Arkham is FULL OF OWLS!

A year ago, pretty much on the dot, we played Sleepy Hollow: The Boardgame A Touch of Evil. As there were wishes to play Arkham Horror, a boardgame based on Call of Cthulhu, that's what we ended up doing instead of roleplaying.

We would not recommend having seven players, four of which had never played the game before, because it takes forever and you don't get very far. If anyone wants to know what the game is like, it's Talisman meets A Touch of Evil. If you've never played either of those, that's a lot of time saved, and well done to you for not having been sucked in. ;)

I’m Nyarlathotep and so is my dog!

When you begin an adventure, you first have to create characters, which it took us a little time to do, so there's not a whole lot of text this week, but chances are, there will be plenty more next week. These characters are tremendously quotable, as it turns out. Populating Victorian London and trying to investigate the occult, in alphabetical order:

• Abigail Duckworth: Confirmed spinster (she's 24) and governess to the three children of Lord Bath.
• Harold "Boaty" Boatman: Chain-smoking police officer who would rather retire, but the Victorians didn't retire, they worked until they died. Which might be sooner than expected!
• Hubert "the Deadly Hummingbird" Smythe: Renowned moustachioed strongman and keen balloonist, except his balloon is currently held by the police.
• Michael Brown: Handyman who gets accosted by anything from small children to scary monsters, and who'd rather they left him alone. The only one yet who's lost Sanity points ...

The story begins in London 1891, the first tube line has just been opened, and we've all ended up at a party to celebrate this momentous occasion. There's a buffet and everyone's having a jolly good time, even if one of Lord Bath's children try to force-feed a handyman peanuts and oysters, and another keeps being called "Kiwi" by a strongman.

Lord Bath leaves the party early, only to be found in the Underground station a while later with his throat ripped out, which the men of the party discover, much to their horror.

Back at the party, the lights go out, and a lieutenant asks the governess to meet with an eccentric professor to pick some things up on behalf of her employer ... although she has no idea her employer is no longer alive.

Let the investimagation commence!

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.

Don't mess with Jerry's Revenge

These are the quotes from the first session's Syzygy game, at session one of ChimeraCon 7 - a 24 hour roleplaying event at Chimera in Beeston - dated 10 March 2012. This is one of those posts we've had tucked away for a rainy day. Anyway:

In this Syzygy session, we were on a Jupiter-sized planet, trying to break into a big skyscraper kind of building, to steal something from the basement. When we weren't doing that, we were cutting up security guards in dustbins, trying to infiltrate sex parties by carrying backpacks full of dildos, implanting chips into someone's ballsack ... then removing the chip and putting in a coin instead ... and then cutting out the coin ... and the GM was astonished at the level of madness displayed in the first session.

We then got attacked by a super soldier programme gone wrong (wow, big surprise there) which turned people into plasma-resistant acid hug zombies, and we had to try fleeing from the planet, with or without the guy who hired us to do the job in the first place.

Oh, and then there's Jerry. There's always Jerry.

We should have our own TV show, we’re so badass

After a lengthy and very serious and utterly brainy discussion about matters of life, the universe and everything, we finally managed to get started with the game ...

Finn and Set have captured a semi-conscious bad guy who fell off a building, handcuff him (with pink, fluffy handcuffs) to Jack's limo and then move on to checking out the contents of the minibar. And so the beertini was invented. Good thing Flora keeps a steady supply of hangover-curing potions ...

Alysiana promised, on behalf of the party, that no one in the car would hurt the prisoner, which later led to a big discussion about whether or not the rest of the party was held to that ... as they hadn't actually sworn anything.

Back at Wollaton Hall, Jack decided to build a guillotine to execute the prisoner, who, after all, had broken a number of Changeling laws. And then he went to bed. The rest of the party had already decided to head off, as they were squeamish about the whole thing. Because of the oath, though, no one could hurt the man, so it was decided to leave his execution until the morning. To make him

Set volunteered to watch over the prisoner, being handcuffed to him, and eventually passed out from lack of sleep ... once he had knocked the prisoner to sleep, as he wouldn't stop screaming because of the cold iron tied to him. We sure know how to treat guests here in Nottingham!

Roll Death and Athletics, shagging Satan is bestiality

In a session that took us through the sewers and eventually ending up in the Dreaming version of Victorian London, where a group of cartoonists with a funny accent chased after some people purely because of their religion ... Set rescued people from a burning building, which ... was burning in real life. And then he chased after an assassin over the rooftops. Very heroic.

Meanwhile, Finn was trying to talk himself into being un-squired by Jack, and instead ... ended up getting knighted. So that ... panned out? He's making an impressively swift ascend up that career ladder, that's for sure.

The rest of us got to spend some pent up XP, Flora became a Saint, and half the party stood around in the sewers while Sir Finn set off after Sir Set - it was dangerous footing. At least until he decided to make use of the only element he hadn't tried so far - Air - and flapped about to actually fly to a portal.

