Drhoz

Champions : Return To Edge City : Beyond the Valley of the DoLs Scooter, despite having a huge stack of unspent XP, also has fewer points in Disadvantages than the other PCs. The Magus OoC: From a certain point of view, Scooter has his life more together than anybody else in the team. GM: Despite being the bouncer at a titty bar. Scooter HAS been practicing some useful stuff, such as accurate Leaping, and the Disguise Skill. The Magus OoC: That’s not Hero Shrew, that’s Normal Shrew! Hardlight OoC: I’ll call my Skill Level upgrade ‘Slightly Less Incompetent’ GM: Scooter can get a motorised scooter: And join the Vespa Vermin. Flux: Now there’s a motorcycle gang the city is missing. We head to the old cemetery, intending to arrest anybody who shows up, especially if they’re VIPER agents. We have a lot of questions about the situation, including ‘If a vampire joins the Daughters of Lilith do they still have to get the fangs implanted?’. Unfortunately, The Magus (and Scooter to a lesser degree) botch our Stealth checks at the cemetery. Hero Shrew: Too distracted by all the free supplies available? The Magus: No. I keep getting flashbacks. Hero Shrew OoC: I probably should have tunneled under the cemetery and dragged them into the graves from underground. The Magus OoC: The problem there is all the human remains. Flux OoC: You’ll bump into something, and burst out of the ground yelling ‘OMG, I just saw Michael Jackson’ Hero Shrew OoC: Ah, so that’s why we failed the Stealth check. The Magus having a spectacular allergic reaction to holy ground is also a problem. But it’s the way the two Daughters on guard apparently smell Scooter coming that’s the biggest issue - a bit of a surprise when they’re supposed to be basically human. Scooter attempts to get behind them by tunneling underground - and when the Daughters find what looks like a freshly emptied grave, they panic and flee for the cemetery exits. Scooter had made a successful Presence attack, by accident. Unfortunately it looks like they made a call to their boss about the unexpected zombie situation, and the meeting we were there to crash is promptly cancelled. Flux gets to work investigating the VIPER agent’s online presence - on top of everything else, she makes an annual trip to Wisconsin. Hero Shrew: Undersconsin! Flux: No. We don’t want to die. We locate and stake-out their next meeting, in a children’s playground. Happily there aren’t any kids around at this hour - that could get messy. Flux: Honestly if there were a bunch of kids hanging around the playground at midnight I’d be more freaked out than I am with all the vampires. We also learn that the Spinnerette network the Daughters of Lilith answer to is a bit upset by the gang’s initiative, and they’ve sent some rollerskaters that go by the moniker of The Cherry Bombs to remonstrate. There’s also a news blimp perfectly positioned to film whatever happens next. The Magus calls up an illusion of thick fog, and the other leap into action to protect the Daughters from likely assassination. And hopefully nab that VIPER rep. The Daughters DO go down suspiciously easy when the Magus follows up with a STUN attack to stop them running away under their own steam. And then the power-armoured SWAT team show up. GM: It’s something you need to know when dealing with this kind of security - if they don’t recognise you and you seem to be involved in whatever is going on, you’re going down to the station in cuffs. It’s called Securing The Scene. The Magus: Their deployment vehicle is currently stuck on one of the access paths because nobody gave him the key to this bollard. Whatever happens, it looks like we’ll need to deal with the Spinnerette Network once and for all. The Magus: They ARE getting a little too murdery. Happily, hitting the keyboards turns up some interesting information - such as the suspicious way the Spinnerets seem to get out of police trouble a lot faster than anybody else. It seems to be a systemic issue too - if it’s a conspiracy the entire ECPD would have to be involved. Something appears to be moving electronic records around without leaving a trace. The Magus: Cyberpathy - or Flux is moonlighting. Since the only thing that can protect against a cyberpath is another cyberpath, it’s probably a problem that the ECPD doesn’t have any technomancers on the payroll. The Magus: I did find traces of another technomancer working in Edge City. Flux: .. what? GM: That might be the first time you’ve actually told Flux that. The Magus: I think I mentioned in passing as part of a larger infodump. Pretty sure I added a note to the blackboard back at our base. It is interesting to note that the Spinnerets keep their prostituion income stream entirely separate from their infobrokering. GM: You pay for discretion. Fireflash: What happens in Edge City stays in Edge City. Hardlight, investigating the actual information hardware, finds some peculiar residue on the nodes. Hardlight: .. I have no idea what this is. Hero Shrew: Special computer grease to make the electrons go faster? Hardlight uses his sensory suite to look at the stuff at a microscopic level - weirdly, it seems to have the same texture all the way down. Flux pokes the stuff in the base lab, but it’s not until he tests its occult properties that he gets any results. Flux: Son of a B****. It’s ectoplasm. Flux: Just a minute, I need to go grab a toaster. Hardlight: And play some music? Apparently it’s some kind of astral residue. But not magical. Our more mystically inclined members eventually determine that somebody is making small astral portals to run their connections through. And the connections are very… spidery. As is the guardian spirit they left on duty. The Magus: Huh. So that’s a thing. They REALLY shouldn’t be hanging out this close to the material plane. We really need to shut the Spinnerets and their subsidiary gangs down. While rounding up their street level members might be doable, actually finding laws to arrest the leaders under might be trickier, assuming we can even get through their layers of sacrificial mooks. Perhaps we should target their unlicensed drinking establishments, preferably when they have lots of customers to scare off. Time for a montage - with lots of press coverage and all due credit to the ECPD Anti-gang Unit (their Internal Affairs and Cybercrime units are busy enough trying to figure out what the Spinnerets have done to their computer system) Flux: With any luck there’ll be underage drinking - then we can really nail them to the wall. It probably helps that Scooter already knew where all the illegal dives were, although he had never done anything about them. Just as well he doesn’t work at the Collar Club anymore, or retaliation would seem likely. Despite actually catching one of the Daughters of Lilith leaders at one of the raids, they somehow escaped without anybody seeing how. Still, each lesser arrest we make provides a point to magically track back to their leadership. So it’s rather unfortunate that when we do, Cassiana and her lieutenants are lying in a pool of blood, and are covered in spiders. And the cloud swirling around the room is more spiders. Hardlight: Magus. Please teleport me out again, Right now. The Magus: Oh please, there’s no way they can get through your shield. Hardlight: I’m still turning the armour way up! Fireflash blasts the room, to kill as many of the spiders as she can, and calls an ambulance for the Daughters of Lilith, and the Port Authority Biohazard team to deal with any remaining spiders. Fireflash: We do NOT want Brazilian Wandering Spiders spreading into California! It’s a bit odd that Cassiana had the accoutrements of a vampire hunter when we found her - was she expecting competition? And sniffing around (literally in Scooter's case) what at first appears to be a dosshouse is actually a bolthole. We’ll probably have to wait for Cassiana to wake up to find out what she was actually up to - unless her real name Theodosia Lathrum is relevant. There was certainly a lineage of vampire hunters going by that moniker. Fireflash: The historical Theodosia was co-emperor of Byzantium with Justinian the First. Hero Shrew: Wife and daughter of Aaron Burr, too. Hardlight: What? Hero Shrew: Hey, I listen to music, ok? Hardlight: Aaron Burr’s wife was a vampire hunter? But what’s with all the spiders? The Magus: The only thing that can save us now is Bee-man’s edgier cousin, Tarantula Hawk Man. GM: F*** me, I still haven’t come up with a name for these things. Because I’m not calling them Tarantuloids. Hero Shrew’s player: Pseudotarantuloids. GM: They’re native to the astral plane Hero Shrew’s player: Tarantulpas. GM: And they’re not earth spiders because they have ten limbs. Flux’s player: Gegenees. GM: But those mythical six-armed giants are already in Champions. Flux’s player: They are? Ah well - it’s about 50-50 odds with anything mythological and Champions. Hero Shrew player: Ungolians. According to some incredibly pretentious Victorian era occult tomes, these things are apparently scavengers that usually reside in the lower astral levels. That might explain why they seem to be sealing up the breaches in the astral veil. The Magus: Shall we follow these cables back to their origin point? Hero Shrew: I’m willing - just shove me through one of these holes and we’ll see what happens. The Magus: You’re too big. Hardlight: And probably too physical. GM: I question the wisdom of implanting an alien energy source in your neck. Hardlight: I keep telling you, I didn’t do it to myself! I fell down a well and woke up with it inside me! The Magus: I heard the same story in the Emergency Department last week. GM: Jack was nimble, Jack was quick, The doctor at the emergency department said “Jack did WHAT with a candlestick?” The Magus can teleport us all to the Astral, which is half-full of webbing, but if anything happens to him we’re screwed. And we’re probably doomed anyway thanks to Hardlight’s Weirdness Magnet, which apparently rates as ‘Greatly Impairing’ The Magus: So, is everybody ready to fight spider people? Hero Shrew: I am! Does that book say whether they’re edible? The Magus: They’re Camel-spider people. Flux: THAT MAKES IT WORSE The Magus: I did say that unless we can find Tarantula Hawk-man we have to handle this ourselves. Hardlight: I’m half expecting Scooter to show up in a costume with a burning can of insecticide as a logo. Hero Shrew: That’s a good idea actually - any aerosol cans and cigarette lighters handy? GM: … OK, sure. Hardlight: It IS a very Scooter Solution. The Tarantuloids (apparently called Uttu) immediately draw weapons and advance when we transition over. And we haven’t even messed with their stuff yet. Hardlight’s Player: I try to find some spider-themed assets for Tabletop Simulator and the first thing I find is a Femboy Spider Token. GM: Welcome to the Internet where Everything Is Awful. The Magus: Well, I’d better try and negotiate before anybody gets set on fire… Hail, fellow sentients! What are you doing so close to the material planes? Uttu: We Guard! You Leave! Flux: Is it OK if we leave that way? *pointing to the direction the cable is heading* The Magus: And who are you guarding it for? Uttu: She! Hardlight: Well, at least we know their assumed gender. Uh, She who? Uttu: SHE! Fireflash: She Who Must Not Be Named? Flux: We seem to be having some translation difficulties… GM: With apologies to H. Rider Haggard. Uttu: We follow SHE! SHE provides! Flux: Can talk to her? Uh, She? Uttu: SHE talks to who She wishes! The Magus intimidates them enough to at least send a message. Hero Shrew: Does She sell seashells? Hardlight: I’m half-expecting She to be short for Shelob. Uttu: *in slow English* She. Says. She Will Send. Emmi-sary. Asks. Who You? The Magus: The Magus. Uttu: She. Says. Crap. At least we get an address - in the middle of Spinnerets territory. Hardlight: I pull out my freeweb device. Wait, no signal. GM: Actually you do have a signal. What??? Flux: Ok Mr Tech Genius, before we leave, find out what the hell that’s connecting to. The Spinnerets emissary has a fancy sword and crucifix earrings Hero Shrew: I wonder if the earrings are significant. GM: Probably - the powered in the Champions universe are generally pretty careful with the symbols of Higher Powers. Hardlight: Well, I’m going to shut up and not say anything - foot-in-mouth and all. So go on you two, get talking. The Emissary is pretty confident that the holes in the astral veil aren’t a problem, because they have a way to stabilise them. The Magus points out that that does nothing about the way the Spinnerets are rewriting police records at will. The Emissary makes an offer on She’s behalf - if we let them withdraw the connections in question (they’re not much use to She now we know about them) the Spinnerets will extend us a line of credit. Hardlight: This is one of those moral quandaries, isn’t it. The Magus calls the rest of us over to join the conversation. Hero Shrew: Cool sword. The Emissary: Thankyou. Flux: So, Magus, I see you’re not dead. The Magus: Did you expect me to be? Flux: *waggles hand* eh. The Emissary: I speak for She. I listen and She hears. The Magus: And She occasionally swears to the Uttu. Hardlight: I’m guessing this line of credit isn’t monetary. The Emissary: Of course not. Flux: My apologies, he doesn’t understand metaphors. Hardlight OoC: No I don't understand metaphors, that’s the whole POINT of my character! So, if we choose to ignore the murder and attempted murder of the Daughters of Lilith, or at least put it down to internal gang politics, we can at least stop the Spinnerets from messing with the ECPD data systems, and can get some favours from She in future. The Magus: Admittedly it’s a lot harder to pin the murders on them. The Emissary: Do we have any other business? Hero Shrew: Are there any giant edible bugs in the Astral Plane? Hardlight: What???? The Emissary: I don’t know. The Magus recognises the Emissary’s weapon too - the Sword of God’s Word, that Separates Truth From Lie. GM: I need a word, not antediluvian, that’s specifically The Flood, but basically prehuman.. Hero Shrew: Pre-Adamite. GM: The sword is Pre-Adamite. Hardlight: Freaky. GM: Says the person who’s bonded to a pre-Adamite artefact. Hero Shrew: I’d like to know which supervillains they’ve been cleaning up records for. The Emissary: That’s confidential. Hero Shrew: What’s the deal with Undersconsin? Hardlight: SCOOTER The Emissary: ...She has no information on Undersconsin. GM: This is all worth 7 XP and two favours from the Spinnerets. The Magus: For not burning the house down. GM: I hope you didn’t find that too frustrating? Hardlight OoC: No, not fighting is just as good as fighting, most of the time. Hero Shrew OoC: Hey! Fighting is the only thing I’m good at! GM: No it isn’t! Half the time you’re the only person who figures out what’s actually happening, because you work at street level. Hero Shrew OoC: Eh, tell me that, I’m having increasing questions about my self worth lately. Flux: Don’t worry, we’ll get you a cave so you can spend a few weeks brooding with the bats and getting horribly damp and s*** on. I mean seriously, that’s a terrible place for a base. And he goes and fills it with computers. Hardlight: The first thing he installed was good HVAC.

Call of Cthulhu : Poissy to Lausanne (via Other Places) JANUARY 1923 In Which The Adventurers Complete the Second Leg Of Their Journey, and Acquire An Arm Sub-Lt. Huxley, journalist Florence Braxton-Hicks, and dilettante Alexandra ‘Alex’ Braxton are currently guests of a French doctor and his wife, who would probably have reconsidered their offer if they knew the kind of excitement the party were bringing into their lives. Admittedly, the fact that their daughter apparently saw a boogeyman outside her upstairs window has no obvious connection to their visitors, but the repeated disturbances in the guestroom, and the discovery of what lies under Chez Lorien, certainly does. But beginning at the beginning, there doesn’t appear to be a mitten-biter or any other kind of bogeyman outside Quitterie’s upstairs bedroom window when Huxley checks, nor any sign that anybody was in the yard. On the other hand, there doesn’t appear to be anybody else in the room when Florence finds herself flung across the room with considerable force in the middle of the night. Or perhaps there was, because Huxley suffers similar injuries the following night, in the same room, but unlike Flo he recalls a horribly withered figure holding him by the throat and hissing “Which god do you serve?” in Latin. Of course that does raise the question of how this attacker got into the room in the first place, since only the Loriens have the other key. Florence: I’m searching the walls for hidden doors - I’ve read enough mystery novels to know the score. Both Florence and Huxley have bruises that strongly resemble a powerful grip around their throat. GM: And as far as you know she’s not into autoasphyxiation. Of course they wouldn’t have had to stay at Chez Lorien that long if they hadn’t botched locating the ruins of Fenalik’s mansion, twice. Florence: I look at the map again and realise I was holding it upside down. Sacré bleu! Although it’s Veronique Lorien pointing out that they’re doing all their measurements in metric, when the estate map they were given was pre-Revolution, that uncovers Fenalik’s cellar. Of course, it still takes another day of digging - by Huxley - to excavate the door. Florence: Hard work never killed anyone. What lies beyond is certainly hellish, so it appears Captain Malon’s report from 1793 was accurate in that regard. It’s probably just as well Huxley acquired holy water from the church in Poissy. The subterranean garden is bad enough, given the unfortunate parallels with the garden where Florence's stillborn siblings were buried. But hey, at least they find the Left Arm of the Sedefkar Simulacrum! Although Huxley does have a new concern. Huxley: I think we have another pursuer. Florence: Charming. The Left Arm is certainly a curious artefact - apparently ceramic, and inscribed with an intricate pattern of hundreds of left arms. And whatever glaze the creator used darkens from pearly white to a deep blue in sunlight. It’s also flawless, with the exception of a vaccination scar exactly where Alex has one - but that they can’t find again when they doublecheck. Huxley can’t even confirm what it’s made of, since when he tries to scrape off a sample his shoulder starts to hurt. GM: But then you did do a lot of digging yesterday - that’s no doubt why. At least they can telegram Professor Smith the good news - he’s apparently recovering from his burns, and has started sending letters to his contacts across Europe to help how he can. And Remi assures his friend that he’ll find a copy of the Diary of an Unknown Soldier and post it to them no matter where they are in Europe. The message from Antonio is less promising - it turns out that de Gremanci is one of the most common surnames in Venice, so finding out if the reputed sorcerer Alvise de Gremanci ever got his hands on part of the Simulacrum is proving difficult. GM: The telegram is already a bit terse, but Antonio is basically complaining that it’s like asking every Smith in London if their great-great grandfather was a sorcerer and did he leave them any body parts in his will? On the other hand, now that they know what the Simulacrum actually looks like, they can find out which auction house in Paris sold one of the pieces after The War, and exactly which Milanese gentleman they sold it to. The couple of days are fruitless, until one of the auction houses takes pity on them (or perhaps are impressed enough by the obvious quality of Alex’s suit) to point out that it might have been a private auction - or not sold as statuary at all. THAT clue uncovers a pamphlet where something that sounds very much like the Torso, from the collection of one Dr Rigault (1746-1794), was put up for auction as a ‘Porcelain Anatomical Model, Maker Unknown’. Rigault was the Royal Physician prior to the Revolution, and a name already connected to the raid on Fenalik’s house. But it appears it didn’t reach the reserve price, and a few years later it was auctioned off as part of a job lot, with a bunch of period costumes, dress weapons, costume jewelry, and dressmaker’s dummies. They were purchased by one P. Rischonti. At last the Investigators can head to Milan - with a brief stop-over in Switzerland to interrogate one Edgar Welligton about his knowledge of the Simulacrum. Huxley is reluctant to let the Arm out of his sight. Huxley: I’ll keep it close. At hand. GM: That pun is a bit of a reach. Huxley: Does this arm come with a manual? At least the other guests on the Orient Express as it departs Paris after midnight are less obnoxious than that preteen on the train from London. Indeed, Signorina Caterina Cavallaro, star of Parisian and Milanese opera, is charming, witty, and very generous, complimenting Alex on her suit and promising to get Huxley and his friends rooms at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, as well as front row tickets for opening night of Aida at La Scala. She has quite a story about how she went to her first opera, fully intending to wish for a pony as she sung along to ‘Ritorna vincitor!’, but decided on the spot to wish to be an opera singer instead. Looks like it worked. She sings the aria for the other travellers, to rapturous applause. Florence OoC: Sing Freebird! The investigators stagger off to bed, and wake up on a cobbled street in somewhere apparently called Ulthar, which has a lot of cats. Florence is pleased about that - the nature of the trains here, less so. That Alex has switched genders is a bit of a surprise too, although perhaps less than some might expect. Huxley: Between a woman I normally see in men’s clothing anyway and the fact we’re riding on giant elephant octopus things under a sky where I don’t recognise a single constellation, the fact that Alex is apparently male here barely registers. Chatting with some of the other passengers on the Dreamlands Express, they learn the train was created to give a chance for any passengers of the one in the Waking World a chance to discard their worries, in the Gulf of Nodens beyond the cloudcity of Serranian. Although there is some philosophical debate in the Dreamlands about which world is the ‘real’ one. After all, as one of the other passengers, one ‘Mac’ Mackenzie from Scotland, points out, sometimes dreamers from Earth die there and live on here, which adds some weight to the question. Although Mackenzie does warn the dreamers away from one Karasov, apparently an arms dealer in the Waking World. Karasov is instantly unpopular with the investigators, and doesn’t help his case any by saying that if he didn’t sell weapons to the governments of the world, somebody else would. Karasov also won’t say why he’s on the train, although MacKenzie’s reason is that he wishes to be a poet in Sona-Nyl. Hopefully there’s some kind of training program there, because his poetry is awful. The other out-of-place person here is one Madam Bruja, apparently an Elizabethan widow, who wants nothing to do with any of the male passengers on the train, but does warm to Florence when she explains that women have much more freedom in the waking World then they used to - she’s a journalist and travels widely of her own recognizance, for a start. Bruja does warn her to beware men. Madam Bruja: Men are animals - worse than animals. They’ll take what they want from you, and I won’t let him. The incredible luxury of the pavilions on the Dreamlands Express is certainly relaxing, and gives Huxley a chance to discuss his concerns with the others. Such as his suspicions about that ‘psychic assassin’ that attacked them in Poissy. He’s sure that at least three different groups know that they’re after the Simulacrum. Huxley: The Midnight Strangler, Sedefkar of many corpses, and whoever likes skinning people. GM: Well, Sedefkar probably died quite a few centuries ago. Florence: PROBABLY GM: Although Professor Smith DID say that possessing the Simulacrum was to possess immortality. Huxley: I’m not sure what I believe anymore - my skepticism is eroding rapidly.

