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.

Halcyon Calling, Episode 2: Blood and Bourbon

So we all got a bollocking off Castor and Pollux, which I couldn't really argue with, but they gave us some shots too, which made me cough. The poor bastard in the back room needed blood, and not just human blood either after what Yigirel did to him, and we couldn't exactly take him to the hospital. People don't always come out of that place. So the hospital would have to come to him.

We stood outside Camden General while Billy sized the place up. There were Asterian peacekeepers on the doors. The roof was clear but he didn't know how to get there. I pointed out I can climb well with my claws, and Balae reminded us that she can fly. So Billy put his arms around me so I could carry him up, which felt pretty weird, but I concentrated on climbing and got the two of us up onto the roof while Balae floated up.

There was one of those manta ray sentries on the roof, and Billy tried to hide us with some smoke that Nigel the chest fish made, but the ray's eyes turned red anyway and an alarm went off and a janitor showed up. I don't know how Billy and Balae managed to convince him that we were actually window cleaners. He seemed pretty cool though, and he had a tattoo of a spider.

It was creepy as hell in the hospital and we kept spotting medical stuff being done, like those awful louse things chewing on someone. It's supposed to be good for them, but that's what they told me when I was being changed and it didn't make it hurt any less. When we got down to the basement I was ready to rip the door right open, but Balae said she wanted a go first and we were supposed to be being quiet. She did something to the keypad and it opened right up.

It wasn't long before I got to do my thing though. Balae and me started loading up with medical supplies, but Billy managed to run right into a pair of Asterians. I got there just in time to have one of their spears bounce off me instead of going right through Billy. I scared the shit out of that alien bastard, but his mate got me right in the neck and I suddenly realised taking on two of these fuckers at the same time wasn't the best idea.

Then Balae showed up and I didn't know what had got into her because she was beating one of them so hard I thought she might actually kill the host. I had to try to talk her down and that felt all wrong because she's the sensible one and I'm the one with stupid hair and a temper, but she did back off and he was still alive when the Asterian jumped ship. Nigel ate the little slimy thing, which kind of gave me the creeps.

We had to get out fast, now we'd got what we came for, except Balae was a mess. Like, a passed out on the floor mess. So I picked her up and carried her and Billy took the other stuff, and we legged it. There was a riot going on outside. I don't know how it started, but it gave us some cover, at least, and when we saw an Asterian hover vehicle unoccupied we knew we had our way out. Good thing Balae was waking up again since I've no idea how to drive the things. We ditched it in the canal and went back to the pub.

You'd think Castor and Pollux would be grateful we got back safely with all the stuff but they just wanted to know if we'd started that riot. They went to look after the guy in the back, so I went behind the bar to get us some crisps, and we all sat down for a bit.

Then Billy said a load of crap that sounded like he was making fun of me, and I tried to say something nice to Balae but that just upset her more, and Billy stormed out of the pub. So I went behind the bar again and grabbed the first bottle I could see and took it up to the roof, because what was the use of doing any of that if my new friends already hated me?

By the time I got to the bottom of the bottle I felt a bit dizzy, and then my phone buzzed. It took me a while to figure out how to enter the unlock code, and then when I did I didn't have any new texts. Then I realised it was a different phone in my other pocket which I hadn't seen before. It took me a few goes to read it because my vision was all blurry, but it was someone called Ariadne who wanted to meet me at the docks at midnight and said to come alone.

It took me a while to get back down the stairs, because they kept moving about, but I got back to Balae and told her I was going to do something stupid and asked if she'd come with me.

I was a bit steadier on my feet by the time we got to the docks, although I was starting to get a headache. Balae turned into a tiny version of her to hide in my pocket and we went into the warehouse. It was dark, and nobody answered when I called. In the end I got fed up and sat down and told them to stop messing about, and then they shone a light in my face and told me off for bringing Balae although it sounded like they expected me to do that anyway so I don't know what their problem was.

