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). America is a magical place (like /k/) and each state or couple of states has something weird going on. The eastern seaboard is reasonably normallish with crusades being mounted from the area into the middle and western regions. Numerous native American nations hold territory throughout the area. The Native Americans are famed for their aerial prowess with Apache Dragons being particularly feared. The Chinooks strike deep in American states and have excellent logistics. The Cherokee are famed as air cavalry.
New Orleans is underwater. The mermaid elves are probably pretty happy. Except the sentient sharks. And the voodoo.
The Americans would be pushed into the sea were it not for European Crusaders attempting to push through to get to the supposed holy land which for (insane Mormon reasons) is somewhere in Utah.
France was just all slutty elves. That was good. Germany was a mix like Britbongsteros except that they also had bear people.
Poland doesn't exist as it does in the modern world. It's more the Poland of 18th century. The Lancers (actual eaglemen) war with both the Germanic bear people and the Russians who are (like the Germans mostly human but with plenty bears and also wolves. They also have literal bear cavalry).
Central Africa is still marked as here be (literally) dragons. There are European colonies on the coast and a little into the interior. North Africa is much as it was in Roman times (I.E. quite civilized).
Greece is 18th century Greece. The gods ascended 1500 years ago and now it's a shithole full of poets wondering where the majesty of Greece went.
(Sorry Greece)
Italy - no one has heard much of the place, but rumours of a second Roman empire have been heard.
The Middle east is full of Arabian nights + huge reserves of magic oil. A clusterfuck waiting to happen. A Britbongsteros citizen (Orrance) advocates for Arab self rule.
Spain is ruled by king Quixote, a noble and honest knight who won the support of the peasantry through his charm and chivalric deeds. Spain is a haven of peaceful learning and culture. All thanks to the steady hand and suspicious mind of Prime Minister At Large Sancho Panza, and no mistake!
Those Spaniards who didn't fit in with the chivalric ideal were exiled to the nightmare of South America. The Aztecs and Mayans hold strong in mountain strongholds.
In China the terracotta armies hold back the Mongol horsemen (I.e. actual centaurs) along a towering great wall. Some trade now occurs with Britbongsteros, tea for opium.
Japan was Godzilla'ed with no survivors. The group loathes all things weeaboo. Additionally, anyone who even mentions the country, or swords, or weaponry, or Tasmanian shadowpuppetry summons Godzilla, and Godzilla will annihilate them and only them.
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 PenguinAldous - 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.
"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.
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.
Britbongsteros visits France
After assainating the Queene we were in a slightly awkward position legally and generally. Admittedly it was unlikely that we had this pinned on us (technically we were still dead and it was a secret audience in her chambers, Algernon was unlikely to give a shit anyway) but we figured we should probably lie low. We had enough in the way of funds to live more than comfortably in Paris for a couple months and it was easy enough to hop on the next boat across the channel.
France as previously mentioned was elves. All elves. And they were French.
So naturally we set up camp in a Parisian whorehouse. Because what else do you do in Paris?
I was safely taken though (and if your girlfriend is like Cruellas Player you don't do anything silly) the rest of the boys quickly acquired favourites among the whores and we passed a very pleasant week drinking, eating, whoring and drinking more.
We didn't do much until people started turning up dead.
Even elves had peasants and local virgins had been turning up exsanguinated. This is where we met our one and only 'Murican. He was a vampire hunter and from Nuuw Yaaawk. As mentioned previously those in that region had to eat constantly to sustain their magical metabolism. So they were immensely strong and tough, but also immensely fat. He would have a crossbow in one hand and a bag of whole fried chickens in the other.
(Sorry America)
Anyway so he barges into the whorehouse and I do mean into. He leaves a 'murican shaped hole in the wall.
The party fumbles for weapons as he shouts
"I need your" munch munch scromnomnom "help!"
The bard launches into Team America's America Fuck Yeah for no particular reason as he explains that he needs our help. He can't identify the problem and people are dying all the time.
Our first priority is to get paid. There is almost unanimous agreement. We consider the poor peasants. Downtrodden by the local aristocracy, French, and now being eaten.
We feel a bit bad. The purple Penguin reminds us of our duties.
Our new friend tosses a bag of money on the table. Resolving the issue.
Now our DM, about a month before, had asked us all to write down our fears. Not our characters fears. But ours.
If I recall rightly the list was:
Angus: failure.
Cruella: clowns
Navvie: Leeches
Me: snakes (because indy! Also fuck telling our cunt of a dm what it was)
Wizard: spiders
Bard: heights and confined spaces.
The purple penguin doesn't join in because it fears nothing.
>fear
So we get a lead. The last victim was seen being dragged into the catacombs of Paris. (Google it. It's a giant mausoleum of skeletons, I'm serious).
So that sounds good...
The catacombs extend for miles and miles of bones, unmapped, untrodden, home to gods knows what.
The 'Murican suggests he takes one entrance, we take another and see what we find.
We tentatively agree.
So we are heading into the dark. Armed as normal with gas lamps as well. We're already lost after about five minutes. The DM is playing a YouTube clip of what I can only describe as "howling cave noises"
>roll for initiative
We do. Nothing happens. Huh?
>a few minutes later, roll again
Nothing happens. This is probably bad.