Pathfinder: In Hell's Bright Shadow : Calling All Girls Ayva OoC: Poor Terzo, all these women and he has no chance with any of them. Terzo OoC: Believe me, I do not actually consider that a problem. Civilla OoC: I should hope so, you’re my tutor. Terzo OoC: And that’s just ONE reason. And Ayva does have a point - between the party, most of the NPCs that are important enough to name, and Thrune’s choice of trusted minions, it seems the script for any future movies about events in Kintargo will easily pass the Bechdel Test. Unless we’re talking about Thrune anyway, but nobody cares what he has between his legs unless it’s an opportunity to remove it with something rusty. Negotiating the Red Jills is going to be dicey, since they basically count anybody from the Basic Character Races as The Enemy. And Rajira is the only one that is clearly outside their broad definition of ‘human’, and only if she doesn’t try to hide her reptilian heritage. Civilla: The thing is, Thrune’s agents might actually follow the rules of hospitality and parley if we were having a meeting like this - they’re Evil, but Lawful Evil. But the Jills are probably Chaotic. Rajira: I was going to say ‘let’s wing it’, but that might offend the Strix. Civilla: So no triggering language. Ayva: And nothing about ‘plans being hatched’. Civilla: You have to be careful about ear jokes around elves too - although given that of the usual races it’s humans that have the weird round ears, that’s kinda strange. Ayva: I was going to say ‘don’t get cocky’ but there’s the bird language again. It’s actually Rajira’s suggestion that we don’t meet at the Red Jills’ hideout, in case of Property Damage Escalating To Arson, and the gang agrees. Rajira: Good evening - I believe we have important matters to discuss. Scarplume the Strix: Ah yes, the Ghosts of Kintargo. Apparently our reputation is already spreading. Scarplume: What makes you think you can change the way the Jills do business? Rajira: I don’t believe I can - but I believe I can give you a reason to change yourselves. Rajira: You are a person of power and influence Scarplume: Power that was hard-won - and you are offering…? Rajira: An opportunity. Rajira is persuasive enough, with the eventual intention of making Kintargo a city that won’t look down on the Tieflings simply for being born the way they are. Rajira: Thrune has drastically under-estimated the power of this city - and its power is the spirit of the people. Scarplume’s demand is that if we do manage to take over the city, that the Tieflings be treated with full equality and respect. Rajira: I already do. Terzo: Liberty! Egality! Fraternity! Scarplume: I will take you at your word then - but if I hear one whisper that your enterprise is failing, this will not be the last you hear from me. At least they've agreed to direct their depredations against the occupation, instead of the citizens. Civilla and Rajira are privately skeptical, and after we leave, discuss the likelihood that we’re going to have to eliminate the Jills anyway. Terzo: Well, that went well. Civilla: How exactly do you think that went well? Terzo: They agreed that Tieflings need to be treated with full equality, and that Thrune’s forces are the actual enemy here. I think we have a lot in common. Civilla: Well, we’ll hold off for now and see how it plays out. Ayva: At least we can say we tried. Rexus has good news too - he’s finally finished his translation of the documents we found under the old Livery. A lot of it is tactical advice for defending the city. Some deals with the Secret Order of Archivists, that Rexus’ mother worked for before she died - or rather, before Rexus thought her dead, since he now thinks she may have made it to a previously unsuspected safehouse beneath Hocum’s Phantasmagorium, a tourist-trap museum that’s been closed for well over a decade. In fact there’s a key to the building among the stuff we found. Terzo: I’m surprised the building hasn’t been repurposed. Civilla: You’re right - that is suspicious. Unfortunately, there’s a bunch of Asmodean priests and zombies doing something inside the building, when one of our rebellion cells does some reconnoitering on our behalf. Terzo: It would appear they thought the building being empty this long was suspicious too. Rajira: Or they just want to take advantage of it. Terzo OoC: Maybe they want to open a Starbucks. Ayva OoC: ‘Local Starbucks Burns Down - Meanwhile Local Cafe Owner Does Roaring Business’ GM: Hell’s Rebels : The True Story Of The Kintargo Coffee Wars https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/808767700515028992/909068946462900264/tumblr_inline_o8ico2kVcn1qao8br_1280.png Ayva OoC: The People Magazine idea for our printing press has gone through the roof. ‘What do we print in our first issue?’ ‘Well, we didn’t get a second…’ We wait until some of the Asmodean priests swap with a shift change, and jump them. Unfortunately, Rajira botches the strike, and botches the follow-up as well. Fortunately Terzo casts Sleep on the one that didn’t turn invisible and run off. Terzo: *expressively gestures* Well, what do we do now? Civilla: We proceed at speed - you could stand to lose a few pounds. The invisible one is probably going to lose a few pounds too, when Civilla’s Celestial Hyena catches up with her. At least she isn’t going to alert everybody else in the building. Unfortunately, the exhibits in the Fantasmagorium didn’t include animated skunk ape skeletons - the ones that attack us are new. Rexus, who insisted on coming with us, gets himself badly mauled. Civilla: He shouldn’t be here anyway. Ayva: He needs training - we can afford that now. Terzo: What, some kind of spray bottle? ‘Don’t Go. Near. The Monsters’ *squirt* Civilla OoC: Well, at least if he gets killed there’ll be no-one to contest the sale of the estate… Ayva OoC: But he is basically Mr Exposition Having dealt with the White Apes of STREWTH!, we press on to one of the marine themed halls. Unfortunately, none of us have Knowledge (Nature), and none of us see a ‘Do Not Tap The Glass’ sign, so we soon regret Terzo’s curiosity about the tanks. Civilla: Terzo, how have you survived this long in Chelliax? Terzo: Natural Charm? Ayva: He’s well pickled, people think he’s a gherkin. Ayva: I’m beginning to think this building is cursed. Civilla: Undead in the last room, undead in this one - I think you’re right. Ayva OoC: I meant the way that since we came in here, all we’re rolling are 1s and 20s. GM: And not the way round you need. Ayva: This didn’t happen to us on the stealth missions. Civilla OoC: In the stealth missions, it was the other people that needed to make rolls, not us. Ayva: Terzo? Come here. Terzo: Yes? Ayva: DON’T TOUCH STUFF IN THE CURSED MUSEUM. Terzo: I’m beginning to get that impression, yes. Terzo: I’m not sure what the problem is, I’ve spent decades poking things I probably shouldn’t and I’m hardly likely to stop now. Although they probably wouldn’t appreciate me calling them ‘things’. Rajira: Since we don’t want a case of crabs, let’s move on. Ayva: Hey, a case of crabs, covered in butter, what’s the problem? Rajira: Depends how you get them. Ayva: Usually by paying for them - how do you get them? Terzo: … Ayva: … we’re talking about two different things, aren’t we? Civilla: Rexus, if you don’t stay at the end of the party, I will ensure you are the end of your line. The next room was an insectarium - the last person in here clearly didn’t get the memo about not touching stuff in the cursed museum. Civilla: This place used to be a tourist trap, now it’s a… Terzo: Death Trap? We also find out why the Asmodeans are actually here - they’ve been stripping the building of anything showing historical facts the government of Chelliax doesn’t like. F***ing Redactors. If they’re that easily upset, they must have hated the wax museum in the next room - it certainly upset us. Whatever genius decided to set up a waxwork display of Kintargo’s more infamous serial killers REALLY shouldn’t have used the kind of waxwork guaranteed to get up and continue the subject’s career. On the other hand we can certainly blame the Church of Asmodeus for the zombies - the next lot are Rexus’ family. Happily, we find the Redactors immediately thereafter and can register our complaints in person. GM: The redactors call out to their commander as you storm the room, but you murdered their commander in cold blood when you first entered the building. Terzo’s player: annoying, battery in mouse has finally gone flat Rajira’s player: Why I prefer wired mice - However, getting the drugs to keep them wired is expensive. Ayva: Rexus is a bit wired at the moment. Rajira’s player: How did he get my mouse drugs? Discovering a hidden entrance to deeper parts of the Fantasmogorium is a problem, because somebody might show up to investigate all the screaming and fireworks at any moment, and we’re already battered and exhausted dealing with the stuff in the main building. Civilla: F*********** - if we don’t look down there now we won’t get a second chance later Ayva: This better be a treasure room or we’re going home. It seems to be a whole complex down here - it looks like we’ll have to camp underground for a few hours to rest, and hope the dottari don’t know about the secret stairwell (and don’t have a shift change before then). This proves optimistic, since the Redactors were apparently here to censor the collected histories of the Sacred Order of Archivists, the group Rexus’ parents belonged to. The archivists were using the Fantasmagorium - or at least, the hidden monastery in the basement - as a base of operations. Terzo: We’ll have to take Rexus’ family down too. Civilla: So now we’ll have to sleep in the same room as a pile of corpses - greeeeeat. Ayva: I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff on these bookshelves to distract you. Ayva’s player: Before we wander into descriptive text can we get some XP? Apparently there’s a creature composed entirely of books and paper down here. Ayva: Ok, Civilla, don’t touch any books. Book Creature: Halt intruders! Ayva: Okay. Book Creature: … I didn’t expect that to work. Apparently whatever this thing is was summoned to guard the hidden library’s books from any intruders, for at least another 12 days. That doesn’t preclude us from having a good stickybeak around, though, as long as we don’t actually touch anything. And it doesn’t stop us finding out that he was summoned by the Asmodeans to protect the Redactors while they go about their business of rewriting recorded history. The Scrivenite isn’t very happy about that. Which is probably why he’s telling us all the rules of his binding. Ayva: But the Redactors are all- Civilla: Shushshushshush! Theoretical question for you, what would you do if the Redactors were all dead? Scrivenite: The ones upstairs are not my purview - I’m bound to protect the ones in the monastery. I don’t suppose any of you can cast Dismissal? Rajira: Bit high-level for us. Scrivenite: Darn it. I really don’t want to fight you. Scrivenite: As long as you don’t enter the room by THAT DOOR *point point, gesture significantly* and don’t touch any of the books in THIS ROOM, *more gesturing* I’m not obliged to attack you. Civilla: Okay, okay, I can work with this. Ayva: What if we dress up as Redactors? Scrivenite: Well I’ll know it’s you, now - you shouldn’t have said anything. Civilla: I think I can get us past your restrictions with a bit of pedantry. You won’t let anybody through the door, correct? So what if I open the door, but not go through it, cast Rope Trick, have my associates enter the extradimensional space, teleport into the other room myself, and have everybody climb down again? Scrivenite: As far as I’m concerned that will work. Civilla: That’s all we need. I believe you’re a creature of Law? Your summoners were insufficiently precise. The first few rooms down here contain sleeping Redactors, who sleep infinitely deeper as Rajira goes to them one by one. Terzo: So, those rooms were empty then? Rajira: They are now. Terzo: I choose to interpret that positively. The next one was actually awake when Rajira stabbed him, and tries to make a run for it - and immediately regrets it, since the rest of the party are waiting in the corridor. GM: The Redactor stops dead - and you recognise him, Civilla. Redactor: C-cousin??? Civilla: Cousin? You call yourself family and you’ve taken the mark of the Redactors? Ayva: I take it that we’re not taking him alive? Civilla: NO. Ayva: Well then. Rajira OoC: For one thing he knows too much. The Redactor IS an Alazario, and the son of the mayor of the Chellish capitol. Terzo OoC: I’ll hold off on doing anything - Civilla might be annoyed if I set him on fire. Civilla summons a monster octopus, and stomps forward to snarl for a bit. GM: He tries to say something but it’s kind of muffled by tentacles. Civilla: *sigh* Let him speak. Apparently Civilla’s cousin, Nicolo, is no happier to be here than Civilla is to see him. Civilla: Then WHY. ARE YOU. HERE. Ayva: Daddy dearest? Civilla: Probably. *sigh* GM: I’ll be quick because he’s bleeding out a HP a round. Rajira: Two. Apparently the Mayor has found himself in deep political trouble, and Civilla’s cousin had to join the Redactors to save the family’s reputation, despite the fact that the Alazarios as a whole are very much against destroying written history. Civilla is now regretting that she’s so family focused - mostly because we can’t leave him here alive, because being the Only Survivor would be highly suspicious. And apparently he HAS been preserving what he can. Ayva: What’s that saying about ‘better pissing out?’ Terzo tries to patch the cousin up before he bleeds out, then we stash him in the Rope Trick dimension for the time being. Terzo: Stabbed him rather deeply, didn’t you? Rajira: I WAS trying to kill him. Terzo: You with the tentacles, hold this limb tighter. Apparently the success one of Civilla’s more distant kin had in becoming a pirate king, a few years back, inspired another Alazario to become a pirate. Unfortunately she was also a captain in the Chellish Navy, and the Mayor’s sister, and she decided to target Chellish merchant ships. Well, at least we’ll have someone to mail the cousin to. The next room has been set up to be the ideal kind of battleground for some quite unpleasant devils. It looks like Rajira and the Chthonic Octopus will be on point - they’re certainly sneakier than the rest of us. For one thing the mollusc can detect living people through walls. Unfortunately it can’t tell WHO is on the other side of the wall, so finding Barzillai Thrune’s bodyguard, Nox, down here, is a bit of a shock. Fortunately she’s not wearing her armour, because she’s asleep. Unfortunately, her hellhound is not. Rajira attacks Nox first, and kills her instantly with poisoned blades. GM: She failed ALL HER ROLLS. She was supposed to be the BBEG of this chapter! There’s a whole subchapter here about her as a recurring villain! Civilla OoC: We could always have left her as the Only Survivor Rajira: NEED A LITTLE HELP HERE. Civilla teleports past all the highly suspicious chains, to try and disable what she suspects is something very close to the Lament Configuration - Chain Devils are the last thing we want showing up. The chains alone are nasty enough. Civilla OoC: Bags not being the first Cenobite. *fails the check* F***. The head injury she suffers from a chain lashing out of the cube into her face also knocks out her last hour of short-term memory, which is going to make for some interesting conversations later. But at least Ayva succeeds in making the chains vanish. Terzo cast Grease before the rest of the Redactor Monks show up. GM: Why don’t these monks - admittedly Lvl 1 monks - have any points in Acrobatics? Terzo: Because books can’t fight back. Redactor-who-isn't-Civilla's-Cousin: Magic-users! Retreat to the Garden! Terzo: They have a garden down here? Ayva uses Boneshaker on one of the Redactors, which proves fatal. Civilla: You grabbed him by the skeleton and shook him like an underpaid nanny! Ayva: I wasn’t expecting it to actually kill him! Terzo: I thought that was the plan - unless any more of these are your cousins, Civilla? Civilla: *still amnesiac* What???? Retreating to the garden and preparing spells does the surviving monks no good at all, because Civilla’s octopus attacks them straight out of the floor. We pursue, leaving Rexus to kill any Redactors we leave merely unconscious behind us. Rexus: THIS IS FOR MY MOTHER! Ayva: It’s OK, we can fix it later. GM: Am I going to have to get THAT post up? Civilla: It’d have to be True Resurrection - and at the moment Time Is Money. Civilla follows up her octopus with a Celestial Hyena, and Terzo uses Blistering Invective on the remaining Redactors, and sets them on fire - one survives long enough to dash for the underground river. Terzo: Get out here and fight, you craven clay-brained canker-blossoms! Unfortunate Redactor: *on fire on top of everything else, and feeling that the rebels are being a bit unfair* We’re Asmodeans, we’re meant to be evil, what the F*** Civilla’s hyena tears out his belly. Civilla: Well, that’s all of them. Ayva: ah…. Terzo: Come over here, dear, you’ll want to sit down for this bit. You know how one of your distant cousins became the Hurricane King? Civilla: Yesss, but that was hundreds of miles away, what does that have to do with these guys? Terzo: We’re getting there we’re getting there - anyway, his example encouraged one of your closer relatives to try the same career. Civilla: OK? Terzo: Unfortunately she was a captain in the Chellish Navy at the time. Civilla: What? But her brother is the mayor of - oh. Rajira: So guess who we have. Civilla: Her? Terzo: No - but her nephew had to join the Redactors to protect his family. So he was REALLY lucky you were the first person he saw when he was running away from Rajira. Civilla: Maybe you should have led with ‘Don’t worry, he’s alive?’ Apparently this place was the Archivists storehouse for Worryingly Magical Stuff. Most of said worryingly magical stuff is missing, including a necklace or amulet, a pair of gloves or bracers, and a reasonably sized rock. Rexus, happily, has a key to the secret compartment behind the shelves, however. Meanwhile, Rajira goes to check out the garden, presumably to figure out the best place to chop up the bodies and feed them to Civilla’s Chthonic Toads. It’s not like we can just dump them all in the underground stream - that might contaminate someone’s water supply. If we can make all the bodies vanish, we can hopefully make Thrune think his bodyguard and entire order of Redactors have fled the city. A few Convincing Lies spread by the underground press should help. In a small nook on the other side of the garden, Rajira finds a series of books that magically contain the memories and experiences of some members of the Order of Archivists. Including Rexus’ parents. Civilla OoC: There’s a reason that we play things the way that we do. We stack our advantages because the dice can **** you in an instant.

Call of Cthulhu : Horror on the Orient Express : Les Fleur du Mal PARIS, January, 1923 In Which The Investigators Compare Parisian Lunatic Asylums And Other Tourist Traps The investigators have reached Paris, hopefully having left any cultist-assassins behind them in London. Fortunately, the Channel crossing wasn’t fogbound, which would have been unfortunate given Sub-Lieutenant Huxley’s wartime experiences, and fortunately they didn’t have to throw any nine-year-olds overboard, no matter how much they deserved it. Although, for the first few days in Paris, Huxley is still paranoid enough to not let Florence and Alex out of his sight. GM: Good idea - that way if one of you gets kidnapped for sacrifice you’ll know sooner Still, he has good reason to be a bit twitchy. Huxley: Whoever flayed that corpse was obviously sending a message. And the message was THE SKINLESS ONE WILL NOT BE DENIED, which is just one of the things they’ll have to research while they’re in Paris. The other things include the Sedefkar Simulacrum, it’s original and most recent owners, and finding out what the damned thing looks like before they start scouring the breadth of Europe looking for the pieces. But before they do any of that they have to wait a few days for the Bibliothèque Nationale to check Huxley’s credentials before they let him put his grubby English fingers on their books. Naturally, Alex and Florence want to hit the fashion outlets on the Rue de la Pax, the street of a thousand luxuries, and the Louvre. Although they do ask whether any statues belonging to one Comte Fenalik ended up in the collection - but they also drag Huxley off to a tour of the Paris Catacombs. GM: You’ll be fine - it’s not like tourists go missing down there every week. For one thing it’s only open twice a month. And the attendants at the gate do a head count - They’ll probably notice if they lose three. Surprisingly, Huxley is OK with this entertainment plan, considering it an opportunity to inure himself to massive piles of human remains (probably a wise precaution in any Call of Cthulhu campaign). Unsurprisingly, it turns out less than relaxing, but Huxley manages to convince himself that the local resident they encounter, one Guillaume, is just some actor in a very clever costume, merely there to thrill the tourists. Huxley: The French have such sophisticated animatronics these days. I remember that movie with the dancing pig-man. Kudos! Alex and Flo are more concerned by the fact that Guillaume has grey rubbery flesh, hooves, and a muzzle. Which is probably one reason he believes that modern Paris, with its wide streets, metal tower, and chariots sans chevaux, has no place for someone like him. Huxley: *blissfully ignoring the fact that Guillaume has apparently been down here since the famine of 1709* So, how did you end up down here anyway? Guillaume: *gesturing to the thousands of human skulls and other bones lining the walls* A man must eat, monsieur. Alex and Flo medicate themselves with strong drink and retail therapy. Florence: I’m claiming all this on work expenses. When the library eventually does let Huxley start his research, he takes the wise precaution of hiring a student, one Remi Vangeim, as a research assistant. For one thing the library’s collection, while huge, has an… idiosyncratic… filing system. Remi: Let me put it this way, monsieur - it is not Swiss. Although Huxley does make a friend for life when he supports the protests against the occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops. Huxley: The world has been through a hellish conflagration, and our leaders seem determined to lead us back into the maelstrom. GM: The Sub-Lieutenant has brought a handsome young man back to the hotel. Apparently they’re going on a date tomorrow. The date being one of the protests - Florence and Alex also come along, partly so Flo can cover it for her newspaper, and partly because she’s seen what the Great War did to her brothers and has no wish to see another in her lifetime. So when French troops open fire on the protesters, she’s well placed to get some really dramatic photos, including Huxley patching up a youth who got shot. Remi promises to do anything in his power to assist Huxley in future, but for now that’s just continuing the research. It takes over a week to research the Comte Fenalik alone, and find out what happened to him in 1789, and more importantly what happened to all his stuff. The initial reports they found did seem a bit odd - no matter how badly he ‘outraged the queen’, execution without trial seemed a bit unlikely for a French noble. And indeed it turns out that he wasn’t executed - just thrown into the basement of Charenton Asylum, and his mansion burned to the ground. Whatever Captain Malon found there must have been beyond the pale. There’s also a hint that at least one fragment of the Simulacrum was left behind on the site, in Poissy some seventeen miles outside Paris. Remi: Have you learned more of this, how you English say, ze C*** Fenalik? Remi also recalls a book he glanced through a few years ago - a preview copy of a Diary of an Unknown Soldier, that heavily featured Captain Malon, and the Royal Physician at the time - both people heavily involved in the raid on Fenalik’s mansion. But Huxley’s paranoia spikes through the roof when they go around to the publishers, only to find the entire stock burned to the ground, and the publisher himself fished out of the Seine, just after the war. Remi promises to try and find a surviving copy - it might be relevant. Places to go - Charenton Asylum, and Poissy itself, to see if any of the Comte’s stuff didn’t end up in the Royal treasury (prior to it becoming the Revolutionary treasury anyway). Perhaps predictably, the asylum is in something of an uproar - the previous director died under mysterious circumstances recently, perhaps related to the brutalised and catatonic patient found in the basement. Finding out a bit more might prove difficult - Florence may well be a fan of Nellie Bly, but getting herself committed to the asylum is still unlikely to get her access to the witnesses. GM: Maybe Huxley will lose some more sanity and he’ll have to be committed anyway. Then you can use him. Given the catatonic patient in question has gone missing as well, it’s starting to look like somebody else is investigating Fenalik, and eliminating any sources of information they uncover. At least part of that theory is confirmed in Poissy, when the investigators introduce themselves to the young doctor and his family currently living on the site of the mansion. Even with the overlong excuse that they’re trying to redo a lot of Professor Smith’s research that went up in smoke with his house, it’s a mention of the Sedefkar Simulacrum that stirs Dr Lorien’s memory. He received a letter from one Edgar Wellington in Switzerland, enquiring about the Simulacrum, but with one thing and another, never replied. It’s not as though he’d ever heard of Fenalik or the statue before. He’s still willing to let the investigators poke around in his yard, to see if they can find any ruins to excavate, as long as his three-year-old daughter Quitterie doesn’t scare them off by spilling any more scalding hot coffee over their left arms. It’s that same daughter who brings the investigators running when she screams from an upstairs room…