Someone called Ariadne talked to me, and she called me Melanie, which was weird. She told me she'd helped me out and she'd keep helping me out if I worked for her and got some thing the Asterians wanted for her. I didn't realise straight away what she meant, but she had the same spider tattoo as the hospital janitor so maybe that was what she meant about helping.

She said I didn't have to decide right away, which is good because she was pushing really hard and my head was hurting, but I've been pushed around so much and I don't mind getting this thing to help stop the Asterians but I don't want to do it for her, just because she told me to.

At least me and Balae seem to have made things up. She told me she saw one of her kind at the hospital, and I didn't need to hear any more to know how bad it was.

So that was today. I'm back home now and writing this down. Abeni says I don't have to show it to her, so I don't have to hide anything. I don't feel much like a hero right now but maybe tomorrow will be better.

Wicker Valley, episode 18: Mazes and Monsters

Toby the gargoyle was very clear on the importance of looking after Michael and his new weapon. Not that I needed telling. But we'd all had a long and confusing day and needed some rest. I suggested we meet up at the Wicker Stop in the morning to catch up.

My flat was nicer than I remember it being. I've always had this feeling of impermanence. Like at any moment my true nature was going to become known to the wrong people again and I'd find myself having to move on. It's happened enough times before, after all. But this timeline's version of me seems to have felt a bit more secure. Enough to actually put up some pictures and get some nicer homewares. The go bag was still under the bed, but some of the stuff had been taken out. It was nice.

Next morning, Adam had some idea about having me using my magical talents to summon our memories from this timeline, which pretty much everyone else agreed was a terrible idea that would probably make our brains disintegrate. We were all gradually catching up on things. Adam, it seemed, was now the newer arrival to the group and had never been in the Foundation. I started googling family members, which was easier once I remembered that all the Agneses were now Agathas.

But then Agnes and Mary showed up, and I got a surprise hug that I still don't really know how to deal with. They had a job for us. Some things never change. Missing teenagers out hiking, and claims of a sighting of the lake cryptid known as Bownessie. Of course we had to help. That's what we do. That's what our alternate timeline selves had been doing for quite a long time.

The Strava app proved useful, as one of the missing teens, Amy Baker, had been using it before she went missing. The data looked a bit weird, but it was a starting point. She'd been out by the lake, and had been moving towards it, and then turned and moved away from it, following a very strange path.

We talked to a fisherman down by the lake, and also a photographer out trying to get pictures of Bownessie. I found a necklace on the ground with the initials AB. We were definitely in the right place, so now we just had to find the hedge maze we'd been hearing about which supposedly only appeared at night. It certainly wasn't there in the late afternoon, so we went back to town for a pizza and came back after dark with head torches and fishing line. Michael remembered the story of Theseus and the minotaur and we wanted an escape string.

Not that escape strings are helpful when the maze is in some kind of alternate dimension reached by looking at the lake and turning around. And turning around and running certainly seemed like a sensible choice when some kind of horrible lake monster with an implausible amount of teeth put in an appearance. Amy's strange route away from the lake made sense now. The others had heard the sound of a child in pain at the edge of the lake. I'd just seen Michael disappear, and followed him.

I flew up to take a look at the layout. Or at least I tried to. What actually happened is I opened the wings and suddenly teleported into the air, which took everyone else by surprise, and the hedges got taller so I still couldn't see.

Back on the ground, the fishing line was going nowhere helpful, and we needed to get out. Some horrible zombie child ran across the path, and straight away I knew I needed to protect Michael. Which manifested in the form of a suit of red and white armour that I was suddenly wearing. Something very weird was happening to me and I was way past being able to hide it from the others.

I'm not sure how Adam got out, but the rest of us had to navigate our way through, eventually emerging without having to fight any more zombie children. We found him outside, making sure the photographer from earlier didn't do anything stupid. We were just wondering what to do next when Elizabeth turned away from the lake and disappeared again.