>roll again
Ah excellent. Something drops from the ceiling. It's fast. It slithers, it has loads of teeth, it has a tail, it honks, and it escapes from our fire/shot/bagpipe/knife/hammer/chainsaw attack through a tiny little hole in the wall.
I am having good feels. We start finding drained corpses of children and teens shortly after. Then the Murican has been drained dry. His once huge body now like an empty chip wrapper.
It's about now we started hearing slithering and squelching and honking just out of range of the gaslight. Just out of sight. That fucking clown honk was the worst. Sometimes from above. Sometimes below. DM had the cave noise down low and the clown honk stupid loud. Cruella's player is edging closer to me. Everyone is on edge. Except Angus who is nipping from his hip flask.
So to recap we are lost, it's dark, and surrounded by fuck knows what.
We are not just in caves but caves literally full of skeletons.
>this is going great
Retracing our steps isn't going to work (lost), we can sit here and wait for the fuel to run out on the lanterns, we can push on maybe getting more lost.
We decide to push on. Critters all around us in the dark. Just on the edge of vision.
As we enter a larger cavern they rush us from all sides, again the same rush of nightmarish images, fangs, claws, teeth, black segmented bodies, the sound of grinding slithering and honking.
We must kill some, we take damage, cookie cutter like chunks taken from exposed flesh.
Suddenly we remember what the DM did with that list of fears.
Snake-spider-clown-leeches-in confined spaces.
Shit.
When they vanish, all that's left is green ichor on the ground and rapidly decomposing hunks of what might be black leather. It's impossible to tell exactly what these things look like or how we'll get back to the light and whores of elf Paris.
We push on. Running low on ammo, the wizard low on mana (basically it recharged a bit per round and each spell/action had a cost + DM fiat). The Navvie is injured, Cruella is (like her player) freaking the fuck out (yes my waifu hates clowns). We start finding eggs. Big ones. The navvy smashes each as we go. We come under attack again.
From up ahead there is an earth shattering honk and the sound of rushing water.
It's the queen. There is light filtering through the ceiling, a grate. The floor is littered with corpses and eggs. She's huge. Thirty feet or more of our worst fears. Half snake, half spider, half leech, and with a bright red nose. (That should be funny. It made it much worse)
We engage. The rotary shotgun chewing into HP. The bard fires into Warren Zevons lawyers guns and money, the navvie dives into a pile of smaller deathleeches, Angus just torches everything, Cruella vanishes.
She reappears atop the thing. She uses knife after knife stab to climb up it. She fumbles. Falls. And the maw comes down.
She's gone.
The penguin begs us to fight on.
Now there are certain things fa/tg/uys love. Dice, children, food, and women. Especially ones that play with them.
Cruella and her player had become a group favourite. Having her arbitrarily eaten seemed so cruel, a random act of the dice that made those neckbeards sad.
Our efforts redoubled. Bits of deathleechsnakeclownthing flying in all directions.
Then the queen stops, gulps,
>Cruella, roll some dice please
The queen's gullet splits open. A slender arm holding a wickedly serrated blade sticks out. The queen falls. Cruella squelched her way our. Her normally elaborately made up self, her hair never out of place, well now she's drenched from head to toe in green slime and looks oh so pleased about it.
Angus torches the bodies. Cruella does her best to clean slime off herself. The rest of us bind wounds. The bard plays
Don't Come Lookin.
Meanwhile, the Navvie and I find some stairs. We ascend. A barred door, and a smell, a very familiar smell.
Garlic.
>Garlic?
Garlic.
Why should that be familiar? Because France. Duh.
We break down the door and ascend more stairs, eventually we come to a very worried looking priest. He's surrounded by clove after clove of garlic.
"Le power of Christ compels you!"
He splashes us with holy water, Cruella is glad to use it to get some more gunk off.
"You're... you're not demons?"
"Unless you tell us what that thing was, we're your worst nightmare padre."
The Padre explains he was hoping to exorcise the clownleeches himself (good luck), but we are happy to return with him to the whorehouse (he doesn't seem to mind going in either). Turns out we are somewhere near the river seine when we get back to street level. (The sound of rushing water being the river)
We ask the padre about the leeches.
The leeches (the padre tells us) have been appearing slowly for months. What we just killed was not the only queen. He believes someone is feeding them. Bringing food (I.e. people) to them and somehow corrupting them to grow and mutate. He suspects two people.
The local mysterious Warlock (for obvious reasons) and concerningly the head of the Bishop of the other local faith. (Imagine we are talking to a Catholic and he suspects the local protestant).
So. Naturally expecting DM to have expected us to go for the warlock first, and then expecting that he'd expect us to do that, and expecting that he'd expect us to expect him to expect us doing that. We triple bluffed and went for the warlock.
Navvie and I perform surveillance as labourers near his tower. Cruella and bard go to local taverns for gossip. Angus is on a mini quest to upgrade his flamethrower with the wizard (more on that later). We meet back later In tavern so as to compare notes.
We have discovered that the Warlock is receiving large shipments of slaves. Especially female and young. Sounds like our target.
We collect Angus and his upgraded flamethrower and go full murderhobo.
The enchanted door locks don't do much to resist dwarven solid shot. A good boot later and we are in the den of the warlock.
As the doors fall. I shout
"BY ENGLAND AND ST GEORGE WE ARE HERE TO FUCK YOU UP FROGGY"
Adrenaline pumping. Pipes skirling (Saxons Crusader). We are ready for this. The purple penguin abides.
