Britbongsteros

What was/is your favourite campaign reward?

Best reward?

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

The Setting

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

The British empire existed.

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

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

The Story

The Necromancers of Scotland

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

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

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

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

I say

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

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

Our titan of a navvie looks at the horizon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We cursed the village, the war, ourselves.

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

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

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

>Necromantic apocalypse

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

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

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

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

We needed a plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The greengrocer and navvie worked on interrogating the alchemist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We looked at the penguin.

"Lets get ourselves a ship."

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

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

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

The party boarded, so did the stuffed purple penguin.

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

We had our boat. Or at least large living seabeast

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

Meanwhile the Navvie and I investigated the cargo hold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The DM passes me a note.

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

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

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

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

>he's a cunt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It all goes to plan. Mostly.

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

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

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

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

Fuck you Sawney Bean.

The technowizard replaces the second arm in a week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The hammer goes up.

"You'll never get her back"

the hammer comes down.

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

>FUCKINGCOCKDABBLINGARSEMONGLER

The navvie hits him again, and again,

>SHITSPEWINGCUNTSPELUNKER

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

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

"Uncle?"

It flickers.

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

I put her penguin next to it.

"I knew you'd come..."

The light goes out.

The Battleship Brunmiggi

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

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

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

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

>muh fetish.

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

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

We had a fight on our hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least that was the plan.

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

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

We were aboard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bard plays the song we agreed.

It's Meatloaf. Bat out of hell.

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

We returned to London to report our success.

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

The Court of the Faerie Queene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The charge?

Killing the little girl.

The evidence?

One stuffed purple penguin

The penalty?

Death.

Oh shit.

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

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

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

>Fuck you DM

We're a little pissed at this point.

We are to be hung in the morning.

We spend our last night in the cells.

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

"Hello boys."

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

She flashes her serrated shark like teeth.

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

We agree.

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

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

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

She wanted an excuse to wipe out a noble house.

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

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

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

They were a mediating influence on the other houses.

This was not good.

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

Of course she knew exactly what that was about.

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

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

We need to do the following:

1. Not die.

2. Keep the Queene happy.

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

4. Not die.

2 and 3 appear to be mutually exclusive however.

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

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

Navvie: Save the nice people.

Angus: Lets not die

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

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

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

More thinking occurs. Cruella is feigning disinterest.

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

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

No. Not Danson large.

Could we just get them exiled?

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

Do we have to kill all of them?

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

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

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

Then suddenly he stops.

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

The Bard player occasionally is quite useful.

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

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

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

"Pretty much"

The purple penguin is not pleased by this.

"How many Dansons are there?"

Cruella pipes up

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

I feel a plan coming on.

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

We established the following:

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

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

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

What we did was this.

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

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

That left me, and the maiden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

>The favourite: Baron Harcourt, another Faerie.

The Baron likes two things. Hunting and fucking.

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

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

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

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

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

There can only be one option.

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

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

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

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

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

I ask him,

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

His ego inflates a little.

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

He knows who I'm talking about. He asks

"Who is the man?"

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

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

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

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

>ohshit

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

"My lord, another drink to celebrate!"

"YES!"

"And to the great wisdom of the Baron!"

"YES!"

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

"YESWUT?"

"And to the Queene!"

"The Queene!"

(continue through many consume alcohol tests)

The baron finally passes out.

>the next day

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

>great success

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

Right?

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

>balls.

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

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

"Ah brave dwarf, what news bring you?"

"We beg a favour my lady"

She listens.

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

Wondering what this insane bitch could possibly want or need.

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

Oh no.

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

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

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

"I. WANT. THAT. ONE."

(Fuck you DM).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need to kill Queene and both the half brothers.

and GET THE PENGUIN BACK.

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

That's gonna be tricky.

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

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

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

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

The hard part is getting to them.

We take stock of our skills:

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

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

The bard could...

...

NEXT

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

>Why did Cruella agree to the assassinations?

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

We consider our targets.

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

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

We go for Carus first.

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

He's also a sick bastard.

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

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

We don't.

More planning occurs.

Suggestions include:

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

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

That was easy. Too easy...

Next up is Balthus.

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

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

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

She has to know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?"

Additionally some relevant V music for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbxgYlcNxE8

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 Navvie passes DM a note.

"Bard. Play me something good. I go to glory."

Jeff Wayne's Thunderchild

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.

Saxon, Broken Heroes.

There is an epilogue to this episode however.

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 went ashore and took a shovel.

The Bard plays Amazing Grace, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards as we walk up the beach.

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.

>DM you're a dick.

Britbongsteros at the North Pole

We return to London and meet with the privy council. We are informed we are being sent on holiday.

Or at least away.

An expedition to the arctic has reported no sign of a north west passage, but it has found land, under the polar ice cap. Reports by carrier albatross are notably unreliable but nothing else has been heard for six months. Fearing the intervention of a foreign (German) power we are sent northwards.

Meanwhile Britbongsteros is being drained dry, victory in Ireland has been costly and with the continentals now aware that the navy is effectively half what it once was, it seems like we may have a fight on our hands soon.

The events in Ireland have already been hushed up under the official secrets act and the Navvie, if questioned, says he remembers nothing. Even a session with Sir Richard Bacon provides no answer to his mysterious powers.

We are instead packed aboard an icebreaker and sent onwards.

Aboard the Icebreaker (HMS Intrepid) we begin to unbox some of the gear that was loaded aboard with us. We were wise enough to purchase our own cold weather gear (Bard is still wearing a kilt) but we have three big crates and no idea what they are.

>DM: "Ok let's roll to see whats in these things! But first who wants to get me a beer?"

(This is DM code for give me a beer or its gonna be full of condoms)

Having a wizard who is very good at controlling metal means you're never without a tinopener, or in this case, a crowbar.

Now at this point DM hasn't told us a great deal about the North Pole (it's cold and not all ice), so as we pop the box, and these are big big crates, we are pleased to see the roll results in a snowcat (think APC specialized for snow). The next is camping supplies for a polar expedition. Food, tents, etc.

>Guys?

>What bard?

>Can any of us drive a snowcat? Its a very different thing to a car or boat and...

>DM: That's a very good point actually. I'll just add some penalties.

>Party: Fucking bard.

The third box we are slightly concerned to see is full of smaller crates. The first is full of britbongsteros-not-bibles, as we dig deeper we find more of these along with a note saying we should "use them to bring the word of God to the fuzzy wuzzies" we also find a great deal of corned beef, and finally, a comically oversized whaling harpoon gun. Too big for it to be man portable, but big enough that the Cat could carry it.

>Scots of the (Ant)arctic

Pleased with our haul, we settle in for the voyage and do our best to piece together what little we know and can learn from the notes sent by the expedition.

Prior to the visit of the expedition, the actual pole was uncharted, an unknown, we are aware that the icecap is thick, that the expedition included a drilling team, armed guards, and several technowizards, so they had come loaded for bear.

We knew they had traveled toward the pole from Greenland on up, when (and this was the last message) they mentioned the wizards with them having detected a large metallic mass under the ice and were going to commence drilling. We knew how far they had gone, in what direction and roughly when they'd stopped. The cat had fuel for twice that so we should be ok.

The voyage into arctic waters takes us via Scapa Flow, the Faroes, Iceland (lots of trolls and stupidly attractive elves, very odd food) and finally to Greenland. We are a bit surprised that nothing tries to eat us on the way. We are horrified however when make land. Next to the cairn erected by the British Expedition, there is another newer one.

"L'expédition française, vive le France!"

-signed "Napoleon Le Talleyrand De Baguette III"

Now, not only does our expedition (which as far as we know are all still alive) not know about the French being behind them, they definitely do not know that it is De Baguette leading them. We are informed (as in the characters already know, but players don't) that De Baguette is a famous French mercenary and explorer, half hobbit, half troll and not the way you'd expect either. Monsieur Talleyrand-De Baguette the elder was one fucking brave rapist hobbit.

Now. We have our mission clearly set out. The British Expedition has not been heard from in months. The French have most likely treacherously waylaid them when they stopped to examine the metal thing. We must avenge them or at the very least beat the French to the pole. So. With Union Jack flying from the CAT we set off.

Now at this point we haven't seen any unusual flora or fauna, nothing, just snow. Lots of snow. We trace the planned route of the expedition, finding camps easily enough, the expedition having left markers at each sight. Some investigation in each camp brings not only empty tins of corned beef, but also empty bottles of vin and the occasional beret.

Clearly we are following traces of both expeditions.

We proceed onward, unaccosted for the most part. We do however see an ogopogo fight some polar bears. The purple penguin and the rest of us enjoyed that. Additionally, don't eat Polar bear or shoot and attempt to eat the victorious ogopogo (they're really gamey).

We make good progress, it's high summer so we travel through the day and most of the night, stopping only to rest for a few hours here and there. We sleep in the CAT mostly. The nights are more of an eternal twilight. Beautiful but cold as fuck.

>About the third or fourth night. We bed down. Everyone drifts off. We are woken by a very loud rap on the window.

Not howling of wind. Not a hungry bear. A distinctive postman's shave and a haircut knock.

We look out, there's no one there. We light lamps, and investigate, no one there. We check for footprints, just ours. Angus and Cruella both have very good senses of smell. They can't smell anything unusual.

The next night it happens again.

No one there. We're starting to freak out a bit. Characters are missing sleep, panicky, and still at the top of the world, more alone than ever, shave and a haircut on a window every night. Always when no one is looking that way, always no trace.

Remember we are alone up here. No one for miles. The CAT moves at a decent speed, so something is keeping pace. Leaving no footprints and no signs. We search the bags and panniers on the CAT thinking we have a stowaway. No sign.

The next morning, there is a big chunk missing from the engine. As though someone had taken a core sample. The bard mentions something.

"Guys, we only have one CAT, if Wizard can't fix this. We can't walk back to shore. We are dead."

Fortunately wizard and Angus manage between them to fix the thing. It takes most of the day, into the night. The rest of us stand guard. Angus feels a tap on his shoulder. A tap tapatap. Shave and a haircut.

Angus is bent over the engine. He freaks the fuck out.

"Its here it's here shoot it shoot it!"

There's nothing there. No print. Nothing.

We are all nervous now.

Later as we bed down. As best we can. Three on watch. Three dozing, dressed and armed, there's a colossal thud on the hood of the CAT. A skinless face stares into the light of the cab. Pile out into the twilight. Surrounding it. It's a polar bear, skinned. Slowly dribbling off the hood. From behind us. Shave and a haircut.

We turn. I bring the shotgun up and fire over the roof of the cab. Either I hit nothing or I am firing at nothing. The sound of the whirring gatling is ridiculous in the arctic silence. We are left alone on the ice. Listening to our breathing. When we wake the next morning. there are 16 tiny perfect pyramids of ball bearings on the hood. The gatling fires eight shells a second. I gave it a two second burst. It's somehow brought back each and every pellet. They pyramids on closer examination, float half an inch above the hood.

>Things that go bump in the not quite night.

Something is fucking with us. The purple penguin doesn't approve of this. We decide whatever it is, tt needs to die. Whether it's aliens or invisible Inuit, it's going to fucking die.

Our first thought is to defend. How do we dig in? We could find a cave? There aren't any. We also decide against looking for one. Not fancying digging our way out of a cave in for one thing. We do however settle on pulling the CAT into a small valley type thing. Now it can only come from above, the front or the rear. We string guy ropes for the tents to empty cans. It might not actually make enough noise to set off the alarm but the wizard thinks he could detect them being disturbed. We also (well Angus and Wizard) set up half a dozen trip wires attached to mines.

We wait.

We wait longer.

"It's here"

We listen in the dark, straining our ears in the silence of the polar night. There's very little wind. There's nothing. In the near dark, Angus lights the pilot of his flamethrower. Cruella coos soothingly at her sword.

>There's a very faint tinkling to the left, all eyes turn very slowly. One of the cans is floating in mid air.

We watch as the can starts to drift toward us. Then slowly something disturbs the snow. A small thing. A very familiar thing. One of the mines is floating too. Towards us.

>Shit shit shit shit shit

Angus flings open a door.

Angus torches everything for thirty yards around the mine. The mine cooks off. We unload in the direction of it. Spraying rounds. The bard launches into his most lethal of songs Luke Bryan, Drinkin Beer and wastin bullets.

Magazines run dry, the song finishes. We pant. It must be fucking dead. We investigate.

From behind us, on the roof of the CAT

>The DM raps the table. Shave and a haircut

We pivot. Silhouetted against the morning sun. A shape can just be made out. Humanoid. Maybe. More like a grasshopper, knees up by its ears. I drop the shotgun and go for my pistols. Cruella sprints across snow, the Navvie lumbers after her.

The harpoon gun (yes that thing) starts to slowly turn. Toward it. Whatever the fuck it is, I unload on it as Cruella leaps onto the Cab with it. I wing it. I'm sure I do. Cruella closes her eyes as the thing starts to leap toward her. Relying on her other senses and sword to do the work. She decapitated it. Beautifully silhouetted against the morning sun.

It's dead. We get our first look at the body. It's not as small as we thought and it must be strong. It's wearing a grey full body suit. Covered in strange devices like nothing we have ever seen. They are more science than magic but a science nothing like our own.

Something on its belt starts to flash and beep. Things that flash and beep are never good in our experience. The Navvie picks the thing up and hurls it a good forty feet. It goes up like a grenade.

We travel on. Finding a British camp. There is the usual cairn but also eight smaller ones. Burials. Three marked with British flags, five with the tri-colore.

The next night. As we bed down for our first good night's sleep.

>Shave and a haircut.

>Not again

Ok so we killed one. We are not entirely sure how, but if it bleeds, we can kill it. Maybe these are the things that killed the first expedition. Certainly there were bodies back at the last camp and we are nearly at the dig site.

Cruella and the wizard seem to be our strongest assets here. The wizard doesn't seem able to sense them, but at least he can stop things flying at us, and Cruella is fast, stealthy and violent. Cruella pulls herself up onto the CAT and closes her eyes.

Things are starting to levitate. Angus wrestles with the flamethrower, it takes the Navvie to help hold him and it down, allowing the Navvies hammer to go full Mjolnir and clobber the bard.

