Drhoz

Having neatly bypassed the vast bulk of the last adventure, Astronauta Peligroso and his gringo allies wait for the other boot to drop. If whatever is on the disk is worthy of multiple shadowrunning teams, death threats, and multilevel encryption, it seems certain that there will be ramifications. Especially since Oracle copied everything on the disk so he can decrypt it later. On the other hand, the pay for the job, and the bonus selling backdoor entry to Nabo's phone, is enough to tide us all over for another month (the other big difference between this campaign and the 2050 one is the GM isn't making the same mistake with huge paychecks – we really will be living hand-to-mouth). But we do check how that other team react when they learn how they were duped – they've left town in a hurry. This is somewhat worrying – evidently our actions have annoyed somebody dangerous. But hey, at least we have good music to listen to while we wait. The Carrion reference on the disc might refer to a major recording studio in Seattle. They were very big in the 40s. And the artist Jet Black and Loomis' dad were in one of the top ten bands ever to come out of the city (Weldun suggested The Butterfly Effect – Begins Here as the kind of thing on the disc, and the GM agreed). Supper at the Ork with the Gold Tooth Tavern, named after a particularly recalcitrant poster in the front window. They do a good egg-and-spam flavoured soy. Ripper K: *sings* Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, SPAAAAM wonderful spam Ocelot gets a call – we've got another job lined up! An urgent rescue of another team who are under siege a few blocks away. GM: It's six minutes away Oracle: F**ck it, I'm driving. Ripper K: This is Seattle 2070 traffic, it's probably six minutes on foot too. Oracle: You're assuming I'm staying on the roads. GM: You roll up to the co-ordinates. Ripper K: nooo, we roll up to the corner of the block and cautiously look around. But the abandoned residential area is deserted. There WAS a battle here, judging by the totalled vehicles and storefront. Perhaps not surprising – any competent shadowrun team could trash a neighbourhood in 60 seconds. Or, as Boots observes, 6. But weirdly – the inside of the vehicle and the actual store are pristine. Not a drop of blood to be seen. Ripper K: This is weird Astronauta: I want out. But before we leave the obviously unnatural scene, the luchadore gets a hissed message from a ghostly figure asking us to wait. The ghost soon realises that it's dead and freaks out. Ghost: I'm sorry, this is my first time being dead. Apparently the ghost wants us to finish the job his team just got killed doing. Find a missing woman. Although most of the information they've found so far is still inside their late decker's head. Ripper K: I'm not feeling a very great motivation here. The ghost has about 6 hours before he disperses. Ocelot: Time enough for revenge. Astronauta: 'Let's see how many spirits I can summon in 6 hours' ' I really hated that guy – time to f**k him up' Astronauta: Of course we have to help him! He asked for help! Ripper K: Ah, of course. The Luchadore Code. At least we have a few clues, including the clean-up team that so rapidly cleansed the site of evidence and bodies – the shadow company Discrete Disposal. Hopefully we can find the body of the dead team's hacker, and get the pay data they had stolen out of her cranial circuits, before the bodies get sold to the organleggers or something. The front for the 'waste disposal' company is a nearly featureless concrete cube out in one of the industrial parks. That complicates things, as does the horrible psychic atmosphere of the place. Ripper K: So, do they have anything set up for corpse disposal on the premises? A pig pen, or giant woodchipper? Van's character Giant Dad has been replaced by a more rounded Boots, a son of Labrat, who used to be the face for the Ork Underground to keep the underground safe and the inhabitants from killing each other. Oracle OoC: By 2070 the Ork Underground is part of the Seattle tourist scene. Ocelot: So, good job! Astronauta: And then you got bored and took up shadowrunning. Boots, Ocelot and Ripper head in to have a polite chat with a building full of 'clean-up guys', while the other get ready to hotwire one of their disposal trucks and ram the door. Their director of operations - Mr Black -seems a bit suspicious that we're there for an inspection. Perhaps because of the late hour, but probably because he's already paid off everybody involved. Oracle's empathy software, monitoring the camera feeds from our gear, notes that the director isn't sweating. Or breathing. He doesn't have a pulse, either. Oracle: Percentage chance Zombie, percentage chance Xombie, percentage chance Shadim … Ocelot : Percentage chance F**k If I Know Back we do talk our into an inspection tour, while Astronauta and Oracle pour over the feeds looking for holes in their security. Which is rather formidable, at least on the physical plane. The door to the basement incinerators, for example, is massively over-engineered, and guarded. And the guard alarmingly is happy about letting us in to look around.... Ripper K: I brace myself for the sudden and inevitable betrayal. Ripper K: Bit dark in here, isn't it? Mr Black: I'm afraid my biomass-processing employees have issues with bright lighting Ripper K: And that doesn't sound ominous at ALL. What Mr Black doesn't know is that we can see the piles of body parts and feasting ghouls perfectly well. And our associates outside are poised to strike the moment the door gets slammed behind us. Ripper K OoC: Have you finished hotwiring the truck? Astronauta OoC: Why? I'm just going to walk in. Boots OoC: That's probably equivalent to driving a truck through the wall. And if Astronauta Peligroso IS the star of this luchadore flick, then waiting until his allies are in trouble and then bursting in through the door is entirely in character. Just wait until he starts bursting in through skylights! Mr Black is immune to bullets, but happily is not immune to being punched in the throat by Ripper. GM: He was standing there laughing off the gunfire, and then gets sucker-punched by the orca. If he was a mundane, you probably would have punched his head clean off. Ripper is reluctant to punch the ghouls however – it's common knowledge ghoul bites spread HMHV virus. Ripper K: I don't want to punch one in the face and then have to pick his teeth out of my knuckles. Oracle sends in his drones, running the Thunderrun script – i.e. Shoot everything that isn't a friendly, then escort the friendlies out again. Boots and Oracle back up and shoot as many ghouls as they can, until Oracle's drones can get here to open the door. Oracle: *facepalm* It's now painfully obvious where most of my data comes from – one of the bodies in your Heads Up Display lights up with a Miracle Shooter objective marker. Oracle throws up inside his own helmet when he gets a RL look at the pile of half-eaten human remains. The rest of us are pretty green too. But at least we can find the bodies we're after. Or the heads at least. The amulet we're after is in here too, but searching for it is a exercise in horror. Sadly, Seattle is one of the few cities that DOESN'T have a standing bounty on ghouls. And Mr Black ghosted out while we were preoccupied. Boots walks up to the reception desk, stinking of blood and death, where the receptionist is cowering. She was just lucky the drones when in through the hole Astronauta made, and thus she didn't fall victim to the Thunderrun script. Boots: I find this establishment unacceptable. You might want to start sending your resume around. Oracle is rather alarmed to learn that the data in the cranial circuitry pertains to Project Icarus, a medical program with a 30% success rate – and 70% fatality rate. He debates whether or not to tell the others. Oracle: If there were any secondary files I'd be burning them right now! Oracle: How well do I know you guys? Do any of you play Miracle Shooter? Because I got banned for bringing Tac-net ware to matches. Oracle is most concerned because he was a designer baby that came from the same line of research – hence all his gibbering as he went through the files. If somebody figures out he's involved in this job, they might come after HIM. The invoice for over a thousand body bags, and two genetic stabilisers, is also worthy of incoherent comment. Especially since the address attached is a high school closed in the 40s. It's also suggestive that the woman we're tracking down is pregnant, and both she and her husband, the original client, are magically active. Magical Mr. Johnsons? Boots: They have magical johnsons. The old school doesn't have any of the power supply a secret lab might need. Oracle's drones search for heat plumes – and there's a big one coming out from one of the roof vents. Oracle: If you don't mind I'll stay in the van. Boots: Just send in your drones Betty and Veronica Oracle: What? Boots: Your drones, Minnie and May Oracle: I've told you before – Tweedledee and Tweedledum Boots: Yeah, that's right – Dick and Tracey. We kick in the door and a promptly overwhelmed by a sensation of Imminent Doom. The scent of unpleasant chemicals, IV fluids, and discarded mediware doesn't help. Boots: Hey Oracle... just thought I should give you the heads up – I'm on the edge of losing my shit here. Oracle: Yeah, I can tell from your biomonitors. We turn to find a young elf girl with long black hair hanging over her face. Boots: WeHaveALuchadoreYourArgumentIsInvalid!!!!!! Nacho boy, punch her through a wall! Now most of us are overwhelmed by a desire to protect her. This is probably a Very Bad Sign. Ocelot sprays the room with shotgun taser pellets. Ripper K: The f**k?? Boots: Ocelot, Jesus! Oracle: Jesus Chr- wait... what was I thinking about? Oracle, now the girl is well and truly unconscious, is now rather alarmed that the girl is some kind of force-aged clone of the foetus, or something, is relieved to see no resemblance to the parents. Ocelot: That WOULD have been difficult to explain... Boots wants to drop the young girl off at Greenlight's home - 'Aunty Sam's place'. The roomful of drugged expectant mothers is considerably more distressing, especially with the evidence of experimental surgery, and wouldn't fit in Aunty Sam's flat, either. Oracle refills his helmet. Oracle: I didn't think I had any more to give! *dry-heaving noises over the TacNet.* Ripper K: So, do we tell the police about this???? Even more fucked up, the set-up is designed to turn magically inclined children into Toxic Shamans, of the kind patronised by toxic spirits like Mr Black. Shamans like the invisible one in the ward, who hits us with a Panic spell, steps on a test tube, and gets a positive hail of bullets for his pains. A pity he's just a kid too, but since he's invisible, how could we tell? Dozens of women pregnant with toxic mages, and possessed children, is WAY beyond our pay grade. Boots calls a relative at the Draco Foundation. Boots: Hi Uncle Inkubus, it's your favourite nephew. Inkubus: Be more specific. Oracle calls his own fixer, the one that called in the rescue. Oracle: We found her. She's hooked up to a Valkyrie unit. Ulysses: What the fuck did they do to her? Oracle: I know, you don't want to know, and the Johnson needs to know. Oracle warms up one of his custom drones – a Knight Errant high speed pursuit drone that he's turned into a one-man ambulance. That still has a tire-damage strip ejector. Knight Errant, who recently took over the Seattle Police contract from Lone Star, will be quite pleased to clear up all these missing persons cases, and hopefully forward any other rewards our way. The reward is substantial – and well-deserved. For one thing if we hadn't been very lucky in which party members were where, half of us could have been killed at four different places in the mission. For example, Oracle and Boots wouldn't have got out alive from the ghoul room, if Ripper hadn't been a Physical Adept. But what if Black comes back? Boots: If he keeps starting shit I'll call Uncle Inkubus and we'll summon the ultimate Spirit of Man – Captain Planet. Ocelot: But we'd need to summon five lesser spirits first. Boots: Wind! Water! Chrome!

Shadowrun 2070 – the main difference being that 2050 is cyberpunk as imagined in the 80s, and 2070 as it's imagined now. Wifi, Augmented Reality, RFID chips and 3D Printing everywhere. Streetrat: Son of Labrat, Ork Rigger Ripper K: Orca-form Changeling, Face and Brawler Oracle: White-hat hacker Giant Dad: Apparently human, also supposedly called The Legend, who rumour holds has been around forever. Astronauta Peligroso: Troll Luchadore Ocelot: Elf gunslinger Giant Dad: I'm going to call you Astroboy. So what brings you to Seattle, Astroboy? Astronauta: The food. Oracle: We COULD strap you down and have a machine-gun installed in your arse. If you really want. Ripper OoC: I wonder if the Tokyo Parasite Museum has got any interesting specimens since the start of the Sixth Age. Giant Dad: Probably – behold! The Insect Shaman! And its natural enemy, the Dwarf with the Incendiary Grenade Launcher. Ocelot: We call him Warhammer. Giant Dad: Check out the front of the museum, where you can get the action figure! Comes with its own lighter. Start 'em young. Ocelot: Known bugs – may set your entire house on fire. Giant Dad: Has been known to start laughing in the presence of naked flame. Insect Spirits are bad news. Just ask Chicago. THAT was the kind of situation that would have required experts, like our old characters. Inkubus: You really want to give me the chance to set off a nuclear device in the middle of an Insect Hive? Wow – I thought I'd never get to top that Ambergel factory. GM: On goes the mask. Astronauta: It never comes off. I Live Every Day In The Luchadore Way. The other PCs haven’t met the charming but rather fearsome-looking Ripper before, and are further unaware of his ‘adult entertainment’ work. This leads to some amusing conversations. Giant Dad: What the fuck is that! Ripper K: The name's Ripper – nice to meet you. Ocelot: I'm Elise – I mean Ocelot! Ripper K: That's OK, most of the people I work with use assumed names. Astronauta: You look like you could go a few rounds – we should give it a go some time. Ripper K: Thanks. I'd enjoy that. GM: *hysterical laughter* Off to the Infinity Club, where the music is as loud as can be expected, despite our ear-plugs. Streetrat: I can still hear it – it's coming in through my Eustachian tubes. Ocelot OoC: I'm wondering if we've been hired by Inkubus. 'Ah, I can't be bothered recovering it myself – I'll just hire somebody' Streetrat OoC: 'I've got six girls to entertain' This is, as you may have guessed, the same module he's already run for Ripper and another group of players. I guess I won't be doubling up my XP points then, and I'll have to try extra hard to suppress player knowledge. Not that I mind, overly - it's easy enough to let the other players come up with ideas, then run with them. Anyway - Nabo, the Ork music star and likely after the stolen disc. Giant Dad: He sounds like an Ork version of Justin Beiber. I hate him already. Ripper K: I wonder if my agent knows his agent. Oracle: Are you talking about Agent Programs? Ripper K: No, theatrical agent. Well, specialist theatre. The module now takes a different path to the version our GM ran online for the other players. Oracle hits the social media to locate which hotel Nabo is staying at, and dispatches a mini-blimp drone through which he can hack into Nabo's internet node. We probably won't even have to go to the concert. Oracle's player: This will take a while. GM: No it won't. Oracle's player: Wait, what? GM: He left an open node. Oracle: OK gang, this is going to take a few hou- ….. scratch that, this guy is a complete moron. Oracle gleefully forwards everything Nabo is doing to the rest of the team, and plants one of his software agents inside the node. Oracle: ORAC, you're up. Ripper K: Do you have one named Zen, as well? Undeleting Nabo's data enables us to backtrack to a elven decker named Zipper, and the Cathode Glow Club, and any amount of unreleased song lyrics and Ork Porn. Also a photo of the stolen disc, and a disc sleeve saying "Carrion Sessions '48 - For Enlightenment, seek out absent friends." The plan – have Ripper seduce Zipper. Complication – Ripper doesn't know a damn thing about retro tech. Giant Dad: We need to geek him up. Oracle: What? Oh, you mean Clank. Giant Dad: How do you feel about spikes? Oracle: Nah – cogs and brass. Giant Dad: You'll need to wear a top hat. Ripper K: I've worn worse. Astronauta: And a monocle. The augmented reality sprites at the club all have googly eyes, like Clippy. And they're all watching us. Streetrat: If any of them actually are Clippy they have to die. Ocelot: We're being watched by the spirit of Microsoft Office Giant Dad: And then a barfight broke out over Mario Party. Ripper manages to seduce not only Zipper, but her dwarf friend as well, and after reducing them both to happy unconsciousness unlocks the door for everybody else. The disc isn't in her apartment, but there is a handwritten letter from one Loomis directing her to set up the auction. There's a Kerwin Loomis who runs a nightclub called Coda out in the Barrens. Streetrat: Coder as in programmer or Coda as in epilogue? Ripper K: It's a musical term too. So that's two links. And a pun, too, since the disc has musical data. Ripper K: At this rate the client is going to regret agreeing to that early completion bonus. The Coda is the worst kind of dive. Happily, Loomis has an apartment above the club, and Streetrat's drones spot the suspicious activity next door before we blunder into it ourselves. He switches his POV to one of the drones and investigates closer – there's a team of armed and armoured individuals watching the club. And one of them is probably a mage. Happily, suddenly appearing at all the doors and windows with two armed drones and three scary-looking individuals demoralises them so completely they readily agree to Ripper's terms. They go wait at the local Stuffer Shack, while we – still posing as some kind of Barrens organised crime syndicate – go have a private word with Mr Loomis. Then they can do whatever they like with him. Evidently nobody told this team of runners that another team had been hired for the job. We head in to have a polite chat with Loomis, who panics and threatens to break the disc. He also insists the disc was willed to him by his father – the big-name rocker K-spot. There never was a theft. Oracle: So how much were we being paid not to care? Loomis caves, especially after he finds out just how many people already know about the disc. Giant Dad: How much are you willing to pay to get out of here alive? We drop Loomis off at the Ork Underground and head back to the Cathode Glow to use their vintage tech to find out what's actually ON this disc. It seems to be music data, as claimed, but there are multiple levels of encryption on it. Giant Dad: Don't mind us, Astronauta and I will just be having Fight Club outside. Ripper K: If anybody asks just tell them you're re-enacting John Carpenter films. The music is melancholy and introspective. Giant Dad: We're listening to Linkin Park? But since we're good shadowrunners, it's time to take the disc to the client. We'll just neglect to mention the one-to-one copy we made so Oracle can run full decryption on it. We will include all the data we have on that other team, including the number of their fixer. But either way, our Mr Johnson seems very pleased – especially since we got it all done in less than 24 hours. The other group of players is still slogging through the same module four sessions later - and that other shadowrunner team are probably still waiting at the Stuffer Shack. D&D - mostly a continuation of a dungeon crawl, and the capture of the enemy wizard, whereupon things become Political. It's always so helpful when the bad guys keep copies of their correspondence around the lair. Kavorog: Murder and psychopathy are all part of being an adventurer. We find a satchel full of potions and adventuring gear in the bottom of a cistern. Kavorog: Looks like a bug-out bag. Or a bugbear-out bag. GM: What do you want to do with these guys? Lamech: Skin them and use their scrotums as a coin purse. GM: You're a bloodthirsty little... aren't you? To a prisoner - Lamech: So, Mr. Human Shield – you don't mind me calling you Human Shield, do you? - What else should we know about this dungeon?

