Wicker Valley, episode 21: Tooth Fairy

Somehow we managed to wake up Adam and get out of there. Presumably because the fairy queen had a job for us. Well, a job for Michael. She was missing a tooth fairy and wanted him found. Adam had some dubious ideas for how to find a tooth fairy, but fortunately Michael was able to overrule him in favour of putting up notices that only the fairy would be able to see in places where teeth might be lost, asking to meet him.

With that done, we all went home to get some sleep. Not that I got much sleep. Every moment I'd spent in that fairy realm had made my skin crawl in a way I normally associate with churches, and I ended up lying awake for what felt like hours. When I finally did manage to drift off, I got woken up again pretty quickly by a knock at the door. I almost ignored it to try to get back to sleep, but I realised anyone knocking on the door at that time probably had a good reason.

It was Michael, dressed in pyjamas and soaked through from the rain. I brought him inside, and he told me that the tooth fairy had found him, and then dragged him out of the window, and he was now locked out of his house. And I was the closest person that he'd be able to explain his predicament to.

I suggested teleporting him home, but he wanted to know what could go wrong, and I realised I hadn't done all that much experimenting yet. It seemed to work very well when I was on my own, but I hadn't had much practice in taking people with me yet, and this was not the time to be ending up in the wrong place. And even at this hour of the night, flying him up to the window was too big a risk.

So he got in the shower to warm up, and I got him some towels and bedding so he could sleep the rest of the night on the sofa. In the morning he called Adam to ask him to bring him some clothes. Which meant I had to answer the door to a grinning Adam.

"Whatever you're thinking, it's not that." Not that he believed me, of course.

I had no intention of going anywhere near the fairy realm again, but Michael was going back and there was absolutely no way I was letting them get their hands on him, so we all went. Except they immediately took Michael off into a different room. They did feed us, after first giving us assurances that the food was free of obligations. Elizabeth said it was legit, but I still didn't eat anything until she did.

Three hours later there was still no sign of Michael and I was getting extremely antsy. Finally we got the news that something bad was going to happen in Wicker Valley and they wanted to keep Michael there to keep him safe. I wasn't letting that go and demanded to see Michael. He was fine, although pretty reluctant to stay. In the end they came to some kind of agreement. We would all go back and try to sort things out. And if we hadn't done in time, Michael would come back. I'm glad to say he didn't say anything about staying.

Bloody fairies. They're as bad as my family. Which is why the idea of Agnes and Mary basically running this town is so unsettling.

Dragging Michael out of windows wasn't the only strange thing the tooth fairy had been up to that night, as we soon found ourselves at a crime scene. Being slightly worried about tooth golems, we'd packed full sugar coke in addition to some fairy-fighting tools. It seems in this timeline we get routinely called in for weird crimes, as the police let us right in. Nasty business. The father was dead, and had lost all his teeth as well. The mother and daughter, at least, seemed unharmed. The victims left, and we took a look around.

There was a tooth creature, but it was a lot cuter than I anticipated.

Halcyon Calling, Episode 5: Breaking and Entering

We were on the point of being sensible and leaving when Nigel spoke up. I thought that desk was just bioengineered but Nigel said it was alive, and was a creature like him, which was why it could do the whole holographic display thing. He said smashing it up would be a mercy. And then there was the fact that we kind of knew what had happened to Mr Stodgely now, but we still didn't know where he was, and Mrs Wilkins the Boss probably knew...

I think she might have locked the door after we left but it didn't make a difference because I didn't bother opening it, I just ran back in with wood splintering around me. She pushed a button on her desk, but I ran over and picked her up to hold her still, and Billy made a hammer out of Nigel's energy stuff and used it to smash the desk. Balae asked her what happened to the people she'd been selling, and was really polite about it, which probably scared her even more. She gave us an address.

