Given the success of the 'Thievery' Comic, Muskie and t0l0k are working on a sequel, staring Zin the Kobold, the Dragonkin Kavorog that he tried to rob, and a gnoll, ratkin, and bugbear.

The Patreon to get it finished is over here :)

https://www.patreon.com/muskie

Paul Kidd (:patpahootie; here) has a new RPG project forthcoming, if it gets the support he desires. Given that he's never failed to entertain me in the past (what with the Discworld and Shadowrun games, and any number of D&D and furry novels and comics, AND the example art for the game features an anthro shark woman riding a giant budgie, this is going to be SWEEEEEET

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/genestorm-rpg

"The game is set in a weirdly beautiful post-apocalyptic future. This is a world of majestic vistas – of abandoned cities floating high in the sky, and overgrown ruins brimming with strange new life. Of huge spacecraft the size of cities crashed into great verdant swamps...

It is a place of terrible dangers. Of sand storms and radioactive dust, of jungles and broken lands swarming with terrible, carnivorous life. A place where gateways lead to a sinister alternative universe where the senses twist and fail, and terrible entities wait to prey upon the weak - A place of ruined, shattered civilisation. Of fallen grandeur and prowling, broken death machines.

- It is a wilderness that has given birth to astonishing new life.

Characters in GeneStorm are the descendants of survivors of the great disaster. They are strange beings made from the inter-tangled genes of all manner of plants and animals. The inheritors of the new earth are bizarre, colourful and chaotic.

It is an age of a weirdly beautiful, resurgent nature.

It is the age of the mutants."

My workload has been so ridiculous for pretty much the last few years that I haven't even had time to put pen to paper in at least 12 months now. A bit frustrating.,

HOWEVER - I did have time to joke with Muskie about "those sexy, sexy kobolds" and this evolved into a plot, which I'm pleased to see he's turned into a full script, and is having turned into a comic, with art by t0l0k

First page is over here - I'm hoping that it gets enough support to come out as the full deal :)

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14904885/

I'm an evil, evil man

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/357.....d-Their-Escape

Slightly delayed, since I spent the rest of the long weekend floored by a particularly nasty Con Crud. Anyway - Swancon 36/Natcon 50 - I *did* get to go to some of it, thanks to the awesome generosity of [info]anysia and [info]aikidomayland, and to whom I am very grateful

Thursday night was quite good as far as panels go - Original work to Film, good and bad ( i.e. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? To Blade Runner - Good. The Spirit comic to film - gaggingly awful. )

Then 'Cranking Up The Cliche' with Tom & Tina Eitelhuber, in which the audience try and come up with the most cliched epic fantasy possible. We ended up with the following

Village boy, in reality the rightful heir to the drought-stricken kingdom, sets out to rescue his family and love interest from slavery, after the weak king, acting from advice from his evil brother, obliterates the village to try and avert a prophesy. Instead - of course - this sets the prophesy in motion, and our hero sets off to locate the Crystal Sword of Knowledge, acquiring a full set of associates - a princess incognito who will become Hero's True Love, a halfling bard for comic relief, a barbarian, exiled court wizard, and a washed-up ex-hero.

Drama ensues in encounters with Amazon warriors who later become allies, and a variety of feeble mooks that the evil uncle sends instead of his best general, thus ensuring he has to try it again and again instead of getting it done right the first time.

Ex-hero dies heroically to buy the party time to escape overwhelming odds.

Eventually, the Hero storms the ancestral castle accompanied by an Amazon army and a slave revolt. The drought breaks, and the Hero has a climactic sword fight against his evil uncle amidst a violent thunderstorm. Uncle is duly dispatched, to the enjoyment of all, but is revealed in the epilogue to have been the puppet of the Greater Evil that will the antagonist in the sequels.



So, would you watch it?

Then there was an anime panel, but it's not a medium I'm very familiar with. After that, home for a few hours sleep, and back to the con.

[info]ratfan was on the first panel - Writing in a Gaming World. Can RPGs help an author nut out a plot, what are the hazards, etc. The answers was yes, they certainly help - even statting up your lead characters helps you keep their abilities straight in your mind. And a good quote from Paul Kidd - "Gamer's don't talk about the games where they *won*, they talk about the games where it all went wrong and they nearly doomed everybody"

Then panelists were quizzed on how their TV viewing as children informed their creative brains - interesting! To the point of transcribing dialogue so they could figure out how the writer pulled that trick off, etc.