I'd completely forgotten that Then managed to miss this paragraph So when you got to this bit I thought "hang about, that sounds horribly familiar" Those poor, poor fools... Also, I want to see this entry

Shadowrun 2050! The team, backed up by Renraku security who are trying quite hard to distance themselves from their agent The Soft-eyed Man. That individual appears to have gone slightly nuts, bombed our homes, kidnapped our friends, and taken over part of the Renraku arcology. We also make sure to inform Lone Star and our military contacts, who will probably like to know about a maniac with access to nuclear weapons, in downtown Seattle. Felix: And by telling everybody makes it's less likely they'll just kill us afterwards. Greenlight: They haven't managed to kill us so far. Titus: Orbital weapon platform. Greenlight: Just to kill us??? Felix: Sure – just mock up some security footage beforehand to make it look like conventional explosives. Greenlight: …. true. The worst thing was the destruction of our armoured liquor cabinet. Lone Star investigators: 8000 nuyen a bottle? Really? Felix: Help us take this prick down and we'll share a bottle. Inkubus: I won't even share a bottle with you! I'm sorry, but my dick needs to sucked by somebody with at LEAST as much skill in the erotic arts as I do, before I'll even THINK of sharing a bottle with them. Felix calls his uncle at Aztechnology. Greenlight: This is going to be a feeding frenzy. If Aztech security go into the arcology and just HAPPEN to get lost... This is going to be a Mass Run – we put the word out to every shadowrunner team we can, every decker that can hack the building's systems, and every favour, tie of friendship and acquaintance, that we can. After all, covering Seattle in a shower of radioactive metal would be a bad thing. And the lower levels of the arcology include some of the largest fusion reactors in North America. While we COULD just use ritual magic to snipe the Soft-Eyed Man without even going near the building, we DO have to rescue the hostages, and it's likely he has a Dead-man Protocol in play. He's not stupid, after all – merely out of his mind from faulty Flesh Drone technology. Inkubus prepares a voodoo doll anyway. And we still have a sample of that wall-softening catalyst from our early run, and Renraku's head of arcology security confirms the same architectural polymer was used between some of the reactor levels. Renraku helpfully provide us with weapons, and are clearly relieved that we're taken ECM grenades, fire-extinguishers loaded with Neurostun gas, and Dimethyl Sulphoxide grenades dosed with powerful laxatives. Before anything else, they really, really want us to cut the Soft-eyed Man's access to the arcology's comp-net. They don't say why this is so important to them. Inkubus: I literally want to give my enemies the shits. And of course Titus and Warhammer can combine forces into the Troll-mounted Minigun again. Titus calls in his friend Cyberpope for Matrix support. Titus: Help me on this and we're even. You might have to start wearing pants though. Felix: What??? Titus: He works in the nude. And Greenlight's mentor Wormwood will be able to take control of the arcology's minigun drones, if we can get him inside. We make a big entrance, past the evacuation perimeter and tank cordon. Inkubus come in standing on his custom Harley Scorpion, one foot on the seat, one foot on the skull, glowing green and pointing dramatically. Felix, however, needs to get a lift. Greenlight: Come on Bubbles – you can ride bitch. The arcology looms, a vast black pyramid – the Hotel Luxor writ large. There's no resistance at first – after all, the Soft-eyed Man is expecting us. Might not be expecting us to be playing 'Back in Black' at full volume though. Nonetheless, getting into the reactor levels is so easy the GM doesn't even bother rolling the combats. Then, ninjas. Who, happily, aren't wearing breathing gear. Felix: Welp... Neurostun grenades then. Greenlight narrowly avoids being shot in the face by ninja-clones of her brother. Inkubus: I fully support Greenlight's decision to not take a shot in the mouth from her brother. Inkubus uses the DMSO grenade launcher. The ninjas all collapse with horrifying abdominal cramps . Inkubus: It's the diarrhoea fairy! Warhammer: Right, number one is down. Are we doing number two? Felix: They are. Titus: Imagine being hit with a laxative, THEN Greenlight's stun baton. Inkubus: Argh! Titus: 'That made a hole on the way out' Inkubus: I see Greenlight's role in life is to make a complete mockery of any combat she's in. Titus: I make a full troll charge at them – then stop on a dime and snarl. I want to scare the crap out of them. Inkubus: Don't you just love DMSO laxatives? Greenlight: It's a new weapon in my arsenal. It certainly went to THEIR arsenal. Unfortunately, then the drone turrets arrive on the ceiling-mounted rails. Fortunately, it's not the minigun turrets. It does, however, fire darts. Happily, they just ricochet off Warhammer's skull. The much larger-sounding drones a bit later are more worrying. Happily, with the wall-softening catalyst means we can bypass the anticipated route entirely. And Greenlight can borrow Felix's magesight goggles, with their extendible fibre-optic cable, to see what's around the corner. Useful thing, those goggles. Titus: You can threaten people with free colonoscopies. Or fireballs. Greenlight: For that direct relief. And with magical concealment, Inkubus' permanent flight and magic fingers spells, and Titus' packs of hi-ex, the heavily armed mining droids really aren't that must of a threat either. Nor are the squad of spider drones. And Felix can really distract the guards at the comp centre with an earth elemental and a Force 14 Stunball while the rest of the party just goes through a side wall. Greenlight: Did you know that cardiac massage can be timed with 'Staying Alive' or 'Another One Bites the Dust'? Inkubus: 'Staying Alive' is appropriate. Felix: 'Another One Bites The Dust' not so much. The computer centre is six floors deep – the Soft-eyed Man is in the security booth, which doesn't help much when we can see him through the glass and most magics use line-of-sight. He's jacked into the arcology's comp-net via an amazing profusion of data-cables. The Soft-eyed Man: You're too late! I have already succeeded! MWHAHAH- Inkubus: uses Magic Fingers to yank out the cables The Soft-eyed Man: *slumps dead* And then we're attacked by robot velociraptor-kangaroos. Greenlight fries one with his stun baton. Greenlight: Thunderstruck! Because we're on an ACDC kick tonight. Inkubus, however, critically fails his own attacks and collapses. Fortunately, Titus decapitates the robot with his sledgehammer before it can disembowel our elf hedonist. Felix is feeling extremely fortunate that none of the velocireapers are attacking him, because while his air elementals are the most useful tool the party has, he has nothing that can hurt a robot. But we take them down before they finish us off. And then through every speaker in the arcology, we hear a digital scream of frustration. It would appear the Soft-eyed Man has gone the Lawnmower Man route and has uploaded his mind into the arcology's comp-net. Time to shut down all those data-stacks. Felix: 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do....' Soft-Eyed Avatar: NO MORE MISTER NICE GUY *triggers the reactor overload* We rush around to try and shut down the reactor, admittedly blacking out Seattle, while the comp-net's in-built security systems eat the Avatar – this isn't the first time the Renraku arcology has spawned an AI, and the corporation installed precautions against it happening again. Plus, of course, all those deckers cutting off every route out into the Matrix. Inkubus: He was doomed from the start. And then we can rescue the hostages, which includes Greenlight's long missing parents, collect our million in pay, and go celebrate. Inkubus: Party at your place? Titus: My place is a crater. Inkubus: Oh. So's ours. Anybody still have a place? Titus: What the hell, let's just buy a hotel. Greenlight: Sorry, Mum, Dad, our old place is a family home for five now – is there any part of Seattle you think's nice? Greenlight: I'm retiring. From now on guys? I'm Sam. Just Sam. Inkubus: If you ever abuse this, I'll Quicken and Orgasm on you. But... my first name's not so bad – it's Mitchell. Greenlight: No worries, Mike. Inkubus: I'm becoming a music producer for heavy metal bands. Titus: I'm rebuilding my house and going back to gardening. Shadowrunning was fun but it got my home blown up, which was annoying. In 2057 we get a phonecall from the office of Presidential Candidate the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn, offering us a job. Apparently somebody is deeply unhappy with what happened to that Hawaiian dragon's body, but at least nobody has dispatched assassins yet. In return for that forbearance, we need to do a few jobs for him. After all, we're vaguely competent, are highly critical of other people's security precautions, have proved ourselves willing to work for dragons, and perhaps more importantly have proven capable of killing them. Although that last one will come back to bite us, as far as conspiracy investigations go. Inkubus: I'll do it for one of those Tickle-Me-Dunkelzahn dolls that got C-and-D'd. One job is retrieving incriminating footage of Dunkelzahn and the CEO of Ares Macrotech, Damien Knight. Inkubus: I didn't even know they were connected! Well, obviously they're connected there... Greenlight: It's true, Dunkelzahn really is the Big D. And then it's all sort of shenanigans leading up to to Super Tuesday, recovering a stolen egg, a presidential assassination that we astrally witnessed years ago, and highly Interesting Times. Titus: Standard bodyguarding won't work – standard practise is strap him to the troll and run away. That won't work with a dragon. All: *part of the Presidential motorcade past the Watergate Hotel, and suddenly feeling this is horribly familiar* Inkubus: Wait, wait, this is - Felix: Oh fuck, he's about to - Presidential Limousine: BOOM All: *facepalm* GM: Congratulations – you're now part of the biggest conspiracy theory of the century. Felix: Well, that's going to do my reputation on the conspiracy boards a lot of good. Inkubus: No it won't – they won't believe a word you say ever again. And there's some very interesting provisions in , covering the very stuff Inkubus is researching on Essence Repair, and regarding any information regarding a certain room in one of Aztech's facilities... the very room that got Felix put on permanent suspension back in 2050. And then the Renraku Arcology spawn another AI – comprised of fragments of other machine intelligences and parts of the Soft-eyed Man's mind – and the resulting Crash 2.0 destroys the global economy and Internet for the better part of a decade. Titus: What would that do your social media addictions? Greenlight: gibbers, groans 'hey, Inkubus, what are you doing with that corkboard?' 'Hey, Sam, you want to post something?' Inkubus: This is what the net was like before electricity. Felix: And no-one will ever believe us when we say we had nothing to do with it. 'it was just co-incidence!' Titus: I was behind everything. Including that. And now you know too much.

Black Crusade : The Five of Thrones A group of heretics attempting to overthrow the Imperium one world at a time. But first, they have to find a replacement leg for the psyker Skerrit, who has yet to learn the importance of cover during firefights. GM: Just rename yourself Hopalong Cassidy. Digna: While reconstructing the limb would be an interesting intellectual challenge, he's not worth the time. True, the party could go steal one from a shipment they found out about. An additional problem – none of the PCs have particularly high Infamy, so they can't acquire a replacement leg for Skerrit easily, and Skerrit's reputation is now so poor that charity from the others will likely drive it even lower. And as Digna points out, cybernetics are blessings from the machine god. Laypeople may receive them, of course, if they make a suitable tithe to the tech-shrines. Cybernetics as indulgences, as it were. None of this does Skerrit any good. Skerrit: Fuck it, point me at the warehouse, I'll get it myself. GM: You'll hop in and steal it yourself, will you? Or Digna and Eniek could fabricate one from scratch. It'll be easier to integrate it into Skerrit's nervous system, for one thing. Digna: Tell me what you feel when I do this. 'strawberries!' Hmm. Interesting. Of course Digna and Eniek have to cut off his other leg first so they'll have enough material to fleshweave actual skin and muscle over the bionics they make for Skerrit. Skerrit: What?!?! Digna: But you will be able to leap small buildings. Daniels: Don't you only get that if both limbs are bionic? Digna: That's why I cut off the other leg > Digna: Success! Aw - you learn so much more from failure. Digna also acquires a pre-fab research base the locals were intending to melt down for scrap, once they figured out how. And some unwelcome attention from laypeople who have noticed she's actually quite attractive for a tech-priest. Digna: My mechadendrites are up here. Digna: So now we have a base of operations. Daniels: And they'll know where to find us. Digna: ...There is that. But now they have a new objective, since driving that wedge between the head enforcer Xabius Khan and the governor Judici-ary Evandus Idrani, Seventh of That Name. To whit - befriend and corrupt the Governor's heir, then get the Governor ousted from his position. A magical ritual to drive him insane seems ideal - especially if they can convince his son to participate. With sufficient tweaking, they can even get most of the nobility on side by having the Governor shut down the spaceport (out of fear of the Calixian Commisariat coming to investigate his various failures) and the damage that will do to Sinophia's already crippled economy. If they can get the Clockwork Court to impeach the governor, and install his heir in the position, the PCs will have a valuable puppet they can bring down at any time. GM: It's an interesting thing that slavery is illegal under Imperial law. And I suppose fish have no word for water. Skerrit's Infamy takes more hits as the others acquire goods for him. Such gifts are a good way to whittle down an allies repu-tation, by positioning yourself as his patron. GM: Here, have these 47 different guns. Skerrit: *sings* On the first day of Tzeenchmas, While Daniels and Skerrit attempt to charm their way into Nonesuch House, Digna will research certain cybernetic mysteries that intrigue her. Digna: Mechanicus Resurrection - we can rebuild him. We have the technology. Routes of attack - Evandus Junior is known to frequent Nonesuch House, built on one of the bridges over the river. It appears to be quite popular with the more dissolute children of the nobility, although getting a letter of introduction is a little tricky. Eventually Dr. Eniek wheedles one out of a client, and Lord-Captain Daniels makes the acquaintance of the mistress of None-such House, the Lady Juliana, and of the various nobles who gather to gossip, deal, play cards, and get themselves completely stoned in the 'smoking rooms' on something apparently called 'Idyll'. Juliana attempts to seduce Daniels, and instead finds herself seduced towards darkness. A few more sessions like this, and she'll be a very useful way to corrupt dozens of nobles into the worship of Slaanesh. He makes the acquaintance of Evandus Junior, and also befriends a few of the nobility, who are impressed by his charm, and good manners, and his economic sensibilities - i.e. if they go along with his plans to re-open trade, they'll make more money. GM: 'He has good taste in amasec'. Nobility: He's one of our offworlders. Of course, once Daniels has nailed down all the new monopolies, he can start imposing a few other things on the Sinophian government. Such as half-a-million heavily armed offworlders. GM: 'Don't mind the ones that keep screaming 'Blood for the Blood God!' - it's just their way. Or the eight-foot-tall ones. Isn't that right, Brother-sergeant? Er, forget I said that' Daniels takes the precaution of acquiring nose filters, in case that Idyll smoke is addictive. It is. Skerrit, brought along as a servant, has no such luck and is soon addicted to the substance, and is caught trying to break into the storage room containing the seeds. He gets banned. GM: Skerrit is son curled up in a corner of the smoking room imagining fluffy pink clouds. It's probably the happiest he's ever been in his life. Noble: I'm hallucinating a little rat thing in the corner, on its back, twitching. Of course, now they have to get Skerrit off the stuff - a psyker will willpower problems is a psyker that's going to get everybody killed. Digna leaves it to Eniek to solve, which he does by strapping Skerrit to a gurney to go cold-turkey, and dosing him with a anti-addiction drug that is itself highly addictive. Digna: It's a biological issue - therefore it's your problem. Plus of course, once the planned theft of those cybernetics has actually gone ahead - not by the party, but by the crooks that had had orginally planned it - Digna can plant a few hints on that darknet node that it was the governor that ordered the theft, and Daniels can subtly point the investigation in that direction. Indeed, a few days later one of the Arbites, a Fidal Constantine, turns up to request Digna's assistance in taking apart an illegal darknet. How very convenient.

Black Crusade : The Four of Eagles In which the players came up with an overly convoluted plan, which would please Tzeench, and one of them got mortally wounded, which pleased me. The PCs have acquired the Hersiliad Codex, by murdering the team of thieves an eccentric loan shark hired to steal it. The codex, it turns out, is a comprehensive diary written by one of Captain Daniels' ancestors about his discovery of the apparently civilised lost human world in what was then the Calyx Expanse, his notes on the 'trance States' and 'mnemonic engrams' used by the locals to ensure good luck, etc. To anybody more familiar with the rituals of Chaos, it's obvious the long-dead Rogue Trader got played - the 'tutelary spirits' are clearly daemonic. That makes the way his ship got delayed during his return to Imperial space, and the timing of the fleet that found Hersilia, condemned it, and depopulated it while he was incommunicado, highly suspicious. All that aside, the rituals clinically described within - the Rite of Entwined Fates, for example, and something best termed 'the Idiot's Guide to Making Daemon Weapons' - are of some interest. Digna: Apparently daemonic entities can be used to overcome structural limitations. Daniels: How so? Digna: Let me put it this way – *sings* Do you want to build an evil snowman? And having taken one of the Hersilians as a consort probably goes some way to explain the increasing decadence of the Daniels line over subsequent centuries. Although the fact that the Daniels lineage intermarried with half the other Rogue Trader families in the Calixis Sector - including the notorious Haarlocks - wouldn't have helped any. For that matter there's also the well-known corruptive influence of obscene wealth and power. That said, the Haarlocks had their own perculiarities - Erasmus Haarlock's horological obsession, for example. One device in his Hall of Clocks has been flashing 12:00 for the last 38,000 years. Daniels: One of the great mysteries of the Mechanicus Digna: Well, they lost the VCR remote. At least the book matches the version in their collective nightmares, right down to the spider with two scorpion tails embossed on the red leather cover. The animated GIFs the two tech-priests received have been particularly difficult to erase. Digna: I'm running the ancient protocols of Windows Firewall, which should be enough. Nobody told me I'd need Avast – that sounds like pirate code! Eniek: I'm running Apple, I don't need antivirus. Paranoia is not helped by the need to agree on a place to meet and study the group. Digna doesn't even have lodgings on Sinophia. GM: You probably just turn up at the various tech-shrines in Sinophia Magna and demand a room. Local Techpriests: Quick, hide everything while she's sleeping! Archimedes OoC : How do we earn more Infamy? GM: Film a 'Will It Blend?' video at the local maternity ward? Their other prize - the one that tickled Skerrit's psyniscience - is a fragment of mirror. But upon gazing into it, Skerrit sees a damp, dark room, dripping with mold, and a huge figure that hisses "I missed you, boy." His reaction is to scream and flee, since he knows exactly who that is. The others watch with interest as he runs off and vanishes down a storm drain. Digna: He's really booking it, isn't he? The other stolen books aren't nearly as useful or valuable - mostly local curios. Skerrit OoC: And eight issues of Mechadendrite Monthly – with centrefolds. Eniek: Yoink. But before he can wander off to his bunk for some implant polishing, they should experiment with that mirror. Eniek: We need to find a random schmuck. Digna: Why? Eniek: We're bad guys. GM: And after you've made him look into the mirror? Digna: Spare parts. I'm sure there's somebody that needs a new liver. Digna: In Techno-Lingua – +++ FUCKS +++ I HAZ NONE +++ They requisition a white ice-cream van and kidnap a few street-urchins. The first one sees nothing, and Eniek snaps his neck. Digna: That was rather wasteful – we have a perfectly good freezer unit right there. Eniek: Standing before are people I thought had gone beyond the petty limits of morality Digna: And become pragmatists. Perhaps the mirror only effects psykers? Digna: Look over there. Archimedes: Eh? *turns back to find the mirror in front of his face* But what he does see is a gaunt, bearded face, and a hand raised to strike. It's the face of Erasmus Haarlock himself, and he vanished centuries ago after hunting down and slaughtering ever relative he could find. GM: Maybe he's gone to the Mirror Universe and grown a goatee. Digna OoC: Hands up those of diving headlong towards Slaanesh All: *Raise hands* They eventually lure Skerrit out of hiding, and set him to work on another Tarot reading. Evidently the mirror fragment is just one of many, and one of the other fragments is in the possession of an agent of the law, an outsider, powerful but corrupt, and who surrounds himself with violence and wealth - according to Four of Adeptio, aka Four of Eagles, and The Arbitrator, Inverted, and certain other cards in the spread. Happily, there's a likely candidate - Xabius Khan, head of the Enforcers, and of the Mandato, the government's even more violent secret police. He's an off-worlder bounty hunter who got in tight with the governor Evandus and turned the enforcers and the Mandato into his personal army of jackbooted thugs. Naturally, if the PCs are going to start destabilising the Sinophian power structure as they build their own influence, they need to drive a wedge between Khan and Evandus. Their plan is to have Khan's mistress - rumour holds she is a distant illegitimate daughter of the aristocracy - kidnapped, and incriminate the Governor. To this end they disguise Daniels as a badly disguised governor's aide, hire the kidnappers, and afterwards go to Khan and offer to track the kidnappers down, acting as an Even More Secret Police. GM: I want to see a diagram of this. Eniek: It IS getting a bit Meta. Daniels OoC: And Tzeentch says 'I approve' They get to work mapping out the structure of organised crime in Sinophia Magna. One bit of data Digna finds on the primitive data-net running from the Loanfather's house is interesting but not immediately relevant - a plan to rob a shipment of off-world high quality cybernetics. Digna: They're going to rob it on Thursday? We'll rob it on Tuesday. The kidnappers and Khan unwisely agree to their respective unwitting roles in the current plan, but Khan insists that some of the kidnappers be taken alive. This suits the PCs - after all they want Khan to get a description of that 'governor's aide' - but he has his own reason. GM: He wants to make an example of them. Daniels: As do we – because nobody should be so stupid as to accept this job without a down-payment. On the other hand, a competent team of kidnappers will also take precautions against discovery and treachery afterwards. Digna: That's the problem for hiring for competence – they can do the job, but it makes them harder to take down afterwards. And of course you don't want Khan making the connection between the people who arranged the kidnapping, and the suspiciously similar-looking group that performed the rescue. Luckily they have access to a telepath and strong drugs, so they can befuddle the courtesan and plant a few memories implicating the Governor in a scheme to undermine Khan. Of course, the Byzantine bureaucracy of the Imperium complicates things - they have to achieve all this without attracting the attention of the Adeptus Arbites. Planetary law enforcers deal with minor crimes like murder. The Arbiters deal with major crimes like tax evasion, or defying the bureaucracy. They also deal with crimes against the other Adepta, so if anything happens to the two tech-priests and they don't report it, the Arbites will be rightly suspicious. As it happens, the kidnapper's precautions would have been great, if they hadn't just let the PCs in past most of them. The Chirugeon's sonic weapon pulps most of them. Eniek: FUS RO DAH!!!! But down at the door Skerrit is in trouble. Turns out a shotgun trumps stub-pistol. The rat-tailed psyker gets his leg shredded, and only the arrival of the others saves his damned existence. Just as well they know where they can find a shipment of cybernetics...

