The prettiest Arch Enemy in the land

The first session I forgot to note down what we were doing, but it's fair to say it contained the licking of wounds in the aftermath of fighting all the things that were coming up through that hole. Possibly even fighting more of the same.

The second session, Elsiosi turned up being very concerned about Murmei. I think it was suggested everyone should pretend he died in the attack to get her to go away, but ... that didn't happen.

We decided we wanted to be the ones to go down the hole on an expedition. We're brave heroes, right? We are clearly best suited for the job! Which is also the reason we give Ordo Magica when we go to ask them permission to go down there. They make us take some old, scary-looking wizard with us.

Funnily enough, Elsiosi didn't fancy joining us down the hole. Sucks to be her?

Rolling a double 20 is very 2020

So, there's a massive hole in the ground in Thistlehold. There are things coming out of that hole, and we fight them. They keep coming back with more friends. And then there's a wizard abomination thing, and that's not good - especially when neither Hairy Dog nor Yahana are with us. They were kept out of the city because a giant spider and a (sort of) tame kotka are a bit ... eye-catching.

In the middle of the fight, a nice double 20 (it was 2020 at the time, after all) ensured Murmei's bowstring snapped. Things continued along those lines. Deadorna very nearly died in the fight. Fortunately, it turned out that a counterspell was useful, because that wizard had a big Corruption cloud, and let's not?

Finally some Templars showed up to help, but there's still a bunch of Corruption boiling up from that hole in the ground, so things aren't exactly looking fabulous, shall we say?

Does she need all her limbs?

Now armed with another PC in the party - yay! - we seemed to spend a heck of a long time trying to come up with a plan to maybe blow some stuff up and get an imprisoned god (?) from the ruins, and then that was decided against or something. It all got very jumbled up by the end of it that I lost track completely, and let's just say we're going to spend next session battling it out. Possibly in a Leeeeeeroy Jenkins style, because the Juicer might get bored with all the planning.

The Emperor ... selectively inhibits serotonin re-uptake?

We parted ways for a bit in order for Gorbash to go back to Blackstone Juggernauts and give John a heads up about the trade agreement Booker had negotiated with the murdery alien dudes. They had hardly finished talking when the guy showed up. That was surprisingly quick!

Booker and Jayson went to see a battle, and then went back to wait for Gorbash at a hotel in Roswell, where the group had decided to hang out.

We later went back to one of the battlegrounds to salvage whatever could be salvaged, and set Booker up as a one of them, by changing an ID of someone who was the closest match we could find. Unfortunately, it was done by Gorbash and all humans look pretty much the same to him ... He did finally get to use his Singing skill, though!

The plan being that Booker, disguised as lone survivor Nathan Anderson, would go into Coalition States and gain access to the Emperor by being the sole survivour of a terrible battle. Because surely the Emperor would want to pat him on the back for that?

Just like the French

It has been a while since we did this (don't believe the posting date, it's a month later) and my notes are a bit scant, so it's anyone's guess what we did at this point.

Something about an adult dragon being a dick, teleporting 5m up into the air, almost forgetting Booker, Jayson on the ground, and "Shemarrians here?!"

For the second session, we went to Roswell and looked at Naruni weapons and the Coalition States came to blows with the Shemarrians and Splugorth.

You can't have Hugh Jackman as a familiar

We decided to go all SWAT team on the cultists. There was a mage abomination and a vindictive demon. Those things are no more, because we're pretty good fighters, actually.

Killing blows do matter

The B team went to find Tanith, the Child of Baal we've befriended, to warn him that ascending to godhood would mean someone else would piggyback on the divine power-giving and things would go very badly indeed.

Found the guy up an elvish mountain. He did ascend, in the end, after we fought off some dracoliches and such.

Packed with potions of greater invisibility and clarity (... this will make one of the quotes below make more sense) we took the air ship to the floating "island" in the sky aaaaaand CUT to the A team! Who finally made it back to Faerûn! But it's now three weeks later, and Things Are Seriously Wrong.

We could only get a faint sense of our higher-up gods, not of the B team - except for Aumen, who we found severely (and I mean SEVERELY) injured in the catacombs below. The sky island thing was a trap, and quite possibly our friends/minions are dead and we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

And this is the last session for this part of the adventure!