The Warlock looks up over his book. So does the class of female slaves he is teaching medicine to so he can free them to become midwives as this country has terrible pre and antenatal care.
Sheepishly we retreat.
Fuck you DM
Ok. Take 2.
The bishop lives in (amazingly enough) the cathedral. Or at least the manse near it. What cathedral? Notre fucking dam of course.
We decide we need to be a bit more tactful this time and actually do some research.
This time, Cruella and I join the congregation for a service. Angus and Navvie sneak in the back, (yes Angus can be quite sneaky despite being an orc with a flamethrower strapped to him), and the wizard and bard stay outside to see what they can see. We plan to meet back in the street after the service.
The service is bretty gud actually, lots of love your fellow man, do unto others etc, and Cruella and I meet Wizard and Bard back in the street.
We wait for Angus and Navvie. We wait some more (DM has been passing notes).
We see smoke rising from a manhole. That's probably not good...
One wizard crowbar later and we're in the sewers. I realize I have no shotgun (it being a bit less than subtle to carry into a church). Cruella is basically a Dark Eldar Wych wearing clothes so she's fine, as are wizard and bard.
I do have a revolver however, and Wizard lends me his spare one.
The Penguin says lead on!
We pelt through the sewers, moving as quickly as we can without falling in, following the smoke and soon the FWOOSH and hammering.
I did mention that Angus had had something done to his flamethrower right?
What I didn't mention was that he'd had the option of using it as a THERMAL LANCE installed.
So as we round a corner expecting who knows what, we're greeted by the Navvie and Angus back to back, smashing and slicing to bits a pack of clownmurderleech things.
"Looks like we're in the right place then" adds the wizard as we get stuck in.
The leeches don't last long against the full party. Angus fills us in. Turns out they found a grate in the stables and decided to have a look. They've been fighting leeches almost ever since. Seems like we're in the right place.
We decide to head the way most of the leeches came from; heading east and away from Notre Dam, we run into more leeches, but just enough to let us know we're probably heading the right way.
We start to hear chanting up ahead. That sure seems good.
Advancing slowly, there's a circle of cultists, they force a brightly glowing green fluid into a woman's mouth, (and I mean a lot of it). They draw symbols across her exposed belly (which is now glowing green too) and suspend her over a pit.
They probably aren't up to anything good so we dispense with hello and go straight Bad Company's Bad Company and do what we do best.
The cultists aren't a match for us, but there sure are a lot of them, the cult leader lets his hood fall back. It's the fucking Padre. The one we saw first. He raises his arms and chants all the louder.
From the pit emerges what is basically the Dune Worm version of the murder leeches we've been fighting. It gulps down the poor sacrifice and most of the scaffold she was suspended from.
I relax my shoulders, drop into a shooters stance, and dammit I'm gonna do it right. I look it straight into what are probably it's eyes and say,
"BY ENGLAND AND ST GEORGE WE ARE HERE TO FUCK YOU UP WORMY"
Now the death worm? Mega worm? Huegworm? That thing.
It doesn't take kindly to being shot. I'm trying to go for anything that looks like a weakspot. Each round from the revolver a hefty lead dum-dum round, it should be blowing great chunks in it. They are. It's not slowing down.
Cruella goes for the Padre.
Angus runs in, and starts carving holes in it, taking off a leg here, a ravening tentacle thing there,
The Wizard does his thing, sawblades whizz over my head, streaking down its flanks.
The Purple Penguin attempts to out stare it.
The Navvie hefts that glorious hammer, and something weird happens. As the bard plays Hammerfall, Hammer of Justice the Navvie begins to glow.
Not like the sacrifice, not green, not with an earthly light either. No.
Like a flaming union jack.
>this is new
He goes for it. A leap that brings his hammer down on it's forehead. A leap that should kill it. A leap that should shatter the earth and rend space and time asunder.
It keeps right on coming, smacking him aside. With a sickening crunch, he slams into a pillar. Out of the fight.
Spent shells rattle off my hobnails. Followed by two speedloaders.
The bard shifts gear, he might be fucking useless but my god does he know what he's doing when he plays. DM fiat says AC/DC, gone shooting.
I am for the mark of the hammer, just as Angus gets the thermic lance into it, ripping it open further, and I empty both cylinders.
It comes to a halt in front of my boots.
Dead.
Meanwhile, Cruella is playing connect the dots using knives and the Padre. He's decided he wants to talk.
We decide to introduce him to the Purple Penguin.
The Wizard goes to check on Navvie (he's gonna be fine).
Meanwhile Cruella borrows the purple Penguin.
"This Padre, is the Purple Penguin. Purple Penguin is annoyed you killed all those people, and every time you don't answer the Purple Penguin, the closer you become to being a eunuch understand?"
"You'll nevernyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaargh!"
"I said answer the purple penguin, do you understand?"
"...yes"
"How many of those things were there?"
"I can't teaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"
"What do we say to that Mr. Penguin? [She speaks in a falsetto pretending to be the penguin] 'bad padre' now you've fed all these people to those things. How many of the big ones are there?"
"No pl... wait wait WAIT! Not again! Three!"
"Good Padre, aren't you pleased Purple Penguin? 'Yes!' Now we've killed two, where is the third?"
"We... we sent it to England, to Guy Fawkes... In time for the coronation"
[Players: Oh come on...]
