Britbongsteros

What was/is your favourite campaign reward?

Best reward?

A small, stuffed, purple toy penguin was returned to its rightful owner.

The Setting

The world of Britbongsteros was the same as our world was until about 15th C but then suddenly magic. This fueled science which fueled magic etc etc. We later discovered why this was. Because of a device at the North Pole which had been keeping the magic from the world. It is there in our world and working. In the world of Britbongsteros it blew up in 1497.

The British empire existed. 'Murica was weird -due to an effect of local magic in New York (where the only American we met was from) you had to keep eating, all the time, but if you did, you became incredibly strong and fat. (Sorry America)

France was just all slutty elves. That was good. Germany was a mix like Britbongsteros except that they also had bear people.

The Party

Throughout our adventures there were always at least five of us, and usually six. These are:

• Angus - An orc from Dundee. Originally a greengrocer but also horrendously proficient with the flamethrower he carries. The flamethrower doubles as a thermic lance.
• The bard - A human, wears a kilt, plays the bagpipes. Occasionally has great ideas. The DM uses his own taste in music for what the bard actually plays (so usually classic rock or country & western).
• Cruella - Essentially a Dark Eldar wych wearing more clothes. She is vicious and stealthy. Armed with two daggers and a sword that she talks to. Played by Aldous' PC's then (and now again) GF. The latter fact occasionally becomes relevant which is why it is mention it.
• The wizard - Not actually magic but can command metal (iron) and summon various sharp or pointy things. Including chainsaws.
• The Navvie (also called Burt) - A very large human with a hammer. He hits things with it.

• 

  Aldous with Purple Penguin

  Aldous - The character of the one telling the story. A dwarven knight. Wears full plate. Carries twin revolvers and a gatling shotgun. Smokes a pipe.
• The purple penguin - Moral compass and possible DM PC.

The Story

The Necromancers of Scotland

Our tale begins in (not) enlightenment era Britbongistan. The nation stands on the brink of annihilation. Barbaric hordes rise in the swamplands of the western island, to the North the undead rise. Gun powder has allowed the nation to stand this long. Our band are on a quest for an ingredient that will make for better quality metallurgy in the cannons and rifles. maybe enough to turn the tide.

Now our GM likes to present us with choices. As the group's resident dwarven knight (from not Yorkshire) I often am the one everyone looks to for a steer on these.

In the relevant session our choice is to chase down an enemy alchemist, who we have been trailing for days now, or we can let him get away and save a village from the undead.

We are in an area that is near (not) Newcastle. We have with us a stoic human, a working class navvie who uses his hammer to smash the undead and return them to hell followed by inventive curses. He has no family but is from around this area. By the way his name was Burt.

I say

"Obviously we go for the alchemist. It will save more lives in the end"

>DM slips navvie a note. Ooc: "DM you're a bastard" says the player.

Our titan of a navvie looks at the horizon.

"The village my Lord it is... it was my home"

The rest of the party argue. The DM reminds us that the alchemist is getting away. Time is running out. We go for the alchemist.

It doesn't take long but we get him. We get him good. We turn round. We make for the village. It's ablaze.

We scream to a halt in our jalopy. The undead are lead by a Necromancer. One we've met before. The Skeletons engage us, the Navvie goes at them. Bellowing. Bodies fly. My pistols grow hot. Our wizard summons chainsaws and the slaughter continues. Our bard plays the song of vengeance upon his bagpipes.

Meanwhile. The Necromancer is stealing soul after soul. Picking up each screaming villager and inhaling their essence, tossing husks aside. We can't save all of them. Maybe one. Just one.

We don't. The last is a little girl.

>DM hands navvie another note. "Fuck you DM"

The Navvie screams as he recognizes her. His niece. She cries for him. For help. And the necromancer removes her soul into a container. As he tosses her withered empty husk of a body aside. He trampled upon the little purple stuffed penguin the girl had been holding. He vanishes.

The undead are slaughtered but even in the hissing and popping heat that comes when our Scottish flamethrower carrying greengrocer uses his signature weapon. Even in that heat, the tears track through the soot and grime on the Navvies face.

We cursed the village, the war, ourselves.

I picked up that little penguin and put it in my cartridge belt.

"We'll bring his owner back. I promise."

>So began a year long quest to return the penguin to the little girl.

>Necromantic apocalypse

We learnt that it all came from a simple farmer. He tried to make his cows last longer, give more milk. He started to research, obtaining darker and darker books. He succeeded. Completely. His cows were famous. A plague struck his village. His wife died. He reanimated her. Then his children. Then his friends, his neighbors.

What he didn't know was that in our world, necromancery works on a body, giving you the human they were back. Until the brain decays. Then they become first a zombie (with all the face eating and turning others with bites) then a skeleton as the flesh decays. A skeleton bound completely to the will of the necromancer. In our setting skeletons were hard as fuck. Hence the slightly mad weaponry we carried to fight them

We left the village. It burned long into the night. I could see it as I smoked my pipe in our camp. The bard played http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iK9LXdl-6eo the Navvie and the greengrocer (a sort of orc thing from what was once Dundee) broke into a bottle of my whiskey, then another. They used the alchemist (above) as a bench. His muffled cries lost in the skirl of the pipes. We had kneecapped him and tied him up earlier.

