I'd apologise but this is hilarious

Ahh, our first Hunter session since May 2014. It's good to be back, even though we're technically back in Derby.

So, the world's about to end in about a week's time and apparently, there is some old Japanese legend of people who bear the mark of a curse that go through a sacrifice of fire in order to cleanse the world of the curse. It looks like an orange circle, this curse mark thingamajig, and is currently occupying the skin of both Eddie and Tilly.

Since May, we have of course lost Tommy Crane's player, but we've instead gained Alex Surname, a 30-35-year-old war veteran who spent a couple of years in a mental hospital being treated for PTSD after coming back from a tour in Afghanistan. There was a werewolf, and there are no werewolves in real life, that sort of thing. He also made friends with Keles Moriton (formerly known as Rommel) in Afghanistan, and now he told Alex to make friends with us lot.

Alex also has an Alsatian, but an adult version called Karl. He pointed out that Tilly's 10-week-old puppy wasn't a puppy at all, and despite the party's best efforts at gesturing him to STFU and not trigger the Russian, Zolistagol finally realised that Rommel (the puppy) wasn't a puppy and freaked the hell out. It almost ended badly.

Not as badly, however, as things ended for Eddie's "chemical analysis lab" in a generic warehouse. The hollow Nazi gold bar we found turned out to contain something that turned people into radioactive barf zombies (!), and they're hell-bent on spreading themselves upon Derby like a bad case of Ebola. Err, yay?

You see tentacles coming out of the portal

Booker seemed suddenly eager to give his stuff to other people, perhaps anticipating his Chosen One-ness being the death of him. Well, that didn't pan out.

First of all, Gorbash and Booker found Rita's Horcrux in the astral room. It was guarded by something and it was kicking off, so Gorbash got out of there. He'd never explained exactly how you leave the astral plane before the Psychedelic Dreams drink's timer runs out, so he ended up having to go back in to get Booker. Eventually they both returned.

Rita was happy to save the world as she had her little soul urn back, so we headed toward the place where Gabriel had set up the big portal/gate thing. (Did we mention Ulmolf, prior to joining the party, was one of the people working on putting that thing together? *slow clap*)

A big bomb full of shrapnel was dropped on a hoard of zombies, and it got rid of Gabriel as well. Nxla was on the other side trying to get in, we slew zombies, held the gate together (ohai Ixchal!) and were generally very distracting until Rita could finish her magics.

World: saved. Party death toll: zero. We win! :D

Are you SURE you're the Chosen One?

After complaining that it's really complicated and soul crushing to generate a Rifts character, we got the show on the road. Booker managed to officially get in Ulmolf's Grudge Book (it's a book in which he notes down all the people he has grudges against ... obvs) after having a morality discussion with young Gorbash. The discussion went along the lines of "all people look the same to you, but you know that if they're wearing red headbands, they're bad and should be killed, even if they're not actually Rakshasa bandannas?"

We also went back to the Crow Bar and had Baradhi corner Granite the gargoyle in the astral plane room thingamajig again. (Yeah, he was outside around the corner, seeing as he's actually barred from the establishment.) Granite wasn't pleased. Especially not when Baradhi blew up the room again. Fortunately, we didn't care, and moved his body elsewhere. He dropped a compass and an earth elemental.

The compass looked suspiciously like the compass Booker's had in his mystery chest for some time out of game, which he (and we) conveniently had forgotten all about. Hey ho. It could be used to find the urn containing a part of Rita's soul (THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S A GODDAMN HORCRUX) and we're running out of time fast. Did we mention we only had 48 hours left, and it takes about 24 to get the astral room back up and running? Eh, woops?

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?

The person who comes last can be Wil Wheaton

For the past few years we've hosted a New Year's boardgaming extravaganza at our place. This New Year's Eve was no exception.

We warmed up by playing Dixit, then Cards Against Humanity, and Betrayal at House on the Hill - which saw in midnight - and the next day, we rounded off by a few games of King of Tokyo.

That's right, we sure know how to party! #wearehorriblepeople

Happy new year!