[IC] "How long do we have!"
"You have no time! It will be oaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Tomorrow!"
"Thank you Padre." [Stab]
>P for Pendetta
We make for Calais as fast as we can. We don't know if it'll be fast enough. We ride through the night. Catch the overnight ferry and are in Dover for dawn. A steam train sees us into London 11:00 am. We have barely an hour until the coronation when we find ourselves heavily armed, probably persona non grata, and in Westminister.
We don't know what Guy Fawkes looks like, but we do know he's beneath the palace of Westminister.
So, remember those automatons that Queenie had? Well there's a number of them around Westminster Abbey, so this is gonna be fun.
It's also worth mentioning:
>why leechclownthings in London?
The Padre and his church were pissed that we were crowning another [not]Protestant King. They'd rather we were [not]Catholic.
We decide stealth is the best option here. Bard pipes up with one of his actually pretty sharp ideas.
""The thing in Paris was fucking huge. I wonder how they'd get it under the palace? Unless they grew it here?"
There's no big holes, therefore it could literally be fucking anywhere under the palace. He could have been feeding it on stocks of royal food, or wine, or diverted a sewer, we have no idea, it might even have laid eggs.
(We did later let the French Embassy know they might want to have a look in the catacombs and under Notre Dame)
There's some discussion. The DM, being a cunt. Goes into his bag (we played at my place) and takes out an old fashioned alarm clock and sets it for 45 minutes time from now. (Fuck. You. DM).
We can get under the palace and maybe find it or we can get into the palace and wait for it to come up from out of the floor or whatever.
The river side is least defended. Now the automatons would be an issue. Would. Except one thing. They're steel.
Wizard decides to have a go, we might even get some troopers to assist us if he can charm it. Well at least he didn't role a 1. He does however manage to get the thing to walk straight forwards, into the river, setting off in the direction of Brussels. It was later heard of in Munich, then Istanbul, then Hyderabad, then Brisbane, I still wake up in the middle of the night worrying it might be spotted in Chile, making the return trip. Pissed as hell.
So, the way in is clear, we get in fast, going for a balcony, we acquire some vestments (priest clothes). Cruella's knives do our bluffwork for us
"I am not a girl. Am I? Good. No."
Now for those non British Anons, the pic (do we need to add it to this page?) is of the interior of westminister abbey, and we wait. Guns, knives, hammer, (I don't know how either, but bagpipes and flamethrower too) under our robes.
The ceremony is beautiful. Dottering mad King Algernon forgets what he's doing, falls asleep, doesn't remember the words, tries to give the crown back to the archbishop.
Then suddenly, there's a rumble, there's a honk, and right in the middle of that pic, up comes the biggest murderworm yet.
We let our vestments drop.
The whirring of the gatling shotgun is drowned out as the bard launches into Scotland the Brave [Note to the Americans, this is hilarious.] and as the Navvie leaps, he starts to glow again (I make a mental note to look into that), Cruella follows, Angus goes nuts, and the wizard and I light the fucker up.
Algernon is under the throne, the archbishop is being eaten, and the great and the good run for cover.
The fight is not over quickly, nor is it bloodless, but by god do we do our country proud. When the smoke clears, when my gatling runs dry, and with most of Westminster Abbey ablaze (careful Angus) the King is crowned atop the body of one giant fucking scary French clownworm and we get a royal pardon.
The Beastmen of Wales
So, for the next episode we must skip forward in time about six months. Algernon has proved a weak king (no surprise) and the Welsh and Irish are preparing to invade. We have our royal charter and the party reconvene in Harrogate.
King Algernon I has been persuaded to lead an army into Wales. Armed with the new Martini Henry rifles (remember way back at the start of this? That's what we got from the alchemist), they march confidently into Wales. Initial skirmishes go well. Welsh barbarians chucking spears, then melting back into the bush at the first volley. The army marches on to Harlech. Algernon leads an assault on the castle of King Rorke and his men of Harlech. Algernon is captured and the army massacred. Failures in the supply train (the army have boxes of ammo for those new rifles. The boxes are screwed shut. No screwdrivers) see the army butchered to a man.
Our mission, when we choose to accept it, is to get into Harlech, possibly kill king Rorke, and rescue Algernon.
First it's necessary to lay out exactly what the Welsh are (sorry Wales). They're a mix of satyrs, half man, half goat, centaurs, and similar. All with the top half of a man and the lower half of some form of Ungulate. They're tribesmen, smart, cunning, and well organized.
Harlech is remote, a large isolated castle. Definitely not something the six of us (+ penguin) can storm by force.
King Rorke is half man, half bull. There are also rumours of the Welsh being supported by a wizard, one who calls himself
>Merlin
>why are the Welsh so annoyed?
Queenie ruled that they weren't human and therefore English settlers could claim their lands by force.
So, we are in my Dorf Fortress. Six months have passed and the party have used them well.
>bard
Has learnt to weaponize the bagpipes. He may now damage enemies with them
>Angus
Invented napalm. Runs a successful shop. (He is a greengrocer at heart)
>Wizard
Is now Sir Wizard, got married. Has further developed his powers.
>Cruella
Now officially consort of Aldous. Has obtained a wicked looking bastard sword. Talks to it. It may talk back.
>Navvie
The spirit of the Union (the magic glowy thing) defies all research. Still likes hitting stuff.