I sat and looked at the little penguin. Cleaning my pistols. The other party member, the wizard (actually an engineer from Aberdeen who had the ability to summon and command machinery such as the aforementioned chainsaws) sat with me. He (and the player) bawled inconsolably.

We needed a plan.

Britbongsteros looked like and had the same terrain as regular britbongland. The undead held most of Scotland, Aberdeen was a fortified port city now. Dundee no longer existed. Edinburgh was the heart of the necromantic apocalypse. It was most likely where we would have to go.

Glasgow still stood. Just. Everything else was held along the old antonine wall. The west of England was under assault from what would be Ireland and Welsh barbarians. The barbarians were either Celts of the old stripe (nekkid, blue) and supported by Elder horrors. The Welsh were more beastmen. Half man half something. (I should add I'm sorry Wales).

The barbarians would raid and pillage frequently. In the south England was England. Human until the midlands, dwarves in Yorkshire.

We didn't interact much with the rest of Europe (aside from sinking a German cruiser -different story) but the French women were generally slutty elves. We liked them.

In Buckingham palace we had a faerie Queene (as in actually a faerie). If you've ever watched blackadder, she was basically queenie from that. Childish, capricious, bloodthirsty.

Anyway. The first thing we would have to do to get to Edinburgh was either win the war or learn to fly.

Dwarves don't like heights, so I naturally favored winning the war. We returned to our base of operations (and my ancestral home) in Harrogate. The dwarves of the area fearing both the undead and invasion of barbarians had dug in deep. Orderly trenches and bunkers covered the landscape. Artillery in every field, barbed wire spooled out for miles. The dales were now a maginot line. If all the effort put into fortifying DwarfYorkshire had been used in the North the war might have been different. We drove through miles of fortifications. My ancestral home had always been a castle, except now it had cannons.

The greengrocer and navvie worked on interrogating the alchemist.

The alchemists were generally from not Holland and played both sides. Helping the necromancers and us. It was in their interest to do so as they sold arms to both sides. This one knew enough of metallurgy to be of some use.

The bard assisted the wizard and I in planning our next steps.

We would have to get into Edinburgh and get the soul cube (where the little girl was kept) back. Killing the necromancer we decided was, if not a priority, it should still be done on general principles.

I placed the stuffed purple penguin on the table. It, and us, looked over the map we had spread out.

We couldn't push up from Newcastle to the borders and on to Edinburgh, for one thing it would mean getting through the undead giants in Stirling. We couldn't sail up the west coast and round (Irish barbarians) and we would never survive the east coast, the great kraken and other monsters that had been summoned by the necromancers would rip apart any ship spotted from land without the appropriate magical wards.

We considered going up north through the highlands and back down.

The Grocer (Angus) ran into the room. The alchemists were making a shipment to the Welsh barbarians tonight.

We looked at each other. Those boats had the wards. But the alchemists were not our allies they were neutral... sort of...

We looked at the penguin.

"Lets get ourselves a ship."

We left in a hurry, moving on to Liverpool, as we were chartered by the Queen (being sort of like 40K acolytes) we had no trouble obtaining the assistance of a royal navy destroyer. HMS Thunderchild (yes that one). With the bard standing on the prow, playing AC/DCs Thunderstruck on the bagpipes (no I don't know how he knew it either but the DM likes ACDC) we set sail. The Thunderchild looked like you'd think a destroyer would. The Alchemists ship when we found her did not. It was a floating nautilus, and fucking huge.

I racked the slide on my newly acquired gatling shotgun, the navvie hefted his hammer, the wizard summoned rotary saws, Angus lit the pilot light on that flamethrower. The bard just... did bard stuff and played on.

The captain of the Thunderchild was the best of men. Guns would break the shell of the nautilus and sink her. So we rammed it.

The party boarded, so did the stuffed purple penguin.

The fight was short, gory as all hell too, the alchemists being shot, burnt, sawn, hammered, and bagpiped to death.

We had our boat. Or at least large living seabeast

We had no idea how to steer this beast. After a great deal of head scratching, the bard discovered it liked the bagpipes. It would swim in the direction of the sound. If he stood in a rowing boat and played it would follow along behind. It wasn't going to be fast, but we could travel.

Meanwhile the Navvie and I investigated the cargo hold.

It glowed. Weaponized soul cubes. Each containing a tortured soul of a deceased man woman or child. They had been turned into grenades or artillery shells. It was silent in that hold, but it was also full of the sound of screaming.

It was another moral dilemma. Do we release these souls? Or do we us them? The Navvies niece was in something like these...

That great hammer rose and fell. With a smash the first soul was released, then another, and another.

I was concerned though. Even if we saved her, where would we put her? What could we do?

I approached the Wizard, he could perhaps build a mechanical body? Some design or contrivance to carrier her essence? Maybe to give her some sort of life?

The answer was (after discussing and rolling) yes sort of. He said he'd have to think, to design. The DM passed him several notes. This was a very bad sign.

We were on the west coast now. The Thunderchild accompanied us as far as Wick but could go no further in these waters. We stopped off for a session or two in this area, fighting a horde of mutated kelpies and also Sawney Bean the cannibal and his insane brood. This was awesome but not relevant to our quest. (I am willing to digress however if requested)

>Yes.

Alright then. The kelpie. (I trust everyone reading knows how to use Google)

We nearly lost Angus here. The kelpie would shapeshift, not just into their usual forms, but they could transform to those you loved, anything to get you into the water so they could drown and consume you.

