Editing Britbongsteros (section)

===1,001 Britbongsteros Nights===
We wake up the next morning in various states of undress and very, very hungover, as we leave, the Bard asks
:"Hey John Borrison, who was coming for the sword today anyway?"
:"Some chick called Joan Dark."
:"Do you mean D'arc?"
:"Yeah close enough."
:"Mind if we stay for a bit?"

So we decide to settle in and wait. Our new-tree-friend seems cool with the idea. We expect that one of three things may happen:
:1. John Borrison will double cross us.
:2. Joan will get pissed off, and John Borrison will double cross us.
:3. Joan will understand that the deal is off, leave, then John Borrison will double cross us,

(the Purple Penguin is very trusting) 

So naturally, we wait, she's meant to arrive at noon, and in comes one plate mail clad chick (subtle of course) and half a dozen adventurer looking types.

Joan removes her helmet.

What happens next may seem surprising to many Americans, but if you're British, this is actually very common.

Joan is a faerie, and therefore a posh person.

Cruella is a faerie and also a posh person.

:''>They went to school together.''

There are various extremely silly sounding girly noises, a very odd looking handshake, and much cheek kissing.

The Navvie mutters to me under his breath
:"If only they had bigger butts, this would be amazing..."

The Wizard is of the opinion that this is "The Old Fay Network" and therefore bad, but also curious as to what is going on.

The girls are asking after the health of various ponies, servants, and are about to start swapping recipes when John Borrison does the tree version of coughing (shakes his leaves).
:"Ladies?"

They ignore him.

Joan asks about Paris and the clownleechspidersnake things, yes that was us,

The boys are eying the French Adventurers, and they us, there's a general air of "Shouldn't we really be fighting now?"

Things don't seem to be going that way, John Borrison doesn't seem to mind. Instead we decide to go for lunch.

We leave with the girls walking out arm in arm followed by two single files of gentlemen watching each other very closely.

I just want to add here that the French Bard was wearing a stripey jumper, a beret and was carrying an accordion. 


We go to a tavern. The DM is greatly enjoying describing what is essentially everyone's double.

We are a bit weirded out.

Cruella is quite happily nattering to other Cruella when she asks
:"So what about the sword?"
and things get a bit frostier. A lot frostier. 
:Cruella: "It's my sword, and that's it."
:Joan: "Couldn't you just lend it to us?"
:"What do you want it for?"
:"I shouldn't really tell you but we were going to..."

The short, angry looking Frenchwoman wearing full plate and carrying what looks a lot like a rotary flail nudges Joan and grunts.

The largest of the party, an enormous guy with a big beard and an axe shifts, a smaller kobold type thing stops making ice cubes with device on its back and looks a lot more threatening. A slice of bread levitates while a nun has her cigarette lit by Angus (Angus you will fuck anything you beautiful bastard). 

Cruella and Joan seem oblivious to all this, however the rest of the party naturally distrusts what is our true enemy (the French of course).

Cruella is happily breaching the official secrets act when we decide enough is enough,
:"And the Aliens wanted me to be a Queen! I've always wanted kids..."

:''>Time to go...''

So we begin to extricate her, the French let us go, for now...

Angus waves goodbye to the Nun, and Cruella looks distinctly annoyed to have the reunion cut short. 

We head off, it's time to visit the Privy Council. First up is a meeting with Sir Patrick (Cyborg) Moore.

:>Who is... 

Seriously you're gonna want to Google this.

Sir Patrick (Xbawkshueg terminator) Moore has been analyzing Mars, he has worked tirelessly to build a new telescope, and from the Royal Observatory at Grenwich has become aware of not only canals on Mars, but other alien looking constructions, cities? He is keeping the area under observation.

Meanwhile Sir Hobart's new inventions have reached production, not only is Britbongsteros frantically building battleships, but we are also building Landcruisers, lots of them. We have a feeling the Germans might be up to something similar...

Finally, we meet with Richard III, Blackadder, and co.

Those Arabians from earlier (like two stories ago) have been asked that a trade delegation go to Arabia with them, this is so that we might see the properties off this magical oil stuff that they're producing. We are being sent instead. The Arabians have drilling technology that we want, and we are going to steal it. It is believed by the Wizards of Aberdeen that massive untapped reserves of this stuff lie off the coast of Scotland, enough that we could fuel a million ships and landcruisers and not even make a dent (and also not have supply lines that go across half the world and either around France or around all of Africa). 

We also are informed that a party of French adventurers have recently visited London and were followed (shit) and were last seen leaving on a boat bound for Araby (shit shit shit).

We are reminded that in Arabia, the place is full of genies, djinn, sand, camels, and also Orrance of Arabia, a Brit who went native and is a fervent activist for Arabia to be left to its own devices without western powers attempting to exploit them.

The local political climate in Araby is like dancing on a volcano, each sultanate has started grabbing land, and foreign "advisers" are everywhere, as each foreign power supports a different Sultan in the hope that if war breaks out, theirs will end up on top.

As a "trade mission" we are classed as one of those very same foreign advisers. Meaning we are packed aboard our very own battleship.
:>Why are you using a battleship? 
:>Show of force, it's history. 
The HMS Dreadnowt is the pride of the shipyards of Liverpool, the finest in Dwarven Engineering and she is the equal of the Brunmigi at the least.

The voyage of the Dreadnowt takes us through the straights of Gibraltar, with a brief stop off in Gib.


Gibraltar. The Rock. (It was called the Rock before anyone else was).

It's a British trade port, at the gates of the med, a haven of intrigue and enigma, a place where deals are made, illicit cargoes shipped, a veritable thieves kingdom and all with the sanction of the crown. The marines who police the place don't mind anything as long as you don't touch a British subject or insult the crown.

Regrettably, our reputation proceeds us, as did an albatross.

Two in fact.

The first one no one ever really saw, the second was enthusiastically shot down by the local Governor - S.T. Coleridge. When his chef was preparing it for dinner, he found in a little canister on its leg, "LANDCRUISER PLANS PART 2 of 2" 

So on the reasoning that someone, somewhere in Gib is enthusiastically waiting for part 2 of their plans, that German/French/Belgian/Russian/Spanish/Foreign bastard is out there with half the plans to our tanks.

Obviously, we want them back.

So obviously, that the bard fires into [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXOhw1ELZK8 Sabaton, Back in Control] as we start to ponder.

We establish what we know as we sit in the very comfortable officer's mess on the Dreadnowt.

We know that the Albatross flew from somewhere in the UK, and was going to wherever its mate was (that's how they work in Britbongsteros, ok?) and it would take the most direct route, it was approaching Gib overland, and flew almost to the middle of the place. It seems likely that whoever was waiting for it, would position the thing's mate somewhere high up, and exposed, allowing for the Albatross to spot the thing.

Hmm... high up... exposed... Gibraltar...

So, this can only mean one thing. Somewhere on the rock is an albatross and most likely our spy.

We set off and start to nose around. 

It's quite a climb, but searching around demonstrates several things: 1. That this is quite a popular spot for albatross communication, 2. There are a fuck of a lot of shifty looking characters up here. Grabbing them at random probably isn't going to work either.

Have some music [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAbzlj3nf4E The Who, the Seeker] 

We do some more thinking,

The parties suggestions go along the lines of:

:Bard: "I play the German National Anthem and we see who salutes. Then we murder them."
:Navvie: "Pub?"
:Angus: "We could try and offer money? Or failing that just burn everyone."
:Wizard: "Well thinking about it, the carrier case on the albatross should have a unique insignia, but they won't have been dumb enough to keep the other with a matching pair, so that idea is useless."
:Aldous: "We could always say we found the 2nd bit, and offer it up, see who comes to try and get it."
:Cruella: "Why aren't we stabbing everyone?"

We let it be known to some double agents that we have found the plans and that we will be at the drinking establishment known as "The Maltese Falcon"

What didn't occur to us, was that just about every foreign power with a hand in Gib, was going to want those plans. So what shows up, is basically every foreign agent and backstabber on the peninsula.
:"Damn what are we going to do with them all?"
:"Aren't they all enemies of the crown anyway?"

:''>Murdered 'em all and looted their dead bodies''

Thing is, the plans weren't there. Or at least not that we could find. We needed a clue. We'd probably just annihilated the lot of our clues however.
:''>The Purple Penguin is running out of options, we don't want to go back empty handed and say "well we probably got the bastard"''

So, with our limited options, we are grateful (cheers DM) when we apologize to the barkeep and start hauling bodies out of the place, that's when a group of "Mysterious trenchcoated figures" run off into the night.

Cruella is up onto the roof tops, the Navvies lumbers after them, and we all do our best to keep pace. 

So the rooftop chase occurs, as does the street level one.

I'm not even going to tell you what this is, every anon must click it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO-ZGP68-3w (or if this gets capped, manually type it into Google)

We pursue them, down lanes, alleys, twisting, turning, we aren't ready to take shots at them, but we are sorely tempted, there's three of them, we can take them if we catch them, we can...

Cruella is quite useful at times, as you may have noticed, but even she rolls a one occasionally, she attempts to leap in front of them, she instead flies into the roof of a shed and is out for the count for time being.

The Navvie has that weird lumber that teen horror movies do, if you look at him, not fast, but if you look away, he's suddenly teleported. He knocks them over and as we catch up, we start to restrain and attempt to interrogate them. 

We establish that these (spies) sold the first part to the Germans, the Germans who are leaving on a boat, tonight.

So we book it down to the harbour, there is boat already pulling out.
:''>How do we stop this tug sized boat?''

We for once follow one of the bards ideas, we grab a speedboat and ram the fucker.

Violence occurs, a lot, someone swallows what looks a lot like an albatross message case.
:"HAHAH YOU WILL NEVER GET IT!"
Cruella resolves the issue with a knife and a little bit of cruelty (she guts him) we have the plans. 


Things wrapped up in Gib fairly quickly after this, both parts of the plans now in the safe keeping of Governor S. T. Coleridge (who is very pleased to have shot the albatross, and has had a little pendant made of its foot to celebrate his act of violence which was so beneficial to the crown. He wears said pendant about his neck).

We re-board the Dreadnowt and set sail. Excited to be heading to Araby. I should really explain what Araby takes in geographically: (It extends westward all the way to Tripoli, please feel free to imagine the Indiana Jones aeroplane red line thing at this point). Where we are going is Port Said, if you're particularly geographically inept, it's near Alexandria.

The voyage through the rest of the med is mostly uneventful, Cruella takes up sunbathing, gets sunburnt, Angus spends a lot of happy times down in the engine room with the mostly Scottish engineers, Navvie and I take up fishing (an extreme sport in Britbongsteros) and the bard learns some new songs.

At this point, we have dinner around the captains table most evenings, and we don't usually act out the discussions, but we thought it'd be fun to have dinner in character, with DM as captain.

What I mean is we had a dinner party and got hammered, with everyone pretending to be their characters (again if anyone cares, pate and melba toast to start, thai green curry (mine) and alcohol for dessert).

:>Why should I care?

The discussions in character were a lot of fun, I can't remember much, but some time after the main course was finished, Cruella asks
:"Captain DM, we are going to the Caliphate, I know from my geography at school that the women there have to wear Bhurkhas. I'm not wearing one of those."