Horror On The Orient Express - London - Dancers In An Evening Fog IN WHICH THE INVESTIGATORS EMBARK ON A INTERNATIONAL SCAVENGER HUNT AND ARE PUT OFF BARBEQUE FOR LIFE The investigators have learned that their friend Professor Smith, and his manservant Beddows, are missing under highly suspicious circumstances. It’s not the only shocking news in the paper today either - another article (front page in the tabloids, naturally) claims ‘Man Dies Three Times In One Night!’. It’s a man they know, too - the Turkish antiques dealer Mehmet Makryat, or at least three similar-looking but younger men with the same name. Florence Braxton-Hicks: Triplets? With very unimaginative parents? The mysterious Mehmets were all found in a room at the Chelsea Arms Hotel, and according to the newspaper all had passports in the same name, had been travelling the Continent for the last few years, and had all been stabbed in the heart. Sub-lieutenant Huxley speculates wildly about the case, despite an almost total lack of actual information. Certainly the Professor seemed perturbed by every meeting with Makryat, but why was Beddows seen fleeing the house fire? He certainly appeared to be content in his position. Sub-lieutenant Huxley: And how does a grievance with the Professor lead to the death of Makryat’s three identical triplet sons? It becomes even more bizarre when a fourth Makyrat, presumably the original, is found burned to a crisp in the ruins of Smith’s house, only identifiable by the keys to his Islington shop and the ostentatious gold wristwatch he was wearing at Smith’s lecture the previous evening. Huxley: So we have a fourth dead Makryat. Florence: Big family. Huxley: This is getting well beyond weird trains. We’ve got a dead Turk who is apparently multiplying. Huxley and Flo scurry around London, attempting to keep ahead of the police, whoever killed the Makryats, and rival newspaper reporters. Using the reasonable excuse that they have to determine which books and documents were lost with the fire, Huxley and Smith’s colleagues start itemising everything left in Smith’s college office. His 1922 diary includes a lot of cryptic references such as ‘dare I return to Turkey?’ and speculation whether whatever expedition he was planning in 1923 is connected to his brush with some exceedingly unpleasant cultists thirty years ago. Huxley’s paranoia is rising fast, not least because Smith’s assistant at the University has also vanished, with signs of a struggle. Florence tells Huxley off for not reporting that last discovery to the police, before she and Alex head off to break into Makryat’s shop. GM: Having just told off Huxley for not reporting a crime, you and your cousin head off to commit one. Florence manages to drag herself away from the pretty things in the antique store long enough to thoroughly search the place. Alex: Do this sort of thing often? Florence: I did tell you what I got up to at school, didn’t I? I broke out of there three nights a week, and didn’t get caught once. They also pocket a few of the smaller, more portable items, while they’re there. GM: Breaking and entering, and now theft Florence: Oh darling, why stop there? If he’s cleared out, we may as well help ourselves. It certainly looks like Makryat had abandoned the shop, taking his clothes, any books, and luggage with him. The only remaining documents in the store are his account books, which are tedious enough but do include an odd reference to the purchase and later sale of a custom-built toy train. The purchaser of the train apparently vanishes in a cloud of smoke shortly thereafter, but by that point Huxley is so paranoid he insists on getting out of London as swiftly as possible, and refuses to investigate. Huxley and Florence do get an unexpected visitor that evening - a cabbie dropping off a desperate message from the Professor (confirmed by his use of a Macedonian ring to mark the sealing wax of the envelope). He and Beddows are in hiding at a bedsit in Cheapside, and Smith has been horribly burned in the house fire. Huxley OoC: Do I need to make a Sanity Check here? I did see burn victims during the war. GM: And that just means you’re getting flashbacks now. Beddows has apparently done what he can, and intends to smuggle his master out to a war clinic as soon as possible. But first Smith has to croak out his tale, and his warning. His home was attacked by Turkish madmen, because he and Makryat had been seeking out the pieces of something called the Sedefkar Simulacrum, last in the possession of one Comte Fenalik in pre-Revolutionary Paris. The pieces need to be gathered together and destroyed in their original location, in Constantinople, and between them they’d found some clues to their whereabouts. And evidently these madmen heard about it. GM: Admittedly some of the clues are a bit thin - ‘One of the pieces might be buried somewhere in Bulgaria - bring a shovel’. But assuming he survives his injuries, Professor Smith fully intends to help as best he can, using his long list of academic contacts across Europe. More practically, he also has Beddows provide a small suitcase containing hundreds of five pound notes. GM: Allowing for inflation, this is what we call a metric f***ton of cash. Huxley: But why do these Turks want the statue anyway? Prof. Smith: *seizing Huxley’s wrist with a hand greasy from the burns and the emollient cream* To possess the Simulacrum is to possess immortality… I’ve always considered myself a man of science, my friend… but the Simulacrum is evil! Evil! God help you... God help us all... The Professor lapses back into unconsciousness, and Beddows explains that the Professor had chosen the investigators to accompany him on the search, and intended to explain all. Naturally, he’d planned to travel on the Orient Express, the fastest and most luxurious way to travel the distances involved. It will take a few days to arrange visas, drop points for telegraph messages, and the purchase of top-quality clothing and luggage for the trip. Florence will need to persuade her Editor to let her go, too. GM: Nellie Bly IS one of your heroes after all - it might not be Around The World in 80 Days but it’ll still be a trip to remember, and write about. Her uncle is a bit reluctant to see her go off by herself, but agrees readily enough when Florence suggests Alexandria come along too. Uncle: I mean what trouble could you get into if there’s two of you? The Professor’s extensive notes for the trip probably went up in smoke (or, perhaps, ended up in the hands of their attackers) so Huxley spends much of the next week at the British Museum’s Reading Room, confirming what he can about Sedefkar, his Simulacrum, and the whereabouts of any documents about same. He’s too paranoid to return to his home, too. GM: On Friday you’re left a series of increasingly anxious messages from Huxley - he’s no longer at the Library and there’s a reason for that. Florence: Have you done anything about your clothes yet, or are you going to embarrass us on the train? Formal clothes for dinner on the train had not been a priority in Huxley’s mind, because somebody left a skinned human corpse at the library, propped up where it could watch whatever he was doing. It was carrying a note, too, written in Turkish on flayed human skin. THE SKINLESS ONE WILL NOT BE DENIED Naturally, medical students get the blame. Huxley thinks otherwise. Huxley: I think they’re onto us. Florence: So did you inform the police this time? Or are we going to have the police after us as well? Huxley has no intention of going out by himself now, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Alex is STILL packing for the trip, would prefer to get out of London that night. Florence: The Sub-lieutenant can always hide in the attic until we leave - maybe he just needs a quiet place to calm his nerves. Huxley OoC: Probably true - I’ve already lost 5 Sanity in the last two days. Huxley, Florence, and Alex depart for Paris, to discover what they can about the Comte, and whether any parts of, or documents about, the Simulacrum remain in the city. Antonio intends to travel ahead to his native Italy, to do preliminary legwork in Milan, Venice, and Trieste, all apparently destinations for parts of the statue. Hopefully he can uncover clues - the party will need all the help they can get...

definitely quotable, that Champions : Return To Edge City : The Right To Bear Arms GM: You’ve actually been a stabilising influence on Edge City. Hero Shrew OoC: Well that’s good to know. If somewhat horrifying considering I’m one of the people involved. Hero Shrew: I really should let Sally down lightly. GM: What???? Hero Shrew’s player: You know, my co-worker that I’ve been romantically interested in since the start of the campaign. GM: Yes, I know who she is, but as a player are you delusional enough to think you had a chance? Hero Shrew’s player: As a player, no, but Scooter sure is. GM: The aliens are still a bit confused by Earth’s technology level - at least two groups have anti-grav technology but it’s not in wide usage anywhere else. Hero Shrew OoC: While other groups still have horse-drawn vehicles. The Magus OoC: And UNTIL even has anti-antigrav tech. Fireflash OoC: I need to change my Psychological Limitation from ‘Show-off’ to “Only Sane Woman’ GM: Fair. Meanwhile, Hardlight is examining the cybernetic technology released by one of his business rivals. It’s a bit puzzling, especially because he can’t find any processors in it. He’s going to need help. GM: ‘Hey Flux, I’ve got this guy’s arm, come look at it.’ Flux: Um. It turns out the processors are distributed throughout the entire device. And it’s trying to find connections to Hardlight’s local systems. Hardlight: This is getting more and more like a ‘kill it with fire’ situation. GM: It doesn’t look like Mechanon or Destroyer-tech. Hardlight OoC: So? I don't want them getting a hold of it either! Between Hardlight, Flux, Fireflash, the Magus, they decide to experiment and investigate by leaving it on a laptop in an air-gapped Faraday cage and see what happens. If this thing can teach itself to interface with any systems from nervous systems to laptops, it’s a pretty shocking advance in technology. Eventually they hook it up themselves, and it promptly fuses with the laptop. Hardlight: Does it at least show up as a USB drive? Flux recognises some of the code running as resembling the kind of thing that happens at a cyberbrain interface. Hardlight: This isn’t hardware - it’s wetware. Dampware? GM: The Tyrell corp have developed a cybernetic device that doesn’t count as a machine, and is therefore functionally immune to cyberpathy. The Magus OoC: They've got a bunch of captured Cybertronians in the basement and they’re hacking limbs off them. It’s also partially opaque to The Magus’ Magesight. Hardlight: So, who wants to go raid Tyrell? Flux: Raid is such a harsh word. Magus uses his powers of Scrying to find whatever this arm may have originally been connected to. Various parts seem to be attached to citizens across the city, but one particularly large fraction of it is found in a parts bin, about to be melted down for scrap. It’s the Head and Torso of an extremely humanoid robotic creature. Poking around inside reveals Tyrell tech, but nothing known in official databases. This is likely some kind of prototype for internal use only. Hardlight: So the question is: How the hell did a hideously advanced, damn-near-human cybernetic creature get out of an internal Tyrell lab, die, and instead of being thrown into a Tyrell furnace, end up in a recycling bin? The Magus: Hmm - so this robot is actually dead. I wonder if it left a ghost? Hardlight: OK, I’m going to do something very stupid. Hero Shrew OoC: I thought that was my job. Hardlight looks inside the robot’s head - it’s not actually organic, but the organisation has some similarity. The foam-lattice design isn’t wholly original, but it’s very very complex compared to previous examples. It certainly looks like a Tyrell design - the hardwired Laws seem to be part of it. The Magus sits Flux down to run through the basics of Necromancy. GM: Which the Magus seems disturbingly familiar with. Flux also learns more about why magic-users usually work in teams. In this case, it’s to wait behind the Magus with a baseball bat, just in case anything untoward happens while the Magus is in his trance state. The Magus: Can You Hear Me? Hero Shrew: Yes? Hardlight: I think he’s talking to the ghost, Scooter. Hero Shrew: So he’s trying to summon a robot ghost. If it was a ghost robot pirate we’d have the whole trifecta. Robot Ghost: Hello? Yes, I can hear you. Who are you? The Magus: Hello - I’m Damien, but most people call me the Magus. Robot Ghost: Hello. I’m Seth. The Magus: Do you know where you are? Robot Ghost: I think I’m dead - how weird is that? Seth: I think I remember dying now… and it’s not easy to kill us. The Magus: Us? Seth: Er… can you forget I said that? Seth seems quite concerned that his being killed will expose his friends, or possibly get somebody into trouble, since they’re not ready to be revealed. He’s initially fine that the rest of his parts got installed into various people, but then gets quite upset that it’s into biological people, especially if they have other cyberwear. Seth: That could be bad. We’re Nexus Series. Tyrell Corp could get in trouble. We’re Nexus Series! We have an important job! We’re Nexus Series! It’s an Important Job! People could get hurt! We’ve run the projections, the city needs us! Seth saw and recognised whoever decapitated him while he was on his mission, but they were more powerful than he expected. Seth: Tell Dr Madox I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to die. The Magus: Is there anybody else? Seth: Tell my brothers and sisters. But Dr Madox can tell them. Seth is also confused that his 55 siblings didn’t collect his remains, especially if they completed whatever their Important Job was. On the other hand, if they were killed surely their ghosts would be floating around in whatever digital afterlife Seth currently resides in. Seth: It’s quiet here. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. Huh. Azura was right. You people have it easy. It’s probably highly relevant that Seth and Azura are two of the 56 children of Adam and Eve. It’s also probably relevant that Seth considers the Moreaus, created by Genesys, cousins. Hardlight: *sigh* Why is it that Edge City has such a hard-on for creating new sentient lifeforms? GM: Part of that is Hardlight. You have Weirdness Magnet. One of the players is late getting to the game. GM: It’s Saturday evening, it’s either the game he’s GMing or the one where he wears underpants inappropriately. Fireflash OoC: At least he wears underpants. Hero Shrew OoC: And I’m freeballing all the time. GM: *sigh* you have no idea how hard The Rep works. Suffice to say, he earns his commission. GM: Which of you has experience talking to dead artificial minds? Hero Shrew: I could say me but I’d be lying. Fireflash: I have some experience talking to college bros. Anyway, now we have one Dr Elly Madox to investigate. Some years back she helped develop the groundwork for the modern Biochip Interface, before moving to pure robotics, and jumping ship to Tyrell. ‘Coincidentally’ the company has developed a lot of fancy tech since then. At least if we show up in our superheroic identities, the Tyrell functionaries will probably kick the problem upstairs until we’re talking to somebody that actually knows what happened. Whether those people are actually willing to tell us is another problem, of course. Happily, Dr. Madox seems willing to meet Hardlight, although for some reason he decides to take Scooter along despite the risk to property. Dr. Madox: So, why did you want to see me? Hardlight: I’m not sure how to say this… Hero Shrew: ooh! Ooh! I can! All: SCOOTER, NO. Hardlight: We found Seth. Dr. Madox: *goes pale* w...what? Hardlight: One of your projects? Dr. Madox: *through gritted teeth* Not how I would phrase it. Hardlight: Sons? Dr. Madox: Still not how I would phrase it. We can’t talk here. Hero Shrew: I have to say I’m impressed - you were almost as blunt as I would have been. Gareth explains how we found Seth’s bits, but Dr. Madox is more interested to know how we talked to him if he was nonfunctional when we did. The Magus: This is more my area of expertise. I did a little necromancy and communicated with his spirit. Dr. Madox: *slightly hysterical laughter* You talked to his ghost. The Magus: Congratulations - you created life. Dr. Madox: I don’t deserve your congratulations - we created nothing. Hardlight: Um. Dr. Madox explains that something degenerative infected some of her coworkers after the Genesys incident, and her cyberoid creations are their attempt to salvage something of their minds. There were dozens of Nexus series created, before their husband-and-wife templates were too far gone to be copied for more. The biblical names they somehow acquired didn’t help matters - Cain, for example, was quite upset about his namesake, and gets on quite well with Abel. Nonetheless, there are now dozens of cyberoids, immune to cyberpathy, that can easily pass for human. And that can grow and adapt. Dr. Madox: I’ll ask you a question - how many times has Mechanon been an active threat to this city? Fireflash: Given the implications of the question, I’ll have to guess more than we’ve heard about. Dr. Madox: Eight. And each time it was the Nexus series that stopped him. Hardlight: So you think Seth was killed by an agent of Mechanon? Dr. Madox: No, Mechanon wasn’t the target of that operation - he was dealing with VIPER. Apparently Seth’s killer was one of VIPER’s enhanced Draysha agents in a combat suit. GM: I can’t remember how many sentient machines there are in the Champions universe. Not many. Hero Shrew (and ROVER’s) player: You certainly couldn’t describe ROVER as sentient, given his brain ran on AmigaOS. The GM’s adopted stray cat is being a bit demanding. GM: This f***ing cat - she wasn’t this loud before. Hardlight’s player: Yes she was - she was just outside. Dr. Madox is extremely concerned that some of Seth’s parts were being used as human bionics - the Nexus series could quite easily create its own interfaces with implanted cyberbrains and interfaces, and is strongly inclined to do so. And there’s no technology Dr. Madox is aware of that would stop it growing its connections. Dr. Madox: So these parts were effectively black market cybernetics - which begs the question why they didn’t activate during the salvage process. The Magus: Would the damage to his brain have temporarily shut down the activity in the rest of his parts? Dr. Madox: Hmm. Maybe. *sigh* Seth was always the gentlest of them. Was. I'm already talking about him in the past tense. You have to understand I’ve worked with these people for over a decade. Fireflash: And you care for them. Perfectly understandable. We agree to keep the problem quiet for now, and offer to approach the people that have had Seth’s bodyparts transplanted into them, on the condition TyrellCorp foots the bill for safer cybernetic replacements. Hardlight OoC: Somebody is going to turn into roboAkira, but in character I’m all for this plan. Flux: Using the Batman Solution of ‘My Superpower is Money’ The Magus: Especially since he’s getting another corporation to pay for it. It IS a little surprising to learn that there’s been entire teams of other superheroes active in Edge City, fighting a Secret War against Mechanon, that we had no idea about. GM: Not everybody is as flashy as you. You’re also a bit surprised that there’s a black market for repurposed robot parts as implants in Edge City. The Magus (and Allana’s) player: Allana probably knows all about it but she’s retired. That said, it’s rather weird that Mechanon has made 8 different covert attacks against Edge City - it’s possible he’s being excessively cautious against cybernetic enemies that he can’t control. Although an obsessive Mechanon that’s trying to figure out why he keeps failing, and why he can’t adapt against it, is not a good thing. The Magus: He did once decide that his weakness was ‘I’m not 50ft tall’. The Magus arranges something that will hopefully be funeral rites for a cyberoid. We’re approached by a guy that looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts - it’s the ‘Tyrell security’ guy that Scooter wanted to punch, months back, when we were dealing with a raid on one of their warehouses. ‘Security Muscle’: Ah, I hear you found my brother. Hero Shrew: Hey, I remember you! ‘Security Muscle’: You do? I’m surprised - we only met once and we didn’t really meet. Hero Shrew: Eh, I was itching to punch somebody and you looked like you could take it. The Magus: He never forgets a potential target. ‘Security Muscle’: … OK. Anyway, thanks. I’m Cain. Cain doesn’t want to tell us about exactly what he does, but does complain about the fact that when they shift to their combat form, they have to wait for their ion cannon to cool down before they can regrow their skin. The Magus: I can see why that would be a problem - melting skin is not a good look. Cain: Oh, I dunno - it’s useful when you’re interrogating somebody who doesn’t know you can’t do it to them. Cain also warns us not to teleport into Tyrell Labs - the security systems are a bit proactive about anything they assume is a threat. Tyrell’s cover story to the recipients of the cyberoid parts is that they had supply chain problems and the implanted parts have components that Tyrell can’t guarantee. GM: ‘Here take this, sign this air-tight NDA’ The guy with the eye is a problem - more work on his eye would affect his health insurance, and he doesn’t have enough medical leave left. Flux: … theoretically, would you be averse to having the cybernetic eye removed and your real one grown back? GM: Hardlight, you know corporate law - that would completely F*** up his insurance, since he’s on record as having a cybernetic eye, and Flux is the very definition of an unlicensed practitioner. Of course, we can always put the eye removal down to an ‘ongoing investigation’ which would satisfy his insurance, technically, and ensure he can’t be fired for missing work. So we don’t have to arrange a court order. Judge: I'm sorry, you want what?? Flux: I’m sorry, a raccoon made me do it. The Magus: I presume one of us will have to inform PRIMUS about all this. Hardlight: Bags not me. They’re not going to be pleased that Tyrell invented a synthetic race with aggressively invasive cyberwear, and saw fit not to inform them. There’s four cyberoids waiting with Dr Madox when we come back - Cain, another man of similar build, and two women of athletic build. GM: Oh - ‘build’. Unintentional pun. We do need to track down and close down the parts black market, too. It’s a bit of a concern that somebody out there is running a bodymod shop without knowing if the recycled robot parts are even biocompatible. Certainly the paper trail on the eye was all faked, using pre-issued certification on eyes that failed quality assurance. We can probably guess where along the supply chain that happened. GM: I imagine Flux is going ‘Well I’m not getting my cyberbrain installed THERE’ Flux: I’m adding them to The List. Hero Shrew: I asked around if there was anybody who could give me a chainsaw arm, but nobody knew. All: … Fireflash: … why do you think you need a chainsaw arm? Hero Shrew: It’d be cool. Fireflash: No. No. Again I say no. Flux: I think what happened there is that you asked them, they thought about your reputation, and pretended they didn’t know. The Magus: There’s one person in the city who could implant a chainsaw arm in a Brick, and she’ld flick your nose for asking GM: Two - Allana AND Dr Soma could do it, but she’s flick you too. Hero Shrew DOES hear that the Daughters of Lilith, who have been tangling with chromer gangs lately, have been flashing extra cash around lately - they could certainly forge the paperwork. GM: Hence my favourite Cyberpunk quote Fireflash’s player: ‘Dead Guys Is Parts’ GM: ‘Dead is Dead, Parts is Parts, Dead Guys is Parts.’ Flux: So what’s the plan of action? Hero Shrew: I go in and ask them if they can get me a chainsaw arm? Fireflash: No. Instead we get a warrant for surveillance, and Flux goes and has a cyberpathic poke around the computers of the suspect bodyshops. We learn that the brokers supplying the clinics all use the same courier service to deliver the parts. The same couriers occasionally pick up packages from the city morgue. And there are discrepancies between orders and deliveries in the form of manila envelopes. It seems almost certain that that’s the point that shenanigans are happening. Especially when The Magus’s Magesight reveals that one of the security guards still has the traces of a VIPER tattoo. GM: He had it right up until his boss said ‘Get rid of that! We’re not in a Nest now! F***ing moron! There’s a whole range of approved snake themed tattoos that won’t raise alarm bells.’ The Magus: That said, anybody with a ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ tattoo is alarming for entirely different reasons. Hero Shrew: Well, that’s a link to Seth’s death, at least. Fireflash: … so it is. We can even set up surveillance from office space overlooking the VIPER courier building. Handy. GM: You’ll have to rotate the static surveillance since all have day jobs or other commitments - even Scooter has appearances he has to make. Although The Rep is this close to getting a shock collar that Scooter will actually feel and pay attention to. We soon confirm that they have contacts with the Daughter of Lilith, too, and can at least pretend to share some of their rather extreme sexual politics. GM: Which is basically ‘F*** Men - It’s all they’re good for.’ But you also learn that the Daughters have had upgrades lately. The Magus: *sigh* Of COURSE VIPER provided them with venomous fangs. I give VIPER a lot of crap, but they know how to stay on brand. Our GM used a random name generator to come up with the company name. One of the first it produced was Viper Delivery. The Magus OoC: We need to outsource more of our investigations to random name generators, that was much quicker. Instead he goes with Basilisk Ltd. The Magus: I can picture the cell leader complaining over drinks one night “It wasn’t even ABOUT snakes until that f***ing Harry Potter book come out.” Flux: “And now it’ll just look suspicious if we deregister the name!” We also record a mention of something called The Old Seam, which Fireflash recognises as a reference to a local cemetery some two centuries old. The Magus: Making it new and hip compared to many of the world’s cemeteries. GM: True, but it’s one of the rare remnants of Old Monterey. Especially after that weather machine malfunction decades ago that turned Monterey into a disaster area ripe for complete redevelopment, long before later disasters left Edge City crippled. At least the vampire problem isn’t as bad as it could be. The Magus: Shooting fire from your eyes is a surprisingly common ability, these days. Having their meeting at the Old Seam is actually pretty clever. GM: No-one is going to notice a bunch of goth chicks in a graveyard. In the early evening, anyway, before it gets so late that someone asks ‘Why are you in this graveyard’? The Magus: Nothing good happens in graveyards at 4 in the morning. Hardlight’s player: Sundog suggested I get a "Skill levels>With a group of similar skills" thing. Now, while I'm sure I could just get an "All Int Skills" booster for 5 points, I should probably like, make it slightly more Lore-friendly, and turn it into a cyberbrain chip...At which point I realise... I don't actually have a cyberbrain! XD Flux’s player: You also already have hard-to-explain 'cyberware' Hardlight’s player: This is very true. Just trying to figure out how to make something like that fit with character lore, is all. I'd rather not just have Gareth wake up one day mysteriously being able to just ‘think slightly better’...Unless it's a plot hook…. brain wooooorms The Magus’ player: Removing the lodged crayon has worked for other patients. Hardlight’s player: Touché!