>Aldous
I have some new titles, a waifu, and the gatling shotgun has gone tacticool.
>Purple Penguin
Already at level cap.
So we unfurl the map again. I light my pipe. The bard helps as usual by humming a tune. Everyone leans in and we start to plot.
Going overland seems more than a little dangerous. The army was lead into a trap and it seems the party would be ambushed if we tried.
We could go by sea however. We'd have to be careful and lucky to avoid the Irish.
Or we could go south through the much safer channel and then up and round. It is still likely that we would meet pirates.
We decide to sail from Liverpool and see what happens.
We provision ourselves and move on from Harrogate to Liverpool.
So we arrive in port. There are three ships we can take:
1. The "HMS Invincible 2", a battlecruiser. Not exactly subtle.
2. The tramp steamer - "Matilda," subtle, not exactly fast. Looks inconspicuous
3. The gunboat - HMS "38 Minutes," small, fast, and exactly the sort of thing the pirates would love to steal if they can catch us.
We favour the gunboat for the stealthy approach, reasoning we may also need to run away quickly.
The royal charter (a very handy document, I should say we are described as "Adventurers By Appointment to Her Majesty - Queenie hugs, kisses and I'll chop off your balls His Majesty Algernon I, for services rendered" on the charter).
Anyway, this document sees us aboard the 38 minutes and sailing south at great speed. The Bard pipes us out of harbour as is tradition. Saxon, thin red line.
>DM: roll some dice please Bard
>rolls
>You kill three bystanders.
>Oh, I forgot about that. I'll play a bit more quietly next time.
Anyway, we make good speed southwards.
As we round a headland, the shout comes
"BOARD THEM."
We've run straight into an ambush. Two pirate ships sling grappling harpoons at us.
We look at each other. We split into two groups and shout.
"BOARD THEM BACK!"
The pirates don't last very long, at all. The 38 Minutes rakes them with machine gun fire before we board, and the party commit all sorts of unpleasantness to the crew.
The bard looks around.
"Guys I have an idea
We take these sails, and well there's six of us, Wizard, Cruella and Me are the tallest so we could sort of cover each other with sails so from a distance we'd look sorta like centaurs and..."
"Guys?"
Angus: "I have another idea, lets take one of these ships."
Unanimously agreeing that Angus's plan is less stupid, we decide to leave the 38 Minutes moored in a cove near Harlech, and take the "The Revenge of the Purple Penguin" in closer for a look at the castle.
The castle, it's fucking Harlech Castle, we sneak ashore in just before dawn, using the dusk for cover, and get a little closer. We set up on a little hill nearby and decide to observe the situation. There's thick mist. Really thick. We use the cover of it to get on the hill into a copse of trees.
The bard and DM are passing notes. Nothing is on fire yet, so we're probably OK, but that's a really bad sign,
We settle in and wait for daybreak.
We can just make out the torches on the castle walls and not much else. When the sun starts to get rid of the fog, we start seeing more detail, and hearing things. All around us. We appear to have followed a stream (to avoid being tracked/scented) straight into the enemy camp.
We're surrounded by tents and dozing centaurs.
Alright. Plan B. Lets wait for nightfall.
We pass the day sleeping and observing as best we can.
Observations include:
- That's a fuckton of Welsh
- Let's not go out there for a bit
We wait for nightfall. The bard starts getting twitchy about dusk. He goes into his bag and removes a small sail.
"Guys guys we could..."
"Shut the fuck up [bard player]"
We think and discuss (quietly). We are pretty sure our king will be held not far from King Rorke. We also know they want his ransom so they haven't killed him. Our best bet is to get into the castle at night, and get out again, King in tow and a knife through Rorke's heart. Now aside from Cruella, none of our weapons are exactly stealthy... We need a diversion.
"Wouldn't a disguise be really useful here?"
No, shut up bard.
As fog starts to come up, we have a thought. The baggage train includes a lot of hay (because centaurs don't like pulling carts, so there are normal livestock), surely a small fire would become a big one pretty fast. A technowizard bomb in amongst all that ammo they stole from the kings army would also sure be handy.
We reason with enough flame and smoke, Rorke will have to send his bodyguard, or at least some out, to help deal with things, and they'll have to come through the main gate.
And the ammo dump cooking off should give us enough sound and random ricochets to cover us if we have to go loud.
Angus gets given the job of starting the fire, and Wizard of assembling the bomb. We split up. Bard and Angus with me, and Cruella and Navvie with Wizard.
This was of course the plan.
They say no plan survives contact with the enemy. Well...
The wizard's team set off in the fog and darkness, with Cruella with them they should manage to be stealthy enough for the wizard to set off a timed explosion with limited disturbance.
Well team wizard snuck through rows of tents and with a couple of guards getting a second smile, they did just fine. Setting off to wait in the ditch next to the main gate for us.
Our stealth team has: a dwarf in plate armour, an orc with a full on flamethrower, and a bard who normally contributes to the war effort by bagpiping. We are ninja.
We get surprisingly far with our efforts before Angus trips on a guy rope, then falling into a rack of weaponry, making enough racket to wake up the Welshmen in the tent nearest.
Options:
>Bluff?
I and Bard have decent social skills. We could, but neither of us speak Welsh.
>Start shooting?
Retarded for obvious reasons
>Run?
They'll raise the alarm
>Silent takedown?
Cruella is the only member of party able to do that usefully.