Cruella with her eyes closed has only the other seven senses (she's not human), but it's enough to feel tiny vibrations of the thing in the air. Her sword lashes out and seemingly from nowhere half a torso appears. Followed a moment later by the rest of the creature.

The Navvie is already prepared and punts both halves into the distance. The explosion ensuring whatever these things are, remains a mystery.

We continue onwards to the dig site. We see in the distance a number of CAT like vehicles. Of two different types. Some with Union Jacks others are French, at least De Baguette hasn't beaten us to the pole.

We start to investigate. bearing in mind anyone alive would have seen us from miles away and heard us before that, we are pretty sure something has gone horribly wrong. It never occurred to us that De Baguette might be preparing an ambush, so we drove right on up to the camp and vehicles. Judging by the Union Jack still flying and a French flag next to it, if the two expeditions had met, it was amicable. So where was everyone?

We look around, orderly tents, half eaten meals, standard Mary Celeste stuff. We note that the meals include corned beef (British) and Merlot (French). There are no bullet holes, blood stains or anything else suspicious, barring that everything has lain undisturbed for at least five months.

Undisturbed is probably not good. Surely bears or something else would have come looking? Nothing however.

We do find the British Expedition HQ and the very orderly logbook. The entries all end five months ago. Mostly it is things we already knew or banality (still drilling, thirty feet today) we note that De Baguette was greeted and the two countries joined forces to drill. Creating a what was referred to as both a channel and tunnel down toward the metallic item. (The logbook called it a "Chunnel" for some reason). The last entry read

"Slowly, desperately slowly it seemed to us as we watched, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway were removed, until at last we had the whole door clear before us. The decisive moment had arrived. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left hand corner. Darkness and blank space, as far as an iron testing-rod could reach, showed that whatever lay beyond was empty, and not filled like the passage we had just cleared. Candle tests were applied as a precaution against possible foul gases, and then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in, De Baguette and Lady Evelyn (his daughter) standing anxiously beside me to hear the verdict. At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flame to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist... there was gleaming metal within, and light. Tomorrow we shall investigate further."

Some anons may recognize the text. I did.

We realize we are going in. Whether we like it or not. Honour and the penguin demand it.

The chunnel is not quite wide enough to fit the CAT down, so we decide to proceed on foot. The Chunnel proceeds downwards as far as we can see, lights strung on the walls merge together in the distance, it's a long way down, so we'd better start walking.

So on we go, into the chunnel, the crude earthworks give way to paved, interlocked, impeccably precise granite blocks as we proceed downward. We pass over what must have been the remains of the door way, and into a great stone cavern, so large, it recedes off into blackness in the distance. In the very center is a circular, metal object, an ellipsoid. It's hard to tell the scale of the thing at this distance, but as we walk toward it, we realize it's huge. With one small opening, perhaps three men wide, and three high.

As we approach, we still see no signs of the expeditions, as we approach the doorway, there is a sound from within. We ready arms. What the hell is...

A man.

A man stumbles out.

Disheveled, dirty, and missing his eyes.

He collapses into the arms of the Navvie.

Crying, whimpering.

"I have seen things. Wonderful things..."

and he expires.

So, that's probably good.

We examine the corpse. He's plainly starving, emaciated, and of course his eyes appear to have been scooped out, which is always a great sign.

He's wearing a mix of British and French Uniforms, filthy and very, very dead.

Obviously with that most excellent of omens, we enter the metal ellipsoid.

What we find within is beyond our understanding, it's reminiscent of a battleship, strange pipes and tubes run hither and thither, and there's corpses, lots of corpses, electrocuted, chopped, splattered, zapped, and generally in bits. All human. Although the walls aren't marked, there are the squashed remains of bullets on the floor. They must've been fired, missed, and then hit the walls, and simply fallen to the floor. We estimate the better part(s) of twenty men within the thing.

We find on one of the bodies a portable gramaphone. The Bard picks it up, fiddles, and we hear what has been recorded.

"I see things, Wonderful things. This creation, this steel building, I am inclined to call it a ship, that lay open within the cavern, allowing our ingress, it is incredible, beautiful, and yet so strange. We track dark endless halls, lit by our torches and gas lamps. There is no dust, no sign of habitation. De Baguette surmises that the creation was too large to have been brought down into this edifice, the edifice must have been built around it."

"We have found within bodies, sleepers, so alien, so bizarre in build and pose, it is large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face. It... it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. They recline tubes, lit with a cold, unearthly blue light, they are perhaps... De Baguette! No!

>the DM hits something on his laptop. Martian War Call: ULLA

Party: Well fuck this....

"The sleepers have not awakened, but the edifice has, it glows, I am sure though that soon the sleepers will wake. Perhaps we shall meet them."

The DM is passing notes to Cruella, the Bard, and Angus.

Cruella goes full on spazz, falling to the floor, jittering, crying, moaning, again, that sound: ULLA

It's coming from her.

The record continues as we rush to her.

"[Breathless] Professor Quatermass, what say you!? What is... What is happening? Oh by the gods, what is happening... I... I am a scientist, an Englishman. I shall... God save our... I shall... I see Wondrous things..."

Another voice. "Dammit Roney, [Slap] here some brandy... tell me what do you see?

"I see... a hunt, a great hunt, I fly, I hop, I am as one with the horde, we must destroy, destroy destroy the unbeliever, the unclean... destroy... Quatermass... the..."

Quatermass: "De Baguette, I think Roney is... he is seeing what the sleepers have seen, what they know..."

Roney: "I see a pale blue dot in the sky, I see a plan, I lust for the dot, IT WILL BE OURS IT WILL BE OURS."

Cruella whimpers

"I have seen wondrous things"

Quatermass: "Roney, WHAT COLOUR IS THE SKY?"

Roney: "It is purple my friend. Purple."

We hold Cruella down, an epileptic fit perhaps? We force brandy into her. She cries, shivering,

Quatermass: "I surmise these things are not of our world, nor of another dimension, they are alien to this earth, they are...."

ULLA

Quatermass: "Come on you alien bastard. I WILL SHOW YOU HOW AN ENGLISHMAN DIES."

The recording continues. A female voice, French, Evelyn perhaps?

"There are not many of us left, the aliens have a power, to suck the magic from us, the wizards, those brave Scotsmen fought them, or they tried, their saws and spears fell to the ground, and yet those men fought them with their bare hands. They are all dead now, as are the others...."

"They do not just kill, they flay men alive, taking parts, they are... they are scientists... like us..."

"I have nearly made it to the... to the..."

ULLA

>A long, drawn out female scream. From the recording, and from Cruella.

So Cruella is going nuts, foaming at the mouth and generally not looking good. We decide to bug out. That seems like the best idea, take off and nuke the site from orbit.

Let's get ou... the door is closed.

The door is fucking closed.

We already know that we can't harm the material the alien ship is made of with bullets, Angus's thermic lance doesn't work either. The Wizard can't manipulate it. We're trapped.

Cruella snaps upright. Her eyes are jet black. No longer human.

Her mouth opens, echoing a cry that comes through the entire ship.

ULLA

Even the Purple Penguin is not very happy about this.

We decide if they have closed the door, they also know exactly where we are. That can only be bad. We pick up Cruella, and pick a direction, and start on inwards into who knows what.

We don't meet anything but we appear to be in the hold, crates are crates, and these ones although alien, still retain that essential crateness.

We move onward, slicing pies and tacticooling it, the interior decor changes, less grey and utilitarian, now a little fancier, and white, stark blinding white.

And red. Lots of red.

We appear to have come across the medbay, we get our first good look at the aliens, they're bent over tables with still living, screaming, humans on them, slowly taking them to pieces. Disassembling them like a child might build a lego house, except in reverse. Bit by bit.

The aliens are taller than us, or would be except they sit on their haunches, like grasshoppers, they have six limbs, a pair of manipulator hand analogues, and two wicked talons. This is our first good look at them, whether what we fought (the shave-and-a-haircuts) were drones or a subspecies we have no idea. These things have big, broad heads, with jet black eyes.

We are looking in through an observation window, fuck it. Scientists or whatever they might be, they're gonna die.

We've not gotten the hang of alien doors yet, but the Navvie giving an interior door a good hard slam buckles it, a second slam with the hammer is enough to twist it inwards, a third brings it down (he was scarily good with that hammer).

>We do the work of the purple penguin.

The aliens might be terrifying, they might be weird, they respond very well to buckshot, .45 caliber, and axe.

We then begin the grim work of giving peace to the subjects.

The five of us...

>The five of us

Where's Cruella?

The Navvie had been carrying her, he'd left her propped up against the wall, in all the excitement, we didn't notice the stealthiest character of the group slip away.

Remember I mentioned she talks to her sword? And it may or may not talk back? Well the thing is lying on the ground. She never leaves it, it's never more than an arms reach away. The thing is pointing down the hall.

I go to pick it up. I lift it just fine, but the damn thing won't change it's orientation, it points rigidly North North East.

What we can only assume is the direction she went in.

I hand the sword to the wizard (who as a wizard is meant to know about this shit), and we proceed to slice pie in the direction the thing points.

We follow the sword, the thing works just like a divining rod. Cruella's player is loving this.

We appear to have left the medical wing, as we enter what may or may not have been a canteen, we meet more aliens, one firefight later (which although awesome, isn't exciting to retell) and we head onward.

There's a distinct and very weird hum in the floor. This thing is starting to power up.

We travel through what must be the cryosleep area, lots and lots and lots empty pods, and then as we pelt down a corridor.

"Bonjour mes amis."

As far as we know, there was only one woman in either expedition, Evelyn De-Baguette.

She's still a woman, whether she is human is an entirely different matter.

The aliens have done... something to her, she's a lot more and lot less than human.

I will not attempt to replicate the DM's atrocious French accent, but what she said was:

"Don't be jealous boys, it only works on women, and doesn't it look good? They've got me, and now they have your friend, they've been asleep for a long time, and now that the aliens are awake, they can begin to rebuild, to repopulate... your friend is going to help."

>Muh magical realm (no shut the fuck up)

The sword points straight past Evelyn. The Purple Penguin doesn't like it when we hit girls. So we don't. We burn her.

The DM occasionally forgets that a flamethrower is actually pretty damn useful in a bossfight (he really shouldn't have let Angus have one...) and we burn her up good.

We follow our diving rod, and there in true Martian style, is Cruella in a pod, and a fuckload of Aliens. They do not seem particularly amused with us either. We're a bit annoyed with them too.

>How was Cruella's player taking this?

Highly amused. The DM had bribed her beforehand and she found us all getting butthurt about aliens turning her into their queen more than a little funny. Bear in mind she played almost exactly what she is like in personality. Therefore, the idea of anyone doing something she didn't want was hilarious to her.

Now that I ask her about it. "I wanted to be the Princess for once."

Which tbh is the best answer you're all gonna get.

The combat is more than bloody, they swarm us, we set to it, shells, flame, sharp objects, and general violence. Leaving only the King/Queen/Captain we have no fucking idea what that is, but it's big, it's mean, and it isn't going to listen to diplomacy.

So. We are looking at a very big alien. It is looking at us. It's a lot like a carnifex. There is a feeling like a pulse in reality. Metal objects grow lighter. Spent shell casings float up from the deck. Angus rolls lowest and his eyes go black. The alien speaks through him.

"You have not beaten us yet. We came to this earth and slept until life grew, life which we could use to outbreed the heathens on our homeworld. Life such as this broodmother"

(Cruella's player puts down her glass of wine and thumps the DM)

"this excellent broodmare?"

(She hits him harder)

"this lovely specimen"

(she mulls it over and nods. This is about the only time I have ever seen DM look scared)

"We blunted your magic, your resources, but the device did not work as planned, in another hundred years or so when your population hit seven billion or so we would have emerged and the breeding and killing would have been sweet. Now I shall simply settle for scouring this earth."

He hits a switch on Cruelllas pod and legs it.

There's no dilemma, we are not leaving her in that thing, so we break her out of it. She is back in character, and her character is pissed.

If this isn't clear for anyone, what the alien is saying through puppet Angus is that in our world, I.e. not britbongsteros, the world of 4chan and double downs, we have no magic or similar because they are there, at the North Pole, waiting until we as a species are ready for harvest.

We pursue the alien. Thanking him for his exposition, it's now time to kill him. He hasn't gone far and Cruella (her modesty covered by my overcoat) scents him and follows at a sprint. She must have been getting bonuses to rolls because she slices and dices down the halls to the bridge. Where the alien is doing... something to the controls. He is setting a course? To a small nearby red planet? (Yes they are Martians).

The combined efforts of the party ensure he doesn't, then with the thing put down. There's an ominous and familiar beep. The same as the aliens on the ice made.

The beep of self destruct.

>Time to go.

We leg it. The way back isn't hard to find (follow the bodies mostly) and coming to the door, we are pleased to find it open (thanks DM), we proceed up the chunnel and out to the CAT.

>KATHOOOOOM

The ship goes up and we are thrown to the ground, the Alien that followed us isn't. It's bloodied from our fight on the bridge but not as dead as we thought. It makes straight for me and sticks a talon through my (mechanical) shoulder as the rest of the party make for the creature to bash/thermic lance/stab/chainsaw it, Cruella goes for the harpoon gun.

It has me say:

"I sent a signal to Mars. They won't be long..."

Cruella lays the gun. Aims.

"Get away from him you bitch. No, I'm his bitch, well really he's mine but... no, look fuck you ok?"

The harpoon is more than enough to finish the thing off.

We take the head and CAT back to the coast, board the Intrepid, and make for London for tea and medals.

The "Beach" Episode

So. Aboard the Intrepid we were able to Taxidermy the head of the Alien. Our first order of business is to explain to the Privy Council what the fuck just happened, and while Sir Richard Bacon and Sir David Attenborough examine the thing and Sir Patrick [Cyborg murder body] Moore examines Mars anew, we are sent on our way.

The rest of the party all have specific stuff they want to do. The Navvie also has something specific.

"I want to get drunk and fuck. Who wants to come?"

"Angus?"

>DM: Roll to see how your sheep infection is doing please

"Umm no count me out."

"Bard?"

"Sex? Never heard of it. I'm going to [have my adventure]."

"Aldous?"

Cruella: "We are but not while you guys watch. We will see you later."

"Umm ok, wizard?"

"Wait aren't I married? No I... I could come but not touch I guess..."

