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Showing posts with label Tea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tea. Show all posts

Deadliest Catch: Human Slaves Edition

In the final session of Rifts, for what might be a very long time because we've complicated things for the GM now, our best laid plans involved using a warlock to create a distraction. He unleashed a water elemental that would turn the town of Moreno into a lake. A lot of people, including the vampires' human slaves that we wanted to save. Gorbash managed to save a handful, and took them to safety, but not without a body count because he had to do it very quickly, in a kind of trawler manner.

But we got the people we were sent there to save, so that's good? Mission accomplished? There were a number of vampires in storage somewhere else and they appear to not be there any more, but that's not going to be a problem, right? No, let's head back home to Blackstone Juggernauts HQ and get ready for our next adventure, I'm sure it'll be fine.

We're not here to assassinate the guy from The Fast Show

In the third and final part of this Victoriana session the party have dinner with Lord Ralph, make countless references to The Fast Show, find out that Ted's wife is actually Mrs Doyle, and try to find out if Ralph, Ted or Mrs Ted know anything about why they might have crashed an airship in a field nearby.

They find out that there's another manor not too far away, belonging to the Waldegrave family (who may or may not be shady), and that there's a vicar who might know something that could help them.

He wasn't dying a moment ago

We went into some kind of other-dimensional house with a magic lift (elevator) and got stuck in various rooms and it wasn't necessarily all fun and games. Someone came upon a chained-up vampire that he decided to free (because why not?) and another room had a booze collection and Elgar records that simply weren't up to Elgar's usual standard.

And then Florence Nightingale turned out to be a bad guy, because these things tend to happen in M&M. :D

Headbutting the axe by accident

Ahem.

Our Victorian characters came across some Greek-or-Roman deities. Attacks were made. Damage was done. Mars/Ares had his weapon taken off him by a cheeky Irishman and Achilles was frozen in time and then stabbed to death, because people like him are not supposed to be alive and real and stuff - especially not if they're foreigners! (Groan.)

In the end, we moved back to our modern day characters who ended up at some kind of carnival/circus type thing, because that's never creepy.

Morality is overrated in the 'Verse

Again we were a couple of players down so we decided to play the Firefly boardgame with all the expansions again (except the Kalidasa expansion, which we didn't know about until we had finished). This time we actually managed to get a winner, and with a little time to spare! It was a closely fought match.

People were eaten by Reavers, the Alliance space deck was reshuffled an ungodly amount of times and fun was had.

First, however, we start with some "before the session" chatter from Facebook because this is why I love our group!

Do orcs need toes?

We nearly died in an attack - two players down, yay - but managed to get back up and win the day. We found the Wyvern Tor and a cave full of orcs and an ogre, and finally managed to take a hostage. Unfortunately, the spitting little git didn't know anything, so the "Lawful Good" Tan cut off his thumb, which Hematite dutifully bandaged. Then the party decided to dangle the orc over the side of a cliff and let him drop ... only to cast Feather Fall.

Long story short, he's now pining for the fjords.

On the way back to the Yellow Brick Trail, we encountered a group of goblins. Since goblins were the ones who actually had something to do with the Rockseeker brothers, we managed to take another prisoner who DID know stuff. He was hogtied in a very ... umm ... imaginative way. Let's just say it would appear Karak-Dag has some very exotic interests ...

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.

Aberrations of evolution, as chosen by God

Things turned interesting for the group this session. While the men in the group hid to avoid detection, Tilly tried shielding the girl/victim we found and ended up being hidden in plain sight. Something's obviously going on there.

Eddie went berserk with his axe, Zolistagol got to speak Russian ("Vladivostok!") and Trevor ... had his skin badly burned. To soothe it, Tilly grabbed some holy water from her bag (like you do), and lo and behold, the witch had apparently obtained magical powers, and the skin started healing!

After much ado, we ended up torching the warehouse to destroy evidence (might have accidentally burned someone alive, but hey ho), borrowed a fake brick of Nazi gold from the Russian mob, and the girl wasn't perhaps so much as a victim but a ghoul in training, or something like that. She wanted feeding to complete the process, and unfortunately, we were on the menu. No gratitude at all, that one.

We tied her hands and locked her in one of the bathrooms at Trevor's. And then we were visited by Tony the Ghoul, who told us what was actually going on. By that point, we couldn't really say sorry, we'd rather stay in with a pizza, beer and watch the Rams game on Sky Sports.

Everyone back away, it’s Miss Marple!

Last week, we continued generating our characters for Rifts, and when you're busy trying to suss out your Cyber-knight's psionic powers - and just skills in general, to be honest (so much to choose from!) - you don't really pay much attention to what's going on around you. The adventure also took its first, gentle steps into plot.

But yeah, we'll save that to next week, so instead, as this was pre-prepared, here's the fifth and final part of Midwinter Murders, the very first Jurisfiction adventure. After chasing Vampire Bella from Breaking Dawn, the team have followed her into a quaint, English village - the sort you've come to expect from Midsomer Murders.

In a picturesque cottage, Miss Marple invites the party for a cup of hot, drugged chocolate. Half the party was snoozing and the other half circling the village in a stolen car looking for Bella. Ending up back at Marple's cottage, they call shenanigans on the old woman - who is obviously the mastermind behind everything!!

And then they bundled her into a bathtub, found Vampire Bella (who passed out because she started bleeding from a gunshot wound), bundled her into the bathtub as well, and went back to HQ with the knowledge of it being a job well done.

Murder on t' winding, windy moors

As we ended up playing Relic last week, which didn't end up being very quotable, here's something we played earlier. At a ChimeraCon in fact. This session was the Blogkeeper's first ever go as a tabletop GM.

To recap: A group of fictional characters, agents of Jurisfiction, are policing the BookWorld, namely:
  • Alice from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  • Arthur Hastings from random Agatha Christie Poirot novel
  • Frankenstein's Monster from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, nicknamed "George"
  • Gabriel Betteredge from Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone
  • Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (although he was mostly asleep)
  • "Outlander", i.e. one of the players playing himself, from the Outland

At this stage of the session, the characters have been briefed about some gruesome murders taking place within the world of fiction - murders that shouldn't have happened in the characters' usual narrative - and after much ado, they set off into Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

They got to Trushcross Grange (try saying that quickly three times in a row!) only to discover the Lintons' fancy manor house was on fire, which is very out of character for it. But with their parents away, can the Canasta-playing Edgar and Isabella actually be saved or will the murderer have claimed two more lives?