We let her know there'd be trouble if she told anyone about this, and then Balae tied her up with the curtains and I shoved her in the stationary cupboard. I gave the desk one more thump on the way out, just to make sure. "This one's for you, Nigel," I told him. Billy picked up the envelope of money we'd been delivering. It looked like it was those special Asterion notes

We had to get to the address fast, so Balae stole us a car. I was hoping she'd pick a Chelsea tractor or something, but it turns out she's been influenced by all those classic car books she's been reading in the library, and she got us a Beetle. It actually had eyelashes on its headlights. Billy got in the back because we weren't sure I'd fit.

Balae had a look at the place when we arrived and didn't think it looked good. It was an Asterion facility and would probably be crawling with Peacekeepers. We were going to need to help. We could call Faustus, which would mean another riot, or Ariadne, who might have something more subtle to offer. We went with subtle. I made the call, which was no fun as whoever was there was just silent most of the time. I tried not to tell them any more than I had to.

They came through though. There was an entrance in the sewers and they'd show us the way. We climbed down through a manhole and there was a spider bot waiting for us. I don't know how it got there that fast. It did the job though. We got into the facility through the sewers. The bot flashed a message to tell us we had thirty minutes to get in and out, and off we went.

We had a look around and Balae found some hazmat suits. Good enough to make people overlook us providing they didn't look too closely. I scouted out one of the doors up ahead and spotted another of those mantaray cameras. This time Billy and Nigel came through with the obscuring smoke and we crept our way past. Then we just had to walk confidently as we walked down the corridor. Which was harder than it sounds, because we had to look in each room and there were all these tanks with people in who'd been altered by the Asterions and there was nothing we could do for them.

Then Billy recognised Mr Stodgely in one of the tanks, even though they'd already started altering him. He managed to make the real staff members go away, but there was still a Peacekeeper in the room with him. A really big one. Balae had an idea though. She burst out of the hazmat suit, and made herself flexible to wrap around him, and heavy to weigh him down. I grabbed his legs to stop him going anywhere while she got in position, then left her to it to go and rip the tank off the wall. Billy grabbed some breathing equipment that Mr Stodgely was going to need, and Balae did something to the Peacekeeper to slow him down just enough for us to escape.

The tank was heavy, but I didn't care. I was so angry with everything I'd seen in that place, I wasn't letting anything slow me down.

There was no way we were going to fit the whole tank in the Beetle, so I smashed it open and Billy fitted the breathing equipment. This was the first time we'd got a proper look at him up close, and it was awful. He had gills on his neck, and some kind of weird circular mouth full of teeth. And now he was awake, and making some kind of noise that was probably supposed to be screaming, except he didn't have enough of his old mouth left for screaming.

I think Billy and Balae had some kind of fight, but all I could think about was how this was the same thing that had happened to me, except even worse, because at least I could still pass for human. We were too late to save him. We were too late to save any of the others. And what was the point of being a hero if I couldn't even save one person.

Then Billy came back, and I didn't want him to see me cry, but the tears were coming faster than I could wipe them away. I don't know where Balae went, but Billy got us back to the Beetle and Mr Stodgely in the back out of sight of the Peacekeepers and drove us back to the Gull.

We took him inside round the back, into the flat, but before we could say anything to Castor and Pollux this woman walked in who must have been Mrs Stodgely, because of the way she looked at Mr Stodgely. I couldn't deal with it, and ended up running out of there and up to the roof.

Billy followed me up there but somehow I didn't mind. He asked if I still had the bottle I'd brought up the other day, and it was still where I left it, but of course it was empty. So we just sat and talked for a while. I don't think we said anything important. I was having a lot of bad thoughts, and I suggested we could do some sparring practice just to get my mind off them. But then we heard Mrs Stodgely's voice behind us.

Wicker Valley, episode 20: Looking for Answers

By some miracle we'd actually managed to deal with the kobold with some evening to spare, so back home I picked up the grimoire my alternate self had and tried to make sense of it. It was tough going. I seemed to have some muscle memory but not actual brain memory. In the end I gave up and shoved it back into the drawer. There was a rattle, and I realised there was was a false bottom.