>Hide?
"Guys we could..."
>shut up bard.
Hiding is our best option though. We duck into some barrels and Bard tosses the sail cloth over us. In the dark and the mist it's just enough.
>Bard player is positively beaming at this point.
We wait, holding our breath, we look innocuous enough against the background of mist and tents, in amongst the baggage train we are just another half shape in the darkness.
We listen to the beastmen bicker and pick up spears.
We wait.
We peek out. We got away with it.
We continue on. Angus is delivered to the hay bails. He has so many fire related skills that him building a small fire which won't be seen but will burn very very fast into the bales (after about five minutes) is easy enough for him.
(IIRC he used a stub of candle, a lantern, and some thick rope soaked in oil as a sort of fuse - it was enough though)
We snuck on. DM, perhaps recognizing we could all die really easily, is likely to have fudged several rolls here, and a lot of the camp were passed out drunk which was useful.
The fire gets going into a good blaze and down comes the drawbridge. Hooves thunder over us as we wait. Then the ammo dump goes up. Perfect.
We wait until the hooves stop. The portcullis starts to fall. Wizard creates tension in the chains and we get up, over and under the portcullis as the drawbridge starts to rise behind us. We are in and it seems no one is any the wiser. The wizard causes the iron of the portcullis to splay out into the cobblestones. No one is getting in or out without our say so. (We do know there is a sally port on the far (seaward) wall.
We get into the cellars relatively easily and as far as we know, unseen. What we find in the cellars is impressive to say the least. Cask after cask, barrel after barrel. Out of curiosity it we find an open one. It's Guinness.
It appears Harlech is what has happened to what the Welsh used to trade with the rest of Britbongsteros (along with tin and mutton).
So, we are beneath Harlech Castle, we have found the king along with a variety of other prisoners. We take it upon ourselves to free each and every one (the Purple Penguin approves). King Algernon has very little idea what is going on but thanks us for "allowing him to continue to consider the custard." The other prisoners are a mix of general prison scum and prisoners of war, our party of 6 is now a party of 40 odd.
We decide to make for the courtyard and the sally port, then the ship.
We get into the courtyard just fine, it's about then that we realize we might not be the only ones to have noticed our entrance. King Rorke and the rest of his bodyguards are facing us, and are not looking best pleased. We can fight, we can most likely take them, the question is, is it a good idea?
>'dis gonna be gud...
We crack our collective necks, rack slides and generally get ready.
The bard pipes up for the first time in a while.
"Guys, guys, I got this."
OK fuck it, it's not like you ever do anything anyway.
He takes a couple steps forward.
You could hear a pin drop. Prisoners and party on one side, and King Rorke and his elite on the other.
The Bard speaks.
"I like beer."
???
>Everyone likes beer.
ok...
"And we know trade has ceased. We have here the king of this sceptered isle, his predecessor decreed you were no longer human, no longer to be traded with, no longer to produce Guinness for us, no longer to own lands, and this is why you rebelled, so were this man, this King, to reverse that, to allow the beer to flow, then what need for this rebellion be there?"
It's working.
Shit it's actually working.
>The bard is starting to glow, just as Navvie did previously. It's going well.
King Rorke strikes his sword into the cobblestones.
"Very well, you may..."
"WAIT."
It's Merlin. He looks exactly like you'd expect. It's Gandalf with a different hat.
"NO. YOU. SHALL. NOT. PASS."
Merlin is up on the battlements. This loopy wizard is going to object to creating peace because... actually why is he doing that?
We ask him.
"Why spill more blood when we can make peace?"
"Because you will never keep this promise, you will never honour your word, you will never hold true."
Fuck.
Rorke and his men are starting to look grumpy, getting ready to charge. Bard is no longer glowing, but he does launch into Hank Williams Jr, Country Boys Can Survive looks like this is gonna end bloody. Then... Cruella does something no one expected.
She seizes the Purple Penguin. She holds him high.
"What is this child's toy? Why do we carry it? It is a symbol, a promise we made to a little girl, that we would return her toy to her, that she would not go alone into that cold dark night, that in all of the horror of the world, there was some good. Let there still be some good. Each and every warrior here will have a wife, a mother, children, why must they be without a father, a son, and a husband? This Purple Penguin is the symbol of what we fight for, and why you should let the Guinness flow."
It's not a natural 20, but it's an 19, it's enough, Merlin doesn't have an answer. Instead he levitates down to our level. Struts past Rorke and starts to chant in a language no one recognizes.
Rorke splits him from crown to crotch neatly with one blow of his axe.
"Peace it is."
Everybody drinks Guinness until they pass out.
That was our one and only happy ending in Britbongsteros
Britbongsteros and the Lucky Charms
So with peace in Wales, we return to London hungover as fuck and with King Algernon and King Rorke in tow. Due to some fantastic
> I roll to seduce
Angus appears to have been the only person in Wales (in Britbongsteros) to have fucked an actual sheep.
With the Kings in London we hang around for a bit, taking a couple days off for R n R while they negotiate. Most of it is spent laughing at Angus who seems to have gotten a souvenir from his beau.
During our time (in the pub) we learn that there is a mysterious ship moored in the Thames and that the advisor who was so in favour of Algie invading Wales wants to see us.
>Who is the adviser Dm?
>Richard the third duke of Bosworth and blackadder, master of Dunny on the Wold.
>Richard the Third?