We first became aware of how shafted we were when I woke up to see my daughter crawling up the side of my bed. She'd been dead for fifty years. Shooting her hurt as much as the sound of the first spadeful of earth hitting the lid of her coffin.

We couldn't move fast enough to escape them (not with the bard piping in the rowing boat), we had to stop. To kill every single last one.

We shot our mothers, burned our grandfathers, stabbed our brothers, chainsawed our wives, bludgeoned our sons, and still they kept coming.

Telling us twisted truths, secrets that we knew were untrue but with enough to make your finger twitch, your aim unsteady, my daughter told me she had killed herself. The others were all equally and savagely unloved, Angus failed his will save, the kelpie (and his wife) separating him from us, leading him to the water.

It took the Navvie's hammer crushing her skull against the deck until Angus started screaming. We had to knock him out. When the kelpies were all dead, we waited for him to wake, when he did, we poured whisky into him until he stopped screaming her name.

The purple penguin and I had some ourselves that night too.

We sailed on. Reaching first Aberdeen (and our wizards home) we stopped off in this fascinating place. The walled city extended to Westhill, north to bridge of Don, and south to Stonehaven, it was a haven of industry and techno wizardry. The Aberdonians could summon machinery and twist steel to their will. The court intrigue we became involved in as we refueled (fed) our mollusc was short but bloody.

It was my turn to risk death. My moment of weakness. I fell in love.

Aberdeen was ruled by seven great families, each with a special affinity for a metal, (iron, gold, silver, copper etc) the wizard was clan iron, and his family had intended for him to be "alloyed" with a girl from the gold clan. He had left the city to win his fortune for her first. She was thrilled to see him. Meanwhile I and the rest of the party ignored the sex he was busily having and instead (I should add we looked everything up on Google maps and just pretended we were there) I went into the merchant quarter With the intention of upgrading my weapons. The rest of the party tagged along for the same reasons.

The DM passes me a note.

>you notice a woman. Tall, redhaired, statueesque you see her in the crowd. Just a moment. She smiles at you. The DM knows I love tall redheads.

"Roll twice" yup you're in love. Congrats.

I followed her into the churchyard, there she was beneath a tree, we talked, she stroked my beard, we kissed. We left, together. It meant I wasn't with everyone else when they discovered that the lead clan were going to sell out the city, or that the copper clan (her clan) were involved.

I should tell you a little about the DM at this stage.

>he's a cunt.

So I'm in love. The others discover that the Lead clan are going to open the gates to the undead, and the copper clan are mostly vampires. On the reasoning that I'm busy having sex, they don't mention this.

However the redhead is human, all human. Her boyfriend isn't. He also does not like discovering her straddling an angry and well armed dwarf.

He goes for me. I get shots into him. But not before he tears my left arm off. He tries to beat me to death with it. Eventually he goes down. So do I.

I wake up with a new mechanical arm, and I'm single again.

Meanwhile the party are doing intriguey things and while I learn how my new arm works, they plot and investigate.

We discover they are on to us when my newly vamprisied redhead kicks in the door along with a dozen of her friends and technowizards.

We fight. We win. Just. I am not as accurate as I was. The bard loses an eye to her claws. I resolve to practice more with my new arm.

We bring down the lead clan by killing a family patriarch and then at the funeral, Angus torches the lot of them inside a church. It wasn't pretty but it worked.

So we say goodbye to Aberdeen and sail on. We get to Montrose and stop for water. The place is deathly quiet. There's no one. We decide to refill and GTFO. Except the navvie that brave, big hearted bastard says no. We should help. The purple penguin agrees.

We scout around. We don't find anything except skeletons.

We do find some townsfolk eventually. They are terrified of "the eaters" we laugh it off. We say we will stay the night and then take them back to Aberdeen

So the Navvie and I are on first watch. He spots them first. I am busy lighting my pipe.

Cockroaches, beetles, maggots, everything, a river of them. They flow and squirm toward us. They coalesce into a man. Sawney Bean. Bullets do nothing. The hammer doesn't do much. The bagpipes are bagpipes. We do have Angus however. Sawney burns good. He flees.

Meanwhile the rest of his cannibal family have broken into the church. They've eaten alive those townsfolk. There's half a woman left (and I mean half vertically) but she's still alive... somehow (they hadn't eaten the brain, just stripped her clean down to the bone on the left side of her navel. I mean everything.

We killed her ourselves (fuck you DM) and decided Sawney must die.

We don't know where he is, where he lives, nothing. There's no tracks to follow, and how would we track a beetle anyway?

We think. We plot. We are out of ideas.

We realize though, the country side is stripped bare, the town is too. The only meat around for miles is... us. So we head into the village square and just sit and wait. We know they're probably watching anyway. Angus has his flamethrower, the wizard makes me flame shells, the bard is the bard. Both the Navvie and the wizard will use their respective skills (techno wizardry and being hueg) to roll flaming barrels of whale oil into them.

It all goes to plan. Mostly.

There's a big statue in the square. It has steps. We have our backs to it. And here comes Sawney (I hate bugs), he and his weird family charge us. Or at least half do. The rest try to get behind us. The navvie and wizard hurl flaming barrels. Angus does his thing. I turn the flaming gatling shotgun on the flankers. The bard... does nothing useful being a bard and plays flower of Scotland Instead.

Thing is, Sawney and co are getting closer faster than we can burn them.