An online Shadowrun 2070 game that our GM is running. Characters include Ripper K: Orca-form Changeling, negotiator, muscle, and porn star Ryleigh the Fox: Changeling, and Rigger The Hogfather: Street Samurai and Orc Vell Rubicante: Elven Mage, with too many pseudonyms for anybody healthy. Also known as The Red Angel, Doc, Dealer, Darkleaf, and 'That fucking geriatric bastard' Also a new PC - a burnt-out Mage going by the non-de-plume of 'Shirley Temple' For some reason dropping the plot hook from last session, the GM throws a new job at us. The Johnson wants to meet at a nightclub. GM: Shadowrun: Guns! Magic! Intrigue! Public Transit! Dr. Rubicante: What, I've driven before! Granted, it was nearly forty years ago. An amusing glitch in the security scanner - when Shirley walks through the detector, the entire machine seems to seize up for a moment, before reporting as all clear. For everyone. For the rest of the night. The client wants us to recover a disc of music-related data before it gets sold on or duplicated. An optical disc. The doctor is rather amused that anybody still uses the antique media he grew up with. We do have one clue though - the thief intends to sell the disc to one Nabo. GM: Everybody’s heard of Nabo, unless they live under a rock. The whole Orxploitation movement has settled down somewhat in the last five or six years from its former white-hot glory, but that doesn’t mean it’s going away anytime soon. Every few months the music-sim companies find somebody new to promote, propel up to the pop charts, and exploit until they can find a new cash cow. These days, Nabo’s their golden boy. Anybody who pays attention to popular music knows his story: he’s an ork ganger kid from the Seattle Barrens who loves music more than he loves firefights and selling BTLs. He makes a name for himself performing in small local clubs, gets noticed by somebody big time, and the next thing he knows he’s rocketing up the charts and livin’ la Vida loca. Must be nice. (Think Tupac Shakur, but as an ork.) Dr. Rubicante: Is the orc a black guy? The Hogfather: You can't just ask someone if they're black, jeez! Dr. Rubicante: I mean, I know he's an orc, but is he a "black" orc. Ripper K: *winces, and remembers just how old the Red Angel is.* It's like your grandmother asking you to get some liquorice candies and yelling across the street "Don't forget to get me some of them NIGGER BABIES" Dr. Rubicante is not the Face of the group for these reasons. The Hogfather: OH MY GOD, VELL. Shirley Temple: if you have to ask..... Ryleigh: Ripper's black. Partially. The Hogfather: Downstairs, we know. Ryleigh: Actually I was thinking of Ripper's face, not his dick XP. The best way to recover the disc seems to be via Nabo - but getting past his security is obviously going to be the hard part. Dr. Rubicante: Can you honeypot him into some alone time, Shirley? Ripper K: winces Jeez, Vell, tact, please! Shirley Temple: I don't swing that way sweety. Dr. Rubicante: You can pretend. It can't be hard, girlfriend. Shirley Temple: The orca has a better chance than I do. The Red Angel has an idea. Dr. Rubicante: I can mask the Hogfather into looking like him so we can "kidnap" Nabo in front of the bodyguards. If they give chase, we'll come in and kidnap him for real! The Hogfather: Except the minders know him pretty well, I don't know if i could pass for him GM: Well, there's always the low-tech option - bribing your way backstage. Dr. Rubicante: You don't have to pass for him... just look like he was bound and gagged and being tossed into a van. Ripper K: And if the minders catch up with you? or call in Lone Star? or his legions of heavily armed fans see you kidnapping their idol? Dr. Rubicante: The mask comes off, and we pretend we don't know what they're talking about. Cameras don't see the mask after all. Security tapes will see us dragging our drunk ork friend into a van. And everyone will feel guilty for thinking orks all look alike. Dr. Rubicante: So, Operation: Racist Riot will have the Hog, Ryleigh and I luring the minders away from Ripper and Nabo, then Shirley can join in, tie him up/or knock him out- I mean, he'll most likely be naked and unarmored- and can drive off in the Hogfather's car The Hogfather: Operation House Call has me and Ripper look into breaking into his place to find any leads, while you guys try and steal his data. And Operation Modern Cocktail means we buy a bug or tracer and find someone to get it onto him. Ripper K: Why Modern Cocktail? The Hogfather: 'Shirley Temple's a drink, right? It was her idea. Eventually we decide to go with all three plans, starting with attempting to plant tracers on Nabo's person, clothes, car etc; getting close enough to hack his phone; and leaving the kidnapping and housebreaking as back-up plans in case that doesn't work. And we'd better do it tonight - he's got one last concert in Seattle before he leaves on a tour of what's left of the U.S. GM: The concert's not only sold out, it's overbooked. The local fire marshal would have fit about this, but his anger was tempered by the 5-digit amount mysteriously appearing in his bank account. The Hogfather: Ok, so the plan is, we get a tracer. Go to the concert, beat up some punks to get their tickets, try and steal the data, failing that plant a tracer and follow him to the meet up and trade? Dr. Rubicante: Can it be shitty teenagers? PLEASE say we can beat up shitty teenagers. Ripper K: I can knock them out, sure... I'd feel bad about ruining some kid's night though. Can we leave them a few nuyen to reduce the disappointment? We should probably use some sort of disguise - the spell Mask is ideal. GM: Maybe not Jessica Rabbit, BUT, if you cast well, and could manage keeping your concentration and the -4 to your dice pools for the duration, you could likely cast Physical Mask and make everyone look like cute genki ork groupies. The Hogfather shudders, but admits it's actually a good idea. Unfortunately it just gives the Red Angel more opportunity to prove what a complete Stone Age misogynist he is. The Hogfather: Fucking orxplotation.... Dr. Rubicante: XD Oh that'd be better, cuz if it were just me, I'd be a 61 year old guy pretending to be a woman to lure away teenage boys. At least as girls, we can slut our way through the backdoor. Women have it so easy. Ryleigh: Heterosexual men are pigs. Ripper K: *facepalm* Hey, Vell? Were you born in 2011? Or 1911? Dr. Rubicante: I was there during the feminazi/SJW uprising. The Hogfather: Oh it was terrible little Timmy, there were trigger warnings and non-standard gender descriptions everywhere While Ripper, Fox and Shirley get into the concert warehouse via the back door - which ironically is also exactly how Ripper distracts the troll security at said door - the Hogfather and the Red Angel aren't having quite so much luck out the front. GM: Hog forgets he's supposed to be a girl and uses his normal male voice. Dr. Rubicante: Oh Orkarina, you're so silly! * high-pitched giggles* Forgive her~ she's had a stuffy throat for a while! You know - *pantomimes a blowjob*. The Hogfather: *forces himself to blush and look coy* Shirley Temple: oh god, just thought.....hot orkish female make-out scene.....they are both secretly guys. The way the disguised elf giggles and blushes and touchs himself girlishly made it disturbingly clear that he was not unfamiliar with pretending to be female. Jager, Head of security: Oh, you some damn fine ladies... He saunters to the Doctor's slender female form and stares at her perky breasts for a moment, before looking back up. Jager: Y'know, Nabo and I go way back.. maybe after you and him have your backstage... autographs, you might think about comin' to see me? I'll definitely make you fly high in more ways than one, girl... He *sniffs* Doc. Ryleigh: if Security is this bad, maybe kidnapping wasn't out of the question after all... Dr. Rubicante: *attempts a deep blush followed by a moan as he's sniffed by the obvious junkie, as if the little missy was turned on by such brutish advances* Oh Head of Security-chan... I've never even had a boyfriend before! *biting on his knuckle* Maybe later you can show me how much better a MAN-friend is, yeah, desu? (Somewhere deep within, Vell Rubicante was the Lich King.) Shirley Temple: bitch king Dr. Rubicante: Oh, the bitchiest. OoC, I'm crying with laughter by this point, because despite promising the GM that the game would remain clean despite our choices of PC backgrounds, Ripper is currently keeping a fifth of the concert security busy in one of the backstage shower blocks, and two other, magically gender-swapped, characters are attempting horrendous flirtation past the rest. As it happens most of these shenanigans were unnecessary - Nabo's security precautions are so pathetic Ryleigh and Shirley manage to clone and hack his smartphone in seconds. Ryleigh: I could probably sell backdoor access to his commlink to the highest bidder too. After we finish the job. Shirley Temple: hurr hurr, backdoor access to an orcish superstar heart-throb? And thus off to spy on the auction and interrupt the handoff. The auction will be taking place at the Cathode Glow Club - a severely retro hangout for hackers that like playing with 20th and early 21st century geek toys - including vintage arcade games that they're all playing remotely. Ryleigh: Ooh, it feels like we're on archaeology survey... The Doc hands the Hogfather a pair of Wiimotes. Dr. Rubicante: Play me. Hogfather: You mean you have to play it with your hands? That's a baby's toy Dr. Rubicante: The best games are played with your hands, sonny. Hogfather: The games I play with my hands don't generally involve computers. Ryleigh picks one up and rubs the phallic controllers curiously. Ryleigh: hmm. Oooh. it vibrates! Does it double as a sex toy? Hogfather slowly puts the controller down Hogfather: I'm just going to go and get something to drink then... The Fox attempts to poke around in the local WiFi. GM: You get a nice, informative UI mesage. "Dear Mr. Ryleigh. Your Commlink's data security is lacking, and at least two exploits were porformed to gain access. do not worry, no data was compromised. enclosed are a series of links to descriptions of the exploits used, and to the appropriate firmware upgrades and patches. We take security seriously at the Amber Glow." GM: You got h4x00r3d, d00d Ryleigh: I know... I thought this would happen. GM: Be glad the Cathode Glow's a White Hat bar Ryleigh attempts to improve his security and screws up so badly Lone Star and his mystery nemesis take an interest. Hogfather: STOP CALLING LONE STAR AND ORDERING HACKING PROGRAMS! Ripper K: Well, Fox, if Lone Star come looking for you I'll them you're visiting your sick grandmother. Near Nottingham. GM: in a house far, far, away, a camera pans up from a man on a commlink. it shows the bottom half of a face. a face half burned. "Got him." Shirley Temple: .... We would be best not to be near this node shortly.... Ryleigh: Oh shit... Dr. Rubicante: Dun dun DUUUUN Ryleigh: .... it's not lone star Ripper K: That sounds ominous There's no really role for Ripper and the Hogfather in the subsequent surveillance on the auction. Hogfather: oh, well, in that case I'll go and hang out with with Ripper. We can play strip paper-scissor-rock The auction eventually goes to an elven woman. GM: Nabo growls, and tosses the 4DS at a wall in anger, shattering it! He's promptly set upon by the bouncers and a whole lot of very very pissed off geeks. The hand-off is happening at a junkyard - as Houston GM has observed elsewhere, a terrible, terrible place for any sort of covert meeting. Too many routes in and out, too much cover for hostiles. At least that works in our favour - at first. GM: Those are orderly rows of stacked crushed ars, about 7m high Shirley Temple: crushes arse?! GM: CRUSHED CARS. Hogfather: pity, i wanted to climb the crushed arse... Dr. Rubicante: Let's get you anyone Ripper has ever been with ever. Shirley Temple: Piles of arse as far as the eye could see.... Those piles of arse become rather less orderly by the and of the evening, when after snatching the elf woman, Masking Ripper as her, and almost getting the disc, another team of heavily armed individuals cut their way into the junkyard's far side and start shooting people in the head. Things would have gone very badly for the party if the enemy mage hadn't shot himself in the foot with his own Stunball, and our own mage hadn't blown up the entire enemy squad, the thief's bodyguards, and half the junkyard with a wildly overpowered spell. This is generally considered a good time to run the fuck away, and we do. Ripper K: Whatever music is on this disc... it had better fucking be worth it!

Me: Your neighbours asked me if I was here for Dungeons and Dragons when I got here. Weldun: Ha! They love the fact we're gamers. They used to have party animals. Titus' player: And now they have nice quiet nerds. Weldun: Nice quiet nerds – plotting murder and arson, but at least we're not ravers Shadowrun 2050: Paradise Lost Continued Inkubus: We came to Hawaii for a holiday, discovered we're shit at them, so now we have a job. Having theorised that Molokai Microtonics (2M) staged an attack on their own premises to steal the plans for a biofeedback filter they'd just perfected, we head off to retrieve the valuables. Despite the fact that 2M's head of security is a dragon, and probably came up with the scheme to kill his fellow employees, steal the prototrypes and plans, and apparently implicate the terrorist organisation ALOHA in the first place. We must be insane – this visit to Hawaii was supposed to be a holiday. Inkubus: Back to Basics, baby. Labrat: I'm in my hotel room with a hula-orc. Greenlight: Trying to get the maximum number of spins. Warhammer: I've been at the firing range. But it was already on fire. Inkubus: Wait, back up, what kind of firing range is already on fire? Please tell me you weren't lobbing grenades into the volcano. Warhammer: OK. It wasn't grenades. But first let's go hit those terrorists that got framed for the attack. Apparently they were sent some of the files we need to retrieve, and attacking them will satisfy the actual conspirators and frighten off ALOHA. At least, that was our working hypothesis. We will be disillusioned soon enough. Titus: Al Queda, ALOHA, Alamos 20K – all terrorist organisations are secretly run by Weird Al Yankovic. Mary Falls has arranged a tilt-wing and pilot for us. Inkubus: Great, you can be extraction if we screw up. Warhammer: When do we ever screw up? Felix: Well, we did hand over that possessed amulet and had to deal with a possessed dragon. Greenlight: Hey, we warned them. Titus: That was us dodging a bullet. Felix: And we did do major structural damage to a historical building. Inkubus: What? Wait, that Bavarian castle? Felix: And the Munchkin Riots made the international news. Inkubus: That was a micronation, that doesn't count. Inkubus: I'm supposed to be on vacation. I expect to spend at least half my time with my dick sheathed in something. Titus: Bags not it. Warhammer: I've got a pot of jelly... Pilot: Think of the money, chummer, think of the money. Titus OoC: Distinctive Style: External Monologuing Greenlight: You're the magical troll, Titus – we rub your belly for luck. We rappel in and our pilot flies off to disguise the tilt-wing as a crashed WWII plane. The ALOHA base has an assortment magical alarms and wards. Happily, a competent team of adepts – or even a team of adepts like us – can sneak on in anyway. Greenlight tiptoes up to place explosives around their shamanic longhouse while Warhammer and Labrat overwatch. The Geese Shamans are meditating. Inkubus: Put a parcel of explosive behind each one, like a little explosive bum-bag. Greenlight OoC: We have gamed together too long, Tony – I was about to do that > Greenlight: Let's blow this popsicle stand. Inkubus: That's not fair – Hawaiian architecture really does look like it was made from popsicle sticks and matches. (Weldun has some right to disparage Hawaiian architecture compared to his native Maori designs) The explosion is quite gratifying. Inkubus: Now it really DOES look like it was made from matchsticks. Inkubus: They should have had some actual geese on guard. Them and ducks - total bastards. Felix: They should be grateful to Peter Scott that there are any Hawaiian Geese to be shamans of. Orc guards boil out of the base and get a nasty surprise. Felix: As bits of longhouse and shaman rain down around them. Inkubus: At least these guys just want Hawaii for Hawaiians – they're not COMPLETELY nuts. Titus: I run up and bring the sledgehammer round right into the middle of his chest. Inkubus: By which we mean the middle of his chest caves right in. Warhammer: well, we have the musical accompaniment for this mission – Peter Gabriel. Inkubus: sings SledgeHAMMER. Felix: One of these days we're going to run into a group that has a sniper overwatching just for circumstances like this. Inkubus: That's the way I'd do it. Or a bunch of Ares Sentinel P's with sniper rifles. Inkubus magically glues the base's door open. Inkubus: gestures with devil horns at the door Titus: Why am I not surprised Metal Magic uses that finger position. Inkubus: I'm trying to think of a good song for gluing stuff. Felix: Stuck On You? Warhammer: That's what I was thinking. Inkubus: Nah, I need something Metal. GM: Spice Girls? Inkubus: Metal, not the Anti-metal! The underground ALOHA base has a stage for live bands and a jumbo screen. Inkubus: You see? See? This is what we need for the apartment! Greenlight: Not a stripper pole? Inkubus: Well, if it was MY apartment sure, but this is OUR apartment. Felix: StripperBowl? Warhammer: The single most-watched TV show in American history. Inkubus: Hey, Titus, can you carry the Jumbotron out to the tilt-wing? Felix casts Catalogue on each room as we go – we are here for a reason, after all. Inkubus: Catalogue – How To Search A Room In Three Seconds. There's a roomful of jamming musicians who haven't even noticed the explosion yet. Inkubus: …. it's beautiful.... Stunball. Titus: Warhammer can treat you for that Drain before you cast Catalogue again. Felix: Sure. Pass me that damp cloth. Greenlight: More like 'Slap you a few times and tell you to Stop That' Felix: I don't know what half this stuff is! What's a Fuchi Cyber-6? Inkubus: Expensive! Yoink! Greenlight: Thanks for your contribution to the Orphans and Cheerios Fund. We hit the kitchens next, where the staff are making dinner and can't even see our ninja girl as she ghosts through the room. Greenlight: Right – Titus wants two pears, Warhammer wants a nutbar. Any other orders? Inkubus: How about you? Felix: Dunno – a sandwich would be nice. Greenlight: I'll see what I can do. Inkubus: What does it say about this group that in the middle of a run we stop for a snack? The off-duty guards, who REALLY should have noticed all the commotion on the surface, fall easily. Some don't even wake up. Felix: I know it works in our favour, but does anybody else get annoyed at how unprofessional our opponents are? The next room has a woman typing away at her computer, and a white cat. Felix: Well, there's the evil mastermind. Labrat: Aims his gun at the woman. Hi there. Get away from the computer and move over there. Cat: hisses and spits lightning bolts at Labrat Felix: F**K! I TOLD you it was the mastermind! Greenlight: And you were right! Inkubus: It's a pokemon! Smash it! Titus: sledgehammer Greenlight: You really know how to pound that pussy. Titus: I should have held it up to the sprinklers. Electric-type pokemon and water don't mix. Woman: My cat! Do you have any idea how much that cost? Inkubus: Stunbolt. Warhammer: IOU One Magical Cat... Inkubus: No we don't! People should be responsible for their own pets. Her desktop includes the files and specs we're after. Labrat: I drain it. And then drain it again. Unfortunately the moment Labrat tries anything else the ALOHA decker notices something is going on, and every alarm in the place goes off. Coming up the ramp from below are more guards. Not really a threat. Although the ramp does puzzle us. Perhaps they'll be tracked drones soon? We're in for a rude shock soon - it's not drones. Felix: They should have had a silent alarm Greenlight: They need it loud – to wake up all the sleeping security. Titus: We could have snuck in under an Air Spirit. Inkubus: The Watcher Spirits would have reported it. Felix: Well, they probably did try to report – to those dead shamans. Inkubus: Hey! Hey listen! You want to know annoying watcher Spirits can be? Try Navi. Titus: Hey, guards, you have a choice – Stun patches or stun batons. No need to be total arseholes here. Guards: F**k, it's them! Greenlight: You have five seconds to decide. But with Inkubus' Concealment spell up we can Riverdance through the complex, or play the Metal cover of Mission Impossible. Which will make for interesting security footage later. Or slip interesting things into people's pants. Greenlight: Reverse pickpocketing grenades. But our confidence takes a major hit when we run into the Load-bearing Boss – 2M's Head of Security. A fully grown Feathered Serpent. Well, at least we know the connection between 2M and ALOHA now. Felix: Can we go now? Inkubus: We could.... Labrat: Do we really want to try and run away from a dragon, in an aircraft with no weapons? Inkubus: Sigh... good point. Dragon: You walk into my house. You steal my stuff. You KILLED MY ACCOUNTANT'S CAT. Inkubus: It started it. Felix: We're fucked. Either he kills us, or we kill him and we're still fucked. Inkubus: Nah – straight up fight – the other dragons are OK with that sort of thing. The hissing of fury becomes gurgling when Inkubus hits it with a maximised Orgasm. GM: This is probably the first time you've seen a dracoform penis in the flesh. Inkubus: Well, now I know why Hestaby doesn't return my calls. Titus, however, manages to swing his own giant hammer, and Greenlight her own big expendable rod, so efficiently that the dragon manages to knock ITSELF out absorbing the damage (one of the quirks of the system). Titus OoC: You rolled so well you knocked yourself out! Suck on that, you bastard! And then we just pile on to make sure he never gets up again. And Inkubus harvests the body for reagents. GM: I hate you all. Felix' Catalogue spell produces a list so long he have to flick through multiple mental pages. GM: There's sets of Simsense goggles Titus: Simpsons Goggles? Inkubus: The goggles! They do nothing! It also lists the entire contents of the dragon's hoard, the most valuable items of which are a small case of unique bootleg recordings, which we would never have even noticed without Felix' Catalogue spell, and Inkubus to recognise them for their true insanely high value. Felix: We buy a Hawaiian island. Possibly this one. And now we can retire. After one last job – helping Greenlight hunt down her remaining family, and killing the Soft-eyed Man. Felix: We're supposed to be on vacation, and we JUST KILLED A DRAGON. Inkubus: Is anybody hurt? Titus: Bubbles has a slight headache from all that casting. Inkubus: F**k, killing dragons really is a holiday for us. But we have a not-so-happy homecoming to Seattle. All our homes have been bombed out by an unmarked chopper. And all our friends and contacts are missing. Inkubus: This is insane. We live in a high security area. Lone Star can't afford to ignore this. RENRAKU knows we'll escalate. I want a five tonne fuel-air bomb and a delivery order for Renraku arcology. Felix: Actually... maybe it was the Soft-eyed Man Inkubus: Hmm. Good point. First Gen flesh drone – probably has driven the original loopy. Titus: I want to point out that I'm angry for the first time in years. We get a phone call from a Renraku exec. Inkubus: You'd better have something for me or I'm dropping an eight-tonne FAE on that fucking eyesore you're building. Renraku Exec: One of our agents appears to have gone rogue. We apologise for any inconvenience. We would like to hire you to deal with him. Felix: laughs hysterically Greenlight: I demand the assistance of the Red Samurai. Inkubus: Why, they're only good for soaking up bullets.. oh, OK. And thus our final adventure will be a full-scale assault on Renraku Arcology, and getting paid to do something we would have done for free.