>Richard III
>Of Bosworth
>DM....
So we travel to Cutlers hall where tricky dicky wants to meet us. We are expecting hunchbacked evil Richard, what we get is a Broad shouldered man, with a huge beard, strongfat as fuck and with a big booming laugh. It's Brian blessed and the King's second bastard cousin.
He is with one Samuel Johnson and one Ollie Cromwell.
Together they represent His Majesties most treasured advisers. The Privy Council.
>Who is....
Google it.
It seems we have developed a reputation for solving problems and the kingdom has two. One is nascent, a vessel full of Arab Princes has come to visit with a view to British investment in extracting oil from their lands. Sir Hobart and The Old Gang believe this could be used to fuel several new weapons of war. Including something called a "Land Cruiser" designs of which show great long caterpillar tracks and batteries of turreted cannons. The Privy Council will keep us posted on this project.
Richard starts munching on an entire roasted pig as Oliver Cromwell outlines what will be our next task while a prototype of this vehicle is built.
>A modest proposal on the Irish Question
While Blackadder's servant Baldrick pours drinks, we listen to Crommie explain the problem.
>Eire Delenda Est...
The Irish have been raiding across the Irish sea, the entire west coast is almost unlivable, British warships are being lost to the allies of the Irish, the so called "Deep ones."
Our mission? End the threat of the Irish.
How?
The Irish are mostly human barbarians (sorry Ireland) who have a portal to another dimension/world somewhere near Waterford. It is from this that they are summoning Pacific Rim style gribblies. Sir Hobart and his colleague (one Barnes Wallis) have contrived an explosive with high plasticity and excellent explosives properties. "Conflagration causing caustic cement" or C4
We are to destroy the portal and a seaborne invasion of troops (including the prototype Land Cruiser) can deal with the humans. The Irish can summon monsters faster than we can build ships so with the portal atomized the navy can deal with Cthulhu and pals but not before.
Victory brings glory and medals.
Failure will bring us a Victoria cross
>Isn't that good?
No it means we will be crucified
How we get to Waterford is an interesting question. Or it would be, if we didn't have a pirate ship moored off Harlech castle and the 38 Minutes keeping an eye on it. We return to Harlech and prepare.
So, now in Harlech, King Rorke came back with us, he and the King (or rather Blackadder and co) having agreed to allow free trade and the Welsh are now people again.
We had the option of taking the HMS Trafalgar - a RN Submarine but decided the pirate ship would be more subtle, so the Trafalgar will linger off Waterford as long as she can, to be summoned by signal flare (or she will run the fuck away if Cthulhu is spotted).
The voyage is uneventful, we land near Tramore, then it's just a matter of following the great green glowy thing that we can see in the sky. It's half submerged in the bit on Google Maps called The Gap.
Now a note on the Irish. As mentioned they're human, they're armed with sharp sticks. They will attack us on sight. With our weaponry we can annihilate a whole whole lot of them, however the DM is very careful to inform us that as soon as a shot is fired or the alarm raised, we will have about 15 minutes in game until Cthulhu or his cousin comes to try and find us.
The countryside as we cross it is green, not the healthy emerald isle green, but slime green, there are shoggoth looking things squelching across the land in the distance, lit against the stars by the way colours shift within them, like a land based aurora borealis. The land is nothing like you'd expect Ireland, it's not a wasteland, it's just... alien.
Plant things we don't recognize, reptilian things in the sky. Small tiny little flying fish that bite like mosquitoes. The sounds of the night as we carefully navigate the sucking mire of the coast are just wrong, what could be frogs screech, what might be fish croak, what definitely aren't foxes make pings and clicks like dolphins. Strange dark shapes move in the water, faces appear and disappear in puddles an inch deep.
On the skyline great huge shapes move inland, some humanoid, some that defy imagination, and others we don't want to imagine.
Toward the gap the great arch of the portal rises from the waters, spinning with green lightning, we can taste magic in the air. Not the ozone of earthly magic, this is a clinging filth that makes your spit black. From the portal there is a great flash and a huge tail with a great staring luminous eye on it appears from nowhere and slowly submerges as it slides down toward Dunmore.
It's a lovely place.
>The Purple Penguin Abides
We cross overland without incident, if thoroughly and completely freaked the fuck out. Britbongsteros is not a nice place but this is new, this is bad. Angus and I are hauling heavy satchels of C4, and as we get closer to the gate we start to realize just how big it is. The flickering eldritch lightning isn't helping either.
We come upon the gate just inland of it. We're pleasantly surprised that there doesn't seem to be anyone around the thing. Maybe the fish thing we saw earlier was the last to come through for the night?
We start to feel on edge, Cruella's hair is standing on end, my beard is bristling, change of plan.
We retreat to a safer distance as the gate starts to flicker, to shift, to twist, almost biologically, flexing like muscle, peristaltic shifting within it.
>THOOOOOOOM
The lightning blasts outward on a level we feel more than hear, and something else slips away into the waters.
We estimate it was about 45 minutes since we saw it land, and we start to really hope that the HMS Trafalgar is still off shore.
It's then we see the barbarians (I'm not going to call them Irish). They approach the gate furtively, like they're afraid of what it could do to them, they start to chant, to cavort, some sacrifice, driving prisoners into pits at the bottom of the pillars, others stroke and caress the mass of it. It's like they're refueling it. A priest is rowed out into the middle of the thing, and slits open the still living body of [we are going to pretend it was a sheep because I feel sick typing this] and [removes the unborn lamb from its womb] and kills it.