Now normally an issue like this we wouldn't give a shit about. However, it was an interesting enough issue that we looked to the DM).
:Captain DM: "Well Lady Cruella, I am given to understand that you are the [the following word was so weighted it should have fallen through the hull and sunk the ship] "companion" of Sir Aldous, as a "taken" woman, even of a different culture and maintaining different sensibilities to those of the land you are visiting, I would suggest it is wise to take up those sensibilities when you are there, you do not, for example, wish to be stoned. This holds true for all of you and I would suggest that when in the lands of the Caliphate, you observe their rules, at least in public. It is just good sense. No drinking for example, the Caliphate also has a very low opinion of [weighted again] those "peau verde" [green skin], meaning our comrade from Dundee (he means Angus) would be wise to take the guise of a slave." 
:''>Angus finds this hilarious. Cruella still looks extremely unimpressed.''
:Cruella: "You mean I'm going to have to wear a sack? tch, no woman of my station would be seen dead in such a thing."
:Captain DM: "My lady [tips captains hat], when you visited the North Pole, did you not dress warmly? The environment here is different, but equally as dangerous."
:''>She mulls this over, and nods.''
:Cruella: "Congratulations Angus, you just got promoted to my eunuch. You can carry my stuff."


Cruella seems satisfied with this explanation and sets about considering options for her outfit. This includes at some point the statement
:"It's not a Burhka, I'm a ninja."
:''>No Godzilla, we actually let her off with this one.''

As discussed we head to Port Said, as we enter the port, we are amazed at the number of other foreign ships, British, German, French, a Spanish one, even some Russian, and what we learnt was a Chinese vessel. The courts of Araby are being subjected to an assault of the most diplomatic kind, but the guns of the battleships make it very clear that there is force behind it.

The Arabs, aided by Orrance's council, wish to set themselves up as oil producers, their oil is fantastically efficacious, and if each of the European powers had to come to them for it, they would grow very wealthy very quickly, however even with their Djinn and Roks, the Arabs could never prevent a real attempt at annexing the country, their only real hope is to dance on the edge of a knife, playing each power off against the other as no European power would risk their supplies of oil, or allow another competitor to get unrestricted access to the stuff.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhhDbaah9DQ Saxon, Crusader] <- what the bard, master of tact that he is, piped us into harbour with. 

We discussed what our best options are, the Privy Council advised us that meeting Orrance first would be an idea as he is still notionally a servant of the crown, however we were warned that he has gone native.

:>Who is Orrance? 
I appreciate I can't just tell you to google it, he's "Lawrence of Arabia" then go read some books. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (which he wrote I might add) are worth the effort. At the least watch the film. Go on, we'll wait. 


Orrance is currently in Cairo, (the Caliphate has two main civic centers, Baghdad and Cairo) and so we travel from Port Said to Cairo on horseback, I should add two things at this point.

IRL Cruella is very horsey, this made her very happy, she was also the only member of the party who had ANY skills that involved controlling or riding an animal, meaning she could (riding side saddle and wearing a Burkha) ride rings around us as we slowly dotted along after her.

It was also the first time we really came to understand where we were, as the great pyramids hove into view shining brilliantly in the sun, a Sphinx lazing in the shade of a dune, great Anubis had been enslaved by the Caliphate and was digging graves, one hundred at a time (he was about 75 feet tall so we could see him from a fair distance, he wasn't actually burying anyone either, just digging and refilling graves as busy work). Horus was chained on the banks of the Nile, forced to call the hour by expedient of hot iron bars being applied to his feet.

:>How are gods enslaved?

Remember we actually slaughtered a good number of gods ourselves, Britbongsteros is a place where you can find gods, and they are very powerful, so are the guns on a battleship. It might take an army of Saracen Cavalry to tie down one god, but if you're smart enough, and don't mind losing a whole lot of troops, you can do it. 

:>We've captured another god! How shall we put them to work, bound to our will?
:>Well, ummm...
:>Eh....
:>Have them... erm... tell the time, I guess?
:>...
:>Abdul, you're a moron. All in favour
:>Aye!

Anon you're going to want to click this first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i1mI-P9Z3s

Orrance is visiting British officers at the Shepheard hotel. We'll find him there. Cairo is amazing, in the skies, Djinn and other creatures waft above us, there are literal ivory towers, but take your eyes off the poor, the downtrodden and filthy in the streets, and you'll find something missing from your pockets. A couple of the ships officers act as guides for us, they themselves having business at the Shepheard.

As we come closer to the Shepheard, we start to see more foreign faces in the crowd, hear languages from all across Europe, as Horus marks 11:00 am, we arrive at the Shepherd, our horses safely tied up, and left under the supervision of the hotel staff, a very large turbaned man remarks to me,
:"She is a fine one, how many camels is she worth?" 
The entire party moves to grab Cruella, the fat man seeing what we are doing tucks his fingers into his belt and laughs uproariously,
:"You barbarians are fantastic, I meant the horse. This one here, she would do just fine for my niece."
:''>Cruella looks a tiny bit offended.'' 
:"You must also be very rich to afford a horse for your eunuch! Ah, I had one of these years ago! They get rowdy but they warm your belly just the same in the night!"
:''>Angus is... not entirely sure about this.''
:"I am Ismail, I trade in dates. Perhaps you will join me once you have conducted your business here? I will be in the local souk."
He shakes the Navvie by the hand.
:"You watch that short one. They are shifty little devils are they not?" 

Ismail vanishes into the crowd. The Navvy opens his great paw. There is a small token in his palm, a token with the symbol of what the wizard identifies as Sekhmet on it.

So with this interesting little development put on ice for the moment, we head into the Shepheard. Now first things first, I know not all anons will have stayed at a hotel like this, but a ''good'' hotel somewhere like this will have a lot of different things on offer, including a barber, a tailor, and a concierge who knows all the best prostitutes (Source: experience). We are going to need clothes more suited to the climate, if (as we suspect) is likely, we'll be going into the desert.

We decide to meet Orrance first and see what the lay of the land is.

Orrance is easy to find, he's the only one in the hotel bar wearing native dress. 

He's in the middle of arguing with two (other) British officers. 

Orrance is deep in animated conversation,
:"Why not let the the Arabs be, why must we even consider this? The army and navy are overstretched as is, a friendly caliphate will be enough and with the trade this will generate, it will be beneficial for both nations. We might even gain a real ally in the region, something we have never had, and we certainly need those."
:"I say we simply annex and be done with it. The Germans can worry about it afterwards and the French can complain and then buy it from us if we let them!"
The other officer agrees with his friend. Orrance stands up and leaves in disgust. Running straight into us.
:"We..."
:"I know exactly why you're here and what you want. The Arabs have only one thing, and the Privy Council won't have sent you for any other reason. I'll have no truck with you."
and he barges straight past us.

We put in an order for some more deserty clothing (shorts, caps, etc) and decide to head to the Souk. 

Now, it's worth mentioning here (mostly because I didn't explain it very well earlier) what we have is the Caliphate who nominally rule over the entire region, and then out in the desert there are the actual Arabs, i.e. Orrance's bros. The Caliphate view the oil as theirs, the Arabs actually live where the oil is, and are the ones who have developed the method to get the stuff out of the ground.

The UK is considering annexing the Arab regions (i.e. Saudi). Orrance is doing his level best to stop this.

Remember just because we're somewhere sandy, the people there aren't all the same. 

We ask for directions to the Souk, and in the end are given one of the hotels employees to guide us (he looks to be about 12, his name is Ali). He leads us there, and asks us quite frankly,
:"Why do you want to go there Effendi? I know much nicer places."

We decide there's not much to be risked in telling him we want to meet Ismail. He has no idea who Ismail is. We describe him.

We half expect the kid to go pale, he doesn't, still not the foggiest. We decide against showing him the token.

:''>What is a Souk?''

Basically it's a market where people also congregate and usually drink coffee.

We ask Ali to take us where the coffee house is, it's a dark place, lots of hookahs and private booths, if you've never been to the middle east, think the Star Wars Cantina and you're not far off.

There's no sign of Ismail, we ask Ali if there is another one of these places nearby? No.

We show the guy behind the counter the token. He does go deathly pale. He ushers through some curtains into the backroom.

In the backroom, there's Ismail, looking as fat and cheerful as he did a little while ago, there's also half a dozen familiar faces, one stripey jumper, one accordion and one beret.

It's our French doubles.

Again.

Cruella is very happy about this, the rest of us are not.

Ismail ushers us in, lights the hookah, and starts to explain
:"I understand you all know each other! I have a favour I must ask of you all, I appreciate this meeting is surprise for some of you, but you (meaning us) I beg that you do me the courtesy of hearing me out. You will have seen the old gods in their debased condition as you came into the city, the old gods are not without followers, and it crushes us to see them used so. Sekhmet is still free, and we wish to keep her that way, in the hope that one day, the old gods will rise again. It is in the interests of both your countries that the caliphate cannot the goddess of war to use (that's Sekhmet) as it would make them far, far stronger." 
Joan pitches in at this point.
:"This is why we wanted the sword (Excalibur), the caliphate cannot kill the old gods, they do not have the means, the sword is one of the few things that can outright kill them. Were the old gods slain, the caliphate would be weaker."
There are a lot of Egyptian gods and goddesses kicking about and the majority more usefully employed than the above mentioned, for example Sobek is used to regulate the tides and floods of the Nile (this is a big deal), and Sopdet to ensure good harvests every year, also FYI the Egyptians had a deity of lettuce and cocks - really.

Ismail is however horrified by this,
:"You want to kill them? No! Please! The old gods mean much to those of us left, they are symbols, without them, the caliphate is an absolute!" 

We are not entirely sure what to do with this information. On the one hand, weakening the caliphate is probably a good thing, on the other, the followers of the old gods include the Arabs and they are very likely to be a source of revolt in the future, which may weaken or indeed overthrow the Caliphate.

(By the way this adventure took place around about the height of the Arab Spring, yup, we were considering...
:>Regime change in the middle east).

Joan can see our confusion and indeed reticence.
:"We are not asking you to make this choice now, but if the Caliphate learn of the sword and your bond to it, they will claim it for themselves, just... keep the thing safe and think about our offer."
Ismail is still horrified.
:"You may provide my brothers and I with arms but... this... this is too much. OUT, get out! You would insult the memory of my entire people and everything around which our hope still gathers, it is disgusting. OUT."
The French leave, likely not wanting to cause a diplomatic incident (and there are an awful lot of people in this market likely to be friendly to Ismail), we don't follow them. 

Ismail beseeches us,
:"I heard you were hear and why, we cannot allow the Caliphate to become more powerful certainly, but I thought perhaps you could help us, even ensure Sekhmet remains free, the Arabs I know would thank you for it."

We need to think about this, we tell Ismail this, and leave. Perhaps it would be an idea to speak to try to speak to Orrance again.

Having left the Souk to return to Shepheard hotel, we suddenly realize our guide, (a 12 year old kid called Ali, whom we told to wait for us and ensured this with the promise of a guinea) is nowhere to be seen. Now anon may recall we had told him where we were going and who we wanted to see.

It doesn't seem likely that he'd have gone given how much a guinea would be worth. Unless he had a better offer or was in some kind of trouble.

The purple penguin likes kids. A lot. We feel obligated to look for him. 

Remember Cairo is busy, labyrinthine, and confusing at the best of times. How on earth are we going to find him in all this sea of humanity and confusion?

We don't know how things work here, we initially suspect the French on general principles, but it seems unlikely. We also consider other possibilities. Slaves are a thing here, could he have been kidnapped? 

:''>The ground shakes a little.''
:>Godzilla?
No. God, yes. Zilla, no.
:"Hey look! It's Ali!"
:"What's he doing? Why is he pissing on that statue and saying those weird things?"

It looks like little Ali was a follower of Babi (God of baboons - Google it) and he did have a better offer.

A huge form swings down from a spectral tree into the square. Think 75 feet of King Kong and you're not far off.