Then 'Ready, Steady, Genesplice! : Building a better Unicorn' by [info]rdmasters & [info]leecetheartist, a event where three creative teams had to come up with ad campaigns for novel genetic chimeras. They were short an artist and I was roped in :D The first brief was a hand-bag sized guard animal, based on the Tasmanian Devil. Since I was representing the illegal back-alley genesplicer, and could ignore CITES, ethics, or basic empathy, I was quite pleased with my Economy-Sized Face-Eating Pocket Monster - Now With Extra-Contagious Facial Tumours! The bomb-disposal & hedgetrimming Star-nosed Pangoplatypus was well received as well, and at no risk of leprosy unlike the armadillo-based designs from the other teams.

Then after lunch we had Grant Watson's 'Walt's Twilight Kingdom' with the Disney films of 1951-77. Very interesting! Especially the gorgeous design work by ??? Who went on to do the early Little Golden Books.

Then Climbing Out of the Refrigerator - Great Women in Comics, with Kitty & Brin - also interesting. It occurred to me that Alan Moore has written a bunch of comics with strong female leads - The Ballad of Halo Jones being a good example, when the only male character of any significance was General Luiz Cannibal, and he doesn't appear until the last book.

I did manage to catch one of the academic papers - Lovecraft & the Apocalyptic Sublime, about 'The Shadow Out Of Time' - Interesting! The horror of what the Great Race were doing to other species hadn't really occurred to me before.

Then off to the second half of Nu Who 2, about Matt Smith's first 13 episodes. Fun :D

Then 'An Appreciation for the Abysmal' : Hilariously Bad Movies - On which there were many clips. Many many clips, each more horrendous than the last. The Turkish Star Wars, for example. The ludicrous SFX scene from Shark Attack 3 too, but not alas, *that* line.

After dinner a managed to run Call of Cthulhu, as described elsewhere, but I did manage to catch some of the Gentlemen's Entomological Club, with Dirk Flintheart. A competitive lying game, with wine. The speakers certainly seemed to be getting quite tipsy towards the end, what with the elaborate tales of Hwandan tribesmen who used their armpit hair as fish nets, and the way the explorer's orangutan companion was welcomed as a god.

Then home. Missed Saturday, alas, so no Lovecraft panel, Masquerade, or Fan Sing-a-long for me, alas. I do wonder how the Sing-a-long went, actually, given that when Swancon had one at the Hilton we got complaints from the fifth floor.

Sunday! Spent all morning playing a demo-game set up by the Napoleonics Wargaming Society - the English Aerial Navy, vs the Martian Indigenes. The Martians had sandworms and a giant flying squid :D A combination of Gaslight and Space 1889. Lots of Fun. Ended with a win for the British, barely, ready to tow the sacred flying island back to the British liftwood plantations. Can't let the natives keep them, what? Damned foriegners wouldn't know what to do with them.

After lunch - Season Four of Classic Who, and a tribute to the late Liz Sladen, which left most of the audience quite tearful. Much mockery of The Underwater Menace Ep. 3, the only one still in the archives, sad to say.

Then '2010 in Film' with Tom & Tina Eitelhuber, some of the quotes from which I posted earlier. Also amusing - Tom, after a series of stinkers, saying "This next one better make up for that" and the next one being Avatar : The Last Airbender to the howls of the audience.

Evening very slow - only things on the schedule that weren't cancelled were the 2012 Doomcon launch, the Awards Ceremony, and Damien Magee's Classic TV session - ITVs children's shows of the late Sixties, and Seventies. Catweazle, Timeslip, Ace of Wands, Arthur of The Britons and The Feathered Serpent. The later noteworthy for Patrick Troughton as an evil Aztec priest, and 'Britons' for Tom Baker with Hilariously mismatching hair and beard. Catweazle of course is a hoot, and I might well steal the Ace of Wands plot for Cthulhu. Timeslip, however... Bit too silly, or too reliant on earlier episodes we didn't see.

[info]cupidsbow did show some nice fanvids in the evening though - including one based on Thoroughly Modern Millie, that alas I can't seem to find on Youtube.

So, that was Swancon - a chance to meet up with friends, be involved in some interesting discussions, see some amusing video, and play some inriguing games. I'm glad I got to go, and just wish I could have afforded the whole thing.

Look To The Future, from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. Some spoilers for it, and Mr Corbitt from Mansions of Madness.

