We’ll cut the narrative off at the pass and leg it

We were half the team down last Wednesday, so those who were left played the Shadowrun card game in what we later discovered was the hardest mode possible, because we drew opponents from the wrong deck. Oops. Anyway, this is why this week's post instead is going to be a trip to Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and what happens when a group of Jurisfiction agents are told to go on a team-building exercise inside its pages.

The agents were told to strictly stay out of the narrative ... and while roleplayers would normally decide to completely ignore this, they didn't, so I never got to inflict my specially prepared Vogon poetry on them. I are still disappoints, two years later.

Here's the crew:

• Arthur Hastings, senior agent and a former military man and now occasional assistant to Agatha Christie's Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot.
• Captain Haddock, an old seadog fond of grog from Hergé's Adventures of Tintin graphic novels.
• Kaa, a snake from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.
• Macbeth, a mighty king of Shakespearean fame.

The first (of two) parts are when the agents have got aboard the Vogon ship and lasts until the Heart of Gold is about to be hit by a couple of Magrathean missiles ...

I think my dice are scared of sidequests

Plot Progression!

Baradhi went ley line hopping over to the town of Londonium, from where it would appear the gate box originated. Around the house where it was presumably created, around 40 people had died mysteriously.

We finally went back to see the insect people, whose queen gave Baradhi his gift - a headband full of mystical runes. Once adorned, the headband would not come off.

Meanwhile, bad dreams kept pestering Jayson, including visions of a guy called Gabriel, who kept repeating "Must save the world" over and over like some sort of mad wizard dude. We suspect Gabriel is being manipulated by Nxla, considering he seems hellbound to opening portals from Nxla's world to ours, sucking out souls and that.


Either way, we're not doing what the GM expected us to do, but then what else is new?

And then the zombies came.

Beavers and buttheads

After talking to Brian Tumnus in the pub, the group of Jurisfiction agents skipped ahead a few chapters and went to see the beaver couple, to check if they had any Christmas decorations stashed away, or at least knew anything about it. They had, and they did.

Van Helsing and Carmilla, in some kind of Mexican standoff, waited outside the beaver hut while Alice said hello to her idol Lucy Pevensie and her older siblings Susan and Peter. (Edmund was of course off somewhere fraternising with the enemy over some Turkish delight.) Lucy turned out to have more in common with a certain modern female character than anyone could have anticipated - much to the distress of Alice and the players.

Meanwhile, Louis and Long John went around investigating ... and met a nameless dwarf, who had a few things to say about his employer (the White Witch), his lack of a name, and the reason behind the recent influx of Christmas decorations in the book. Louis was kind enough to give the dwarf a name: Louis. Just a shame it won't last.

I could explain it, but I choose not to

Well, sometimes things happen. There's no need to go into details, really. We thought we were going to continue Changeling, but the GM had to leave the group ... so we're obviously not doing that game anymore. We'll have to leave Alysiana, Finn, Flora, Jack and Set to their own devices for the forseeable future. Sad, but that's how it is. On the positive side, we're happy to report the GM in question now the proud father of a fresh squeezed baby daughter, so our congratulations! :)

But, the GM announcing he was leaving put a damper on things, and it means that the quotes from the session last week ... weren't that many. Although I really need to check the recording because Justin Bieber tweet fortune cookies causing black holes is a pretty funny concept.

Does bending the rules always result in this?

Courtesy of the last night's 2^nd Edition Changeling: The Dreaming adventure at Chimera.

The Band (that's us) went to a casino to try and find clues as to the whereabouts of the Count's missing son. This meant Jack took a crash course in how to win at cards, Flora and Finn (aided by Jack, sort of) distracting the crowd by singing Grease medleys and Irish folk songs while Set broke into the "Staff Only" area, and Alyssiana distracting the big bad guy by taking him home to show her etchings, so to speak, even though she's normally a lesbian. Then we finished the session in style, by Set and Alyssiana's silver-munching ferret and later a Finn high on cocain and Valium ("I'm very concentrated but extremely not moving") staking out Nebuchadnessar Nessun Dorma a house with a peculiar name beginning with N.

This might get known as the "Sex, Drugs and Rock'n'Roll" session. For good reason.

Squish me now, it can't get any better

Courtesy of the last night's 1^st Edition Deadlands adventure at Chimera. The final showdown between our little posse at the mad scientist symposium and a massive titan behemoth.