:>Where the fuck did that come from?
We have no idea. Looks like not all of the gods are enslaved. 

In a plume of dust, he lands, shattering flagstones and crushing a good number of folk. As what sounds like sirens start (actually prayer calls that served the same purpose), he rises to his full height, beats his chest and looks at us. 

We have about five seconds to consider our options:
:1. Leg it?
:2. Kill it?

Legging it will mean a whole lot of people will die before enough troops get here. If we run. It'll likely be enslaved. So what, the Egyptians have plenty gods of dongs?

2. Kill it. We have the only thing in Egypt that we know of that can kill the thing. Do we? It'll draw the interest of everyone in Egypt. Cruella might be disguised but the rest of us are pretty recognizable. We don't know how pissed off Ismail will be. 

Now bear in mind that the DM has just explained options 1 and 2 above (along with his caveat of:
:"Or do whatever the fuck you want don't cry to me if you die? Oh and yes I'd love a beer"
he pops his beer and adds,
:"Just FYI for those of you who don't know about Babi, he is one of the many Egyptian gods of Cock (wiki it). You also have five seconds to choose. 1..." 
:"Two... It takes a step towards you."
:"Three... it roars again."
:>Oh fuck it. Let's kill it.

I want to add at this stage that I blame the bard for everything.

:>Bard you're up. What are you gonna do?
:"I play an inspiring song!"
:>rollplz
:>It's a one. 

:>DM: Ok you shoulder your pipes, take a deep breath and play [http://youtu.be/-_pTeDz4Zpk Aqua - Barbie girl] 

The DM looks this up on his laptop and it plays along through the rest of the combat. 

A further little note on weaponry. As you may have noticed we have what we like to call light kit where we leave the heavy weaponry -namely my shotgun and Angus's flamethrower, at our base of operations as these are very conspicuous. In these circumstances I will use pistols and Angus usually uses bad language and a revolver.

What Babi has going for him is some pretty decent agility and fuek hooge regard strength, we are suddenly reminded this thing is 75 odd feet tall. The Navvie has a good go at its ankles, I try and aim for hamstringing it. It's hard to tell but it looks like the wounds we are causing are slowly closing up. Cruella (Burka and all) unsheathes the sword from Angus's back (it being unlady like for her to carry it about) and gives the thing a good whack. It loses a toe. That doesn't seem to be growing back.

Babi definitely notices that and puts all of his attention into squashing the agile little gnat that just chopped his toe off.

The wizard has been busy, he hasn't summoned anything sharp for once, but instead slowly summons, link by link by link, anchor chains. They slowly flow outward from him, it's going to take a while before they reach Babi and do anything to him.

We try to distract him to let Cruella get enough time to land a blow and not get squashed. We are also worried that as she expands energy dodging, this thing is less likely to get tired before she does...

Angus decides to get closer. It's a baboon he reasons. A huge, God of alpha baboons. Therefore a show of dominance should work. He advances. He stands defiantly. Clears his throat, loudly, and spits on it. 

We were just pleased he didn't try to fuck it. He does however get some of its attention. Enough that when he beats his chest and (has a go at) roaring he distracts Babi enough for Cruella to start climbing up his leg. Babi then beats his own chest and slowly, carefully, kicks Angus through a wall.

There is a piercing shriek. A shadow passes over us, then another.

Roks. The strike force of the caliphate. They dive bomb Babi, dropping huge nets, flexible, sticky and entangling.

His movements are slowed but similarly as is Cruellas ascent.

He decides he needs to get off the ground. He climbs a minaret, the party follows him to the base of the thing.

The Roks circle and dive bomb.

The bard finally finishes his first song and rolls again. 

[http://youtu.be/_N0cQJ2BPS0 Texas Hippie Coalition: "Turn It Up"]

There isn't much the rest of us can do as he ascends beyond shoot at his eyes or break into the tower and try to get to the top. The wizards chains snake up the thing and snag Babi by the ankle.

Babi is starting to realize he's fucked.

Cruella is on his shoulder. Excalibur in hand. Ready to go for the jugular.
:"I've never killed a God before. You know what this sword can do don't you?"
She shouts into his ear.

The great head turns to look at her. He strains at the nets. The Navvie and I break out onto the balcony, about level with his chin. The roks tear into his back.

Cruella continues:
:"Let go. Be a slave, or die. Now."

Those big dark eyes look very sad for a moment as a God contemplates his own mortality, or to become a slave of mortals. 

The great ape lets go. Cruella makes the jump from him to us on the balcony. Just. He nearly flattens Angus and bard.

We watch as he is swarmed by Caliphate troops. Exuberant in having captured another God. We decided to leave before anyone notices the toe.

Hopefully Ismail (if we decide to favour him) won't be too annoyed by us making the best of weird circumstances. At least we didn't kill him.

We decide to retreat to the Shepheard to think. Hopefully before anyone thinks to ask us any awkward questions. We appear to be involved in local politics already but haven't burnt any bridges yet.

We retire to a quiet area in the Shepheard. We decide to check for eavesdroppers and spies (Angus and Cruella finding nothing).

We decide it is time to discuss our plan and position in this strange land.

There are a couple of key questions:
:1. Are the caliphate dicks?
:2. Do we care?
:3. Does Britain care?
:4. How do we use this to our advantage in getting whatever it is that we are here to steal? 

:1. Well they aren't very nice to the old gods, but so what? They have different (not necessarily better or worse) customs.
:2. We at this point don't particularly mind. They haven't done anything to us, they aren't our allies and at least they have put all these random deities to work.
:3. Yes. A weak caliphate could be conquered by us. A new regime favourable to us would also be useful. We may not want the oil directly but we want to deny it to the rest of Europe.
:4. Ismail and his brothers include the Arabs. Those same Arabs who have what we want to steal. If we help overthrow or at least damage the caliphate, they should like us. 

The bard makes the case for the purple penguin.

:"The people here are unhappy. They are poor. Dirty. Downtrodden. They have a caste system and no hope."
The rejoinder is:
:"Would changing who is on top alter this? Would British rule make it any better? They might be under the heel of our government but they would all equally be so."

A new regime especially sympathetic to us would be useful however...

:>What about the French?
Well what about them? Are they necessarily even on our side? 

It seems wise then, to approach Orrance again, hopefully he won't just tell us to fuck off this time. He and a group of his most loyal followers have camped near the pyramids.

We get another guide (this one we are tempted to shoot on sight) and head toward the pyramids.

There is a cluster of bedouin tents and camels, meaning we're probably in the right place.

:>Camels
I just want to add, as an anon that spent some time in actual Arabia, and for those anons that haven't been near one. The camels of Britbongsteros are EXACTLY like real camels. They (unlike everything else) have not been turned up to 11.
:>Camels. Are. Dicks.

We approach the camp. We pass a herd of camels on our way in. One has a couple of spots on its hump. It gobs on Angus. Angus spits back. It bites Angus.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOJk0HW_hJw Whitesnake, is this love?]

Angus bites it back.

We separate the two, I lose a chunk of beard in the process.

As we approach the guards, they chuckle and and ask us what we want? 
:"We are here to see Orrance."
(DM cannot do anything close to an Arabian accent without it sounding like Team America and I am not going to either)
:"He's not seeing anyone."
:''>We are slightly stumped by this.''
:"Why not?"
:"He's not here"
:"Oh." 
:"Where is Orrance?"
:"He went to... wait a minute why should we tell you?" 
This is actually an exceptionally good point. Why should they tell us?

We're not exactly well known, Orrance doesn't really like us anyway, so...
:''>The Navvie hands over the token of Sekhmet''
The guards have a look at it, adjust their thawbs. Ponder it.
:"What are we meant to do with this thing? I'll give you half a dinari for it? It's kinda nice."
We've killed gods, queens, necromancers, and now, we are absolutely stumped by some chaps wearing bed sheets. 

By the clock (i.e. Horus) it's getting toward the late afternoon, in the heat things shimmer in the distance, the stark contrast of sand and sky makes it hard to concentrate.

This shouldn't be such an issue, but (and the DM is punishing us for being dim I think) it is.
:"Will he be back tonight. Can we wait for him?"
They tell us we can, and we settle into as much shade as we can find. We get a useful opportunity to observe the Arabs as they camp, most remain in tents, others tend to animals, they are nomadic so it seems, or at least these are.

What they definitely do not seem like, is a technological people. They do however have a seeming mastery of Djinn, camels (more threatening than you'd think), and that Sphinx we saw earlier seems to be something to do with them as well. 

Orrance arrives about sunset, looking very tired. He spots us, and directs his camel in our direction.
:"What on earth do you lot want? I thought I told you all to bugger off last time."

No one actually seems to have thought about what we were going to say, or how we were going to convince him other than to tell us to get lost. We would rather avoid that and so the Navvie decides to have a go at convincing him.

The Navvie speaks. He isn't the most social of characters but he is sincere. That is actually quite useful.
:"If you want us to help, show us why we should? There is the political situation here, which you are obviously involved in, somehow, and the situation in Arabia. Why should we help you and why should we go to the effort of trying to without knowing why?"

Orrance mulls this over and decides this actually makes a fair amount of sense. He might have gone native but he is still British and a servant of the crown.
:"Alright. Come to my tent, we can discuss there."

So under the high moon, pyramids casting long angular shadows on silver sand, we join him.

We know Orrance is pro Arab, and the Arabs are big fans of the old gods as far as we know. Therefore the (OOC) decision is made not to bring up Excalibur with him. The issue is, that we had that discussion in front of the DM.

So when we sit down, who is serving tea? It's little Ali, the monkey summoning bastard from earlier.

:''>fuck you DM''

Ali whispers to Orrance.
:"So I hear you have Excalibur with you..."

Well then, we might as well own up. Yes. Yes we do.

Cruella looks ready to decapitate anyone who tries to take it off her, Orrance just sits and smiles.

:"You know just how much the Caliphate would want that? They'd rather the old gods were dead than serving as essentially unkillable symbols to those who might resist them. If I were you, I would keep it out of their hands. However, if you have brought that thing with you, you might as well do me a favour and I might do one for you. Tell me what you want first..."

:>We explain the following:
:1. We have nothing against the Arabs. (Not entirely true, we want to steal their shit)
:2. Britain wants a weak caliphate, but also access to the oil. (We do not mention we want to steal the process of extracting it, whatever it is, just learn where it comes from)
:3. The French support the Caliphate in wanting the old gods dead.

:>Conclusion: It looks like we want to work with Ismail and co., or at least weaken the caliphate, either through stealing stuff, helping the Arabs and old Gods, or both.

:>What does Orrance want?
It appears the Caliphate have found something under one of the pyramids. Something they believe could sap the magic from the old gods and the world itself. Somehow that sounds really familiar.

Orrance knows we solve problems and are very good at covert(ish) ops.

Therefore, whatever it is, he wants it wrecked.

Also, have my favourite maiden song [http://youtu.be/UwLtyvGdNbc Iron Maiden - The Clansman]

Orrance has a plan, he and some picked men will create a distraction opposite the pyramid, meanwhile the rest of us (disguised as locals as best we can) just trot down into the dig site and wreck shit. Simple. Possibly.

So, borrowing some native outfits (thaubs) and camels (Angus is given one that looks really, really familiar, it has some spots on the hump) we set off into the night. Given the possibility we might murder Ali, we are pleased to meet our new guide, who doesn't really do much other than point our way.

We wait behind some dunes. Well most of us do. Angus and the camel seem to have made friends and are sharing belts from his hip flask.

We wait.

Now you all know what a sphinx is I assume. A djinn in Britbongsteros looks like a genie. Male or female, and magical in some way.

