The Path to Eden, episode 12: A Mystery Solved

Venno's audience were once again excited.  The murder of Puzzle Paul had intrigued them, and Venno had no doubt that they would find the next installment just as thrilling.

"Things had settled down somewhat in the Ark.  Puzzle Paul's place among the Chroniclers had been taken by Jigsaw Jeff, and he insisted that the museum should be completed, and that it should be named in Puzzle Paul's honour.  Silas - or Staircase Silas, as he was now known - was not happy.

With most of the recent Ark projects complete, it was time to discuss starting some more, and the Chronicler Charlie Cube felt that a school would be a valuable way to learn about the artefacts in the museum.  Jigsaw Jeff agreed, and suggested that Staircase Silas would make an excellent schoolmaster.

A few more ideas appeared.  A militia would be a valuable addition to the Ark's defences.  Scraggy Maggie wanted a bank, to keep bullets in safely, and after the incident with Puzzle Paul there was also a demand for a tribunal, so that the Ark could have proper justice instead of mob violence.

It was time to get to work.  Katin went hunting around the Ark to find a good spot for the school's foundations, and soon had a suitable site picked out.  Lenny hefted his shovel, and finished off the Ark's barricades.  Quin, enamoured by the idea of the tribunal, went to fight for justice, but found justice quite a difficult thing to fight for.  Silas spent some time collecting suitable materials for the school.  Zippo gave the Ark's projects a rest for the day to get Lenny's new armour finished.

Lenny's new armour was rather better than the artefact helmet he'd been wearing.  Katin suggested he pass that on to Silas, as his face was clearly in need of protection.  Lenny took the time to write 'Staircase here' along the front.

The next morning, there was some commotion outside Quin's tent.  Two mutants named Estelle and Alfred lived nearby, and Jigsaw Jeff was pulling a confused looking Estelle out of their shack.  Quin went for a peek into the shack, and saw the bloody remains of Alfred.  Closer up she could hear Estelle saying that the voices had told her to do it.

Panic gripped the Ark.  It wasn't just Archie hearing voices.  And Estelle had loved Alfred.  If that could happen, then anyone could be affected.  Who would be next to hear the voices?  The group gathered to discuss what had happened.  Where were the voices coming from?  It couldn't be a big pipe, because Estelle didn't sleep in the same place as Archie.  Katin and Lenny were both familiar with voices in their heads telling them to kill, but that was perfectly normal revenge fantasies.  Not like what had happened with Archie and Estelle.

A large crowd had gathered at the Dawn Vault, with Scraggy Maggie calling for Estelle to be hanged, but Lenny pointed out that the tribunal wasn't ready yet, and along with some intervention from Briktoria, Estelle was taken to the Seven Sisters and Zippo was appointed chief investigator.

Alfred's body needed to be disposed of.  There was a briefly proposed theory that the voice was just someone very hungry, creeping round at night whispering in people's ears to tell them to kill people to create more bait for the hunting party.  But in terms of actually finding out what was happening, they weren't making much progress, and if they didn't go foraging soon they were going to run out of grub and water pretty fast.

A few hours scouting around the marshes to the west of the Ark turned up a reasonable quantity of supplies, and Katin's nose was able to sniff out some additional food.  Back home she sat down to cook the rot out of it, with a bit of help from Lenny and some encouragement from Silas who read to her from the sacred Ministry of Food book.  Soon she had enough boiled snails to feed all five of them for the next two days.

But as Katin was handing out food and water supplies, she heard a strange voice in her head.  It was telling her than Lenny must die.  She must kill him immediately.  Armed with nothing but snails, Katin could only attempt a barehanded attack, which completely failed to do anything thanks to his new armour.  Silas attempted to tackle her to the ground, but she wriggled out of his grasp.  Lenny got up and with minimal effort, picked up Katin to restrain her.  The voice stopped, but Katin was quite happy for Lenny to continue to restrain her.

One of the group hearing the voices meant they finally had something of a solid lead, however.  Katin didn't recognise the voice, but she was sure it was the voice of an old man.  And she had some idea of where it was coming from.  She gave Lenny directions, pointing with her nose, and the others followed behind them.

Just outside the cult headquarters, they found a shack, where an old, very sick mutant named Stan was lying sleeping.  Katin was sure she was in the right place, so Lenny woke him up.  He said he'd been having a nightmare about Katin trying to kill Lenny.  And it wasn't his first nightmare.

Stan had previously had psionic powers, but more recently hadn't been able to use them, after he went out in the zone.  He hadn't intended to kill anyone.  What were they going to do?  He couldn't be allowed to sleep again, or he might end up causing someone else to commit murder.

Lenny put Katin down, and Stan told her that he'd been with her in the dream about the garden.  He'd been wearing the skin of the elf.  Katin was thoroughly creeped out.  She didn't like the idea of someone poking around inside her mind.  Stan also mentioned that one of them would betray her before they found Eden, giving Silas a pointed look.

"Yeah, we figured."  Everyone shrugged.

He also claimed Silas would try to kill Ork, and asked Zippo what it was like being a gearhead who wasn't any good at making stuff.  It was gradually becoming apparent that he was trying to deliberately wind them up, especially when he brought up a dream Katin had had about Lenny.  They'd been at the temple, and Katin had been wearing a pretty dress.  But his attempts to provoke Lenny into killing him ultimately resulted in convincing them that they needed to get Briktoria to deal with things.  After all, Zippo had been appointed chief investigator, and since they'd solved the mystery it was about time he went and reported what they'd found.

Once Briktoria had heard the whole story, she agreed that Stan was a danger to the Ark.  She asked everyone to turn away, and then came a sickening crunch of a head being crushed.  Stan's body was wrapped up and removed to the corpse pile.

The string of murders was over, but Katin still wasn't happy.  Nobody was sure her dream about Eden could be trusted now.  But the elf did know about the Old Ben tower, so that part at least was true.

They all retired to the tavern for some food, which with the new options coming from the croplands now included bits of potato with salt, dry roasted peas with salt, and flakes of bran with peas.  There they talked to the elf again, and asked her about Old Ben.  Once it had told the time, and gone bong at certain points.  That seemed like a good feature to add to the sundial, to give Sundial Sam a break from shouting the time.  But more importantly, they might find some answers at Old Ben.  They would have to keep on searching.

It was time for some sleep.  Lenny accompanied Katin back to her shack, and noted how weird the things Stan had said were.  Katin agreed.  She never wore dresses.  They were totally impractical.  Lenny though it might be nice if she did though.

Katin was also very uncomfortable about what Stan might have seen in her head.  He might have seen things about Jena.  Katin really missed having a best friend.  Lenny suggested that he could be her friend.  She'd hoped Zippo would be her friend, but then he blew her up.  Lenny had never exploded her.  Katin gave Lenny a slightly awkward hug, then dived into her shack, leaving a surprised Lenny outside."

Emissary Lost, episode 5: Wheeling and Dealing

 The group continued their journey downwards, soon hearing voices again.  This time they managed to listen in without immediately being spotted.  Four hunters and their human prey.  Razaq was not going to allow that to continue.  One brief firefight later, they were collecting the hunters' carbines, pistols and tabulas - with the exception of one carbine, now in the hands of their would-be target.  He provided them with directions before running away.

Down a ladder, and into the Third Sphere, which they rapidly learned was in the hands of Queen Elmeda.  Her guards, dressed all in red, asked if they had any goods to trade, as that was a requirement for entering her domain.  Conveniently they had a bunch of pistols and carbines going spare.  Tahir, Khalil and Sayah, as the members of the group least likely to say something inappropriate in front of an authority figure, went in.

Not everyone down here was human.  Rat-like Skavara children asked Khalil for treats.  He offered some slightly squashed baklava, which was accepted enthusiastically.  The Queen herself was accompanied by both wolfish Nekatra guards, and a huge snake - almost certainly a construct.  Tahir did the talking, offering the weapons as a gift.  He explained why they were there.  The search, for both Noor and the Emissary.

The Queen mentioned that they were not the only newcomers to the Third Sphere.  Others had been there, transporting people, and taking them beyond the Labyrinth.  They would need a guide, if they intended to pass that way themselves.  She could provide one, for a price.  The price was removing a Skavara merchant by the name of Awl, who had started a rival market that was costing the Queen's own market a lot of profit.

They decided they would have to talk this over with the others.  Doing so alone was going to be difficult though, as they had been joined by Frax, one of the Queen's Nekatra guards.  Of course this was also an opportunity to find out more about the Queen.  They learned that she had powerful family back on Kua.  The Queen's subjects were not allowed to harm each other.  The Skavara was not a subject though, and was increasingly gathering support.

Arriving at the Skavara's market, it was clearly very different to the Queen's.  Much better stocked, and with significantly more food.  No wonder it was growing in popularity.  Nobody much liked the idea of taking Queen Elmeda's offer at this point - but of course they still needed to get through the Labyrinth somehow.

Awl was soon located, and agreed to talk in exchange for a gift of technology.  Conveniently they had a bunch of tabulas going spare.  Awl knew the way through the Labyrinth.  Since the alternative was that we would have to kill him for the Queen, he wasn't too hard to persuade.  A deal was made though, to take him up to Ozone Plaza afterwards.  Awl's people caused a distraction to get Frax out of the way, and the group set out for the Labyrinth.

This was not a well maintained path.  Rickety bridges caused a nervous moment for Razaq, who almost fell, prompting Sayah to get out her hyper rope to get herself, Arin and Khalil across in relative safety.  Then there was a choice to be made.  Three paths lay ahead.  The safe path, slow but secure.  The cemetary path, faster, but not without its dangers.  Or the fastest route, that would take them close to the Beast.

For Tahir, there was only one choice.  The fast path, and never mind the danger.  And for once, Sayah backed him up.  Noor was in danger, and if that meant risking the fast path, then so be it.