>To Soho we go

So a wizard and a Navvie walk into a whorehouse.

The Navvie disappears upstairs. Thudding, screaming and general happy large man noises can be heard. The wizard gets into a game. Of roulette.

>Roulette balls are steel aren't they?

>Aren't I able to control steel?

Amazingly enough, the roulette table is rigged, and the local lowlives are extremely unimpressed when a Scotsman in a dress rigs it the other way.

Murderously unimpressed.

They pick up the wizard, it would have been better if they had drawn knives at least that would have been easier. I should add by the time wizard has won the pot, he's quite pissed (drunk). Like very. He would have trouble summoning a pair of scissors let alone a chainsaw.

His manly screams of Heeeeeeeeellllllllp are heard by the Navvie upstairs however.

Now the Navvie is a simple man, he likes pies, stout, and round bubble butts. He takes a direct approach.

>My buddy downstairs is in trouble.

>I am upstairs

>Stairs will waste time

So stark naked, he leaps from bed, takes his hammer, and slams it into the wooden floor, down comes a huge naked man and a bed with four PAWGs on it.

The bar brawl that followed sees the Peelers called (early form of police to Ameri-nons) and rather than take them on and injure officers of the law, they retreat upstairs, and as there is a covered wagon below, leap for it, a naked huge man with a hammer and a scrawny drunk Scot with a bag of money. We will pause their tale there as this is where they enter another.

So we know that Cruella acquired a bastard sword some time ago. It started talking to her and her to it not long after. They mostly talk about their favourite things, blood and violence. She likes those and it likes those.

She acquired the sword as one does, in a shop, she saw the thing and liked it.

She wants to learn more about it, so we take it to the royal armouries to have it examined. (Her and I) After some pondering the dwarves there get very very excited

>It's Excalibur

They persuade her to part with it for a few hours, to examine it.

She and I spend a very pleasant few hours in fade to black. We return,

"Yeah... We got robbed last night... Only one item missing and it's"

>Cruella broke the poor bastard's nose and we go to look for it. In London. A needle in haystack made of smaller haystacks

We set off, Cruella's [spider sense] leads us to Soho and we pause there.

>Aldous needs pipe tobacco

While we are in Soho, I spot a tobacconists, and in the window, is my brand of pipe tobacco. I know that a local tobacconist is an excellent source of gossip so Cruella condescends to let us go in, we bump into a passerby on the way in but successfully purchase a kilo of good dwarven smoke, our gossip plan fails however, then Cruella realizes her bracelet is gone.

That guy we bumped into is still out in the street, he must be a really really shit pick pocket if...

He spots us, and turns to run, he is stopped in his tracks by a huge naked man and a scrawny Scot with a bag of money landing on him.

(They missed the wagon) So while they apologize to the poor guy, we run to them, the police are starting to run out of the building. We ask the Navvie to pick up the thief and the four of us (plus squashed thief) run the fuck away.

"For gods sake man, put some clothes on."

We duck into an alleyway and the Navvie puts the thief down.

"I want your boots, your clothes, and by the way, have you heard anything about any swords?"

The poor bastard tries to get naked, returns Cruella's bracelet, and explain to us that a local "legitimate businessman" - John Borisson is looking after a very important sword shaped package until it can be shipped to France tomorrow.

This is where the story of the four of us pauses.

Rewind.

Bard: "Guys, I don't really do much do I?"

"You play the bagpipes and kick anything that gets too close?"

"Yeah, but that's combat Barding. I want to... I want to play for my public."

"You're in London, that famous home of bagpipes and Scottishness, but ok..."

"Exactly, I will play my through the city, I will busk, I will play for the poor and rich alike, I will bring the joy of music to all!"

It turns out playing the bagpipes in London in Britbongsteros is not exactly popular, he gets thrown out of Trafalgar Square, punted out of the inns of court, starts a brawl in the Royal Society, and a riot in the Globe.

The bard heads for Soho.

He is approached in Soho by some rough looking men.

"Our boss really likes bagpipes, come play for him! Tonight you shall play at the home of Borrisson, John Borrisson."

"Ooh ok!"

And now we pause.

>Angus does science.

Angus decides to get his Sheep Transmitted Disease cured.

(Angus crit failed an "I roll to seduce a female centaur" (dumb bastard) and fucked a sheep instead by accident back in Wales)

His research takes him to a doctor

"Ah what the fuck is that!?"

A barber surgeon

"What the flying fuck is that!?"

And finally another less reputable doctor.

"There is an eastern remedy that might help, you'll need to acquire some components for me though"

>Gives list

"Where am I going to find 'tears of a Phoenix killed on the second Tuesday of the month?'"

"I dunno, try John Borrison in Soho, what he sells isn't always of the best provenance, but if he doesn't have it, he can get it..."

>Who the fuck is John Borrison?

Well we know he lives in Soho, he has an emporium of well known whores, (referred to as "Boris Bikes" because amazingly "everyone has had a ride") and a mop of unruly straw coloured hair.

>You're setting us up to fight "Boris Johnson" DM...

So we return to the party of four (Cruella, wizard- still pissed by the way, Navvie - no longer naked, and myself who is surrounded by a cloud of most excellent and noxious smoke).

The party of four wait for dusk and assemble outside of the city mansion of Mr. Borrison, we have a look around. It's got highwalls and guards.

We retire to a nearby tavern (the Wizard would rather be drunk than hungover) to discuss.

>Topic 1

Do we want to kill Mr. Borrison?

Probably not. As far as we know he's a criminal but not actually bad as such.

>How do we get in and get out with the sword?

As we ponder. Suddenly, The Seeker by The Who on the bagpipes, and its coming from Borrison's house.

It's worth noting that the parties heavy weaponry (the gatling and the flamethrower) isn't being carted around with us.

So we skip now to Angus. He has been following the crudely drawn directions to John Borrisson's shop, house, warehouse and mansion (combined). He has been told to get there, and ask for the Apothecary.

He arrives and approaches the shop (i.e. the south side of the building).

The guard says (in awful cockney which again I'm not going to try)

"Nah the Ceildh (he pronounces it "Celd ay") is on the other side. Go round mate."

Angus looks shy, Angus says

"I'm actually here to see... The Apothecary..."

The guard looks him up and down,

"Hahaha what did you fuck?"

Angus goes as red as an orc can and heads into the shop.

He gives the apothecary (actually a very happy looking dryad) the list,

"Fucked a sheep did we?"

"HOW DO YOU PEOPLE ALL KNOW THIS?"

>DM: Angus your balls sure are sore... you sure you want to get pissed off at the only guy who might be able to help?

"I mean... yes I would like some ointment please."

The apothecary is rummaging through shelves, humming to himself, suddenly Angus stands bolt upright.

"I hear... I hear bagpipes!"

"Oh yeah, something the boss is up to, anyway look, this potion, there might be some side effects..."

Meanwhile, upstairs,

The bard is in his element, it turns out John Borrison isn't actually human, he has a thatch of straw for hair, not straw coloured.

(I mean he's an Ent)

The bard is on a table, piping to a court of criminals, they do their best to dance as the great tree claps and belches his joy.

The bard keeps rolling performance checks and he's doing beautifully.

He's well into Highland Laddie having already played Dashing White Sergeant and others. The Bard is over the moon.

About 1:40 in the video. The great stained glass window at the east side of the hall shatters.

"GIVE ME BACK MY SWORD YOU FUCK."

>Rewind

So the four of us are down the side of the building, we reason that shock and awe is our best tactic, we don't know if it's the bard inside, but he probably needs rescuing, therefore we decide to go full on Sir Lancelot and crash the party.

We acquire some rope, easily get up the side of the building (Cruella) and then abseil through the glass.

As Cruella shouts

"GIVE ME BACK MY SWORD YOU FUCK"

The bard stops playing.

>Change channel

Downstairs, Angus is handed the ointment.

Angus: "I'm gonna apply it now, my nads are on fire here."

>Angus roll a D20 please.

The DM consults a list. Please note that the DM checking a list is really, really bad. He starts laughing. That's even worse.

>Upstairs

There's a Mexican stand off developing, the entire room (although not well armed), vs the four of us with the bard in the middle.

It's looking bad.

Cruella stops shouting, instead she looks at John Borrison, straight in the eyes and says

"You have something of mine. Right next to you in fact. In that chest. I want it back."

"Why should I... (there is a large amount of pistols leveled at us by the party goers) give it to you?

Things get tense. DM has us rolling dice to see whose nerve breaks first. Us VS them.

Suddenly, the door at the North end of the hall is kicked down.

>Downstairs.

DM: "Yeah Angus... mate... look... your balls. They're actually... they're on fire..."

Angus's player: "Yeah I know they are, fucking sheep..."

DM: "No Angus, I mean, On. Fire."

Angus goes into a panic, screaming for water, everything in the apothecarion is either explosive or probably bad. Angus is directed upstairs, fanning his crotch with his kilt, he charges blindly, kicking down a door.

Angus bursts into the hall.

He's crotch is on fire, his kilt being flapped from nose to thigh rapidly. He is a true Scotsman and his Scotsman is wreathed in blue flame.

Angus runs straight through the middle of us, as he runs he spots an open cask of beer, and dunks his crotch.

>Best. Thing. Ever.

John Borrison is the first one to start laughing. He's also the first one to lower his weapons.

"Fine, have the sword, that was the best thing I've ever seen."

Later, as we dance, party and ceildh, I ask Angus something.

"Alright, I understand why the Bard was here, I know why we were here, and but why were you here?"

"Not. One. Fucking. Word. Not. One. Fucking. Word. Aldous."

And that Anon, was our beach episode.

We all got drunk, Angus got a bucket of ice, Cruella cuddled her sword.

1,001 Britbongsteros Nights

We wake up the next morning in various states of undress and very, very hungover, as we leave, the Bard asks

"Hey John Borrison, who was coming for the sword today anyway?"

"Some chick called Joan Dark."

"Do you mean D'arc?"

"Yeah close enough."

"Mind if we stay for a bit?"

So we decide to settle in and wait. Our new-tree-friend seems cool with the idea. We expect that one of three things may happen:

1. John Borrison will double cross us.

2. Joan will get pissed off, and John Borrison will double cross us.

3. Joan will understand that the deal is off, leave, then John Borrison will double cross us,

(the Purple Penguin is very trusting)

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

Joan removes her helmet.

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

Joan is a faerie, and therefore a posh person.

Cruella is a faerie and also a posh person.

>They went to school together.

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

The Navvie mutters to me under his breath

"If only they had bigger butts, this would be amazing..."

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

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

"Ladies?"

They ignore him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are a bit weirded out.

Cruella is quite happily nattering to other Cruella when she asks

"So what about the sword?"

and things get a bit frostier. A lot frostier.

Cruella: "It's my sword, and that's it."

Joan: "Couldn't you just lend it to us?"

"What do you want it for?"

"I shouldn't really tell you but we were going to..."

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

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

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

Cruella is happily breaching the official secrets act when we decide enough is enough,

"And the Aliens wanted me to be a Queen! I've always wanted kids..."

>Time to go...

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

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

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

>Who is...

Seriously you're gonna want to Google this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As a "trade mission" we are classed as one of those very same foreign advisers. Meaning we are packed aboard our very own battleship.

>Why are you using a battleship?

>Show of force, it's history.

The HMS Dreadnowt is the pride of the shipyards of Liverpool, the finest in Dwarven Engineering and she is the equal of the Brunmigi at the least.

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

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

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

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

Two in fact.

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

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

Obviously, we want them back.

So obviously, that the bard fires into Sabaton, Back in Control as we start to ponder.

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

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

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

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

We set off and start to nose around.

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

Have some music The Who, the Seeker

We do some more thinking,

The parties suggestions go along the lines of:

Bard: "I play the German National Anthem and we see who salutes. Then we murder them."

Navvie: "Pub?"

Angus: "We could try and offer money? Or failing that just burn everyone."

Wizard: "Well thinking about it, the carrier case on the albatross should have a unique insignia, but they won't have been dumb enough to keep the other with a matching pair, so that idea is useless."

Aldous: "We could always say we found the 2nd bit, and offer it up, see who comes to try and get it."

Cruella: "Why aren't we stabbing everyone?"

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

What didn't occur to us, was that just about every foreign power with a hand in Gib, was going to want those plans. So what shows up, is basically every foreign agent and backstabber on the peninsula.

"Damn what are we going to do with them all?"

"Aren't they all enemies of the crown anyway?"

>Murdered 'em all and looted their dead bodies

Thing is, the plans weren't there. Or at least not that we could find. We needed a clue. We'd probably just annihilated the lot of our clues however.

>The Purple Penguin is running out of options, we don't want to go back empty handed and say "well we probably got the bastard"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So we book it down to the harbour, there is boat already pulling out.

>How do we stop this tug sized boat?

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

Violence occurs, a lot, someone swallows what looks a lot like an albatross message case.

"HAHAH YOU WILL NEVER GET IT!"

Cruella resolves the issue with a knife and a little bit of cruelty (she guts him) we have the plans.

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

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

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

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

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

>Why should I care?

The discussions in character were a lot of fun, I can't remember much, but some time after the main course was finished, Cruella asks

"Captain DM, we are going to the Caliphate, I know from my geography at school that the women there have to wear Bhurkhas. I'm not wearing one of those."

Now normally an issue like this we wouldn't give a shit about. However, it was an interesting enough issue that we looked to the DM).

Captain DM: "Well Lady Cruella, I am given to understand that you are the [the following word was so weighted it should have fallen through the hull and sunk the ship] "companion" of Sir Aldous, as a "taken" woman, even of a different culture and maintaining different sensibilities to those of the land you are visiting, I would suggest it is wise to take up those sensibilities when you are there, you do not, for example, wish to be stoned. This holds true for all of you and I would suggest that when in the lands of the Caliphate, you observe their rules, at least in public. It is just good sense. No drinking for example, the Caliphate also has a very low opinion of [weighted again] those "peau verde" [green skin], meaning our comrade from Dundee (he means Angus) would be wise to take the guise of a slave."

>Angus finds this hilarious. Cruella still looks extremely unimpressed.

Cruella: "You mean I'm going to have to wear a sack? tch, no woman of my station would be seen dead in such a thing."