Wherein we chat more with that hostage we rescued, learn more about why he and our boss actually got sent out here, and get yet more quests added to the mission log. At least no-one has asked us to go collect potion ingredients yet. Lamech Judocus: Gnome Wild Sorcerer and former mushroom smuggler Kavorog: Dragonborn Barbarian/Mage Urlon: Elf ranger Elthendial: Dragonborn paladin The hostage, Sildar asks the party to take a seat. Three members of the party lift their chairs and start walking towards the door. Sildar: At least you're maintaining a sense of humour. More quests for the PCs. Kill King Gurnt. Sildar: Are you adventurers? Lamech: I just get paid to escort the supplies. Then I was going to see what else turned up. Call us odd-job men. Troubleshooters. Itinerant troublemakers. Sildar: Adventurers. Lamech: Drive off or kill? Sildar: Either. Lamech: Drive off a cliff? Sildar: That usually does both. Usually. All: *turn to glare at the dragonborn that got the gentleman in question thrown off a cliff* We do the required meetings and meals with the village's authorities and powers-that-be. GM: Do you all have dress clothes for a formal dinner? Lamech: I've got a piece of cloth that folds into a stylish hat? Kavorog: I wear clothes? We get offered chairs here too. Lamech: Accumulating quite the collection, aren't we? We'll be able to open a furniture store. Urlon: Are you by any chance psychic? NPC: I'm a halfling matriarch, it comes with the job. Lamech: Kavorog got kicked from his clan for picking too many fights and being a completely incorrigible trouble-maker. GM: And that's how he became an adventurer. Matriarch: And what are you, gnome? Lamech: Mushroom aficionado. Matriarch: Strange, you don't look like a druid. Lamech: How attached is the taphouse's owner to the building? Matriarch: Since the Red Brands effectively own it now, very. Good people do not go there. Lamech: Well, that solves some ethical problems. Apparently the elf cleric is a member of the Harpers, the loose network of do-gooders that are mostly famous because half of them are bards and are therefore masters of self-promotion. Elf-cleric: I have a task for you. Lamech: Just add it to the list. She wants us to go consult a local oracle who also happens to be a banshee. Elf-cleric: I advise diplomacy. Kavorog: No kidding. One of the local contacts wants to come on a trip with us, despite his sister's suspicions. Andi Alderleaf the Halfling: It'll be fine - the Goddess blessed me at birth. Lamech: And if we're really lucky we'll run over King Gurnt as we go down the road. And thus we set off to collect all that stolen loot for the coster. It's certainly easier than any of the other jobs. Lamech: *banging on pots and yelling* Hallu, Hallu, anybody out there? Poorly defended party here, we're carrying gold! Actually this works either way - the stupid ambushers will attack and get killed, and the smart ones will realise it's a trap and stay away. We get ambushed by half a dozen hobgoblins anyway. Lamech: So... do you count as smart or stupid ambushers? Given they run forward, nicely bunching up for Lamech's Colour Spray, probably the latter. Although they do cut the cart's traces before they get hit, so as the two dragonborn and the elf continue the battle, Lamech and Alderleaf get carried off in an out-of-control cart. Lamech's Wild Magic side-effects don't help. But we survive and triumph and force the surviving hobgoblins into service - they're both living on borrowed time, and they know it. Oddly enough, there's an illusion of a gate across the entrance to the previously goblin-infested cave - not particularly plausible. A rockfall would have been more believable. Lamech: We can always send the hobgoblins in in front of us - it's probably only a *small* dragon. Unconvincing Booming Voice: WHO DARES DISTURB THE REST OF CUPRASULPHA There's a small orange fairy dragon in the bushes. Lamech: Why is it orange, with a name like that? Surely blue would be more appropriate. I know my alchemy. The dragonborn and the fairy dragons exchange looks. But fairy dragons don't speak - they use telepathy. So whatever just spoke in the cave.... Lamech: Um. Cuprasulfa, presumably a juvenile copper dragon, or a bunch of fairy dragons playing a prank, demands a story before they'll let us take any of the coster's goods. Lamech amuses it with a tale of smuggling wheelbarrows, and the new lord of the lair agrees to swap some of the hobgoblins' chainmail, and Lamech's magic hat, for all the stuff we're here to retrieve. Lamech: It'll impress any visitors if they think you killed previous adventurers... (and I can all too easily picture a fairy dragon wearing a stylish hat)

Food Fight - The classic intro Shadowrun module. GM: Seattle. 2070. The Night is Cold. The Rain is wet. And you are HUNGRY. Ryleigh: I'd be surprised if rain wasn't wet. Dr. Rubicante: Back in my day, the rain was wetter. Backup GM: In the manasphere it has been documented to rain fish. GM: It's the Great Equaliser. It'll stop a troll the size of a car just as easily as the smallest dwarf or thinnest elf. It ain't a weapon, spell, or even a dragon. It's Hunger. When it's time to eat, you just gotta get the stuffers in your stomach before you go berserk. What are stuffers? they used to be called Junk Food or Munchies. They're probably about as good for you as nutrisoy and krill-filler, regardless of the ads from the UCAS nutrition council. Ripper K: I'm hungry. Wanna go get some protein bars? GM: When the Pangs hit, there's only one place to go (especially when the sun rises in about an hour) to find that kind of chow. It's the place everyone loves to hate: Stuffer Shack. Ryleigh: Let's raid the shack. Dr. Rubicante: Back in my day, 'Stuffer Shack' was the title of porn. It was one of those cross-genre horror/smut pieces. Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Still is Grandad, get with the times Dr. Rubicante: I got with the times once. It was awful. Ryleigh: They'd done porn in a Stuffer Shack Ripper K: *looks smug* I know Ripper K heads straight to the energy bars - 150% protein with added caffeine and red food food colouring. Ripper K: Anybody want some Soya-Bulk? It's on special. Hey, banana flavour! An elf-woman and her kid come in, a car explodes in the car park, the cashier gets knocked out, and four gangers come in and order everybody onto the floor. Dr. Rubicante: You spilled my soykaf. Prepare to die, obviously. Anders "Hogfather" Lee: You should all back the f**k off right now, you're not getting between me and my pie! Ripper K points at the largest of the raiders Ripper K: Hey! Hey, you! You allergic to nuts? Ganger: Yes, what's it to you, blubberhead? Ripper K: Hope you've got your Epipen. *kicks the ganger's nuts into his throat* The GM (and temp GM while the GM had a guy thrown at his car at Subway) are still learning how to use roll20 for Shadowrun. Ripper K's player: It's a learning experience for all of us. Especially for the ganger, who has just learned 'Wear a cup' Another ganger screams, and unloads his shotgun at Ripper. Ganger 2: What the f**k ARE you?! DIE! Ripper K: What am I? Pissed off, chummer. Or should that be 'Chum'? *showing all those pointy pointy orca teeth* Ganger 2: *starts backing off* Holy shit! I signed up to knock over a stuffer shack, not fight monsters! Frag this! GM: He f**kin' Books it. There's a little something called Professional Rating. It's the WHAT THE F**K EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG RUN AWAAAAY Stat. We interrogate the remaining gangers. They claim they were paid to intimidate the elf. Blowing up her car was the chosen method. Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Ngong Kau, idiot. Explosives on this kind of run? More likely to blow your idiot asses up. Dr. Rubicante sighs softly, producing a scalpel from his medkit. Dr. Rubicante: Do you know how much a Mortimer of London Berwick Suit costs? Soykaf stains are so hard to get off... I may need to sell some organs to help pay for it. Unless of course... you have some information interesting enough to keep me from cutting off that pretty little tongue? But they really don't have much more to share. They don't know who or why they were hired. The elf doesn't want to explain either, at least while her kid is within earshot. Ripper volunteers to keep him distracted. GM: The kid jumps up on you and gives you a hug, going wooow at your big muscles ans the fact that you look like big willy from the movies Dr. Rubicante: Free Willy 7 Backup GM : big willy, hurr hurr GM: (The KIDS MOVIE, not the Porno!) Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Free Willy 11" more like it.... GM: Anyway - who's going with the mom? Ripper K: LOL. wow, the accidental innuendo is strong today Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Cute kid. So whats the situation here? You on the run, abusive husband, dealt with a dragon? Apparently the kid's dad is an exec at one of the AA corps, and she was being paid a small remittance to never bother him again. She has no idea why the money has been replaced with explosives. Ripper K is giving the kid piggyback rides around the store. GM: Before you can plow deeper into this dilemma, however, You hear sirens in the distance. Knight Errant patrol this area, and they're on their way. Unless you want to have a nice chat with a nice officer who wants to know your SIN, I suggest you hightail it out of there, chummers. Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Look, lady, do you and the kids want a lift home or something? I don't know what else we can do, I'll talk to the others...But uh, for obvious reasons we needs to make like a tree and fuck off Dr. Rubicante OoC: I still don't know how to cast magic. XD Can I have some practice casts? Like, OOC targetting dummies. XD Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Just use the ganger Ripper stuffed in the fridge. Dr. Rubicante: Let's take the gangers with us! 8D Make them dump all their equipment in your trunk first. If they really just want to scare the lady, they've done their job and they're gonna get paid- but if they were paid to kill a woman and her child, well, sympathy is a privilege they do not have. Anders "Hogfather" Lee: Fair enough, besides, they owe you for that free medical treatment Dr. Rubicante: These medkits don't refill themselves, after all!

Black Crusade : The Sundered World The alternate Black Crusade campaign, where the PCs are surrounded by enemies and have far less agency than devotees of Chaos have when they're at large in the Screaming Vortex. On the other hand, the perpetually rainy Imperial world of Sinophia is so financially and spiritually bankrupt that it's a miracle it hasn't fallen to Chaos already. It's degenerated so far that the Imperium hasn't bothered to raise a Guard regiment in three centuries, and even the Planetary Defence Forces have been judged unfit for purpose, and it's only a matter of time before Holy Terra orders the execution of the Governor for gross incompetence, installs a military dictatorship, and then raises the taxes to pay for the bullets. Of course, the planetary nobility are so far in denial that can see the Pyramids. Until then they can while away the time in mutual loathing of the criminal underclass. Anyway, the characters - an assemblage of villainy that warmed my cold cold heart. Lord-Captain Robin Daniels: A minor Rogue Trader with a very peculiar name. "Robin because its what he likes to do and Daniels because its what he likes to drink!" A name and a joke so old it predates the Imperium and nobody knows why it's supposed to be funny anymore. He's an alcoholic too, spending every available coin on more booze while his ship is stuck in orbit undergoing vital repairs, and the Sinophian authorities try to milk him of every cent he has. Such crew as he brought down with him are little more than another armed gang now. As the plater puts it, 'Stumbling out into the ever-present rain, a bottle in hand and unsure legs to carry him he seeks yet another night of adventure and delight to while away the time, the hope of something to break the tedium and throw him free of this forsaken planet.' Digna FeM8xr97MR: "You comment on my hair. I blame the Genetor who failed to notice the faulty recessive melanotropin receptor in my paternal gamete." A heretek from the Lathe Worlds, and no mere tech-priest at that. She was a member of the Prefecture Magisterium, the Diagnostic Covens that are the tech-priest equivalent of the Imperial Inquisition and law enforcement. And as far as they know she still is. She's certainly been interrogating every suspected heretek on Sinophia she can catch up with. There's enough of them - the Adeptus Mechanicus are just one of the Adepta that use Sinophia as a dumping ground. Digna's realization of the hypocrisy of the Adeptus Mechanicus preaching the "Knowledge is Holy" in one breath, only to decry certain knowledge as profane and blasphemous, was her first step into darkness. The Dark Gods simply offer yet another path on which to acquire knowledge, including knowledge that the Mechanicus wilfully keeps itself ignorant of. She has been careful to hide the clues of her true allegiance from her masters within the Prefecture Magisterium, but knows that all it will take is some diligent archivist uncovering the faint clues within the records of her interrogations or, worse, reconstructing the original recordings of her more "blasphemous" ones. But she has made the acquaintance of a certain Heretek with an affinity for the squishier sciences (and reported him as 'requires further surveillance'). Dr.Eniek, aka The Surgeon, The Consultant, The Chirugeon, AC7^2 : Gender: probably male. Build: Of adjustable height and width. Favourite Sleeping position: Curled into a ball while tethered to the ceiling. Favourite thing to collect: used optical implants. Current Occupation: Chirugeon to the Upper-class; on days off, runs a high turnover homeless shelter/street clinic. The surgeon's goals are noble, his methods are not - he has long ago shed his morality in the face of pure logic. Morals merely delay or undo the necessary work. To whit: implanting alien organs and DNA into humans to improve the species. Hence his presence on Sinophia, where the Logician Cult were doing that to the PDF a few years back. When they got found out, the entire garrison went into berserk cannibalistic frenzy, and most of the local garrison of Adeptus Arbites went up in a mushroom cloud. Digna has an offsider too. Vlad-9: A skitarii tribune assigned to assist her in her investigations, actually assigned to surveil her. Given that he's a heretic too, somebody at the Lathes must have REALLY screwed up when they set the assignments. Presumably, somewhere, two loyal servants of Mars got sent to the Vapourisation Vats. Vlad's mutation is what the players refer to as 'Godzilla breath'. Vlad: When it happen I just started throwing up lighting Digna OoC: Which was a bitch to repair since he had his helmet on at the time. Skerrit: A Sinophian street urchin and tarot reader, once the servant of a Sinophian noble who used him to spy on his rivals. Poor but pious, Skerrit was lucky. Too lucky. Rumours started that he was a witch, and since even the suspicion that his master was harbouring a psyker could be disastrous, his lordship staged a prominent execution - using him as bait for the North End Monster. What actually happened is that Skerrit found himself the slave of the lord's underworld colleague, and his life infinitely worse. Only after Skerrit admitted that the God-Emperor of Man did not care what happened even to the most desperate of his followers did he escape - and his precognitive powers blossomed to their full strength. His other mutation is a long hairless tail, which at least matches the rat-like plague mask he wears. Archimedes: Another rogue psyker - this time a telepath. His wife was killed in a skirmish between the criminal conspiracy that held him, and one of the equally corrupt private armies of the nobility who wanted him for themselves. He surrounds himself with beautiful women, knowing that they are much more expendable than his wife ever was. On top of his mind-bending abilities, Archimedes enjoys a profitable sideline in addictive substances. All these heretics have been having headaches, and migraines, and increasing nightmarish visions of a figure wreathed in black flame. Ominous Vision: BENEATH THE SIGN OF THE SUNDERED WORLD. FIND THE HERSILIAD CODEX. THE KEEPER DIES. FIND THE CODEX, AND THROUGH IT FIND POWER. FIND KNOWLEDGE. FIND REVENGE. This, quite likely, is Cassius, moving mortals into place as he prepares for his return. No doubt he will trouble their dreams with other psychic sendings whenever the players need more plot hooks, or are being especially obtuse. Lord-Captain Daniels OOC: I could just imagine Cassius in the warp, big hulking deamon prince, very powerful.....with a tiny headset going 'This is the deamon helpline, how can I help you?' Like all Black Crusade characters, the PCs are already completely beyond the pale. GM: You've gone right through insanity and out the other side. As it happens, one of the players is running a Dark Heresy game set on the same planet - so he knows the module I'll be cribbing from. GM: So I trust you'll keep your player knowledge and character knowledge separate? Eniek's player: .......*looks away* ...yes All: Laughter ensues. Eniek's player: I put all my points into knowledge skills and implants - if I do get player knowledge mixed up with character knowledge, that'll be my excuse. Either way, they figure out what the Sundered World reference is - it's one of the major arcana of the Emperor's Tarot, and there's an establishment called the Turning Hand that once catered to off-world visitors, back when Sinophia still got them, and that is decorated with hanging brass versions of each card. Skerrit occasionally does readings for the handful of customers it still gets. GM: Yes, you're meeting in a tavern. Vlad-9's player: But a SPACE tavern. Digna's player: At least it's not a cantina so there is no jizz being poured in our ears. GM: The Hand is nearly empty, apart from a few customers, servitors, an offworlder at the table under the Sundered World card, and a mysterious hooded stranger in one corner impatiently waiting for another group of PCs. The offworlder is Lord-Captain Daniels, who has been amusing himself by drinking the bar dry, building a model hive city from them, and playing a tune on them with the butt of his bolt pistol - while his other pistol, under the table, is trained on the tech-priests approaching him. Digna's activities have been causing some comment around the city, especially among the few that recognise her Collegia Extremis insignia. NPC: Hey Joe you have some knowledge skill, what's that symbol mean.....oh....Joe's run off GM: Actually, none of them seemed to recognise you, per se. They were more alarmed by your friend walking in with the rifle. Not that Master Thall had many customers tonight. Or this century, really. A conversation (in Binary Cant) between the two AdMech. Digna: My interrogation methods include my Medicae Mechadendrite. As you learned when I interrogated you, Subject Eniek-AC7^2 Eniek: *shrug* I gave you pointers. Digna: Why are you here? Eniek: I received a message from a legitimate source. Digna: The kind of source that gets more illegitimate the more I torture you? Eniek: Please don't, I only just got my kidney back in the right place Digna's circling Pict-skull reports the approach of the other PCs and the bar's amiably absent-minded Master Thall. Digna OoC: Picture-in-picture view, gotta love it Master Thall: We don't get many of your lot in here, Reverends. What can I get you? Digna: Chairs. Ensure they are well reinforced. Eniek: And a high-chair for this one. *gesturing at the rat-masked Skerrit* Digna's player: Sorry, dude - five minutes in- GM: And we're already shitting on THIS character too. Lord-Captain Daniels OoC: Nobody returns a book late to a space marine Librarian Hypothetical librarian: Please wait while I perform a personal augury to see if you will be returning it *30 minutes rolls by* Archimedes introducing themselves causes some confusion from the captain's player. Archimedes: I am Archimedes. I sit. Lord-Captain Daniels OoC: Did you just say in-character 'I Sit'? Digna's Player: Are you the kind of person who narrates his own life? 'I go!' 'I come back!' Regarding that mysterious psychic message, which the hereteks received as unsourced messages from inside their own cortical implants. GM: They even came with animated GIFs. Digna: I hate scrap code. How did that even get in there, that's an output-only port! Vlad-9: That's what she said Skerrit: I check the bottles. Lord-Captain Daniels: They're empty, I saw to that earlier Since discussing heresy out in the open is probably a bad idea, they retire to one of the private rooms. GM: Discuss among yourselves All: *Silence* GM: Well this is a group of heretics - such paranoia is entirely apt. Eventually someone admits they got the vision about the book (Skerrit had already figured this out with an augury while doing a tarot reading for Vlad) and everybody relaxes slightly. Digna: For such a message to appear in my cortex suggests the source to be the Warp. GM: Maybe its a really small xenos. After discussion, the locals suggest a number of Sinophian nobility and one eccentric loan shark as bibliophiles. Perhaps one of them is this 'keeper' of the Hersiliad Codex? Hersilia itself, Digna knows, was a planet discovered during the Angevin Crusade, that had the entire human population exterminated, was renamed and resettled, and expunged from the record. That's all she knows - poking around in the Black Datastacks after something the authorities wanted expunged wouldn't have looked good. They decide to target the loan shark first - kidnapping and interrogating some of his staff about any especially mysterious books. Digna: The streetrat can tail someone Skerrit: They can't even see that, its in my pants All: *laughter* Eniek: What's the book keepers name? GM: Sigmun Barnfarter All: *silence followed by laughter* GM: BarnfahRER GM: It's said he's quite approachable - if you need money. Digna: Soylent Pink is heretical. GM: Pink is not a grimdark-enough colour Archimedes uses his telepathic powers silently and is in heavy concentration - the pirate doesn't know. Lord-Captain Daniels: He looks constipated, I hope he's OK A maid gets interrogated. Maid: Please lord I have 2 children! Digna: What age? Maid: 11 and 7 Digna: Good, old enough to fend for themselves This does at least terrify her enough to ensure she spills everything she knows, which isn't much. But in return for tactical info she gets a free lung-scrubbing, some precancerous tumours removed, cosmetic surgery and the suggestion she find a new boss. Right now. Lord-Captain Daniels OoC: Come for the interrogation, stay for the boob job. On the nature of human life : Digna: A complex mixture of compounds that happens to sustain an intellect. Further interviews (and telepathic interrogation) with some of the Loanfather's leg-breakers and steward reveals that he isn't the Keeper - but one Regimius, recently deceased, probably is, and the Loanfather has arranged a team of thieves to go raid the place the next night. Regimius' heir is currently trying to restore the reputation of the Sinophian PDF, said some things regarding this that irritated the rest of the nobility, and his father's creditors have descended en mass as a result. But rather than befriend this potential ally, the group decides to just wait until the team of thieves have the book, and mug them for it. The rest of the group wait until they're already inside then move into the empty townhouse they'll be using as an exit. Skerrit follows the GM's advice and hides on the Regimius' roof, and nearly gets spotted as a result. Digna's Player: He used to GM Call of Cthulhu GM: He's got a point. Just because I suggest something, doesn't mean it's in any way a GOOD idea. Carnage ensues. One of the thieves even gets entangled in Eniek's servo arm as it's retracting after decapitating and dismembering two others. Eniek: Excuse me while I remove this femur from my armpit. The Hersiliad Codex is indeed among the bagfuls of books. So is something else - a case resembling a data-slate, locked and leather-bound. It tickles Skerrit's psyniscience. GM: Do you open it? Skerrit OoC: You run Cthulhu games, I'm not opening the book! The enforcers have been attracted by all the screaming. Eniek and Digna just bluff their way out, relying on the enforcer's reluctance to get involved in apparent Adeptus business, while the rest of the PCs leave across the rooftops. Eniek OoC: And we'll leave the enforcers to clean up the mess.