We are very impressed to see the sphinx in the distance. Things get more exciting as a fireball shoots over the thing's head, the sphinx replies violently, as do the other djinn, there is a sheet of lightning, it starts to rain amphibians and generally things are very pyrotechnic.

The DM hints (via guide - who will remain with the camels) that this might be our distraction...

While the apocalyptic (pretend) battle thunders in the distance, we enter the dig site. There don't seem to be any people around the entrance, but there is the usual fare of torches on pillars and scarabs carved on things.

In one room we pass through what looks like a very large stone block has landed on a huge quantity of jam which has dried into the floor.

We consider this.

We suddenly realize this is a trap which has been triggered and is what happens if you drop a big stone block on a lot of people.

We reason we are unlikely to walk into anything that hasn't already been triggered, but it is a weird feeling walking through another party's dungeon if you see what I mean.

It's only I think about that last sentence do I realize we actually saw a "rocks fall and everyone dies" and survived.

There are some other signs of old violence. None of it essentially creepy, just interesting. Missing statues surrounded by bullet holes in walls (as though they had come to life and been shot at) a very large pit, crossed by what seems to be an invisible bridge (actually a very smart optical illusion), but now it has warning signs, a rope, and someone has helpfully covered the bridge with sand.

The feeling of someone else's dungeon intensifies as we descend lower. We can no longer hear the fight above us, but we can definitely hear one in front of us.

There is gunfire and something heavier, a rhythmic heavy thudding, which is building to a pulsing. We get closer. Readying ourselves. We reckon whatever it is, it is around the next corner. That's when we hear it. That fateful fucking sound.
:>Accordion music
What is round the corner?

The room is large. As big as Westminster Abbey, seven great pillars within, some standing, some not. The firefight is intense as from the opposite side of the room flow a quantity of shadowy creatures we can't quite make out, they're too big to be human. On one side of the room are a large number of caliphate troops with some very recognizably German uniforms amongst them. In the center of the room sits a weird looking eldritch device, with a great big toe sitting in the middle of an actinic blue field (it's Babi's toe). On the other side of the device are a group of six recognizably French adventurers, including one playing the accordion. It seems like the French interrupted the Germans while whatever the fuck the other things are have crashed the party.

:>What would Purple Penguin do? 

The shadowy things seem to be slaughtering the Caliphate troops with what look like glowing swords and... whips? We can't really tell. They are advancing on the French too. The accordion playing stops as the French bard is split in two from forehead to groin.

The purple penguin doesn't like death, but it also hates accordion music. However, we join in on the side of humanity. Something tells us what ever the other things are, they are probably not nuns.

A new music replaces the accordion. [https://youtu.be/nMyMS-p9YW0 Iron Maiden- The Trooper (HD with Lyrics)] 

I should really describe the rest of the French Party

:Joan D'arc is easy enough.
:The short angry dwarf woman with a rotary flail.
:A nun who seems to be able to levitate things.
:A kobold with an ice gun,
:A navvie type who is a big lumberjack with an axe,
:The now deceased stripey jumper-ed accordion playing beret-ed bard.

By the time we start to engage, moving directly between the two parties (Germans and French), we are starting to see the critters a bit more clearly. They sure don't look human. Six limbs, big ridged heads with crests like a triceratops, if you squint a bit they... aliens. Bastard sodding aliens. A different type than our friends at the North Pole, but similar enough in the same way you can tell a gorilla and a chimp are cousins.

We note as we move to the center of the room that there are big thick iron clad pipes running from the machine with the toe through to where the aliens are coming from.

We don't concentrate on the "why?" At this stage. More the fuckingkillthemall!

Like the ones we met earlier, we discover they respond well to being shot, stabbed, and various other things. The Germans are falling and the French are losing ground, the one with the axe disappearing into a pile of aliens, we haven't seen the nun in a bit either.

The fight with the aliens is intense. The the French are not left with many of their original party, and there's scant few Germans left. The six of us are relatively unharmed barring some minor injuries (suck it we are PCs!). We look out on the still crackling pile of bodies and then back at the toe. Someone has some explaining to do.

We try to tend to the wounds of those still alive. There are not many. Joan is one of them. We ask her
:"What were you doing here?"
:"We tried to stop them, they used the toe to open..." She falls unconscious. The kobold follows on for her.
:"There is something down here that could alter the balance of power in the world, we came to try to take it, or at least destroy what was down here."
:"And we," the leader of the Germans, a huge man of a bear, or bear of a man, take your pick he's half and half, "had things entirely under control."
He continues
:"We knew you had accessed something similar at the north pole" (again I'm not even going to try a German accent) "and with the consent of the Caliphate, we sought to open what was here. We have done so. We will claim what lies within."
He has been looking around the room, and is starting to realize we may not outnumber him, we could definitely stop him doing anything we didn't want.

Obviously we need to stop whatever is down that hallway or who knows what will spill out.

We can't really leave the Germans alive with the French, there aren't enough of the latter to subdue the former. We could just kill them, which the purple penguin would not approve of. We could also try to take them with us...

The caliphate troops are seemingly easily cowed, and we think we are safe to leave them behind. The four surviving Germans we decide are large enough a threat to be worth taking along.

We ask (regarding the toe) "Can we shut that thing off?"
The wizard looks it over, while we are told "not safely" and the wizard seems to agree with this.

We split up, a line of three of us, them in the middle and three behind and we proceed down the tunnel. We don't get far, (I should add that the doorway was what the toe seemed to be connected to, what is further on hasn't been investigated yet) before we come to what look like sarcophagi. Lots of them. Investigation reveals... That they are. The mummies within don't seem very inclined to try and eat us, but it does give us a moment to take stock.

:>What do we know about these aliens?
They seem markedly different to the ones we fought. They don't seem to exhibit any of the mind bullets or other weirdness. They just straight up murderise people. From what we remember (those of us who were under alien influence and from the recording) there were two warring species on Mars. The north pole ones and the others. These ones.

We got the impression the North Martians (as I'm going to call them) had been losing when they sent the ship that we found. We don't know if they were still losing now. Either way, Martians are dicks.

One other thing we realize, if there is a ship down here then it's been here a very long time too. We creep forward, half expecting to be rushed any second. Instead things seem very quiet. If we didn't know better this tomb might have been undisturbed for thousands of years.

This feels more than a little strange, nothing has gone "ULLA" nothing is floating. We do not trust this.

They aren't invisible, they aren't psychic, they were definitely here...

It's about then that one of the bears explodes.

Well he doesn't so much explode as... change... Into one of the aliens. His body shifting, bones cracking, skin splitting, a green glow emanating from his hand as the beginnings of an energy sword starts to form.

We don't wait for him to finish. We obliterate him.

:"What the hell is going on?"
The largest of the bears pokes the remains with his boot.
:"Poor Hans. I thought this might happen."
:"You what?"
:"The device down here is said to turn men into beings of power, we thought it meant the ability you discovered at the pole, to destroy or nullify magic. Clearly the translation was more literal than that. We opened the door and sent 40 natives in to search for traps. We are not nimble creatures as you can see. Shortly afterwards we were attacked from both sides... If this device can change men, then either it does so as an infection or the closer we get, the more dangerous it becomes... I would advise you watch your comrades closely."

We all, each and every one of us, have been scratched, cut, or have some form of open wound, we all are getting closer to whatever the thing is. Hans wasn't the most wounded, nor was he closest. He seemed fine until exploding.

We realize that the forty odd aliens we fought were the forty odd natives. We start to wonder, was it one cut finger? Someone must have powered the thing up... or... flipped it on somehow. We establish that the bears (I felt a bit bad calling them Germans) have no idea what we are looking for. So in the light of the torches we push on, past sarcophagus after sarcophagus.

Something new happens, we come to the first open sarcophagus. We examine it. It looks to have been broken open from within. Shiiiiiiiiiit.

From up ahead there is a thump. Then another. We take cover. The sarcophagus falls open. And seemingly oblivious, the mummy within begins to walk in the direction we are heading. Deeper into the tomb. Another breaks out next to the wizard and walks straight past him. It walks around Angus when he experimentally interposes himself in its path.

We decide to follow them, there is a faint red glow ahead now and there are a number of mummies shambling ahead and behind us. The wizard senses no magic.

The red glow is enough to see by at this stage. We extinguish the torches. Carefully pushing forwards. No one is showing signs of going weird yet but neither did Hans. We enter another chamber. There is a mass of mummies slowly milling around the source of the glow. We watch as one, then another are lifted off the ground by what looks a lot like a tentacle. What little viable biological material left is (we surmise) removed from it. It is then tossed aside.

:''>ok fuck learning. Fuck all of this. DM what ever carefully planned thing you have, fuck it. We are going to burn it. Then take off and nuke the site from orbit.''

We don't want to give our presence away quite yet, so Angus extinguishes the pilot light and settles for dousing the mummies with fuel. Mummies burn good, it's all the wrapping and general dryness. Then we light a torch and toss it into the room before ducking out of sight. There is a very impressive whoomph noise and we can feel the heat even from here. We decide to give it five minutes to see what happens then investigate. Angus reports he does not have a great deal of fuel left.

We can't tell if the red glow is what was there before or just fire. We investigate carefully. There are a lot of burning mummies, or remains of, on the ground. In the center of the room sits a black and red shiny looking device, about the size of a bowling ball. If it's going to be anything, it's going to be that. Now, we have no explosives, we can't retreat and fetch some (Who knows who might come looking), we could just shoot it, or give it a whack with Excalibur... Blunt force trauma via hammer or maybe just wizard something at it.

As the flames die down, we begin to see what happened to the natives, the thing still glows, and we wonder if someone might have touched it, it seems quite alluring if you don't know what it can do. The wizard summons a nice big lead block, in the shape of a hemisphere, then a second. The ball lets itself be scooped up into the container. Feeling a bit more confident. We approach it. Angus welds our crude radiation shield closed.

Experimentally, the Navvie, with all of our guns trained on him, picks the thing up.
:>"Hello it's very dark in here..."
:>AAAAAAAHFUCKFUCKFUCKITALKS
The Navvie promptly drops the thing as though he has been stung. The Chief Bear seems quite impressed.
:"So this is it, an alien device sealed down here by Horus himself, locked away with the bodies of a thousand of his most devote followers to serve as a warning to others and to stand guard over it."

:>Britbongsteros and the bowling ball of doom

The wizard is meant to know about this shit so he gets shoved forward. I can't believe we are about ten threads in and we haven't discussed this. The wizard is a tcheuter (Google it) and sounds like [https://youtu.be/y0TXmWlSPLE this]. If you imagine everything that follows in this guys voice, anon will get the full impact. I will post it in Aberdonian and a translation can be provided if requested

While the song is about Angus, the accent is wizard. [https://youtu.be/xLf615sCfDE Evil Scotsman With Lyrics]

:"Aye baw fit do ye want?"
:"What? I am Antrygos the annihilator!"
:"Och ats good, but whit are ye aboot?"
:"I am here to stop the unbelievers, they are here to increase their numbers and..."
:"De ye mean the wans whae winted to shag this lass?" (He points to Cruella. Note that bowling ball has no eyes, is also encased in lead)
:"The breeding unit?" (The DM makes a very odd noise, it later emerges this is because someone kicked his shin under the table)
:"Onywae whit are you doing here and hoo dae wae kill ye?"
:"What? You cannot kill me! I..."
We hear running feet, we are presented with a conundrum. The Caliphate will take this thing off us, and we don't want that. The bears will tell them about it....