Captain DM: "My lady [tips captains hat], when you visited the North Pole, did you not dress warmly? The environment here is different, but equally as dangerous."

>She mulls this over, and nods.

Cruella: "Congratulations Angus, you just got promoted to my eunuch. You can carry my stuff."

Cruella seems satisfied with this explanation and sets about considering options for her outfit. This includes at some point the statement

"It's not a Burhka, I'm a ninja."

>No Godzilla, we actually let her off with this one.

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

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

Saxon, Crusader <- what the bard, master of tact that he is, piped us into harbour with.

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

>Who is Orrance?

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

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

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

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

>How are gods enslaved?

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

>We've captured another god! How shall we put them to work, bound to our will?

>Well, ummm...

>Eh....

>Have them... erm... tell the time, I guess?

>...

>Abdul, you're a moron. All in favour

>Aye!

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

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

As we come closer to the Shepheard, we start to see more foreign faces in the crowd, hear languages from all across Europe, as Horus marks 11:00 am, we arrive at the Shepherd, our horses safely tied up, and left under the supervision of the hotel staff, a very large turbaned man remarks to me,

"She is a fine one, how many camels is she worth?"

The entire party moves to grab Cruella, the fat man seeing what we are doing tucks his fingers into his belt and laughs uproariously,

"You barbarians are fantastic, I meant the horse. This one here, she would do just fine for my niece."

>Cruella looks a tiny bit offended.

"You must also be very rich to afford a horse for your eunuch! Ah, I had one of these years ago! They get rowdy but they warm your belly just the same in the night!"

>Angus is... not entirely sure about this.

"I am Ismail, I trade in dates. Perhaps you will join me once you have conducted your business here? I will be in the local souk."

He shakes the Navvie by the hand.

"You watch that short one. They are shifty little devils are they not?"

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

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

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

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

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

Orrance is deep in animated conversation,

"Why not let the the Arabs be, why must we even consider this? The army and navy are overstretched as is, a friendly caliphate will be enough and with the trade this will generate, it will be beneficial for both nations. We might even gain a real ally in the region, something we have never had, and we certainly need those."

"I say we simply annex and be done with it. The Germans can worry about it afterwards and the French can complain and then buy it from us if we let them!"

The other officer agrees with his friend. Orrance stands up and leaves in disgust. Running straight into us.

"We..."

"I know exactly why you're here and what you want. The Arabs have only one thing, and the Privy Council won't have sent you for any other reason. I'll have no truck with you."

and he barges straight past us.

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

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

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

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

We ask for directions to the Souk, and in the end are given one of the hotels employees to guide us (he looks to be about 12, his name is Ali). He leads us there, and asks us quite frankly,

"Why do you want to go there Effendi? I know much nicer places."

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

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

>What is a Souk?

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

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

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

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

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

It's our French doubles.

Again.

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

Ismail ushers us in, lights the hookah, and starts to explain

"I understand you all know each other! I have a favour I must ask of you all, I appreciate this meeting is surprise for some of you, but you (meaning us) I beg that you do me the courtesy of hearing me out. You will have seen the old gods in their debased condition as you came into the city, the old gods are not without followers, and it crushes us to see them used so. Sekhmet is still free, and we wish to keep her that way, in the hope that one day, the old gods will rise again. It is in the interests of both your countries that the caliphate cannot the goddess of war to use (that's Sekhmet) as it would make them far, far stronger."

Joan pitches in at this point.

"This is why we wanted the sword (Excalibur), the caliphate cannot kill the old gods, they do not have the means, the sword is one of the few things that can outright kill them. Were the old gods slain, the caliphate would be weaker."

There are a lot of Egyptian gods and goddesses kicking about and the majority more usefully employed than the above mentioned, for example Sobek is used to regulate the tides and floods of the Nile (this is a big deal), and Sopdet to ensure good harvests every year, also FYI the Egyptians had a deity of lettuce and cocks - really.

Ismail is however horrified by this,

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

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

(By the way this adventure took place around about the height of the Arab Spring, yup, we were considering...

>Regime change in the middle east).

Joan can see our confusion and indeed reticence.

"We are not asking you to make this choice now, but if the Caliphate learn of the sword and your bond to it, they will claim it for themselves, just... keep the thing safe and think about our offer."

Ismail is still horrified.

"You may provide my brothers and I with arms but... this... this is too much. OUT, get out! You would insult the memory of my entire people and everything around which our hope still gathers, it is disgusting. OUT."

The French leave, likely not wanting to cause a diplomatic incident (and there are an awful lot of people in this market likely to be friendly to Ismail), we don't follow them.

Ismail beseeches us,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>The ground shakes a little.

>Godzilla?

No. God, yes. Zilla, no.

"Hey look! It's Ali!"

"What's he doing? Why is he pissing on that statue and saying those weird things?"

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

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

>Where the fuck did that come from?

We have no idea. Looks like not all of the gods are enslaved.

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

We have about five seconds to consider our options:

1. Leg it?

2. Kill it?

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

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

Now bear in mind that the DM has just explained options 1 and 2 above (along with his caveat of:

"Or do whatever the fuck you want don't cry to me if you die? Oh and yes I'd love a beer"

he pops his beer and adds,

"Just FYI for those of you who don't know about Babi, he is one of the many Egyptian gods of Cock (wiki it). You also have five seconds to choose. 1..."

"Two... It takes a step towards you."

"Three... it roars again."

>Oh fuck it. Let's kill it.

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

>Bard you're up. What are you gonna do?

"I play an inspiring song!"

>rollplz

>It's a one.

>DM: Ok you shoulder your pipes, take a deep breath and play Aqua - Barbie girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His movements are slowed but similarly as is Cruellas ascent.

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

The Roks circle and dive bomb.

The bard finally finishes his first song and rolls again.

Texas Hippie Coalition: "Turn It Up"

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

Babi is starting to realize he's fucked.

Cruella is on his shoulder. Excalibur in hand. Ready to go for the jugular.

"I've never killed a God before. You know what this sword can do don't you?"

She shouts into his ear.

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

Cruella continues:

"Let go. Be a slave, or die. Now."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a couple of key questions:

1. Are the caliphate dicks?

2. Do we care?

3. Does Britain care?

4. How do we use this to our advantage in getting whatever it is that we are here to steal?

1. Well they aren't very nice to the old gods, but so what? They have different (not necessarily better or worse) customs.

2. We at this point don't particularly mind. They haven't done anything to us, they aren't our allies and at least they have put all these random deities to work.

3. Yes. A weak caliphate could be conquered by us. A new regime favourable to us would also be useful. We may not want the oil directly but we want to deny it to the rest of Europe.

4. Ismail and his brothers include the Arabs. Those same Arabs who have what we want to steal. If we help overthrow or at least damage the caliphate, they should like us.

The bard makes the case for the purple penguin.

"The people here are unhappy. They are poor. Dirty. Downtrodden. They have a caste system and no hope."

The rejoinder is:

"Would changing who is on top alter this? Would British rule make it any better? They might be under the heel of our government but they would all equally be so."

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

>What about the French?

Well what about them? Are they necessarily even on our side?

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

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

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

>Camels

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

>Camels. Are. Dicks.

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

Whitesnake, is this love?

Angus bites it back.

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

As we approach the guards, they chuckle and and ask us what we want?

"We are here to see Orrance."

(DM cannot do anything close to an Arabian accent without it sounding like Team America and I am not going to either)

"He's not seeing anyone."

>We are slightly stumped by this.

"Why not?"

"He's not here"

"Oh."

"Where is Orrance?"

"He went to... wait a minute why should we tell you?"

This is actually an exceptionally good point. Why should they tell us?

We're not exactly well known, Orrance doesn't really like us anyway, so...

>The Navvie hands over the token of Sekhmet

The guards have a look at it, adjust their thawbs. Ponder it.

"What are we meant to do with this thing? I'll give you half a dinari for it? It's kinda nice."

We've killed gods, queens, necromancers, and now, we are absolutely stumped by some chaps wearing bed sheets.

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

This shouldn't be such an issue, but (and the DM is punishing us for being dim I think) it is.

"Will he be back tonight. Can we wait for him?"

They tell us we can, and we settle into as much shade as we can find. We get a useful opportunity to observe the Arabs as they camp, most remain in tents, others tend to animals, they are nomadic so it seems, or at least these are.

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

Orrance arrives about sunset, looking very tired. He spots us, and directs his camel in our direction.

"What on earth do you lot want? I thought I told you all to bugger off last time."

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

The Navvie speaks. He isn't the most social of characters but he is sincere. That is actually quite useful.

"If you want us to help, show us why we should? There is the political situation here, which you are obviously involved in, somehow, and the situation in Arabia. Why should we help you and why should we go to the effort of trying to without knowing why?"

Orrance mulls this over and decides this actually makes a fair amount of sense. He might have gone native but he is still British and a servant of the crown.

"Alright. Come to my tent, we can discuss there."

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

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

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

>fuck you DM

Ali whispers to Orrance.

"So I hear you have Excalibur with you..."

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

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

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

>We explain the following:

1. We have nothing against the Arabs. (Not entirely true, we want to steal their shit)

2. Britain wants a weak caliphate, but also access to the oil. (We do not mention we want to steal the process of extracting it, whatever it is, just learn where it comes from)

3. The French support the Caliphate in wanting the old gods dead.

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

>What does Orrance want?

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

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

Therefore, whatever it is, he wants it wrecked.

Also, have my favourite maiden song Iron Maiden - The Clansman

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

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

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

We wait.

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

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

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

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

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

We consider this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

>Accordion music

What is round the corner?

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

>What would Purple Penguin do?

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

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

A new music replaces the accordion. Iron Maiden- The Trooper (HD with Lyrics)

I should really describe the rest of the French Party

Joan D'arc is easy enough.

The short angry dwarf woman with a rotary flail.

A nun who seems to be able to levitate things.

A kobold with an ice gun,

A navvie type who is a big lumberjack with an axe,

The now deceased stripey jumper-ed accordion playing beret-ed bard.

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

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

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

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

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

We try to tend to the wounds of those still alive. There are not many. Joan is one of them. We ask her

"What were you doing here?"

"We tried to stop them, they used the toe to open..." She falls unconscious. The kobold follows on for her.

"There is something down here that could alter the balance of power in the world, we came to try to take it, or at least destroy what was down here."

"And we," the leader of the Germans, a huge man of a bear, or bear of a man, take your pick he's half and half, "had things entirely under control."

He continues

"We knew you had accessed something similar at the north pole" (again I'm not even going to try a German accent) "and with the consent of the Caliphate, we sought to open what was here. We have done so. We will claim what lies within."

He has been looking around the room, and is starting to realize we may not outnumber him, we could definitely stop him doing anything we didn't want.

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

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

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

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

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

>What do we know about these aliens?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What the hell is going on?"

The largest of the bears pokes the remains with his boot.

"Poor Hans. I thought this might happen."

"You what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Experimentally, the Navvie, with all of our guns trained on him, picks the thing up.

>"Hello it's very dark in here..."

>AAAAAAAHFUCKFUCKFUCKITALKS

The Navvie promptly drops the thing as though he has been stung. The Chief Bear seems quite impressed.

"So this is it, an alien device sealed down here by Horus himself, locked away with the bodies of a thousand of his most devote followers to serve as a warning to others and to stand guard over it."

>Britbongsteros and the bowling ball of doom

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

While the song is about Angus, the accent is wizard. Evil Scotsman With Lyrics

"Aye baw fit do ye want?"

"What? I am Antrygos the annihilator!"

"Och ats good, but whit are ye aboot?"

"I am here to stop the unbelievers, they are here to increase their numbers and..."

"De ye mean the wans whae winted to shag this lass?" (He points to Cruella. Note that bowling ball has no eyes, is also encased in lead)

"The breeding unit?" (The DM makes a very odd noise, it later emerges this is because someone kicked his shin under the table)

"Onywae whit are you doing here and hoo dae wae kill ye?"

"What? You cannot kill me! I..."

We hear running feet, we are presented with a conundrum. The Caliphate will take this thing off us, and we don't want that. The bears will tell them about it....

The purple penguin would not be happy of we killed them, so we talk.

"Alright, do you agree this thing is dangerous?"

"Yes."

"Do you also agree that it is better contained than released?"

"Yes."

"Do you agree that it is better in our hands than theirs?"

"Yes."

We take the ball and chief bear, being a bear of honour, gives a salute and nod.

We leg it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the further task is, is to release Horus.

>A brief note on the Egyptian gods.

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

How do we know it was 1497?

Because suddenly dragons, orcs, and cthulu.

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

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

>Where's Jesus then?

Jesus was (apparently) a person.

>Ok where's God?

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

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

>what do we know about Horus?

Well he is chained up on the banks of the Nile and currently serving as a clock.

>What will freeing him do?

He can escape into the desert and give hope to Ismail's folk, he can also lead an army to overthrow the caliphate. In 1497 he didn't have many worshipers, now he has more, not many, but enough, enough he is starting to sober up... He is probably the best chance they have, especially if he can free other gods.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We go round the group for suggestions:

Bard: "We need to break the chains. Could we use explosives?"

Angus: "The thermic lance probably won't work. Also, explosives might... if it was directed, it just might... We know from previous experience that enough dakka can kill a god, so we will have to be careful."

Wizard: "Chains are cold iron that I didn't create, fuck all I can do. The dreadnowt (our pet battleship) might have some spare."

Cruella "So we are going to blow up a god, but only slightly? I wonder if Babi could help? Can we free him too? He looked so sad..."

Rest of group: "So you will happily murder anything that is human, but if it's fluffy then we should be nice to it?"

Cruella: "He might be useful, also yes."

"Wasn't he going to kill us all?"

"Oh shush. For once I want to be nice, and I got him into this..."

Ok so now we are freeing both.

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

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

We travel to the dreadnowt (not exactly far) and pleasingly it seems all is normal aboard (at least no one has turned into anything they shouldn't have...). We acquire (after Angus, Wizard and I have a chat) a couple of shells from the main battery. They are armour piercing and fucking heavy. They should do the job.

"How are we going to set them off?" Asks the Navvie as he picks them up easily.

That is a very good question. The wizard seems to think, however, he can direct something like a coin or hammer with enough force to set off the smaller ignition charges and those will do the rest.