Slightly lunatic Professor Samuel Santorio, in possession of clues given to him by Nyarlathotep himself, heads off to a slightly rough part of New York to investigate a businessman's group calling itself 'Look To The Future'. Apparently they have free coffee and doughnuts. But to Santorio's puzzlement, the weekly meeting seems entirely mundane - indeed, tedious - and there's no sign of the hyperdimensional folding of space and time he was hoping for.

The design of the building is slightly peculiar, and as there don't seem to be any architects among the members he is directed to the group's organizer, one Bryan Slim, who promises to send Santorio details. If he can just get a name and address? Santorio gives the first that spring to his somewhat addled mind, and heads up to Arkham. There, McGinty is reminiscing about old love affairs, and bringing Rondale and Givetti up to speed about his ever-growing collection of eldritch literature, and the story about how he acquired the Corbitt house, and the thing that used to live there.

McGinty : Yeah, I think she wanted to ride the baloney pony, that's why she never betrayed me

McGinty : ... so that was little Eggy Corbitt.
Rondale : And that thing is still alive?!?
McGinty : Apparently.
Rondale : Well... ****.



The Amazing Julius is there because the appearance of a mangled corpse mid-stage, mid-performance, kind of put the kibosh on the rest of the run going ahead. So he's taking a few days off to come up with a new show.

He's also received a letter from his bank manager, and opens it with dread. Happily, it's nothing to do with the state of his account, the man wants Givetti to do a Houdini-style investigation on a group he attends - a group called 'Look To The Future'. Apparently their monthly meeting and meditations on curious geometrical designs, and attendant chanting, are designed to psychologically stimulate. But the banker comes home exhausted. On the other hand, they have made some remarkable artefacts available to their members. Could Givetti check them out, and see if they're legitimate?

Naturally, Santorio's chat with Aching is brought up, although the others are very unhappy and distrust his conversation. The four pour over the letter, the geometrical design, the chant, the flyer, Aching's song lyrics, and the receipt. It's all very alarming - the design closely resembles Santorio's mad scribbling; the chant names Yog-Sothoth ( familiar to them from the Corbitt investigation, as 'One Who Splits Apart Worlds and Devours the Survivors' ); the group are beset by crullers, whatever they are; the song lyrics include explicit references to the investigator's phobia of the dark, and lines like 'you think you know me but you haven't got a clue'; and the receipt is for two African rattles purchased from some place called the Ju-Ju shop in Harlem.

Rondale : Ju-Ju Shop? Rattles? Sounds cultist...
GM : But he paid cash for them and got a receipt...
Rondale : Yeah..... *baffled*

Rondale OOC : I'm sorry, but this is the first time I've run into a god that doesn't want to kill me, and instead just keeps taking the piss... Nyarlathotep is a troll, isn't he?



Despite their certainty that this is a trap, they go investigate anyway, just in time for one of the special monthly ceremonies. Santorio's new friends seem pleased to see him.

Random NPC : Mr. McGinty! Good to see you!
McGinty : What? How do you -
Santorio : Hello again, good to see you.
McGinty, Rondale : *staring murderously at Santorio* Just a minute there, we just have to take our friend here outside for a little chat



It turns out the false name and address Santorio gave were McGinty's. There was a fair amount of other stuff Santorio neglected to tell them.

McGinty : You tell me what I need to know right now and I won't commit grievous bodily harm on you. You might have noticed I'm not very happy right now.

The Amazing Julius : I'm just going to sit here and watch McGinty melt down. It's hours of entertainment.

Rondale to Santorio : Do you have any idea what you've done? We ought to have you locked up!
McGinty : Give the guy a break. We don't need to send him to the asylum
Rondale : He does this all the time.
McGinty : So? I drink all the time.
Rondale OOC : Yes, but the Betty Ford Clinic hasn't been opened yet.

McGinty : I reckon you could knock somebody out with this magic frypan. I'm thinking of using it on Santorio.



They disrupt the ceremony by ripping the muffler off the truck, parking it outside the Look To The Future building, and revving the motor at random moments as they try to 'fix the engine'. This seems to work, or at least nothing eldritch materialises over the city, but Mr. Slim does come out to have a few harsh words. The party leave, and return after dark for a proper investigation. The kind that involves tommyguns and grenades. This is when they discover that whilst machine-guns are wonderful things, it really sucks when the bad guys have them too. Professor Santoriol, reliving his experiences in the Boston tunnels, goes slightly combat crazy, but with two ex-soldiers on their side and the frank incompetence of the heavily armed cultists, the investigators manage to clear the building of resistance with only poor Givetti blown apart by a full clip of machine-gun fire.