Our Shadowrun GM is planning another occasional series, with mostly different players, to be set in the 2070 era. However, the PCs so far are such a pack of deviants it’s likely the game reports will be unprintable. The GM does point out that our rather conspicuous appearance gives the team plausible deniability. Who’s going to believe a report that Santa, an anthro orca porn star, Disney’s Robin Hood, and a geriatric elf just broke in? Or that anybody would be insane enough to hire such a team? Ripper K: Class III orca-form changeling, niche porn star (by the name of Dick Moby), and BDSM-powered Physical Adept. “A few hours being flogged on the X-frame? Great – just the thing to get me in the mood for headbutting trolls unconscious” Ryleigh ‘Fox’: Another changeling, who as the novelty of Changelings wore off went from media darling, to b-grade tri-D flicks, to porn, to prostitution, just to make ends meet. Now working as a rigger. Vell ‘ The Red Angel’ Rubicante: Mystic Adept. One of the first generation of elves in the Sixth Age. Runs a mobile black clinic. Nelson ‘Hogfather’ Bodie: Ork street samurai. Took one look at his team and said ‘f**k it, I’m wearing a Santa Suit’. Fox’s player: Do I get to keep the money that's left over or should I use it all up? Ripper K’s player: Keep it, it could be useful in an emergency. i.e. ‘F**k, we pissed off a dragon, how much are plane tickets to Antarctica?’ Red still has trouble staying ahead of the bills, even though the white van housing his black clinic/operating theater is a fixture in the nastier parts of town. Ripper K: "Free Cand^h^h^h Medical Help" spray painted on the side The Red Angel: "30% Off!" Fox: "get your penile enlargement today!" Ripper K: "want illegal cyberwear implanted? See my very reasonable repayment plans!" "Frightened of catching Sentient Herpes? Get your STI Screening here!" The Red Angel: "Did your boss find out you were banging his daughter AND his wife? Come on in and get a new face!" ‘Back Alley Bris! 20% off! I guarantee this isn’t a rip-off!’ Red Angel’s player: 'Welp, this guy died. On one hand, I don't get paid. On the other, free organs!’ I wonder if I go around harvesting organs from homeless people. ‘I’ve got food for you. Surprise, it was drugged.’ Ripper K: Discount kidneys – ‘Buy two, get one free’ Fox: If someone needs two kidneys, he's got issues Ripper K: So, how much of a Bad Rep do YOU have? The Red Angel: Uhm, I dunno. Does it even out with my terrific prices? XD ‘Get your blood by the litre!’ Ripper K: Or is all this rumour and the graffiti that gets sprayed on your van wherever you park? The Red Angel: F**KING KIDS, STOP VANDALIZING MY ESTABLISHMENT The Red Angel: I'M 61 YEARS OLD, YOU DON'T GET TO BE AN ELF AND LIVE THAT LONG BY BEING A GOOD PERSON The Red Angel: Can you sign this contract stating that I get your bodies if any of you die? Fox: No. The Red Angel: And is it okay if I grab the organs from anyone we kill? Fox: Keep in mind I have microscopic vision, I'll read that fine print The Red Angel: It's gonna be in bold. No trickery here, I just need the organs. I mean, if you die, you won't be needing them! Fox: I wanna be cremated XP The Red Angel: My my, what a waste. What about you, big guy? It's for a good cause. Ripper K:shrugs I'm not going to die, I'm immortal. Or is it delusional? One of those things The Red Angel: Then you have nothing to worry about if you sign it. ^ ^ Ripper K: Patient dumped onto the operating table, bleeding out, liver on the floor "I just need you to sign this organ donor consent form.... thumb print will do. Let me help you..." The Red Angel's player: Good lord I sound like an awful person. I'm 61 though, so I guess my fuckbasket is empty. It’s not just surplus organs either. Ripper K: Salvaged cyberwear - don't forget that The Red Angel: Oh, yes, yes! Those will probably sell, right? XD GM: ..... Ripper K: ‘Going Cheap - one Husqvarna Rippa chainsaw arm. Previous owner - a little old lady who only ever used it when she went to church on Sundays’ Red Angel’s player: I need to learn future slang! XD Oh wait, not really. Being old and stuff, I can insist on talking like it's still 2015 or something. Only 10s kids would get it. Fox’s player: Born in 2011 and already talking slang in 2015, huh? Red Angel’s player: Yes. Just like my neighbour's kids. 2011-2019 are his 90s. XD Ripper K: Teeners Red Angel’s player: And yes, he's a Teener! XD GM: You were teased pretty harshly as a kid btw - long ears, legolas, tinkerbell, the list goes on Red Angel’s player: Yes, and that's why I started cutting people - TO HELP THEM (It may have been because I've become a sociopath.) Fox’s player: Now I have this image in my head of you stabbing someone, putting your hand on their mouth and going "Shhh... shh...." Red Angel’s player: "Shhh... shh..." *Dark smile* "Think happy thoughts..." "Nice hair, Amy Lee!" *Young self adds name to his list and tries to think of ironic last words*"Your eyes are wrong. Let me fix that." XD Red Angel’s player: XD Poor young Vell. Vell Rubicante isn't even his real name! He changed it to that later. XD His real name is Alvar Mørklöf, which is sufficiently Nordic, I believe. Alvar translates to "Elf", and Mørklöf is "Dark Leaf"! Fox’s player: Now you need a habit of drinking wine out of human skulls Red Angel’s player: XD That's a classy habit, I guess! And I’m sure they’ll be a few skulls lying around the van after a busy night anyway. Generic NPC: R-Red Angel The Red Angel: You forgot 'The'. 'The Red Angel'. Everyone forgets 'the'. Generic NPC: Y-you're The Red Angel! The Red Angel: Oh there's no need to use my title! 'Your Highest Eminence' is also an acceptable moniker. Generic NPC: Isn't that a little... egocentric? The Red Angel: I will cut you. Generic NPC: I- The Red Angel: YOU WILL FEED MY EGO OR YOU WILL BLEED. EITHER WOULD MAKE ME HAPPY. Red’s religious beliefs – what does he worship? The Red Angel: Myself, I guess. What self respecting elf wouldn't worship themselves? Ooh, I worship Taco Tuesdays? ‘Oh mighty Tacoest of Tuesdays, please let my evening be completed with sour cream, cheese and flavoured meat, ahem *Crunch* I mean, I could just worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be ironic, but "MAY THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER SMITE YOU" doesn't sound very impressive. The Red Angel also has a combat runestone. In the form of a bloodstone cockring. The Red Angel: According to the GM, other mages will notice my astral signature on my willy. And I get to call them out on staring at my junk! The Hogfather: And you can just tut and tell them "third eyes up here"

D&D 5th Ed : The Town of Questgivers A caveful of goblins dispersed, and an NPC rescued despite being used as a soft landing by the goblin's leader. The rescued hostage is actually an agent investigating disquieting rumours about our destination, the mining camp of Phandalin, and the fate of his predecessors. Lamech: So you're going undercover. To rat them out. You're a narc! He doesn't know how King Gurnt, local goblinoid tyrant, found out about the map, or the agent's friend and our boss. Lamech: Something is rotten in the state of Phandalin. GM: The Shit has hit the Phandalin. But we do run into another Dragonborn, one Kavarog, and a clanmate of the one we already had. Lamech: Wait, TWO blue dragonborn? I must be seeing double. Funny, I don't recall eating any of THOSE mushrooms. Our ranger is suspicious and keeps the newcomer covered with a bow. Lamech: Really? GM: He's in for a rude shook, isn't he? Lamech: I hope you're a really good shot. In fact, I think your best bet would be to pin his foot to the ground with an arrow, and run away. Kavorog is a little disgusted that his kin-lizard is associating with humans. Kavorog: No wonder you joined the army. Lamech: Yes, this way he gets paid for killing people. Something is sneaking up on us during the night. Lamech: The horses are getting skittish. We should send them down to the 7-11, and they'll be getting Skittles. It's lions. Despite blind arrow fire turning one into a shish-kebab, Kavorog still runs back into camp with a lion hanging off each arm. Lamech: It's a chimera! Quick, shoot it! Kavorog botches removing the lion's pelt. Lamech: There's more than one way to skin a cat. Kavorog: But this wasn't one of them. GM: Now I get to inflict undead lions on you. Lamech: Eh - It doesn't have any arms or legs anymore, I'm not that worried. Kavorog: Have you ever heard floating undead lions before? Lamech: No, but I've seen a dead cat floating down the canal once. Lamech: Going to show off your dragonskin in town are you? GM: Lionskin. Kavorog: Dragonskin - I'm going shirtless. Lamech: But do you have nipple rings and baby oil? Kavorog: No. *pause* Dragonborn don't have nipples. Lamech: Our boss has two brothers? Great - I've heard dwarves love bloody revenge. Actually, that might mean we have to wait until he's actually dead before we can call them in. Apart from an alarming number of disappearances, the town is being terrorised by a band of thugs calling themselves the Red Brands. Lamech: Anybody likely to object if they mysteriously all get their ankles broken? Urlon: I think this town needs some law and order. Lamech: Congratulations, sheriff! Lamech: Let's go get the merchants to pay us for recovering their goods first. I'm sure the cleric will agree that money = piety, so the town cleric is more likely to listen to us if we're rich. To the local Coster, a large amount of who's goods we found in the caves. Lamech: I hear you're running short on stock Lamech: So, how much will we get in salvage fees? Coster: I've a deal for you, shorty - you go recover our stuff for us, or you'll never buy anything in this town. Lamech: Gee, where do we know there's a big pile of stuff going free? Coster: Stolen goods. Lamech: Salvaged goods. Kavorog: How do you know so much about this sort of thing? Lamech (a former smuggler): I have prior experience in shipping goods. But that sort of negotiation over, we suggest the town cleric witness a salvage contract. Things are so bad the coster needs a bodyguard just to cross the street. But if we can get the rest of those lions intact or alive they'll be quite valuable. Urlon: How long will it take to train a lion? Coster: How should I know? We'll need to get a Beastmaster in. Lamech: I knew a beastmaster once. He was from the South. He kept sticking his thumb up their arses. Coster: That's the locksmith joke. Lamech: ? Coster: My dog's a locksmith. Urlon: Really? Coster: Yes, when I stick my thumb up his arse he makes a bolt for the door. Cleric of Tymora: *gives the Coster a disgusted look* Urlon: Salvage first, then deal with the Red Brands? Lamech: I say break their legs then use them as lion bait. Kavorog: I want to burn the taphouse down while they're inside. GM: Burn down a pub? That's un-Australian! Lamech: Well, we could get Kavorog to do a pole dance in the taphouse and once they've all clawed their eyes out they'll be helpless. GM: A gnome, an elf, and a dragonborn walk into a bar Kavorog: We've heard this joke before... GM: This town is very well organised - all the quest givers are on one short street.

A caveful of goblins dispersed, and an NPC rescued despite being used as a soft landing by the goblin's leader. The rescued hostage is actually an agent investigating disquieting rumours about our destination, the mining camp of Phandalin, and the fate of his predecessors. Lamech: So you're going undercover. To rat them out. You're a narc! He doesn't know how King Gurnt, local goblinoid tyrant, found out about the map, or the agent's friend and our boss. Lamech: Something is rotten in the state of Phandalin. GM: The Shit has hit the Phandalin. But we do run into another Dragonborn, one Kavarog, and a clanmate of the one we already had. Lamech: Wait, TWO blue dragonborn? I must be seeing double. Funny, I don't recall eating any of THOSE mushrooms. Our ranger is suspicious and keeps the newcomer covered with a bow. Lamech: Really? GM: He's in for a rude shook, isn't he? Lamech: I hope you're a really good shot. In fact, I think your best bet would be to pin his foot to the ground with an arrow, and run away. Kavorog is a little disgusted that his kin-lizard is associating with humans. Kavorog: No wonder you joined the army. Lamech: Yes, this way he gets paid for killing people. Something is sneaking up on us during the night. Lamech: The horses are getting skittish. We should send them down to the 7-11, and they'll be getting Skittles. It's lions. Despite blind arrow fire turning one into a shish-kebab, Kavorog still runs back into camp with a lion hanging off each arm. Lamech: It's a chimera! Quick, shoot it! Kavorog botches removing the lion's pelt. Lamech: There's more than one way to skin a cat. Kavorog: But this wasn't one of them. GM: Now I get to inflict undead lions on you. Lamech: Eh - It doesn't have any arms or legs anymore, I'm not that worried. Kavorog: Have you ever heard floating undead lions before? Lamech: No, but I've seen a dead cat floating down the canal once. Lamech: Going to show off your dragonskin in town are you? GM: Lionskin. Kavorog: Dragonskin - I'm going shirtless. Lamech: But do you have nipple rings and baby oil? Kavorog: No. *pause* Dragonborn don't have nipples. Lamech: Our boss has two brothers? Great - I've heard dwarves love bloody revenge. Actually, that might mean we have to wait until he's actually dead before we can call them in. Apart from an alarming number of disappearances, the town is being terrorised by a band of thugs calling themselves the Red Brands. Lamech: Anybody likely to object if they mysteriously all get their ankles broken? Urlon: I think this town needs some law and order. Lamech: Congratulations, sheriff! Lamech: Let's go get the merchants to pay us for recovering their goods first. I'm sure the cleric will agree that money = piety, so the town cleric is more likely to listen to us if we're rich. To the local Coster, a large amount of who's goods we found in the caves. Lamech: I hear you're running short on stock Lamech: So, how much will we get in salvage fees? Coster: I've a deal for you, shorty - you go recover our stuff for us, or you'll never buy anything in this town. Lamech: Gee, where do we know there's a big pile of stuff going free? Coster: Stolen goods. Lamech: Salvaged goods. Kavorog: How do you know so much about this sort of thing? Lamech (a former smuggler): I have prior experience in shipping goods. But that sort of negotiation over, we suggest the town cleric witness a salvage contract. Things are so bad the coster needs a bodyguard just to cross the street. But if we can get the rest of those lions intact or alive they'll be quite valuable. Urlon: How long will it take to train a lion? Coster: How should I know? We'll need to get a Beastmaster in. Lamech: I knew a beastmaster once. He was from the South. He kept sticking his thumb up their arses. Coster: That's the locksmith joke. Lamech: ? Coster: My dog's a locksmith. Urlon: Really? Coster: Yes, when I stick my thumb up his arse he makes a bolt for the door. Cleric of Tymora: *gives the Coster a disgusted look* Urlon: Salvage first, then deal with the Red Brands? Lamech: I say break their legs then use them as lion bait. Kavorog: I want to burn the taphouse down why they're inside. GM: Burn down a pub? That's un-Australian! Lamech: Well, we could get Kavorog to do a pole dance in the taphouse and once they've all clawed their eyes out they'll be helpless. GM: A gnome, an elf, and a dragonborn walk into a bar Kavorog: We've heard this joke before... GM: This town is very well organised - all the quest givers are on one short street.