I pulled out the hidden book. A journal. Seems other me likes keeping track of things too. Except mostly what was in there was concerns about Agnes. We were on the same page, metaphorically as well as literally. I like aunty Agnes a lot, but when it comes down to it, she's hellspawn. We have a tendency to take things to extremes, whether that's violence, love, or anything else.

The next morning as well as checking on the cafe (where Michael was finding himself suddenly having to deal with holiday request forms) I decided to do a bit of experimentation. I'd acquired a belt pouch from somewhere, and even though I hadn't put it on in the morning, I was still wearing it. So that needed investigation. I went out into the woods, partly for privacy, partly in case anything dangerous happened.

What happened was that after concentrating a bit to make some of the armour appear (I just got the shoulder things, which made me feel like a video game character), I reached into the bag and pulled out a tiny demon. Not a hellspawn like me, but the kind of cute little guy who gets assigned as a familiar. At least, I think they're cute. People who weren't brought up with a very literal fear of God might disagree.

There were five of them in there, which was impressive given that the bag definitely wasn't big enough to hold five ten to eleven inch tall demons, but I filed that under more Doctor Who nonsense. They were ready to fight, and were quite disappointed that there was nothing there to fight. I thought about directing them towards the local squirrels, but decided against it and put them back in the bag, telling them maybe next time.

Then there was the matter of the wings. A bit of practice showed that I could teleport anywhere I could see with ease, but I wondered if there was more range on it. I focussed my mind instead on my bedroom, opened my wings, and I was there. Unexpected, but convenient.

I had a text from Adam who wanted to meet up for a chat in the oubliette. I gave him quite a shock when I teleported into the junk yard, but he immediately saw a practical use. He'd had a call from Michael, whose bike had vanished, replaced with a car that he didn't know how to drive. Adam had been going to pick him up in the van, but maybe I could pick him up instead?

Michael was no less surprised to see me, and there was some awkwardness as we tried to figure out the practicalities. I'm not really a hugger outside of extremely stressful situations, plus it was Michael, but we managed to figure it out and a moment later we were at the junk yard in a swirl of leathery wings.

Once Elizabeth had arrived via more conventional means, we all agreed that the next step had to be talking to Rusty again to find out why he'd been sending us into the past in this timeline. I sent him a text, and it seemed like he'd been waiting for me. It took him ten minutes to reply though.

Adam drove us out to the Welcome Break services. Rusty seemed surprised and not entirely happy to see the others with me, so I joined him for a quick private chat while the others ordered at KFC. This version of Rusty seemed as scared of Michael as Michael is of him. I confirmed that he had tried to kill Michael in this reality as well, so I don't really know what his problem is. Unless he knows more about Michael that we do.

Anyway, I convinced him that I did trust the others. Well, I'm still not completely sure I can trust Elizabeth not to do stupid things, but mentioning that would just encourage him. He asked how far back in time we'd gone, and I told him about the village full of gnomes - real ones, rather than the lawn gnomes in the lake. He looked shocked. We were only supposed to go back a few decades, to try to figure out where the convergence of ley lines was in Wicker Valley. What could have caused things to be out by several hundred years? Possibly the convergence of ley lines, Elizabeth suggested. Yeah. That would do it.

There were other problems besides our wibbly wobbly timey wimey issues though. Agnes is demonic like us and Mary is some kind of fae, and our previous encounter with the moss hag showed us how dangerous it is when those things combine. Meanwhile outside the town, tensions are building between our family and the fae. Mary is suspected to be the reason that Agnes has lived a lot longer than our kind normally do. And of course our lot always take things to extremes and have been experimenting on the fae, who naturally responding in kind since they're better at being reasonable than we are and did something unspeakable to cousin Harriet.