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

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

We go for the Nile side. There are even less guards here....

>DM, this wouldn't be a trap would it?

>Why on earth would you think that?

>Well maybe because you're pure evil as DMs go....

>Of course it isn't a trap...

It's a trap.

The first thing we notice is Babi sniffing the air. He looks right at us.

"Ook?"

Cruella makes a shushing motion, he waves backwards at us. He might be an ape but the gesture of "no! Run!" is pretty clear.

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

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

Wikipedia:

The Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) is an African crocodile and the second largest extant reptile in the world, after the saltwater crocodile.

On average the Nile crocodile is between 4.1 metres (13 ft) to 5 metres (16 ft), weighing around 410 kg (900 lb). However, specimens measuring 6.1 metres (20 ft) in length and weighing 907 kg (2,000 lb) have been recorded. They have thick scaly skin that is heavily armored.

>Now add Britbongsteros.

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

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

>Shit! Run!

Except of course

"Smaller specimens can gallop, and even larger crocodiles are capable of surprising bursts of speed"

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

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

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

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

The Navvie (unbeknownst to us) makes a detour. Stopping at Babi. Babi is manacled hand and foot with decent sized chains (nowhere near the foot across links used on Horus). The Navvie gestures for Babi to lay his wrist chains on the anvil used to fashion the iron bars (which after use on Horus get recycled into bayonets).

"Ook?"

The wizard conjures a spike of the hardest alloy he knows of and the Navvie brings that hammer down.

"Ook!"

He does it again on the second set of chains.

"OOK!"

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

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

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

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

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

The bard by now has switched songs Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark and alarms go off across the city. Horus, rising against the moon, looking bigger, weirder, and frankly more pissed off than anything we have seen yet.

"Thank you mortals."

He stoops and picks up Babi by the scruff of the neck and sets off in the direction of Anubis. Babi carries the last remaining croc with him having subdued (concussed) his new friend.

>The old gods return.

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

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

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

We awake on a new day, and look out into the city as breakfast is being prepared. Quite a lot of it is on fire or wrecked.

>oops.

It also seems like the Caliphate is in total disarray. Ismail is happy with Orrance in charge, so our fat happy merchant friend will guide us out into the deserts of Araby. We have a couple hours to make ready and are assisted with supplies and camels (Angus gets his favourite again).

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

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

We should, and do, feel bad about this.

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

Have some mood music: it's a bit different to the usual metal but seemed fitting Arabic Music - The Desert Lounge Vol IV

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

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

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

Day 6 is uneventful, but hotter and hotter.

Day 7 - "Ismail, are we nearly there yet?"

"Tomorrow I promise, effendi."

Day 8 - "Where the fuck are we ismail? The camels are starting to complain, getting grumpier. Angus is sunburnt to fuck."

Day 9 - "Ismail, are we lost?"

"No effendi it can't be far now..."

Day 10 - Ismail's camel drops dead.

>DM, just for ONCE can we go somewhere and not... hang on... Camels take six or seven MONTHS to dehydrate.

>Come to think of it, we're all a bit more dehydrated than we should be, and the rest of the camels are looking peaky.

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

We are starting to suspect something is wrong here.

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

>By the purple penguin it is fucking hot.

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

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

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

>Has anyone got any bright ideas?

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

The wizard drops.

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

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

We agree to try to head east. Our progress slower and slower with each dead camel. Finally, we are left with Angus's camel with the weakest members of the party on her back.

>Why are the camels dying?

We don't know... we are fucked...

>A spot, a spot on the horizon... it's... is that green?

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

Feet rise and fall, each step slower than the last, chapped lips would bleed, but we are too dehydrated. The sun is getting higher, hotter. We walk, a slow steady, lung burning mantra of

"Fuck it's hot" right step

"Fuck you DM" left step

"Fuck it's hot" right step

"Fuck you DM" left step

The green dot isn't going away... it is getting bigger...

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

What's that funny flappy thing?

>A caliphate flag

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

The last one isn't full of water. It's full of sand and a note.

>Camels poisoned. Ali.

>I fucking hate this kid.

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

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

Dehydrated and half dead? More than a deadly challenge.

>Plans?

>Surrender? The Purple Penguin spits upon you for your cowardice.

>CHARGE! Might work...

>Make as much noise and violence as possible when they're sleeping and see what happens?

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

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

>Flamethrowers are amazing at crowd control

>As are gatling shotguns

Bard does his best as well: Slayer Raining Blood (Hilariously apt DM, thanks)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seconds later from beneath the corpse, oil bubbles, then flows, then gushes.

>aaaaaaaw fuck.

"Ismail... dude... did you know about this?"

"Of course I did. We only use people who volunteer."

"What do you mean volunteer?"

"Well they are mostly slaves really, their owners volunteer them and..."

>The purple penguin is starting to froth at the mouth

"Ok, who is that priest guy?"

"That would be one of the cult, they don't follow the old gods. They are very good at doing this magic though are they not, effendi?"

Ok. Huddle up.

1. We need that process.

2. Fuck this cult.

3. If we (ok wizard) can learn whatever the fuck it is, maybe we can reverse engineer it and make it less murdery.

"Ismail, we would like to meet one of the priests please."

Ismail is extremely happy to arrange this. He suggests we take a goat.

The priests reside in an old fortress nearby. Ismail merrily gives exposition on who they are.

>The priests of (I can't post the Arabic characters in text but it's pronounced Daem, which, delightfully, is Arabic for blood) (yay!) They were kicked out of the caliphate for being too extreme and generally weird, practicing magic that was forbidden and entirely unholy. They were welcomed by the Arabs who are actually just nice guys, and they took them in as down on their luck folks without realizing what these guys were about.

Then the oil happened and the Cult of Daem got to be very wealthy, they don't care about influence or power, just the occasional blood sacrifice or virgin here and there.

There are about sixty of them, and every so often they tap wells like this.

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

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

Step 1, acquire goat.

This is done easily enough.

Step 2. Wait a minute, does anyone speak Arabic?

Ismail, and possibly the penguin.

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

We think so. He seems nice enough.

Step 3. Acquire favour within the cult.

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

Have some more mood music seeing as anon liked it. Chillout Arabian Lost In The Desert

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

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

"For her, I would give much gold, enough for forty others."

We close in around Cruella again to prevent another murder.

"I mean the camel, not that skinny thing"

Cruella: "Why do people keep doing that?"

Party: "We'll explain later just don't stab anyone right now please..."

Angus steps forward to defend his camel.

"She is worth a hundred others, there is none like her" (he really liked that camel)

"Ha. I will give you two."

"Two what?"

"Of your hearts desire, eunuch. Then I would pluck that heart out and feast on it"

He walks away laughing.

>What the fuck was that about DM? Is he just crazy or crazy and evil?

Ismail answers: "That was Al'Fella. Please, effendi, we were very lucky to have survived that..."

"Why?"

"He is the leader of the cult of Daem. The best and worst of them."

We have a feeling he is not the best at ethics and the worst at blood sacrifice. We ask Ismail

"How are we going to get to learn any of this stuff if he doesn't like us?"

Ismail laughs now, that big fat belly laugh that seemed really jolly and lovely in Cairo is actually creepy as fuck now.

"Didn't like you? He loved you!"

"Wut?"

"Are you dead? No? Then he liked you. He made a joke, then he really liked you. You are still not dead for the punchline? He must love you!"

We are in a really weird place and awfully far from home.

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

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

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

>The DM is a dick

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

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

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

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

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

Ismail says

"Speak after me"

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

I'll do it in doric

"Ok wizard, tell them you come to learn."

"Aye ahm hir tae oonderstan yer magik."

Heads start to pop out over the battlements.

"Tell them you want to get answers to your questions."

"Ahm winting ye tae answir mae thae question thrae."

"And that you bring them this offering."

"Ah bright ye ah goat"

"Now slit its throat."

"Whit?"

"Do it."

DM: "Wizard PC, close your eyes and hold out hand please."

DM: "Do you do it?"

Wizard PC "Aye, I mean yes."

>DM squeezes tomato ketchup onto wizard's hand.

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

The creak closed behind us in proper horror movie fashion.

We we are in. What next?

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

Who greets us? Our good friend Al.

(again whenever someone speaks Ismail is interpreting)

Al: "You come seeking wisdom?"

"We wish to learn how to take oil from the ground, yes."

"Very well. There will be trials. I suggest you take some time to compose yourselves. Why not enjoy refreshments while we prepare."

He claps his hands and a group of slave Leias bring in some tea. We sip, reclining on cushions. As we finish our drinks, Ismail kindly pours more, there is a note under the pot.

Ismail reads aloud

"The first trial has begun."

The doors slam shut and bolts turn.

"The tea was poisoned. The antidote is somewhere in this room. There is enough for half of you."

Those who are best at searching (Angus and Cruella) start doing so. The rest of us do our best to assist while working out how we can make half the dose work for everyone. We don't have any kind of magic healing person, the bard isn't bad at medicine, but he isn't exactly going to help.

>The DM places his alarm clock on the table.5 minutes.

We search, frantically, after a little while, Angus finds a glowing blue bottle and swigs from it, about the same time Cruella finds a purple one and, being a bit brighter, doesn't.

>Is this it? Are these one dose each? Two? We don't know...

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

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

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

Wizard: "Well, Ismail is fucked..."

Cruella: "Who ever wants to take this off me can try..."

Aldous: "Drink mine, I have lived long enough."

Navvie: "I agree you have... gimme!"

Bard: "Guys! Guys! We can't end like this we...(OOC now) would the DM kill half us us so arbitrarily? Would he kill us in such a stupid way?"

DM: "Actually I did bring some new character sheets." (dm ruffles papers)

15 seconds

Bard: (IC) "Refuse to drink it, these are cultists obsessed with blood. They want to see if we turn on each other... Don't."

>The alarm clock rings.

DM: "Well I need a slash, I will be back in a minute. Who wants a beer?"

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

Al returns

"Ha! Well done, normally they fight like tooth and nail. It is so much fun to watch. You have survived the first trial!"

>Note that the session ended for the night there, DM fearing reprisals.

As mentioned last time, DM was rounded upon for nearly arbitrarily killing the entire party twice.

>Our DM is a Cunt.

So he decided to try harder this time. Going all the way back to the first time I talked about Britbongsteros, he liked offering us choices... Difficult ones.

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

>Jelly babies (they are a British sweet which for some reason are in the shape of babies)

>There is a collective intake of breath.

>DM opens the bag and starts lining up jelly babies on the table. Little serried colourful ranks.

>"Can I have a knife and a chopping board please? And a beer? Also would anyone like a jellybaby?"

>No one seems inclined.

Mad Ali launches into some exposition as the DM happily munches jellybabies.

"Come follow me, it is interesting to see a group of supplicants all survive the first trial. I understand only one of you is magically inclined (He means the wizard), what the rest of you hope to learn is not in my understanding, unless perhaps [wizard] you have brought me some new "volunteers"? That would be most kind of you."

Mad Ali giggles at a joke only he seems to get.

>DM bites the head off a jellybaby.

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

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

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

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

Mad Ali keeps talking

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

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

Cruella seems to be chewing something.

("I like jellybabies, fuck off").

Angus: "Guys what are we gonna do? If he does what I think he is about to ask to do, we can't go through with it, we can't let him kill someone in front of us either."

Navvie: "I think Ali has a point, you know we did just inadvertently have half of Cairo smashed. What's a little blood sacrifice?"

Bard: "I do not like hard decisions!"

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

The bundle starts to cry.

>Oh shit we are gonna have to kill everyone now...

>DM slowly, carefully, chops the head off a jelly baby and eats it.

>He does it again.

Mad Ali speaks:

"Blood is important. Blood is everything. Blood is..."

The baby wails. Ali continues

"Ooogooo woogly googly oooogly"

The baby gurgles and claps. He cradles the child.

"This is my son, my flesh and blood. He will carry on my work after I am done. Is he not beautiful? Blood is important."

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

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

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

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

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

"This is the avatar of our God..."

We peer into the water. It's rather a big shape.

"HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT?"

Ali throws his arms out wide.

"Is Ibil al'Daem not perfect?"

Navvie: "That's a dunleosteous mate."

The Navvie is quite correct from what we can see. Ali continues

"Those who wish to learn must be judged worthy."

He removes a bracelet and tosses it into the pool.

"You do wish to be found worthy do you not? Retrieve it."

The Dunkleosteus (who I'm going to just call Duncan) scents blood in the water and thrashes about. The wizard looks on nervously.

"Go retrieve it! Duncan can scent cowardice"

Wizard: "I'm not going in bloody there...."

Party: "Yes you sodding are."

Ali: "Do you wish to forfeit the trial?"

Cruella: "Isn't the bracelet metal?"

Wizard: "Yes... why?... oooooh."

The wizard closes his eyes and sure enough, the bracelet rises above the water, Duncan makes a bite at it but misses, it lands at Ali's feet. He seems a tiny bit put out that no one dived in.

"The normal process is to satiate Duncan with slaves first... But I am sure he will not be hungry for long..."

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

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

The wizard seems to be ok learning on goats but everytime we see him he is covered in more and more blood. Learning this stuff can't be good for him. Eventually he reports that

"Ali says tomorrow I am ready to practice on humans"

>Time perhaps to put an end to this...

We interrogate him,

"Does this mean he knows everything required to drill for oil?"

"Nearly."

Tomorrow is when he will learn.

"Can the process be modified to work without humans?"

"Yes, probably."

That settles it then. Tomorrow we wipe out the cult of Daem. They may have been quite nice to us, really nice in fact, but the fact of the matter is... they practice human sacrifice and that is enough of a reason for the purple penguin.

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

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

We discover his absence on waking the next morning.

We search for him to no avail, we definitely had him with us when we went to our separate quarters, his room seems to have no trapdoors or secret passages we...

>Ali sweeps in

We tactfully ask him where Angus is.

"Your slave? I have had him staked out in the desert. I assume that is why you brought him..."

(Anon may recall that Angus was notionally disguised as Cruella's slave for this adventure to allow him, as an orc, to be seen in public)

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

We follow him out into the desert, with Ismails help, the wizard asks,

"If most of this works on goats, why do you need to use people? Couldn't you just modify the process?"

Mad Ali seems a bit shocked by the idea.