Shadowrun : Paradise Lost September 2052 - The party have decided to take a sudden holiday. True, Renraku corporation might think we're dead, what with the nuke and all, but a low profile might be a good idea. So we'll be lounging around on a beach in Hawaii until the Red Samurai watching our apartments get bored and go home. It's certainly more pleasant than hiding in Seattle and hiding in cheap dives with cheaper beer. Greenlight: Cheap beer? I hang out at Panzerwaffle! F**k your cheap beer! Inkubus: I got banned from Panzerwaffle, becase of the hourly weapons check. Personally, I think they're jealous. It's not my fault my d*ck is the best weapon the party has. Inkubus: *escorted from Panzerwaffle, shirtless, between two trolls, singing* I'm, too sexy, for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt.... And a completely out of context quote from the troll. Titus: Just because I bought more warehouse space is not an excuse for people to fill it with elephants. But we won't be using our own boat - Renraku will probably be looking for it, too. So it's disguise, false Ids, and flying to the island kingdom on a newly acquired plane. Felix: If we ever get a zeppelin I expect at some point to cry "Oh the metahumanity!' And as we enjoy ourselves the Renraku operatives watch from the empty buildings opposite our empty homes. Renraku Agent One: You'll never see the dwarf. Renraku Agent Two: Why? One: He's a sniper. Two: Oh. Well that's not too bad. One: And you'll never see the human. Two: Why? One: They're a master of disguise. They could be anybody. That's why we're not wearing masks. And the empty pot noodle containers start piling up. Two: What's that smell? One: Oh, I needed the containers. For something. Two: Dude! We HAVE a toilet! September is the least popular time to visit Hawaii, thanks to the temperature. Felix: At least the hotel rooms are cheap. Felix: So have any of islands been set up as Jurassic Park yet? Greenlight: Don't tempt me. Inkubus has all sorts of improvements planned for his plane. Inkubus: I want it to be my Love Castle in the Sky. Inkubus: I used to be a air chauffeur, but I had to get out of the business. Felix: So when was the first time you fucked someone while flying a plane? Inkubus: *thinks* Well. ... no, she was earlier... after... Oh right - my flight instructor, first time out. GM: There's something weird about Hawaii - there's sunlight. Felix: The Daystar! It burns! Inkubus: The sky! It's blue! I know they told us to colour it like that when we were kids, but... Felix: You thought it was artistic license? Felix: What are those berries Pele likes? We probably want to stay on the right side of the local fire goddess while we're here. Inkubus: Are you sure you want to take the risk of ME possibly coming into contact with the local goddess? Titus: *has panic attack* We enjoy the good life and sunburn for a few days. Felix: Coming out of tourist shops with armfuls of stuff. Inkubus: You do - I come out with armfuls of the local girls. One evening, enjoying the entertainment and open bar at the Kona Kalaa Luau, we're interrupted by an elven woman running across the dining area pursued by three humans and an ork. She drops a parcel on Greenlight en route - who dodges, fearing C.O.D deliveries of grenades from Renraku. Felix: Unusual sort of cabaret they have in these places *sips from pineapple* It's a job offer, from somebody who knows our rep. Although the messenger apparently needs our help. Titus picks up the two mages and we set off in pursuit. Inkubus: Wait, I'm being given permission to chase after a tall Elven girl? *pursues, tongue lolling* Inkubus: Do we ever do any actual work on one of our jobs? Felix: We're not that Ork Underground team. Greenlight: It's been two days, I'm tired of holidays! I never knew I was such a workaholic. Inkubus: I'm not sure I ever could be debauched out. When i think i've plumbed the depths I break through and find even more. Inkubus: You've given me an idea for my next holiday - two weeks, and fourteen doses of that amnesia drug. Greenlight: He calls it the Jason Bourne package. We wipe his memory, drop him somewhere in the Middle East, and when he figures out who he is he comes home. Pursuing the group down the street - Felix: We didn't pay our bill Titus: It was a banquet - we paid on the way in. Felix: Good point. Greenlight: Frankly I think we were the ones that got ripped off. Greenlight and Titus (despite the additional load) easily overtake the group. Titus intends to pick up the elf as we do so. Inkubus: Charging Mah LAZEEERRRRRRR! Greenlight: You should yell to the humans as you overtake 'You do realise I'm carrying two mages, right?' Felix: Do we need to start singing the Katamari Damacy theme at this point? If you're collecting everything we run over? Titus stops dead. Felix: And does the ork manage to stop? Inkubus: One way or the other he will be. The pursuers pause to econsider their careers, and actually leave. Greenlight: 'My subordinates are getting shock batons to the groin - I'm out' Inkubus: Don't knock it til you've tried it. Greenlight: 'I'm going back to surfing' Serena, the elf, thanks us for rescuing us from the 'discipline team' sent to chastise her for accepting the courier job. Her gang patch is 'Haoles Don't Surf'. Inkubus: I'm trying to think what gave us away as Shadowrunners - I think it's the way that whenever we entered a room we checked all the corners. Greenlight: You ever had the feeling you want something, but don't know what it is? I think I want a holiday... Inkubus: But you don't know how to have one? Greenlight: *sighs* Let's go have our holiday. Inkubus: A working holiday. Defined as 'working in a holiday setting' La Maison D'Indochine is a very high-end and elegant restaurant. Just as well we packed our best suits. Titus: We do tend to do the high-paying jobs. Sometimes because they're bullshit difficult, and the rest of the time it's for dragons who have to pay extra before anybody will agree to work for them. Felix: The string quartet are playing Pachelbel's Canon, and the cellist has this expression ಠ_ಠ Inkubus: D, A, B, F Sharp, G, D, G, A Greenlight: What? Inkubus: Cellist's part. Repeat indefinitely. Greenlight: Oh, I thought you were trying to learn the alphabet. The Johnson is a woman in her mid-30s, exuding an air of innocence. Inkubus: An air of niceness so complete it makes the idea of violence against her seem- Titus: Entertaining? Felix: Before we accept the job how did you know we were here? That sort of operational leak is of concern to us. Inkubus: We're supposed to be on holiday... Actually all it takes is one guy to recognise us. Felix: 'Hey, it's that guy that had the Renraku heads!' Inkubus: *wince* and the shiteating grin. Renraku Underling: Sir, we have found- Frothing Renraku Exec: Silence! We will find them with spies! Renraku: But sir, he is trending on Facebook! The job is to investigate the theft of a product known as an "AFD". to develop it, the Johnson's client company entered into a joint venture with a company called 2M to develop it. Two weeks earlier, the client company and 2M met at the latter's corporate offices in Honolulu, when an assault team showed up, stole the prototypes and files, and assassinated everyone present. We need to investigate the theft, find the culprit, and retrieve the prototypes. And 2M's Head of Security is a Feathered Dragon. Felix: Another f**king dragon???? Off to the skyraker where the attack happened. Greenlight: All this talk of the 34th floor means I'm going to throw somebody out the window. If I can. Inkubus: I'm going back to the elevator and squeezing the rest of my... Felix: Lube? Inkubus: Sunscreen, over the floor. Just in case there's a security team coming up after us. There's a thumb-scan lock on one of the doors. So we make a Titus-shaped hole in the wall. Felix hears something move in one of the other offices. Felix: What was that noise? No, the other noise. It's a nervous guy with a gun. Greenlight appears a foot away. Greenlight: Hi. Nervous Guy: Fuck! Hands up! Where I can see them! Inkubus: *snickers* Sure. Not a problem. Orgasm. Greenlight: Is that wise when he's holding a gun on us? Felix: He shoots. Twice. Nervous Guy was already logged into the computers - helpful. He's the Vice-president of Accounts Management. Greenlight: An Ares Predator for self-defence, at the Office? I can't imagine why. *sarcasm off* Felix: Were you here during the attack? Inkubus: He's alive, of course he wasn't. Felix: Good point. WHY weren't you present? Then Titus accidentally sets off the alarm. Just before the strike team open the elevator door, startling everybody including them. And as they rush in, they hit the sunscreen on the floor and go arse-over-tits. Inkubus: You know what we call this sort of situation? Stunball practise. I'm just glad it's not a septuagenarian nightwatchman. 'Argh, my hip!' Greenlight effortlessly picks them all off with gel rounds. None of them are wearing uniforms, but it’s possible they're the replacements for the murdered security. On the other hand, at least one of them was a shaman, and another suspiciously unarmed. Our new captives include one Mark, the President of Accounts. Inkubus: This is sad - these guys thought they were shadowrunners. Hey, Mark, were you diddling the company? Mindprobe. Greenlight: I wonder if their street samurai is just a guy with a plastic arm. Felix: Winter Soldier cosplayer. Mark IS working with Aloha, a Hawaiian terrorist organisation – those AREN’T the new security team he’s with. They were after the AFD - the Anti-Flatline Device, a biofeedback filter first devised by Mary Falls Inc in Seattle. Possibly the first ever built. But he doesn't know who raided 2M, apart from the fact it wasn't Aloha, but Aloha somehow ended up with the info anyway. And then they heard the woman in charge of the project may have extra files hidden at one of the company labs, and came to find out which lab. Good news for Nervous Guy - he can pretend he caught the terrorists and company traitor on the condition he lets us finish poking around inside the company servers. Inkubus: Congratulations on your promotion. And now WE know where the extra files are, and where Aloha hide out. Greenlight writes FAIL on their chests, one letter for each. Terrorists: F, A... oh you d*ck! Oh, and our Johnson IS Mary Falls. Inkubus figures out what happened - 2M realised how valuable the AFD is, and staged an attack on their own offices and lab so they could steal the data and run off with it without being under suspicion. 2M tried to incriminate Aloha, not knowing their own President of Accounts was already associated with Aloha. Greenlight: 'And we would have got away with it too' Inkubus: 'If it wasn't for you meddling Shadowrunners.' And then Mary Fall hired us personally. Mary: I want the best team you have. Money is no object. Fixer: Er... are you willing to pay 3 or 4 million? Mary: OK, money is an object. Fixer: But if you want a team that will change the parameters of the mission halfway through - TO YOUR BENEFIT - then you should still hire them. Johnson: I hired Them. Exec: Them? Them who? Johnson: THEM. Exec: Oh, THEM. Inkubus: I think they were close to perfecting the AFD. That's when I'd scrag my own research team if I was a total amoral bastard. Felix: Like a dragon. Indeed, it seems likely this was 2M's Head of Security that came up with this plan. Titus: Dragon's have achieved perfect self-awareness. Inkubus: 'I'm a dick... and I'm OK with that. Sometimes the world needs a good d*cking.' Felix: Well, you should know. Mary Falls is quite startled by our report, and that we figured out who she is and what the AFD is. Greenlight: Isn't this exactly like all your other relationships with woman? They're dumbfounded but impressed with your efficiency. Next week! Off to Molokai and Waimea!

Duplicate post edited to this: Given the dire events in both campaigns, there's both doing something different when we get back to them. We're going to quietly sail off to Hawaii for a few months until the heat dies down in Shadowrun, and Black Crusade is changing GMs, PCs, and setting for a while. This spin-off campaign is going to be set on Sinophia, an Imperial World so financially and spiritually bankrupt it's amazing it hasn't fallen to Chaos already. I'm looking forward to running it, especially since the PCs are going to have to be paranoid and careful all the time lest they attract the attention of the authorities or torch-wielding mobs. Plus it gives me the opportunity to be really, really horrible to the PCs in their back-stories (and afterwards of course), as we explain how they fell to Chaos. Bring umbrellas - on Sinophia it rains ALL THE TIME.

Actually, I'm playing Jrska and Felix (and Vitus and Lamech) and Weldun is playing Cassius and Inkubus. I try not to let myself get typecast. If I was going to play another character in Black Crusade instead of GMing for a while, it was going to be a sarcastic, intense, whipcord-thin Nurglite assassin

Shadowrun 2050 - Characters include Inkubus: Elven party animal and metal mage Felix 'Bubbles' Bethke: Formerly an Aztech security mage, put on permanent leave for no reason he can figure out Samantha 'Greenlight': Teenager whose entire family was kidnapped by Renraku corp. Titus: Troll - party accountant and juggernaut Labrat: Ork vehicle and demolitions expert Warhammer: Dwarven sniper and merc The Soft-eyed Man: The Renraku operative behind the kidnappings. Kitty: Greenlight's fixer Wormwood: Greenlight's mentor when she first found herself alone on Seattle's streets. Jake: Greenlight's little brother - also one of an unknown number of experimental clones, at least some of whom have biochipped memories. After wiping out five squads of Renraku Red Samurai and two helicopters, it is becoming evident that the megacorporation doesn't like us. . Inkubus: I however would like to thank them for their continued contributions to my retirement fund. Titus: I'm pretty sure they like us, they keep sending us more stuff to sell. Although it does leave us in possession of more collectibles, although the fact they're still on fire and underneath a burning helicopter is a problem Felix: Let's congratulate the auction winners on their purchase of increasingly rare intact Red Samurai armour. Greenlight: Hey, Miss Kitty, I want to organise another auction - more Red Samurai stuff, slightly burned. Felix: 'Fire Sale' Titus: How many of the bodies can we throw into the back of the truck? Inkubus: All of them. Greenlight: If necessary we will strap them to the roof like deer. Greenlight's player: *struggles to open jar of salsa* Titus' player: Troll? Greenlight's player: Troll. *passes jar* Titus' player: *opens jar without difficulty* Greenlight's player: I want to be a man too! Labrat: I say we escalate Greenlight: *playing with red samurai corpses like they're ventriloquists dummies* Hooo! You besmirch my honour! Labrat: We are going to f**k up Renraku Greenlight: SCANDALOUS! Titus: You decapitated one with a stun baton! Greenlight: Red Samurai helmets are awesome! Pity about the neck part. Labrat suggests a row of Red Samurai heads on pikes in front of their corporate HQ, with broken katanas and a little sign saying "Red Burakumin" Labrat: Untouchables. Lowest of the Low. And, of course, inform Renraku's media rivals beforehand so they can film it. With any luck we can make the exec responsible commit Seppuku. One of the Samurai's commlinks blinks. It's the guy that kidnapped Greenlight's family. The Soft-eyed Man: Well? Did you get them? Greenlight:.... Hi. The Soft-eyed Man: ... you f**kers. Greenlight: No. *takes off bandana* I'm THAT Fucker. The Soft-eyed Man: Oh. Well. Greenlight: I'm coming for you. The Soft-eyed Man: Actually, I'd like to extend you an invitation. *signs off and texts coordinates* Labrat: You realise this is a trap, right? Greenlight: .... Yes it's a trap! I don't need a giant fishman to come up and say 'it's a trap!' The coordinates are for a decommissioned oil-rig. Felix: Boat again! Inkubus: We already win Felix: Well, we could really surprise them and hijack a sub. Inkubus: They'll be locked up tighter than a nuns arsehole. Felix: Speaking from experience, are you? Inkubus: Well, if you have the right lubricant... Titus: I did not need to know that. Our ninja specialist starts prepping for a stealth insertion at night - infra-red goggles, etc. Greenlight: I almost feel like Sam Fisher now, all I lack is the children and the gravelly voice. GM: You have the children. Greenlight: Oh shit I do! Titus: It'll cost half a million to cover my armour in Diamond-Kote Greenlight: Pimp my Troll! Titus: I say we just blow the place up. Labrat: I can do that. GM: Goddammit. Greenlight gets another message - it's 'Hoping for a family reunion' and photo of Greenlight's brother. With him the age he should be. It might be the original. Still, rigging the platform with C12 is a good idea - Labrat knows SCUBA. Of course, there are bound to be complications. Greenlight: We're not leaving him in the water around a Renraku oil-rig! Can you say 'cybersharks?' Inkubus: These ones WILL have fricking lasers. Or paracritters, such as the ridiculous-looking but utterly lethal sea-wolves. On the other hand, with the assistance of Felix's water spirit, Labrat and Titus can park 20 miles away, zoom in and out, and only need the rebreather gear and dry suits just in case. Inkubus' summonings might be impossible, if the necessary conditions - such as fire - aren't available. Titus: If Warhammer is around, you are always in a place with fire. Or that will be on fire shortly. Inkubus stirs up the Seattle glitterati to start a flash mob in front of Renraku - with the rest of us utilising our street cred and 100K from the petty cash fund, we can get half of the city to show up. And likely a couple of dragons, who are probably wondering where all the humans are going. Titus: Dunkelzahn shows up in full 70s disco outfit. And when the heads on spikes get revealed at midnight, they'll see we used the same font they use for 'Red Samurai'. GM: Most of the crowd will assume they're art installations, but Renraku will get the message. Inkubus: Well, they ARE art installations. And rival corp Fuchi will be there to film the lot - and Inkubus' shiteating grin - and make sure it appears on Japanese TV. And when the reveal happens, and Renraku security is 'distracted' the rest of us will be paying a little visit to the Renraku airbase just outside town, and stealing all their choppers, flying them over the border, and hiding them. GM: Are you going to blame this on an ecoterrorism group? Labrat: It's an option. GM: Oh shit, you're going to blow up an oil-rig. Of COURSE you are. Greenlight calls his mentor, Wormwood. Who by a lovely coincidence is a Rigger. Greenlight: It's time. Felix takes advantage of the effects on Renraku's stock value, and gives his grandfather at Aztechnology the heads-up too. Even though Lone Star security shows up, they're not going to interfere in a raucous and non-violent street party of 50,000 people - ESPECIALLY since they're in direct competition with the Red Samurai for Asian security contracts. Labrat: This is turning into a perfect storm of bad publicity for Renraku. Renraku: Ok, which executive is responsible for this? Which executive just violated first tenet of corporate culture - 'Vendettas are not profitable'? Plus, of course, we have a combat chopper, transport chopper, and drone-launching chopper, under camo-nets over the border. Labrat: Are there any spirits guarding the oil platform? GM: Surprisingly, no. Felix: Well, you may have killed all their wizards when you wiped out all those Red Samurai at the auction. Inkubus: Or the Astral Resources department at Renraku isn't talking to that exec anymore. Titus: They're contemplating jinxing him bald. Or impotent. There's discussions. Felix's own drone runs surveillance over the oil rig. Titus: Now I'm picturing us scrawling 'Don't mind me, I'm an albatross' under the wings. And with an air spirit making our boat invisible, hopefully whoever is on the oil rig won't know how badly they've fucked up until too late. But the Soft-eyed Man is looking surprisingly undiscombobulated when we spot him waiting for us on one of the gantries. Titus: Maybe he hasn't been watching the news. Felix does get some criticism for not bringing any weapons more formidable than a light pistol with gel rounds. Felix: If you REALLY want to kill people I'll just push them off the gantries into the North Pacific, OK? The Soft-eyed Man speaks to us over the PA - although we have no idea if he can see us, or even if he ACTUALLY knows we're there. Apparently he's arranged dinner in the rig's dining hall. We take our time getting rid of the guards first. Inkubus: The thing I love about this party is we can legitimately say 'Mess with us and we'll sic Bubbles on you' Titus: 'He took out a dragon once' Inkubus: 'And where is he now?' 'Picking out a new dinner set' Unfortunately, it's not until we've already killed a dozen of them that we notice they're all the same build, and take off their helmets. The Soft-eyed Man wasn't joking about 'family reunion' - we've just murdered a dozen clones of Greenlight's brother. Greenlight manages to maintain her composure, at least externally, but now we have to switch to non-lethal attacks. The Soft-eyed Man is apparently alone in the dining hall - we've already killed all the clone stormtroopers little brothers. Whoops Greenlight: I have something to thank you for. The Soft-eyed Man: Oh? Greenlight: You taught me how to survive. And during this whole speech Inkubus is invisibly loading a duffle-bag with the booze from the bar. Greenlight: I'm going to give you 30 seconds to explain yourself before I kill you and throw your body overboard. The Soft-eyed Man explains the whole deal with the kidnapping, cloning, stem-cell and biochip experimentation, and shifts blame to HIS boss. And THEN Inkubus reveals himself and Mind Probes the man. Apparently Greenlight's brother Jack is on the rig. And is his own security. And is a hulking black void in the Astral. And that the Soft-eyed Man is a biological telepresence - biochipped and remote-controlled. The Soft-eyed Man: Did you honestly believe I'm HERE? Greenlight: You're right, that was silly of me - STAB Jack is a horrific example of somebody cybernetically altered into something more resembling combat drone than human. But he still has a human face in the middle of the machinery. Also, a rotary cannon. Labrat empties a clip into it, which does little more than stagger it. All: Oh Fuck. Greenlight: *with Commanding Voice* Jack! Stop! Despite all the rewiring, the cyberzombie is actually given pause by his own sister telling him to calm his tits. Jack: .... S-s-s-AM? I Cc--cc-ant STOP. RuN! *opens fire* Inkubus OoC: Wait, it's attacking Greenlight in Hand-to-Hand? Great! 'Not only can I parry that, I can attack you, AND disarm you.' Titus: Just don't parry his head off. And Greenlight indeed manages to take her brother down. And asks for Labrat's knife. Labrat: I'll do it if you want. Greenlight: I need to do this myself. But out of extra spite Jack's remains come with a 60-second countdown. We flee, and Labrat sets off his own bombs first. Which we learn later disables the small nuke Renraku set up. Labrat: Nuclear bombs are one of the few WMDs that can be disabled by a guy with a small hammer. Which further means Renraku is going to be in VERY deep shit when the authorities investigate the merely horrendous explosion Labrat prepared in advance. Greenlight: Gentlemen, let me remind you - Renraku has been having a very bad day. Felix: And the conspiracy boards are going to go nuts trying to figure out what they did with those three missing choppers. And, of course, the various dead clones floating around. Inkubus, however, injects himself with a memory-wiping drug. Inkubus: I don't want to remember cyberzombies. Or what I saw in that mans' brain. Inkubus collapses. Greenlight: I didn't expect you for a one-pump kind of guy! Ha-ha! F**k, he's unconscious. Greenlight goes home and checks on the young Jack clone she's been living with for over a year now. Greenlight: Hey Jack, sorry to wake you up. Can I get a hug? Then goes to sit in the shower all night.