At Awl's suggestion, they crept along in silence.  If they could avoid attracting the Beast's attention, they had a better chance of getting past it safely.  But after a while they heard a voice, singing a song about doors.  What did it mean?  They soon found the singer, who approached them and asked them if they were beings of darkness or light.  Beings of light, of course.  The group explained once more about their search for Noor and the Emissary.

The strange man knew the Emissary.  He had spoken to him.  He was a friend, but not as good at poetry.  He had passed through this way, accompanied by eight guards, who were holding his mouth, whatever that meant.  The strange man remembered one of the Emissary's poems.

When the unworthy speak without tongues
When sister betrays sister
When the light of peace nourishes the servants of darkness
When brother kills brother

Sayah immediately remembered the words from Ramas's data chip.  When he had asked Noor to explain herself, she had spoken words that seemed to echo the Emissary's poem.

"There will come a time when the darkness in invited in, when people speak without mouths, when sister betrays sister. Only they who live in the darkness will see the light."

Emissary Lost, episode 4: Going Down

Nobody had any intention of waiting until the requested meeting time to visit the Garden of Seekers.  Razaq and Sayah went for a scout around, with Razaq identifing a good spot for a sniper hide and making sure he was the one occupying it.  Khalil went to visit the artists' tent and chat to the jugglers there, where he discovered a complete lack of juggling ability, albeit with a will to improve.

When the time for the meeting arrived, only Sayah and Tahir waited at the meeting point, while the others looked on from their various vantage points.  Brother Ramas arrived a little late, and at the same time a number of suspicious characters appeared.  One of them pushed roughly past him on the bridge, and Tahir caught sight of a bright flash of light.  A few moments later, Ramas staggered and collapsed to the ground, reaching out to hand Tahir a data tag as he fell.

Tahir had his stun gun in hand in a moment, firing at the attacker while Sayah checked on the condition of Brother Ramas.  More new arrivals from the path above the artists' tent fired down at them, almost taking out Arin, who jumped into the lake to take cover under the bridge.  Khalil sheltered behind a tree.  Razaq fired from his hide, taking out another of the strangers.  Sayah joined Arin under the bridge, and once she'd confirmed he wasn't in need of urgent medical attention, borrowed his gun to fire back at his attackers.

It wasn't long before the shooting attracted the Coriolis station guards, at which point the attackers decided to make themselves scarce, the one Razaq had shot taking a moment to pick up his severed arm off the ground and take it with him.  Khalil scarpered in the confusion, and Razaq dropped a smoke bomb and vanished.

The other three were rounded up by the guards, where Sayah and Tahir were quick to explain how they were meeting their old friend from the Ghazali - an easy story to sell given Tahir's fame.  Tahir also told them about the weird behaviour of the attackers, specifically the bit where they picked up an arm.  After an uncomfortably long wait, word finally came through from the Judicator that they were to be released.

Khalil had an idea for how to track the attackers.  They'd all escaped - but one of them had escaped with one of his bullets inside them.  And he had a talent for finding things that had previously belonged to him.  He went into a trance and watched, seeing them regrouping in a building that looked like an abandoned hospital.

Once everyone was reunited, it was time to read the data tag that had cost Brother Ramas his life.  They began with the holo recording, where Ramas explained that a Martyr strike team from Zalos was operating on the station and attempting to wipe out new mystics.  They were being taken to the 'real sanitorium', somewhere down in the cellar.

Other files on the tag mentioned Noor.  She felt she'd been given her powers for some higher purpose, and the last time he'd seen her she was being escorted by the guard after being arrested in the Ozone Plaza.  She'd claimed to have a vision from the Emissary at Xene Station.  Ramas wasn't sure which Emissary she meant - the one on Coriolis or the heretical self-proclaimed 'Judge' from Xene.  She had a strange message for Ramas.  "There will come a time when the darkness in invited in, when people speak without mouths, when sister betrays sister. Only they who live in the darkness will see the light."  Not long after that she'd been taken down to the 'real sanitorium'.

They had to tell the Judicator everything, of course, and she was keen for them to get moving.  Chances are, this 'real sanitorium' in the Cellar was where the Emissary had been taken, and Sayah was equally keen to find Noor.  Should they take the route down through the Sanitorium, or use the guard elevator?  For speed, they went with the elevator.

Once suitably equipped with some armour loaned from the Judicator, plus some other equipment, they set off.  It wasn't long before they heard some people up ahead talking.  Razaq scared them off, and investigation showed they'd ripped out a nexus node, presumably to sell.  They found a screen, which rather unexpectedly was showing a news report from not long after the wreck of the Ghazali, specifically an interview with Tahir.  This couldn't be a coincidence.  Sayah djinned into the network, and confirmed it was being broadcast locally, not from the main station network.

Up ahead they could hear an oppressive thrumming noise, which when they got closer turned out to be huge ventilation fans.  Sayah spotted something stuck on the underside of one - a Vulcan carbine held aloft by the airflow.  Below them, on the hub of a fan, was a body.  He looked like a Coriolis guard, but with a shaved head and some increasingly familiar face tattoos.

Khalil was getting a headache, and not just from the fan noise.  He heard the crackle of a stun gun and smelled ozone.  Just like he had in the Emissary's residence.

Could they retrieve the carbine?  Tahir had a hyperrope, and felt quite confident in his ability to get hold of it if the others held onto the other end.  Khalil had a better idea though, using his mystic power to attempt to wind the end of the rope through the gun.  Instead the rope got caught around the fan and ripped out of his hands.  Good thing that wasn't Tahir.

Emissary Lost, episode 3: A Few Polite Conversations

Khalil had a vision.

He was standing in the room.  The room where the attack had taken place.  Five people were attacking him.  A wave of force burst out, deflecting the bullets.  And then came the knife in his chest, and the vision ended.

He made the decision to trust the others.  None of them seemed to have any prejudice against mystics, and the more informed they all were, the better.

Sayah, Razaq and Arin went to a weapon shop to investigate the silenced bullet they'd found, soon learning that such things were not sold on Coriolis - at least, not in respectable shops like this.  They were used by rebel groups down on Kua though, so could have made it onto the station if brought up by smugglers.  Sayah took a look at the knives, to see if there were any that resembled the one in Khalil's vision, but there were not.  She bought one anyway, to be polite.

Which turned out to be a good choice, as shortly after leaving the shop they were attacked by a group of stevedores.  They fought them off and made a hasty departure, but soon ran into Jeyla Kuhari, the reporter, once again, and had to avoid sharing the story with her.

Khalil and Tahir, being the more social and less paranoid part of the group, went to visit the ambassador.  Not to make any accusations, but because as the last person seen on the camera, he might have caught sight of something important without realising it.  His room was an imposing sight - a group of servants carried potted plants, which Khalil recognised as being a particularly poisonous variety with sharp leaves, where a single touch could prove deadly.

The ambassador spoke briefly.  He'd been given a tag to put into the emissary's music system, as somebody 'wanted him to hear a message'.  He'd since examined the tag, and to nobody's surprise found it infected with a data meme.

The local news was reporting more murders.  Sayah asked Judicator Akouba about them.  The one mentioned as happening at Wahib's was a woman called Kohmina.  Sayah remembered her well - the mad woman with the crystal ball that was really just a ball of sugar, who wanted to go down with the Ghazali because it was the will of the icons.  She'd been saved by Lila's intervention.  Sayah did not know what had happened between the two of them, and did not want to.

Once Khalil had complimented the ambassador on his taste in plants and Tahir had got his assistant's comm address, the two of them left to meet up with the others again to pay another visit to the sanitorium.  Tahir and Sayah went looking for their old friend from the Ghazali, Brother Ramos.  Instead they were introduced to Sister Robwah.  She confirmed that Ramos had met with Noor, and after some prodding, Ramos himself appeared.

They discussed the mystic's disease, and convinced Ramos to talk about Noor once they told him what had happened to Aram.  Noor believed that she was chosen by the icons to perform great deeds.  Specifically, she was chosen by the Martyr - the Zelosian name for the Judge, and according to their beliefs, the only icon.

Razaq had had enough.  Enraged by the constant claims that mystic powers were a disease in need of a cure, he stormed out.  The others followed, but Sayah had had a communicator pressed into her hand as she left, with just one message.  "Contact me."

A meeting was arranged.  That night, in the Garden of Seekers.

The Path to Eden, episode 11: A Puzzling End

Venno's audience were buzzing.  The level of concern for the team members was obvious, especially among fans of Katin and Silas.  Venno smiled as he prepared to begin.  He could already imagine the coming reactions.

"Back at the Ark, they barely had time to deliver the collection of magazines and other valuable documents to the dawn vault before they found themselves dragged into an assembly.  Puzzle Paul was once again pushing the museum, taking advantage of Silas's crushed face preventing him engaging in any coherent argument.  Ultimately the Ark decided that they had quite enough projects on the go and didn't need any more right now.

Katin went straight back to her den for some sleep, while Silas attempted to use the first aid kit he'd found to fix his face - with a bit of help from Lenny.  He ended up using most of the contents of the box, but got the job done.

That night, Katin had a strange dream.  She was outside, surrounded by green grass, with a gentle sun shining down on healthy trees.  Flowers were all around her, but somehow when she tried to sniff them, she couldn't make out a scent.  Looking around, she saw the elf from the tunnel.  Trying to talk to her wasn't helpful, but she was pointing at a wall where there was some writing.  Katin couldn't read it.  The letters wouldn't come into focus.  But there was a picture.  A tower with a clock on it.  And then a loud bang woke her up, and she was back in her den.

The next morning, everyone felt rather better and got to work.  Zippo began working on making some armour for Lenny.  Silas went scouting for building the defenses.  Quin attempted to work on the pigsty, but lacking the proper tools for digging post holes, she strained her back.  Clearly more time reading the Health and Safety manual was required.

Lenny spotted Silas struggling at the defences and went to help, but distracted by worry for both Silas and Katin he managed to injure himself.  Meanwhile, Katin decided to try another attempt at training the hunting party in archery, this time using a regular jury rigged bow which they were more familiar with.  One brilliant archery training session later, they were ready to go.