"This might be it lads, I'm sorry penguin, we might have failed you..."

They start climbing the steps. They're much more material now. Almost solid. Human. The navvie stoves in the lid of a barrel with his fist. He grabs Sawney by the throat and rams him into it. The bugs that make up Sawney eat his hand clean and the fire does for his arm. But sawney burns good. With him down, his weird family are less organized and start to go down too.

Fuck you Sawney Bean.

The technowizard replaces the second arm in a week.

With Sawney and co dead. The quest of the purple penguin continued. We said goodbye to the fortified port of Aberdeen and soon the countryside grew blackened and blasted, the night sky was never dark, skulls and faces played in the northern lights, the Navvie had long conversations with himself. Skeletal fish swam in the sea. Skinless dolphins played in our bow waves. We entered the Firth of Forth. The sanctified ground of Inchgarvie island was we thought a safe place to rest, to prepare. We were wrong.

It turns out our landing on Inchgarvie was observed. We camp. No fire. But we manage to rest.

Then the dead start to rise. Walking out of the sea. Silent legions of them. While they aren't as coordinated as those of the big bad (the power of a necromancer determines how good his skeletons are at fighting) they are still tough. A minor necromancer must be wanting to take us down himself. Thing is, if we open fire, we'll bring everything in the region down on us. We can't let that happen now. Not right now.

So we set about ourselves, hammer, my axe, the wizard with iron bars, Angus with his knife and the bard... I think he hummed rather than piped.

Gliding in over the waves came the necromancer controlling these skellies. He was actually quite helpful all things considered.

"You'll never get what you seek. you'll never make it to Edinburgh castle. You'll nev *HAMMERTOTHEFACE*"

"Thank you, you pathetic excuse for a knobdusting emaciated necrophiliac. Now we know where she is."

We proceed inland with the dawn. Leaving our trusty nautilus at Inchgarvie. Stealth is the order of the day. We slink through the country side as best we can. Most of it is glassed. As though a nuclear bomb had gone off. No vegetation. Only death. The glass is warm to the touch and slightly sticky.

There is no food. No shelter. Nothing. No sound. No birds. Nothing.

We make it to Edinburgh. The city is intact. Rebuilt so that upon each hill is a necromancers tower. Green glowing energy emanating from each. We look up. There's the castle. We know what the purple penguin expects of us.

The castle is the only tower without that green light. The wizard tells us it is because the others are locked in a ritual. Only the big bad and our target is not. Meaning we only have one opponent. And several million of his minions.

We get into the city via the sewers and a twenty minute OOC debate on how clean they would be (undead don't poop). We get to where Waverly station would be. We are able (thanks to technowizard) to ascend the cliff and get over the wall. We go loud when Angus takes an arrow to the shoulder. Suddenly skeletons. Skeletons everywhere. The bard finally has an idea.

"This is Edinburgh castle. They have an artillery piece here they use to shoot every day to mark the time. We have several necromancers stuck in a ritual who can't move And have green fire telling us where they are."

This is the most useful thing the player and character have ever done.

We make for the gun. Technowizard aims loads and fires. We fight and fight on. Covering him as we end the necromantic menace (DM looks unhappy as we crush his campaign). The purple penguin approves.

We fight on atop the battlements, green fire flashing in the darkness as the wizard brings down tower after tower. The hammer smashing skeletons. The gatling shotgun annihilating skellies, the bard goes back to being useless but does manage to play Queen's princes of the universe on a natural 20. Angus burns the skellies. This is the most metal moment of my life. The stuffed purple penguin agrees and says we must rock harder.

The necromancer comes, his belt is full of soul cubes. They're powering him. One goes dark and he tosses it aside even as we watch. We don't know which is her. We don't know if she's even in there. The purple penguin demands he die.

He draws his arms up. The skeletons we have slain come together again, forming a giant creature, the Navvie leaps from the battlements. Hammer held high. Angus plays fire across the giant. I do my best to tickle it with eight solid slugs a second, the techowizard turns the gun. Slowly, the Navvie hangs in mid air as the necromancer zaps magic at him.

Our wizard fires the gun. Down goes giant. The Navvie is getting closer to the necromancer. By sheer force of will he is resisting the magic and continuing his path. He lands cracking a flagstone. The hammer goes up. The hammer comes down. The necromancer laughs and inhales a soulcube.

"These are why you came, this is what you want. She's not here. I ate her weeks ago. She was delicious."

The hammer goes up.

"You'll never get her back"

the hammer comes down.

We realize he's right. Even as we bring down his empire. He is right. This was all for nothing. This was...

>FUCKINGCOCKDABBLINGARSEMONGLER

The navvie hits him again, and again,

>SHITSPEWINGCUNTSPELUNKER

The necromancers skull turns to dust. The legions of skeletons fall to the earth.

One soul cube left. It's... it flickers... just... still life in it. The Navview picks it up.

"Uncle?"

It flickers.

"I'm here. I'm here now."

I put her penguin next to it.

"I knew you'd come..."

The light goes out.

The Battleship Brunmiggi

We left the now silent ruin of Edinburgh. We were victorious... weren't we? The necromancers had been broken. Some would remain, but the threat in the North was over. For now. it still felt like a loss. A shameful filthy loss. I couldn't meet the eye of the purple Penguin.