Another oddity regarding current events in Kintargo - there were a number of mercenaries in town when Thrune took over. But instead of hiring them, which is kind of what mercenaries are for, they’re all being held prisoner at Kintargo’s salt works. Finding out why is probably worthwhile, and hey, maybe they’ll give us a discount rate if we rescue them. It’s possible that the leader of the mercs, one Forvian Crowe, has a personal animosity towards Thrune (and hey, who could blame him) but Laria thinks they could make good recruits to the rebellion regardless of their personal opinions about the Dogf***er. The Sallix Salt Works are built on the shoreline underneath the eastern wall of Kintargo, near the now mostly irrelevant Salt Gate in the aforementioned wall. Brine is shipped in, and boiled dry on the premises. Terzo: That seems wildly inefficient. The fuel requirements alone are ridiculous. Civilla: That's why they use slave labour. Like the mercenaries we’re rescuing. The market adjacent to the salt works is mostly dedicated to building supplies and related products, but Civilla and Ayva do have a good reason to be hanging around, which is convenient - maybe we can arrange a good deal on rebuilding the Livery prior to filling the basement with armed mercenaries. Civilla casts Ears of the City on Terzo, in order to divine details about the salt works and the prisoners. Terzo isn’t entirely happy about gathering information with magic. Terzo: The problem with doing it this way is that I don’t get to go around a dozen different pubs and ask a few innocent questions between drinks. Civilla: You think that’s a problem, do you? I think it’s a bonus. Although using Ears of the City DOES ensure that nobody notices, for example, an increasingly drunk Terzo going from bar to bar asking questions. Ayva: Or an increasingly annoyed party member with a wheelbarrow taking Terzo from bar to bar. Apparently the previous owner of the salt works was arrested for tax evasion, and killed when he resisted. Barzillai has now seized the premises as a money-earner for the government. Civilla: Well, at least Barzillai is honest about the nationalisation process. Terzo: How so? Civilla: For ‘nationalised’ read ‘stole’. We also learn, via the spell, that Crowe and his soldiers are being worked to death because of their faith in Sarenrae, the goddess of healing. That’s the kind of thing that can get you in huge trouble should any Asmodeans find out, and that’s exactly what happened. Civilla gets quite thoughtful about the Salt Gate - they haven’t been closed in years, since the internal mechanism has rusted stiff, but that suggests a few ideas to Civilla. Civilla: A plaaaaaan is forming in my miiiind. Civilla wants Terzo to Grease the gate mechanism when we leave, so we can stop pursuit. Doing anything more permanent would probably annoy Thrune and provoke another Proclamation. Terzo OoC: So basically we need a bucket of WD-40. Civilla: In case we are chased. Rajira: *snickers* Civilla: Grease doesn’t last very long either. Rajira: *snickers louder* Civilla: CHASED, not CHASTE. CHASED as in PURSUED. Civilla also has to keep her footmen loyal - otherwise they’ll eventually figure out she’s up to something and might inform on her. Telling them to wait with the carriage outside the salt works and suddenly running up with a troop of mercenaries and expecting them all to fit in like it was some kind of clown car would be a bit suspicious. Instead we sneak up to the door of the salt works late at night, get the door open, and knock Thrune’s blackshirts out with Lullaby and Sleep spells. Civilla: See? I’m perfectly good at Stealth, as long as everybody is asleep. We silently tie the unconscious guards up, release the prisoners, and tiptoe out again without the rest of the guards in the building hearing a thing. Civilla: And give a short prayer to Noctiluca. Terzo: … isn’t that the demon goddess of darkness and lust? Civilla: … I can see we’re going to have to have a conversation later. Rajira: And nobody even saw us. Terzo: All that effort into disguises, hoods and Oaths of Anonymity wasted. Civilla: Not wasted, reserved for future endeavours. GM: … well then. Civilla OoC: That’s this party’s warcry - ‘Sorry, Not Sorry’ Civilla: I mean, it won’t be hard for the authorities to figure out what happened - all the guards fall asleep at once and wake up bound. Unless they leap to some wrong conclusions. I can picture the Inquisitor asking “So WHY were you enjoying a BDSM orgy?” Rajira OoC: ‘And why were you letting the prisoners top you?’ It WILL make an amusing rumour to spread once we get the underground press running. Something to keep in mind for the future. That rescue cost us one first-level spell and a cantrip. We might have time for another mission this evening, after leading Crowe and his men to the Livery basement, before the curfew even comes down. Going via the Tiefling ghetto is also convenient, given how many friends we have there after dealing with the tooth fairy problem - that makes the residents less likely to comment on the large group of half naked prisoners sneaking through the alleyways. But instead of another mission tonight, we decide instead to make sure the mercs have food, clothes, and bedding. Civilla: It shows that we consider them important enough to put off other important tasks. Civilla: Liria told us about your predicament. Crowe: Ah, so that’s why you came to our aid. Ayva: She bribed us with scones. Crowe: Damn, we owe that curvy little vixen our lives. At least we temporarily disrupted the salt works, but it won’t take long to replace the unfortunate workers. Terzo: Probably with Tieflings GM: To be honest, right now, it’s going to be those thugs. Permanently disrupting the salt works is also a goal for the future. Civilla: Any way to reduce Thrune’s ability to punish the populace. And, of course, effortlessly ghosting our way in and out of the salt works will increase our Notoriety, and rescuing the Black Feather Mercenaries will make us more friends among Kintargo’s population. But we still need to investigate the ruins of Raxus’ family home, the Thrashing Badger pub, and the Silver Star music shop, for any clues the Dogf***er’s arsonists may have left intact. There isn’t much left at the latter, and not being able to see in the dark doesn’t help. On the other hand, accidentally falling through a hidden trapdoor is quite helpful, at least in that it unearths some useful potions and scrolls. On the other hand, having our carriage pulled over by one of the Kintargo guardsmen, especially since he’s backed up by three of Thrune’s blackshirts. Civilla: How can we be of assistance to you fine civic-minded individuals? Thug: I’m sure you good folk are unaware, since it only happened ten minutes ago, but this road is now a tollway. The toll is a mere five gold. Per passenger. Civilla: Five gold? How interesting. I assume you have your Writ? Terzo: And a receipt book? Civilla: That too. Thug: I have my Writ right here *hefts mace* Terzo: *casts Lullaby* Go to sleep, little A**hole, do not cry. All three drop to Civilla’s Sleep spell, and she orders her drivers to move the carriage on. Civilla: We do not want to cut their throats in front of my drivers. Ayva: So we’ll leave them there to be inevitably pickpocketed? Civilla: Or killed by any number of Kintargo’s other residents. Unfortunately most of the Thrashing Badger washed out to sea when the boardwalk burnt through, and it wasn’t Terzo’s local drinking hole. Ayva: Terzo has been kicked out of most of the pubs in Kintargo. Terzo: Rolled out of, possibly. The Badger used to be the rowdiest alcohol dispensary in the city, but any of its regulars have moved on to other establishments. It seems likely one of the more notable regulars, the fairy dragon Vendalfek, will have moved to one of them too. Perhaps Clenchjaw’s, although the name does not inspire images of fun and harmless hooliganism. Although given the fact that we walk in on a mass bar fight, that pauses only long to look at us come in, it might be a more enthusiastic clientele than the name suggests. Terzo: Don’t mind us, carry on as you were. Terzo: Well, at least if they're all so busy with their fistfight, they’re less likely to remember what we look like. Civilla: I fear they’re going to remember us anyway. Two of us anyway. Rajira: I’m wearing my hood over my head. But I am over 6ft and attractive. Civilla: That’s what I meant. But Terzo is going to attract attention anyway, as they see him accompanied by the three of us and try to figure out ‘How?!’ Ayva: So we set up at the bar, wait for information to come to us, and maim anybody that assumes we’re call girls. We claim a table that doesn’t leave our backs to the door, and order refreshments. Terzo: A bottle of your most enjoyable wine, dear. Barmaid: We’ve got wine, water, watered wine, or if you want something spicy, wined water. Ayva just gets a small beer, and Rajira some hard mead. Civilla: It’s not like we can get mint liqueur anymore. Unfortunately Ayva also complains about not being able to get night tea, and we get told off by a neighbouring sailor. Old Salt: Word to the wise - I know you’re new here but one of the house rules is No Politics. *to Terzo* And you, you - how’d you’d end up in the company of three buxom lasses like these? Care to share the love? Terzo: It’s my irresistible charm, dear man - I can’t beat them off with a stick. Civilla: Buxom? Buxom? Ayva: I don’t recall being buxom. Rajira: *puts an arm around Ayva* Don’t worry, you’re buxom enough for me. GM: You settle down to enjoy your drinks. Make a Perception check. Ayva OoC: Ah, it’s one of those bars where adventures happen. Terzo OoC: Well we already have a hooded stranger, but they’re a member of the party. Terzo: *fails the check miserably* This is a very enjoyable wine. Rajira’s resistance to poison probably means she could have drunk anything behind the bar, but she's not going to get the chance. Ayva spots the lizard with butterfly wings in the rafters, laughing at the barfight. This is presumably Vendalfek. When he realises he’s been spotted, he goes invisible. Ayva Messages the fairy dragon. Ayva: Vendalfek We Know You’re There Civilla: FFS can you be more ominous? At least indicate we’re friendly first. The doors of the pub swing open all by themselves. Rajira: And there goes our informant. Terzo: What was he doing in the rafters? Ayva: Everybody enjoys a good bar fight. Terzo: He probably started it. Ayva tries a more diplomatic Message, and the dragon pokes its head back in and indicates we should follow. Civilla: It’s nearly curfew - we should head home. Come along Terzo. Terzo: But I’m still enjoying this wine! Civilla: . Terzo: Can I get this in a doggy bag? Ayva: Damn. First good mead I’ve had in years. Civilla: We’re far too far south for good mead. Vendalfek Vendalfek: What do you humans want, anyway? I’ve only just found a new bar to live in after your lot burned the last one down. Rajira: Not ‘my’ humans. Civilla: *Diplomatically remains silent, specifically about her own ancestry* We do determine why Thrune’s agents burned the place to the ground - it probably has something to do with the Roses Vendalfek kept overhearing about. Vendalfek: Did I live in a bar that was a secret meeting place for a society of florists? More like Milani’s Rose of Kintargo, a rebellious cult. They were arrested by Thrune’s personal enforcers, one of whom has an ominous magic sword. Rajira OoC: Oh great, we have an Edgelord. Civilla: These Roses they took - fun people? Vendalfek: Oh yes. Civilla: And the Dottari - not fun? Vendalfek: Definitely not. Civilla: So, what do you think about playing a few pranks on the dotteri? Vendalfek is agreeable, and the rebellion has a new ally. Just as well, since Vendalfek also overheard that they were planning to Doghouse one of the Roses. Terzo: Oh dear. Vendalfek: I’d like a doghouse - cosy. Civilla: Doghousing involves feeding a prisoner to one of Thrune’s feral mastiffs. And they starve the dog first. Terzo: Out of curiosity, Mr Dragon - why was the barman unconscious in the corner in there? Civilla: He was no fun. Vendalfek: Such a stickler for the rules. And then there is more quiet recruiting of partisans, and smuggling funds into the Rebellion’s pockets. And dealing with the fact that the Dottari are taking an alarming interest in Liria’s coffeehouse... Liria: *communicates by frantic eyebrow-waggling* *DISTRACT THEM!* Civilla: Um, ah, what? *grabs Rajira and kisses her* Rajira: *briefly startled then grabs Civilla and kisses back* Civilla: Eep. Terzo: *looks briefly surprised and annoyed, and mutters something about ‘alright for some’ before returning his attention to his drink* Of course the fact that Rajira might LOOK human, but doesn’t TASTE human, and has fangs and forked tongue, might be even more distracting, if Civilla hadn’t already figured out what Rajira actually was. It distracts the male Dottari though, until their female superior officer slaps them upside the head. Rajira: Thankyou, m’dear, but I believe it’s my set. *casts Fascinate, which fails* GM: I’m sorry, but the slap worked and they’re concentrating on their job again. Instead we order a pot of coffee, which will give Liria an excuse to go into the pantry and move a few sacks over the hidden door in the floor. Civilla: Wait, no, it’s tea that Thrune has a problem with, isn’t it. Terzo: We can always ask these nice Dottari if coffee and tea are the same thing. Civilla: Better not - we don’t want to give the authorities an opportunity to decide they are. Apparently somebody sent the Dottari an anonymous letter alleging unsavoury practises at the coffeehouse. Liria: The only unsavoury things here are the muffins. Civilla: Unsavoury practises? I’ve kept my clothes on this time. Rajira: We’ll see if that lasts the night. Civilla manages to convince them that somebody is wasting their time, barely - sometimes you roll low but the bad guys still roll lower. The Dottari leave. Terzo: I trust Liria offered them a complimentary muffin. Rajira grabs Civilla and drags her over to the bar. Rajira: Something strong - 120 proof at least. Swill this around in your mouth before you swallow. My saliva can be toxic and I’d rather you didn’t become ill. Civilla: I’d rather not. Rajira: … OK. Civilla: I mean I’d rather not smell like I’ve been swilling the kind of alcohol I usually use for cleaning purposes. GM: Oh god, somebody gave Vendalfek coffee. Civilla: actually we shouldn’t shut down the Salt Works - that way if anybody else gets imprisoned there we can rescue them, too. Rajira: And some of the prisoners they send there have actually been arrested for good reasons. There’s always actual criminals around. Civilla: True, but Thrune is employing those. Civilla decides to take the air, with her compatriots and supposed paramour, to scout out the ruins of Rexus’ family home that we have to investigate. After all, since Terzo is her tutor and Ayva is her business partner, we actually have a good reason to be strolling around the expensive part of town. Rexus doubts we’ll find anything, but Civilla thinks it will still be worth a look. It’s certainly suspicious that the ruins of the Victocora estate are under permanent armed guard, even this many weeks after the fire. Perhaps we can stay at Civilla’s family home, so we can come back after dark without having to sneak back into the Kintargo equivalent of a Gated Community? Civilla: Eh, it would attract attention to them and they’d ask questions. Trust me, they’d ask questions, it’s what Alazarios do. It’s one reason we’re not very popular with House Thrune. We decide to wait until after curfew, and sneak along the alley between the city walls and the noble estates, and climb over the estate wall into the ruins. Which is a good plan, if we didn’t run into a Dottari guard patrolling the other way. Rajira: *drunkenly slurs* Hey there, handsome. GM: Roll to Seduce. Dottari: What are you DOING here, woman, it’s almost after curfew! Come with me! Rajira: Oh, I’m sure we can find something much more fun to do… GM: You were unlucky enough to get the nice guard, and he’s actually insisting on escorting you back to your home. Rajira: S***. Rajira: *signals the rest of the party* Should I take him out? Civilla: *summons a monster frog out of the ground* Dottari: What the Hells is that! GET BEHIND ME! Rajira: *clonks him on the head* Civilla: Can somebody cut him in half? Rajira: … not without getting blood all over my clothes, no. Ayva: … Why? Civilla: My frog can’t eat something that large. Unless we fold him double, maybe. Terzo is rather perturbed by the murder, and reminds so during the wall-clambering and ruins search. It’s Ayva that finds the remains of a recent preparatory ritual next to the ornamental lake on the property. Apparently a witch did something here, more recently than the fire. Civilla cautiously wades into the lake and promptly vanishes with a splash, into a lake that’s supposed to be thigh deep at best. It’s now way more than 60 feet deep, and there’s something glowing blue in the depths. Terzo OoC: So the Victocoras had a secret nuclear reactor in their pond. Civilla: Just as well I can summon Celestial Dolphins. Civilla and Rajira descend, and are soon spotted by somebody else swimming down here, who hurriedly swims into a side tunnel. Unfortunately there’s also a grate, which Civilla can Dimensional Slide through at least, in a search for some kind of opening mechanism. The tunnel on this slide slopes upwards. Civilla: I’ll return to the others and get high. All: LOL. Sending Rajira back to the surface when they do may have been a mistake, since some kind of magical pulse boils up the shaft and engulfs Rajira while she’s on her way up. She’s turned to stone, which doesn’t make things any easier for the dolphin. Terzo OoC: Do I need to throw some waterwings in there? Still, Terzo and Ayva are rather alarmed by the petrification, at least until Ayva determines it will only be temporary - apparently that was a wild magic surge. So all we know is that somebody, probably a witch, was messing around at the bottom of an unexpectedly deep lake, and we have no idea who or why. Civilla has followed the zig-zagging tunnel to another grate, with a room on the other side. GM: This is clearly a Spellcasters Only route. Civilla OoC: And this is me. *casts Dimensional Slide again*. Was this really supposed to stop low level characters? One Halfling wizard with Reduce Person would go right through it. GM: …. Excuse me a moment while I consult the next book of the campaign. She’s apparently somewhere underneath the Hall of Records. She casts Pass Without Trace and Disguise Self to reduce the chance the Dottari wandering about don’t find her. Disguising herself as that Dottari officer from last night gets her out of the building without too much attention, and she dispatches one of the Silver Raven devices to let us know she’s heading to the Alazario estate. This is a relief to the rest of us, although Rajira has already seen the disguised Civilla on the road. Terzo: Well, I must say we’re glad to see you alive - when Rajira came back up turned to stone and wrapped around a dolphin, and no sign of you, we were a bit concerned. Civilla: Turned to stone? What did I miss? Civilla excuses herself to write some letters to her family, suggesting they buy the Victocora estate and hinting that they should keep the lake as is but not investigate too closely. Civilla: ‘There’s a secret back entrance to the Hall of Records? That’ll be useful when it reopens’ Civilla: There are currently two cults of Noctiluca - the ones who are wrong and the ones that are right. Ayva OoC: I can see her followers inquiring about what happened, and when they find out, go ‘wait, she did WHAT to WHO and then WHAT????’. GM: I just looked up what Night Tea actually is, and it’s nothing about ‘disturbing the balance of the slumbering mind’ - it’s a prophylactic. Civilla gets a delivery while she’s writing at Laria’s coffeehouse - less a package than a bouquet. Of very beautiful roses, with a slip of paper concealed down among the stems. Rajira: And there was me thinking I had a rival for your affections. Perhaps predictably, it’s from the Rose of Kintargo, the Milani cult that is also planning a rebellion against Barzillai Thrune. They warn us not to act rashly, and promise to contact us soon. We recruit a team of street performers, who we call Nobody’s Fools, and put the finishing touches on the former Livery. In fact we’re just getting ready to open up when a small child runs in screaming for help. Rajira: What’s wrong with the spawnling? Tiefling Kid: She’s been taken! Civilla: Who? Tiefling Kid: Zea! The bad people! They said they're going to put her in a doghouse! If we’re quick we might be able to intercept them before they reach Aria Park - it’s fortunate that the Livery is practically next door to the ghetto. We all pile into the carriage. Civilla: Come along child - you get to ride in a carriage! Unfortunately they get to the park first - the pagoda in the middle of the lily pond in Aria Park has been converted into a kennel for any of the dogs the citizens of Kintargo have been handing in for the reward. It’s also Thrune’s thug's choice of destination for anybody they decide has insulted the throne. Civilla gets her disposable cloak ready - if necessary she’ll swap costumes with Zea so the blackshirts chase the wrong person. She’ll also Summon a Celestial Dog, tell it to play Keep Away over to the east of the pond, and use that to distract the thugs. After all, they’ll certainly try and catch it for the reward, and the mortal mastiffs will probably go mental. Then the rest of us can sneak up and overwhelm the other thugs, under the cover of the borking. Dottari on far side of pond: Hey, there’s a dog! Celestial Dog and Mastiffs: Play? Play! Play! Play! Dottari on our side of the Pond: What the **** is happening over there/ Rajira: *kukris them in the back* GM: The surviving thugs all need to make Handle Animal checks. Ayva’s player: I’ve had to walk a Saint Bernard before - these thugs might be going for A Walk. GM: Aaaand they all failed their check. One of the thugs invents water-skiing as his mastiff drags him into the pond, and the rest all chase off after the dogs that are supposedly in their charge. Zea can basically stroll off while they’re busy. GM: … Good work. I basically doubled the number of NPCs that were supposed to be here, too. Terzo: With only two spells again. Ayva OoC: If we were playing rogues we wouldn’t even have needed that. Rajira OoC: If we were all playing rogues we’d have Stealth Synergy and have ghosted through the entire scenario. I rolled a 1 and they STILL didn’t see me. Ayva: And we’re home in time for curfew. Rajira: At this rate the Dottari are going to start talking about The Ghosts. Although trying to squeeze Zea and the kid into the carriage with the rest of us is a bit tricky - fortunately the rest of us are a lot skinnier than Terzo. Civilla: In this group are one and a half humans. Zea is suitably grateful for the rescue, and doesn’t know why she was targeted - it may have been a random sweep. Civilla casts Ears of the City to find out. It looks like the Asmodeans came after Zea because she’s trying to hold the ghetto together now their actual leader has gone missing. And Thrune’s troops are making concerted efforts to solve the Tiefling Problem for good. Rajira: The Asmodeans boink devils like it’s going out of style, then try to eliminate the results. Civilla: Welcome to Cheliax - they’re wonderfully hypocritical. Rajira: So the next sweep team that goes into the ghetto doesn’t come back. Civilla: I’d rather they come back - but without pants. It doesn’t appear that Thrune actually ordered this - he doesn’t seem to care either way. The blackshirts are acting on their own initiative. Civilla: Oh, it’s blackshirts doing the sweeps? In that case we go with Rajira’s suggestion - any sweep teams that come in, don’t come out. Terzo: *hopefully* So we’re going to be keeping them tied up in a basement somewhere? Rajira: No, we’re going to cut their throats and dump the bodies in a cesspit. Terzo: …. oh. Civilla: Perfect! We render them down as soaps and fertilizers for the rich. Terzo: I’m going to assume you’re joking. Rajira: No. Civilla: Have you ever heard me joke about anything alchemical? Ayva: You should hear the one about the alembic. Civilla: I don’t think Terzo has quite figured out the situation he’s in. He’s definitely the softest of us. Ayva: Every ‘smore needs a marshmallow. Thrune: They might just be Tieflings, but taking a prominent member of their community was going to anger them. At least they left my dogs alone. There is one possible problem looming - a Tiefling gang, the Red Jills, who would happily escalate the violence beyond any sane limit. So we have to persuade them to limit their mayhem to a level that won’t invite reprisals from Thrune. Terzo: Oh, I know where they hang out. Ayva: Terzo knows everyone. Sorry, every pub. Their current lair is an old temple of Aroden, an immortal human who was the focus of a whole bunch of prophecies, but who then died mysteriously and threw all those prophecies out the window. His temples have closed up shop. So now the building is occupied by the Red Jills, who hate humans, and their leader a winged Strix, one Scarplume, who hates humans even more. Civilla: Anybody have any ideas how we can use this? It’s sounding suspiciously like we’re walking into a fair fight. I’d rather not fight at all, obviously, but this is sounding more and more like a fair one, and that I do not like. Civilla: I don’t think these are our kind of people - do we really want to recruit them? Terzo: Well, the last thing we want is a circular firing squad among the partisans. Rajira: The Revolution is for everyone. Civilla: But these Jills are already attacking the general citizenry - we want them to focus on the actual threat. Civilla: The Strix have a reputation as baby-snatching monsters. And I can say that because I can speak Strix….. I’m going to have to do all the talking, aren’t I. At least our smuggling contact has done some work for the Red Jills. The Jills might also be desperate for a new fence, too. And the Strix has something in common with the tengu, too - they have wings, at least. We can organise a meet on Red Jill turf without being instantly murdered.