As the sacred text said, 'Meat's back on the menu, boys!'

The next day, Katin sought out the others at the Prancing Pony, and told them about her dream.  Silas took extensive notes.  Clearly she needed to ask the elf about it.  But before she could find her, a scream echoed across the Ark.

At the site of the museum, they found the body of Puzzle Paul under some bricks, with his head bashed in with one of the bricks.  Gripped in his hands was one of the anti-museum posters Silas had been putting up.  Accusing eyes turned on Silas.  Paul's face had been crushed - just like Silas's was.

The team rapidly leapt to Silas's defence, by pointing out that he was so hopeless in a fight there was absolutely no way he could have killed anyone, because Puzzle Paul would have kicked his arse.  Silas was a coward who once left Lenny to die, not a competent killer.  There's no way he could have snuck up on someone because they'd seen Silas try to sneak and he was really conspicuous.  A reasonably compelling argument, and enough to buy them some time to investigate what really happened.

Lenny promised to keep an eye on Silas, reminding everyone that he was no Boromir or Saruman.  Quin had a look at Puzzle Paul's body to see if she could find something to get a scent from.  The murder weapon looked like a good candidate, and with some assistance from Katin, Ork was soon on the trail.  Noses to the ground, the two of them tracked down the real culprit.

The young man's name was Archie, and he'd never been known to cause trouble in the Ark before.  He was sitting in the ticket office, covered in blood, and repeating the words, 'the voices made me do it'.

Katin went to get the others, while Quin stayed with Archie.  He didn't seem to have even noticed her presence.  She did her best to get through to him, but it seemed he was too far gone.  Zippo's attempt to slap some sense into him when he arrived didn't even register with him.  Finally Lenny's imposing presence got him to talk - although he was still talking mostly about the voice in his head.  He'd been hearing it for two months, every day, telling him to kill Puzzle Paul.  And with that he retreated into himself again.

He obviously needed some help, and the Seven Sisters seemed like the best option.  Silas hung back, not wanting to get thrown under the replacement bus service.  Zippo explained things to Briktoria.  She agreed to look after Archie, on the condition that they were paid for their services.  After some further persuasion and bribery, she was convinced to go out and tell everyone that Silas was not the killer, cementing the work the team had already done.  Silas was off the hook - even though the nickname 'Staircase Silas' seemed to have stuck.

Silas headed for the Dawn Vault to look at the artefacts, where he was rather annoyed to discover that the other chroniclers were planning on naming the museum after Puzzle Paul.  Katin went looking for the elf, who was no longer staying at the Dawn Vault, but had integrated herself with the group from the Misty Mountains and was currently staying at the Prancing Pony.  Rather to her surprise, she found them reading a book.

The book was called Travels With Asterix, and unlike the Ark's sacred texts, it had pictures all the way through.  It was quite an effort to drag herself away from it, but she finally managed to talk to the elf - even if they were all a little confused about why they called her an elf.  Katin told her about the dream, and she did know about the tower with the clock.  It was called Old Ben, and she knew where to find it.  She drew it on Katin's map of the zone.  It was definitely the right place - it looked just like what Katin had seen in her dream.

It was going to be a long walk, into a far more dangerous part of the zone.  The elf didn't think they were ready to go yet, and Katin agreed.  She would have to scout out the first part of the path so they could get through them quickly when they made the push to the tower, and they definitely needed more food and water supplies.  Katin went on her way with the Asterix book on loan.

Katin knew Silas would appreciate the book, so went to visit him.  His eyes lit up at the sight of it.  She explained that she knew he'd had a rough day, and thought he might appreciate it.  Even with his access to the Dawn Vault he'd never seen anything like it.  They passed some time turning the pages.  Katin might not be the most empathic of people, but Silas was starting to feel better all the same."

Emissary Lost, episode 2: Dinner and a Show

Sayah could only stare in horror at the bloody mess in front of her before the others hitting the deck prompted her to join them in taking cover.  But there were no further shots.  Clearly the killer had found their target.

While Sayah, Razaq and Khalil made themselves scarce, Arin distracted the reporter while Tahir made a quick search of Aram's body.  He found some gambling chips in his pocket, along with a communicator and a couple of thousand birr.  He talked to the authorities when they arrived, learning that they believed his death was due to gambling debts.  Aram's parents got the sad news.  He'd been keeping quiet about having the mystic's disease, out of fear that his parents would loose their bakery concession if it came out.

The group regathered for some tea and to eat the baklava they'd got from Aram's parents, which was really excellent.  As they were eating, Khalil suddenly heard a loud sound in his head.  Five notes.

Checking out the local news feeds, there was clearly a lot of discussion of the mystic's disease, and a lot of disagreement, which was sometimes spilling out into violence on the streets.  Then a news alert came up.  The emissary was missing, having failed to show up at the council meeting.  Crowds were forming in Spring Plaza, wanting to know what was going on.  There were claims that the emissary had been sighted, but could reports from down in the Cellar really be trusted?

But the group found themselves with more pressing things to worry about when they were hand delivered an invitation to dinner with a judge.  Sayah assured everyone she could help them find suitable clothing.  This wasn't the first time she'd had to dress people for dinner.  Razaq declined.  He had no intention of going anywhere near a judge.

Dinner was in the evening, and they had plenty of time before that for both shopping and trying to make sense of what had happened to Aram.  They had two leads - the gambling chips and the communicator.  The former were quickly identified as belonging to the Oporium.  The latter proved more enlightening - point to point encrypted, with the other end point being somewhere near the Sanitorium.

Sayah and Tahir went to follow up on the communicator.  While the Sanitorium was next to the library and the museum, it was in the entrance to the Sanitorium itself where they found their target.  Her name was Sanna Torm, and she was expecting to meet Aram.  She recognised Sayah, much to Sayah's alarm, although she relaxed on learning that Sanna had seen her in a vision.  They quietly told her about Aram's death, and advised her not to go into the Sanitorium, but to stay with her family (who were sufficiently rich and powerful for Sayah to recognise their name.)

While Sayah gathered anyone willing for a shopping trip, Razaq went in search of the street children again.  He asked them about the Cellar.  They hadn't been there, and claimed it was full of shambling jelly monsters.  However, they thought if he really wanted to visit, the stevedores might be able to help.

Minus Razaq, the group got dressed and went for dinner with Judge Nigelia.  It was obvious she'd done her research on everyone, as her veiled comments were enough to rattle at least some of them.  She had a job for them: look into the emissary's disappearance.

Once a suitable fee had been negotiated (9000 birr and a weapon license for everyone who didn't already have one) they all headed to the emissary's lakeside residence, accompanied by Judicator Akouba as the Judge required.

It was a strange sight.  Blood all over the living room and trails of it down the hallway to to door.  And yet the rest of the house was almost uncannily clean.  It was as if the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen had never been used.  The only item that seemed out of place was a hand fan by the bed, decorated with First Come religious iconography.

Sayah went straight for the data console, wanting to keep her mind off the blood for as long as possible.  She found it infected with data memes, and after a brief flashback to the horrible time when she'd had to do a system restore on Suleiman to remove an infection, she realised that the codebase was familiar.  The Order of the Pariah.  A group strongly opposed to the Icons - and presumably, by extension, to the emissary.

The security footage had cut out before anything particularly useful could be seen, but there was one familiar face that appeared before that.  Johar Quassar, the ambassador of the Hegemony.  The last thing to be visible before the footage cut out.

The group examined the sitting room.  Its walls were decorated with a mosaic, which had been seriously damaged.  Some examination revealed the cause to be a vulcan carbine on autofire.  On the floor was a Miran prayer rug, heavily stained with blood, much to Tahir and Sayah's distress.  It was a terrible thing to happen to any kind of soft furnishings.  There were books lying around with cut pages, looking like they'd been slashed with a dura knife.

There were also bowls on the floor.  One had contained water, one incense, which had burned a hole in the rug.  One contained couscous and one held candles.  All four were decorated with religious symbols, and their contents and design seemed to link them to Miran and Algolan representations of the four states of all things.

Closer examination of the floor found a series of hairline cracks, and looking at the walls again found a similar pattern.  It was like some kind of wave of force had hit the room, deflecting even bullets.  A single vulcan round was found embedded in the wall.  A noiseless vibro round, not the standard model.  Black market gear.

They questioned the Judicator about the blood.  Six individual sources had been identified, although the biocode analysis was not yet complete.  What they knew so far was that five of them were likely Zelosians.  The sixth had behaved oddly in analysis.

There was one last desecration of soft furnishings - or clue, to those of the group who weren't from the Aliya.  A bloody right hand print on the rug.

The Path to Eden, episode 10: Hospital

Venno's audience weren't quite as nervous as they had been last time, but the chatter suggested they were expecting to hear about a new journey into the zone.  He smiled.  They would not be disappointed.

"The biggest concern in the ark, with so many new people expected to arrive, was food supplies.  After consulting the sacred text, the Ministry of Food, a number of ideas were presented.  Scraggy Maggy suggested rounding up some pigs would allow them to have bacon, and Lenny thought a hunting party could also bring in some meat, both of which would allow them to make more of the recipes from the sacred text.  But there was also the critical matter of defence.  They didn't want to get over-committed.  While at some point they did need to think about a brewery, for now it was time to get to work.

But first, Quin had a gift for Zippo.  She'd found it in the BBC building.  She wasn't sure what it was, but she was sure he would like it, and he did.  While a first attempt to examine it resulted in him accidentally hitting himself over the head with it, he was soon sure it was a tool for repairing things, which was going to be his new best friend.

After some pointed non-discussion of museums, work began.  Quin got to work building the defences, getting a lot of building done but hurting herself in the process.  Silas tried to help, but found himself baffled by the napkin diagrams they were working from.

Zippo decided the hunting party could use some training in how to shoot things.  His first attempt didn't go so well, as they just weren't getting it, but a change of approach involving a lot of running around finally got through to them.

