Let’s get ready to fumble!

Ahh new week, new game! This time, we've gone for Hunter: The Reckoning, which the GM has set in modern day Derby. The new characters are as follows:

• Eddie Smith, 23, football hooligan
• Matilda Churchill, 53, parapsychology professor
• Trevor Simmons, 28, circuit judge
• Zolistagol Bagridan, 48, ancient history professor

Lord Simmons was in court, letting Eddie Smith's brother go. Meanwhile, at Derby University, the two professors held their respective classes. After work was done, the court people were driving home, the professors were on the bus ... and they all had strange visions. Someone, who turned out to be a monster, drove his - and Eddie's - car off the road, along with the bus. And it all got very, very strange ...

Can I take your Sanity?

For this session, we did two things: levelled up our Rifts characters, followed by a game of Mansions of Madness, one of the expansions. The GM had had a bad day, so he was definitely in the mood to inflict pain on us - but first, getting us into a false sense of security by being nice.

We got the clues, were doing okay, and when the character with the silver tablet was making a run for the exit, hell broke loose ... quite literally. And then we all failed horribly and the GM won. It was a fun session. :D

Harry Dresden and the Coffee of Intimidation

While we stuck around waiting for our contract to finish, Gorbash was visited by the dragon whose territory he was in. They had to strike a deal, or there would have been a big dragon show-down. Probably.

Booker tried to stay low, to avoid being spotted by the Rakshasa, who showed up sniffing around while he was conveniently out shopping. The rest of the party said the other person had gone, so ... he tried his best to live up to that.

Marcus the Mage, Baradhi and Jayson went shopping. As it happened, we found out that someone else had paid Marcus to do the spell. Wouldn't it be convenient to pay someone to do your dirty work if there's a high risk of dying while preparing the spell? Baradhi knew the spell the guy was casting wouldn't work, but that it also wasn't lethal.

Jayson bought a nice, cheap gem for Gorbash, which wasn't half as appreciated as the diamond Booker went and got him. Booker, strangely, decided to share the bonus money ... and not keeping anything for himself. He got gifts for the whole party, so repenting for blowing up the side of a building obviously agreed with him.

Baradhi got an Astral Plane visit from the creatures, whose queen we sort of allowed them to rescue. They were grateful to have their queen back, and said there would be a reward to pick up. Oh, and they would be back in ten days time to collect Marcus. As our contract to protect him would be up before then, we didn't see a problem with this - but were morally obliged to warn him. Not that he heeded our warning, but there you go.

Mission accomplished.

How to make friends and alienate creatures

Our shoot-out with the weird creatures continued. In the Mage's basement, where tentacles of DARKNESS tried getting at us, but some dragonbreath and plasma missiles later, the creatures were gone ... along with part of the wall.

Booker tried to convince us he was Jayne with naming his weapons. He also decided to shoot part of a building off and crush one of the Rakshashas - which was probably not the best idea ever. Not when their supposed leader came by to frown on us for being in the general vicinity and probably had something to do with it.

We were also considering our part of the deal being fulfilled, considering we were hired to keep the bugs out of the building, and seeing as how they got in and got their queen out, we're thinking the Mage is probably going to be left alone from now on ... But apparently, that's not good enough. What do you have to do to get paid in this system, eh?

Every evil wizard has to start somewhere

Welcome to Rifts! It's 11 March 104 PA and a roleplaying party has been hired to babysit Marcus the Mage while he gets his shizzle together for some kind of spell around the Solstice time. There are bug-like creatures trying to kill him, and down with that sort of thing.

The problem is, once we got there and started digging into things, we came to realise maybe he wasn't such a good guy after all, and maybe, just maybe, the world would be better off without him - except then we wouldn't get paid, so there is that. We got him to sign a contract saying that if he locked himself inside his den (where we weren't allowed) and got killed, we'd still get paid, so we might be able to find a way around that ...

Well, if the bugs don't get us first.

Starring:

• Booker Dayes, Gunslinger
• Gorbash, Dragon
• Michael Baradhi, Ley Walker
• Sir Jayson Oakwood, Cyber-Knight

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.

Stop that, it's Scilly

Monty Python Monday could be like a thing.