The small body he holds starts to glow, and he tosses the green shining corpses into the inky black waters.
Lightning starts to play up the arc, and the glow comes from within the waters.
It appears they've summoned another.
We also have our time frame.
45 minutes to recharge, five minutes to refuel, and then the natives disappear.
One hushed conference later and we agree, we have a plan.
>It's a shit plan.
We wait, we wait for the next summoning to complete. Then...
We wait. We wait for those five minutes for the barbarians to dissipate. Then we charge.
We're about 150 yards from the gate when we're spotted, a wedge of dirty, malnourished, and zealously frenzied barbarians forming almost from nowhere.
The DM starts timing us. 15 Minutes to Cthulhu.
The barbarians form a shield wall. There's six of us. What can we do against 500 odd men?
We form a straight line. Six abreast and move forward in pace with the bard. He runs surprisingly fast but stops at 30 ft and plays. He plays Man O'war, Defender
Then we simply charge. Straight into that mass of humanity, slaves of the dark ones, they form a shield wall.
The Navvies hammer breaks shields, Angus turns men into screaming pillars of flame, where they don't simply melt. The gatling shotgun makes a fine red mist. Cruella laughs and moves so fast you can barely work out her motions until she stops to spit out a mouthful of jugular. The Wizard simply drives one sharpened stake through man, after man, after man.
We massacre them. Wading through blood and offal to the sacrifice pits.
Looking back on it now, sitting in my safe warm study, pipe in hand and Cruella playing with a dog nearby, those warriors spoke as they died. Each and every one, and they thanked us.
They thanked us for saving them.
We feel literally and figuratively filthy as we start to prime the charges.
The silence is the worst, after the screams. After the cacophony.
There's a shape on the horizon, a shape like a great, crystalline structure, that walks with the gait of a man and the step of a bear, it can't be looked at for long, and it's coming our way.
We thought to wire the charges in a neat demolition pattern, the wizard would bore into the pillars, and we would place shaped charges, we thought.
>We thought.
We didn't think that these things were operated by blood sacrifice.
The gate has starting to glow already. We didn't summon Cthulhu, The barbarians did that.
>We just summoned Cthulu's dad.
We simply toss the bags of C4 in, fire the signal flare and turn tail.
Thing is.
That great big shape on the horizon is catching up on us. It's a ten minute run to the Trafalgar, even if she's there. If she hasn't been sunk. We set the charges for two and whatever the thing on the horizon is, it's about ten minutes away.
It's gonna be fine, it's gonna be tight.
We run. We run like crazy.
The charges go off. We don't even look back. The pillar comes down, Magic blasting out, throwing us flat. The shock wave blowing us off our feet. Heat on our exposed skin.
We can't hear, we can barely see, magical lightning spearing into the ground around us. Throwing up great spumes of earth.
The beast is catching up. By the time we're on the dunes, down at Dunmore East, it's right behind us. It's right there. It's literally on us. It's... indescribable.
Out in the dark, we can see the Trafalgar. She's not alone. The beasts of the waves have risen. The Trafalgar and the entire Atlantic fleet lay into every filthy beast your mind can imagine, lit in flashes of lightning, strobing slaughter, guns fire, ships are torn asunder, beasts scream, everything dies.
There's something small coming for us. It's one of the Trafalgar's boats. A steam pinnace.
Thing is, the beast on shore is at least as fast as it.
We are stuck.
We can dig in, try and hamstring it maybe? We can...
The night is black, rent asunder by shot, ethereal lightning, and the sound of a countryside dying, and in that darkness, the Navvie starts to glow. Stripes of Red, White, and Blue.
Saltire first, cross of St George next, and finally St Patrick's Saltire. Overlaid across his broad, broad back.
We move to stand with him.
"Go boys. Go."
"Go."
I shake his hand. I press something into that broad paw of a hand. A small, purple, penguin.
He tucks him into his shirt, and starts to walk forward. A small glowing flag into the blackness of the night.
That was the last we saw of him.
The beast stopped in its tracks. Raised one great foot, and slammed it down on that little flag.
We watched from the beach, then the pinnace.
It raised its foot, and that proud little flag still stood.
It began to climb.
As we boarded the Trafalgar, we saw the beast fall, the Union Jack atop it's great head. As the Trafalgar began to sink beneath the waves, we saw that little flag cease to glow.
And that anon, is where this episode of Britbongsteros ends.
We returned to Waterford the next day. The remains of the Atlantic and home fleets licking their wounds in the channel, the Trafalgar took us back to say a few words.
We approach that great huge corpse, already rotting in the sun, seagulls (because seagulls don't give a fuck) picking at it.
Within the great sundered skull, split right down the middle, we find first a sodden, bloodied, slightly torn purple penguin.
Then within that skull, a hammer, and a body.
We start to dig. In that blasted tortured land. The flower of the British Navy burns off shore, great huge elder things lie on the beach, rotting in the sun.
Britain, this great Britain, is united once more, we did that. This man did that. This penguin did that.
We pick him up.
>He coughs.
>motherfucker.
I suppose I should have said "that night" (in regards to the last we saw of him), but that'd have ruined the effect a little. I thought /tg/ might prefer to experience it as we did.