Lenny had a gift for Katin.  As the team's stalker, she was the person best able to make use of the thing for making far away things look close.  Having made Katin very happy, he headed off the the wrestling cage to demonstrate a few moves, and soon had the wrestling team up and running.

Delighted with her new gift, and wanting to support Lenny, Katin went to give the hunting party some training in archery, which had the significant benefit of not requiring any bullets.  Unfortunately, the fact she was using a crossbow and they all had regular bows made for an exhausting session in which nobody learned anything and several bits fell off the crossbow in the resulting argument.

Katin swallowed her pride, apologised to Zippo for blaming him for that time she nearly got blown up, and asked him if he could fix her crossbow.  He managed to stick most of it back together, and fixed the device for finding directions as well.

Everyone had a bit of a rest to recover from their exertions, and then prepared for another mission outside.  Now they knew where the hospital was, they needed to get there as soon as possible to be ready for the arrival of Eriel's hobbit.  Following Katin's lead they headed out through the marshes and turned to the south, and after a couple of hours, found themselves outside St Ann's Hospital.

They weren't alone.  While picking a low rot path into the hospital, Katin spotted a group of zone ghouls up ahead.  Remembering that historically, attempting to sneak past dangerous zone entities had not gone too well, they decided to attempt to surprise them instead.

Quin and Katin lead the charge, surprising the ghouls with rocks and arrows.  The others were...less of a surprise.  Nevertheless, after a brief but brutal fight that included one of the ghouls being dissolved by Lenny's acid spit, the ghouls were defeated and the team were all more or less intact.  They removed the helmet one of the ghouls had been wearing, realising that this was not just any helmet but an ancient artefact.

Lenny donned the helmet, and after some more arguing about the merits of museums, they moved on.  The hospital itself was a creepy sight, with dessicated corpses lying all around and the stench of death in the air.  Ork didn't want to go in, and Katin wasn't particularly keen either.

Leaving Ork outside, they began searching, and soon found a collapsed stairwell.  Zippo activated his mutant powers and used his insectoid limbs to scuttle up the wall, where he managed to locate a sign with directions to different departments.  With some help from Silas, who could remember some important lines from the sacred text, the Health and Safety Manual, he determined that they needed the maternity department on the third floor.

Zippo scuttled the rest of the way up, and found a hose, which he unrolled to allow the others to use it as a climbing rope.  It seemed his difficulty with stairs was not a problem when all the stairs had collapsed and he was soon at the top.

Zippo scuttled back down to give Katin a hand, but despite massive effort, she kept on sliding back down until she was completely exhausted and had to sit down for a rest.  Not wanting to leave her behind, Lenny scooped her up and carried her with him as he climbed.  Quin sensibly decided to stay downstairs and have a look round there instead.

Silas attempted to get Katin back on her feet, but failed to apply the appropriate drugs, leading to a serious case of self doubt.  Lenny stayed with her to look after her while Zippo and Silas searched, sharing his water with her.  The hospital did have some useful bits and pieces, including a box that Silas identified as a first aid kit, as documented in the Health and Safety Manual.  Zippo also found some jars of hobbit food.  Overall, they felt pretty confident they had what they needed.

The four of them descended the stairwell again, Lenny carrying Katin with him and Zippo deploying his insectoid limbs once more.  Silas attempted to follow, but instead the hose snapped and he plummeted down the stairwell.  With Lenny already tired from helping Katin down he couldn't help to break his fall, and Silas landed face down on the ground.

Quin came running at the sudden thud, and managed to put Silas's face back together while Zippo collected stray teeth.  They gathered their finds, and limped slowly back to the ark."

Emissary Lost, episode 1: Missed Meetings

 Neither Tahir nor Sayah were particularly keen to leave the Aliya, both being rather attached to it - if not for exactly the same reasons.  But sometimes you didn't get a choice about these things.

Sayah had no intention of hanging around on Coriolis for any longer than necessary, but Tahir knew people, especially pilots, and managed to find a ship willing to take them on.   But before they'd actually managed to ship out again, Sayah got an unexpected message.

Sayah had always got on well with her cousin Noor, who shared her rebellious streak, but had lost touch with her after leaving home.  So she certainly wasn't expecting to get a message from Noor, needing help and asking to meet up.  Not trusting anything family-related not to be a trap, she asked her new friends to go in first to check things out.  But arriving at the tea room, there was no sign of Noor.

What there was, once everyone was settled down drinking tea and eating dates, was a woman none of them recognised, pursued by what first appeared to be station guards - except unusually well armed.  She seemed to know who she was looking for, launching herself at them, sending candied dates flying in all directions.

While Tahir, Razaq and Khalil distracted the guards, Sayah, Arin and the strange woman slipped quietly away until they were able to vanish down a side passage and get some answers.  The strange woman's name was Althea and she was a friend of Noor.  Both of them had the 'mystic's disease', as she called it.  Noor had been in contact with another mystic, Aram Yafa, and had contacted Althea a week ago, wanting her to come and meet him.

But Althea hadn't found Noor.  All she had found was Noor's communicator, where she had seen the messages Noor had exchanged with Aram, and also the final message that she'd sent to Sayah.  And then the guards had found her, and she'd had to run, dropping the communicator in her flight.

The group met up again once the coast was clear, and headed for Noor's home.  The student apartment was tiny, with barely room for the five of them.  Searching wasn't going to take long.  They soon found a pamphlet from the Samaritan Sanitorium offering help for people with the mystic's disease.  General group consensus was that being a mystic wasn't a disease.  But still.

Sayah spotted a loose floor panel, and soon had it pulled up, revealing a transactor and of all things, a paper diary.  But before anyone could get a look at it, they were interrupted by the apartment building's senior studeont, Ekvias Memoxes, who had serious opinions on the subject of all these strange people being in Noor's apartment.  Khalil swung into action, with a torrent of fast talk that soon had Ekvias on the back foot, allowing Sayah to pocket the transactor and diary and put the floor panel back in place.

Arin went a couple of doors down the corridor to talk to another student.  The girl who opened the door wasn't entirely helpful, but had seen a mysterious tattooed man recently.  She couldn't say exactly what the tattoo was of, but her description did resonate with those of the group who'd had a good look at the guards at the tea house.  Facial tattoos were no more a common sight among the station guards than those carbines had been.

A second trip to Noor's neighbour and some rather circuitous discussion managed to extract Noor's communicator from her, at the cost of a rather extortionate 'reward'.  On it they found another message in addition to the ones Althea had had time to read - one from Aram telling her to show up an hour earlier than planned for the meeting with Althea.

Back down in the more concealed parts of the station, Sayah took the lead hacking into the station security cameras.  There they saw Noor arrive at the tea house, where she was grabbed by three guards, possibly using a stun pistol, then handcuffed and dragged away.  No sign of Aram, but some street children did see what happened.

After a chat with the street children (and a bit of shopping), they headed for an address where they had found the name Yafa, if not Aram.  There they found a bakery, and some headed inside for baklava and a chat.  Tahir, waiting outside, ran into a reporter, and managed to keep her occupied when Aram himself showed up.  Gathering outside, they had just enough time to ask Aram about what was going on and what happened to Noor, when they saw the red light of a laser sight, and a moment later Aram's head had turned to red mist.

Grogmeetish 2020

I've never been to Grogmeet before, although from what I could determine from last year's Twitter chatter, it seems to consist largely of people exchanging jam, with maybe some games in between.  Obviously in 2020 the jam exchanges aren't possible, but the games are.

Game 1

When in doubt, I find a modern day Call of Cthulhu game is a safe choice.  'Restitution' (coming soon to the Miskatonic Repository, I believe) is set in the Netherlands and based on current events, specifically the de-poldering of one of the polders.  Our group of entirely normal people (the mayor of the nearby city, a journalist and a PR specialist) went to do a press thing at an archaeological dig and things went downhill from there in true Call of Cthulhu style.

I really enjoyed this scenario.  Being a modern day scenario, it's entirely possible to jump into the location in Google Streeview and take a look around.  I wasn't sure what a polder or a dyke looked like, but now I've learned something.  Also the pacing is excellent, gradually ramping things up as the horror goes from more mundane fears to full on supernatural terrors.

Game 2

I skipped the middle session, as things were pretty booked up by the time I came to look at it and I figured a break would be good for me.  But in the evening it was time for another outing of Mother Said I Never Should.  While I wasn't initially planning to run anything, when the only Liminal game on the schedule booked up entirely from GMs before player bookings opened, I thought maybe they could use another game and took up Dirk the Dice's invitation.

A few hours before the game I lost two players, due to illness and getting the wrong time zone, but soon had replacements and we dived in.  Some enthusiasm for cricket lead to the group being called Edgbaston Investigations, and through stealth, charm, and creative use of pepper spray, they solved the case.

I've run this scenario enough times now that I barely look at my notes.  Since I'm planning to write it up for publication, I actually looked at it again properly, and was surprised to find various elements from the first time I ran it that I no longer use.  It's been interesting to compare what I run now with the original version and see how I've refined it.

Reflections

I know I'm going to want to attend the real life version of Grogmeet once that's a thing again, which is annoying, because it's a long way to Manchester.  The Dutch GM in my first game mentioned flying in for it, and so long as he's not far from the airport his journey's probably quicker than mine.

There was quite a lot of additional stuff going on that might make it worth a trip next time though, including a quiz on Thursday and a Mausritter tournament on Friday, neither of which I attended because I had other regular games happening, plus the RoomZoom of Roleplay Rambling on Sunday morning which I did get to.  So maybe it'll happen.  LARP permitting.  Otherwise I'll be looking out for Virtual Grogmeet next spring.

I guess I'd better learn to make jam.

The Path to Eden, episode 9: The Prophecy Fulfilled, Whatever It Was

Venno's audience looked worried today.  Unsurprisingly, given where he'd left things last time.  But they'd all come back.  It was time for the resolution.