The purple penguin would not be happy of we killed them, so we talk.
:"Alright, do you agree this thing is dangerous?"
:"Yes."
:"Do you also agree that it is better contained than released?"
:"Yes."
:"Do you agree that it is better in our hands than theirs?"
:"Yes."
We take the ball and chief bear, being a bear of honour, gives a salute and nod.

We leg it. 

By the time we left, the French had actually also legged it, at some point having released the Caliphate troops, now swarming the area.

Avoiding the caliphate troops by hiding amongst the sarcophagi. We return to Orrance and tell him what we found. He is understandably pleased about the result but when we show him Antrygos (the bowling ball) he is amazed by the thing, especially when it talks.

We wonder what the hell are we going to do with it. As we discuss, Antrygos interrupts every so often with "UNHAND ME" or "RELEASE ME PUNY EARTHLING SO I CAN FEAST ON YOU"

We can't immediately destroy him, and he might be useful to the Privy Council. We settle on taking him to the dreadnowt and sealing him in a safe so we can do something with him when we have time.

So with Antrygos safely stored away (which took some time in game, but not much happened aside from explaining to Captain DM exactly what the chatty bowling ball of death was about) Cap'n DM was not exactly pleased to have him aboard, but there was little else to be done - we could hardly chuck him in the sea - that'd just be not environmentally friendly and mutant alien tuna didn't sound good.

What comes next is a return to Orrance, who seems better disposed toward us than previously. He agrees that he will take us into Araby on the condition that we help him further.

As we know, the Caliphate has enslaved the old Gods but would rather they were dead. Ismail's group would rather they were alive and free. If we manage to steal the process of extracting the oil, Britain doesn't really mind what happens to the Caliphate or the area if we already have oil, however, having a sympathetic regime that is less inclined to provide oil to other powers seems like a good idea.

That regime we decide is more likely to be Ismail and Orrance's.

What the further task is, is to release Horus.

:>A brief note on the Egyptian gods.
:>What were they all doing beforehand? Well as we know in Britbongsteros, magic is a peculiar quantity and the aliens did something to nullify it. This stopped being a thing about 1497.

How do we know it was 1497?

Because suddenly dragons, orcs, and cthulu.

This also meant Horus and co. suddenly materialize again with hardly any worshipers (God food), and very little idea of what is going on.

Think of it like this, if you have ever been blackout drunk, you're still you, you just don't record memories of the time when you were drunk. You just stumble around and drunk dial your ex. The old gods are all into the second bottle of tequila.

:>Where's Jesus then?
Jesus was (apparently) a person.
:>Ok where's God?
Well actually this came up in a discussion the party had. I forget when but it was the Wizard who brought it up. Being a monotheistic sky God, who wasn't very big on appearing in person, he hasn't really shown up and is too busy fighting the other similar gods somewhere else. So no God. This doesn't stop the church existing however, as you all already know.

I'm sure holes can be poked in the theology but that's what we went with.

:>what do we know about Horus?
Well he is chained up on the banks of the Nile and currently serving as a clock.
:>What will freeing him do?
He can escape into the desert and give hope to Ismail's folk, he can also lead an army to overthrow the caliphate. In 1497 he didn't have many worshipers, now he has more, not many, but enough, enough he is starting to sober up... He is probably the best chance they have, especially if he can free other gods.

Of course we might be CIA'ing the situation (which, for one, this is what always happens when you touch middle eastern politics...), but if required, a European power could still put down enough ordinance to splat him, and fuck it, if we get our own oil (via the process) then we don't really give a shit anyway. Also you never know, being owed a favour by a god might be nice. Especially if there really are aliens coming...

Anyway, that also covers a good deal of in character discussion.

We decide the best thing to do, is go with Orrance to have a look at Horus and see what exactly the situation is. We wait for morning and head out.

The trip is uneventful (Angus and that camel are getting really friendly though). Horus is bounded by chains made of what looks like cold iron, he couldn't break them no matter how strong he was. He is on his back, the caliphate have apparently tried everything they can think of to kill him judging by the way the earth around him is stained a deep dark black of old blood. He is not in a good way. We arrive about 07:58 and so are in good time to see the crew of slaves beating something which is stoking a fire and the red hot bars being drawn out. What they are beating is Babi, it seems like he has lost a lot of faith (worshipers),is a good bit smaller (still 30ft tall), and is not enjoying his existence. Poor bastard looks miserable.

You could even say he looks a little flaccid. Anyway we are there as Horus screams the hour (well, just screams really, but it's at about 08:00:05).

We decide getting too close (particularly with Excalibur) is a bad idea. So we retreat back to the Souk to meet Ismail and plot (also we just quite like Ismail and wanted to see him again).

Ismail is pleased to see us, and even more pleased that we didn't turn out to be dicks. He is thrilled with our goal, but beyond providing local knowledge, he isn't sure what he can do to help.

We go round the group for suggestions:
:Bard: "We need to break the chains. Could we use explosives?"
:Angus: "The thermic lance probably won't work. Also, explosives might... if it was directed, it just might... We know from previous experience that enough dakka can kill a god, so we will have to be careful."
:Wizard: "Chains are cold iron that I didn't create, fuck all I can do. The dreadnowt (our pet battleship) might have some spare."
:Cruella "So we are going to blow up a god, but only slightly? I wonder if Babi could help? Can we free him too? He looked so sad..."
:Rest of group: "So you will happily murder anything that is human, but if it's fluffy then we should be nice to it?"
:Cruella: "He might be useful, also yes."
:"Wasn't he going to kill us all?"
:"Oh shush. For once I want to be nice, and I got him into this..."

Ok so now we are freeing both.

If I forgot to mention it, they only make him scream during the hours of daylight, and that does makes it hard to sleep in (keeping everybody productive). This also means it's pretty much just him and Babi at night Ismail informs us. There are guards but not many, and they are easily bribed or distracted. His faction haven't had any means to break the chains and don't want to draw unnecessary attention to themselves without definitely knowing they could free Horus.

Ismail tells us Babi is bound by smaller chains, and because he was missing a toe when he was captured, has been quite extensively mutilated (The reasoning being, if he was missing a bit, then surely they could ensure he misses some more bits). The toe hasn't grown back, and even if he is slowly healing from his other wounds, pain is still pain.

We travel to the dreadnowt (not exactly far) and pleasingly it seems all is normal aboard (at least no one has turned into anything they shouldn't have...). We acquire (after Angus, Wizard and I have a chat) a couple of shells from the main battery. They are armour piercing and fucking heavy. They should do the job.
:"How are we going to set them off?" Asks the Navvie as he picks them up easily.
That is a very good question. The wizard seems to think, however, he can direct something like a coin or hammer with enough force to set off the smaller ignition charges and those will do the rest.

We return at night and have another look. The Caliphate really don't seem to post many guards, but we can see about two dozen by the light of their torches. That doesn't seem like many given that someone must've mentioned the raid on the pyramids the other night. It is possible the bears didn't talk about it (they seemed to get our point), but some of the infantry must've... Also y'know sphinx and djinn playfighting...

We use the cover of darkness to sneak closer, the area Horus is in is essentially a waste ground with slum type buildings at either side and the Nile a short distance from his feet.

We go for the Nile side. There are even less guards here....
:>DM, this wouldn't be a trap would it?
:>Why on earth would you think that?
:>Well maybe because you're pure evil as DMs go....
:>Of course it isn't a trap...
It's a trap.

The first thing we notice is Babi sniffing the air. He looks right at us.
:"Ook?"
Cruella makes a shushing motion, he waves backwards at us. He might be an ape but the gesture of "no! Run!" is pretty clear.

Of course it's also enough to spring the trap as anyone watching him knows that something has been spotted.

A tiny djinn rises into the sky like a flare, making the whole area glow like daylight as the Nile behind us loses its stillness.

:Wikipedia:
:The Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) is an African crocodile and the second largest extant reptile in the world, after the saltwater crocodile.
:On average the Nile crocodile is between 4.1 metres (13 ft) to 5 metres (16 ft), weighing around 410 kg (900 lb). However, specimens measuring 6.1 metres (20 ft) in length and weighing 907 kg (2,000 lb) have been recorded. They have thick scaly skin that is heavily armored.

:>Now add Britbongsteros. 

They're bigger than the wiki implies. Much. The eyes glow red indicating something magical going on (Tiny djinn implanted in their brains).

And then if you recall Sobek was one of the enslaved Gods.

:>Shit! Run! 
Except of course
:"Smaller specimens can gallop, and even larger crocodiles are capable of surprising bursts of speed"

There is no plan. The Navvie hefts the shells and runs like a rugby player with them in the direction of Horus. The wizard as the other part of the demo team Rincewinds after him.

With about ten seconds before engagement, the rest of us prepare to stand our ground.

This is the first time we have ever faced anything truly heavily armoured. I've got solid slugs, Cruella has Excalibur, the purple penguin has disapproving looks, and Angus has a thermic lance, we should be fine...

In the stark light of the flare/djinn in the heart of an ancient civilization, the city wakes to a new sound. [https://youtu.be/ayjVxUC2qDE Sabaton - Panzer Battalion + Lyrics] (on the bagpipes of course).

The Navvie (unbeknownst to us) makes a detour. Stopping at Babi. Babi is manacled hand and foot with decent sized chains (nowhere near the foot across links used on Horus). The Navvie gestures for Babi to lay his wrist chains on the anvil used to fashion the iron bars (which after use on Horus get recycled into bayonets).
:"Ook?"
The wizard conjures a spike of the hardest alloy he knows of and the Navvie brings that hammer down.
:"Ook!"
He does it again on the second set of chains.
:"OOK!"

Meanwhile, we prepare to meet the crocs. Angus quite rightly suspects fire is not going to do much, but the lance definitely will. I try firing on the closest, it seems to slow it down, but not a great deal else. Cruella prepares to leap.

They get closer. Angus fencing with one with the lance, carving bits off, but it does not seem to feel pain. I get some critical hits as one roars (a couple dozen solid slugs down its gullet kills it very dead). Cruella gets on top of one and sticks Excalibur through its brain. It doesn't seem to really notice and keeps trying to eat me.

It's about now that Babi sweeps into them. Picking up one croc and using it as a bludgeon on the others.

Further up the body of Horus, Navvie and wizard come under fire. Horus grunts as everything that misses them hits him. They are pinned down somewhere near his hand, about twenty feet from the chains across his chest. The wizard has some small influence over bullets and the Navvie makes a run for it, slamming the shells in between the links of the chains and taking cover in Horus's armpit (there are no atheists in foxholes as the saying goes). The wizard redirects the suppressing fire and, well, the Dreadnowt has some really big guns because when the smoke clears a very big chunk of Horus is missing and the chains are broken.

Horus with his arms now free, and a hole in his side you could parallel park in, sits up. He rips the chain around his neck from the ground and the chains around his legs follow suit.

The bard by now has switched songs [https://youtu.be/Nba3Tr_GLZU Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark] and alarms go off across the city. Horus, rising against the moon, looking bigger, weirder, and frankly more pissed off than anything we have seen yet.
:"Thank you mortals."
He stoops and picks up Babi by the scruff of the neck and sets off in the direction of Anubis. Babi carries the last remaining croc with him having subdued (concussed) his new friend.

:>The old gods return.

Well say what you like about us, but as we watch Horus's broad back retreat into the moonlight, the Purple Penguin sensibly reminds us that "Holy fuck, leg it."

We make for the Souk where Orrance and Ismail seem quite pleased with us. Orrance has a map of the country spread out and Ismail is assisting. The place is a tumult of activity. We decide to settle in and try to get some sleep. See what the morning brings as no one seems in the mood to take us out into the desert yet.

Every so often we can hear bangs and what sound like explosions in the city. It sounds like in the traditional of PCs, we fucked shit up good.