We moved on. Sailing the Nautillus from Inchgarvie back first to Newcastle (the shell torn industrial country still burning. The locals working for drink to forget the work they must do. Rendering down the undead armies or the remains of them into magical components for the artillery, smelting rusted swords down for bullets. Tearing apart their once great city for total war). There we met Cruella with a letter from our Queene.

So the wizard, Angus, the Navvie, Bagpipe bard, and I were joined by Cruella (yes I know) of the same species as our Queene, a faerie. Long of limb, beautiful, and fueled by the blood of our enemies. She had two long knives which she used to maim. She had bonuses the more cruel she was to her prey.

I'm afraid we shouldn't have let her character in but

>muh fetish.

The Brunnmigi had been spotted off the South coast. We were to sink it.

The Brunnmigi (Google it) was the pride of the Kaisers fleet. A battleship of enormous power, row after row of guns, pure industrial might. Crewed by the Kaisers elite bearmen. It could sink a dozen ships before they even got in range.

We had a fight on our hands.

We had an unexpected surprise however. At Portsmouth we were met by the Thunderchild. A destroyer. Nothing on the Brunnmigi but crewed by the stoutest most valiant of men.

Once again. The bard went to the prow As we set sail. (Don't ask) but we left Portsmouth dock to his rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrds Simple Man (DM again). We knew the brunnmigi was moored off Jeresy. The Kaiser wanted those islands and was using the ship as a show of force. What better thing to occur then for it to sink in British waters.

We would be dropped off the coast of Jersey, travel overland and sneak aboard.

It all went perfectly. We lowered a boat. Then suddenly the deafening scream of the attack siren aboard the Brunnmigi sounded. She knew the Thunderchild was here. There was no running for the Thubderchild. There was never any question of running.

We rowed ashore as that little ship. Outclassed by twenty times in tonnage alone. She turned. She made straight for the Brunnmigi.

Never a question as shellfire hammered that brave little ship. The aft turret was hit first. Then taken amidships. Fire licked up the funnels. The bridge was next. Still she carried on. Fire from the fore turret rebounded from the flanks of the Brunnmigi.

The Thunderchild was low in the water. None could be left alive, but she came on. She rammed the Brunnmigi on the portside.

We didn't think she even scratched the paint. The proud ensign of Her Majesties royal navy was the last thing to slip below the waves as we watched from the shore. (Fuck you DM)

The people of Jersey were honest hobbit types. We were taken in by a farmer loyal to the Queene, but we were not unnoticed. The party was woken by the barn doors being kicked in.

Brunnmann. A party of twenty marines from the Brunmigi. Each huge bear given the form of man. We could stand against them. We could. But it was likely to cost us.

They had hostages. The farmer and his family. So small against their black uniformed bodies.

We couldn't fight. We shouldn't fight.

I laid down my shotgun. It was joined by hammer, flamethrower, knives, and bagpipes. The wizard laid down his backup revolver. No one else saw him wink at me.

The marines chained us. Binding our wrists and ankles with cold iron. No magic could effect those locks.

The wizard was of the iron clan. With complete mastery of steel. He practiced no magic. He did however bend metal to his will.

The hobbits were released. Watching us go sadly. The farmer sung Gods Save the Queen until one marine cuffed him.

It was the distraction we needed however. The wizard brought up the bayonets of each marine. All twenty lay dead. His own bayonet through his throat. The chains fell away.

The wizard collapses. He would not be able to do that again for some time.

We have a large pile of corpses. We suddenly realize that had we been taken aboard then broken free that might have been smart.

Nonetheless we proceed across Jersey, taking the truck that the marines had used. We come from Les Mellies to St Hellier. We wait for nightfall in a derelict warehouse. The new plan is simple. Wait for the wizard to recover then sneak aboard.

At least that was the plan.

Cruella was to take down the sentries on the gangplank. Then she and the wizard would find the magazine. Meanwhile the rest of us had the easy bit. Raise all hell on the bridge. Kill as many as we could then leave gtfo.

Cruella gutted one bear, licking blood from her knife then decapitated the other from behind.

We were aboard.

We split up and make for the bridge. The bard signals our attack with Motorhead's Ace of Spades on the bagpipes again.

He starts to play outside the entrance to the bridge. The bears run straight into Angus and his flamethrower. Those that survive meet the shotgun.

We have taken the bridge. There is no sign of the captain however. We estimate we have about two minutes before they counterattack. We have agreed the bard will play a song when that time comes and another when we bug out. It's Steve Earle's copperhead road that comes as the bears swarm our defenses.

Meanwhile, Cruella and the wizard are in the magazine. Stacking shells. The wizard priming timers. They give us five minutes. Firing a flare as they jump from the rear deck into the sea. None of us on the bridge roll high enough to see it.

Time is ticking down and we don't even know.

The bard stops playing eventually. We don't know it but we have maybe two minutes left.

The ship is crewed mostly by bears. Except the captain. The captain is a fucking gryphon with a pickelhaube. In he comes with the rest of the marines.

Time is running out. Then it runs out. The bears are all dead. Only us and the bloodied captain still standing. He is an enormous winged gryphon.

The explosions from the magazine rock the ship. We are screwed, shells cook off. The small dent in the hull from the Thunderchild now becomes a gaping hole. The ship is taking on water. We are either going to burn or drown.

We look at the captain. He looks at us. We nod. He nods.

Seen from where Cruella and the wizard are (on shore now).

The explosions rock the ship. The smoke and flame obscures so much. The ship lists heavily to one side.