"The nearby building with the strange metal rings on the roof looked like a good place for Zippo to find some scrap.  A sign on the front appeared to read 'BBn', but when the last letter was poked with a spear, they realised it said 'BBC'.  After some thought, Silas revealed that this symbol represented an ancient distributor of knowledge through radio broadcasts.  Lenny remembered that the symbol also appeared on the Gardener's World magazine in the Box of Lost Prophecies.  Could this place be a library?

Quin and Ork went in to investigate, and soon learned that they were not alone.  There were people talking there, on the floor above.  This was concerning.  Last time any of them had met other people, they had been cannibals who wanted to eat them.  She headed further in, followed by Silas, with floorboards creaking under her feet, until after a particularly loud creak, the talking stopped and a door slammed.

Quin indicated to Silas that he should keep quiet, and headed up the stairs.  Silas followed, missed a step, fell back down the stairs, cursing loudly and letting an arrow fly into the ceiling.

The noise didn't bring anyone out though, and Quin continued.  There were people there, behind a door, speaking in strange voices.  She kicked open the door, which bounced off something and shut again.  Despite some strange noises, they didn't seem entirely hostile.  After some tentative words, introductions were made.  There was something different about these people.  Rather like that elf they'd found.

They were looking for a new home, and once it was established that nobody wanted to hurt people on either side, and they didn't want to eat anyone, it seemed possible..  They came from a mountain range far away.  Was it the Misty Mountains?  It seemed like it was, although they seemed confused about what goblins were.  Perhaps they were dwarves?

As a sign of good faith, they handed over a weapon which they called a shotgun.  It was like Zippo's scrap rifle, but more powerful.  The group weren't convinced yet, but the strangers then offered to deal with the Nazgul.  The Ark did have a few vacancies after some of the recent deaths, and they claimed to know how to grow crops.  It seemed like a reasonable offer.

While the strangers went to deal with the Nazgul, a task that they insisted they had to do without the team there, they went for a look around the building to see if there was anything interesting.  Lenny found an interesting object.  If you looked in one end it made things look bigger, and if you looked in the other end, things looked smaller.  It gave Lenny an excellent view of the Nazgul.  And the others, an excellent view of what was left of it after the strangers completely obliterated it.

After a thorough search of the area, which turned up a reasonable amount of grub, water and bullets, they made their way back to the Ark, with their new friends in tow.  They had also seen a building with a big red cross on it, and knew where to find it.  It turned out to be only a short distance from the Seven Sisters Ark.  The name St Ann was written on it.  Rather than visit it straight away though, they decided to get everyone home so they could all have a rest.

Quin and Silas took the lead, to warn everyone about the new arrivals, since nobody had ever seen twelve new people at once before.  Lenny, Zippo and Katin showed them around the outside area, pointing out the croplands and the sundial.  Boss Elona came out to meet them, and they told her about the slaying of the Nazgul.

Inside the Ark, Silas and Quin headed for the Dawn Vault, where Silas was forced to have a conversation with Puzzle Paul, much to his disgust.  Puzzle Paul had found one of Silas's heretical posters and he and the other chroniclers had recognised his handwriting.  They argued for a while about the relative merits of museums, until they finally got onto the subject of the new arrivals and how Silas wanted to talk to the Elder.

After a second argument, Silas was finally allowed in.  He explained to the Elder about the new people, who somehow seemed more like the Elder than the people of the Ark, and how they had defeated the Nazgul.  His arguments proved convincing, and permission was granted.

Silas returned to the Dawn Vault, where he found Quin and Ork exactly where Puzzle Paul had told them to wait.  Together they returned to the surface to share the good news.  Lenny headed in to talk to Boss Marlotte, to sort out tickets, and got sent back to ask the important questions, like whether anyone needed a family ticket, and if anyone had an oyster card.  Once Boss Marlotte's spreadsheet was properly filled in, Lenny was sent back up to hand out tickets, blow the whistle and shout 'All aboard!'

And with a cheerful chorus of 'Mind The Gap' the new arrivals were welcomed in."

Projection in Delta Green

One thing I love about Delta Green is the bond mechanic.  In purely mechanical terms, agents have bonds with loved ones, which can be used as ablative sanity armour - when you lose sanity, you can choose to project onto a bond, and reduce the sanity loss at the expense of reducing your connection with that person.

True Detective series 1 illustrates this pretty well.  At the start of the show, in 1995, Hart has a wife and children, while Cohle has nobody.  By 2012, Hart has all but destroyed his relationship with his family, but is still pretty much keeping it together, while Cohle, with no bonds to project onto, has gone entirely off the rails.

We've just finished playing the superb Delta Green adventure Viscid, and when I fumbled a sanity roll that I really didn't want to fumble, I decided it was time for a bit of bond projection.  I didn't have much time to think about the implications of it at the time, but after a bit of thought it's all making sense to me.

Minor spoilers for Viscid below.

---

Emily had never stopped loving John.

Their marriage hadn't worked out; it had been a struggle even before the incident and impossible afterwards.  Divorce had been a relief.  But it turned out that without the pressure of being his wife, it was easy to be his friend.

She didn't think about her home life while working.  Even her regular work put her in contact with the worst of humanity, and then there were the special jobs.  Like this one, which had already claimed the lives of two of the team.

And then that...thing, that creature of flesh and slime that somehow still had enough brain to remember a name and enough mouth to call it out, came crawling into the house.  She'd kept it together before, out by the trailer, determined not to embarrass herself in front of Matt and Glenn.  But this time, knowing what - knowing who - this time she couldn't.  And as she ran she thought of John.

There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself, even as she went stumbling out of the house and into the garden.  Just a man, scared and confused, looking for his wife.  Just like John had called out for her in the hospital.  And then Glenn was there to unpeel her fingers from the gas can that had somehow seemed so vital to hold onto, and once she knew that the creature was gone for good she started feeling a little better.

But the trouble was, now she'd made the association between that creature and John, she couldn't forget it.  Every time she saw him, every time she spoke to him, every time she so much as thought of him, it was there.  In her nightmares it was her name that the creature called out, and John's voice with which it spoke.

Emily still loved John.  But, she couldn't help wondering, for how much longer?

Dungeon Crawl Classics Revisited

My first experience of DCC was at a convention, back when they still happened face to face, and it wasn't great.  While my normal convention experience ranges from good to great, this was merely OK.  I can think of three factors that contributed to that:

• The GM planned for 4-6 players and only two of us signed up.
• I'm quiet, the GM was a little hard of hearing, and the room was loud due to a group coming in to play video games so we struggled to communicate.
• I'd never heard of a funnel before so had no idea what was going on with these multiple character sheets or how any of it was supposed to work.

So I figured I owed DCC a second shot, and when a friend offered a one-shot of Creep, Skrag, Creep! I decided to give it a go.  This time I knew what a funnel was, we had the four players the GM had planned for, and...well, we had some internet problems so maybe the sound wasn't all it could have been, but at least we could all hear each other.

The adventure itself is a fun horror-themed scenario, which I suspect takes some inspiration from the Alien franchise.  One of my peasants was dead within five minutes.  Another followed shortly afterwards.  Since one thing I did like about the previous DCC game was the big red stamp the GM used on dead characters, I decided to improvise with MS Paint:

Going in knowing what a funnel was certainly improved the experience, and I was impressed by how the GM handled the fact that there were quite a lot of PCs in play, even after the initial massacre.  There's definitely fun to be found in attempting to guide your team of hapless potato farmers through a situation they're entirely unequipped to deal with, and a feeling of victory when any of them make it out alive.

That said, I doubt I'll sign up for many more funnels.  They're good for an occasional bit of fun, but not really what I'm looking for most of the time when playing an RPG.  I wonder what the game looks like once you're playing a character with levels rather than a random peasant though.  I've seen the core book and it's enormous - there has to be a lot more in there than what I've seen so far.

It looks like I'm going to have to revisit DCC at least once more to really get a feel for what it's like.  There's a massive DCC Humble Bundle currently available though, with a bunch of level 1 and higher adventures, so maybe I'll get the chance.

The Path to Eden, episode 8: Knightfall

 Venno's audience were unusually quiet.  Rumours had been flying that this episode would be particularly terrifying.  He smiled.  They had no idea.

"The people gathered for an assembly.  With work almost complete on the temple and the sundial, it was time to start on some new projects.  Puzzle Paul was the first to speak up.  The Fellowship were bringing back artefacts, and he was sure that a museum to display them in was an excellent idea.  Despite a shout of 'No museum!' from the back of the crowd, the motion was approved.

Then Boss Johamed spoke up.  His lads wanted somewhere they could have a bit of fun.  They'd read all the holy books, and they wanted a tavern, like the Prancing Pony.  And furthermore, if they were going to have this museum, they were going to need to be ready for troublemakers showing up to steal them.  They needed a wrestling cage to practice fighting.

Scraggy Maggie was worried about the cannibals that the Fellowship had encountered.  She didn't think the fighting practice was enough.  They needed proper defences.  She hadn't wanted to keep living on sourdough starter, and she didn't want to get eaten either.  That seemed like quite enough to be going on with, and the assembly broke up so everyone could get to work.

Zippo decided he'd had quite enough of trying to work on the temple, and was going to do something he was good at.  He effortlessly interpreted the Ikea instruction manual and soon had the sundial set up and ready to go.

Silas headed for the tavern site, directing people in the proper layout of the building.  Not many people were actually listening to him.

Quin wanted to do some physical work rather than all this people stuff, and went to the temple.  Some solid hard work later, everything was in place and the temple was complete.  At last, Zippo's ears would be safe from Briktoria's anger.  She was now free to collect rocks for her slingshot.

Lenny was planning on working on the temple, but on finding that it was already finished, he headed for the tavern site instead.  There he found Silas directing people to run around like prancing ponies, not getting very far.  He pulled out his shovel and got to work.  By the time he finished, his shovel wasn't quite what it once was, but the tavern was close to completion.  Zippo got on the case, screwing it back together.