We awake on a new day, and look out into the city as breakfast is being prepared. Quite a lot of it is on fire or wrecked.
:>oops. 
It also seems like the Caliphate is in total disarray. Ismail is happy with Orrance in charge, so our fat happy merchant friend will guide us out into the deserts of Araby. We have a couple hours to make ready and are assisted with supplies and camels (Angus gets his favourite again).

We are lead through the backstreets and circled round what sounds like full on magical civil war.

We are starting to realize, that our actions last night killed an awful lot of people indirectly.

We should, and do, feel bad about this.

We set off into the desert eventually. Making camp beneath the stars, watching the moon rise, it is incredibly peaceful, relaxing almost. For the first few days anyway.

Have some mood music: it's a bit different to the usual metal but seemed fitting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldeWzNtgtsk Arabic Music - The Desert Lounge Vol IV]

Ok point one. Fuck me is it hot. We knew it was the desert but my god, it is getting hot in the day and beyond cold at night. Ismail seems to know where he's going, and we trot along after him. Days one and two are uneventful. Day 3 we come to an oasis, refilling canteens and camels, all feels pretty good. Day 4 we start to pass from rocky desert into dunes, mile, after mile, after mile of dunes.

It's hot, it's a dry heat, each day the sun makes this slow ascent, seemingly higher in the sky than the last, lips become chapped, even in our thaubs (we kept the disguises) we roast. Ismail is starting to look unhappy on day 5. Consulting the map, checking the sky.

We haven't seen anything fly over since Day 3.

:Day 6 is uneventful, but hotter and hotter.
:Day 7 - "Ismail, are we nearly there yet?"
:"Tomorrow I promise, effendi."
:Day 8 - "Where the fuck are we ismail? The camels are starting to complain, getting grumpier. Angus is sunburnt to fuck."
:Day 9 - "Ismail, are we lost?"
:"No effendi it can't be far now..."
:Day 10 - Ismail's camel drops dead.

:>DM, just for ONCE can we go somewhere and not... hang on... Camels take six or seven MONTHS to dehydrate.
:>Come to think of it, we're all a bit more dehydrated than we should be, and the rest of the camels are looking peaky. 

Ismail gamely walks along with us, insisting he's ok, and no he doesn't want to share a camel with someone, he is burning his feet on the sand. He drops too. He sure seems to have lost a lot of weight when the Navvie picks him up.

We are starting to suspect something is wrong here.

We were already on alert for Djinn and mirages or zombie French foreign legion, but we didn't expect the DM to make a play like this. 

:>By the purple penguin it is fucking hot. 

We decide to make camp in a wadi and study Ismail's map. We may not have any idea where the fuck we are, but we might as well try and work it out. We don't want to end like this. Lost in the desert, dehydrated husks with no one to tell our stories.

With night first comes blessed cool, we drink water, the water skins aren't doing very well, neither is based Ismail.

We estimate we have a couple days at best. We are lost as fuck.

:>Has anyone got any bright ideas?

We try to make condensers, it doesn't work very well. We know in the morning we should head east. The DM starts to make us roll every so often. What for he won't say. No one seems to fail, but as we traipse on, losing my camel, then Cruella's, then the Navvie's, each seeming mysteriously drained dry we...

The wizard drops.

We can just carry Ismail, and we can just about carry the wizard too. One more, and that's it.

The DM has chucked us in at the deep end (Quicksand?) with this one.

We agree to try to head east. Our progress slower and slower with each dead camel. Finally, we are left with Angus's camel with the weakest members of the party on her back.
:>Why are the camels dying?
We don't know... we are fucked...
:>A spot, a spot on the horizon... it's... is that green?

We get closer, and closer, it has to be a mirage,

Feet rise and fall, each step slower than the last, chapped lips would bleed, but we are too dehydrated. The sun is getting higher, hotter. We walk, a slow steady, lung burning mantra of
:"Fuck it's hot" right step
:"Fuck you DM" left step
:"Fuck it's hot" right step
:"Fuck you DM" left step
The green dot isn't going away... it is getting bigger...

We can see palm trees. Holy fuck it is an oasis.

What's that funny flappy thing?

:>A caliphate flag

We decide to finish the waterskins, each and every last one, every drop, pouring some into Ismail and Wizard in the hope they'll be able to help.

The last one isn't full of water. It's full of sand and a note.
:>Camels poisoned. Ali.
:>I fucking hate this kid.

We wait in the scorching oven of the desert for nightfall, assessing the caliphate presence. We are literally yards from salvation, between us are two platoons of Caliphate soldiers.

Ordinarily, for us, at this level, no fucking trouble.

Dehydrated and half dead? More than a deadly challenge.

:>Plans?
:>Surrender? The Purple Penguin spits upon you for your cowardice. 
:>CHARGE! Might work...
:>Make as much noise and violence as possible when they're sleeping and see what happens?

We watch them bed down for the night. Dry lips chafing at that cool clear water. The Camel huffs, sniffing water on the air. Angus fluffs his roll to control her. She gets away from us and barrels into the camp.

We decide that this is our best hope of a distraction.

:>Flamethrowers are amazing at crowd control 
:>As are gatling shotguns

Bard does his best as well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnn47V09Q2M Slayer Raining Blood] (Hilariously apt DM, thanks)

The Caliphate troops break and run. In the burning camp, as palm trees go up like torches, as the wounded scream and burn, silhouetted in the darkness is one camel drinking her fill very happily. We do the same.

In the confusion it appears some of the caliphate troops were either too dead to use them, or too busy running, and their camels legged it, they start to wander back over the next 24 hours.

Everyone's starting to feel better, we don't know what Ali used on the camels but we have a feeling he used the same stuff on a couple of the waterskins, but the symptoms are starting to leave us now. We rest up a bit, keeping careful watch on the dunes for Caliphate reprisals.

We also find in the camp maps which seem to imply we are, at worst, a day or two from where we need to be.

We head onwards after resting up, we start seeing signs of Arab habitation, it appears what we met was a Caliphate forward patrol, one which was deep in enemy territory as it were. The dunes start to give way to scrub, we aren't far from the coast as far as we can tell now. Then we mount a dune, and there, in all it's blue watery gorgeousness, is the sea.

We prepare for the next part of our adventure, onward to the oil, and to steal the process of extracting it.


After getting lost (very lost) and our nearly dying of dehydration, we are on the gulf of Aqaba, we travel up the coast and round, down to Medina (it takes about five more days doing this but we don't die). We meet more and more Arabs, they are friendly, especially when Ismail tells them about what we have been up to. They seem pretty bro-tier all round. Each night we stay with a different camp, hanging out and generally making friends. Medina has some foreign influence, especially British but we head out from there and on to somewhere between Hafir al batin and Buradyh.

We start to see Djinn again and things are very deserty.

The oil fields at last. We meet camel trains carrying barrels full of the stuff to the coast, we are so close. After all this weirdness, things have taken on an almost unreal quality.

We see a geyser of black gold spurt into the sky. Whatever they are doing it clearly works. We crest a dune and see just how it works.

There are human shapes chained up on the desert floor. A man casts an incantation of some sort over the body of one bound and gagged victim and blood flows from him, a lot of it, all of it. Draining into the sand.

Seconds later from beneath the corpse, oil bubbles, then flows, then gushes.
:>aaaaaaaw fuck.

:"Ismail... dude... did you know about this?"
:"Of course I did. We only use people who volunteer."
:"What do you mean volunteer?"
:"Well they are mostly slaves really, their owners volunteer them and..."
:>The purple penguin is starting to froth at the mouth
:"Ok, who is that priest guy?"
:"That would be one of the cult, they don't follow the old gods. They are very good at doing this magic though are they not, effendi?"

Ok. Huddle up.
:1. We need that process.
:2. Fuck this cult.
:3. If we (ok wizard) can learn whatever the fuck it is, maybe we can reverse engineer it and make it less murdery.

:"Ismail, we would like to meet one of the priests please."
Ismail is extremely happy to arrange this. He suggests we take a goat.

The priests reside in an old fortress nearby. Ismail merrily gives exposition on who they are.
:>The priests of (I can't post the Arabic characters in text but it's pronounced Daem, which, delightfully, is Arabic for blood) (yay!) They were kicked out of the caliphate for being too extreme and generally weird, practicing magic that was forbidden and entirely unholy. They were welcomed by the Arabs who are actually just nice guys, and they took them in as down on their luck folks without realizing what these guys were about. 
:Then the oil happened and the Cult of Daem got to be very wealthy, they don't care about influence or power, just the occasional blood sacrifice or virgin here and there.
:There are about sixty of them, and every so often they tap wells like this.

It seems like chopping the cult out is not a bad idea. We are sorely tempted to just go full on murder hobo, but we also need to learn from them.

So we need to make friends, then kill all of them.

:Step 1, acquire goat.
This is done easily enough.
:Step 2. Wait a minute, does anyone speak Arabic?
Ismail, and possibly the penguin.

Ok....do we trust Ismail to translate?

We think so. He seems nice enough.

:Step 3. Acquire favour within the cult.
This third step is likely to require the wizard doing something we really do not like. But with the fleet back home damaged, and landcruisers needing fuel, Britbongsteros needs this stuff.

Have some more mood music seeing as anon liked it. [https://youtu.be/-oYCaaZYG-k Chillout Arabian Lost In The Desert]

We have our objectives. As we are discussing, we see that the cultist and those with him are going to pass pretty close to us. We get our first look at what we are up against up close. Black robes are a given, trimmed with red, a belt made of finger bones, and a staff with a skull on top. We can't see his face for mask, another skull. We can see eyes, blue like the desert sky stare out at us. So obviously foreigners in this land. He stops.

He says something (for the rest of this just assume Ismail is translating)

:"For her, I would give much gold, enough for forty others."
We close in around Cruella again to prevent another murder.
:"I mean the camel, not that skinny thing"
:Cruella: "Why do people keep doing that?"
:Party: "We'll explain later just don't stab anyone right now please..."
Angus steps forward to defend his camel.
:"She is worth a hundred others, there is none like her" (he really liked that camel)
:"Ha. I will give you two."
:"Two what?"
:"Of your hearts desire, eunuch. Then I would pluck that heart out and feast on it"
He walks away laughing.
:>What the fuck was that about DM? Is he just crazy or crazy and evil?
:Ismail answers: "That was Al'Fella. Please, effendi, we were very lucky to have survived that..."
:"Why?"
:"He is the leader of the cult of Daem. The best and worst of them."
We have a feeling he is not the best at ethics and the worst at blood sacrifice. We ask Ismail
:"How are we going to get to learn any of this stuff if he doesn't like us?"
Ismail laughs now, that big fat belly laugh that seemed really jolly and lovely in Cairo is actually creepy as fuck now.
:"Didn't like you? He loved you!"
:"Wut?"
:"Are you dead? No? Then he liked you. He made a joke, then he really liked you. You are still not dead for the punchline? He must love you!"
We are in a really weird place and awfully far from home.

Then again, we are often in a really weird place far from home. 

We acquire a goat quite easily. Ismail seems quite happy to take us to the mountaintop residence of the cult (typical evil looking fortress).

Now anon may be wondering, generally we try to be at least neutral good or whatever the brokenness of the D&D chart thinks we are. This is balanced against
:>The DM is a dick

So the obviously evil chaps have something we really want, and the question for us is how far are we willing to go for this before we murder them.

It's actually quite an interesting dilemma for the party.

The wizard, as the only really magical one, gets shoved to the forefront for a lot of what follows. 

The DM has a little mechanic he uses for this, he dips into his bag (bad sign), he asks nicely if he could have a bowl please. Also another beer. He has something in his hand.