HORROR ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS - PRELUDE IN WHICH THE INVESTIGATORS GO TRAINSPOTTING, WITHOUT BENEFIT OF HARD DRUGS ***** In 1204, a great city burns, and something inhuman preys on the people hung from the city walls. In 1922, a kindly professor has asked two of his friends, and a trustworthy journalist, if they could undertake an overnight expedition to Darkest Surrey. He’s being very mysterious about it too - not saying why he wants them to be on a certain country train platform hours after dark, just that they have cameras ready and that they’re not to compare notes until after they’ve recorded all their individual observations. Assuming anything actually happens. The investigators are - Brian Randall Huxley, formerly a junior medical officer on HMS Fearless, traumatised during the so-called Battle of May Island where British submariners were sliced to pieces by the propellers of escorting warships. Post-war he has a lucrative consulting contract in the budding pharmaceutical industry, and uses it to fund his love for archaeology and ancient history, using back channels to import antiquities from Egypt and Tunisia. Antonio Gusto Masiero, an Italian airman of some renown, who arranged transport for Professor Smith to a number of his more remote digs, after the War. In 1922 he travelled to London to see the new planes and visit his dear friend, where they would discuss future travel prospects. Florence 'Flo' Victoria Braxton-Hicks, of an Australian grazier family, who went into journalism with the approval of her parents, on the condition she do so somewhere where it wouldn’t embarrass the family. London fits the bill nicely. Antonio’s player: This Prof. Julius Smith - is he a real person? GM: No, purely fictional - which is just as well in Call of Cthulhu. The three agree to assist the professor, make their plans for travel, equipment and accomodation. Flo’s tomboyish cousin Alexandria ‘Alex’ Braxton will be tagging along to make up the numbers Antonio Gusto Masiero: I’ll go with Florence. Florence 'Flo' Victoria Braxton-Hicks: Miss Braxton-Hicks if you don’t mind - we’ve only just been introduced. Brian Randall Huxley: My, these Italians work fast. There’s a pub in Stoneley, but no rooms. At least they have beer, and food, not that it’s likely to impress Antonio and Flo, both of whom have lived on the flavours of the Continent. GM: British Cooking - boil it until it stops struggling. They also find out why the Professor sent them to the village - apparently there’s a ghost train every year. And any number of variations on the tale, especially about the woman that supposedly comes out to meet it. Alex encourages the tall tales, fueled on beer. The others at least try to stay sober, and unspoiled in their expectations, although Flo of course is recording everything in her notebook. GM: What do you want for dinner? There’s two choices - both of them are stew GM: The locals don’t seem very interested in going to see the Ghost Train? Why would they when they can stay in the pub and tell stories about it instead. There’s beer and a fire and stew. Leaving Alex rugged up and passed out in the car, the trio prepare for their vigil - Huxley even puts a few pieces of gravel on the tracks to see if they are disturbed by the passage of this supposed Ghost Train. Florence: Yes, nothing like risking a derailment. And a little after nine in the evening, a train actually appears - out of thin air, and faintly luminous. Antonio and Florence are deeply shocked, and her half-frozen fingers certainly don’t help with the photos. Huxley takes more photos of his own face than of the train - which fades rapidly from existence the moment Antonio tries to step aboard. Florence: *curses a blue streak in Italian* GM: You’ve been sworn at by a lot of women, Antonio. Huxley: My, these Italians work fast. Huxley is convinced it’s a hoax, or that they were fed drugs and the tall tales at the pub primed the form of the hallucination. Antonio and Florence are much more unsettled. Flo even drops the camera as she was trying to take the last few shots. Huxley: Have I been eating some kind of hallucinogen? GM: It must have been in the stew. The trio (and desperately hungover Alex) return to London in the morning. GM: Antonio feels the stab deep in his soul when they tell him he can’t get coffee in rural Surrey. But the Professor seems very pleased with their results, and invites them to the Challenger Trust Banquet-Lecture at the Imperial Institute on New Years Day, where he promises to reveal all. Prof. Smith: Did you get any more photos? Florence: Do you have any idea how cold it was? What is wrong with this country??? Huxley: I give up Professor, you got us, how did you do it? Where did you hide the projector? Well done old man. On the other hand, the Professor isn’t quite so cheerful when they see him in the interim - in fact whatever meetings he was having with a mysterious Turkish gentleman have been leaving him distinctly perturbed. He also wants Antonio’s advice about travel in the rural parts of Eastern Europe, in preparation for some large trip in the first quarter of 1923, and asks if he’ll be available to accompany him on the trip. Antonio, of course, agrees. The after-dinner lecture is certainly amazing, when it happens - Professor Smith is right back in his old form, discussing, of all things, hauntings like the Ghost Train. Smith hopes that one day, whatever mysterious other dimensions that ‘haunts’ drift in and out of, will be accessible to mankind and the sciences. But that mysterious Turkish gentleman (identified as one Mehmet Makryat, owner of an antiques store in nearby Islington), turns up just as the lecture is finishing and the Professor is doing the rounds of the tables. When the staff let him in, he urgently whispers something to the Professor that leaves the man shocked and not a little frightened. He asks the trio of investigators to come by his house the next afternoon - apparently he has a lot to tell them. He won’t get the chance - as the trio open their papers over their breakfast eggs, they all see the headline that the Professor’s house burned to the ground overnight, and that he and his manservant Beddows are missing.

Pathfinder - Hell's Bright Shadow : No-one But You (Only The Good Die Young) Good News - there was indeed a Silver Raven secret hideout under the old livery. Bad News - the hideout was quite thoroughly compromised and defiled. It’s entirely likely that Terzo and the girls are the only people in Kintargo in any position to get an organised resistance off the ground, which is not a job with good prospects for long-term employment. We make contact with Raxus’ contact, the halfling Laria, and not too long after that are situated in some tunnels and a forgotten shrine to Calistria that had been used for some light smuggling and as a part of the Bellflower Network, an underground railway for halfling slaves. The temple is certainly convenient for Rajira, especially since the worship of her god has been banned by the Chelish Fun Police. Between Civilla’s Ears of the City spell and Terzo’s avuncular diplomacy, we also managed to make peaceful contact with some Tengu who were down here with their adopted Dire Corby sister, who is having aggression management issues and is currently being detained in the hopes that we can help her learn to control herself. It might be a tall order, since Dire Corbies are best described as 'psychotic', 'cannibalistic', and ‘lacking any instincts of self-preservation'. Terzo OoC: Not entirely negative attributes if they're directed at the appropriate target - Thrune's agents, for example, and not the nearest kindergarten There are also other things down there. Terzo OoC: So, Kintargo has two things in common with Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One - firmly under the thumb of a brutal authoritarian state, and giant albino alligators in the sewers. Civilla suspects that the Tengu sisters are going to be our rebellion's first team, and we're going to need a good number of teams. Quite a large part of the Hell's Bright Shadow campaign is bookkeeping about rebellion cells, officers, caches, and rebellion funds. We also have to decide exactly which angle of attack to use, since open combat in the streets is hardly going to work, and encouraging a popular uprising openly would paint a great big target on our backs. Ayva: There is a small part of my brain jumping up and down wanting a printing press so we can print our own broadsheet to influence the people of the city. Civilla: Remember the Fair Fortune Livery? I'm wondering if we can re-purpose the upper area into a workshop and the lower section into a lair for us. Ayva: I do not envy whoever has to clean it out first Terzo: The print shop would be a bit of an obvious target for Thrune's inquisitors, though. Civilla: The print shop would be in the underground section. Terzo: Ah, ok, of course. My knowledge of underground resistance movements is alas pretty minimal. Ayva: If it was a wine cellar Terzo would know it intimately. Which reminds me, must find out if Civilla's family herb garden has any wild basil - also known as dog mint. "Basil sent me" could be a useful code phrase. Terzo’s player: I wonder if the White Rose Network is why the goddess of resistance, Milani, has all those rose associations Rajira’s player: That and probably the nature of wild roses. Beautiful, but very pokey and very hard to get rid of. Terzo’s player: I also wonder if we could get Thrune's agents to waste their time chasing an imaginary resistance leader. Call him Adam Selene. There’s quite a few things we can do with the former livery - turning it into a workshop to earn some coin for the rebellion, for example (assuming we can thoroughly hide the secret lair again and pretend we never knew about it, whilst still having our own means of access). Ayva: Was not expecting The Artisans Workshop for Painting but it's appreciated. Means I can do at least 3 types of earnings that way. Terzo: People are going to need a lot of portraits of Queen Abrogail II too now - it’s a legal requirement in all business under Thrune’s new laws. Ayva: .....I honestly did not think of that *headdesk* Terzo: So I hope you don't mind painting hundreds of pictures of the same heinous bitch. Ayva: If I get bored I'll just paint her bare arse on the opposite side of the canvas before backing and framing. As a Bard-Provocateur Terzo certainly has plenty of options for undermining the government - popular slander is a class feat. GM: Why do I just know that the words "Dogf***er Thrune" are gonna be bandied about across the city? Rajira OoC: Because it was inevitable? Terzo OoC: Graffiti such as ‘Thrune F***s Dogs? Knot Likely’ We also recruit a group of ‘seamstresses’ to generate another income stream for the Rebellion. Civilla observes that between the party members, the Tengu sisters, and the ‘seamstresses’, the Rebellion is becoming something of a clam bake. And then has to explain the term to Terzo - it’s the opposite of a sausage fest. Terzo: Ah, I see - I was insufficiently filthy-minded. Terzo Offers His Teeth To The Cause! Ayva: Terzo? Terzo: Yes, m’dear? Ayva: We’re going to be using you as bait. Whilst there are a lot of things we could be doing right now, it’s a number of pretty horrible murders around the tiefling ghetto that get us involved. Surprisingly, it’s not somebody taking advantage of Thrune’s takeover to practise some genocide, and is instead the predations of a pack of tooth fairies. Rajira; You’re the obvious target. Terzo: Because I smile so much? Rajira; Well, partially. Nothing comes after Terzo the first night. Terzo: Perhaps I need to smell more of peppermint. Civilla: Please don’t - Thrune’s Proclamation the Seventh ‘The odour and flavour of mint is an abomination to the refined palate. Be not the cretin! Mint use in candies, drinks and all manners of confections are hereby proscribed’. Rajira; A man with no taste. Civilla: I’d be tempted to make the same proclamation about vanilla. Terzo is yawning widely late on the second night’s fairy-baiting, when he hears chittering from an adjacent alleyway. Terzo: *jaws snapping shut* …. Hello? The rest of the party are following well back, or leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Terzo OoC: I’m going to regret lighting a match to see what’s down there, aren’t I? Civilla OoC: Dude, do you have any idea how expensive matches are? Terzo OoC: Well, at least in that case I WON’T see the wall of tooth fairies about to descend on me. Terzo OoC: Well, I certainly hope the others are close-by, but I don’t want to do anything obvious like look back over my shoulder. ‘Is there anybody there?’ Civilla OoC: A question - what will you do if somebody replies ‘No’? Civilla OoC: I don’t mean to be rude but in-character the logic of the question just irks me - I’m a very logical character. A woman who has Views on the idea of Love. Terzo takes a few nervous steps into the alleyway, sees a large number of small flitting shadows, and backpedals rapidly. Civilla: I seem to have underestimated how many tooth fairies were involved. I should have known better, knowing they were overpowering full-sized humanoids. Civilla probably should have prepared a Dancing Lights spell too - since we’ll be fighting in the dark. GM: You have a target-rich environment. Unfortunately the tooth-fairies also have a large target - specifically, Terzo. Terzo: Who supplies these little b*****ds with their pliers is what I want to know. Terzo continues to backpedal, and Inspires Courage in the others with a few verses of ‘Feed Them Their F***ing Teeth’. Although it’s a bit slurred because Terzo’s jaw is half-off. Those pliers are lethal. Fortunately the rest of the party pile in before the fairies can get away with the entire mandible. The surviving fairies attempt to flee, but Civilla glues one to a wall with Adhesive Spittle. Ayva OoC: You basically hocked a giant loogie at it. Civilla OoC: I AM a Changeling and offspring of a Hag. Terzo OoC: Is Adhesive Spittle a Changeling trait? Civilla OoC: Nope, it’s a spell! It originated with witches, IIRC. Ayva OoC: Sounds about right, I can’t see a wizard inventing it. It’s a pity we can’t actually interrogate the thing - none of us can speak Sylvan. Hopefully the Tiefling who helped us identify the little monsters knows somebody that can translate for us - a flock of murderous fey is the last thing Kintargo needs at the moment. GM: The older Tiefling will translate for you, despite the shocking language - you can use Diplomacy or Intimidate, depending on your approach. Terzo: Given we’ve already used a cold iron dagger on it, and we set the others on fire in front of it, I suggest we go on as we started. Civilla: How so? Terzo: Intimidate. Civilla OoC: I’ve got a +3 on Intimidate, and +4 if they’re sexually attracted to me, but frankly I don’t want to know. Apparently the tooth fairies want to build a fortress entirely out of teeth. Even given the creature's size, a disturbing image. Best nuke the site from orbit. Or at least crawl into the ruin, soak the place in Keros Oil, and reduce them to a greasy cloud of soot. That’s the plan, at least, but the frankly awful series of dice rolls we’ve made all night continue, and Rajira is promptly paralysed while headfirst in the tooth-fairy den. It’s quite fortunate for the rebellion that none of us get killed trying to exterminate these vermin. We also find some rather horrifying evidence that the tooth fairy infestation was deliberately engineered. Which is honestly a bit odd - between the gate to hell in the old Silver Ravens base, and the fae infestation, it’s looking like somebody is trying to escalate the problems in Kintargo. And it seems unlikely that Thrune and his agents are responsible - they have no reason to be subtle about it, and have full authority to be as brutal and public as they like. Work on translating the documents we recovered from the Silver Raven’s former lair also continues, but for some reason Civilla’s decision to keep the one with the Secret Page between two sheets of lead, on the grounds that we’re not equipped to deal with magical documents yet, is so unexpected that our GM had to go ask other GMs for advice. No doubt we’ll find out how badly we’ve stuffed up soon.

Champions - Return To Edge City : Squid-jigging On why most of Earth’s polities have abandoned super-soldier programs and are going with external augments or recruiting natural talents instead. Hero Shrew: External augmentation technology is also a lot easier to shut down remotely, if your supersoldier goes rogue. Hero Shrew: They just have to look at the personal history of half the world’s superheroes - sorry, supervillains - and say ‘well, we’re not doing that again’. GM: Half the superheroes too - you were right the first time. Of course now we’ve got an alien super-soldier with unknown augments running around on Earth. At least the tentacles should make him pretty conspicuous. We have no idea what it intends to do here - could it use Earth technology to open a concordance to the Sirian fleet? Fireflash: Probably not - anybody who has that kind of technology can probably deal with the problem themselves. The Sirian presumably doesn’t have any contacts on Earth - but Earth does have a very broad information network, easily accessed. GM: You can probably program your Crime Computer to look for any unusual internet activity. Fireflash: I’m resisting the urge to say ‘To the Bat-Computer!’ GM: Why? Adam West is awesome. The alien salvage crew are a little shocked that Earth isn’t as primitive as they were told - Magus and Flux’s magical knowledge is pretty advanced, in arcanotech terms. It’s possible they can use the Sirian’s life-support tech, still in the cargo hold of the alien’s ship, to track the Sirian. Magus: Tracking down an alien using its iron womb is more your sort of thing. Flux: *rolls a fantastic success* GM: Oh f*** off, the Sirian hasn’t had time to do anything yet! It’s under the bonded warehouse holding the Sirian tech we handed over to the ECPD a while back. Magus: Sorry, gotta run, we had better deal with this now. Alien Captain: What? Magus: We found the Sirian, it’s already found Sirian tech. Alien Captain: WHAT???? They do want us to take the Moreau-looking crewmember with us - he’d attract the least attention in Edge City. GM: When he finds out that there’s a whole organisation that has better tech than his, he’s going to cry a little - Earth is supposed to be a backwater. Happily, the Sirian hasn’t had time to finish the warsuit it was making, and between the alien’s grenades and Magus’ stun attacks it doesn’t even get to self destruct. Hero Shrew: So who wants to tell UNTIL that we caught a Sirian super-soldier? Alive? The Magus: We can tell that UNTIL agent back at the ship. Flux: We only told them an hour ago that one was on the loose - they were just getting warmed up, and we go ‘Found it’ Of course the alien crew now need to get their ship repaired, without giving away so much about interstellar flight and dark matter accumulators that they’d get thrown straight into jail when they get home. Or bankrupted by the rescue fees. Flux: Hey, UNTIL guy, do you have a standard procedure for this? UNTIL Rep: No? Usually they only stay a few hours and leave, or blow up their ship and forcibly emigrate. Or get dropped off here. The Magus has been doing some arcane calculations - he can theoretically use extra-dimensional travel to take one of the aliens on an interstellar shopping trip. Aiming is the tricky thing. The captain is a bit sarcastic about that, but they have a point - missing your target planet by a light year is A Problem. GM: It amuses me that one of you has forgotten a completely broken power on your character sheet. Flux: Hmm? GM: The keyword is ‘broken’. Flux: OK, fine, I’ll do it *starts casting Repair* Alien: What? How? *string of what we are now pretty sure are alien profanities* Under what paradigm is that even POSSIBLE?? Hero Shrew: He’s restoring a platonic ideal. GM: He’s reinforcing a platonic ideal, and - oh f*** he’s doing it holistically. GM: They let Flux have a look at their Dark Matter Accumulator so he can fix it. It looks like a cross between a Philosopher's Stone and a fairyfloss machine. The Magus: Given Flux’s alchemical abilities he could probably make one. Flux: Um. GM: Remember how I said that there are certain people that get upset every time Flux does alchemy? Flux: Oh dear. At least the salvage crew can make some money from the Sirian computers we hacked.

cad

Pathfinder : Hell's Bright Shadow - Great King Rat Terzo: Poor dogs. Civilla: They just tried to eat you! Terzo: They were starving! Civilla's player: At least they can’t say ‘I am!’ when you ask them if they’re a good girl. Terzo’s player: Yessss. Father of The Year, Shou Tucker was not. Ayva's player: Is it children and animals you’re not supposed to work with? Terzo’s player: And Tucker worked with both! Terzo: Some people might wonder why I didn’t make some comment when Rajira knifed that man earlier, but I’ve worked with a lot of opera divas in the last 40 years. The old killing floor has been abandoned for some time, but there are some unusual patterns in the dust. And the way the equipment inside animates to attack is pretty unusual too. The blood oozing from the walls is a bit stereotypical, though. Apparently Grimples are responsible. Terzo: Gribbles? No, they’re a kind of woodlouse that eats jetties. Civilla: Grimples? Terzo: That’s the monkeys, yes. Terzo’s player: What’s a Grimple? Civilla's player: A not very good punk band. Which arguably makes them a good punk band. Just not very good. Terzo’s player: Also something on Urban Dictionary but I’m afraid to look. GM: They’re basically one step above an angry magical possum. Unpleasant giggling comes from under the floor. Terzo: Ahem - before we go any further I’d like to point out we can just set the building on fire. Instead Civilla just Colour Sprays the hole, and knocks the vermin-encrusted fey unconscious. Too bad that 90s punk bands aren’t the only thing down there. Ayva: I thought I was joking when I said Dire Rats. Civilla OoC: Well, we’re going down in an urban environment. GM: You went down on a Grimple? Civilla's player: What?? EW! EWWWWW! The formerly hidden shaft and ladder might be a tight fit for Terzo. Civilla OoC: You are not Mister Five by Five. Civilla adds to the local population of Rodents of Unusual Size by Summoning one of her own. Terzo demonstrates the importance of voice projection in the theatre by Ear-piercing Screaming another to death. The eye watering stench of the giant rats and the Grimple isn’t the only unpleasantness down here, especially after the creatures get stabbed to death. Terzo: After we’re done down here, can we still set the place on fire? Civilla: No. We’re In A City. Fires in City Bad. (You know you’re in trouble when the Neutral character is telling you off) Arson thus prohibited, we move deeper, only to discover more damn Grimples. Terzo: Well, I didn’t bring any lamp oil anyway. Ayva: I did. Civilla’s Summoned monster rat is spitting lethal acid at the revolting gremlin-possums, who also projectile vomit. Terzo OoC: Exactly what kind of rat did you Summon there? Civilla: Dark. A creature of Shadow. Terzo OoC, GM: Ah - Edgy. Ayva OoC: The Rat that Squeaks In The Night. Civilla OoC: I don’t like to advertise the fact I can see in the dark, but needs must… Terzo OoC: On the bright side, it’s so dark down here none of us can tell you can see in the dark. Terzo DOES know the Grease spell, but unfortunately, so do the Grimples. Terzo barely manages to keep his footing. Ayva OoC: Fatcrobatic. Civilla OoC: Hiram Worchester he is not. Terzo: You know, unless their standards have really dropped, I don’t think these things are the Silver Ravens. Ayva: Perhaps they were honorary members. Terzo: Probationary, perhaps. *sigh* We’re going to have to search through their nest, aren’t we? And since I’m not going to ask the girls to do this, it’s going to be you and me, Raxus. We find a small assortment of shinies, and a Cloak of Protection. None of us want to touch it. Ayva: I know Prestidigitation will clean it, I STILL want to send it to the laundry. There’s more to the Silver Raven’s lair, further down, behind some grilles and locked doors, but it’s flooded by sewage, and actually smells worse than the Grimples, incredibly. And the walls are covered in profane writing, and there’s greasy chains and some very dubious-looking pillars. GM: And wallowing sound in the pool are two, well, S***-demons. Ayva OoC: Excrelementals. Terzo OoC: Funnily enough, they’re not Cacodemons. Terzo: What in the Name of ALL THAT'S HOLY happened down here??? Raxus: What in the Seven Hells is that SMELL???? Civilla: Nine Hells. Raxus: Ah, yes, Nine. Ayva: It’s fine, you were busy and missed a few. Civilla’s Summoned Celestial Eagle is quite effective against the unholy feculence, as is turning a coin into a ranged weapon, which is just as well since the rest of us don’t want to get anywhere near the things without Hazmat suits and flamethrowers. We try to figure out what happened here. Rajira and Civilla, at least, can read some of the sigils painted onto the walls. Civilla: I can read Infernal…. I’m a Chellish scholar, OK? As much as I don't want to traffic with the things, a lot of the stuff around here is written in Infernal, alright??? Apparently somebody tried to open a Gate to Avernus, the uppermost level of Hell. It would only have opened for minutes at best, but probably explains the animated ordure. Terzo: So… not much chance of any Silver Ravens down here. Civilla: There were never going to be any Silver Ravens down here! We were only going to find records, evidence at best! The Silver Ravens were all killed! What were you expecting, some undead Ravens that would have been useless to us anyway? Terzo: *sigh* I was being hopeful. Civilla: You were being delusional. We DO find hundreds of pages of documentation about the Silver Ravens in a crate. Civilla speculates on what kind of precautions and codes they may have used to protect their secrets - as it happens, she’s spot-on for most of it. GM: It will take somebody fluent in Celestial, Strix, and Elven weeks to decipher them. Civilla: It’ll take me weeks then. Raxus: *holds up a hand* Um. Ayva: And Raxus can help. Unfortunately one of the more mundane-looking journals is also enchanted with Secret Page, which will be rather more difficult to bypass. And a useful assortment of other magic items, including the enchanted silver ravens the group used for communication, and that they named themselves after. GM: I’m starting to wonder whether you’ve read the campaign notes. Civilla's player: I’ve got my own notes on how to run a secret society! I’ve tried to run through Kingmaker TWICE! Terzo’s player: And they’re playing a paranoid scholar. GM: And an Alazario - fair enough. Civilla: It looks like we’re getting roped into resurrecting the Silver Ravens. If not us, who else? Terzo: If nobody does anything, nothing will change. And there is nobody else, so it has to be us. Raxus suggests we go to the Long Road Coffeehouse, to meet another possible contact. Terzo: Bath first.