After seeing her artefact bow get broken, Katin was keen to ensure that that kind of thing didn't happen again.  She made her way to the site of the museum, much to Silas's disapproval, and got to work guiding the arrangement of exhibits.  Once she'd put in a decent amount of work, she headed over to the Seven Sisters cult to see how Eriel was getting on and when the hobbit was likely to arrive.  She was still getting sick a lot and sourdough starters were not agreeing with her.

Silas went to have an argument with Puzzle Paul on the subject of museums.  After a prolonged debate in which no agreement was reached, things were getting serious.  They both reached for their notebooks for an epic note-off.  At last, Silas slammed the door as he left, resolving to him him with the notebook next time.  But it wasn't long before he had another idea, and started putting up posters about how the museum was heretical and Puzzle Paul was lying to the community.

Meanwhile, Eriel was berating Katin for her ongoing failure to find a hospital.  Why hadn't she found one yet?  Maybe she could find a surgery as well?  Katin had no idea what that was.  Neither did Eriel.  But maybe if Katin could get her a hospital, she would stop blaming her for the death of Eriel's sister.

Katin ran away to cry.  Zippo, on his way to give Lenny his shovel back, spotted her and went to comfort her.  Together they went looking for Lenny, but they actually found Quin.  There was some disagreement over whether or not Ork was a good boy, and the hunt for Lenny resumed.

Lenny was up doing guard duty near the entrance, and had found some of Silas's posters.  He wasn't impressed.  They looked a bit heretical.  Silas explained his concerns, bringing up the recent damage to the temple, but Lenny pointed out that that was heretickal, with a k.  Silas still had a lot more say though, and the argument was still ongoing when suddenly night turned to day as the sky outside lit up.

Katin, Silas and Quin ran for the surface.  Silas dived for cover, only emerging once the light had died away.  Something had fallen from the sky - maybe it was the work of Sauron?  Perhaps his eye was passing across them?  Zippo thought it had landed somewhere beyond Alexandra's Tower.  Maybe they should go and investigate in the morning?

Katin's attention was drawn to the heretical posters on the wall.  Who had put them up?  Silas claimed not to have seen who put them up.  Ork sniffed the poster and Silas.  Katin told him he was a good boy, gave the poster a sniff herself, and turned to Silas.  Why was he putting up heretical posters?  Lenny took the poster down, and threatened that if he found any more, he would stuff them down Silas's trousers.

The next morning, Silas, Quin and Zippo were awoken by cheering and the voice of Briktoria.  She had a plan to take a group to the site where the Eye of Sauron had fallen, to destroy Mordor.  Eriel was amongst them as the group headed to the Ark's exit.  Zippo's best efforts did nothing to dissuade them.  The crowd soon awoke Katin, who went straight to look for Lenny.  They joined the effort to turn them back.  They didn't have a ring.  And there were supposed to be only nine of them.  It was in the holy book!  And they might have a hobbit with them but it was still inside Eriel, and the health and safety manual was quite clear about how pregant people shouldn't go out on expeditions.

Finally Briktoria was persuaded.  The Fellowship would go out, supplied with some waybread and water.  They headed out, with Silas surreptitiously dropping some fliers on the way out.

There was an unpleasant smell at Alexandra's Tower, coming from the place where they'd found the hanging bodies.  Katin advised everyone to stay away from that part and head for the higher parts of the building.  While Quin scouted to make sure there were no cannibals still lurking, Katin looked out over the area where the Eye of Sauron had fallen.  In the middle of the crater she could see something moving around, and the best, least rot-contaminated way to get there.

The big shiny thing required further investigation.  Was it an olyphant?  They needed a closer look.  Quin offered to sneak her way in and see what she could find.  The thing she found looked rather like a troll, but a metal troll instead of stone.  It looked like it was hunting or looking for something.  She didn't think Ork would be able to hurt it, and Katin agreed that arrows would just bounce off.  Quin was sure it wasn't friendly, so talking wasn't an option.  What were they going to do?

Silas wanted to get a look at it.  Quin offered to take him, on the condition that he was quiet.  Silas wasn't sure he could promise that.  Quin agreed, but said that if he wasn't quiet, he would be in front of her.  He decided it was worth it.

The creature he saw was unlike anything he had ever set eyes on before.  A huge monster, covered in metal.  He had no idea what it was, but perhaps talking to it would be helpful.  But even as he reached that conclusion, Quin and Katin were reaching a very different conclusion.

Katin had seen something like this before, in one of the pamphlets from the Box of Lost Prophecies.  It was called a knight, and was made by covering a person in lots of bits of metal.  They would then be used in fights.  They were very dangerous.  And Silas was about to try to talk to it.

Quin wasn't quite so sure what it was, but she recognised it as something dangerous.  She started trying to talk Silas out of getting any closer when Ork drew her attention to another person in the area.  A cannibal.  And then the creature spoke, in a strange unnatural voice.  'Mutants must die.'  And then a beam of light shot out of its arm and the cannibal was instantly vapourised.

Silas found that a very convincing argument, and the three of them quietly left.  If that thing came anywhere near the Ark, they were really going to need those defenses.  They discussed how it could be stopped.  Perhaps the knight was a Nazgul?  In which case they would need the right prophecy to know how to kill it.  Maybe it could be stopped by a river?  Or by some of Zippo's bombs?  One thing was certain: if Briktoria came here, she would die.

Katin took a look around at the local area on either side of the crater.  To the west she saw a building, covered with strange structures of rusty metal rings.  And to the south she saw what seemed to be an underground carriage that had burnt up after falling from the sky.

The first seemed like a good place to find useful items.  Katin had confirmed there were no threats here, with anything unpleasant having presumably been scared away by the Nazgul.  And so they set out once again, in search of the treasures that might lie within."

Always leave them wanting more.  Venno smiled again as he walked away.

Gumshoe and Me

Within the next week I should have my hands on a print copy of Casting The Runes, an RPG based on the ghost stories of M. R. James. As a huge James fan I'm pretty excited about this.  As a kickstarter backer I've already got the pre-production PDF so I've already had a good read.  With the print copy of the adventure, The Secret of Chimneypots already in my hands, I've been taking another look at the PDF in preparation for the arrival of the print.

There's only one thing I'm not sold on regarding this game and that's its use of the Gumshoe engine.

I've played Gumshoe games before (Bubblegumshoe and Night's Black Agents) but they never really clicked.  I thought that I wasn't quite getting the system.  But reading Casting The Runes, I've realised that it's not that I haven't got my head around it. I understand it OK. I just don't enjoy it.

I don't like not rolling dice for the investigative abilities. I understand the design principle that the game is about interpreting the clues, not finding them, and the way that the players should always be able to find the core clues.  However, I prefer the approach Liminal takes, where if you're searching for a key clue and fail the roll, you're still going to find it but there's some negative consequence.  Imagine you're searching an office for a letter.  You suspect it's in a hidden drawer but fail the awareness roll.  You still find the drawer, but you make so much noise trying to brute force the thing open without having located the trigger mechanism that you attract the attention of the owner of the office.  Now what do you do?

I can see the merits of both approaches, but the latter is the one I find more fun.

I don't like pool spends for the general abilities.  Having to gamble on how many points to spend on something before you've rolled and without knowing what target number you're aiming for isn't fun for me.  It's stressful.  When I roll dice I like to have some grasp of  how likely I am to succeed, and I never have that in Gumshoe.  Constrast with Call of Cthulhu, where I know exactly what my chances of success are, and while luck is a finite resource, I don't have to spend it until I already know how well I rolled.

I like tension and uncertainty in investigative horror, but I like it to come from the unpredictability of dice rolls, not whether I happened to pick an appropriate point spend.  And I can absolutely see how that aspect might make for a more thrilling game for someone else.  It's just not my kind of fun.

It's time to accept that Gumshoe and me don't get on.  The issues could certainly be mitigated; the rules allow for 'toll tests' where you do know the difficulty and can spend points after the roll.  Simply doing all general ability rolls that way would remove a lot of what I don't enjoy.  Including some kind of roll to investigative abilities if there's a potential for negative consequences would also add some extra interest, although that would be mathematically more complicated to handle.  All of this does require that the other players and the GM are all on board with the changes.

I intend have a shot at running Casting The Runes as written, using the pre-written adventures and maybe the above rules modifications.  However, I rather suspect it's going to join Serenity as a game I use for its setting material rather than its system.  The question is, which system do I use?

Call of Cthulhu is the obvious choice, as the classic game of investigating occult mysteries.  The time period is slightly different, but not so much as to require significant changes to skills, and the stereotypical James antiquarian protagonist is near enough to a Lovecraftian librarian to be confident we're going to end up with similar types of character.

Cthulhu Dark is another good option.  The rules-light system requires effectively no conversion, and the focus on narrative over combat is very fitting.  The idea where if you actively take on the horrors you will die certainly works thematically.

Liminal, despite being a modern day setting with a lot of explicitly supernatural character options, is also a contender.  It shares what I consider Gumshoe's strong point - a focus on abilities over attributes - and while the thematic differences would require more work to overcome, with such a simple underlying mechanic it's certainly possible.  It's my favourite game for doing investigative scenarios, so could be worth the effort.

To me, Christmas is just as much a time for spooky tales as Halloween, so whatever rules I end up using for it, I hope to get Casting The Runes to the virtual table very soon.

The Path to Eden, episode 7: There and Back Again

Chronicler Venno's audience were once again eagerly awaiting the next episode.  Not such a cliffhanger this time, but with so many injuries, who knew what might happen?

"Zippo and Katin dashed to Lenny's aid, Katin keeping Lenny distracted while Zippo attempted to set his broken leg.  An enormously stressful experience for him, seeing his friend in so much pain as he treated the wound, but ultimately a success.  Lenny would be OK - eventually.  The two of them celebrated briefly, before moving on to Silas.