Ahh well. I never liked her anyway. There's a reason my arsehole of a brother, who actually winked at Elizabeth while we were leaving, is my favourite family member.

Next stop: the fae courts. Michael had had a vision of armoured fae marching through Wicker Valley and we needed to know more about that.  Elizabeth knew how to find them, and led us through some kind of portal out in the countryside near the town. We ran through the rules first. Don't accept gifts. Don't eat or drink. Don't fall asleep. We avoided giving our true names, and didn't eat any of the offered food. But then Adam fell asleep.

Concrete Cow 23.5

It's always good to be back at Concrete Cow. I put out my sign up sheet, chatted with friends, bought a copy of Masks: A New Generation from Leisure Games and generally prepared for a good day.

Game 1: Monster of the Week

You can't write a scenario called Concrete Cows and not run it at Concrete Cow. This was a repeat of my Men In Black inspired game from North Star but thanks to having four players this time and a different selection of playbooks, it had a different feel.

It was also a good reminder that while character creation and establishing relationships does take some time, it's also an enjoyable part of the game. This time we had the experienced agent, the rookie, the alien and the conspiracy theorist, and the conspiracy theorist deciding that the alien was actually her father gave their relationship a whole different dynamic.

The dice also stepped up to provide the comedy side of this comedy-horror-scifi adventure, with the alien's wildly misfiring teleportation powers making the simple act of leaving a lake into the funniest part of the game.

While I've played a lot of Monster of the Week (see Wicker Valley) I'm still pretty new to running it, but I felt pretty comfortable with it this time and I'm looking forward to more.

Game 2: The Cthulhu Hack

The Raspy Raven discord often has games running in seasons, and Heist Season was a particularly unusual one. We all started off with the same blurb about a group of people in a room who'd just completed a heist, and wrote adventures for a variety of systems. This game was one of them, originally written for Those Dark Places but redone using The Cthulhu Hack.

This scifi horror take on the premise had us all waking up in a room on a spaceship with a body and a bad case of amnesia, and only got weirder from there. Unlike my previous game of The Cthulhu Hack we were at least vaguely competent at some rolls, although of course this did us no good in the end. The system is easy to pick up and having picked up a bunch of adventures with the kickstarter, I might try running this myself.

Around this point we discovered that the venue had double booked us in the evening slot, and some kind of Hindu religious festival was taking place in the main hall. Fortunately we still had the meeting rooms, so we all piled into the largest one for the raffle. There I picked up Mythos World, a PBTA take on Call of Cthulhu, which should make interesting reading.

Game 3: Darkness of the Demimonde

I wanted something flexible on numbers for the evening slot so decided to continue playtesting my scenario, Lights Out In Limehouse. I got five players in the end, and once again we learned that while difficult, angel summoning is not completely outside the remit of a starting magician with sufficient assistance. A fun game where I got to introduce more people to this charming system.

Post-Con

With a few people having stayed overnight, we decided to meet up for lunch on the Sunday. The Harvester provided a very average meal, but the meetup itself was fun and an opportunity to talk more to people I hadn't seen much at the convention itself. Something worth repeating, although at a different restaurant.

Reflections

Numbers were low, and I wonder if we'll ever get back to the pre-covid peak, but it didn't seem to matter. There was a great selection of games, to the point where I struggled to decide what to use my golden ticket on, and plenty of room to spread out (at least until the evening). Regardless of size, it's still one of my favourite conventions.

Halcyon Calling, Episode 4: Getting The Band Back Together

Whatever I picked up in the hospital, it was one of those 24 hour things, because I woke up the next morning feeling pretty much back to normal. Also hungry. All I could find in the kitchen was the leftovers of a pea and broccoli pasta bake that Abeni brought round, which I was going to eat yesterday but couldn't face it. It smelled alright so I decided to chance it. A couple of minutes in the microwave and a drizzle of honey and it was fine. Honey seems to make everything taste better.