A Situation Has Arisen - it turns out the aliens we were beating up really had a good reason to be here. Hero Shrew: We probably should have realised something was up when we saw that the security guards were unconscious and stacked against a wall, instead of splattered all over it. Of course now we have to patch up the seriously hurt pilot and one of the other aliens, before we can do anything else. She was connected to the computers when we came in blasting. Hardlight: I may have just accidentally screwed that up. What am I talking about, I did it on purpose, and I’m superbly embarrassed. It’s also not easy to get a straight answer from the aliens about how much time before the invisible starship re-enters, or exactly why they needed to commandeer half the satellite fleet, but most of that is the result of half-arsed translation software. The Magus OoC: It’s got a huge STOP sign in the rulebook so I need to ask the GM first, but can I please invent a Universal Translator spell so we stop having this problem? Apparently the reason they had to abandon the ship was because of serious damage to the power systems by a stowaway and saboteur. Fireflash: And which one are you? Alien Business-demon: *indignantly* I am Captain! The ship will probably also self-destruct now, if it detects anybody boarding it without proper protocols, so teleporting to it probably isn’t going to work. Hardlight uses his civilian ID and business community connections to ask if we can use WorldSat’s primary server farm to try and connect to the alien ship before it craters Edge City. One hopes they’ll be agreeable. And answer their phones promptly. Hardlight: *texting everybody while simultaneously frantically talking on his phone* Hey everybody? Ask for Forgiveness. At least we can teleport into the main server farm instead of knocking down more walls. Hero Shrew: Hey Flux, Hardlight, how long would it take to make the Qruiser space-capable? Alien Hacker: Ship Is Translating With Ports Open! This Is Not Good! Not Good! Apparently one of the aliens - their magic user apparently - recognises SOMETHING about the Magus’ teleport spell, and recoils with abject horror after the jump. The Magus: Don’t worry about it, I’m reformed. Fux: I don’t believe a word of it. Hardlight: All I know is that his Teleports hurt. Fux: You should try it with your Third Eye open. Hero Shrew: Did I miss something? Seemed like an ordinary teleport to me. Hardlight: You just used ‘ordinary’ ‘and ‘teleport’ in one sentence. Hero Shrew: Sure. It wasn’t destructive at that end and we didn’t get reconstituted from a pool of blood at this end. Or did we? Fux: We’ll never know. Their hacker can’t stop the ship from crashing. Or redirect it away from the city. And self-destructing it will be very bad given the Dark Matter engine. And it’s already entering the exosphere. Hero Shrew: Hey Magus, can you open some kind of portal in front of it so it becomes somebody else's problem??? Instead, Magus hurried invents a Flying Belt, slaps it onto Hero Shrew, and the Moreau finally gets to use his Stronger Than a Locomotive power. Hardlight: Scooter, this is your big ‘Superman Saves The Plane’ moment. The aliens turn off the ship's cloaking device, and Fireflash grabs the shrew and flies off at top speed to intercept. The Magus: OK, Scooter, the Flight Belt will obey your thoughts. Actually that’s a terrible idea, Scooter has a lot of stray thoughts. Ok, now it follows what’s in your heart. Fux: Just make it so he points where he wants to go. The open pod ports are the only thing Scooter can get a grip on (and the only thing that was blazing on re-entry) given the frictionless metal. Then it turns invisible again, to Scooter’s shock. Thankfully it’s just the cloaking device being turned back on. Fireflash: OK, I’ll direct Scooter to that wrecked and empty lot. Hero Shrew: Wow, this spaceship is really slippery. Fireflash: Well don’t drop it, we’ll never find it again. Hardlight: Oh look, he’s flying over an orphanage. At least the Dark Matter engines would probably have survived the crash without exploding, even if we hadn’t brought it down safely. The alien captain is more concerned about losing her charter thanks to accidental contact with a pre-Warp civilization. Scooter is mostly pleased that he got to show off his muscles. Hero Shrew: So is that stowaway still on board? Alien Captain: No. He was in the other pod. The Team: … Hero Shrew: Oh. I was going to ask about that. Hardlight: Aaaaand it’s right about now that I finally get through to the business council. It doesn’t help that the aliens have no idea what their stowaway looked like. Hero Shrew: It didn’t have acid for blood did it? Hardlight’s Player: I really must play Alien: Isolation in VR sometime. Flux’s Player: Not while I live in the same house. Hero Shrew: Do you want me to tell that UNTIL guy what happened? I’m sure I remember all the details. Fireflash: .... no, I think I’ll handle that. The Aliens aren’t particularly encouraged by the fact that Earth has had other alien visitors in the past, and are utterly horrified to discover that one of those other aliens was an Elder Worm. Alien Mage: They All Dead! They ALL Dead! The Magus: Well, he should be. Alien Mage: Then Make It!!!! They Make Your People Into More Worms! The Magus: He’s tried a few times but got his ass kicked. Alien Mage: Kill Them And All Of Them! Burn Them To Ash And Scatter The Ashes! Hero Shrew: You’re lucky you didn’t come here in 70 years ago, you probably would have been autopsied. UNTIL Rep: To be fair most of them were autopsied because they were already dead. The Magus: Crashes will do that. With the exception of Ironclad who basically walked it off. Hero Shrew: If we do find a way to get you home, will you be in trouble? Alien Captain: Probably not, given the unusual circumstances. But the situation with the stowaway has me most concerned. The stowaway was aggressive, and technologically proficient, and we don’t know where it is. It did something with our drive that should not have been possible. It made a correspondence point. So this stowaway, which they picked up on a derelict ship they were salvaging, somehow knew enough to take the alien ship straight to Earth and then sabotaged the safety systems in such a way to force the launch of all escape pods and crew towards the nearest inhabitable planet. They have a picture of the derelict - and it’s a classic Flying Saucer. Little Green Men from Mars, or rather Sirians that used Mars as an invasion staging point in the 30s. GM: Little Green Men, but usually Grey - only 15% of them are green. But the alien’s lifeforce detector should have picked up any Sirians on the wreck, and it didn’t. Maybe the Magus and Flux can track it down after examining the wreckage it was hiding in to get aboard the other ship. Or at least have a look at exactly what the lifeforce detector DID detect. It’s one of HG Well’s Martians, although the upper part of the body-head really looks like a Sirian’s head. GM: Although the tentacles are a bit spindly. Fux: It just got out of a cold shower. Fireflash: Is there anywhere around here that’s storing Sirian tech? UNTIL Rep: You do understand that whether there is or not my answer will be no? Fireflash: If this thing gets its tentacles on Sirian tech we may have a problem UNTIL Rep: … I’ll kick it up the chain. GM: If you really want to understand where the Sirians sit in the Champions Universe, think of them as the Daleks But With Even More Fail. Fireflash uses her Retrocognition to figure out what the Sirian Tree Octopus was doing aboard the alien’s ship as it snuck around, which included siphoning off some of the dark matter to power its modifications to the systems. The aliens aren’t happy about having Fireflash aboard their ship, but since the Magus has already scanned most of it with Magesight they reluctantly let her get on with it. Between their various researches and study of the Sirian wreckage, the smarter members of the team come to an alarming conclusion - the thing that came to Earth in the sixth pod was an experimental Sirian Warrior, a specially designed and self-improving biomechanoid supersoldier. It was supposed to be part of the last Sirian invasion. GM: Oh F***, I’ve just realised - this is Invader Zim only competent. The Magus OoC: Just lacking supplies. Flux OoC: Have you seen this planet? That’s easily rectified. GM: It’s the alien version of ‘Dude, You’re Screwed’.

Pathfinder : Hell's Bright Shadow - A Night At The Opera Civilla’s character’s Drawback is Family Ties. Terzo’s player: Just Family Ties or 80s sitcoms in general? All: …. GM: That was a Kevin-level joke and you should be ashamed. Civilla’s player: When I found this Pokeball item in the TTS menu I said ‘Yes, I’m using that to keep my Summoned Monsters in’ Ayva’s player: Giant F***-off Toad, I choose you! Civilla’s Player: I can’t summon those yet. Ayva’s player: Small F***-off Toad, I choose you! Closing Kintargi’s beloved opera house is not the only bizarre thing Barzillai Thrune has done - his other proclamations include banning the drinking of tea after sunset, and declaring that mint is an abomination. Terzo: The man is a cad. I might, if pressed, go so far as to describe him as a knob-end. Terzo: He’s not married? At his age? Surely he should have ensured an heir and a spare by now. I mean, I don’t envy whoever he’s been married off to, but it’s not like House Thrune haven’t been sticking their… fingers… in everything else. He comes to a city widely acknowledged as having the most beautiful people of the Inner Sea, and the only locals he wants to meet are the canines. Heaven knows there are reasons one might want to conceal one's personal predilections - there’s more beards in Kintargo theatre then there are the nearest dwarfhold - but it’s like the man WANTS to go down in history as Barzillai the Dogf***er. Between people who have been financially inconvenienced by martial law or the closure of the opera house, and people desperately trying to find any anti-government allies that haven’t already been rounded up and publicly tortured to death by Thrune’s agents, and people just tagging along to see what happens, and people pickpocketing the crowd, and Thrune’s Blackshirts, there’s quite a large crowd gathering in Aria Park opposite the Opera House. On the other hand quite a large number of Kintargo’s citizens have gone missing entirely, including the former Lord-Mayor Jilia Bainilus, and the outspoken opera diva Shensen. Anya is there to protest the government. Ayva: The current government, at least. The last one wasn’t very good, but you take what you can get. Terzo is ostensibly there because he invested an unwise proportion of his savings in the next season of the opera, but under his cheerful facade he actually carries a deep loathing of the Asmodean church and House Thrune. Rajira was actually going to BE in the next season of the opera, in Huntress of Heroes. Civilla is there to ensure her former tutor, Terzo, doesn’t get himself arrested with the rest of the mob. Terzo: Ah, Ms. Ononda, isn’t it? One of ‘Shensen’s Songbirds’ as I recall. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from her? I was quite looking forward to seeing your performance in Huntress of Heroes - you never forget your first night in a starring role. Although I must admit it’s been a few years since I played the lead in Ser Curlique. Rajira: And you don’t seem to have changed in size at all. Civilla: Ouch. Terzo: I don’t think I could play Ser Curlique anymore - perhaps his acquaintance Ser Lavagna? ‘Hurry Uuuupppp’. Ah, Civilla, dear girl, there you are - have you met Ms. Ononda? Of course Huntress of Heroes was already a controversial choice, given the current political climate. Maybe that’s why Shensen has gone missing. Most of us get to work agitating the crowd. Terzo, for example, loudly points out that some of the new laws would almost be acceptable if they were imposed by an actual local, instead of somebody like Thrune. Terzo: Why should a tiny city across the sea regulate the price of tea? And of course, indirectly slandering Thrune about the dog thing. Trying to polarize the crowd and drown out the Blackshirts etc is also a option to take - Anya pointing out that the Chellish government are technically still pro-slavery (something she has a personal stake in) shuts some of them up, and Terzo leading a portion of the crowd in a rousing chorus of Do You Hear The People Sing? helps Terzo: Definitely not the kind of song Thrune would want pointed in his direction, either. Thrune, who has claimed the Opera House as his residence for some damned reason, eventually stops ignoring the gathering crowd and comes out onto the balcony. Barzillai Thrune: Ah, my adoring little chickadees. I am sorry to say I have not yet adapted to your quaint, country ways, being accustomed as I am to the sophistication and learning of Egorian. Nonetheless, know I have heard your concerns, and that I appreciate your valued feedback, and I know we shall eventually find a mutual understanding in the fullness of time. I take pride in updating Kintargo’s quaint, outdated laws to the modern standards the city deserves, and strengthening its ties with the empire in these cruel times, but obviously I have approached my duties too aggressively. You say you chafe at the presence of nonnatives in positions of power? That authorities not of this city have no place as its leaders? That you will not be yoked by intruders? Your lord-mayor hears you. And so it is with a heavy heart that I issue this proclamation, in response to your demands: all ships’ captains are hereafter barred from leaving their vessels and setting foot on Kintargo docks or streets, under pain of... let’s say... squassation!” That is not good - a large proportion of the city’s wealth comes from the port, and he’s just made us very unpopular. Terzo: You take away our art and now you take away our income?! Somebody manages to fling manure up three stories, and the inquisitor spills his drink over his robes. Thrune is not the kind of man to take constructive criticism well. He sets his Dotarri on the crowd. And he had an alarmingly large number of armed agents hidden in the crowd. GM: If you can move off the map this round you can escape the riot. Terzo: I’m not going to leave these young women behind! Ayva: I’m older than you! Terzo: But you look younger so chivalry applies. Ayva: You flatterer, you. Terzo is the first one to get clubbed down, anyway. Evidently Thrune’s curs have no compunction about hitting old men. So the three women have to fight for themselves - Civilla Summons some of her creatures and whistles for her carriage, and Rajira gets just a teeny bit murderous with her kukri. Rajira: Grab the fat guy! Ayva: You must be kidding. Civilla: Please! The two of us should be able to drag him. Then Rajira gets ‘subdued’ - she’s going to need to be carried out too. Civilla: When we reach the edge of the park I summon a Chthonic Dolphin. GM: As if the riot wasn’t weird enough… And Thrune’s bodyguard Nox can apparently shrug off a dagger to the throat, although the NPC that knifed her is willing to help haul Terzo’s unconscious bulk out of the escalating riot, and we flee just before hellhounds get set on the crowd. Unfortunately there’s not enough room for the stranger in Civilia’s carriage, which she apologises profusely for. Maybe we’ll run into him again - he was certainly a dab hand with a thrown dagger. Civilla frets a bit until she’s sure Terzo and Rajira aren’t bleeding to death, and relaxes. Civilla: *mutters dark thoughts* I wonder if that one with the dung was a plant. Rajira: *mumbles* … no.. pretty sure he was human… Ayva: Wow. Even when she’s unconscious. Civilla orders her footman to drive the carriage back to her apartments. About an hour later Rajira and Terzo regain consciousness. Rajira: Ow. Terzo: *clutches head* I didn’t think I’d drunk that much… Civilla: You didn’t. You were struck in the head. Terzo: Hmm. I could say I’m surprised that Thrune is the kind of man that hires the kind of thugs that attack unarmed old men, but I’m really not. Civilla: He may not have hired them, but I strongly suspect that one that threw the manure was an agitator. Rajira OoC: A Chinese agitator - Who Flung Dung. Rajira comes around with a literal ‘Where am I?’ - she does want to know exactly who had a carriage on hand to get us out of there. It’s certainly evidence that Civilla has strong family connections, as well as wealth. Terzo is more interested in apologizing abjectly to the three women, for letting them get into such danger, especially since rescuing him put them into even more danger. And then he’ll have to find a few bottles of wine, since his Drawback is Hedonism. Ayva: Ah - a drunkard. GM: Wine, Women, or Song. Civilla: Well don’t look at me. Things get worse for the people of Kintargo, with armed groups of Thrune’s curs patrolling the streets on top of the curfew restrictions, etc. A few days later Rajira has to rescue a nobleman from a group of them. She does that by cutting one of their throats from behind. It takes a few goes, and her victim loses his fingers as well as he was trying to hold his throat shut when she slashed his throat again. And then Civilla calls for the Watch. Which shocks the rest of us until she points out that these thugs DID attack a nobleman. Although recognising the victim is a further shock, since he’s the youngest son of the Victocora family, and possibly the only surviving member after their family estate mysteriously burned to the ground a week ago. Rajira: We might have to get him out of here BEFORE the Watch arrives. Raxus Victocora: Do you have somewhere safe? Rajira: Yes. Come with us. Apparently Victocora saw us at the riot, and tried to follow us. He needs our help - Thrune’s agents were responsible for a lot of highly suspicious fires that night, as they eliminated anybody that might be a threat to the Inquisitor’s takeover of Kintargo. And we, at least, were influential enough to stir up the crowd, and lucky enough to not get arrested and tortured to death at the riot. Raxus Victocora: You are people of uncommon skill and I am a man of uncommon need. Rajira: This is my city - I have no wish to see it under the thumb of outsiders. Civilla: My Aunt Ginevra will hate me for this… Terzo: So. You want us to be rebels against the Chelish government? Well, my family always said I was the black sheep - I’m in. Ayva: What have we got to lose? Rajira: We might get killed. Ayva: We nearly got killed attending a peaceful protest. Victocora has a letter from a now dead relative, pointing us towards possible allies - the Order of Archivists who try to preserve historical records threatened by the Chellish equivalent of the Ministry of Truth, and the Silver Ravens, who protected Kintargo during the last civil war. The Ravens apparently have a hideout underneath the abandoned Fair Fortune’s Livery. Terzo OoC: We'll have to invent petrol engines in Pathfinder just so we'll have a place to hang Barzillai Thrune upside-down. Either that or post him to Civilla's brother in the Shackles - all pirates need a friend. Or chum. Ayva’s player: I’d quite like to do a prison break scenario at some point. Terzo’s player: Depending how this goes, we might have to - it’s not like we’re professional revolutionaries. Civilla’s player: First order of business, don’t get caught. Rajira OoC: Running from rooftop to rooftop is theoretically possible, but will involve a lot of climbing and leaping. Terzo OoC: Then let us hope we don’t have to do that, because Terzo leaping from roof to roof is ridiculous. Civilla OoC: I too am lacking in fantasy parkour skills. Terzo: It’s been quite a few years since I’ve had to use any kind of disguise spell… late nights meeting up with like-minded individuals… Civilla: Such is the price of celebrity. Terzo: I'd better go fetch my rapier from under the bed. Civilla’s OoC: Probably wise. I’m bringing my umbrella - so I have at least one square where I can Summon things in, without people noticing. The four of us and Victocora dress inconspicuously and squash into Civilla’s carriage, and try to get across town without being spied on. The strangest thing about the abandoned livery is that nobody has occupied the building - the nearby tiefling slum can’t be as overpopulated as it might be. Civilla: It might be a meeting-place for the local ne'er-do-wells - my Ears of the City spell wouldn’t have told me that. Terzo’s essentially spherical nature leads to problems with things beyond parkour. GM: It’s chained, but loosely enough that any medium creature should be able to slip in easily. Terzo: Ah - slight problem there. Civilla: Well, while Rajira picks the lock on the chain, the rest of us behave as though we’re slightly tipsy and looking for a little... Rajira: Privacy for an assignation? Civilla: Indeed. Ayva OoC: Any performance by Terzo is widescreen. Civilla: It’s been a long time since Terzo has slipped into anything. Other than a bottle. Unfortunately the livery is already occupied by large angry half-starved mastiffs. Terzo: I’m amazed they haven’t already been acquired for Thrune’s collection. Or should I say harem. Ayva: I should have brought some meat with me… Terzo: I shouldn’t have eaten that sandwich on the way here. Terzo is soon mauled by the largest mastiff. GM: You are a tasty tasty ham. Wine-glazed, even. Poking around after the fight reveals the old killing floor from when the building was an abattoir, and a secret door that isn’t very secret anymore. Terzo: Hopefully the ‘killing floor’ bit isn’t a portent.

Champions : Return to Edge City : V Is For Visitors A few night later, while various party members are chomping on midnight mealworm bars, doing something wizardly up in the hills, drinking at a late-night party, and so on, a fiery SOMETHING narrowly misses Fireflash as she’s flying home from university, another takes out the top of Plaza Tower, and the other half-dozen light up the rest of town like daylight before they crash into the sea. Whatever they were they’ve also dropped burning debris all along their flight paths. Hardlight: I carefully put down my drink and dash off to change into my costume. Fireflash: I don’t know about you but I’m definitely buzzed. The Magus turns on the rain to control the spot fires as we converge on the Plaza - fortunately this happened at 3AM so the casualties should be limited, but we’ll still need to check for anybody still alive in the upper floors, which now have a large hole right through the building. GM: Plaza Tower is the tallest building in Edge City. Hero Shrew: Possibly not for much longer. Fireflash and Hardlight are scanning the upper floors for survivors, Flux has life support armour to go in anywhere he needs to, and Scooter stays down at ground level clearing debris off the roads so the emergency vehicles can get in. Hardlight: Oh my god, the team actually knows basic disaster relief. Fireflash also checks with the building security if anybody was logged in as being on those floors, and to our great relief there shouldn’t be. In fact, it looks like sheer fluke has prevented any fatalities in the tower. Hardlight bubbles fires to smother them. It’s still fortunate that the city’s emergency coordination centre wasn’t actually in Plaza Tower. Hero Shrew does think to look for any debris that isn’t part of the building, but is a bit too busy to look closely. Fireflash: Better make sure none of that debris is radioactive or toxic. Hardlight: What the hell was this anyway? A meteor strike? The Magus: Firewing sneezed. Probably not a re-entering satellite - whatever they were they came in from the east, which is unlikely. And once the situation here is dealt with, we can go use the Qruiser’s submarine capabilities to find whatever they were. Although the Navy ships en route do try to wave us off. If they were Coast Guard they could actually do it. We find where they settled into the sediment, but they’re not there now. It looks suspiciously like somebody beat us to the site and moved the objects back in towards shore. There’s also a number of individuals in US Marine power armour. But since we used our police powers to declare it a police emergency, they might just be here to observe and demarcate the limit of international waters, so it doesn’t become Their Problem. The Magus: Gosh, it’s like we need somebody who can reconstruct events of the past. Fireflash does so, but what she gets most of is fish fleeing the scene. And five humanoid things carrying six objects back in the direction of the city. The Navy are probably going to want to know, since that implies the objects were escape capsules or an invasion force. Let’s hope that there’s lots of security cameras along the coast - and that Magus’ rain spell hasn’t stopped us actually seeing them come ashore. It does occur to Flux that we can use one of the scanning spells in reverse, to find anything in the debris that wasn’t part of Plaza Tower. Magus is impressed, and annoyed that he didn’t think of it first. It takes a while to sift through everything that isn’t a photocopier or the shredded remains of a surveillance pigeon, but we do find a shard of curiously oily metal covered in what might be blood. It may have had more blood on it earlier, but the friction coefficient of the metal is so low that most of it probably slipped right off again. The Magus: Anybody got one of those evidence baggies we’re supposed to be carrying? Flux: No? The Magus: Well, I’ll put it in one of the baggies that definitely didn’t contain some of my ‘supplies’ from earlier this evening. Which reminds me, hold this, I left my summoning circle on. We rule out that it was a local lacerated by the shard, too, so it was definitely one of the recent arrivals that was wounded in the collision. Flux: Hag about, you’ve got a spell that hugs people, and a spell called Sugar Crash. Now all you need is a Disabling Tickle Attack. You’re like a 5-yr-old that’s been given magic. The Magus OoC: At this point I’m pretty much a Dark Magical Girl The Magus tries a few spells on the blood, and does determine that the visitors are invisible to his detection spells. The Magus: Unfair - I have REASONS to be invisible to divination magic. I deal with major demonic cults! The shard on the other hand did come from something ‘Up.’ A Ways Up. We get two messages - one from UNTIL requesting a meeting, and one from the EC Fire Department thanking us for the assistance last night. Although carefully not thanking us for the rain spell since weather manipulation is banned by international treaty. Hardlight: There’s some data scientist at NOAA that’s had to reset all the predictions. Flux: Just blame it on 5G. And the first call came through immediately after we determined where the reentry capsules came from. Phone: We need to talk. Flux: God? Is that you? The representative lets us know that UNTIL’s space station detected a high energy event in low earth orbit, and tracked the six pods to Edge City, but immediately lost track of whatever the pods came from. Hero Shrew: Maybe they popped back into hyperspace after dropping them off? UNTIL Rep: We’re unaware of any species that utilise hyperspace. The Magus OoC: Apart from you guys, in your teleporters. GM: A fact that is not public knowledge so his statement is still true as far as you’re concerned. Hero Shrew: Maybe they had a Romulan Cloaking Device? UNTIL Rep: … you do know the Romulans are fictional, right? Hero Shrew: *looks innocent* They are? Fireflash: Scooter, stop trolling the government agent. The UNTIL guy is a bit annoyed that the Magus can still locate where the pods came from hours after all their space tech lost it. Us recovering that shard might help. Hero Shrew: It looks oily, but it doesn’t smell oily. I haven’t done a taste test yet. Fireflash: Well don’t. Flux: It might be radioactive. Hero Shrew: Will I get extra super-powers? UNTIL Rep: Hmm. That’s weird. Looks like a Mandaarin alloy. They visited Earth as peaceful explorers in 99. Hero Shrew: Well, a lot can change in 20 years - here on Earth big hoop earrings were back in fashion. Mandaarins surprisingly, aren’t orange and sort of round, but are instead mostly human in appearance, although about 40% of them are psychic. It’s surprising that they didn’t reach out for assistance from Earth’s governments, if they were in trouble. But as one of the most advanced races in the galaxy, it’s a bit alarming that they ould need help at all. Hero Shrew: Maybe they’re Mandaarin criminals trying to hide among the human population. Or a hunting party. Or Bounty hunters. UNTIL Rep: What part of ‘peaceful explorers’ did you fail to understand? We give him the debris for further study. Hero Shrew: I’m surprised you hadn’t asked for it already. You’ve got all those machines that go ping. UNTIL Rep: Yesssss… we have lots of machines that go ping. *aside* Is he for real? Flux: I’m afraid so. Fireflash: He hasn’t eaten in a while. Flux OoC: So, aliens have invaded Earth before? GM: Yes. One of the most famous superheroes in the world is an alien. Hero Shrew OoC: So is one of the most famous supervillains. GM: Yes. They often fight. Flux failed to detect any more of the alien alloy in Edge City, when he scanned for it. Flux: To be fair I haven’t had my coffee yet. Building another detector is probably still wise, but we’d need to keep some of the debris. Flux: Can we break it into two? UNTIL Rep: It’s pretty damn tough. Hero Shrew: Now I really want to chew on it. Hardlight: I don’t want to find out how many types of cancer he’ll get from having it in his mouth. UNTIL Rep: If you don’t understand their tech, it’s probably Mandaarian. They’re that advanced. In a few hundred years their entire civilization might up and leave the Milky Way. Flux: ‘We like the physics one galaxy over’. Hero Shrew: Well that makes it even weirder that their re-entry was so clumsy. So on top of all this, it’s probably alarming that WorldSat have lost contact with half their satellites. Flux: ‘ET Phone Home’ Hero Shrew: Theoretically speaking, if there was an entire alien fleet with Romulan Cloaking Devices up there, would it block radio transmissions but still be transparent to visible light? Hardlight: Now I have to wrack my brain for ways to defeat an alien invasion. Hero Shrew: The common cold! Fireflash: Cut them off at the ankles - that'll defeet them. We head over to the WorldSat building, in case the problem is at this end, and are surprised to find a very neat square hole in one of the upstairs windows. Magus’ Ghostsight spell soon determines that the building’s security personnel are alive, but unconscious, and neatly stacked against the wall, and that there are other beings crowded into and around the server room. Two of them appear to be Star Trek aliens, one is a human businesswoman with small horns, one appears to be a wolf Moreau, and one is a heavily armed and cyborged out the wazoo. Hero Shrew: So probably not Mandaarians then. GM: Nope - because none of them could pass for human. The Magus: Although there’s any number of Edge City gangs they could fit into without comment. Fireflash and Hardlight plan to fly in the hole and target the pastrolling wolf-morph, while the rest of the team teleport in and gang-cape the cyborg. The Magus will teleport straight back out, taking the security guys with him. Hero Shrew: Just making sure he IS a cyborg right? Fireflash: That’s what the Magus’ spell says. So no dismantling. Hero Shrew: But putting extra right angles in his limbs won’t be as much of a problem? Unfortunately one of the bad guys has Danger Sense, and stun+entangle grenades. And some sort of sealant gun that glues Scooter to the floor. Hero Shrew: What the h*** did they spray me with, starship glue?? GM: Yes. That’s exactly what they sprayed you with. Hero Shrew OoC: I’m frustrated - I want to hit people, the team wants me to hit people, there’s people RIGHT THERE I can hit, and here I am stuck to the floor. It might help us if we knew what they were saying, but of course we don’t speak Alien and they seem unwilling to compromise. Some of the associated gestures don't seem very flattering. Fortunately the Magus teleports back into the building and gives the rest of the team some much-needed assistance in the form of police-approved comas. Various other four-colour pyrotechnics ensue, which is only to be expected when 10 superhumans get together and immeadiately start swinging. Wolf-guy, who got blown out an upper-storey window, uses an Entangle grenade on himself to reduce the damage from his imminent argument with gravity. Hardlight hurriedly creates a giant green glowing catcher’s mitt, anyway. Quite a bit of damage is done to this floor of the building, and the various participants, but with the exception of the steel being ripped out of the walls by Flux to try and entangle the aliens, and the fact that one of the aliens appears to be bleeding out, none of it looks like it’ll be lasting. Quite a few thankfully non-loadbearing walls do get turned into confetti, however. Scooter finally breaks free of the starship glue and takes considerable pleasure out of punching the cyborg in his carbon-nanotube kidneys. It’s at this point the cyborg finally decides to speak English. He points at the alien currently unconscious underneath him. Cyborg: If This One Does Not Pilot Ship Down It Will Crash Into City. Hero Shrew: *skids to a halt* It would have been nice to tell us that EARLIER. Hardlight: I told you guys we should have tried to talk to them first! GM: You guys are making me think of a Miley Cyrus song. Fireflash’s player: Which one? GM: Wrecking Ball. Hero Shrew: We are going to get so many dirty looks… GM: It’s just as well two of you guys have Repair spells.