As far as they know. We're dead. The purple penguin no more.

Then the glass of the bridge shatters. A dwarf, an orc, a navvie, and a bard are on the back of a howling gryphon.

The bard plays the song we agreed.

It's Meatloaf. Bat out of hell.

The Captain should have gone down with his ship. Instead he was given a pardon and allowed to stay in Britain. He later joined our navy.

We returned to London to report our success.

We were a bit surprised when the Queene had us imprisoned on our arrival.

The Court of the Faerie Queene

Ok so before I launch into this properly there are some things you need to know. If you've ever read or heard of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (it is not as gay as it sounds) you'll be fine. If you haven't, what you need to know is that royalty in Britbongsteros are all faeires. We've mentioned already that this means they're vicious, cruel, capricious, and very childish at times. Now we have a Queene who for reasons of her choice to remain "virgin" and not produce heirs, has pissed off a lot of people. It got worse when she banged a French Elf (because then we'd have French Elves on the throne) and so the other nobles had said French Elf killed. She then took a demon succubus as a lover. More people were pissed off but at least no French Elves.

Her court is a place where there is great wealthy, silk, gold, pearls, diamonds, and blood. Lots of blood.

We are imprisoned almost as soon as we arrive in London. We aren't told the charges, just surrounded by royal guards (automatons built by Sir Issac Newton the century before) and reluctantly we lower our arms.

We are taken to the cells beneath the Old Bailey. Cruella is removed from the party at this point. We are not told why (Fuck you DM and your notes).

Escape is out of the question. The Mistress we serve is scarier than anything we've faced so far.

Finally, we are (after the Navvie and I beat up several prisoners), we five are lead into court. We still have the Purple Penguin.

It turns out that as our resident Faerie, Cruella is to be our defense counsel.

The charge?

Killing the little girl.

The evidence?

One stuffed purple penguin

The penalty?

Death.

Oh shit.

We are lead before the judge. Regrettably because of my actual day job I try not to cringe too much as the DM makes a hash of Criminal Procedure, but I'll stick with his version.

The charges are read to us, and the prosecution set out the case against us. We maliciously by our own omission failed to save the hamlet (from the original post). We deviated from our mission. We allowed the Thunderchild to be sunk.

Cruella manages to have our sentences cut to *just* death.

>Fuck you DM

We're a little pissed at this point.

We are to be hung in the morning.

We spend our last night in the cells.

We are woken by torches in the corridor. Hushed footsteps. It's Cruella, and not just Cruella, but the Queene.

"Hello boys."

"The good news is, you're not going to die. Yet. I've had five criminals "agree" to take your place. People are very amenable when I eat their children I find. Very strange."

She flashes her serrated shark like teeth.

"I have plans for you, and we need my enemies to think you're dead. Do you agree boys? Or of course you could just stay here."

We agree.

We know what's coming. Or we thought we did. We'd all be thought dead. Then we'd be able to kill some noble or end some plot.

It did not occur to this dwarf that there was a very good reason the Queene was still in power. She was about the scariest thing in the setting.

No, what the Queene needed of us was far worse.

She wanted an excuse to wipe out a noble house.

We were to invent a plot. Then pin it on the other house.

The penguin did not approve of this. He approved even less when we discovered which house.

The third wealthiest, and by far the most philanthropic in the country. Faeries were all fucking horrible, but this house at least weren't that bad... really... it was the difference between being a free range chicken and a battery chicken.

They were a mediating influence on the other houses.

This was not good.

Our first thing to do was agree enough with this psycho bitch to get out of jail.

Of course she knew exactly what that was about.

"I'll be sending Cruella along with you of course, as my observer" (Cruella's player smirks) "and she'll tell me every little thing that happens, and don't even think about coming back without her..."

We agree. We are given our gear back, and ushered out of the city in a covered wagon. We are somewhere on Cruella's estate in Kent when we start to plan.

We need to do the following:

1. Not die.

2. Keep the Queene happy.

3. Not let the Dansons (the nice - relatively) Faeries be wiped out.

4. Not die.

2 and 3 appear to be mutually exclusive however.

The discussion in character took about an hour so I'll summarize.

Cruella: sits in the corner idly ripping the legs off mice and eating them bit by bit. (Fuck Faeries).

Navvie: Save the nice people.

Angus: Lets not die

Wizard: Kill them and then we won't have to die.

Bard: Mostly noodles - Sabbath's Planet Caravan (no I don't know how you play it on the bagpipes either)

Me: Can we do all of the above? Not die, kill them, but also not kill them?

More thinking occurs. Cruella is feigning disinterest.

What the Queene really wants isn't the Dansons dead. She wants their lands. If they're all dead or traitors then the land and money go to her as the reigning monarch. So really the Queene wants cash.

Can we conceivably get her a large pile of money quickly?

No. Not Danson large.

Could we just get them exiled?

No. Some of their lands are overseas. The Queene will want them too.

Do we have to kill all of them?

(Fuck you DM) Yes. I think we do.

Cruella is beaming like the cat that just got given the deeds to a cream factory.

The bard is playing (the actually quite fitting) Court of the Crimson King - Saxon version

Then suddenly he stops.

"What if... what if we persuaded the Dansons to, in exchange for their lives, pay the Queene an amount each year, so that in five years, she gets even more than she would have?"

The Bard player occasionally is quite useful.