"Because Daem demands it, you wouldn't want to insult Daem would you?"

"No no of course we don't want to insult your crazy God."

In the distance there is a scream, a crack and a pillar of oil gushing into the sky.

Ali: "Oh look at that, they have started without us!"

>Oh fuck they've started without us.

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

Mad Ali takes us to a restrained body near Angus. DM takes great pleasure in describing the poor disheveled slave, how the bonds chafe her wrists, how her eyes implore us.

Mad Ali: "Practice on this one first. Use what you have learnt wizard."

He looks expectantly.

The wizard totally fluffs his attempt to postpone things.

"I... I'm... umm... are you sure?"

"Yes wizard, use what you have learned, you know the ritual, I will complete the last step."

There is a lot of muttering between the party as this goes on. It boils down to

"Are we going to let her he exploded? We still don't know the last steps... we might need those..."

Suddenly this seems very familiar, thinking back to the first adventure, this is sort of fate is what we were saving people from... But we really need that process...

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

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

Blood soaks into the sand.

Cruella drives Excalibur deeper into Ali's chest.

Ismail doesn't translate but he manages to gasp what can only be

"Why?"

>Because purple penguins. That's why.

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

One of the latter category asks us (via Ismail)

'Aren't you afraid of [Duncan]?'

"Ha! Why should we be afraid of a fish in a desert?"

'You really should be...'

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

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

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

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

>Where the fuck is everybody?

Our first port of call is where we were staying, Angus collects his flamethrower.

Angus: "I wonder what Dunkelosteus tastes like?"

On our way to the lower levels we pass through the courtyard, and confirm that one very familiar camel is still alive as are some others. We decide this is probably going to get violent, but we should probably bring based Ismail along in case we need to be diplomatic.

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

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

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

Based Ismail stands near the altar looking in, we have a quick conference,

Let's go, what is a fish gonna do, and the cult is all dead. We should check again for survivors and get gone."

Ismail starts to speak,

"Let's not look for survivors, lets not wait around, let's GO!"

Ismail continues,

"Please effendi, it is not a good idea to stay we must leave."

The blood/water/watery-blood seems to be rising. It's level with the top of my boots now and getting higher.

"Please we must leave this is a very bad place to be now...."

Ismail still has his back to the pool. Damn that blood is rising fast.

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

Then this happens.

>Hi Duncan, you seem a lot bigger...

>We are gonna need a bigger boat...

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

Duncan bides his time in his pool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly...

>Actually where is that fish?

We hold onto the wizard as he leans out to place the first piton.

We watch the water carefully.

Nothing.

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

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

I was trying to think of an appropriately sea based metal song. I got stuck on this: The Life Aquatic Soundtrack - Ping Island/Lightining Strike Rescue Op though really I should go with Sabbath - Children of the Sea. Anyway, back to Duncan.

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

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

We keep climbing, knowing that we're gonna have to swim the final stretch, and really must do something about him.

>What exactly can we do about one extremely large, angry, armoured, god-fish?

We try to plan as best we can, fire isn't gonna do much, neither will shotgun shells, getting close to hammer/stab him doesn't seem wise either, this leaves the wizard and the bard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duncan, true to form, does his best to eat Angus, who due to some very lucky rolls is able to avoid being eaten and is actually totally unscathed, Duncan does grab the canister and swallows it. Whole.

>Oh.

So we are left with charm fish or a new plan, the water is rising...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>Portents of doom

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

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

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

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

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

Antrygos makes everyone near him uneasy, he doesn't seem to be doing much beyond rolling, we can't see him rolling (but we hate him). He doesn't roll in easy motions like with the waves but fast and frenetic, stopping, starting, never with a rhythm, moments of silence then thudding like he's jumping.

"Maybe we should crack the door?

We chat about the idea, doing our best not to listen to him bouncing or whatever alien balls do.

>GREETINGS OAF, IDIOT, MIDGET, BREEDER, LECHER, AND SKILLED MUSICIAN.

His voice comes from right in the middle of us. Definitely not muffled by the room.

There's nothing in the hallway, and we can still hear him rolling about.

>I SAID GREETINGS. ANSWER ME MORTALS.

Cruella: "Aaw he sounds lonely."

>I NEED NONE OF YOUR PITY MORTAL, BUT YES I YEARN FOR COMPANY

"You do realize you eat people and turn them into Martians Antrygos? You're not exactly likeable."

>I AM TO BE FEARED NOT LIKED.

"Alright well we could just go and leave you to it..."

>NO DO NOT GO. I COMMAND IT.

"So you are lonely?"

>YES. NO. I DEMAND AN AUDIENCE.

"And why is that Antrygos?"

>I HAVE WAITED MANY YEARS ALONE

Cruella: "Aaw."

>AND NOW YOU SHOULD KNOW THE CHANCES OF ANYTHING COMING FROM MARS DO NOT WANE (Wayne?), THEY GROW.

"And what do you mean by that Antgyros?"

>THE ENEMY IS COMING. IT IS CERTAIN.

He bounces around some more.

"How do you know?"

>CAN YOU NOT FEEL THEIR CREEPING PRESENCE? OR ARE YOU BEASTS THAT UNDERDEVELOPED?

"He sure is a nice guy huh?"

>YOUR AFFAIRS ARE BEING WATCHED BY INTELLIGENCES GREATER THAN YOURS. SCRUTINIZED LIKE THE TRANSIENT CREATURES THAT SWARM AND MULTIPLY IN A DROP OF WATER. ANTGYROS CARES NOT. ANTGYROS CARES ONLY FOR HIMSELF. ANTGRYOS DEMANDS YOU SACRIFICE YOURSELVES TO PROTECT HIS MIGHT.

"Antgyros are you... are you scared?"

>ANTGYROS CANNOT FEEL FEAR. ANTGYROS KNOWS NOT THIS EMOTION.

"You are, aren't you?"

>NEVER. THEY REGARD YOUR EARTH WITH ENVIOUS EYES AND SLOWLY AND SURELY, DRAW THEIR PLANS AGAINST YOU. ANTGYROS DEMANDS YOU ENSURE HE SURVIVES.

"Antgyros. You're terrified..."

>NO. I FEEL NO FEAR.

The ball stops rolling.

"Can you tell us what's coming Antgyros?"

He remains silent.

"When will they arrive?"

He remains silent.

"Why are you so afraid."

There is a final decisive clunk as though he has come to rest and isn't going to move again for some time.

So begins our next tale.

Good Omens, or Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Kaiser?

Antgyros refuses to be drawn for the rest of the voyage. We actually begin to suspect he's ignoring us. We dock at Portsmouth at night, waving goodbye to the Dreadnowt and feeling a bit cold to arrive in a Britbongsteros winter.

There's a couple things worth restating at this point. Long range communication in Britbongsteros is done by albatross or telegraph. News is fast but not that fast. Especially not on the Dreadnowt calling in at foreign ports.

News that the Germans have annexed Ipswich comes as a bit of a surprise.

We are obligated to return first to London and the Privy Council, taking Antgyros with us. He won't answer questions but does occasionally exclaim

>GET YOUR DAMN DIRTY PAWS OFF ME YOU APE

and similar.

We meet with Sir Patrick (CYBORG MURDER BODY) Moore and hand over Antgyros. He listens with great interest as we explain who and what he is. Sir Patrick (robot McFacepunch) Moore informs us he has seen seven sequential flashes come from Mons Olympus on each of the last consecutive nights.

If that sounds familiar, well it should...

We leave Antgyros and Sir Patrick (bionic man of violence) (it really helps if you think of him as being a space marine Dreadnought) Moore to chat.

Richard III and Blackadder seem fairly pleased with us, and the process is demonstrated near Windsor Castle (yes, there's oil under that) using a sheep.

We share a mutton curry with Richard III and Blackadder, and the process is safely written down to be transmitted via albatross to Aberdeen.

Then we come to the "annexation."

The Germans have landed in divisional strength in Ipswich. Two brigades of Bears and one of Prussian Gryphons. They don't seem overtly hostile, just they have claimed Ipswich and are fortifying it.

The Privy Council have a plan which is two-fold:

1. We (the party) politely ask them to fuck off.

2. We drive a battalion of Landcruisers into Ipswich.

>Why are they there?

We have no idea, it's Ipswich!

>Why weren't they stopped/spotted?

After the Ireland "incident" there's not as much home fleet as you'd expect. They are keeping a fleet of Cruisers off Walmington on Sea. There is still a local force in platoon strength of soldiers from the Boer War doing sterling services guarding their homes and reporting on German movements. Their Captain Manwaring (V.C.) and Lance Corporal (V.C., O.B.E., Khorne Bezerker) Jones have kept up observation via albatross and telegraph since the "annexation" with L.C. Jones holding a bridge against successive waves of bears with nothing but a broomhandle with a knife strapped to it.

In other news, King Algernon has made representations to the Kaiser, but we have yet to have received a reply.

The communications from the locals in Ipswich indicate the Germans are not hostile, but are politely and efficiently taking names of locals and then moving them outside of the town. They are digging in like they expect the entire first world war to take place in the locale of Ipswich.

So just making sure all non-british anons are following: Home Guard (Dad's army).

>TFW when your entire party could be dad's army.

Anyway. So the Landcruisers, at top speed of 8 knots per hour, will arrive in Ipswich in 48 hours. We have that time to come to a peaceful solution.

Sir Hobart is leading the Landcruisers along with Sir Rirchard Clarkson May and they are being escorted by a Ghurkha regiment lead by Sir Stahig (pronounced Stig).

So with the Germans not actually being as hostile as one might expect an invasion to be, and instead they respond to force, but only on a local level. It's like they are here to fight, but not us...

So with the clock ticking, we head onward. We know the Landcruisers will reach the area by dawn the day after tomorrow, and we arrive near Colchester with 40 hours to go. We don't really have a plan yet, but the vague outline of one is starting to form.

It may be helpful for anon to have a map at this stage.

Just replace Walton on the Naze with Walmington on Sea. So if you've found Colchester, the Germans have landed all along the coast between Walmington and up the coast to Felixstowe, they're inland as far as Ipswich and have stopped there.

The majority of their forces are in the city or surrounding it, digging in and fortifying. The Landcruisers, once ready, will push from Colchester into Ipswich via Copdock (for the Brit-anons it may be fun to imagine the Dad's Army arrows at this stage) while the remains of the Home Fleet will try to circle in from the North and South, trying to close the gap between Felixstowe and Walmington. Even with less hostility than expected, this is still a landing by a foreign power on our coast.

We (the party) are the last attempt at diplomacy and wouldn't even be trying diplomacy if they hadn't been so efficient and reasonable.

The party agrees that walking straight up to their lines, while normally completely insane, actually seems like (with a flag of truce) our best option.

It's about Noon when we set off from Washbrook. The bard pipes and we have a white flag. We are moving slowly, thoroughly, and making it very, very obvious we don't have any malicious intent.

The bard plays something neutral (or tries to but fluffs the roll), so off we go to the strains of Raubtier - Achtung Panzer.

It turns out walking across what is nominally no-mans land, we receive no fire, though we can see plenty of troops dug in front of us.

Given that the Bard's performances have been fatal previously, we stop playing about 500 yards out.

We get closer, there are birds singing now, and lots and lots of gun barrels ahead of us. The nature around us is strangely idyllic, English, plants and animals around us, the land green and pleasant.

We jump as a rabbit takes off out of a bush, but we proceed unmolested, we can make out individual figures in feld-grau now.

As we get closer to the trenches, a shape rises, a Prussian Gryphon.

He has enough English and we have enough German to communicate.

"Who are you and what do you want Englander?"

He takes a notebook and pencil from his uniform.

"Names und addresses bitte."

I'm not proud to say what followed was a babble of.

>Don't tell him your name wizard

>Don't tell him you name Navvie

>Don't tell him your name Aldous

"Hi, I'm Bard!"

He looks unimpressed and smooths his moustaches.

"You really ought not to be here."

"Neither should you!"

"Ve haff (ahem) we have as much a right as you!"

"You're German!"

"We are on state business. This is not an invasion, it is a peacekeeping annexation."

"A what?"

"You can't just march in here and take Ipswich!"

"We are doing so because it is undefended and weak. Herr Schiarperelli says so."

"Who?" (Wait a minute that sounds... familiar).

We don't really want to declare war on Germany (I don't, this I've made this sufficiently clear) as the country is still weak. War may be an eventual certainty, yes, but at this stage after everything (we have blown up and) the nation has been through, now is not the time for war.

This is why we are here to politely ask the Germans to bugger off.

The gryphon looks us up and down, and flexes his wings.

"I suggest you come with me. It is perhaps best explained to you by another."

Well we still have about thirty six hours until the bombardment and advance of the landcruisers which we expect will be enough to throw the invasion back (and irredeemably declare war).

We agree to go into Ipswich with the Gryphon officer. There are orderly ranks of bears marching to and fro. Digging things up, and houses with pink sheets on them being demolished. The locals seem to have some too (I.e. if your house was demolished then you got a pink sheet).

Things are orderly and, while the air is pregnant with promises of things to come, you can see off duty bears playing the accordion and drinking stout, stiff backed Gryphons duel on cricket pitches.

By the by, I haven't really talked about landcruisers. If you look at a MKV male tank and then superimpose a TOG II* on it, you're basically there.

In the center of town we start seeing what can only be anti aircraft guns (aircraft not really being a thing in Britbongsteros beyond zeppelins, this is strange) along with (in the town square) an enormous telescope.

The county hall seems to have been requisitioned to serve as HQ for the annexation. Aside from the presence of Germans, there's not really a great deal that seems to have changed. Aside of course from the Imperial Eagle sitting outside.

When I say sitting I mean perched. It's an actual Reichsadler in the flesh. I.e. it has two heads, feathers and talons. It's quite happily tucking into a can of corned beef and dressed in what can only be a military uniform.

It should be noted two heads is actually an error on part of DM/me as the Reichsadler of the German empire only had one. The Austrians had two headed ones. So this one must have also been a bit Austrian somewhere in his heritage.