Champions : Return To Edge City : Silverfish Bait Fireflash is out patrolling one evening when she spots some suspicious midnight furniture removal. Or possibly cow-tipping, with trucks. Hardlight: Was there a football game tonight? GM: That’s actually a good question. Fireflash flies over to the possible drunken hooligans, who are shaking and yelling at a truck with dark windows, and asks what is going on. They take one look at her and run off. She knocks on the van and asks if everybody inside is okay, whereupon the rear doors open and somebody says ‘We will be!’. It’s another attempt to catch Fireflash, by the Doomtroopers. One might ask why Fireflash is out patrolling alone if this kind of thing keeps happening, but as the GM points out, Fireflash is the only member of Quadrant that can be trusted not to turn a basic patrol into a disaster. And there is also the problem that if Scooter, say, is trying to keep up with her, he’d keep running into buildings and passing traffic. It would probably help if we’d set The Magus up with a link to the Crime Computer too, but we keep forgetting. It would certainly help co-ordinating the response of the rest of the team, and whether it would be faster for us to converge on Fireflash’s position ourselves, or have whoever is at the base and has the keys to the Qruiser come pick us up. By the time Flux gets there, he’s in time to see Fireflash being loaded into the back of the van, but instead of driving off in it the Doomtroopers rappel up to their invisible helicopter. Flux: The package has been collected. Hero Shrew: Well stop them getting away! Flux: Scooter, we had a meeting about this, we let her get captured then we follow them back to their base. Fireflash: Please tell me they’re not having this conversation over our unsecured comm channel. By the time the rest of us get there, there’s smoke coming out of the back of the van. Scooter pulls the doors off the van, revealing a circle of melted electronics and no Fireflash. Flux: Tracking teleports is a pain. Hardlight: We planned for this, remember. Flux: I know, but now we have to go get the Magus because we forgot to key him into the Crime Computer AGAIN and he hasn’t got any of the push notifications. At least we have three different ways to track her - one tracker that’s only there for ARGENT to find, one active-on-demand tracker that the one we hope they don’t look for, and a lock of her hair we can track magically if we have to. Hero Shrew: And hopefully they haven’t dipped her in Nair(™) Flux: It doesn’t work like tha- actually that’s a good point. But why would they depilate her if they don’t know about magical tracking? GM: To have more places to attach the electrodes. Fireflash: Ow. Flux: It’ll take me an hour to set up my magical tracking device, but if we get the Magus here it’s five minutes of wiggling. GM: I can’t wait to hear your explanation of all this to the Magus. The Magus is suitably impressed by a plan so half-assed that most of us had forgotten the details. Although in Scooter’s case that probably took under 24 hours. Flux: Sorry we didn’t give you the log-in earlier. Or the low-down. The Magus does suggest we at least LOOK like we’re investigating the remains of the van, before he does his stuff. Apparently Fireflash isn’t that far away - somewhere at the south end of Edge City’s medical center. Hero Shrew: Just point me at whatever you want me to punch. Flux: No, no, no punching yet. I want negative punch. Hero Shrew:... what, hitting myself? The Magus can tell she’s underground, in some kind of sensor equipment, and on an IV drip. He can also tell there’s some large blocks of Edge City opaque to magevision, which will probably bear later investigation, but ARGENT or whoever paid to kidnap Fireflash aren't keeping her in one. He can also see what he presumes is a roomful of cloning tanks. Flux: Who needs a tunneling machine when we have a giant shrew. Flux OoC: I can think of one major problem with our tunneling equipment - most mining machines don’t need to surface regularly and say ‘I should have taken that left at Albuquerque’. Hero Shrew OoC: Hey, that rabbit cut Florida off from the mainland. Flux OoC: … true. You still need a Disguise skill of at least 30. GM: Nah, just a deep understanding of his opponent’s fetishes. The Magus also points out that we should have the police cordon off the building before we go in - ARGENT is an illegal organisation in the US, but we can probably guarantee they’ll have the ARGENT logo on all the stuff in their secret base. They have a strong internal corporate culture, and presumably don’t make their employees pee in bottles. Of course, timing will be everything - we can probably also guarantee they’re listening to all police band communications. Probably best that we use teleportation to organise the police back-up, and then teleport our team into the sewer entrance and sweep in from there. Of course the moment we teleport in the pressure sensors in the floor go off - they might not have defenses against teleporters specifically, but this just proves they don’t need them. Hardlight: Scooter, punch those doors in. Hero Shrew: I thought you wanted Negative Punch? *punches them out of their frames anyway* The ARGENT staff in the dormitory are a bit surprised to see us - they’re still in their underoos. But we can hear machinery somewhere nearby starting up. Hardlight: That better not be an army of Fireflash clones. The security staff we’ve just surprised do have instant-armour-deployment hatches above their bunks, although they at least look embarrassed at having transformation sequences. Hero Shrew OoC: Doesn’t bother me - now they’re in armour I can hit them as hard as I like. ARGENT Mook: *thinking* Out of all these supers that guy is the only one that stands out. Magus looks... Normal. I don’t trust that. *Shoots Magus*. As it happens it’s Hardlight who forgets how fragile humans can be, and blasts one of the as-yet-unarmoured mooks most of the way through a wall. Hardlight: Oh S*** oh S*** oh S*** Flux OoC: You’re rolling GREAT for once. Hardlight: I just did that in front of Hero Shrew! Flux: We had a meeting about that sort of thing - I ignored most of it, but still. We soon run into somebody attempting to flee the complex, carrying an unconscious Fireflash. He seems a little perturbed to come face-to-face with the rest of our team. Evil Scientist: Ah. This is problematic. It’s probably even more problematic that any reinforcements from the room with all the tanks have to deal with the Magus-summoned tentacles holding the door shut. Or rather, holding the pieces of the door in place. Flux adds his own Entangle attack. GM: It looks WRONG. The things coming through the door seem a bit wrong, too - despite the various unnatural senses available to the party, it’s not clear whether they’re robots, cyborgs, or just armoured humans. They’re certainly tougher than the armoured mooks. And it would appear there were a lot of them in those tanks we detected. Flux: Who wants to tell Fireflash that she snores? Hardlight revives an understandably annoyed Fireflash, who flies off to apply a therapeutic beat-down. Hardlight OoC: Well there’s your two page spread for this issue. Fireflash OoC: Actually, what are you wearing? GM: Not your costume. Hardlight OoC: Well, it’ll be fine, unless we’re published by Image. GM: If we were published by Image this scene would be on the cover. Flux OoC: And you’d be nude. One of the new bad hits the Magus most of the way down the corridor - he was extremely fortunate there wasn’t a wall behind him, or he’d have ended up like that mook Hardlight accidentally left coughing up internal organs. Another tries to do the same to Hardlight, who frantically preserves the integrity of his cervical vertebrae by throwing up a forcewall that deflects the punch. At least we find out that at least one of these new bad guys are female, or perhaps just programmed with female voice files. Bad Gal: Irregular. They actually hit Hero Shrew hard enough to knock him out. That is alarming. He has a skull like a cinder block. Fireflash suggests a tactical retreat, but the Magus points out that these things, whatever they are, would slaughter the police waiting to apprehend anybody leaving the building. Although judging by the EM spikes Flux can detect from another chamber, a bunch of the Evil Scientists got their emergency teleporter working and are escaping that way. Bad luck for the rest of the staff that didn’t get there in time. Whatever ARGENT came up with when they were creating these guys, they’re certainly highly dangerous, even when they limit themselves to non-lethal attacks. And then the sprinklers go off. As the only one not wrapped in armour, or force fields, he’s the only one that notices the ‘water’ tingles. And smells weird. Hero Shrew: What does cerebrospinal fluid smell like? I think it might be mine. It’s actually scrubbing the complex of DNA evidence. The tanks in the big room were also being purged, but Hardlight gets there in time to stop the program. The contents are all identical clones of a woman we don’t recognise, with cyberbrains installed to ensure total obedience and custom knowledge sets. And it looks like ARGENT were repurposing an old Genesys lab, which will annoy Scooter when his brain stops rattling. It would further seem that ARGENT were planning to use these clone cyber-amazons as replacements for the Doomtroopers when their contract expired. It’s pretty horrendous, actually. Flux is appalled by the theft of free will, for a start, and Fireflash wants to know exactly why they needed her in captivity again. At least we caught one of the scientists. Fireflash: You will now tell me everything. ARGENT Scientist: No I won’t. Fireflash: *blasts a hole through the wall next to his ear* I wasn’t asking. Hero Shrew: How come she gets to kill people, I don’t. Flux: I’m just going to turn off the cameras… we’re going to be in so much trouble. Apparently he genuinely can’t tell us where the computer records are. Or where his boss is. Fireflash: I find that difficult to believe. ARGENT Scientist: That’s because you’re… I mean I’m not surprised. Fireflash: Take this useless POS away before I do something obscenely violent. Hero Shrew: Notice that she didn’t say ‘that I’d regret’. Hardlight: I’m just staying very quiet and out of her way. There’s still a room half-full of clone bodies that hadn’t woke up yet, before Hardlight shut the room down. Hardlight: Do we know any AIs that want physical bodies? Flux: WE ARE NOT GOING THERE. Hero Shrew: Well, at least we got our Fireflash back Flux: Did we though? She might be a clone.*pokepoke* Fireflash: Quit poking me! Flux: It’s her. A clone would have slapped me. The Magus: I’m going to go invent a spell that turns cyberbrains into real brains so people stop being immune to my mental powers. Flux: The mage’s answer to technology, everybody.

Champions : Return To Edge City : A Slow Week There’s been a break-in at one of the LowellTech warehouses. The entire building got cleared out before anybody got here. They left an electronic signature on the looped footage, but also, oddly, an ‘I Was Never Here’ field. It’s not surprising that the Crime Computer missed it, because it really only responds to actual people in danger, but something is clearing affecting the more unusual sensory abilities we have available. The Magus and Flux do rig a tracking spell, and recover the stolen goods, but Hardlight’s impatience means we botch the chance to arrest anyone. Hero Shrew: And because Hardlight did a Leroy Jenkins the bad guy got away? The Magus: We didn’t even SEE the bad guy. Flux: By the time we found out that we could have found out it was too late to find out. Although Scooter does have news about a new player in Studio City - this Moreau goes by King Tiger. He’s a student of the Shaolin temple, and has been attracting students. Apparently he’s a bit pissed to have missed an invite to that martial arts tournament. He’s also been speaking out against Madam Lil and Colin as representatives of the community. GM: The problem isn’t that he’s vocal, it’s that he’s vocal and people are listening. It’s certainly true that the prostitution at the Collar Club and Madam Lil’s establishment is either illegal or legally problematic, but King Tiger dislikes the tone set by having a brothel owner and a pimp represent the community, more than the legal aspects. He wants to be the Zoo’s face himself, and promote closer relationships with the neighbouring Chinatown. The growing rift it’s provoking might be a problem. Hero Shrew: I feel a need to protect Colin - he gave me a job. That proves he has good judgement. The Magus: This King Tiger might have a point. Although King Tiger turns out to be a good name, since he’s 10 foot tall and can bench-press 6 ½ tonnes. He’s also clashed with Wild Kingdom a few times. Flux: I’ll put a tick in the positive column there. Flux: As long as he doesn’t start anything, I say we don’t get involved. Hero Shrew OoC: I’m more concerned about the growing rift in the tiny Moreau community, but Political Awareness does not feature prominently on Scooter’s character sheet. So we ask The Rep for advice, which is as bad as you might expect. Being Pro-Colin can also be construed as being pro-prostitution and pro-explotation. A public stance of being anti-King Tiger could still work, however. As usual, we feel the need for a shower when we’re done. Hero Shrew: I should tell Colin privately that I’m on his side. If a five minute conversation with The Rep is any indication, I really don’t want to get involved in politics full-time. There’s more Moreau kids on the way too - the contraceptive implants are really starting to fail. And it also appears some Moreaus were engineered for accelerated maturation. Hardlight: Are variously-shaped prophylatics going to be required in future? I should do some research. … I just said that out loud didn’t I. The Magus and Flux do figure out how to dismiss that depressed Chinese Demon that’s been hanging the Zoo back to the Hells, who bows and hands them a note with a written character and old Chinese coin before vanishing. The character is ‘debt’ - apparently getting him out of a contract that he could not complete means he owes us a favour.

Actual people remain anonymous, to protect the guilty A: if the cat is already dead when it goes inside the box, could it become alive again in its unobserved state? Only thing that supports my theory is the story of Lazarus and the resurrection of Christ But both of those lack boxes B: Boxes are a prerequisite. Which may explain the fascination cats hve with them... A: Could it be thats the reason behind the longevity of cats? they are part time dead? could explain the 9 lives C: Jesus dies and gets put in a rock box [cave]. For three days he is both in the rock box and "with god." On day 3 they open the rock box and the chocolate egg industry is born. A: So boxes are basically more efficient and portable caves? B: No, caves are less efficient and portable boxes. A:so how does the chocolate egg tie into it? B: Any time you get cats and boxes together you have to expect side effects. A: wait wait i got it, in the Hobbit, eggs was the answer to the riddle concerning a box with no lid, lock or hinge but golden treasure lies within! Cause of the caves inefficiency and the fact Christ is a lizard *See lizard Mary theory* we have unexpected side effects of the quantum Resurrection B: Now explain the bunnies.

On the Rajira character pic above - "Now there is a Face that says "Your future holds many things: Death, Snu-Snu or Death by Snu-Snu"."

Characters for the next campaign - In Hell's Bright Shadow Civilla Alazario: Changeling scholar and arcanist with occult ties beyond the material world. The family Alazario (motto: Sword or pen, we conquer all) have branches all over the former Chellish empire, and scions of the House include a Pirate Captain of the Shackles. The core branches are loyal to House Thrune, but heavy influence from the Varisian branch in Magnimar causes internal conflict. The Alazarios live their lives by 5 questions and the 4th - Who do you serve and who do you trust? - weighs heavily on Civilla's mind. Rajira: A Vishkanya, exotic humanoids with a proficiency for poisons. Since she’s also a Rogue, and devotee of the goddess of lust and revenge, woe betide anybody that attracts her ire. Ayva Romanya: Half-Elf Tattooed Sorcerer. Her earliest years are a mystery but at a young age she was taken as a slave by Dwarven followers of Droskar the dark smith. She took to the life of toil like a fish to water, honing her craft as she grew. When her 'Parents' mysteriously went to the Dark Furnace early she set out on her own, keeping her joy of 'frivolous' painting as her comfort. "Adventure and toil awaits!" Terzo Porcinus: An over-the-hill bard, who used to be highly experienced but lost most of those skills because he hasn’t actually worked in years, on top of two decades of wine for breakfast. If the Pickled Ham industry ever needs a mascot, Terzo is their man. In Hell’s Bright Shadow is set in Kintargo, a city in the nation of Cheliax. The Chelish government (diabolists all) has a minor problem at the moment - a growing uprising at the other end of the country, so Kintargo is currently under martial law, specifically the law of one Inquisitor Barzillai Thrune. Terzo: You do have to wonder what Thrune was thinking when he came to a city where the two main pastimes are opera, and muttering about overthrowing the government - and he bans the opera. (You also have to wonder what the writers were thinking when they created a country that is clearly supposed to be Fantasy Italy, and made the state religion devil-worship.)

I was wondering why the GM was so keen on having the wedding in the capitol... Maybe, but also a neat cliffhanger ending for the campaign

Pathfinder : The Mummy's Mask - Finale Zenobia’s player: Anyway, that was my bad day - let’s see if we can give Hakotep’s widow Neferuset a bad day of her own. Asrian’s player: Double widow. Zenobia’s player: True, they were both already undead. Nemat: It occurs to me that to accomplish my future plans I need to seek an audience with the legitimate Pharaoh. Onka: I don’t think that will be a problem - we just saved his entire kingdom. Nemat: But I need to get his permission to take possession of an Osirion landmark. Zenobia: Ubet’s Folly at Wati? Cheap at half the price, I should think. He’ll probably be grateful you don’t want more. Asrian uses Hero’s Feast to buff us all. Onka: It shouldn’t take us more than two hours to deal with her. Zenobia: Unless she comes looking to see what happened to her husband. Asrian: True, she might show up while we’re eating. GM: A Teleportation circle opens in front of you. Zenobia: While we’re having breakfast? GM: Yes. Zenobia OoC: I’ll delete those temporary hit points then. GM: Nothing comes through the circle. Nemat: Ah, it’s an invitation. Which I choose to ignore until we’ve finished the feast. Zenobia OoC: I’ll put those temporary hit points back on again. Onka: Pass the chicken. THEN we go through the teleport circle - even if Neferuset has a small army waiting at the other side, our chances are still actually pretty good. We’ve curbstomped nearly everything else they’ve thrown at us. There’s a disturbing amount of fresh blood and older gore splashed around the chambers beyond, but the decorations and statuary are all Ancient Osirion themed. Which is a bit odd, given we know Neferuset was a devotee of the entities of the Outer Dark, rather than the more familiar gods - even if those more familiar gods include Set, who should be Chaotic enough for anybody. Zenobia: I certainly hope they didn’t collect the friends we left outside the pyramid to provide that blood. It’s certainly easy enough to get past some of the defences, once Onka identifies them, when they’re too stupid to realise we’re walking past them just because we put a paper-thin wall in the way. Nemat OoC: It helps that we have three librarians in the party, instead of murder-hoboes. It also helps that we’re too paranoid to follow blood trails to where they end suddenly in the middle of a corridor. Instead we use Tombsight to identify what is probably Neferuset’s chamber off to the side. Asrian: Time for another Magnifying Chime. Zenobia: Do you want me to snipe her in the back of the head with the Greater Arrow of Undead Slaying as well? Zenobia’s player: Just another reason why this module needs more wandering monsters - if they had wandering monsters we wouldn’t have TIME to do things like this. Most of the chamber beyond the one we just reduced to rubble is filled with magical darkness. Queen Neferuset seems a bit upset with us, although the Dark Ones apparently predicted most of what happened today, although were a bit vague on the details. Neferuset: You have defiled our throne. You have killed the true Pharoah of Osirion. You have murdered my beloved Hakotep... I wished that this would not be so for centuries... but the dark ones already foretold this fate for my husband... On you, however.. they are frustratingly vague in their whispers...For they are too occupied with their coming arrival to this world. You shall pay for your transgressions here, "Covenant of Wati". For even should you succeed, and you will not, the Old Ones WILL return, and not even the GODS shall be saved! So Meet the Inhabitants of Oblivion, blasphemers. Experience a taste of the Void's cold embrace! Her minions certainly have a lot of tentacles, and not much else recognisable as terrestrial anatomy. Zenobia: It’s ironic that these things hail from the lightless void - because that end of the chamber is about to light up like the surface of the Sun. Sunburst. It’s the duty of our faith to bring light to dark places, but it’s not usually this literal. Nemat: I bring my morningstar down on her head and don’t stop until I hit the floor. Zenobia: It’s amazing how less stressed I feel, now the entire Hakotep dynasty is dead. I think the last thing we need to do here, before we collect our friends outside and go report to the relevant authorities, is tell that ghost in the engine room the good news? Nemat: She probably already knows. Zenobia: Do we still want to blow up the engine room with another Magnifying Chime? Onka: Trashing the engine room is the kind of plan that comes with the description ‘Minimum Safe Distance’ He has a point - it won’t be easy to get out of the pyramid in ten rounds. Of course, we can just Summon a wood golem and tell IT to set off the chime in an hour. And there’s still the 15 lesser pyramids we shut down remotely. Do we hand over control to the legitimate ruler of Osirion? Asrian instead insists we fly them into the Eye of Abendego and crash them there, although Nemat insists we keep one for study. Nemat: I agree with Asrian on this - we need to NOT give the Pharaoh a fleet of flying pyramids. Asrian: As much as I love my country, I don’t want it to be the world. Nemat: And giving the Pharaoh a fleet of flying pyramids is called ‘empire building’. Jeshura, the pairaka, decides to go her own way after we meet her outside. GM: She intends to go on a long journey of self-discovery. Zenobia: If you ever want advice and a friendly ear, come find us in Wati. Asrian: And if she comes and causes problems I’ll cut her head off. Ruby Prince Khemet III, the Forthbringer: I wish to reward you with titles matching your accomplishments! Nemat: *starts to cackle disturbingly* Zenobia just wants to expand the hospital at Wati, so her friends talk her into accepting a writ to expand the temple of Sarenrae into a major temple. They point out that she is probably the most powerful Sarenite in the country now, and certainly qualifies as a High Priest. As for her fiance... Asrian: Hereditary Princess of Wati and the surrounding countryside. Nemat: … it only had a governor before. Asrian: And now it’s a principality. And I’ll have the authority to raze that f***ing Necropolis. Nemat: So the upcoming wedding is a royal one. Zenobia: And I’m going to have to completely reorganise it! Now I’m stressed again! Asrian: No dear, we’ll have people for that. Nemat requests a Writ of High Justice - Asrian can give him that old fortress herself, now she’s a princess. Onka: Sorry, I was a bit distracted wondering where Asrian is going to put her palace. I’d like a writ of free passage across Osirion and beyond, so I may travel as Onka the Wanderer. Asrian: Onka the Seeker of Truth. Onka: I like that better. And if he phrases the writ properly he can start a travelling order of suitable scholars. Nemat: Good, you can help me eliminate that Nethyrite cult. Nemat: Onka, I need you to brew a particular potion - two doses. She did ask to be a hereditary princess and this way they’ll have options. The wedding of Zenobia and Asrian is spectacular, and given the size of the guest list we’ll have to hold it in the capitol, especially since Asrian is royalty now. She invites most of the friends we made over the last few years (it’s not like Zenobia intends to invite any of her relatives). And Asrian even goes unveiled for the ceremony, although Zenobia does have to hold her hand reassuringly for the whole thing. GM: The ceremony is beautiful, Zenobia and Asrian exchange their vows, and kiss, and the Black Dome dominating the Sothis skyline cracks open and a monstrous beetle hundreds of feet long emerges from the earth underneath it. Nemat: What? WHAT? Asrian: *sigh* Timing... Freeze-frame as Asrian draws her sword from under her dress and the Covenant of Wati turn to face this new threat...