D&D 5th Ed. - PCs are Lamech Judocus, a stoned gnome wild sorceror, Urlon and Elethndia (Elf and dragonkin ex-soldiers), hired to escort mining camp supplies, and distracted by a goblin attack on the wagon that had preceded us. Having tracked down the surviving goblin, and interrogated him, Urlon debates what to do next. Apparently the dwarf back at the road was kidnapped because of some map he had, and the human with him carted off for food. What now? He promised to spare the goblin's wretched life, but if he leaves him here and heads back to fetch the others, the goblin could just run off and warn the lair of our approach. So he gags the goblin and ties him to a tree trunk four feet off the ground. Urlon: If i get out alive, you do. The approach to the cave in question has thick briar thickets to either side. Lamech: You know... if I was a goblin I'd have guards in those thickets watching the approach ALL: *turn to stare suspiciously at the shrubbery, but we all fail the Spot Check* GM: No tar babies, goblin faces, Br'er Rabbits... As it happens the goblins must have been too busy jerking off or something, since they completely fail to notice us strolling up to look closer. The subsequent carnage over, we wonder how we're going to protect the NPC cleric, who will prove to be the only thing that gets us out alive. Lamech: If we find enough goblins in there we can strap them to him and he can use THEM for armour. GM: Live kobold armour - aargh!! Urlon: Done that. Lamech probably doesn't have the right skill set for dungeoneering. Lamech: You two are the survival experts here - the only wilderness skill I have is 'If I eat that mushroom, will I get high?' He also has a somewhat impractical spell list. Lamech: Continual Light? Why? Enough special 'shrooms and everything is covered in lights anyway. The first chamber inside the cave has huge chained up dogs. They look at Lamech the gnome with some interest. Dogs: [Chew toy?] The goblins spot us coming and start their emergency plan - knocking down the weir they've built to contain the cave's central stream, and thus flood us out of the cave. Lamech: It's Peter Weir and they're refilming The Last Wave The cleric throws Lamech to an upper level, which spares him from the flood anyway. Lamech: Bonus - they're drown their own dogs. Lamech and one of the goblins run into each each other in the tunnel. Unfortunately for the goblin, Lamech was already holding his dagger out in front of him. They exchange horrified looks. Then, for want of anything better coming to mind, the gnome stabs him again. Lamech: Gnome uses Stab! It's Super Effective! The goblin leader, cornered, holds one of the missing people at the edge of a cliff and threatens to push him off. The dragonborn charges anyway, the hostage gets pushed, and the goblin jumps off afterwards to use the soft landing. Lamech manages to negotiate a truth - we take the hostage, and the surviving goblins grab everything they can carry and run off in the other direction. Elethndia: You alright down there? Hostage: *groans something incoherent that probably translate as 'No, you unbelievable bastard' The goblins point us in the direction of THEIR boss, a bugbear who apparently knows why the dwarf was kidnapped, and why this unknown king wanted him and the map. GM: You seen something hairy and incredibly ugly at the other end of the bridge - and it's not your mother-in-law. Alas, the bugbear fights to the death - looks like we'll have to chase up more clues in town.

The Kasserkratch! The notorious grand cruiser and monument to the Ruinous Powers, lost for centuries despite any number of efforts to locate and claim it. We've found it, now all we have to do is seize it. Easy, right? The way our starfort Promise of War can find its own way through the Warp, even without a Navigator, is still a little disturbing. Cassius: This station worries me. The system is a nearly bare red dwarf with one barely habitable rock, and a gas giant out in the Kuiper Belt. Jrska: No innocent populations to pervert - Boooo! There are, however, an unknown number of smaller ships nosing around waiting for the Kasserkratch to surface from the Warp. So far, they're avoiding us. It's a pity the Promise of War hasn't finished growing all it's new daemonic improvements - those harpoons would have been handy to keep us attached to the barely-ticking over derelict. Cassius casts the auguries, reading the necessary entrails. Aladar: He has a steady supply of chickens. Cassius: Chickens? Jrska: Crew members. Cassius: Whichever ones are under-performing the most. It's good for crew morale. Aladar brings our smaller ship, the frigate Chains of Judgement, up alongside the grand cruiser, then surrenders control to the lesser bridge crew. Cog: And the crew offer a prayer of thanks to whatever gods they believe in, that Aladar is no longer in the pilot's seat. The Kasserkratch's deliberately confusing internal architecture is not going to be very useful for us at this point. Joanna: It's designed to ensure boarding parties get lost and separated. Cog: Oh, great. Guess what we count as. Despite the ominous rumours, we go aboard already divided into three groups. No doubt we will regret this. Jrska, Joanna, their Kingfisher girls and Sisters of Pain, and Jrska's pet Daemonhost and pet moron Aladar are in one group. Cassius goes in with his Thousand Sons Rubric Marine and a complement of mutants. Cog goes in with the insane dreadnought, which should be enough to deal with anything. And we make sure to take plenty of comm-unit relays, balls of string, luminous paint sticks, and anything else that should help us not get lost, or cut open walls if we do. Jrska: You know, I'm sure all these precautions have occurred to the other teams that have gone in here over the centuries - and it didn't do THEM any good. Cassius: The problem isn't the gun, Aladar, it's you. You keep forgetting you have a big *long-range* gun. Jrska: What orders do we give the crew if we're not back in 10 hours? Cassius: If we're not back in 10 hours, us being missing is not the biggest problem. And the sealed orders will be 'HahahaHAhaHA - I'm not even sorry' And things go awry almost immediately - Cassius' boarding compartment opens and he and the mutants get blown out into vacuum. That probably explains one of the more opaque warnings he got in his augury. He's untroubled by the lack of air, but the mutants are lost to the Void for now. And the Kasserkratch isn't visible through the hole. Cassius: Aladar, I need to have a word with you about your parking skills. Nine kilometres of cruiser does not just disappear! Jrska: Aladar, sweety, darling, why is the bridge telling me the Kasserkratch is where it always was? Ten thousand kilometres away? Aladar: What??? You heard the hulls scraping together! Jrska: I know. I want you to explain this discrepancy. Then explain it to our Lord Cassius. There's archeotech that can confuse boarding attempts like this, but it's no doubt something even more diabolical. And the Kasserkratch is now showing damage it didn't have before. Jrska: It was lost in the Warp, my lord - perhaps it is also unbound in time? Cassius decides to let Aladar do something stupid, as opposed to the usual and Aladar doing something stupid of his own initiative. We fire up the Chain's engines and ram the derelict! The Chains shudders, bucks, and consoles explode all over the bridge as we throw ourselves about dramatically. Cog: There's nothing explosive in that console! Nothing! Aladar: And why did that wooden table explode? Despite the obvious collision, the sensors still insist the Kasserkratch is thousands of kilometres away. Aladar: I walk out the airlock. Cassius: No need - this time it's not your fault. The Kasserkratch isn't visible to our eyes, either - and there is no apparent damage to OUR ship either. Jrska suggests we just ask for permission to come aboard - she is the party diplomancer after all - but Cassius wants to trying getting the Kasserkratch between us and our Starfort and see if we can push all three together. And the damage on the Kasserkratch is now even closer to what the legends describe. Aladar wants someone to monitor the collision from outside. This is a bad idea - not even magboots would save your bones, if you were stupid enough to be standing on the hull - and there's also the problem of shrapnel. Joanna: I'll happily ram the ships together if Aladar's standing on the prow. At least the latest attempt exhausts any remaining power on the derelict - although it's suffering rather a lot of repeated ramming damage. Whoops. We've now made it match the legends. Jrska 'helpfully' prepares Joanna for a jump-pack jump across the vacuum - binding her wings down. GM: You realise that'll hurt right? What with the jet-pack exhausts? Jrska: Slaneesh cultists. Cassius: The agony is a bonus. Joanna: I look forward to the exquisite pain. We attempt a second boarding. This time the Kasserkratch is actually there. Cassius: Now we find out if life support is online. Jrska: It may have been up until a few minutes ago. We're promptly attacked by swarms of warp-tainted motes. Jrska: We're being attacked by daemonic dust-bunnies? Cassius: Nobody say 'Hey! Who turned out the lights? Hey! Who turned out the lights?' The dreadnought opts not to unleash its flamethrower. Dreadnought: The Master will be annoyed if I incinerate his minions. Cassius, unwisely, uses Wind of Chaos, and nearly kills his own minions anyway. Just as well Cassius gave Jrska that Conversion Field ages ago. Jrska takes hold of either end of her daemonwhip and skips rope into the Netherswarm, shredding a large number of the minor entities. Aladar: Cassius, do I need to worry about backstop? Cassius: No! Aladar: *fires Big Bertha* Jrska: That's LORD Cassius, sweety. Cassius: No, no, he's fine - I love that gun. Admittedly, Cassius was in that direction at the time, so perhaps the shine has come off the honeymoon. Cassius: *starts to chuckle evilly* I have a plan - it might even gain me favour with Tzeentch. Cog: The 'I have a plan' is the scariest part of that. Joanna: Permission to use my flamer, Lord! Cassius: Go ahead - it's lascannons using me as backstop that I have a problem with. Cog: Logic tells me there is no-one above me. Cassius: ... eehhh. LOGIC tells you. Logic is just a way to be wrong with certainty. Cog warms up his new Tzeentch-given lobes and opens a psychic vortex - which sucks Jrska up off the floor and halfway towards the rip in reality. This fails to amuse her. Joanna has it worse as the Netherswarm flows through her armour and tears strips of muscle off her torso - she's incapacitated by the pleasure of it. Aladar gets much the same, and since the silly boy switched his allegiance to Tzeentch he doesn't even get any enjoyment out of it. Jrska is irked by this as well, since her Conversion Field insulated her from this new sensation. And she's sucked even further into the air. Cog: I can see right up her - oh wait, she doesn't wear underwear. And then, even worse, Cassius critically botches his psychic perils check, and the Deamon Prince is banished into the Warp. For centuries. GM: Every time he gets taken out it's by his own means! Jrska OoC: I'm unlikely to live long enough to see you come back - I am mortal, after all. Cassius OoC: Unless you become a Daemon Prince. Jrska OoC: If I become a Daemon Prince who cares what happened to you? At least with you gone it's a good opportunity to seduce the others back to the worship of the One True God and Prince of Pleasure And thanks to the mind link Cassius was maintaining at the time, the rest of us all get experience the transition up close and personal as Cassius' soul is turned inside out. Jrska: Oooh, neat! And because we never did the Ritual of Conjoined Fates, there's NO way the rest of us can bring him back sooner. This is starting to look like a Total Party Kill - no wonder nobody has ever come back from the Kasserkratch before - it's swarming with Vashta Nerada. On the other hand Jrska's double-Dutch skills are pretty lethal. But we make it back to the Chains, and even we return with flamers to clear out the Netherswarm at this point we're going to have to put the campaign on hold - with Cassius lost in the Warp, his Crusade is going to need a major rethink, even with the rest of us to continue with The Plan. It would appear our GM will be taking a break to actually play, and I'll be running a Black Crusade campaign for a while as we give the existing characters a rest. Jrska: The Kasserkratch will be reborn in fire. Lord Cassius will return. And he wants you prepare for his return. He's been sending you dreams. Cog: About ponies. And apocalypse, but mostly ponies.

Jrska wants to lure Aladar away from thralldom to Tzeentch and back into the embrace of Slaneesh. For one thing, he was her thrall first, and all his internal mechanical mutations have not only left him immune to Jrska's charms, they didn't even include a vibrating attachment. GM: I'd rather you didn't seduce him back to Slaneesh. If you do seduce him it'll count as a failing, and he'll gain enough corruption to turn into a Chaos Spawn. Jrska: I don't mind - I'd quite like to have him a Spawn as pet. Aladar: Hey! I mind! Arriving at Xurunt, where the legends we barely know suggest a chance to get armies of Khornate berserkers if we can hold the Throne of Baphtar for a year. Although piloting the Promise of War is difficult, given the currents of the Screaming Vortex even at the best of times. Sister Johanna: I thought it flew itself? GM: It needs to be guided. Jrska: And hit with a rolled-up newspaper every time it tries to eat the crew. 'Bad Daemon-station! Bad Daemon-station!' The highest mountain on Xurunt has been carved into a cloven-hoofed warrior. Aladar: Lord Cassius! I think you'll need to sit on his lap. Cassius: No. I need an adult. Jrska: 'Sit up here and tell Santa Khorne what you want for Christmas'. GM: 'Piles of skulls, and more piles of skulls, and more piles of skulls...' There's also an ancient fortress beneath the Throne, which Aladar determines is showing a few signs of life. Cassius decides to disguise himself as a mortal - to whit, Jrska's brother Prince Pseudanor. Cassius: Just to mess with her > Jrska turns to see her brother, squeals with delight, and skips forward. Cassius: Oh crap, I didn't think this through. Jrska: *embraces and deeply tongue-kisses him* Cassius: *Pushes her off* I forgot how ... close... you two were. Jrska OoC: You realise I'd have reacted the same way even if I HAD realised it was you? Cassius OoC: Yeah - just to mess with me. Jrska OoC: Yup Jrska: This has possibilities *leers* Cassius: I'm sure you are thinking beyond the carnal ones. Jrska: *shrugs* Eh. Cassius: With Profane Runes I can disguise all of you, as well. Cassius is irritated that Jrska thinks we need to conquer. It goes against his plan to make Chaos work together for once. And if we can seduce the Xurunt leaders into following Cassius even without taking the Throne, we get want we wanted anyway. But as we fly down to the surface we meet flak fire coming the other way. GM: And where are the rest of you? Jrska: Enjoying myself with one of the stewardesses. GM: There aren't any stewardesses. Jrska: A Kingfisher Girl in a short skirt. GM: It looks good on him. Johanna pulls Aladar out of the pilot's seat and takes over, driving our Battle-ram straight at the ground and pulling out of the dive at the last moment, skimming the fortress' battlements. Cassius opens the deployment ramp - while we're still flying at full speed - and Johanna barely keeps us out of a fatal spin. It turns out there more than one fortress down here among the trees, and some of them have actual technology. Aladar is not happy about losing his only job on the ship, and threatens Johanna with his lascannon. Johanna responds by flipping the Battle-ram upside down. Aladar has magboots. Cassius does not. Jrska: Since we're apparently flying out of control at the moment, I imagine somebody is screaming 'Pull out! Pull out!'. It's the Kingfisher Girl. Cassius: I have the perfect solution for this. I kill both of you. Jrska: This is not the way my Kingfisher Girl wanted to join the Mile High Club. Cassius OoC: Can you imagine a lascannon with the Accurate trait? 'This is my sniper team' GM: 'Don't you mean Heavy Weapon Team?' Cassius OoC: 'Nope >:)' We'll also learn later that the flak cannons are using radioactive ammunition. That probably explains why the ground troops are scattering when the ammo dumps explode. Or it could be because Cassius dropped into their midst, shedding his mortal disguise. Either way, Jrska is in more trouble than she realises, since her armour is by far the weakest in the party. Johanna flies the Battle-ram up to the walls of the most annoying keep. And then through them. Jrska meets a posse of axe-wielding Xur warriors and draws her one-eyed plasma pistol. Plasma pistols are already suspiciously phallic, and now it's a Daemon Weapon, so the way it gushes sticky plasma over anything that attracts Jrska's attention is hardly surprising. Me: I am so looking forward to drawing her like this. MWAHAHAHA However, the Xur's own weapons - some sort of howling power axe - are also alarming, and it looks like Jrska is going to need a bionic replacement for her OTHER leg. Happily, Johanna and her minions come to the beast-woman's rescue. Jrska: They like me, they really really like me. Of course, having dozens of minions all trying to disembark at once completely clogs the exits. Jrska: They're packed in like sardines. There isn't even room for them to hit the ground. Cassius: Not that they're complaining. Cassius himself, outside, challenges the keep's master to single combat. Given Khorne's biases, the local champion HAS to accept, or face Khorne's ire at his cowardice. Jrska's Kingfisher Girls swarm the enemy inside the keep and tear them apart with their bare hands. Jrska: And hold the bits overhead saying 'I'm going to get this laminated' Aladar: How do you laminate a three-dimensional object? Jrska: I'm sure Cog could do it, if they ask nicely. Cassius' minion - the soulless automaton that used to be a Thousand Sons Space Marine - is also doing well, exploding Khornate warriors left, right and centre. Aladar is starting to suffer radiation too, now. This battle is going to be very bad news for all the mortals involved, it seems. The keep's master refuses to fight, claiming that throwing his life away in a pointless battle will not please his lord, Baphtar-Khorne. Cassius: If you wish to sit at the right hand of Khorne I will gladly send you on your way. But do you wish to continue this battle of words, as befits a follower of Tzeentch, or continue this as a warrior of Khorne? What say your men? The keep's troops do indeed seem disgusted by their leader's caution, but haven't rebelled yet. Cassius: What fault of it is mine that I have achieved such greatness, while you cower here within your keep? Jrska: While you curl up here like a snail in its shell'. Cassius: Nice. His hand forced, the keep's master agrees to honourable combat, and a truce is called. Cassius acknowledges this by putting his force staff Doomwind to one side, and shrinking himself down to merely human form. Cassius: I require a blade, though it dishonours my Doomwind. Cassius nonetheless cheats, using precognition in the combat. Cassius: After all that grandstanding it would help if I actually win. Although the local seems to be toying with Cassius too. Keepmaster: I have something to tell you - I am not, in fact, left-handed. But Cassius disarms him anyway (eventually). Keepmaster: My life is yours. Cassius: Your blood is Khorne's - but your skull will not adorn his throne this day. The Keepmaster compliments Cassius on his fighting skill, but does warn us that we had all better abandon the keep, lest we all succumb to the Wasting Sickness. Darn radioisotopes. Apparently some followers of Nurgle gifted the locals with the radiation missiles etc, in an effort to spread the blessings of the Plaguefather. It's certainly made life interesting in the eight kingdoms, as we share mead and the Keepmaster informs us of the political situation surrounding Baphtar's Throne - it would appear the legends are out of date. Whenever one kingdom tries for the throne the other seven gang up to stop them. And all eight will open fire on anybody trying to fly straight to the old temple. Cassius: Game of Thrones but with more blood. And radiation sickness. The eight daimyos might be persuaded to follow Cassius. Especially with Gray's Repulsive-class Grand Cruiser hovering overhead. Jrska: The Unfettered Judgement is the Big Stick. But in the end it seems a better idea to move on from Xurunt, acquire some fleets for transport purposes, then come back and unify the eight kingdoms under Cassius' banner. Or just take the Throne entirely. Jrska: If we're going to be salvaging space hulks, I want a skin-tight gold lamé void suit. It might not be gold lamé, but the form-hugging carapace armour Cassius gets her is very sexy. Jrska: I had no idea you had such good taste, my lord. Cassius: I keep you around, don't I? Jrska: *beams* Cassius: True, I also keep Aladar around... But chasing down rumour does lead us to the Kasserkratch, the legendary treasure-filled wreck of a Grand Cruiser that nobody has ever come back from. It's also the kind of prize that any aspiring Warmaster in the Galaxy would salivate after, even without the tales of corridors drowning in loot. This should be interesting...

