With Dave sent to find him, Dave also went missing. One of them was found smeared on the walls of his cabin ... and one of them Dark Eldar nearby. CLIFFHANGER!!

Can I use the ship's guns to shoot something on the planet from space?

Arranging a visit to the planet down below, the Captain and the Librarian were very nearly ambushed by some Chaos beings. Fortunately, the Chaos beings were taken care of by the cunning use of the Arkadius's onboard guns, blasting the Chaos to bits from space. A warning flare was totally fired beforehand, honest guv ... *cough* There's a fetching new crater on the planet now.

The actual, human, residents of the planet were much nicer.

Then some Dark Eldar came along, but umm, we may have shot them slightly - using the bigger guns of the derelict ship and a blatant disregard of the laws of physics. But hey, at least they weren't pirates out trying to steal the ship (again), and hopefully the Explorator won't have picked up the super virus from a transmission he listened in to.

Life is too short to remove safely

Finishing off the Rivergard Keep, the party came out victorious. Lo-Kag, being a noble paladin, decided to dig graves for all the slain cultists as a penance for having killed them. When Kyla and Aial tried to help (using magic instead of shovels), he got a bit upset at their blatant disregard for honour that he'd rather they not help at all.

This worked out well for the rest of the party, who went to check out the rest of the castle in case anything had been missed off. They went back to the hidden boats and found that going in one of them and rowing into the darkness meant some kind of creatures trying to capsise them.

When the creatures in question were eventually returned to death and the whole party were assembled, they rowed all the way to the main water cultist temple, because this is what roleplayers do. That's not what the adventure book thinks should be done for another couple of levels ...

I've never been so tense to start a boardgame

After finishing Hunter, we've had a couple of sessions of boardgaming. The first one was zombie survival game Dead of Winter, and yesterday, we played the XCOM boardgame - which is a very stressful (yet fun) experience.

We also started putting together characters for the next roleplaying game we've got lined up: Deadlands: Hell on Earth. It's like Deadlands, but in the FUTURE. With MUTANTS. And RAD POISONING.

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?

You're not rolling particularly high, are you?

Two regulars down but with the addition of an occasionally recurring player, we decided on playing Betrayal at House on the Hill for this session. We were doing okay, and then the little boy turned out to be a traitor (AGAIN - seriously, third time playing this game in the group and all three times that kid's been the baddie!) and summoned a ghost.

The ghost took down three of the explorer characters and the traitor died but there was one guy left standing - who finished off the ghost and lived to tell the tale. Somehow they were making it out to be some kind of feminist conspiracy, because the female characters died first. Methinks feminism isn't a word that means what they think it means.

If you haven't got the XP, it's not dead

We continued our foray into the Wave Echo Cave system. There were skeletons and bugbears and stuff in there. It's a good thing we have Malinda in the party - she whittled five bugbears down to one in one round of burning hands. Result!

We also managed to find a door that said bugbears had barricaded. Turned out there was a big, flaming skull behind there. We decided to close the door and explore one of the other directions ...

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."

Door Murderer - Scourge of the Side Quests!

We finished up in the caves/tunnels/dungeons and decided to burn assorted weaponry in a room. How the weapons would manage to melt in an enclosed room with limited oxygen supply ... well, never mind.

In the cellar under the Redbrand mansion, we found the wife and children of a man who had been murdered. We tried to be reassuring and sympathetic, but it perhaps didn't pan out very well.

At any rate, we got rid of (in an Al Pacino way) most of the Redbrands, strongly suggested others might want to skip town and never return, and took a few as prisoners. Said prisoners were then hastily juged by the person we saved from that other cave, who assumed control of the town and Mayor Spineless didn't mind this at all, and executed.

Pats on the backs all 'round.

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!

You can't buy beer with frog ornaments

Taking the injured What's-his-face with us, the party finally reached the town of Phandalin, where rumours abound. (They have to, it's D&D law or something. Just like all dwarves have a Scottish accent.)

There were tales of the Redbrands, a gang of thugs saying they're "keeping people safe", and there was something about a banshee called Agatha, and basically, we went around town doing quest pick-ups. There were a whole bunch of 'em in the local tavern. (Please consider giving an honest review on Ye Olde Trippe Advisory!)

Gundren the missing dwarf is apparently with something or someone called the Black Spider. Meanwhile, his two brothers have also gone missing, so now the party cleric has three missing cousins instead of just one. Yay?

All good deeds must be given with a minor crime

And we're off!