I refer you to this Kurt Vonnegut story

Couple of options here, all pretty micro https://australian.museum/learn/animals/fishes/fwhat-is-the-smallest-fish/

Pathfinder - The Mummy's Mask - Boss Fight We've reached the culmination of the entire campaign - one last level of the Sky Pharaoh's pyramid, and a confrontation with the cruel undead ruler himself. It's probably a good point to take stock of our abilities and resources. Over the last three years of play we've gone from 1st level to 16th Lvl Mixed Combat Archeologists, and would probably be even more experienced (and scarred) if we didn't keep avoiding side quests and obstacles, and using diplomacy instead of weapons. Nemat Merituzat, AKA Nemat of Valat: Now very much an Inquisitor of Wadjet, and more than enough power to back up his support of the Old Pantheon. Popular combat tactics include growing to enormous size and enchanting his weapon of choice with whatever Aspects are going to make his target most unhappy. Onka the Half-orc Spell Sage: His mastery of magical theory and animated constructs has probably saved our lives more than once, given we went into the campaign armed to face undead and keep running into assorted golems, living statues, and automata. Still wearing the eponymous Mummy’s Mask, which contains Hakotep’s ka and hopefully won’t lead to any issues later. Asrian al-Adjir: Has had a bunch of mental adjustments over the past couple of years. She's fallen in love, gained a new level of determination to protect her loved ones, and her body image issues have, through the encouragement of her friends and lover, been significantly reduced. She has also taken her art of combat to levels she has never conceived of before, and reached the pinnacle of her mystic abilities. She isn't quite sure what she's going to do now, aside from marrying Zenobia. Zenobia the Gnoll: Still firmly faithful to the Cleansing Light, Sarenrae, although under increasing stress every time she sees her fiance and found family put themselves in harm’s way. Does have some plans for after the wedding, assuming she can keep everybody alive until then. We’ve amassed a large number of useful magical items, some acquired, some created to order by Onka in his hyperbolic time chamber, and some purchased on quick teleportation trips back to town. And we can use Portable Holes, Create Constructs, Summon Planar Ally, and Summon Monsters, to get all our allies and Hakotep’s disgruntled former employees together and accrue more. And if the Sky Pharaoh is one of those undead that regenerate, we have some 100 needles designed to stop assassination victims coming back to complain. With any luck we now outnumber anybody left in the Pyramid, and Hakotep will roll over to avoid a much-deserved beatdown. Zenobia: Lets find him, talk him down, and resolve all this peacefully. Onka OoC: Spoken like a true Sarenite who will be going last in the initiative order. It seems unlikely that anybody else in the party will GIVE Zenobia a chance to parley with the Final Boss. Even assuming we survive that long - the gynosphinx that Nemat summons with a request for assistance has a LONG list of Hakotep’s most favoured minions and monsters that we haven’t encountered yet. Zenobia’s face becomes increasingly aghast at the recitation of horrors. We descend into the horrible depths, with superhero landings. This might have been unwise given Onka is back in his Ancient Osiriani Mecha Suit. Zenobia: This big crack in the floor wasn’t from you landing, was it? We’ve landed in what appears to be some kind of engine room, possibly, although one of the engines is broken and spewing pink smoke. There’s also some kind of spirit engineer, who appears to be a tad cranky with Hakotep, and a bit cranky with the state of the pyramid. Ghost: I take it you’re here to take the Pharaoh ‘out’. Onka: Absolutely. Asrian: That’s the plan. Zenobia: I keep suggesting we talk to him first but they don’t agree. Nemat: Not This Time! Nemat: We need to put him down and send him on to his reward. Onka: I think you mean his Just Desserts. She’s a Shory Engineer. Nemat: But the Shory are long dead. Asrian & Zenobia: So’s she. She’s also Jeshura’s sister, and had been murdered by her, so it’s just as well we didn’t bring Jeshura into the pyramid for the final fight. Zenobia nearly blabs that we know her, until Asrian shuts her up. Zenobia: Would you like us to help you on to your final rest? Shory Engineer: I wouldn’t mind seeing my husbands again. Assuming they weren’t too stupid to find the door to the afterlife. Onka: Part of me wants to bottle her and take her home with me. We’ll probably have to destroy the pyramid’s power source to release her ghost. We press on - using the door in the other direction we intended, on the ghost’s recommendation - she designed the pyramid after all. Shory Engineer: Have fun storming the castle. We do the obvious thing, and try to go through the wall instead. It turns out the designers of the traps thought of the obvious thing too, and a Symbol of Insanity goes off. Shory Engineer: I wouldn’t do that if I w- oh dear. It also appears that the ghost’s information is out of date - the short corridor beyond is lined with sealed chambers, that Nemat can check for undead without even opening the doors. That doesn’t stop him drilling holes in said doors to check. It would appear that one chamber has a teleportation circle, but there’s no safe way to check where it goes, and while the spell in question prevents teleportation anywhere innately dangerous, there’s still plenty of ways they can kill you. Zenobia: Such as onto a frictionless floor overlooking a chasm? Nemat: Or just to a point several miles above the ground. On the other hand we still have Overland Flight going. Still probably wiser to check the other corridors first. Zenobia: I wonder how that gynosphinx does her make-up, with paws. Nemat: Prestidigitation. Onka: Maybe she’s born with it. Nemat: Maybe it’s Maybelline. GM: This next bit was supposed to be a cool reveal, but you WOULD summon somebody with Legend Lore. Zenobia OoC: We always do our research first. It’s like having a high Library Use skill in Call of Cthulhu. The next chamber contains that Herald of Hakotep we’re run into before - although it appears her rather attractive appearance in those previous meetings was because she was wearing somebody else’s skin as a costume. She doesn’t look nearly as appealing now, unless you like flayed corpses. We’re not about to kinkshame you. Ain-Mekh: It was my belief we would meet again. Welcome to the workshop of Anubis - Anubis as he should be. Soldiers of the Sky Pharaoh! Slay these intruders so that we might add their numbers to our strength! Zenobia OoC: My go now? Nemat OoC: What? No, it’s Asrian’s turn - you’re merely engaged, you’re not a single organism yet. Zenobia OoC: We’re only joined at the hips sometimes.*lewd smile* Asrian casts Wall of Sound across the room - which is especially effective since the herald’s back-up archers keep setting it off again and hurting their boss more. We very probably could have killed her by throwing handfuls of pebbles through the barrier. GM: At this rate she’s going to be killed by her own henchmen. Nemat: Par for the course with us. Zenobia OoC: That herald of Hakotep frightened my fiance. So, hopefully the boundless love and mercy of Sarenrae will render her down to her constituent atoms.*Channel Ray of Positive Energy, with added Sun’s Blessing and Beacon of Faith* Onka: I wish wizards had some kind of magical sleeve we could pull Rods and Wands out of as needed. Nemat: We do, it’s the Wizard’s Golfbag. Also known as the Efficient Quiver. In the end we barely need to do anything to her henchmen - they follow their previous orders and march straight through the Wall of Sound and blow themselves to pieces. Asrian: That spell was a lot more effective than I thought it would be. Not that I’m complaining. Among the valuables we sieve out the debris are a couple of interesting spell scrolls. Some of them rendered illegible because of exploded pickled viscera, but Prestidigitation deals with that problem instantly. The next chamber is knee-deep in mummified bodies, more bodies hanging from chains, hieroglyphs apparently drawn in blood, and ominous glowing sigils. Zenobia: … can we NOT go through this room? Even if it was merely the site of a major industrial necromancy accident, we can avoid it using Tef-naju’s Stone Shaping abilities, and we don’t even have to go all the way through in one go - letting Nemat use his Tombsight through a now paper-thin wall will help avoid any surprises. In fact, whoever is on the other side of the wall is going to be more surprised when we bypass half the pyramid. In fact, since Tef-Naju has unlimited uses of Stone Shape and the pyramid’s engineers can’t have installed Symbols of Insanity EVERYWHERE, we can install our own secret tunnels inside every wall, like a party of heavily armed termites. Asrian: More like a worm through an apple. And with a Silence spell up nobody is going to hear us tunneling away and drilling spyholes. Localised Silence will also be useful if we have to use Wall of Sound again. The power of the undead and constructs Nemat can detect strongly suggests we’re about to burst out of the wall right behind Hakotep’s throne. Alternatively, Asrian can just roll a coin enchanted with Magnifying Chime out into the room and do even more damage. Although we might have to back off in a hurry since after a few rounds of Chime the walls and ceilings are going to be coming down too. The GM has gone rather quiet. Nemat’s Player: Well, I’m going to go get a drink while the GM works out how much damage that did. Asrian’s player: Me too. Zenobia OoC: So Mr. GM, how many weeks of play have we just bypassed? GM: No. Comment. Especially if we use the Limited Wish scroll to ensure Hakotep fails his Spell Resistance check. Zenobia: I’m glad I thought of that. Nemat, Asrian, etc:*pleased agreement* Zenobia’s Player: Hooray! Zoidberg is useful. Chiming Coin: womWomWOMWOMMWOMM!!WOMMM!!!!!! Nemat: You might want to come over here, Zenobia. Onka OoC: ‘Does this sound like thermonuclear detonation to you?’ Nemat: I don’t know how they expected us to deal with this, but I’m glad we did it this way. Onka: Make of me still wants to have cast Magnifying Chime on the Mech suit and march it into the room. ‘You still want your mask back?’ Nemat: But it would still take damage. Onka: Nope - the spell radiates out. Nemat: Good point. Onka: ‘Ok, everybody budge in here with me.’ Four rounds later stone is starting to crack, but it’s not until the 5th round that Hakotep figures out what’s happening. But the effect is now wide enough that he can’t flee around the edges and get away. Nemet: See, I told you the throne room was through there - once you’re seen enough Ancient Osirion architecture it gets a bit predictable. GM: I can’t believe you cast this at 16th Level. Onka: Be glad it wasn’t me casting it or it would be Level 20 with my Spell Sage feats. Zenobia: I wonder if this is going to flood the throne room with lava from the fire level. Onka’s player: Well we can always do it again - we can use Hero Points to restore the spell slot. GM: What?? WHAT???? Asrian’s player: And I still have 6th Level slots free anyway. Alas, his throne room is large enough that if he cowers right in a corner he’ll only be affected by the final round of damage. Zenobia: Well, at least we made him hide in a corner. Hakotep The First: I am the Sky Pharoah, master of the worl- what’s that noise? Hakotep’s throne room is thoroughly trashed. Unfortunately, our tunnel is revealed as well, so sniping the Sky Pharoah in the back of the head with a Greater Arrow of Undead Slaying, through another spyhole, is probably off the table. Alas, his four golems are all the clay variety, and completely undamaged by sonic effects, and are immune to most other magics well. On the other hand, Clay Golems are also notorious for going berserk mid-battle, and half the golems have already gone berserk and started attacking the splinters of Hakotep's throne since there was no other target in sight when Hakotep realised how much trouble he was in. In fact, Hakotep doesn’t even know we’re there until HE staggers past the hole. Zenobia: I guess this is where we found out what the Ancient Osiriani for WTF???? Is. Hakotep stares down the tunnel, completely ignoring Tef-Naju, Mohebi the sphinx, and our entire party, with the exception of the Bronze Sentinel mecha suit that Onka has been piloting for months now, and within which Onka is still wearing the Mummy’s Mask that the entire campaign is named after. Hakotep I:*snarls* My Ka!*casts Meteor Swarm* Which may have been a mistake on his part since he’s in range of his own fireball, but doesn’t help us in the slightest. GM: The guy had a super-impressive speech he was going to say from his throne, but NOOO, you had to throw a coin at him. Onka: I’m surprised he uses clay golems - actually, no I’m not, he has a history of bad decisions. He was blessed by the Bad Decision Fairy when he was born. One of those bad decisions was choosing to stand between us, and one of the Clay Golems that Onka just assumed control of. Targeting Asrian with a Boneshatter spell was probably a bad decision too, since it will probably ensure Zenobia tears his head off and shoves up his wrinkled, mummified arse. Zenobia does need to tap Asrian with a Wand of Restoration, first, to remove her Fatigued condition. Zenobia: I’m sure that wand will be useful on our wedding night, too. The last golem still under Hakotep’s control chooses this moment to go berserk. Not ideal, but probably more useful than letting Hakotep keep hold of its leash. Hakotep finds himself in a not-very-good position. Hakotep I: Who let a sphinx in here?? Nemat OoC: He’s currently being attacked by a sphinx, a tomb guardian, an angry archaeologist, one of his own golems, and... A ninja? Zenobia OoC: Garlic Woman. Nemat OoC: And there's a gnoll up the back there that’s carrying a symbol of Sarenrae??? Hakotep attempts to retreat, despite all the rubble. We, of course, are still flying. Zenobia: Flee and die a coward! And die he does, as Nemat descends on him like the wrath of God. Which as an Inquisitor of Wadjet, he is, since no Pharoah rules without Wadjet's blessing. He ends the Forgotten Pharaoh in his own throne room. Nemat: In the name of Wadjet, I deny your rule! Zenobia: May the mercy of Sarenrae guide you to your final rest, whatever rest you deserve. Presumably, the next few hours will be spent sending the rest of his undead minions after their master, making absolutely sure Hakotep can’t come back, and then getting on with our personal plans. Zenobia: Four funerals and a wedding. Onka: I’ll have to make you a house. Zenobia: We can get one in Wati easily enough. Nemat: Just give it chicken legs. Onka: There’s a perfectly good flying pyramid available - one previous owner. We grab Hakotep’s remains and leave the golems to their crazed devices. Zenobia’s player: It’s a bit strange that it’s clay golems that go berserk - historically speaking those were the most reliable golems. GM: The fact that you’re going backwards through the rest of the rooms makes most of the traps redundant. Zenobia’s player: Good. Nemat’s Player: Sorry, not sorry. We do run into one of Hakotep’s generals.Riding a chariot at 100kph along the roof of a large chamber. So it’s more likely she’s going to run into us. Asrian: Hold, general! There is no need for us to fight! She doesn’t seem amenable. The Wall of Stone Tef-Naju creates in front of her isn’t very amenable to being hit at 100kph either. Being hit by Sarenrae’s Tactical Nuke (Sunburst) probably even less so. Further, Onka’s mecha suit is mostly immune to her attacks, especially since his poppets keep opening and closing the firing hatches. But at least Asrian gave General Tarawet a chance - maybe Zenobia’s morals are rubbing off on her. In the end it’s some offensive Healing that takes Terawet down, but it’s Nemat not Zenobia that does it. We still have to find Hakotep’s wife, the cultist. Nemat: She’s going to be a problem in her own right. Zenobia: And I don’t want her crashing the wedding. Onka: That’s why you put a permanent Symbol of Healing on the venue. One of the other guardians accuses us of being intruders, but we confuse it briefly by pointing out that we’re leaving the throne room. Unfortunately it still attacks and constricts our new gynosphinx ally. And starts dehydrating everybody nearby. And regenerates as fast as we can hurt it. And has horrible spells. Nemat OoC: I think we’ve found the Secret Boss of this level. Thankfully, Onka can banish it to an extradimensional Maze it will be too stupid for solve for 10 minutes, given us a chance to heal up and Restore ourselves, and prepare our best attacks for the moment it reappears. But even with the prep time, we’re extremely lucky that Zenobia offensive Heal does 150HP damage and Onka’s Acid Arrow finishes it for good. It’s probably just as well we went after Hakotep first, because some of his underlings are a lot more dangerous than he was. Of course, Nemat’s extensive knowledge of good burial practice does tell us that the only way to put Hakotep to permanent rest is to restore him to his sarcophagus, along with all his assorted parts, so with any luck will find that somewhere down here too. Zenobia: It would be amusing if we think we’re leaving the pyramid and we actually stumble across his tomb chamber by mistake. One possible hidden chamber is protected by a riddle. The obvious answer doesn’t work, surprisingly - when you live in a country like Osiria, that’s been having riddle contests for thousands of years, the old classics tend to be pretty well known. Happily, we have a sphinx in the party. Onka: Hey, Mohebi, do you know this one? Onka: Let’s do our usual thing and go through the wall. Nemat: We haven’t got this far by using doors. Zenobia looks like she’s going to seek parley with the next bunch of undead, but pauses. Zenobia: Do you think gnolls can be redeemed? Nemat: Of course. Asrian: You’re not an undead monster. Zenobia: Many people would say my kind are monsters. And we’ve given undead a chance before. Nemat: The Undead we have parleyed with before were undead through no fault of their own - these individuals willingly chose their path. Zenobia: I see. It’s not that they were born monsters, but chose to become them. Nemat: Monsters aren’t born Zenobia: *twitch* Nemat: Well, goblins. But most ‘monsters’ simply need an opportunity to learn a better path. Zenobia: As I did. I see. You have relieved many of my concerns, friend Nemat. There’s another alchemical barrier, which Onka investigates. Onka OoC: Well, I can tell what it is by taste but I am now dead. It’s Nemat’s Tombsight that saves us again, because it makes it quite difficult for any kind of undead to sneak up on us. At least the undead in question is intelligent enough to be sneaky, which makes an interesting change. Most of Hakotep’s minions aren’t exactly subtle. Although this one is not exactly as threatening as Imhotep’s sandstorm form from the movie. Zenobia: He’s an itty-bitty little sandstorm. GM: He is, he’s Small. Zenobia OoC: Does anybody have a DustBuster? Zenobia: Well, it’s intelligent enough to sneak up on us. Nemat: Which doesn’t necessarily mean much - it’s not intelligent enough to realise that sneaking up on this party is a bad idea. He’s certainly wildly outmatched by opponents that can walk in and out of the walls at will, or bunker down inside nearly impregnable armour, or blast them with Positive Energy around corners. Being mostly composed of dust would appear to leave him quite flammable, too, at least once Zenobia’s Channel Positive Energy is applied. A few items are acquired that would probably have been quite useful if we’d gone through the pyramid in the order the creators intended. Zenobia: Well, at least it will be an interesting curio for the museum…they won’t be able to Clone Hakotep from this, will they? Asrian: I think they require a pound of flesh for that. But it all ends up with pitchforks and torches. At least we find the right sarcophagus, eventually. Zenobia: Do we have any way to properly record the moment? We are sending the Forgotten Pharaoh to his final rest. Anybody want to say anything? Asrian: I have some final words - let me check for traps first. Onka: Are those your final words? They might well have been her final words if she hadn’t been that cautious. The Pharaoh spared no expense on this room. Of course we have enough excavating equipment on us, including block and tackle and animated ropes, to set off the traps without danger to us. Time to refill that fancy coffin with a mixed assortment of Pharaoh-bits. Zenobia: Any last words? Asrian: Good riddance you stupid loser. Zenobia: … fair enough. We do have one problem - Onka seems really, really, REALLY reluctant to take off the Mummy’s Mask. At least until he uses his four-leafed clover. Nemat: I was going to cast Remove Curse. Asrian: I was just going to sleight-of-hand it off him. Zenobia: You okay there, friend? Onka: Like I wasn’t prepared for that - I made an anti-possession amulet the week we got the mask. GM: The Mask of the Forgotten Pharaoh now covers the visage of the one for whom it was fashioned 6,000 years ago. For a moment, all is silent in the crypt. Then, light seems to flicker within the mask’s sightless eyes before slowly expanding to cover its entire golden surface. A ghostly figure rises above the pharaoh’s dead body—Hakotep as he appeared at the height of his reign: strong, determined, and ruthless. His eyes glare at the Covenant of Wati in pure contempt. But then the form begins to dissipate, lose shape, and slowly blow away like rings of smoke in a breeze. Faint whispers of diminishing protest drift about the crypt, until they too disappear, leaving only the silence of a grave. At long last, the soul of the Sky Pharaoh passes on into the afterlife and the judgment that awaits there. And as the apparition fades away - Zenobia: We catch a glimpse of a long line of people putting on brass knuckles? Nemat: No no, a set of scales, and a feather. We know he’s going to fail, but he still gets tested. There IS an unearthly, blood-curdling scream from somewhere in the pyramid the moment Hakotep disperses for good. Onka OoC: Right, let’s go find his wife and get a Level Up.