Okay, duct tape bandage it is

This is the episode in which we get tooled up - at B&Q and a local garden centre, of course, we're not savages - and begin a dungeon crawl. The end of the world - and the campaign - draws near.

The cave system somewhere outside Leamington Spa had baddies in it, like a vampire and a werewolf and a Russian bear, and they had also abducted Eddie's brother. Things that generally put us in a bad mood. Armed to the teeth (in Rommel the pseudo-dog's case literally, he was carrying a knife in his mouth) we went after them.

Having found a chamber which split off in three different directions, we split up the group - with all the PCs going down the same route. There, we first found a table with chairs and some very familiar mystic symbols. Trevor, Zolistagol and Alex sat down by their respective symbols, and immediately zoned out. Worried, Eddie and Tilly quickly jammed something between the table and two of their party members' hands (well, there was just the two of them) ... leaving Alex connected to the table and thus able to hear the vision presented to them. A vision from a long, long time ago, and which might possibly be helpful when we find the Burning Man.

The abductees were drained of blood, but we managed to find Eddie's brother and heal him a little before he expired. There was a vampire there. Heroic Molotovs, axes and other weapons came in handy. Then we heard a scream, and discovered one of the other groups in trouble. One of them got stabbed in the back by Eddie's axe (he was aiming for the Russian bear), but on the other hand we also managed to get the Russian bear after a number of Molotovs, shots fired and grenades thrown.

To be honest, it's a surprise we're all still alive. Just-IIIICE!

Is your hoover covered for supernatural ash damage?

The Derby crew had an interesting morning. Tilly woke up with a bed full of cats - and only two out of nine were her own. Instead of being weirded out by this, she thought it was lovely and promptly fell back asleep. Later on, trying to film them, they didn't show up on the recording, and as she mentioned this over the phone to Trevor, the friendly cats turned into a mass of black goo that went all horror film shock moment on her, causing her to pass out.

Worried, Trevor, Eddie and Alex went to her house and confronted the black goo, dragging the unconscious woman outside in her PJs for all to see, and ... when seen through "The Sight", the black goo was a rather pleasant druidic entity who could remove the curse from people. Eddie and Tilly are therefore no longer cursed, and are off the menu when it comes to both being the person who sparks Armageddon and being the person you sacrifice in order to stop it.

Meanwhile, clues pointed to Weymouth, Stonehenge, and Codnor Castle, with Leamington Spa somewhere in the middle-ish of the wonky triangle, so that's where we reconvened with the Nottingham crew. In a Travelodge. Trevor just had to finish being interrogated by the police because his doppelganger had been seen causing all kinds of shenanigans. Good thing Zolistagol spotted this on TV!

Silver bullets always work in the films

Eddie and Zolistagol's mobster family made some kind of deal, in which they divided up the north of Derby into two territories. We were asked by the mobsters to go and take out the rival Russian gang, eleven different targets, and because we have a military man in the party now, he was the one doing the work, with Zolistagol driving and Tilly bringing Rommel for the forensic cleanup.

Everything was going fine until we hit a house with werewolves. Then shit happened.

But on the plus side we now have 21 boxes of Nazi gold, only some of which are hollow and contain a horrific zombie-making goo.

The Secret Life of Zolistagol Bagridan

Eddie and Tilly have dreams involving people throwing themselves into fires. In other news, pancakes were made, and one player had to cut the session short because he was feeling so unwell he didn't even fancy cake.

The rest of the session went by with the rest of us learning that Zolistagol isn't the only Russian in town. Half of the Bagridan clan appear to have set up shop in Derby, and they're all some kind of relation to him or other. There is also a rival Russian gang, because why not? It's a roleplaying game - any similarity with any form of reality is purely coincidental.

Right?

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.