"But how will they get the money together? They'd need to be making even more money that they have now? All their cash is tied up in land anyway."

Angus: Lets just fucking kill them. (I should add that Angus's full name was Angus, McAngus, of the Clan McAngus, from Anguston)

"So we're stuck then. We kill them, or we get killed?"

"Pretty much"

The purple penguin is not pleased by this.

"How many Dansons are there?"

Cruella pipes up

"Three left. An old Dowager, a young maiden, and a knight."

I feel a plan coming on.

So what followed from this discussion was a lot of scouting, sneaking, research, it took about a week of time in game.

We established the following:

The Dowager was in rude and excellent health. She also had an excellent right hook. Laying Angus out cold when she found him in her flower beds. She spent all her time running a hospital for sick and injured ex-servicemen.

The maiden assisted in this. The maiden was also in love with one of the Queen's favourites. That could be awkward.

The Knight was eager now that the necromancers of the north were ended as a threat to crusade into the wilds of North America.

What we did was this.

Angus and Cruella took the dowager. They had her donate her share of the family fortune to the hospital. This made the Queene look bad. Except for one thing. Other nobles started to match the donation. Not wanting to be seen to be ignoring the poor. The Queene then won a massive PR victory in creating the "Thunderchild Memorial Hospital for the Heroes of the Nothern Campaign." She was immensely pleased with this.

The knight she agreed to fund an expedition for. He would sign over his lands until he came back, and if he did, what he found was hers. The Navvie and the Wizard were able to organise this.

That left me, and the maiden.

So DM wants to give us all little solo missions. You already know how the rest of the party got on. I can give you a little more detail on mine.

We know the maiden loves one of the Queene's favourites. Thing is. We didn't know if he loved her back.

We also didn't know how the Queene would react to one of her favourite boy toys shacking up with some younger woman. Like the original Elizabeth I, we expected it to be pretty badly.

After discussing it, we decided two things had to occur. The favourite had to either fall in love with her, or man the fuck up and do it.

Secondly, we had to get the approval of the Queene.

So. I'm left to my own devices to resolve these. I am not a social character. I do plans. I do leadership well. I shoot things. That's about it.

>The favourite: Baron Harcourt, another Faerie.

The Baron likes two things. Hunting and fucking.

Obviously I can't really do the second (or don't want to), but I can get involved in the first.

I get invited along (with a little help from Cruella) on one of his hunts. It's a hunt for a great English Wildcat - the beast of bodmin moor in fact (google it).

He would obviously view my shotgun as unsporting (and it won't leave much of the beast left), so I am given (by the huntmaster whom Cruella knew) a halbred.

>What the fuck do I do with this.jpg?

There's two things I can do, I can try and watch him kill the thing, and maybe talk to him, or I can kill it, and definitely talk to him, but he might be a bit fucked off.

There can only be one option.

It turns out, that if you load a dwarven shotgun with very large flechettes, it looks a lot like you killed something with a halbred.

So I get the beast alone, (lucky rolls) and delete a large chunk of it with the gatlingshotgun (Bessie by the way). The Baron is actually quite impressed with my hunting skill (as I stand with the halbred, my doomcannon tactically hidden in a bush).

He invites me to dinner in his tent. This is going well I think.

Now a little note on Faerie speech here. It is very very very rude (like stabbed in the face rude) to come out and say something directly.

So there are many consume alcohol tests, I regale the Baron with tales of our adventures (much as we are here) including those of the Stuffed Purple Penguin, and the Baron is a little bit drunk.

I ask him,

"My Lord, affairs of the heart are bothersome, but perhaps a man of your wisdom can assist me"

His ego inflates a little.

"I have a good lady friend, and her love for another is under a great shadow."

He knows who I'm talking about. He asks

"Who is the man?"

"He is a fine strapping gentleman, of great estate, great munificence, and most of all wisdom."

The baron knows full well who I'm talking about. I also think mostly to prove a point he guts a retainer for spilling a little wine.

The baron is a lot more drunk than I thought. He stands.

"Come! Let us ride to the maiden! I shall show her every inch of my love!"

>ohshit

I now have to get this drunk posh fool persuaded that he won't get far with vomiting on her and then trying to put it in her pooper.

"My lord, another drink to celebrate!"

"YES!"

"And to the great wisdom of the Baron!"

"YES!"

"And to the great wealth of the baron such as he would not need a dowry!"

"YESWUT?"

"And to the Queene!"

"The Queene!"

(continue through many consume alcohol tests)

The baron finally passes out.

>the next day

After a cold bath in the nearest stream and a breakfast of raw lamb (for him) bacon sandwich for me, we ride to the maiden. The very hungover baron proposes, and she accepts. The baron is too shy to mention dowrys.

>great success

Now we just need the Queene on side. That shouldn't be hard.

Right?

Now to persuade the Queene that not only is there a good reason the relevant Danson isn't dead, but also that there is a good reason why they should be getting married.

>balls.

She is fairly pleased with the PR and what happened with the knight (we waited a bit to tell her). So when we approach her as a party, to request that the baron be permitted to take a bride. She is fairly reasonable.

We find her bathing in the blood of virgin maidens. Because... y'know... faeries. (fucking Faeries). She has a small rubber duck.

"Ah brave dwarf, what news bring you?"

"We beg a favour my lady"

She listens.

"Very well, but there is but one thing I want from thee before I acquiesce."