We're a very heroic party, obviously. Especially when we get hooked on discussing male genitalia for an extended period of time. Most of which hasn't made it into writing. ... Most of. (Just imagine what the actual session was like in real life!)

Dr T & Mr Dre: Narcoleptic Assassins

Awesome as ever, we had taken down an assassin. Still, that wasn't enough of an adventure, so we ended up going to a coffee bar, where plot hid behind the wall. Or, rather, an opening into the sewers, which eventually took us back to the Goblin Market.

There, we met with the Labyrinth potion seller and its granny, and Jack even managed to exchange a few words with a dwarf he once didn't try haggling with. And then the naive kid - Jack, that is - invited a bunch of seelie Fae to set up shop on his lawn at Wollaton Hall. Great move, we don't think.

One that does have great moves is Alysiana, who's currently pretending not to know us. She normally does that, but now it's with an actual purpose. To find clues! Are we any closer to finding any, though? That is the question. We're too busy inventing new concepts for roleplaying villains ...

Similar to a comrade motion picture, maternal fornicator!

We're caught in politics about who's to rule Nottingham, and if that wasn't all, the potion administered to the princess had echoes of Dark Fae, so even though she seems to feel better, she now has a Something Something Something Dark Side to her. Hmm. How do we fix that?

Actually, we need to put that one on hold because there's a wedding that needs planning - Finn's!! - and someone needs to become the Count of Nottingham, and as Jack's a baron, we went along with him to a big meeting of all the local barons.

There, we found Jack's uncle - who doesn't have one set of eyebrows, but two; the second pair look like a pair of caterpillars on his forehead and we suspect they are a separate species of Fae entirely - and Jack's uncle told us some rather interesting things about Jack's parents and why they were in Borneo. Apparently, there were assassins after them. Good to know! Moments later, an assassin crept up on us, trying to take out said uncle. We saved the day, of course, even though the assassin had a scary iron knife. We may or may not (emphasis on the latter) let him live.

Soaking carpets in the Nottingham Chainsaw Massacre

We're back in the weird and wonderful ways of Changeling: The Dreaming again, and we left off with an Epic Cliffhanger of DOOOOOOM, in which our friend Count Valdemar was held at knifepoint in his own home. Well, it didn't exactly pan out. He got his throat cut after all, and even though Flora tried to save him, she couldn't stop the bleeding.

On the plus side, the rest of the party brought down all the bad guys, so yay for us! Jack then found some papers, while Alysiana sneaked off to administer one of the super-mega-deluxe healing potions to the princess, with Finn and Flora a couple of minutes behind. Potion administered, the princess ... well, we've yet to find out, actually.

Needless to say, Set is awesome - even chainsaws can't bring him down! Now all we have to do is to not get caught in the middle of a number of Fae nobles who want to rule Nottingham. Or get arrested for the bloodbath that is currently Count Valdemar's residence. Maybe there's an old lady somewhere we can pin it on?

Dude, where's my app?

Last week, we procrastinated. This week, we met an old, blind bloke who seemed to be on eerily good terms with the genestealers. He got what was coming to him - as did the Judge. Sneaky bastard. One of them was split in twain by a large sword, which made us all feel a lot better.

Eventually, after slaughtering a number of the Xenos scum (in their sleep, badass bonus points for us) we found our way to a couple of rooms - one, a greenhouse, the other, a walk-in freezer. Something managed to escape the greenhouse. The patriarch genestealer in the walk-in freezer ... is no more.

And as we went back up to the surface again, Brother Drem'Tu started to fix the ship Gyos crash landed last week. While this was going on, the magnetic storm had lifted and we could finally communicate with our superiors. After we had done that, this part of the adventure was concluded, so we have a few weeks break from Deathwatch now, and will get back to where we left Changeling on Tuesday.

These boots were made for stompin'

When we're one player down and face certain death, there is a coping mechanism we tend to employ in the group. It's called "procrastinating until Death goes away". We've done it in Deadlands before, and now ... we just ended up talking all manner of bollocks just for our own amusement. All the while, of course, aware that the more we stall, the less chance there is of us getting killed in that particular session.

It very nearly failed to work, when the GM threw a bunch of genestealers on us. Nasty critters, they are. They pack a savage punch, and we took damage. Had it not been for a few strategically used Fate points, there would have been more body parts missing than just an eye. Or, as it turned out, having your leg very nearly shot off.

Before going into the next Xenos-battling, however, someone said that would be a good place to leave it, so that the missing player wouldn't miss out on as much. The other players quickly agreed, as did the GM. So now, battered and bleeding, we go into the next combat with a full squad.

I had an Eldar and I eated it

Not a lot of quotes for this session, because we got started quite late, and then we spent a lot of time clobbering orcs over the head. And clobbering orcs doesn't give a lot of time over for other things. We were rather successful in the clobbering, however. Because we're awesome Space Marines, blessed by the Emperor. Obviously.

Oh, and one of them turned out to be an Eldar. We brought him back to the base and interrogated him. He didn't last long, but that really wasn't our fault. After all, he shouldn't have been a Xenos heretic in the first place.