Could well be. I was so exhausted from 6 days of overtime I had to go lie down for the last third of the session, and was barely coherent for the rest. They may well have been quoting something at each other.

On the difference between our runs and the rumours we've heard about a certain other team - ( Houston GM's - ) Felix: Our team gets by on Inkubus' libido and boats, their team gets by on subtlety and professionalism. Inkubus: F**k you! Besides, my libido and boats has worked so far. Felix: Why is there a hose attachment on the table? Inkubus: Because there's a hose attachment on the table. Do you have a problem with this? Warhammer: Do you want it somewhere else? Greenlight: Does it offend you? Inkubus: Are you hosist? Back to Scotland, where we need to use that Astral Gate near Loch Ness. Just as well part of our deal with Celadyr retroactively fixed any visa problems with us mysteriously leaving Scotland and coming home via Germany. Dragons generally don't have transponders. But there's never any guarantee where an Astral Gate will take you. Titus: The Place of Endless Groin-punches Inkubus: The Elemental Plane of BEEEES But who will look after our bodies while we're in the Astral Planes? We decide that that Scottish professor owes us a favour. And her students can watch over us and hopefully learn something. Warhammer: How about your uncle Maximillian, Bubbles? Inkubus: You need to have your brain examined. You literally just proposed leaving our unconscious bodies in the care of somebody that has climbed to high position in AZTECHNOLOGY. And corporate high position is bad enough, but Aztech?! Felix: All part of the alien's masterplan Inkubus: I for one welcome our new alien overlords! Because they've chosen me to be AWESOME. Greenlight: Titus, what does your warhammer look like? Felix: Short and Beardy. Greenlight gets a bit unhappy when we prep our weapons for Astral use - Titus' Pimp Cane, for example. Greenlight: It's just so boring - there's no legend to the weapons anymore. We just go out and buy a Sword +2. It's sad, really. Titus: It's an age on consumerism. Get used to it. Inkubus: I never want to see Weapon Focus : Caber GM: 'Where are the Shadowrunners' Inkubus: Ask the guy carrying the tree. Titus: I know what to get you for Christmas now - a spellcasting focus Scrubbing Brush. Inkubus: This is an aspect of the Way of Metal you don't see often - the clean-up afterwards. Actually, it is an aspect! The Roadie. At least being out of town will give the renovators time to do up Inkubus and Felix' loft apartment, now luxury standard - and above luxury food. Felix: Movie Nights are going to be AWESOME. Take-away from the best restaurants in Seattle And of course, there's the interrogation of Doctor What. Inkubus hits him with an Orgasm, and sustains it. And sustains it. Inkubus: Tell us why the book we stole is so important, if you ever want to enjoy the touch of a woman again. Or a man. Felix: Or Sheep. Apparently What was hired by Ehran the Scribe, who is pissed off that we've inconvenienced him repeatedly. We point out we have no idea who hired us to do those jobs. Greenlight: Although if Mr Ehran wants us to run a counter-run, we are available for a reasonable fee. Titus: We are professionals after all. Greenlight: Now there's a change of clothes in the next room, and you can clean up. Felix: I buy Wetwipes in Economy boxes. This is going to be dangerous, but we can be careful. Titus: We don't want to become cautionary tales. Inkubus: *looks confused* Become? On the Astral Threshold, Greenlight is greeted with an astral image of his little brother. Lil' Bro: Thank you for rescuing me. Lil' Clone: But why didn't you rescue me? Lil' Clone 2: Or me? Lil' Clone 3, 4, 5, 6 etc: Or Me? Inkubus: 'Are you my Mummy?' Inkubus gets ravished a metal dragon, but protests he's straight. GM: Tough. That or challenge it to a rock battle. Greenlight : 'Play the best song in the world, or I'll eat your soul!' Warhammer: Summon Ozzy Osbourne! Titus: To bite its head off! Ozzy: Sharron, what the fuck am I doing here again? Sharon: you're judging a rock contest Ozzy! Ozzy: I what? Sharon: A rock concert! You're judging it between two rock icons! Ozzy: Oh right. Well, going by tradition, I'll have to bite one of your heads off. Inkubus and the dragon:*wince and clutch their junk* Ozzy: Only your top 'eads you twats! Felix meets his grandfather, at an Aztech corporate function atop the Great Pyramid in Tenochtitlan. A function that's becoming increasingly ... traditional. Max Bethke: I do this for you, Grandson. And then the Aztec priest next to him guts him like a fish and cuts out his heart. Felix: F**k!!!! Actually, this is probably the first hint Felix has had as to just what his grandfather had to do to stop Felix being killed after whatever mysterious incident got Felix put on 'permanent administrative leave'. Inkubus: The next time I need to summon a fire spirit, I can always summon Indestructible (from every Disturbed album cover) Titus: I'm sure he's friendly. Look, he's smiling! The metaplane on the other side is swarming with fairies. Inkubus: This is not metal. We also have a fairy guide - Felix's bound air spirit. Greenlight: F**k off, Navi. There's also a town, at the base of a World Tree. Inkubus: Bet you we have to climb that. Warhammer: Tavern! Greenlight: Tavern! Felix: Inkubus is the one that's supposed to be tempted by this sort of thing! Greenlight: We're in a medieval town. Inkubus: Tavern! But I don't carouse. Inkubus: Did Neil the Ork Barbarian just walk past us? Greenlight: What? Where? *runs off after him for autograph* Inkubus: You are such a fangirl. Greenlight: Stop raining on my parade. Do I pooh-pooh you when you seduce women? Inkubus: Yes. Greenlight: True, fair enough. Warhammer's totally lack of etiquette is likely to cause us problems. Inkubus: Maybe that's how you left the military - you kept mouthing off to officers. Greenlight: He's really good at shooting off his gun. And his mouth The Queen of the fairies has been kidnapped! Greenlight: Is the Queen of Fairies actually female? GM: Yes. In this instance. Inkubus: We need to buy some chains and manacles. For me. I get the strange impression that banging the Queen of the Fairies is not going to end well for us. And, as Inkubus predicted, we have to climb the tree, facing hundreds of armoured insect-soldiers-fairies. Inkubus: I'm about to make it rain. You'll probably want to shower afterwards. Titus: Don't worry, our bodies aren't here - it'll only get on our souls. Put it like that, Inkubus decides NOT to cast Mass Orgasm. Felix' bound spirit changes into a army, but the battle remains fraught. Titus: The entirety of Bavaria has a grudge against you. Inkubus: I only set a SMALL section of the Black Forest on fire. And Felix then comes very close to killing himself with a miscast - back in reality he's bleeding from every orifice. Titus grabs the bleeding mage as he falls, fling back up again. Meanwhile, Greenlight blows into the main group. On her turn, she hits them for massive damage. On their turn, they attack her... and get hit for massive damage. Greenlight: Disarm by way of breaking your opponent's wrist, it's a hell of a trick. Titus: Parry, thrust, punch, counterpunch, DICK PUNCH Likewise, Warhammer wildly fires grenades into the main group of insect-fairy-soldiers. Once ever other turn the dice betray him. Warhammer: Wait... everything is fantasy here isn't it? I can't have grenades. Titus: Sure you can, they're just jars carrying the spirits of bees from the elemental plane of fire. PHOSPHORUS BEEEEES! The battle is not going well and we're already down a Mage. After telling off the semi-conscious Bubbles, Inkubus opts to summon up a massive earth spirit (force 12). He succeeds. Inkbus: Oh crap... I just summoned the Yggdrasil squirrel. GM: A troll-sized squirrel crawls to you, watching the battle commence. It sneers in bloodlust... AND DRAWS A ZWEIHANDER! Titus: He doesn't like crabs either. Greenlight: (after a particularly bad roll) I'm running out of Edge here! GM: (Agast) You're running out of bad guys, too! Titus: I fly up, rising like a Valkyrie Greenlight: Carrying a rainbow Aztec Squirrel: If you guys don't clear out, I'll do what we squirrels do best and COLLECT YOUR NUTS Crab: (GM rolls, rolls a 1) Hah! We don't have any nuts. Other crab: (Turns out the 1 was for the Crab's willcheck) Actually fred, we have twelve. GM: They friggin' scatter. Greenlight: Ratatosk uses Intimidate! It's super effective! Finally, the party gets through to the top of the tree. There is a massive door. Greenlight: Titus? Titus: (hefts hammer) Inkbus: (knocks on the door) GM: The door opens Inkbus: (turns to greenlight) You taught me that. GM: And guess who the queen is. The queen is the same air spirit who's True Name we were here to steal. Greenlight finds the situation to be particularly amusing, and therefore acts as Inkubus' wingman - as he attempting to seduce the air spirit that was out to kill us. (Long story short, Inkubus adds his dice together. It's going rather well... then he adds his street cred.) Inkubus: 26 dice. GM: Holy shit. Whole party: Holy shit. Inkubus: (nodding) Will of the D. Needless to say, the queen of the fairies decides to accompany him, and later, agrees to the mutually satisfying binding ritual. Inkubus: Well, uh, be busy. Greenlight: Sure, and the squirrel will be watching the nuts Inkubus: 5 hits on Erotic Arts. GM: And they say that Yggdrasil grew three sizes that day Inkubus: And they thank Rattatosco Greenlight: He's in the top percentile of Rattata. He knows sword dance. And thus, the partying commenced. After half a day, we reawaken in the real world. Greenlight: Bwah! Giant squirrel! Inkubus: (looks down at Bubbles) Urgh, can someone please clean up Bubbles Greenlight: (looks at Inkubus' pants) And yourself. This will no doubt add to our public notice - as would the way Inkubus body started enthusiastically humping thin air - but the students watching over us will hopefully only refer to us as Subjects 1, 2, etc, in their research papers. Felix: But the dragons will take one look... Inkubus: ... see a Metal Mage in the company of a Hermetic and a bunch of Adepts... Felix: ...and go 'Ah, it's them' Inkubus: 'Those arseholes'. Greenlight: How to ID German infiltrators. Get them to sing the national anthem. Inkubus: If they get it right, shoot them. No-one knows all the words of their own anthem.

Playing D&D 5th Ed with a friend GMing. PCs - two ex-soldiers Urlon and Elethndia (oddly enough, Urlon is the Elf and Elethndia the dragonkin), and Lamech Judocus, a gnome sorceror who has red eyes and is constantly surrounded by a cloud of smoke. But that's not because of any Fiendish ancestry or alliances. He's just constantly stoned. Lamech Judocus: Just call me the J-man, man. GM: Thanksgiving - the perfect time to invite all the arseholes you know over for dinner. Because that's when you carve up the turkeys. The job - escort a cartload of camp supplies in the Sword Mountains. GM: You guys sit on top looking decorative. Or whatever you want to do. Fishing off the back of the cart perhaps. 'I was wondering why the fish weren't biting'. Lamech: Land sharks. Urlon: What? Land sharks? Where? Lamech: *leans forward conspiratorially* I'm actually half-giant. Urlon: .... Lamech: But I'm tall for my size. GM: One year there was a multicoloured light display on the Museum opposite. And when the cops realised what was going on they'd just wait for whoever walked past, stopped, and stared at the lights going "Oooooh... ahhh.... pretty." And then they'd cross the road and gently steer them into the police station. Lamech: Want a brownie? GM: That can be taken many ways in D&D Lamech: *sings* Gnome, gnome on the range. And, naturally, or this might have become a rather ordinary trip, we are attached by Goblins. Urlon: They've been attacked by goblins. Lamech: Can't we all just get along? Lamech OoC: They're the Chinese Meals of the Forgotten Realms - Kill one, and five minutes later you kill another one. (re: the game itself - seems straightforward enough. The changes to the rules are not overly annoying - not that I am any good remembering rules - but some of the more useful spells have been nurfed.)

Our new Starfort, now somewhat carnivorous, has come to rest on the outskirts of the Screaming Vortex muttering and eating anybody who wanders alone through the corridors. And there's the surviving Severian and Imperial troops to be hunted down and sold into into slavery. But at the moment there's also the Thirteenth Station, and the blockade fleet that preys on anybody trying to enter or leave the Vortex. A meeting in the Starfort's command center, which is now disturbingly biological. Jrska: And that servitor is playing Gallaga. Cog: Yes, there's always one. We've never been able to to stop it. Blockade Negotiator: You speak of Crusade. And where do you intend to take the Word of the Gods? Cassius: To a world that has no use for them, for it is infested by the Necrontyr. *stepping out of the shadows and causing the negotiators to collectively shit their pants* We come to an agreement - they will blockade the Thirteenth Station in Cassius' name, preventing any ships from leaving the Vortex without his warrant, and inform us of any ships that try to enter, and contribute their ships to Cassius' Crusade when it's time to attack. In return, they want the Imperial trade world of Sinophia. This is fine with us. Aladar writes up the contract. GM: Bear in mind that while Aladar WAS a Rogue Trader - Cassius: - He wasn't a very good one. GM: You found him planetbound, minus a ship. Cassius: One of the most powerful unifying forces in the galaxy is mutual enlightened self-interest. Jrska: And Mutually Assured Destruction. Cog: Same thing. The mercenary Gray's Grand Cruiser 'Unfettered Judgement' warps into the area. Jrska: All batteries stand down - Gray is an ally. Cassius: Jrska - Gray is better described as 'someone we have had dealings with' Jrska: I know, my lord. But if Gray thinks our batteries are actually in working order... Cassius: Good point. Carry on. The 'Unfettered Judgement' is a truly fearsome ancient vessel, and fully equipped the pound the crap out of practically anything and then invade whatever survives. Jrska: We need a new ship, don't we my lord? Cassius: .... Aladar: How long would it take you to seduce the ship out from under him? Cassius is looking forward to the meeting - he recalls clearly our original agreement with Gray - Bring the Starfort to the Vortex. There wasn't anything about handing it over when we got there. Gray: And where is your master Cassius? Cassius: Oh, I'm around *steps out the shadows* Gray's ceremonial guard: *shit themselves, but maintain position* Cassius: Well done. Gray: You will require a flagship, a place of command - and this paltry frigate, while fast and well-designed, is not sufficient. Jrska: It no longer suits the magnificence of my lord Cassius. Cassius: It is a good ship for reconnaissance - but your point is well made Rumours have already circulated in the Vortex that Warmaster Abbadon, heir to Horus, is pleased with Cassius's activities. Cassius: Abbadon approves. Cog: 'Go forth, my homey' Gray: It has been many, many years since any individual has tried to unify the Screaming Vortex. Jrska: Such is the nature of chaos. But as you say - to unify the mortal forces of the Vortex towards one common goal - to destroy the Soulless and strike a blow against the hated Imperium of the Corpse-Emperor... THAT will take a great individual indeed. Gray: Or group of individuals. Gray certainly seems eager to ally with us - even as a lieutenant in the Crusade, he'll have many opportunities for advancement in the eyes of the Ruinous Powers. Cassius: I am in need of capable lieutenants. Jrska: And intelligent ones, as you have remarked on a number of occasions. Cassius: Indeed. Jrska: And did we all glance towards Aladar? Cassius: He was in that general direction. But what to do with the station? Perhaps dedicate it to the four Ruinous Powers, with each arm dedicated to the various gods? Cassius: I don't like the idea of two docking arms dedicated to Slaneesh. I can HEAR the radio chatter during docking procedures already. He's also reluctant to dedicate any part of the ship to Nurgle - not only because of his Tzeentch alignment, but most because rampant rust, ruin, and decay is not very conducive to space operations. Instead, Cassius decides to divide the station into five sections - one to each of the Four Chaos Gods - and one to the Fifth. The destroyed docking arm will be dedicated to Malal - the Chaos God dedicated to the destruction of the other gods, and symbol of the tendency of Chaos to turn against itself - and the station will make ongoing efforts to KEEP that arm destroyed. Symbolically unifying the disparate followers of the four powers, hopefully for the duration of the Crusade. The station does start to grow appropriate attachments in response to the rituals of dedication - Aethyr Harpoons to drag enemy ships closer, out-of-control vegetative growths that expand to repair damage to the hull, and whispers promising pleasure and corruption to any enemies that DO get too close. The command structure, dedicated to Tzeentch, grows crystal towers to assist with astropathic communication, or blink the entire station out of existence if something truly dangerous faces us. Jrska suggests a name for the Starfort too - 'The Promise of War' And that all sorted, the first planet we'll have to pass is Hindrance, a nasty little dessicated shithole mostly inhabited by Nurglites. But it does have hereteks - admittedly Nurglite hereteks. Cog: We need holy ammunition. Cassius: Get them away from me. Cog: Hmm? Cassius: I don't react well to unexpected holy munitions. Things get broken. Aladar: Starting with Cog. The hereteks on one of Hindrance's moons are famous for being good repairmen and scrapcode writers. As dangerous as it is to go anywhere near the Hindrance moon that apparently has the mass of a neutron star, is IS a good idea to impress the local yokels by parking the 'Promise of War' in orbit around the other heretek-infested moon, Alactia. Local Yokels: Ooooh. I Want. We do have to find some gift to impress the local cult leaders. Jrska: The WHO Handbook of Infectious Diseases. 'Jane's Book of Plagues' Alactia is so encrusted with wreckage and scrap that most of the local topography is built from piles of rust. This sort of environment is probably not conducive to the proper operation of our devices and bionics. Especially not with all those computer-virus writers and wild scrap-code infesting the local WiFi. The local Magos is suspicious, given the obvious allegiance of Cassius to the rival power Tzeentch, but he does give us permission to attempt recruitment. But the opportunity to study and dissect Necrontyr technology - and loot an Imperial Forgeworld en route - is tempting. Cassius: This grows tiresome. Everywhere I go people ask 'what's in it for me?' when the benefit is right there in front of them. Assist, or do not - the choice is yours. *glares at Magos* Jrska: Shall I be good cop then? Cassius: If you can do it without laughing. The next planet along will be Xurunt. Jrska: Xurunt? Ugh. It's all 'RRR, look how big tough and fur covered me am. Me am cut your head off'. *raspberries* On the other hand, there's a legend that if any warrior can hold the Throne of Baphtar for a year will earn the loyalty of entire Xur armies. That Baphtar is an aspect of Khorne and Cassius is Tzeenchian AND a psyker is likely to rouse considerable ire - from the Xur AND Khorne. Jrska: The legend speaks of one who can take the throne, my lord. That doesn't mean you can tear it out of the ground and walk off with it. Cog: Now we know why nobody has held the throne for a year. Jrska: Haemorrhoids! It's a cold planet after all.