By the way anons, if you don't know anything about the German unification and Empire, I would strongly suggest reading up on it. It's a fascinating topic. A lot of devising these campaigns involved a great deal of historical research by me and DM. So while I'm thinking about it, you may enjoy The Influence of Sea Power Upon History which was one of the most interesting things I read for Britbongsteros. One further point, anon may note the progression of technology in Britbongsteros is quite rapid. Well game time so far has been around 2-3 years, so that is worth considering, also that the idea was it was somehow to go from Elizabethan to Pre WWI in its scope (that was sort of a goal at the start).

We didn't get too excited about it and just MST 3K'd it for a good story.

The Eagle is rapidly joined by a very large bear with huge moustaches.

He is introduced by the Gryphon as "Otto von Baarmarck" (Bismarck if your want to Google him) advisor to the Kaiser, represented by Herr Tirpitz of the Kaiserliche Marine (the eagle).

We are invited inside, the eagle perches on what appears to be an ornate... Well, perch. I'm sure it has a wonderfully complicated German name. Tirpitz doesn't add much to the conversation, Von Baarsmarck does most of the talking

He reiterates what we already know, that the Germans are annexing Ipswich and as they are nice guys, they are planning on paying for the damage they do and are moving civilians out of the area. They apologize for the inconvenience.

The one thing he doesn't actually tell us is why exactly they feel they need to do this?

"Why? (Vhy?) Because we are incapable of defending ourselves."

"So you invaded to prove a point?"

"Nein. From what is coming. Herr Schiarperelli believes they will land sooner rather than later."

The Germans (we discover) know at least as much about the Martians as we do (it seems we may have some spies to kill soon) and Schiaperelli has had the planet under observation for months. He has worked out from the trajectory and some other calculations (possibly involving a dart and a map) that this is the most likely landing site.

We are then stuck with a bit of a problem. If there are Martians coming then we really ought not to be fighting each other, nor should we be asking the Germans to go home.

We have a further problem, to stop the Landcruisers (which are about a day away), we will need to convince them to do so. We then realize the average citizen of Britbongsteros, even one in command of a Landcruiser brigade, is going to find us asking them to stop from "bashing the bosch" (sorry Germ-anons) because we are raving about Martians laughable. Why? Only the Privy Council and us know about them.

There is a little ooc discussion at this point, including my favourite "why is nothing ever simple in this setting..."

We don't really fancy our chances in convincing the commanding officers of the taskforce (slowly) motoring its way here.

We decide to do some more fact finding before deciding on our next step.

More to the point though, the Germans seem awfully keen to tell us all this.

"Why are you being so nice?"

"Because if Grosse Britain falls then the aliens will have a base of operations, then Europe, and then the rest of this weird, nasty, violent, beautiful world will be ended."

"Why didn't you just offer to help? Why invade."

They get a bit shifty at this point.

The door to the room busts in as what can only be described as a man-shaped crocodile skin handbag is wheeled in. (If you don't know who that is, go watch Dr. Strangelove)

It appears Herr Schiaraperelli is not entirely human, or sane... (please note to everyone, I am so so sorry wherever you are from).

"Mein unterkaiser, ve haff made zignifikant progress mit die deff raiii!"

Herr S. notices the new faces, and switches gear,

"Ach vatt fine specimens such excellent breeding stock..."

He zips past Cruella and pokes at Angus's bicep. (This had sort of become a running joke by now)

"Vould du kare to submit yourself to some of my (giggles insanely) ecksperimentaaaation?"

We try to get between him and Angus, but there's no separating the two, so we turn our attention to Von Baarsmarck.

"Soooo... Death Ray?"

"To use on the Martians of course, and acquire their technology, ensuring that the world will be ein reich..."

In the background Herr S. is babbling to Angus about

"Mitt my super zerum derivved from ze gods toe ve could make you ten, twenty veet tall!"

Von Baarsmarck seems quite non-plussed,

"Assuming any of us survive the landings, do not tell me that you British would not take the items for yourselves? This way, we ensure there is no..."

"Death Ray Gap!" Cackles herr S.

Ok that sort of seems weirdly fair, we will just backstab them later... next comes the awkward bit...

"So maybe we should leave now? Get the landcruisers stopped? Work together?"

Herr S. cackles again,

"Du may kill or imprison ze rest, but I wish to keep zis one... and this one... Perhaps maybe I can keep all of them...."

One last try...

"Your death ray will massacre our forces, and then you will face the aliens alone... you are very likely to lose, we all are..."

"You have seen to much... heard too much, Herr DoktorProfessor, you may have them..."

It is worth remembering at this point that yes we can probably take everyone in the room easily enough, what we cannot do is fight our way out of town through an alarmed garrison.

Also, worth considering is Martians don't really like magic (or at least the north pole ones, it seems likely then that they may not have something like that.

So the party is taken away at gunpoint for MAD SCIENCE.

>Why didn't you escape from the highly visible HQ where all of the German forces were concentrated?

Well that's why.

Arriving in Herr Schiaraperelli's lab we are greeted by tesla coils, fizzing falcon tubes, a smell of frying eggs, *things* in jars, and he offers some boiled sweets.

He explains that this is his "travel" lab and we are really missing out on the interesting stuff, but at least there was space aboard the Brunmiggi II to bring ZE DEATH RAY.

(It may be helpful for anon to look up Professor Death from That Mitchell and Webb Look)

But that (zat?) is not why we're here, nein, we are here because he wants Angus for experimentation, and to this end he fills a syringe. Angus doesn't look terribly concerned.

"Zis ist mein ubermensch zerum."

"Bring it on" says our favourite camel-lover.

(It's worth adding we have had our weapons taken off us and stored we think in the guardhouse - which by-the-by also appears to be doubling as a barracks).

So Angus, being Angus, and not even tied up, accepts being stabbed in the arm with a novelty sized syringe. Angus gets this bizarre grin (as does his PC).

>DM, what is this stuff?

"Eet ist mein superzerum!"

>Yes DM, but what does it *do*?

"Zis vill make you stronger, ein Ubermensch!"

Party: "DM, think about this!"

Angus: "Oh yes!"

Angus starts to grow. To hulk out... (He has hulk level clothing. Thank fuck for that.)

Angus is getting bigger. Not just ripped but fuek huege, eight feet, ten feet.

"Herr schiarparelli, this death ray, is it man portable?"

Angus flexes his enormously powerful hulk arms while Herr S. Enthusiastically babbles at a portable gramophone.

"Herr S. You really cannot be this stupid."

"Nein mein Ubermensch. I'm not."

The taser Herr S. fires knocks Angus on his arse. The rest of the charge knocks him out.

"MEIN KAISER, I CAN WALK!"

He stands up and kicks Angus in the balls for good measure.

>DM: "Come on guys, give me some credit..."

Herr S. Looks quizzically at us. He cocks his head to one side. He takes a box with flashy lights from his belt.

"Zomethink is giffink powerful magical emanations. Ist not the fraulein... nor ze oaf... nor ze musician, ze wizard I know of... ze midget? Zis child's toy? Was ist das? Ein Pinguin!?"

At gun point he takes the purple penguin from my bandolier.

"Und now to enter ze data into mein komputer und then ve proceed to ze dissection."

Herr S. Sits back down and wheels himself off.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party begin to properly size up our situation. We have eight attentive and armed bears, five unarmed party members.

So, captive (wrist manacles) and at gun point, the DM makes us whisper to one another or our communications will be overheard.

The Wizard's player is actually bit deaf, so he doesn't hear very much, only interjecting with the occasional "Fit?" (What?)

The rest of the party decides that Angus is out for the count (DM is having him roll to wake up every so often, but he keeps failing).

We know the Herr S. is probably going to sense anything magical before it happens (flashy box).

The bears can see us whispering (the Wizard's occasional "Fit?!" doesn't help), so giving up on any semblance of plan, when the nearest bear goes to crack me over the back of the head with his rifle, some violence occurs.

Cruella gets her chains around his neck, the wizard has the bear's now dropped rifle levitating.

While this is going on, the Bard kicks one bear in the balls and gets his rifle, and I (with a little jump and some mechanical arms) headbutt the other and then it's a Mexican standoff.

>Why are you being non-lethal?

I didn't make this very clear earlier, but the DM had quite clearly told us that the more we fuck up the bears, the more we may suffer for it later. We decided to try our hardest not to kill anyone. So in effect, we are now murder hobos, without the murder. Hobos if you will.

Bear looks at man, dwarf looks at bear, (etc.) we're rolling intimidation, then Herr S. sweeps back into the room, having clearly heard/detected something.

"Was ist los!? Meine Meerschweinchen! Nein!" ("What is this!? My guinea pigs, no!" Also "Meerschweinchen" is absolutely adorable as words go)

"YOU. KICKED. ME. IN. THE. BALLS."

Angus wakes up and punches him in the side of the head (well, taps really - again non lethal).

With the Angus aided distraction, we subdue the rest of the bears and begin to take stock.

>Things we need to do:

1. Escape

2. Disable death ray - hopefully not permanently

3. Stop Britain declaring war (by driving several thousand tonnes of Landship through this place).

The bard has one of his ideas.

>Some dicerolls and a small argument later.

"Hey guys what's a wunderwaffe?"

"It's German for... DO NOT TOUCH THAT."

"Why does it sting or something?"

We decide to take one. The Navvie, as the only party member who can be trusted not to set it off out of curiosity/fun/accident, is entrusted with it.

We decide to have a quick look out the door of the building - - pic related.

So with that outside, and as the bears are... well, bears... that rather rules out the traditional steal their clothes approach, as does the fact Angus is 12 feet of Orc.

>Diplomacy tiem

Cautiously, we poke a white flag (made mostly from Herr S.'s labcoat) around the doorframe. That doesn't get shot, so we poke our heads round.

"Don't shoot, we have a doomsday device and are not afraid to use it!"

"Do you know how to?"

Wizard: "I'm rolling to bluff"

"Yes!"

"Alright, what do you want?"

"Free passage out of here and a promise you will not use the death ray if we can stop the British forces from attacking."

"That seems reasonable."

Hmm, that went better than expected. We nervously proceed out of the building, doomsday device in tow. We get most of the way out of town before someone remembers, aren't we forgetting someone?

Navvie, check,

Cruella, check,

Aldous, check,

Cruella, check,

Bard, check,

Angus, check.

No we're all here... Aren't we?

Oh shit.

"Ok, large group of angry well armed bears, we're turning round!"

The bears seem confused, but ok with it, it's getting dark by the time we have retrieved the extremely annoyed looking penguin, Herr S. laments the loss of his Wunderwaffe, but kindly suggests that dropping it is a really bad idea (so at least we now know how to activate it).

When the bears realize what and why we went back, we're a laughing stock, if you've heard the chuckling of several thousand bears, it is not a nice thing. I think the purpose of the ridicule (or DM's) was for us forgetting him.

Penguin in tow, we head off again. There's a very large star in the sky that no one recognizes and some fainter ones too... It seems we don't have long...

Now we have our real problem. Martians aren't far off and the pride of the British army is about to attack our next best hope in the morning. We book it back to our lines.

The DM punishes us for our stupidity when we hit the dirt as our own sentries fire on us (don't run around in war zones).

When we eventually convince them not to shoot us (for some reason we have also progressed to Lee Enfield rifles), we enter the camp. There are tents and the huge looming bulk of the landcruisers, if you (I hate this term) diesel-punked a Bolo, you're not far off. They glow a little with the light of magic, it appears the oil is already being used. The wizard detects a presence within them. An additional note, Angus is slowly shrinking back to normal size.

We pause momentarily near the HMLS AR4 (it has "Arthur" painted next to this).

>HELLO

Oh fuck no. We made Bolos.

>Wut is a Bolo?

"Hi... Hi?"

>I AM UNIT AR4 OF THE LINE. PLEASE CALL ME ARTHUR.

(Wizard and I are huge Bolo nuts so have gone all fangirl by this point. Cruella, Angus, and Bard continue to engage in conversation)

"What... are you?"

>I AM A BRITISH OFFENSIVE LINE OPERATIONS-UNIT

>squee

Our Ghurkha escort urge us onwards, we rather hope we might get to meet more BOLOs later (we do).

We are escorted to the command tent, we recognize Sir Clarkson-May, and Sir Hobart, along with Sir Stahig. In addition are two well know faces: Sir Barnes Wallis (who is... wiki him, awesome read) and Sir Patrick ROBOT DEATH MACHINE Moore.

With Sir Patrick Murderborg Moore here this may make our task a little easier. We explain where things stand. He is particularly pleased to see Herr S.'s device.

Sir Patrick takes the device off us for safe keeping, the military men are still in favour of assault. Sir Patrick is adamant that it would be unwise. That we should prepare for the first ship (he has also worked out where it's going to land) and that we should head back to London where he expects the heaviest fighting to be.

Sir Patrick doesn't manage to convince the military folk, they are of the opinion that we should wipe out the Germans (real threat of course), then deal with the Martians.

Struck by this remarkable bit of military daftness, and even Sir Patrick can't sway them, we appear a bit stuck. The most advanced armour on earth is going to ram itself against the death ray tomorrow unless we do something.

The military men are moving landcruiser shaped counters around the map and ignoring us so we decide to head back out to collect our thoughts. We end up back near AR4.

>HELLO AGAIN HUMANS AND HUMAN APPROXIMATIONS.

"Hello AR4."

>YOU APPEAR TROUBLED. WHY IS THIS?

We explain the situation.

AR4 stays quiet for a bit. We start to think he isn't talking to us.

>SO IN SUMMATION, AN ATTACK ON A POSSIBLE ALLY WOULD SQUANDER OUR FORCES PRIOR TO ENGAGEMENT WITH THE REAL THREAT?

>some dice are being rolled here.

"Yes, essentially."

If he's listening then we might as well talk to him.

"AR4 what is your primary duty?"

>TO DEFEND THE REALM.

"Against all threats?"

>ALTHOUGH I HAVE NOT YET TASTED BLOOD, I KNOW THERE ARE NO THREATS TO ME.

(You might change your mind there)

"But if there was a threat to the entire realm, would you face it needlessly diminished?" (nice rollan occurs)

>HUMAN MALE IN A SKIRT, I CAN SEE WHAT YOU ARE ATTEMPTING. WE HAVE ALREADY DECIDED NOT TO RIDE OUT TOMORROW. WE WAIT. WE WAIT FOR THE TRUE CHALLENGE.

Across the field, other Landcruisers light up their sensors, flashing affirmatives. The most patriotic thing we have met today was a very large tenk.