The guards do get a warning call out to their boss before they are brutally slain.

Boss : *On phone* What's going on over there? What's all that gunfire?
McGinty : *growled into mouthpiece* You're next.



The other discoveries in the building are strange, to say the least. But it does promise to be yet another base of operations for the party. It even has its own power supply, but they haven't opened it up yet to figure out how it works. They collect Givetti's remains and head out, intending to return later to take the place apart. And discover something horrible coming down the only exit towards them. Poor Santorio, a.k.a. 'Paddy McGinty' takes one look at the thing, gives a small strangled whimper, and blows his own brains out. Rondale and the real McGinty flee, and manage to get out of the building without the entity catching up with them.

At least the deaths will be easy to explain - Givetti's gangster-themed magic show was just asking for trouble, and even if Santorio's body is identifiable, the real McGinty and the real Santorio ( the one native to this decade anyway ) are both alive and well...

McGinty and his colleagues continue their cautious investigations of superhumanly talented musician Charles Tow Aching, and are reaching some alarming conclusions. They drop off their latest acquisition to The Massachusetts State Hospital For The Insane

Rondale : How many lunatics have we dropped off there now? We should be getting a finder's fee.



Heading back to McGinty's dubiously acquired home ( As McGinty puts it : Ah, good old Bernie Corbitt. He donated his house to the cause. *looks innocent* ) to study the poor mad writer's paranoid manifesto, which includes the poem below,

And at the last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.

Soon from the sea a noxious birth began;
Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold;
The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled
Down on the quaking citadels of man.
Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play,
The Crawling Chaos blew Earth's dust away.



(I'll admit I changed one word of that)

All this leaves McGinty and company highly alarmed, given how much of it, and Aching's song lyrics, seem to be direct references to their own experiences or Aching himself. They're now certain that Aching is really Nyarlathotep in disguise, a prospect that leaves them understandably dismayed.

OOC : I think I hear my mother calling. I'm going home.



Considering a switch in careers to something less likely to get them horribly, horribly killed, McGinty wants to get in the movies, inspired by the fine examples of Intolerance, and other movies where the extras were considered expendable.

McGinty : I'll hire two hundred hobos, and have them fight it out for a tank of booze. We'll call it 'King of the Hill'. And to make it really dramatic, we'll give them real weapons.



Back in New York, The Amazing Julius is finding out what happened to that hitman he sent to kill Aching. The eviscerated corpse turns up in one of his magician's cabinets. In the middle of a performance. This, naturally, ruins the show, kills the rest of the run, and attracts enthusiastic police attention. Plus puts Givetti in bad odor with the crime boss he hired the hitman through. Nonetheless, Givetti is grudgingly impressed, if Aching is responsible.

The Amazing Julius : Well, I have to admire his showmanship.

The Amazing Julius : I need a favour
McGinty : If it's sexual, Rondale can do it



Neither are happy to learn that Givetti tried to have Aching assassinated.

McGinty : You outsourced my field of expertise! You could have asked Rondale or me to do it!
Rondale : Sorry, I only kill people for money when I'm doing government work.



They try to determine which organised crime families they haven't annoyed yet.

McGinty : Well, we can't work with the Irish or the Italians again. Are there any Jewish gangsters?
The Amazing Julius OOC : Sure. Murder, Incorporated is at its height.... Mental note - don't piss off the Jews



McGinty, Rondale & Givetti break into the morgue to check the corpse of the hitman, and if possible interrogate his ghost. The police description of 'lost a fight with a steamshovel' is pretty accurate, although McGinty doesn't recognise the face.

McGinty : Well, all Italians look alike anyway
The Amazing Julius :*glares* And all Irish smell alike.

GM : To call up his ghost he needs to be *buried* - sprinkled with dust bunnies doesn't count.

Rondale : Actually, I was the only one to kill any Englishmen
McGinty : I feel so robbed
Rondale : Don't worry, we'll save the next one for you



They want to find out where Aching and his band are staying - this involves another visit to the club, where Aching smiles from the stage to see them glowering at him, and a break-in at his theatrical agent's office. Where they find the agent long dead, apparently a suicide after the collapse of his business. Slightly peculiar, given Givetti had talked to him on the phone a few days before.