We built this weapon for rock 'n' roll!

After playing with a plant, growing it to gignatic proportions and hatching one of Auriga's protectors from it, we took Denethor's Floating Wagon to a hole in the ground. A big, big hole in the ground full of necrophages, eww. Down there we found a thoon hulk, some spider type creatures and a throne.

Battle ensued.

We were looking rather out-gunned, then Auriga's moth creature crawled under the throne platform, and it eventually cracked, and there was a big ass Rotten Court general hiding there. Which we, by the skin of our teeth, managed to somehow down.

And then we got pelted by dropping dead necrophages and got the hell out of there.

Spiders and reapers and fairies, oh my!

We continue our venture into Davokar Forest. There be swarms of spiders. We fought them off and got out of there. They were delicious. (They were represented by pieces of salty liquorice, so your mileage may vary.)

Then we found a group of treasure hunters who wondered if they could join us for the night (we said no), followed by a Necromage coming to attack them because someone in that group had decided to steal something of its. They died, it took its thing back and went away.

And then there was a wizard with fire-y bodyguards that turned out to be part of Elindra's arch enemy hindrance. Fun times were had. And by that I mean death (theirs).

#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.

Why do our plans keep succeeding?

We went through the portal and had a nosey, dressed up as cultists. It ended up with us throwing fusion blocks at them and their apparent leader in a corridor ...

Party signature move: shooting corners off buildings

In this episode we mostly fought battles. Then there was a wizard that Gorbash trapped inside a building by shooting off a corner of it, echoing the beginning of us playing Rifts, when the party berated Booker for doing a similar thing - how times have changed!

The wizard went invisible and Gorbash pretended not to see him, hence toying with him.

We're getting close to the Cult of Nxla now. Unless we do what we normally do and drag it out a number of sessions ...

SHENANIGANS! SHENANIGANS, I SAY!

There was talking to a dragon, finding out about the Key of Solomon, and also levelling. We're now shiny level niners. Who'd'a thought it?

Ohh, THAT apocalypse

The symbiote previously known as Barry was apparently actually called Bally according to the player's notes. We're not sure if that's an improvemen or not.

Anyway. Plot progressed. Turns out some bad nights were caused by visions of some cultists bringing Nxla back. Yeah! Them other cultists don't know how to act. And so on. There was a guy there who blended in with the ceiling, had a very pointy nose and a forked tongue and looked like it has something to do with Coalition State.

We went on a quest to speak to Psyscape, by way of meeting the Grey Seers again. We didn't cause a cell to burst into flame this time, so I think they don't mind seeing us again.

I've seen this trap before!

We finally made it back to Deadlands. And then we very nearly died when we got inside a building with a big mechanical centipede. It was big and mechanical and in charge of people. Still, we all made it through and live another day.

The Paladin we were looking for, on the other hand, was not so lucky.

Revenge is best served with fusion blocks

We continued the discussion with Sister Anna the Rakshasa. Turns out she wants our help to get a nexus point back. She's held it for over 70 years and now someone has taken it off her, and she's not happy. Despite feeling a bit iffy about calling a truce with the Rakshasa, we agreed to at least go and have a look.

Booker's box that went "ding!" last week turned out to have a bunch of Plot Devices in it. Or, as it may turn out to be, Deus Ex Machinas. They do point at us encountering Gorgons at some point. As in the Medusa type Gorgons, not the metallic bulls.

Perhaps the Rakshasa are the lesser of two evils ...

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!

You know there's such a thing as dice rolling apps, right?

We continued fighting the Nxla cultists who so rudely interrupted us when we went to visit their neighbours.

Oh well, they're not standing anymore, that's for sure.

We then decided it was high time to get out of that town ... because even though we've paid for our citizenship, they will probably still frown on mass murdering ...

Why is there not a Save vs Dumbass?

A session in which we all decided to become citizens, because it seemed like a good idea. Probably just as well because then we went to talk to the kind of people who look up to Booker because he's the Chosen One and all that. When we finished, the people in the house across the street (Nxla cultists) were less keen on seeing the Chosen One. Fighting ensued ...

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?