This didn't go quite so well.  Zippo already wasn't feeling great after seeing far too much of the inside of Lenny's leg, and Katin wasnt much help.  For now, the crossbow bolt stuck in Silas would have to stay there.  Perhaps he could use it as an extra arm?

As they discussed getting some sleep and hoping they felt better in the morning, Zippo was distracted by the sound of yapping.

'Ork!'

'Where?  Where?  Oh, that Ork.'

It was a dog.  A dog they all recognised.  And he seemed to want something.

'What's that, Ork? Someone's trapped down a well?'

While Lenny ate some more stew, Katin and Lenny followed Ork to a door at the back of the room.  Pushing it open they found bodies.  Lots of them, hanging from the ceiling, and several with clear signs of having been carved.

'Lenny, don't eat the stew!'

'Too late.'

In amongst the bodies was one who was still alive.  Ork's handler, Quin.  In a flash, Zippo and Katin were at her side, cutting her down to take her back with them to the fire.  Silas began to come round just as Quin was also waking up.

'Quin!  It's so good to see you again.'

While Silas removed the bolt from his own chest, Quin explained how she had got there.  She'd been out searching for junk and anything else that Zippo could use to get the temple and the sundial done faster, so that Briktoria would stop pulling on his ears.  Not that she had a problem with his ears.  Quite the reverse, in fact.  And she'd met these people who she thought were going to help, but instead had hung her up in their larder.

Zippo collected up weapons from the fallen enemies, and handed them out.  Scrap spears, good for poking people while out of arm's reach.  Also useful as crutches while Lenny and Silas needed help walking with their broken bones.  What was left of what Quin had found out here was a flat basketball and a picture showing two people and 2.4 hobbits.  Perhaps it would look nice in the temple?

While the others got some sleep, Zippo sat down to talk to Quin.  He was concerned about her putting herself in danger.  Quin tried to reassure him that she had Ork to look after her.  And between that and some sleep, he started to feel better.

The next morning, everyone was feeling significantly better, broken bones notwithstanding.  Zippo took on the challenge of repairing Katin's artifact bow, but was so confused by its complex construction that he completely destroyed it.  Fortunately, he'd given Katin the crossbow he'd taken from Malcolm the night before, so she wasn't too angry about it.  And Silas's scrap bow proved significantly easier to repair.

While Zippo was at work, the others went to do a bit of exploring.  With Katin taking the lead, they managed to hunt down a small number of bullets, plus some rot-contaminated food that wasn't made of people and which could be cooked into something edible back at the Ark.  Next they tried climbing upwards in search of a good vantage point to get a look at the nearby area, just in case the red cross symbol the elf had told them about was visible.  But getting a really good look was going to take time, and Katin was worried about Lenny.

The five of them (and the dog) set out once more, and a few hours later they were all safely home.  It was time to do some work.  Katin and Silas worked together on the sundial, getting quite a lot more completed, although the words of the great prophet Ikea remained too confusing for Katin.  Quin, Lenny and a reluctant but resigned Zippo made their way down to the temple.  The damage done by saboteurs was restored and more progress made.  Perhaps with a little more work both projects would soon be completed?"

There was a small murmur of disappointment that the story was over, but the fact that he was not leaving them on yet another cliffhanger left many of them more relieved than anything else.  For now, at least, their heroes were safe.

---

If you'd like to watch us playing this game, we play on Sunday evenings on Twitch and you can also catch up on past games on YouTube.

Furnace XV

I was supposed to be playing one of my favourite LARPs at the weekend, so hadn't planned to attend Furnace this year.  But when registration opened, back in June, I signed up anyway because who knew what things were going to be like by October?  Good choice, past me.

Game 1

Saturday kicked off with a game of Punkapocalyptic, a game that I have learned to pronounce since my first time playing.  We played the scenario 'Bad Luck in Luckyland,' a rather less bodily fluid focused adventure, but even more absurd.  A simple cooking contest kicked off a chain of events that included constructing a Disney themed mecha, frolicking like woodland sprites and the accidental creation of a mutant buffet.

Describing the game to a friend afterwards, he said it reminded him of Borderlands, and that's not a bad comparison.  While the content is very different, there's a similar feel in the game's irreverant tone.  I don't know if Punkapocalyptic is intended to be a comedy game, but it's absolutely the funniest thing I've played this year.  Of course a lot of that was due to the GM's brilliant scenario and the way my fellow players embraced it.

And talking of fellow players, not only was I not the only woman at the (virtual) table, but for the first time at a convention, I was at a table where the women outnumbered the men!  What a great way to start the weekend.

Game 2

Saturday evening's game was Vaesen, with the scenario 'A Wicked Secret'.  Fria Ligan have done an amazing job with this adventure, with a bunch of handouts that bring the setting to life and a mystery that seemed obvious on the face of it but turned increasingly complex as we delved further into it and kept the surprises coming until the end.

Five of us headed into the Swedish forests to solve this mystery.  As in Mutant: Year Zero, we all had a bit of text to describe our relationship with each other character, plus our own opinions on the subject of vaesen, which resulted in some spicy conflict.  My only regret is that we didn't have more time to roleplay that aspect of the game - we already overran by nearly two hours without things ever feeling slow, and could easily have taken another hour on our traumas, relationships and dark secrets.

Vaesen is a bit like Call of Cthulhu, in that not only can you play it with little to no knowledge of the setting, it can actually be a better experience to play it that way.  This is a bit of a challenge for someone like me, who aims to be both player and GM.  I'll just have to hold off reading certain bits of the book until I'm actively planning to use them.

A key part of the setting that did shine through though was the conflicts brought about by the increasing industrialisation of northern Europe during the 19th century.  Not only does it drive the whole setting, but it ran through the game right down to a very personal level.  My initial impression of Vaesen when I first saw the game on Kickstarter was that it was something like a 19th century Liminal, but after a couple of games, the best comparison I can find is Princess Mononoke.

This game gave me a new insight into the world of Vaesen and I really hope to play more.

Game 3

A rare opportunity for me to play Liminal, with a London based scenario using some of the Pax Londinium content - including pre-gen characters from the Worshipful Company of Investigators.  I picked Mika, the urban explorer, which reminded me of one thing I love about Liminal - you can play a character with no supernatural abilities at all, and still feel just as valuable to the group as anyone else.

A tense investigation followed, full of poor decisions and good natured ribbing but ultimately ending in success.  It was fascinating to see someone else's take on the setting.  So far most of the scenarios I've run were either my own or written by Paul Mitchener, and the only time I've played before was also with Paul Mitchener.  In this game the GM leaned a lot more into the Neverwhere side of Liminal London, making for a very different experience.

Game 4

Unfortunately one player had to drop out of my afternoon game of Liminal, but a quick advert on Twitter soon netted me a replacement.

I can't even remember how many times I've run Mother Said I Never Should now, but the players still manage to find ways to surprise me.  The scenario is set up so that there a number of pieces of information for the players to find, but it's up to them how they go about finding them, and this time a player took an approach that nobody has tried before.

This adventure is getting one more outing at Grogmeet until it gets (temporarily) retired in favour of the new stuff I'm working on.

Reflections

I'm glad to say nobody in the games I was in made any attempt to use the Roll20 AV (although I'm told one of the other groups actually got it to work!)  We used Discord or Google Meet for each game, and apart from one of my Liminal players having some internet wobbles, it all went very smoothly.

By the time social gatherings are safe enough for conventions to resume at the Garrison, I'll probably be LARPing again, so might not make it to an in-person Furnace for a while.  But it's going to be a tough choice.  A lovely group of people that I'm really looking forward to meeting in person.

AlbaCon 2020

As far as I know, AlbaCon (definitely not Al Bacon) is another new arrival on the convention scene, headed up by the same person as Tabletop Scotland.  As a southerner, Perth is a long way to go for a convention, but my internet connection is right here...

Game 1

First, a complaint, unrelated to the game itself: Roll20 AV does not work.  Presumably there are groups out there who do manage to use it, and it sure would be convenient to have the AV and the VTT all running in the same place.  But it's not going to happen.  Save yourself the trouble and go straight to Discord/Hangouts/Jitsi.  But back to the game.

I love Alien, and have run my scenario The Toxic Jewel a few times now, but this time I was signed up as a player.  The scenario was excellent, hitting all the right story notes as we started out confident that we knew what the threat was and how we were going to go about neutralising it, only to discover things weren't quite as they seemed.  On a scale of Alien to Aliens, it was at the Aliens end of the scale - good scary action fun.

One thing I loved was the GM's creative use of props.  As well as being fully branded in Weyland Yutani clothing, he also had action figures, and his 'the last thing you see' vignettes of an upside-down xenomorph slowly lowered down from the top of his screen were a delight.  I'd not thought of using props this way, and in these strange times of exclusively online gaming it's great to see creativity in the use of video.

Alien remains one of my favourite systems, and I need to get on and write my next scenario.

Game 2

Conventions are a great opportunity to try out new games.  I'd never heard of Broken Shield before, and it's hard to describe exactly what it is, as it has elements of cyberpunk and superheroes while at the same time not being either of those things.  I was intrigued enough to sign up.  I was a little worried I wasn't going to get to play, as for a long time nobody else did, but as the date approached, one of the convention organisers signed up, and my husband decided he'd like to join me at a convention for a change, so we set out with a party of three.

Rather than a VTT, the GM was making use of Discord's screenshare facility to share a digital whiteboard with all the maps and handouts which worked very nicely.  Important bits of text were copied into the Discord chat (where we also did the dice rolls).

So a new team of a detective, a priest and a psychic arrived for their first day working together, only to suddenly get dragged into a much bigger murder investigation where nothing was as it seemed.  As we followed the trail of the killer, uncovering secrets as we went, I could have done with a whiteboard of my own, preferably with red string to join things together.  As it was I settled for making notes.  And I absolutely loved it.  A really fun adventure, and a system with a fair bit of crunch but not so much that it slowed down play.