Meanwhile, the wizard is nudged forward, we are standing before the gates to the place, the wizard has the goat next to him.

Ismail says
:"Speak after me"

Bear in mind that the wizard has the thickest Scottish accent and he is trying to parrot a language he hadn't even heard last month.

I'll do it in doric
:"Ok wizard, tell them you come to learn."
:"Aye ahm hir tae oonderstan yer magik."
Heads start to pop out over the battlements.
:"Tell them you want to get answers to your questions."
:"Ahm winting ye tae answir mae thae question thrae."
:"And that you bring them this offering."
:"Ah bright ye ah goat"
:"Now slit its throat."
:"Whit?"
:"Do it."
:DM: "Wizard PC, close your eyes and hold out hand please." 
:DM: "Do you do it?"
:Wizard PC "Aye, I mean yes."
:>DM squeezes tomato ketchup onto wizard's hand.

The surprised wizard PC (and everyone else) finds this more than amusing, and the doors to the place swing open. We are in.

The creak closed behind us in proper horror movie fashion.

We we are in. What next?

Ismail whispers that there are likely to be trials, if we want to learn, then they will put us to the test. They are unlikely to be much fun.

Who greets us? Our good friend Al.

(again whenever someone speaks Ismail is interpreting)
:Al: "You come seeking wisdom?"
:"We wish to learn how to take oil from the ground, yes."
:"Very well. There will be trials. I suggest you take some time to compose yourselves. Why not enjoy refreshments while we prepare."
He claps his hands and a group of slave Leias bring in some tea. We sip, reclining on cushions. As we finish our drinks, Ismail kindly pours more, there is a note under the pot.

Ismail reads aloud
:"The first trial has begun."
The doors slam shut and bolts turn.
:"The tea was poisoned. The antidote is somewhere in this room. There is enough for half of you."

Those who are best at searching (Angus and Cruella) start doing so. The rest of us do our best to assist while working out how we can make half the dose work for everyone. We don't have any kind of magic healing person, the bard isn't bad at medicine, but he isn't exactly going to help.
:>The DM places his alarm clock on the table.5 minutes. 
We search, frantically, after a little while, Angus finds a glowing blue bottle and swigs from it, about the same time Cruella finds a purple one and, being a bit brighter, doesn't.
:>Is this it? Are these one dose each? Two? We don't know...

We are starting to get a bit panicky. Three minutes left. Then two, then one. We haven't found any more. No one seems to be any worse off.

Still only enough for half... We all drank the tea, and Angus is fine, maybe...

We are starting to look at each other in a new light. We are very fond of these characters...

:Wizard: "Well, Ismail is fucked..."
:Cruella: "Who ever wants to take this off me can try..."
:Aldous: "Drink mine, I have lived long enough."
:Navvie: "I agree you have... gimme!"
:Bard: "Guys! Guys! We can't end like this we...(OOC now) would the DM kill half us us so arbitrarily? Would he kill us in such a stupid way?"
:DM: "Actually I did bring some new character sheets." (dm ruffles papers)
15 seconds
:Bard: (IC) "Refuse to drink it, these are cultists obsessed with blood. They want to see if we turn on each other... Don't."
:>The alarm clock rings.
:DM: "Well I need a slash, I will be back in a minute. Who wants a beer?"

The DM takes an ostentatiously long time, and returns, pops his beer and continues

Al returns
:"Ha! Well done, normally they fight like tooth and nail. It is so much fun to watch. You have survived the first trial!"
:>Note that the session ended for the night there, DM fearing reprisals.


As mentioned last time, DM was rounded upon for nearly arbitrarily killing the entire party twice.
:>Our DM is a Cunt.
So he decided to try harder this time. Going all the way back to the first time I talked about Britbongsteros, he liked offering us choices... Difficult ones.

At this point, DM dips into his rucksack and removes a large yellow bag.

:>Jelly babies (they are a British sweet which for some reason are in the shape of babies)
:>There is a collective intake of breath. 
:>DM opens the bag and starts lining up jelly babies on the table. Little serried colourful ranks. 
:>"Can I have a knife and a chopping board please? And a beer? Also would anyone like a jellybaby?"

:>No one seems inclined.

Mad Ali launches into some exposition as the DM happily munches jellybabies.
:"Come follow me, it is interesting to see a group of supplicants all survive the first trial. I understand only one of you is magically inclined (He means the wizard), what the rest of you hope to learn is not in my understanding, unless perhaps [wizard] you have brought me some new "volunteers"? That would be most kind of you."
Mad Ali giggles at a joke only he seems to get.

>DM bites the head off a jellybaby.

Ali leads us deeper into the fortress, until we come to a cavern, the walls are rough stone and from the roof shines a shaft of sunlight into near darkness. It looks a lot like Majilis al Jinn cave.

We are at the heart of what is by all accounts an extremely unpleasant cult, and as crazy as mad Ali is, they still seem surprisingly ok with us being there and wanting to learn their secrets. This and the jellybabies are starting to make us suspect not all is right here.

The shaft of light shines down onto an altar, if anything it is so blatantly a sacrificial altar it can't be anything else.

The rear of the altar seems to have a fairly substantial pool of inky looking water behind it.

Mad Ali keeps talking
:"You have all killed before, numerous times, you have a great deal of blood on your hands. Each death is in furtherance of some goal I am sure, but you six have killed a great many, I doubt for any of you, you would have second thoughts of killing again, especially not for the powerful knowledge I may teach you. Surely a great prize such as that, is one which is worth spilling blood for?" 

After a speech like that, we all look at each other.

Cruella seems to be chewing something.
:("I like jellybabies, fuck off").

:Angus: "Guys what are we gonna do? If he does what I think he is about to ask to do, we can't go through with it, we can't let him kill someone in front of us either."
:Navvie: "I think Ali has a point, you know we did just inadvertently have half of Cairo smashed. What's a little blood sacrifice?"
:Bard: "I do not like hard decisions!"

Mad Ali claps his hands and a robed acolyte brings out a small, squirming, bundle. 

The bundle starts to cry.

:>Oh shit we are gonna have to kill everyone now...
:>DM slowly, carefully, chops the head off a jelly baby and eats it. 
:>He does it again.

Mad Ali speaks:
:"Blood is important. Blood is everything. Blood is..."
The baby wails. Ali continues
:"Ooogooo woogly googly oooogly"
The baby gurgles and claps. He cradles the child.
:"This is my son, my flesh and blood. He will carry on my work after I am done. Is he not beautiful? Blood is important."

:>DM gets the biggest shit eating grin, slits a jellybaby in half, and eats it.

This by the way is the reason I don't trust jellybabies.

Mad Ali hands the bundle back to the (we notice for the first time) female acolyte, and draws us and our subverted expectations closer to the altar. 

So with our wonderful DM having done that to us, Ali asks for each of us to make a contribution, to slit open our palms and lay it on the altar. He passes round an ornate looking dagger, and we oblige, there is a shimmer in the water as blood flows down the altar, ripples form in the perfect stillness. We can't quite make out is causing them...

As the water breaks, mad Ali, cult leader, person exploder, and surprisingly nice family man bids us take a step back.

:"This is the avatar of our God..."
We peer into the water. It's rather a big shape.
:"HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT?"
Ali throws his arms out wide.
:"Is Ibil al'Daem not perfect?"
:Navvie: "That's a dunleosteous mate."

The Navvie is quite correct from what we can see. Ali continues
:"Those who wish to learn must be judged worthy."
He removes a bracelet and tosses it into the pool.
:"You do wish to be found worthy do you not? Retrieve it."
The Dunkleosteus (who I'm going to just call Duncan) scents blood in the water and thrashes about. The wizard looks on nervously.
:"Go retrieve it! Duncan can scent cowardice"
:Wizard: "I'm not going in bloody there...."
:Party: "Yes you sodding are."
:Ali: "Do you wish to forfeit the trial?"
:Cruella: "Isn't the bracelet metal?"
:Wizard: "Yes... why?... oooooh."
The wizard closes his eyes and sure enough, the bracelet rises above the water, Duncan makes a bite at it but misses, it lands at Ali's feet. He seems a tiny bit put out that no one dived in.
:"The normal process is to satiate Duncan with slaves first... But I am sure he will not be hungry for long..."

DM seems fairly serene and we can't tell if that was what we were meant to do or not...

In any event, Ali agrees to begin to teach the wizard how the process works. This takes a couple of days in game but is glossed over quite quickly. The rest of us try to stay out of the way and not get sacrificed to anything.

The wizard seems to be ok learning on goats but everytime we see him he is covered in more and more blood. Learning this stuff can't be good for him. Eventually he reports that
:"Ali says tomorrow I am ready to practice on humans"
:>Time perhaps to put an end to this...

We interrogate him, 
:"Does this mean he knows everything required to drill for oil?"
:"Nearly."
Tomorrow is when he will learn.
:"Can the process be modified to work without humans?"
:"Yes, probably."
That settles it then. Tomorrow we wipe out the cult of Daem. They may have been quite nice to us, really nice in fact, but the fact of the matter is... they practice human sacrifice and that is enough of a reason for the purple penguin.

The DM has us all roll a D20. Angus rolls highest.

The note the DM passed to Angus (I later learned) read "Congratulations during the night you have been kidnapped"

We discover his absence on waking the next morning.

We search for him to no avail, we definitely had him with us when we went to our separate quarters, his room seems to have no trapdoors or secret passages we...
:>Ali sweeps in
We tactfully ask him where Angus is.
:"Your slave? I have had him staked out in the desert. I assume that is why you brought him..."
(Anon may recall that Angus was notionally disguised as Cruella's slave for this adventure to allow him, as an orc, to be seen in public)

We decide that killing Ali at this stage is not a good idea, as he obviously knows where Angus is, and can lead us to him.

We follow him out into the desert, with Ismails help, the wizard asks,
:"If most of this works on goats, why do you need to use people? Couldn't you just modify the process?"
Mad Ali seems a bit shocked by the idea.
:"Because Daem demands it, you wouldn't want to insult Daem would you?"
:"No no of course we don't want to insult your crazy God."
In the distance there is a scream, a crack and a pillar of oil gushing into the sky.
:Ali: "Oh look at that, they have started without us!"
:>Oh fuck they've started without us.

Again, we start to see familiar shapes staked out on the sand. One of which is green and refreshingly unexploded.

Mad Ali takes us to a restrained body near Angus. DM takes great pleasure in describing the poor disheveled slave, how the bonds chafe her wrists, how her eyes implore us.
:Mad Ali: "Practice on this one first. Use what you have learnt wizard."
He looks expectantly.

The wizard totally fluffs his attempt to postpone things.
:"I... I'm... umm... are you sure?"
:"Yes wizard, use what you have learned, you know the ritual, I will complete the last step."

There is a lot of muttering between the party as this goes on. It boils down to
:"Are we going to let her he exploded? We still don't know the last steps... we might need those..."
Suddenly this seems very familiar, thinking back to the first adventure, this is sort of fate is what we were saving people from... But we really need that process...

More to the point do we actually know how powerful Ali is... is this a good idea?

At Ali's coaxing the wizard starts to chant, to perform the ritual, the slave screams into her gag, her eyes becoming bloodshot.

Blood soaks into the sand.

Cruella drives Excalibur deeper into Ali's chest.

Ismail doesn't translate but he manages to gasp what can only be
:"Why?"
:>Because purple penguins. That's why.

We quite efficiently butcher the rest of the cult of Daem, spilling plenty of blood while we're at it. The slaves seem grateful to be free for the most part, aside from a few who seem awfully disappointed not to be going to meet their god.