Oh dear, we haven’t even started playing

One player down, we decided a game of the boardgame Pandemic would be a good idea. And it was - we won. By the skin of our teeth, perhaps, but still. After that, seeing as how we had plenty of time left, we started rolling up some characters for the next roleplaying game we're doing: Rifts.

There wasn't a lot written down from this evening, but luckily, a couple of us went roleplaying over the weekend as well.

The Saturday game will be perhaps one session a month, and is the Warhammer 40k based Only War. A group of Imperial Guards have been trapped in a hive for quite some time, until one day, the tech priest finally managed to get the doors open.

No one's outside.

Trying to find some supplies, the party headed out and ... were eventually shot at. And we ended the session on a cliffhanger!

Play it again until I kill someone!

We stayed around the radio telescope and continued the investimagations and interrogations. McAffe tried to convince Bones to break into the chalets, while Mulligan continued to bully the telescope staff. Trying to find the wifi password (they didn't have a guest network, go fig), McAffe ended up using his hacking skillz in order to grant him and Cully internet access in order to do background checks on staff.

And then hell broke loose. Literally.

A maniac came after Bones and nearly beat him to death with a baseball bat, and when patched up by McAffe, he was so preoccupied with saving the world that Cully had to sedate him and handcuff him to to a bed as he really was in no shape to save anything.

Then there was lots of shooting of telescopes, re-pointing where the telescopes thought the general direction of the Nemesis Star was so that it wouldn't be found again, and some kind of strange being helped in the destruction of said radio telescopes.

But umm, we all made it out alive, and with our sanities intact, so that's another job well done for X Cell!

Don’t worry, it’s only the end of the world!

We went to bed, and in the middle of the night, Bones receives a phonecall from an unidentified source, saying the radio telescope must be stopped or Ghroth (?) would come sooner rather than later. Mulligan has taken to wearing ear plugs at night, and didn't hear Bones banging on the door. McAffe did, but told him to shove off. Cully lent him a sceptical ear, and got the other two out of bed. Early in the morning, we headed back out to the telescope array ...

And were very nearly run off the road by some lunatic surveyor, whose tires we had to shoot out to get him to stop. An ambulance was called, because the man did not appear to be at all well. In Hayden, we - or rather, McAffe - drove over someone's leg, but he was lying in the middle of the road because apparently the poorliness was contagious. And the garage we visited last week was ablaze.

Finally made it out to the telescope array, where we were shot at, but Bones shot back. Unfortunately, for purposes of finding clues, he's a very good shot and blew the guy's brains out. But at least he shot first. (Anyone telling you differently is lying. Yesss siree.)

What then followed were Mulligan pestering telescope staff for information, McAffe and the ever increasingly paranoid Bones going through chalets searching for clues (seeing as how Bones shot the clue we had), and Cully played CSI with the crime scene. It all had a sense of impending doom over it. Is the end of the adventure nigh?

Why does this CD rack have 'Made in R'lyeh' on it?

Still slightly mentally scarred from seeing big, red eyes in the sky, the show had to go on. Cully went back to North Platte to do some research - not that anything useful really came from it. Bones and McAffe headed up to Three Mile Lake to check if it was a portal to R'lyeh or not. They founds lots and lots of flies, so ... probably not. Or maybe. We're not sure yet.

Mulligan, meanwhile, went to have another look at the girlfriend-murderer's house, and by the computer, found a peculiar sort of CD rack looking thing. When the right sort of rolls had been made, it was found that the discs contained a very long and rambling message about the End Times. The ones who bothered reading this lost a bit of Sanity in the process. (Cully declined to read any of it for religious reasons.)

In other news, Marshal Bones is down to 20-something Sanity. He might not last to the end of the adventure.

This would make a great PowerPoint presentation

Once we got back to the hotel after a good day's work, we went to sleep ... and woke up in the middle of the night, because of a storm. Outside, a big, red sphere hanging in the air ... with eyes ... It caused a crapload of SAN to be lost (enough to kill off two characters) - and then we woke up. It had never happened. Still scared the willies out of us, though.

Well, aside from Mulligan, that is. He's come to terms with his own mortality that puny things like that don't cause him to lose Sanity.

We also met the car mechanic again. First, he whistled a tune across the street - and then he came at us with a tyre iron. Some grappling and handcuffing later, we finally had to tazer him to stop him from killing himself. Yes, it's against protocol and our training, but then again, neither are how to deal with the Old Gods.