I was wondering how early was too early to go looking for the others at the Gull when there was a knock on the door and I suddenly remembered Abeni shouting through the door when she dropped off the parcel that she was coming round this morning to check on me. She was wearing one of her weekend outfits, all bright colours and fancy headscarf. I let her in and she swept into the room with her arms full of more food parcels. Jollof rice, from the smell.

It was obvious she wasn't happy with the state of my flat, and she demanded the marigolds. There's no point arguing when she's like that so I just pointed out I'd been busy while we got on with cleaning up. Then we spent some time complaining about the latest episode of Star Cop and she did the usual bit where she was worried about me after that riot at the hospital and I did my usual promising to be careful.

As she was leaving I couldn't help thinking about the first time we met. She wasn't the first social worker they tried to assign to me. Some of them looked pitying. All of them looked scared. I guess that was because I kept screaming at them and breaking furniture. But then Abeni showed up and she swept into the room just like she did today, and she didn't look scared at all. For the first time since the change I felt like a girl instead of a monster.

I put my jacket on and went out to the Gull. I wasn't sure what I was going to say to Billy after storming off the other day, but just as I got to the door I felt something bounce off me. Billy.

We talked a bit about Star Cop. Honestly, with all the technology the Asterions have you'd think they'd at least be able to make a decent TV show. But then we got onto Ariadne, because of course Balae had told him all about that while I was ill, and apparently Faustus also wanted us to work for them. Fortunately he agreed with me that we'd do what Balae wanted. She's the sensible one. So it sounds like we're going to be working for two mysterious so-called helpers at once.

Then he actually kind of apologised for the way he behaved in the hospital, which I didn't see coming. So I tried to reassure him that I would always protect him and all he had to do was let me do that. And that seemed to be us friends again, because he told me some awful joke he heard at school and I shoved him and managed not to knock him over, and in we went.

Inside there was a weird looking girl I didn't recognise at first, but she told us she was Balae and she'd just finally got the hang of this shape in her sleep, and she asked us to ask her a question that only she'd know the answer to, but by then it was so obvious it was her we didn't have to. She's going to start going to school now, which she seemed really excited about, which I thought was weird because I was really happy when none of the schools wanted me and Abeni had to arrange for home learning instead. But if that's what makes her happy, then sure.

First though, we had a mission. Some guy called Roger Stodgely went missing and we had to go and check out the last place he was seen, some accountant's office or something. Billy figured out how to get us inside by pretending to be delivering something, since none of us looked anything like accountants. Then the postman showed up and Billy dived behind the bins, so me and Balae had to talk to him. Well, Balae talked, and pretty much just told him the truth, and it turned out that was what he needed to hear. And also he recognised Billy.

There was a guy on reception who seemed to think he was hot shit, which wound me up, so I told him what I thought of him which seemed to do the job, and Balae took the parcel and walked straight past him with so much confidence he didn't even bother to try to stop her. This new look is really suiting her.

We found Mr Stodgely's desk, but there was no sign of him, just a name plate and some inspirational quotes. There was an awful woman at the next desk with a signed photo of David Cameron on her desk, and she was so annoying that I ended up having to do that thing Abeni taught me to stop the badger rage from taking over and focusing on three things in the room. The signed photo. A picture of her with a horse. And a set of rather odd looking reports.

Then we went to visit the boss to see if we could get any more hints about where our guy was, and she was somehow even worse. Billy took the lead, and Balae handed over the parcel. Then on the way out she told us the parcel was full of money, and between that, the large number of empty desks, those reports, and Balae's impression of her, it was obvious she was selling her employees to the Asterions.

I wanted to go back into her office and smash up her stupid bioengineered coral desk, and then use the pieces to beat her with, but we'd promised Castor and Pollox that we wouldn't do anything like that, and I really didn't want to get Balae into trouble. And I told Billy I'd protect him, and right then that meant all of us walking away. Sometimes doing the right thing really sucks.