One of the latter category asks us (via Ismail)
:'Aren't you afraid of [Duncan]?'
:"Ha! Why should we be afraid of a fish in a desert?"
:'You really should be...'

It occurs to us that we haven't wiped out the Cult of Daem in its entirety, about 3/4s of it are back up on the hill, with their families, and one very big fish.

Really we can't just bugger off and leave them to be sacrificing folk.

We double check, the wizard seems to think he's learnt enough of the process to try it out back home, so we've ticked that box off our objective.

We go back up the hill in half-murderhobo, (remember there's kids in there, and the purple penguin likes kids) we start getting tacti-cool as we get closer, there doesn't seem to be anyone on the walls, and one parkour'ing Cruella and one Navvie shaped hole in the gates later seems to confirm it.

:>Where the fuck is everybody?
Our first port of call is where we were staying, Angus collects his flamethrower.
:Angus: "I wonder what Dunkelosteus tastes like?"
On our way to the lower levels we pass through the courtyard, and confirm that one very familiar camel is still alive as are some others. We decide this is probably going to get violent, but we should probably bring based Ismail along in case we need to be diplomatic.

As we get lower and lower, we notice that it seems like the walls are a little damp, the passageway certainly is, it's not just condensation, one quick finger taste says it's blood, rather a lot of the stuff too.

We get deeper and into the caves, just in time to see what we assume is the last cult member slit his own throat and fall backwards into the pool.

We approach the pool, taking a careful look around, there really isn't anyone left, but the floor is wet, about an inch or two deep in blood now, the pool is overflowing.

Based Ismail stands near the altar looking in, we have a quick conference,
:Let's go, what is a fish gonna do, and the cult is all dead. We should check again for survivors and get gone."
Ismail starts to speak,
:"Let's not look for survivors, lets not wait around, let's GO!"
Ismail continues,
:"Please effendi, it is not a good idea to stay we must leave."
The blood/water/watery-blood seems to be rising. It's level with the top of my boots now and getting higher.
:"Please we must leave this is a very bad place to be now...."
Ismail still has his back to the pool. Damn that blood is rising fast.

There's a very loud bang. The (only) entrance to the chamber seems to have just collapsed in on itself.

Then [https://youtu.be/uz1J9PUcMQ0?t=1m26s this] happens.

:>Hi Duncan, you seem a lot bigger...
:''>We are gonna need a bigger boat...''

The water (blood) level is starting to rise, and a quick assessment of the doorway shows no hope of getting out in time. So we are stuck in about two feet of blood with a giant fish that seemingly is very keen on eating us.

Duncan bides his time in his pool.

The DM helpfully fills a pint glass with a little beer every couple minutes, the fluid level in that representing that in the cavern.

We examine our surroundings. If Duncan is a smart fish he will wait for the water level to rise a good bit. The cavern has ledges around it leading upward the dome of the roof. We can't climb out of the hole from the ledges but we can keep going until we think of something better than "get eaten by Duncan."

If the water level rises high enough, we could, in theory, float out of the skylight.

With Duncan in the water we didn't really feel like paddling at this point, but we did get up on a ledge and started climbing. It was pretty slow going, for every yard we went upward we went six or seven horizontally. Angus and Cruella did alright, the rest of us had to rely on the wizard summoning and drilling pitons in the wall. We got about a third of the way up with the water level rapidly catching up to us when we next saw Duncan, just a subtle flick of his tail breaking the water below us.

I don't know if anon has ever been trapped in a cave rapidly filling with blood and your only company is an angry murderous devonian fish, but it is not a good feeling.

We continue climbing, settling on a ledge maybe halfway up, the ledge is about five feet wide and ten long. Getting to the next ledge is going to be a tricky ascent across almost sheer rock. Going will be very slow and we have no ropes.

Suddenly...
:>Actually where is that fish?
We hold onto the wizard as he leans out to place the first piton.

We watch the water carefully.

Nothing.

There's a thud directly from below us as Duncan rams the ledge with his armoured forehead, cracks appear beneath our feet as blood/water begins to lap at the edges

We urge the wizard to work faster as Duncan rams the ledge again, bits of rock falling away now, the wizard is a few feet above us and climbing fast. Duncan comes straight up through the far end of the ledge, he is gone before we can even get a bead on him.

I was trying to think of an appropriately sea based metal song. I got stuck on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRibnHiuZkQ The Life Aquatic Soundtrack - Ping Island/Lightining Strike Rescue Op] though really I should go with [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd3ZiAwmLpM Sabbath - Children of the Sea]. Anyway, back to Duncan.

Duncan rams the ledge again, there's not much of this thing left.

We start to climb, he's hot on our heels, jumping, snapping, and generally being certain death. We make it to another ledge, and he stops, waiting for the waters to rise.

We keep climbing, knowing that we're gonna have to swim the final stretch, and really must do something about him.
:>What exactly can we do about one extremely large, angry, armoured, god-fish?
We try to plan as best we can, fire isn't gonna do much, neither will shotgun shells, getting close to hammer/stab him doesn't seem wise either, this leaves the wizard and the bard.

Our options are starting to run low, the DM's pint glass is nearly full (it would actually have been a while ago if he didn't keep drinking out of it by mistake). We consider exactly what the wizard could do. We're a bit short on metal, and summoning random sharp objects is probably not gonna do a great deal.

Our thoughts are interrupted by Duncan making a leap at us, he misses everyone, but his nose touches the cavern wall behind us, if we're doing something, it needs to be done fast.

With no real bonuses to charm fish, the bard is out, so that leaves the wizard, we would have some grenades, but no one carried them. We have however seen jaws...

Angus takes some persuading to give up the fuel tank of his beloved flame thrower, the wizard is able to levitate it quite comfortably, the tricky part is persuading Duncan to open his mouth at the right time...

What we need is bait... the Navvie is too slow, I'm about as heavy as him, Cruella will stab us, we need the wizard, so that leaves the already unhappy Angus or the bard, who is wearing a kilt.

We grab Angus by the ankles and dangle him off the ledge while I cock the hammer of my pistol.

Duncan, true to form, does his best to eat Angus, who due to some very lucky rolls is able to avoid being eaten and is actually totally unscathed, Duncan does grab the canister and swallows it. Whole.
:>Oh.
So we are left with charm fish or a new plan, the water is rising...

We are going to get eaten or drown and then get eaten soon.

It's time for true heroism, a noble act to be told to future generations.

At least that's what I tell myself as I'm hung over the ledge of the cliff, even without a bonus to accuracy from the wizard, I'm still the best shot in the party.

Duncan resurfaces, some distance away. He is a fairly smart fish after all, and he must sense we aren't likely to want to feed ourselves to him...

He comes closer, experimentally floating just below me, eying me. He submerges. This must be it....

He breaches the water below me, I don't wait to fire I empty the whole cylinder down his throat.

He neatly snips off my arm (the good one) and submerges. The water boils, bubbles and then there is an explosion within the depths. I however am busy not dying from blood loss and being patched up by the bard.

The water rises and my unconscious body is dragged through the hole in the ceiling to safety.


The trip back to port Said is uneventful, though we pass more and more refugees, it seems we have caused all out civil war. It sure would be nice to get home.

The wizard is adamant he can build me a new arm once we are about the dreadnowt and then it's home for tea and medals.

The dreadnowt is still in harbour and appears normal. No one has been eaten by the bowling ball, and we celebrate by collapsing into our respective beds. Sunburned, missing a limb in my case (I liked that arm!) and ready for the voyage home.


The voyage sees a return to normality as we steam through the med, the captain is very pleased with us. I am very pleased with my new arm, and Angus has retreated down to the engine room with the other engineers. He was last heard of muttering about "Willy Pete."

I should add, Angus somehow got that fucking camel aboard.

:>Portents of doom
Captain DM reports that the bowling ball can be heard rattling around in its cell. Every night about the same time. When Mars is highest in the sky...

We sail through the straits of Gibraltar without incident. We decide after a good night's rest to listen out for what Antrygos (the bowling ball) is doing that night.

He has been sealed inside a store room, no portholes and only one way out through a bulkhead door which is guarded by two ratings with a deadman switch. (Britbongsteros does not fuck about). We take over from the ratings who are very relieved not to have to hang around near Antrygos.

We don't have to wait long in the corridor (Cruella has sensibly acquired a deck chair, the wizard summons a steel plate bent at a right angle and sits on that, the rest of us just lean against the wall and smoke or play cards).

Soon there comes the sound of a rolling ball, sliding from side to side within the room, getting faster and faster.

Antrygos makes everyone near him uneasy, he doesn't seem to be doing much beyond rolling, we can't see him rolling (but we hate him). He doesn't roll in easy motions like with the waves but fast and frenetic, stopping, starting, never with a rhythm, moments of silence then thudding like he's jumping.
:"Maybe we should crack the door?
We chat about the idea, doing our best not to listen to him bouncing or whatever alien balls do.
:>GREETINGS OAF, IDIOT, MIDGET, BREEDER, LECHER, AND SKILLED MUSICIAN.
His voice comes from right in the middle of us. Definitely not muffled by the room.

There's nothing in the hallway, and we can still hear him rolling about.
:>I SAID GREETINGS. ANSWER ME MORTALS. 
:Cruella: "Aaw he sounds lonely."
:>I NEED NONE OF YOUR PITY MORTAL, BUT YES I YEARN FOR COMPANY
:"You do realize you eat people and turn them into Martians Antrygos? You're not exactly likeable."
:>I AM TO BE FEARED NOT LIKED. 
:"Alright well we could just go and leave you to it..."
:>NO DO NOT GO. I COMMAND IT.
:"So you are lonely?"
:>YES. NO. I DEMAND AN AUDIENCE.
:"And why is that Antrygos?"
:>I HAVE WAITED MANY YEARS ALONE
:Cruella: "Aaw."
:>AND NOW YOU SHOULD KNOW THE CHANCES OF ANYTHING COMING FROM MARS DO NOT WANE (Wayne?), THEY GROW.
:"And what do you mean by that Antgyros?"
:>THE ENEMY IS COMING. IT IS CERTAIN. 
He bounces around some more.
:"How do you know?"
:>CAN YOU NOT FEEL THEIR CREEPING PRESENCE? OR ARE YOU BEASTS THAT UNDERDEVELOPED?
:"He sure is a nice guy huh?"
:>YOUR AFFAIRS ARE BEING WATCHED BY INTELLIGENCES GREATER THAN YOURS. SCRUTINIZED LIKE THE TRANSIENT CREATURES THAT SWARM AND MULTIPLY IN A DROP OF WATER. ANTGYROS CARES NOT. ANTGYROS CARES ONLY FOR HIMSELF. ANTGRYOS DEMANDS YOU SACRIFICE YOURSELVES TO PROTECT HIS MIGHT.
:"Antgyros are you... are you scared?"
:>ANTGYROS CANNOT FEEL FEAR. ANTGYROS KNOWS NOT THIS EMOTION. 
:"You are, aren't you?"
:>NEVER. THEY REGARD YOUR EARTH WITH ENVIOUS EYES AND SLOWLY AND SURELY, DRAW THEIR PLANS AGAINST YOU. ANTGYROS DEMANDS YOU ENSURE HE SURVIVES. 
:"Antgyros. You're terrified..."
:>NO. I FEEL NO FEAR. 
The ball stops rolling.
:"Can you tell us what's coming Antgyros?"
He remains silent.
:"When will they arrive?"
He remains silent.
:"Why are you so afraid."
There is a final decisive clunk as though he has come to rest and isn't going to move again for some time.

So begins our next tale.