Sorry for the lack of posts in December - we had our last session on the 9th, and then the Blogkeeper went on holiday - which wouldn't have impeeded preparing a seasonal JPEG or putting together some other kind of post, but the entire holiday was a blur of nursing a bad cold, so ho hum never mind.

While we're waiting for normality to resume on Tuesday (yay!), we'd like to welcome in the new year by some random Facebooking:

"Only 3 more days to the tactical moustache... and cake!!"

Rifts GM: "What are we doing on Tuesday by the way - is it me?"
Player: "Rifts according to the calendar"
Rifts GM: "I better prep a bit then - hehehe"

Player 1: "Unfortunately X has lost his tactical moustache"
Player 2: "O.O No tactical stache.... shocking!"
Player 3: "Lost?!"
Player 1: "X has coiffeured his moustache and beard, so no longer has his tactical moustache."
Player 2: "I have bulding a theory - X found a threat to the world and the only way to stop it was to deploy the tactical stache permanently - as a barrier against evilness, so he can't bring it with him anymore."
Player 1: "Lol"
Player 2: "I like my theory better"

"What could be so evil that it needed a tactical moustache to stop it?!"
"So, I was thinking along the lines of USA finally realising that Sweden has 3 more letters in their alphabet than the English one has. Under pressure from the senate, USA decided to accuse Sweden for mass-alphabetication and was mustering forces when X deployed his tactical stache to protect the homeland of his fellow role players. USA, trembling in fear of the stache at their borders, decided not to go for it at the moment, as they have no matching stache to counter it."
"Thinking about it most US superheroes are clean-shaven! Wolverine's sideburns are probably their best bet."
"Wolverine is canadian!"
"That explains it!"
"Also, I am sure that sideburns would only compliment a tactical stache, not counter it - so even Wolverine's sideburns would be of no use against X's tactical stache.."

"I'm guessing their best bet would be Hagrid - Y is more the expert on him, so she will have to say if he would assist USA in their evil deeds or not"
"It depends ... will there be a dragon in it for him?"
"As far as I know, USA do not deploy dragons, so I would say no."

We're starting up Rifts on Tuesday, if that wasn't clear enough already, so see you in the next week with new posts!

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.

One die-roll at a time, we will kill everyone in the room

As we settled down with a couple of freshly baked Bakewell tarts and fudge and tins of candy and a box of After Eights (you think we're kidding), a Scottish Dwarf was rolled up in preparation for Rifts, and we were well excited by the prospect of playing that game again in the new year, as you can see by the quotes below.

In D&D, we went further into Wave Echo Cave and got to a room where we then spent the rest of the session killing things. (You think we're kidding.)

Having dispatched a number of bugbears, spiders, a doppelganger and a couple of wizards, we found a room in which we in turn found Nundro Rockseeker - the last of Hematite's missing cousins. Alive, luckily.

And then we got XP and lived happily ever after, having not died. (Except for Rhogar, rest in piece, dragon brother.) Will we return to D&D again? We might, you know, but it'll have to wait until the new year.

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 ...

Bacon-flavoured breakfast ale needs to be a thing

We are now in the final dungeon, a big cave system called the Wave Echo Cave, because we're still trying to find Gundren's missing brothers. So far, we've met an ochre jelly and assorted map-making.

We left this session being attacked by some ghouls. Two out of five characters are paralysed ...

The appropriate barbecuing of goblin chefs

Having liberated an owlbear by killing it rather than setting it free, we continued to explore Cragmaw Castle with our new friend Theren. We found the kitchen, where we basically stormed in and killed a bunch of people without warning, thus making one of us remark, "You realise this is like someone running into Chimera and gunning us all down, right?" or words to that effect.

Well, in D&D you kill first and ask questions later. It's like a rule and everything.

In one of the rooms, we came across some scrolls - one of which was Revivify, which allows you to resurrect a dead character within a minute of their demise. If only we had had one of them to hand last session ...

It would appear that we have finished exploring the castle, so can now be on our way back to Phandalin to hand in the quest and get rewarded.

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.