Wondering what this insane bitch could possibly want or need.

"Dwarf you wear something upon your belt most unique."

Oh no.

"My pouches Milday? My axe? My..."

"No fool. The purple thing. Give it to me."

"Milady surely we would not sully your court with such a child's toy, it is dirty, bloodspattered, your seamstresses could create such a fine recreation, golden stitching, eyes of..."

"I. WANT. THAT. ONE."

(Fuck you DM).

The Navvie looks distinctly thunderous as we hand it over. (it's that or die right there and then).

So after retreating back to Harrogate (my Dorf Fortress) we decide that perhaps we really are not happy with how this country is being run.

We fight for a Queene that is... in all fairness, kind of a bitch.

We decide to begin research on taking her down, and most importantly. GET THE PENGUIN BACK.

So while we've discussed Scotland a fair bit. I've brushed over England. So as a reminder. The south is all peasants ruled over by very unpleasant Faeries (one of whom is in the party I might add) the north is half DwarfYorkshire and the other half working class humans (like the Navvie). We have various sundry populations like the halfings of Jersey and mythical bits and bobs here and there.

The Queene has those worryingly big automatons. We also know that the country is still being assaulted by the barbarians of wales and Ireland. We need to take her out and do it without a civil war.

The fact we've just given a huge pile of money to her war chest along with some very positive PR does not help.

Now, a little on the Royal family. There's the Queene, she hasn't produced much in the way of offspring (see above). There's also not much of her family left. In fact next in line to the throne is her bumbling and not terribly astute (but really quite nice) brother Algernon. After him, there's two half brothers who are both as bad as her.

The reason Algernon is still alive is an early warning system, in case one of the half brothers bumps him off with a view to killing the Queene.

Now if we simply kill the Queene, we might cause those two brothers to kill Algernon, and also put the nation into a state of civil war.

We need to kill Queene and both the half brothers.

and GET THE PENGUIN BACK.

So, we know we need to kill three of the greatest people in the land, and do it in a way that doesn't make it look like anything more than an accident.

That's gonna be tricky.

We think it'd look less suspicious if we went for the brothers first.

It'd be almost reasonable if they were to try and kill each other, in fact we're a bit surprised they haven't...

Bard: "Hey that's not a bad idea guys..."

Now, we know the brothers never meet, never see each other, they are never in the same place at the same time. They hate one another, so it makes things a little simpler.

The hard part is getting to them.

We take stock of our skills:

Thing is, it's actually not that hard to butcher people if you have a wizard that can control flying chainsaws. The hard part is getting him in range of something he can affect (or summon).

Then we have Angus. It's probably not going to be Angus.

The bard could...

...

NEXT

Cruella seems like the obvious choice. However she's linked to the Queene and very recognizable. That leaves me and the Navvie. Our special powers are gun and hueg respectively.

>Why did Cruella agree to the assassinations?

>Her player and I were already dating as mentioned above - and thanks to /tg/ her and I got back together at Christmas. It was kinda taken as read that she switched alliances after the PCs also started banging.

We consider our targets.

One, Balthus, is immensely fat, he loves food, and is always eating. We may have an in there.

The other is Carus, he loves books, painting, and torture. So he rarely leaves his dungeon, unless it's to paint on the battlements.

We go for Carus first.

We approach the castle of Carus. It's in Bath. A spa town, lovely place. His castle itself is beautiful, well decorated, well appointed, even the dungeons are the nicest this side of the channel.

He's also a sick bastard.

Now we learn (via the bard impressing the locals in the tavern with Blue Oyster Cult, Godzilla) that Carus has recently been painting sunsets.

Now if we had a snipah we could end this easily.

We don't.

More planning occurs.

Suggestions include:

Poisoned paints, a meteor strike, a cannon, metal plates in his shoes which the wizard takes over, summon Cthulu.

In the end, I bash a guard over the head. The Navvie nicks his uniform, and upends Carus over the battlements.

That was easy. Too easy...

Next up is Balthus.

Balthus lives in Knightsbridge. He is, as mentioned, an immense glutton. He is also involved with the British Museum. We decide to off him at one of the dinners. It's public, it's perfect. With a little help from Cruella, we grind up some metal splinters, very small, and add them to his soup.

About desert time (the 18th course) the wizard excites those splinters, one massive case of internal bleeding and unknown cause of death later, all we have left is Queenie.

Queenie we think must be onto us by now. She must know something is up. Both her brothers dying in explainable but mysterious circumstances a few days apart?

She has to know.

The question is, does she know it's us?

We hope not. We request an audience. We have to remove all suspicion from Algernon, so this has to be complicated, messy, and so not his style that it couldn't possibly have been him.

The plan is best kept secret. It makes a better story that way. We are brought into her chambers. As we bow obeisance before her bathtub (blood again) the bard offers to play her a song. Queenie is delighted.

The song is The Godfather Theme - Guns and Roses (Slash guitar solo) Instrumentals.

Queenie loves it. We amuse her as a distraction. The bard plays on. Angus sets parts of himself alight (she finds this wonderful) and the Navvie lifts the tub with her in it as a feat of strength. Meanwhile as the wizard juggles chainsaws, he plants a bomb. Cruella replaces her face cream with acid (and also the detonator) and I snag a small purple object. We leave when she is bored of us.

There is a scream then a bang. We make for France. We miss the coronation of King Algernon, but we also are alive.

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