Wicker Valley, episode 19: Let's split up and investigate

We turned to Adam, resident expert, for advice. Escaping the maze was nice, but hadn't actually done anything about the problem. He reckoned the only option was for us to go back into the maze and let the monster come to us, so we could take it on properly.

So back in we went, following Michael who seemed to have a knack for finding the way in, and then deliberately taking the wrong path to draw the thing out. It attacked Michael, but he's tougher than he used to be and shrugged it off while I went in with my claws. Maybe I'm imagining it, but my claws seemed a little more effective than usual, and the horrible little zombie child thing seemed particularly scared of them.

Anyway, we scared it off, just in time for Elizabeth to catch up with us, along with her new friend Klaudine, who turned out to be Amy Baker's sister. Family blood is great for scrying, along with the necklace I'd already found, so Elizabeth decided to give it a shot with me as backup.

It didn't go well. The necklace exploded. Elizabeth was a bit vague about what that meant, but it wasn't anything good for Amy.

We still needed to find the creature, and it seemed reluctant to come out again. Adam suggested following up our earlier walking into the obvious trap with splitting up, and doing horror movie tropes had worked out once already so why not? He thought it was particularly interested in supernatural types, so clearly I was going to be bait.

We split into three groups. Adam and Robin, me and Michael, and Elizabeth and Klaudine. I expected it to come after me, as the least human person there, but apparently it had more sense than that and went after Elizabeth. Not that that made a difference in the end.

With the chance to look at its body properly without being attacked, Adam could finally identify it for us. A kobold. D&D has really misrepresented those things. It didn't look like a lizard at all.

With the maze gone, we also found the bodies of the missing teenagers, including Amy. Nothing we could do for them now except text Aunty Agnes and call Jenkins to let him know some weird bollocks had happened - once we managed to convince Adam not to break out the body bags, anyway. Why does he have those in the van?

We went back to town to get out of the way of the police and get Klaudine a cup of tea. Turns out she's had dealings with the Foundation before, and isn't a fan. Fortunately she's also a Doctor Who fan, so did at least understand when we tried to explain that things had been a bit wibbly wobbly timey wimey recently. She's not sticking around, since she's got her own stuff going on in the south, but she knows she can call on us for help.

Halcyon Calling, Episode 3: Sick Day

When I was being modified in that facility in Wales, I heard them talking about their plan for me, and why they chose a honey badger as the template. They're strong, aggressive, damn near fearless, and able to shrug off attacks that would take down most animals their size. They're also poison resistant, which is why it takes a whole bottle of bourbon for me to get drunk.

You know what they didn't give me though? Disease resistance. I must have picked something up in the hospital because I woke up with a head full of slime. I texted Abeni and she brought me a care parcel with lemsip and orange juice and tissues, which helped a bit. Billy texted me asking me to meet at the Gull but I just sent him a picture of my pile of used tissues. I figured he wanted to make up after storming out but I couldn't face it with a nose like a leaky tap.

Being stuck in bed was the worst though. I had nothing to do except watch TV and that was all Asterion sanctioned programming. Just a bunch of reruns of Star Cop, which would be cringe even if the lead character wasn't a fucking Asterion. In the end I switched it off and tried to think about things instead.

I'm not built for thinking about things, but at some point I had to make a decision about Ariadne and this time punching wasn't going to help. I wanted to tell her where she could shove her offer. Assuming she is a she, because with all the bollocks in the warehouse with bright lights and voice modulation I'm just guessing from the name. And if it was just me I would have done. But it's not just me any more. I have to think about Balae. Ariadne was talking to her too. And maybe she does want help, after what she saw in the hospital. It's not like I can always be there for her. Like today.

So now I just have to shake this thing off. Then I can talk to her properly. I'm not letting Ariadne push me around, but if Balae wants her help, I'm in.