Deciding to incriminate Aching in the death, they fake and hide a letter claiming Aching had been threatening the dead man, and call the police down on the scene the next day. Then they head around to watch the fun at the club, and plant the 'murder weapon' in Aching's guitar case. Aching of course notices them grinning maliciously from the back of the crowd, but seems blissfully unconcerned. And indeed, as far as the investigators can tell from the back of the club, handles the police with equal aplomb, presenting receipts and witnesses and train stubs proving he can't possibly have been in two places at once. And gives the investigators a smug little wave as the police leave.

Givetti, Rondale and McGinty head out to bribe the police into checking his luggage. Professor Santorio stays in the club. They await developments. Which is all the lights in the street going out. So do the ones in the club, although Aching amuses the punters with a few jokes about New York blackouts and some acoustic numbers played by touch.

And outside, the others curse and switch the truck's headlights on - to find Aching standing there, and smiling.

They react by piling into the truck and leaving at speed. Aching simply steps aside and lets them go, smiling in the rear view mirror. Possibly because the gun they planted in his guitar case is now on the middle seat in the truck.

The Amazing Julius : At least he's still smiling. If he stops smiling, I'm going to be ****ing terrified.



Abandoning the Professor, the three flee back up to Arkham, determined that there's no way they're going to mess with Aching. At the very least, they want to compare notes in every Mythos tome they've acquired before they risk running into him again. In the club, unaware of the scenes outside since the music never stopped in here, Santorio hangs around until after the show, wanting to talk to Aching.

Aching : Professor! Alone, I see? Did your friends leave you here?
Santorio : Yes, looks like it.
Aching : What a pity. I was so enjoying having them around.
Santorio : I was wondering, have you ever seen anything like this? *shows Aching one of the Gate diagrams he's been compulsively drawing on everything at hand*
Aching : *studies them with polite interest* Something similar, yes. Not exactly like this... one moment. *fetches scrapbook, pulling out one of his song notes and dropping a receipt that Santorio sweeps onto his own lap for later study* Yes, here you go. I did see something similar. At a business group called 'Look To The Future' - I wrote one of my songs on the back of the flyer, you see.
Santorio : Can I take this with me?
Aching : Well, it's one of my songs.... but since you ask so nicely - take it with my blessing. And tell your friends I look forward to seeing them again.



And thus Santorio heads off to investigate alone, and sets up events that will culminate with The Death of Paddy McGinty, as I will tell in the next installment...

I ran over some of the groceries the other day

Purrdence : You ran over the apple! You killed the apple!... Applecider!
Me : *headdesk*

Saw a very interesting caterpillar crossing the road today, so I backed up and moved him to safety. Quite large, four or so inches, fringed with fuzz to expertly conceal its outline , and a pleasant pale gray from head to tail, even the eyes. And the stump of a horn down at at its tail, and two red thin red horns on its 'shoulders'

But when disturbed it reared up, tucked its head down, and thus neatly opened two hidden creases in its neck, revealing the jet black skin beneath.

Thus it became a very good mimic of a snake. Complete with forked red tongue. Very startling, and I *knew* it was a caterpillar. Unlike your better known snake mimics, where the eye-spots are either side of the center-line, this one's jet-black false pupils were *behind* each other, so the snake head was sideways.

No idea what species it was, though :/ Entometa, possibly Entometa fervens :) http://www.aussiecreatures.net/inde.....?showimage=580 Thanks, Gotica :)

One of the pleasures of running Call of Cthulhu for a group that have never actually read much of the fiction behind it, is that I can give them news clippings like the following without alarm bells starting to ring.

Big Cats Escape Central Park Zoo
Two black panthers are reported to have escaped from their cage at the Central Park Zoo sometime last night, according to police and zoo authorities. Parties of armed officers and zoo staff are searching the Park for the animals, which are believed to be hiding in the grounds. The public are urged to avoid the Park until the animals can be shot or recaptured, as they are considered highly dangerous.

The animals, well known to zoo patrons by their nicknames Shadow and Silhouette, were last seen when locked into their quarters for the night. It is not known how they escaped, and police are investigating the possibility they were deliberately released.

Older readers may recall the New York Herald’s notorious Central Park Zoo Hoax of 1874, in which it was claimed that dangerous animals were loose in the city, with casualties of 49 dead and 200 injured, but in this case the police and other authorities are in deadly earnest regarding the animals, and the danger they pose to members of the public.