The GM was also the game's creator, and all the players got a free PDF copy of the game.  I'm looking forward to reading it, but since he's also written a novel in this setting, I might be taking a look at that first.  It's a future London that's very different to the ones I'm used to, and I'm really excited to see more.

Game 3

Another outing for Liminal: Mother Said I Never Should.  A couple of players had to cancel, but a quick advert on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias discord brought in two people who'd previously played my Alien game.  With two of the other players having been in the Alien game that morning, for once at a convention I was playing with a group that was almost entirely people I knew.

While Discord is generally a solid choice for AV, it does have its moments, and we had some initial hiccups.  Fortunately I've used Discord enough to know that when someone can't hear and/or be heard, there's a good chance this is because Discord has changed its audio input/output.  I normally run it with the output on my speakers, but now and then it will decide to change the output to use the headphones on my audio interface, which makes it seem like I'm not getting any sound.  Directing people to the user settings screen usually gets things sorted out.

Game 4

After not nearly enough sleep, I was up again to play City of Mist.

I've already picked this game up in PDF (there was a sale) but this was my first time playing it.  I've been looking for a superhero RPG that's a bit more Birds of Prey than Justice League, and this was recommended.  It certainly captures the aesthetic.  We played the starter set adventure, Shark Tank, and the maps and imagery gave me the feel of a dark rainy city suffering under the weight of deprivation and organised crime.

The premise is that you play a human character that has a link to a mythological entity, which is where you get your superpowers.  My character, a detective moonlighting as a private eye, reminded me a lot of Renee Montoya, except she also had a link to an ancient Mesopotanian mythological wild man, enticing her to break control and turn to the wild (and allowing her to lash out with thorny plant-like tentacles).

It's the strangest implementation of PBTA that I've encountered, feeling more like I was playing Fate a lot of the time. Picking the appropriate powers to apply to an action was fun, and since there's a lot of them and they're all worth 1 point it gets rid of the Fate tendency to try to use your best skill for everything.  I tended to go with the thorny tentacles in the fights, as it felt appropriate for her to be lashing out aggressively as the bad guys wound her up, but shooting them in a controlled cop-like fashion would have felt appropriate in other circumstances and been just as valid mechanically.

They've done a brilliant job with the starter set, and the roll20 implementation is superb.  Making a roll is a matter of selecting the powers you're going to use and then clicking the appropriate move, with a space to add positive and negative modifiers.  Damage involving inflicting conditions with varying levels of severity, which then apply negatives if you have them, or positives if your target has them, and there are places on the sheet to fill those in.

The end result is a visually attractive game, easy to pick up, and easier to explain than either Fate or PBTA.  Our GM mentioned that she was pretty new to running anything other than D&D, but she had a good handle on things and got us up to speed so fast I was wondering if I'd missed something.

This game was everything I hoped for, and now I'm going to have to actually finish reading the PDF, and maybe even try running it myself.

Reflections

This was a big con that felt like a small con.  I'm not sure exactly how many games were running, as there were a lot of D&D Adventurer's league games happening and I don't entirely understand how those work, but even not counting those there were 13 games happening in each of the Saturday afternoon and evening slots.

The level of organisation was exceptional.  Booking games through the website was a breeze, and it seems cancelling must have been reasonably simple too, as both the people who had to drop out of mine managed to free up the spaces so more people could book.  The Discord setup was excellent, and a convenient way to contact my players without having to invite them to my own server.

Unlike most of the online conventions I've attended, this one actually had a price - £5 per game.  I wondered if that put people off taking a chance on less familiar games, although given that the event was run as a charity fundraiser for kids with cancer, I didn't have any problem paying.

While my preference is for smaller cons, I felt just as comfortable with this one and I really hope it's going to be a regular event.

On the Subject of Werewolves

My home group are currently playing the new SWADE Deadlands.  It's going well.  For the first time ever I'm actually enjoying the Savage Worlds system rather than enjoying the setting in spite of it.  In the most recent game, we were rather surprised when one of the people we'd just rescued (who, for ease of tokens, consisted of a small group of Chuck Norris clones) turned into a wolf.  Which meant that someone was going to have to make an Occult skill roll to know stuff about werewolves.

This was concerning, because nobody ever in the history of this gaming group has ever managed to succeed on a roll to learn things about werewolves.

It doesn't matter what system we're using, or what setting we're playing in.  Any time we encounter werewolves, the result is the same.  In everything from Dungeons & Dragons to The Dresden Files, we find that our collective sum of knowledge of werewolves is that they turn into wolves and don't like silver.

The in-game explanation we had for this is that everywhere in the gaming multiverse there exists only one book on the subject of werewolves, which is a children's picture book that we call The Penguin Book of Werewolves.

Then one day in a game of Pathfinder, one of the PCs actually became a werewolf.  This opportunity was too good to pass up.  After a prolonged period of experimentation that perhaps bordered on the inhumane, a new work was written, expanding considerably on the original Penguin Book of Werewolves.  It contained much that was inaccurate (due to the PC in question being an aasimar,) but was nevertheless hailed as a significant improvement over the original work.  It was published as The Sungrass-Vade Basic Werewolf Primer, after its two authors, Sephone Sungrass and Shavaros Vade.  Alas, its distribution was not particularly widespread, and many characters were still obliged to fall back on the earlier, less detailed work.

And so, we return to our tense Deadlands moment.  The werewolf was preparing to attack.  Without the knowledge of how to defeat such a creature, we were all but defenseless.  The nearest thing we had to an occult expert made his roll, and much to everyone's amazement, pulled out a copy of the Sungrass-Vade Basic Werewolf Primer, and informed us all that werewolves could turn into wolves, and they didn't like silver or magic.

Which wasn't overly helpful, given that that meant only one out of four PCs could actually do magic or silver damage, and he promptly rolled a double one on his spellcasting.  The rest of us flailed ineffectively, unable to hurt it in any way, while barely escaping being ripped to shreds.

But as it turned out, there's one more things werewolves don't like, and that's being yeeted into the sea.

The Path to Eden, episode 6: Into The Woods

Chronicler Venno was gratified to find his audience already waiting for him.  No need for introductions this time.

"As I was saying, the devourer was approaching Lenny with its jaws open wide.  But as it did so, Katin drew her bow and loosed an arrow into it, while Zippo shouted and waved to draw its attention.  The monster turned its attention away from Lenny to chase Zippo, who was able to fend off its enormous teeth with his chitinous carapace.  Lenny crawled his way to Silas, who gave him a quite massage to get him back on his feet.  Seeing Katin in danger, Lenny charged in with his spiked bat, but it bounced off, dealing more damage to him than to the devourer.  Silas's attempt to punch it was completely ineffective, but finally another of Katin's arrows found its mark and felled the foul beast."

The release of tension in the room was audible, as everyone who'd been holding their breath exhaled in unison.

"What to do next?  It would be dark soon, and they were all injured after the fight.  Should they stop and make camp in the forest, or should they push on to their intended destination of Alexandra's Tower in the hope of finding shelter?  Not knowing if there were more devourers in the forest, they decided to continue.

"Katin lead the way once more, and found them a route out of the trees.  The remains of the old city buildings once again appeared before them, and much to their surprise, as they approached the building, voices called out to them.  They seemed friendly, and invited them to join them for dinner.  Having foregone eating the devourer, suspecting it to be rot contaminated, they were all hungry.

"Silas was suspicious, however.  There seemed to be something not quite right about this.  Their motivations in inviting them to a meal seemed less than wholesome.  He shared his suspicions.  Boss Johammed wouldn't be that friendly if strange people came to the Seven Sisters ark.  But before they could turn around, there was a sudden smell of metal in the air, and their hair stood on end.  Moments later, lightning began to strike, and they all ran for the only source of shelter - the building before them.

"Inside they found themselves in a great hall.  It had once been full of chairs, and had a raised platform at one ended, but the centre had been cleared of chairs and a firepit built in the middle.  Four people sat around the fire, where they were cooking some kind of food.  Katin couldn't help but notice that one of them held a weapon that was clearly an ancient artefact like her own, but of a very different style.

"Lenny suspected that these might be trolls, and they wondered if the meat stew they were given might in fact be hobbit.  Not that this stopped the very hungry Zippo from eating.  Once the strangers assured them that the meat was from some animals they'd found here and killed, and that one of them had cooked the rot out of it, everyone tucked in.

"The strangers wanted to know where they came from.  Silas, still suspicious, claimed they came from Zanzibar.  The strangers said they came from the ark, which was confusing, as they clearly weren't from the Seven Sisters.  Their ark was a boat, but it must have been a much bigger one than Zippo's canoe.  Zippo asked them if they'd seen a big red cross on a building anywhere, and they not only had seen one, but said they could take them there in the morning.

"With everyone tired and injured, they decided to get some sleep.  Still a little suspicious, Silas stayed awake to stay on watch and chat with the strangers.  He spun a long tale about the wonderful sunny land of Zanzibar.  And it was lucky he did stay awake, for he suddenly realised that their leader was about to attack.  The truth had come out.  The strangers were cannibals, and were planning on making Silas and the others their next meal.

"Silas loosed an arrow into the leader, but as he did so the end of the bow shattered, rendering it unusable.  The bolt from the leader's bow slammed into him, and the other strangers stood up - they'd only been pretending to sleep.  Silas threw himself out of the way, waking up the others, who joined the fight.

"The battle was brutal.  Katin loaned her spare bow to Silas, but it wasn't long before a desparate attempt to help a seriously injured Lenny caused her to break her own bow.  Silas took out one of their attackers, but knocked himself out in the process.  But it was Zippo who was the hero of the fight, sacrificing precious bullets to kill one of them, and when the remaining attackers decided to flee, taking down the leader so that his precious artefact bow could be retrieved."

Another sigh of relief from the audience.  While the group were hardly out of danger, at least for the moment they could rest easy.

---

If you'd like to watch us playing this game, we play on Sunday evenings on Twitch and you can also catch up on past games on YouTube.