>The following morning.

>Dawn.

Sparrows flit across the sky, in the gloaming the world rises, grasses still wet with dew. A hedgehog wends his weary way to bed beneath the great amroured flanks of AR4.

Sir Richard Clarkson-May unsheathes his saber. A trumpet sounds.

"Drive me closer. I want to hit them with my sword."

>NO.

"Wut?"

>YOUR ORDER WAS ANSWERED IN THE NEGATIVE.

Watching from nearby with a bacon buttie, we decide we should probably make ourselves scarce. Sir Patrick Moore and wunderwaffe in tow.

Above us, the lights in the sky grow stronger, visible even in daylight now. Above serried ranks of motionless landcruisers, above the German defences, above us.

Tonight the Martians will land. The first battle of a war no one wants will begin.

Martian war call: ULLA

We are nearly at the end of this adventure (tbh it was more a of set up for the last one anyway) and about this stage a discussion took place after a session.

DM: "After this... Well, look... All good things come to an end right?"

>The party agree.

DM: "You want to go out with a bang right? You don't want me to hold back?"

>ohshit.jpg

"We guess not?"

>DM cracks his knuckles. "The bad news is you're all going to die, the good news, is it will be awesome."

>Disclaimer: if you are attached to anything in Britbongsteros, you may wish to stop reading now.

We wait for dark, the British (some of the senior officers are still swearing at the Bolos), the bears across the fields, and the party with Sir Patrick.

The day is quiet. The lights in the sky grow and grow. The brightest is heading straight for us.

The day has an eerie quiet to it. A heavily pregnant pause. No one appears minded to shout at us for causing the Bolos to refuse orders but we keep out of the way. Occasional patrols of bears meet with ours, they exchange cigarettes. Attempts to teach the bears cricket do not go well.

Darkness falls as it must.

High command still intends on attacking the Germans (though Sir Stahig refuses to commit his Ghurkhas, and the Bolos aren't shifting).

DM introduces a new mechanic:

For the first time we have friendly troops. We may if we so seek, inspire them. It will help.

We have been chatting with AR4 and he shares his findings with his counterparts. We learn about Bolos and he learns about the tale of the purple penguin.

AR4 and Cruella have made friends. Other units including B3A have responded occasionally.

>On the Bolos of Britbongsteros:

They are smart, they are also the first real sentient race that has been created, their minds inspired by the automatons of London. The amount of magic and technology within them ensured that what was meant to be a machine spirit became self aware. It was decided (based Sir Hobart) that this was actually incredibly useful. So they were taught, taught the ideals of knights. Bolos exist to protect and are one of the few genuinely good things in the setting. Except of course being fueled by oil, blood, and some of those soul cube things from waaaay back in the first adventure.

Dusk turns to dark, dark into night, but the lights are still above us. The largest now the size of a saucer, the sonic boom that precedes it knocks men flat, windows are blown out, the Navvie's beer bottle shatters.

The light grows, like daylight now as the thing decelerates, bits of what must be heat shield raining down around us.

It hits the ground. Hard. About five miles from our position. A huge plume of dust washes over us with the shock wave.

What we can see in the distance are the raised sides of a crater. Sounds of hammering, blight plasma flashes, and tortured metal reach us even from here.

The bard hops up onto the turret of AR4 as crews mount up. Ghurkhas get into formation. Khuhkris gleam in the dark.

He plays Ennio Morricone The Ecstasy of Gold.

From the crater comes the Martian war call: ULLA

A black smoke starts to rise from the crater, spilling between waiting armies, the fitful light of the moon obscured. Darkness almost absolute. Visibility down to 75 metres.

The bard plays on.

We wait.

The twin 16" guns of AR4 track left in the darkness.

In their gas masks the Ghurkhas wait. A sea of bayonets glint in the darkness. Breathing heavily in our own, vision fogging, we scan the darkness. Martian war call: ULLA

Wizard: "How can you play the bagpipes in a gas mask bard?"

>DM & rest of party: "Because fuck you. Shut up."

The Navvie has acquired a Union Jack from the semaphore lines of AR4, knitting it about his shoulders. Looking like an anglican version of Thor.

The purple penguin looks on waiting lines of nervous men. The world may be a horrible, vicious, nasty place, a place where children have no childhoods, a world where gods make men playthings, a world of blood and pain, but there is still hope in this world, there are still purple penguins, and now, Mars has come to take even that from us.

Flickers of magic begin to play around the barrels of AR4, Cruella starts as Excalibur bursts into flame, red, white and blue.

This battle will see the beginning of the war, not even the end of the beginning, there are still seven more dots up there.

From out of the black smoke, great silver shapes begin to rise. Small metallic items grow lighter.

Then...

Silence.

Darkness.

The first red pulse of laserfire immolates four score of men, screaming skeletons silhouetted in the darkness and then all hell breaks loose.

Fighting machines tower in the darkness as waves of Martian infantry wash from the smoke.

The Bolos duel with the fighting machines, guns tracking, firing, tracks crushing Martians as they advance.

"Ayoooo ghoorkha!"

The infantry charge with the tanks, halting every few feet for volley fire, but it's seconds before bayonet meets energy sword, khukhri meets claw.

The party fights in the mist of the the smoke, flares casting some light. A fighting machine goes down, casing cracked by shellfire. Elsewhere a Bolo in flames from tip to stern rams another before exploding.

The party fight and fight hard, the night a wash of images of violence. The Navvie smashing skulls, Cruella leaping from creature to creature, the wizard and I back to back on a mound of corpses, Angus cackling as he burns his way to us.

Lightning crackles through the sky, the landing of the ship having caused enough atmospheric change for it to rain. A green pulse flashes through the sky, impacting deep in Martian lines - the death ray at work.

Men fall, rent asunder, Bolos are wrecked one by one. There seem no end to the Martians, we push forward, making progress into the tide but for every step we lose more men.

Lasers wash through the smoke. It seems for every fighting machine that falls, others lumber from the darkness. It is impossible to tell how the battle is going, we can see the great hulk of AR4 ahead of us, Martian corpses crushed in his wake. The Bard still on his turret booting the occasional Martian off.

We fight through the night, bodies piling high, the Martians it seems are implacable, they will not break. They will not run. Are we winning? We genuinely can't tell.

A headless Martian lands at my feet. Followed swiftly by the other half of it. Lit in the darkness by his chain guns is Sir Patrick Cyborgmurdertron Moore, he seems to know what he's doing so we join him. Side by side. Advancing on the LZ.

Suddenly from out of the darkness, the crater walls loom. As does something else. Bears. And one familiar chap in a wheelchair.

We start to climb the crater walls. Not knowing what we'll find. AR4 covers us as we ascend, ramming his way through the earthern parapet and firing his guns at their lowest depression, laser fire crackling over his upper front plate and baking the earth covering his LFP into some sort of ceramic.

We get our first look at what lies below us while the battle rages behind us.

Some more mood music: For A Few Dollars More - Final Duel Music

Think back to us, the rain has soaked the still warm earth of the parapet into mud, on the other side of this thing, hell lies below us, actinic plasma flashes wash upward, we ascend, clawing into mud, to our side AR4 keeps firing, his armour melting.

Behind us the first battle of Britbongsteros rages. Fighting machines and Bolos, men and martians, hell on earth. The sound of it is a physical thing, this is not the war we first knew, a war of heroes, this is industrial scale violence, German artillery thunders down into the landing site, directed we think somehow by Herr S.

We pause at the brim, laser fire raking across it.

Sir Patrick Moore is the first to go over the top, we follow, below us is the sight of the first stage of Martian conquest.

Automated machinery assembling fighting machines, squadrons of Martian troops being cut down by AR4 even as others scramble up and out into battle.

At the very center of what is almost a Martian city, we can see a green glow.

The party knows from experience, we are going straight towards that, big glowy things are usually exactly where you have to go.

We number about twenty in total between party, bears, Sir Patrick, and us.

The terrain below us, in the thunder of guns, the flash of lightning, the pulse of energies no man could ever stand against, looks for all the world like a city, the exterior of the first ship. We shout over the noise, Herr S. and Sir Patrick agree, we are going to make straight for that glowy thing (yes that's what it's called), Sir Patrick hefts something, a familiar something.

Herr S: "Mein Wuderwaffe!"

We look at each other, let's do this.

"VORWARTS FUR DIE WISSENSCHAFT!" Herr S. and the bears roll (in his case literally) down the hill, not to be outdone,

"BY ENGLAND AND ST. GEORGE, WE ARE HERE TO FUCK YOU UP GLOWY THING!" (we are not good at battle cries)

Whitesnake - Here I Go Again '87

We go over the top, we get the better part of thirty metres down, sliding, slipping, loose mud sloshing before us onto the metal of the decking, our boots ring on it soon after. The Martian's attention is fixed on AR4, and he does his best to keep it, even over the noise, we can hear his engines, see the earth bank in front of his hull break, and down he comes, tonnes of Sheffield steel, crashing onto the hull of the ship, if this is his first battle, it will also be his last, but he, as he makes for the fighting machine assembly line, will sell himself dearly.

As he tears past, we see a little something on the side of his turret. It's purple.

"Where did that come from?"

Cruella: "He wanted one of his own. I can paint."

The OOC is cut short as Martian infantry start to notice us, we take cover, returning fire.

Then from behind us.

>Shave and a haircut.

Iron Maiden - Run To The Hills

"Was ist los?" One of the bears asks as one of his spent shell casings floats past his muzzle, we've dealt with this before.

Cruella is up and over the bear's head, eyes closed, seemingly from nowhere bits of bodies start appearing. The wizard hold's Angus by the shoulder, directing his fire.

Sir Patrick kicks through a wall, and laughing as he goes, hoses Martian infantry with large caliber rounds.

Then Herr S.'s chair starts floating.

He jumps from the thing (he can actually walk remember?)

We have to struggle to hang on to weapons as they start to rise, there is a flash and a fizzle in our midst, the cloaking field (think predator) goes down on something very large, and very fast.

It's big, carnifex sized. It takes apart one bear with a slash, then another. I turn the shotgun on it, blowing chunks from it, the Navvie points at it.

"YOU!"

It paws at the deck. It knows a challenge when it sees one.

I start trying to get behind it, as the Navvie spreads his arms in a come-at-me-bro way.

"TRY ME, COME ON!"

It spreads all of it's claws, and roars, spittle landing on the Navvie's chest from the better part of 5 metres.

I'm behind it now, I aim for the backs of the knees. Hitting critically, the thing goes down on it's belly. The Navvie nonchalantly walks forward, and busts it's skull open.

"Twat."

He spits on it, and we start to pursue the Martian infantry who have begun to break.

Elsewhere, AR4 sings a song to himself as he takes damage, his left track unit running on wheels only now, guns glowing red.

>Daisy... daisy....

>Why are you still talking about the Bolo?

DM had noticed we had already gotten fond of him, and if the DM can, the DM will break your heart and burn everything you ever loved.

We push onwards, it can't be more than 300 metres to the center of the thing.

The closer we get, the quieter it seems to be, we can barely even hear the battle above for the low thrum of whatever the glowy thing is, we reckon it might be a power source, we don't care, if we chuck enough explosives at it, sheer narrative alone says that should fuck the thing up good and proper.

>200 metres

Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast

We're closing in, no Martians, just that low, low thrum, you can feel it in your chest, in your teeth.

>150 metres

AR4 considers tactical withdrawal, rejects it, and decides to sell his life for a country he has never really known. Martian infantry swarm his hull, he allows himself to take laser fire from the nearest walker, immolating them, and another section of ablative armour.

>100 metres

ULLA

>75 metres

ULLA

>Where is that coming from?

>50 metres.

Oh fuck. Fighting machine.

The thing fires straight at us, the DM has us all roll to dodge it, we all pass. Except the bard.

We're blinded by the flash. When we can see again, he's still standing, still piping, glowing saltire standing between him and the beam. It fades out and he starts laughing. (I.e. fate point used).

"I AM ALIVE AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" (see)

It starts to charge to fire again

DM: "Are you gonna take cover Bard?"

Bard: "Why? I AM ALIVE."

DM: "That laser is charging up."

Bard: "So! BRING IT!"

The Navvie knocks the stupid bastard aside and into cover with a shoulder barge.

DM made it quite clear while he poured a beer that the bard was about another second away from dying.

The laser burns a hole in the hull instead.

We take cover behind a large building, the fighting machine stomping towards us.

We have about five or six seconds to plan.

We look at each other... err...

"AT-AT?"

"AT-AT."

The wizard summons chains, snaking them out toward it. Cruella distracts its fire as the most agile. The chains hold tight, the thing totters, falls. Legs flailing uselessly, laser pointed at the sky.

We smash the thing to bits and proceed to the glowy thing.

We examine the glowy thing, it's definitely... glowy... beyond that, no one has the damndest idea what to do with it.

ULLA

There's another one, and another one, and another.

We can't take three of them.

Sir Patrick hefts the wunderwaffe and runs into the glow, deeper into the ship and what we assume is the power generator.

"GO!"

Before we can stop him, he tuns toward the glow, the thing beeping in his hand.

Herr S. helpfully adds: "Ve should be leaving..."

We start to run, elsewhere, AR4 fights on.

We run, firing, killing as fast as we can, making as quickly as we can for that muddy parapet, Martians pursue us, Herr S. and the bears take cover.

"Go, we will hold them."

We aren't going to say no, struggling up through the mud, it's clawing at us, slowing us, fire pattering around us, the climb is slow, excruciating.

We fling ourselves up over the parapet, slithering down the other side. The land before us is a sea of flame, the battle still raging.

We run toward it, away from the ship.

Within, Sir Patrick wades through bodies, laughing,

"I always wanted to meet alien life! and KILL THEM!"

The parapet shields us from most of the force of the blast, but we are knocked flat.

The rest of the battle is vicious and messy, but with the ship gone, the alien's spirit is broken, the Bolos and Ghurkha's mop them up. We do our best to assist, eventually the sun rises fitfully over a blasted, lunar landscape, wrecks still burn, bodies bleed and scream.

Ghurkhas stalk over the fields, giving peace to their comrades, finishing off Martians.

Bloodied, victorious, and with seven more stars falling above us. We begin the final tale of Britbongsteros.

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