So, we killed Milan, the dragon allied with the Rakshasa, and that was just the last adventure. For this, Booker Dayes (the gunslinger) got a mystery box from the Gray Seers, filled with all manner of weird and wonderful things. There's a protective amulet, a kinetic force gun (totally frickin awesome), a brick with a cryptic message, some red bandannas and a bag of what 1200 credits later turned out to be table salt.

As the Blackstone Juggernauts chief went out to buy loo roll or something, he put Booker Dayes in charge, so when a creepy guy called Rolf (without an Aussie accent, we hasten to add) said he wanted us to find his missing girlfriend, Booker got us a pretty sweet deal. Hopefully.

The missing woman is slightly beyond a Jessica Rabbit level of hotness, so the rest of the team seemed quite interested in helping out. Perhaps less so Christopher Drake the Glitter Boy who, when not in his armour, is dead from the waist down. Well, presumably he still is even in his armour, it's just that he can move around.

Baradhi and Jayson went to check out the place where Jessica Rabbit has a magic shop, and Gorbash had a look around with Drake but things were heating up, so they got out of there. It might have had something to do with Drake threatening to maim a guy ...

I have to lick … I mean, tend to his wounds

Part two of Meanwhile in Narnia, where the team of Jurisfiction agents have finally made it into Stephen King's The Shining, which is apparently a children's book now.

At the snow-covered Overlook Hotel, the agents look for statues of what are probably petrified Narnians, avoid being read by diving behind a bush and then interrogating little Danny Torrance, busy riding around the hallways on his tricycle. Admittedly, the GM has never read The Shining and therefore based everything that happened here on the Stanley Kubrick film, which of course has very little to do with the actual novel.

Also, there were clues, leading Alice to suspect Mr Tumnus from Narnia might be involved. Who else has hairy legs, horns and wears a red scarf? The Turkish deligh definitely must come from Narnia!

Why does this CD rack have 'Made in R'lyeh' on it?

Still slightly mentally scarred from seeing big, red eyes in the sky, the show had to go on. Cully went back to North Platte to do some research - not that anything useful really came from it. Bones and McAffe headed up to Three Mile Lake to check if it was a portal to R'lyeh or not. They founds lots and lots of flies, so ... probably not. Or maybe. We're not sure yet.

Mulligan, meanwhile, went to have another look at the girlfriend-murderer's house, and by the computer, found a peculiar sort of CD rack looking thing. When the right sort of rolls had been made, it was found that the discs contained a very long and rambling message about the End Times. The ones who bothered reading this lost a bit of Sanity in the process. (Cully declined to read any of it for religious reasons.)

In other news, Marshal Bones is down to 20-something Sanity. He might not last to the end of the adventure.

Son of a gun, we'll have some MORTAL PERIL on the Bayou

So there we were, party of three stranded in the middle of a swamp on an oil drilling platform, where we after much deliberation decided to spend the night. In the morning, after shooting an alligator right between the eyes, we started heading back to Manchac ... this time without a guide.

We came across some redneck trappers, who were apparently both hairy and Cajun (they still exist!), and who later decided to kill us. They caught Sutcliffe and Murphy in beaver traps, and we had a hard time getting out of there.

Fortunately, Sutcliffe made them pay for the ambush. Unfortunately, he left the battle with a hole where his chest used to be. Seeing as how he's Harrowed (YES, HATCH AND MURPHY FINALLY REALISED!), it meant he didn't stay dead. As the trappers so rudely tried to get rid of us, we looted their bodies before continuing back to the town. Murphy passed out from exhaustion, as we hadn't thought to pack any food. Fortunately, she woke up and could take the train with Hatch, while Sutcliffe (bundled up in beaver pelts) had to pay double for his ticket.

Back in New Orleans, Sutcliffe came back from the dead the next day, and he finally had some 'splainin' to do!

We don't need no coffee, let this building block explode

When we finally managed to get on-topic, we paid for the pizza and then headed over to a deserted building so that Will the human hacker could get started on tracking down the missing elf we're supposed to find. Meanwhile, Dru the eco-warrior dwarf checked up on her eBay bids in the background, and Mr G the troll mage/enforcer and JDog the orc gangster had a heart-to-heart. JDog learned to be worried about his new employer/partner-in-crime very quickly.

Unfortunately, we were caught by a team of Chinese-talking assassins, but we pulled the pin off a grenade and legged it. A survivor came after us (despite some great blending into a crowd we got up to), but he was quickly, ehh, liquidated. Or liquified? One of those.

Injured yet knowing where we had to go, we healed up and headed to an Internet café in Iron Jaw territory, where the target was last seen. He looks to have been taken captive by the Iron Jaws. We thought we were getting out of there okay but ... we might have been mistaken.