And of course, the following homebrewed adventure, Instruments Yet Stranger, written as a prelude to an upcoming campaign, contains a slew of other little clues to warm an evil swine's black heart. See how many you can spot.

But first a few quotes about previous sessions and future characters.

GM : Exorcism is not a performance art. Well, technically it's not a performance art.

GM : 'It's got a vicious streak a mile wide! Look at the bones!'
Rondale's player : The bunny wasn't a killer
GM : ... And we all turn to look at McGinty

GM : I don't think a demon-hunting kabuki-man named Malkovich is entirely convincing

Rondale's player, examining the character sheet : It's a balanced character
GM : Balanced like Fox News?

GM : If you can come up with some justification for a demon-hunting kabuki-man named Malkovich who speaks Swahili, I would like to hear it.



This being the Musical Episode, I was pleased to see they didn't need much prompting to launch into 'Send in the clowns', 'My Ding-a-ling' and 'Dueling Banjos' at a moments notice, usually when discussing their own performance as investigators. The story opens with them travelling down to New York to report to the Office of Naval Intelligence and tell The Amazing Julius everything they got up to in the tunnels beneath the Martensen House.

McGinty : We found one of them there Gate things. When you poke them they take you somewhere else. We found England!
The Amazing Julius : I'm pretty sure England has been discovered before

McGinty : I found a pub.
Rondale : I didn't send him there, he found it himself. He's like a natural alcohol-detection machine

GM : Rather than go through all these car customisations, can we just assume there's a Greased Lightning montage and get on with the plot?



We're not the only group at the Guild in a musical mood - one of the other tables is playing 'Battle-Hymn of the Republic' for some reason. Sound quality leaves much to be desired.

Rondale's player : I'm sure it sounds fine over there. But from over here it sounds like they're playing it by stamping on a cat.

The Amazing Julius : I'm not given the keys of my Landa to McGinty, I'm giving them to Rondale!
GM : Rondale is responsible, McGinty is Irish



Agent Landing at ONI's office in New York is extremely unhappy with McGinty's performance in the UK.

Agent Landing : Tell me, when you joined the Army, a village somewhere lost its idiot, didn't it? I've met some f***ing cretins in my time, but you, YOU, take the f***ing cake. Did it occur to either of you what a military asset instantaneous transport between the US and Europe could have been? And now they're sealed the tunnels at this end and I can't send you back to the UK to investigate that end, can I? Because you gave your real names and addresses and are wanted for murder. *head desk, and sobs* I can't even send anybody else because I don't have the manpower. I've just wasted three weeks because some moron in New England started a rumour the Germans were going to blow up dams and flood America.
McGinty : Oh yeah, that was me.
Agent Landing : *pops a blood vessel*
Rondale : Now now, if he started a rumour the Germans were going to blow up dams and flood America, it was for a good reason. Or because it was funny.



Leaving Landing to his apoplexy, Santorio heads to the New York Library to scribble Mythos notes into the margins, and McGinty and Rondale head to Central Park to hunt panthers.

Rondale : They're probably hiding in the trees.
GM : I somehow doubt they're sitting in the middle of the baseball diamond.
Rondale : Oh, I dunno, they're probably there right now, people eating them.
GM : Eating them?? Central Park is overrun by panther-eating cannibals, is it?



Mention is made of Rondale's brief sexual attraction to Thompson machine guns

GM and Julius : *sings* Happiness is a warm gun....



Givetti and Santorio are heading out for the evening - there's a musician Givetti's heard of, that's been compared to his own stage show in some of the reviews. Both performances are disturbing and strange. Some of the reviews are disturbing and strange too.

I recently had to endure the work of so-called musician Charles Aching, who for some reason has seen fit to inflict his discords and distasteful lyricism on audiences up and down the East Coast. I can only imagine that the proliferation of 'jazz' in the speakeasys and other low dives has given him reason to believe audiences will swallow anything. Certainly his compositions are as poisonous as anything the bootleggers can provide.

I certainly can't believe he was ever classically trained, since no sane individual would do as much damage to traditional ideas of rhythm, melody & rhyme as he seemingly delights in doing.

In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it is pure incompetence, a complete lack of skill, that enables him to produce cacophony out of graceful old favorites, where he isn't being completely fraudulent and presenting twisted versions of other composers work as his own.

AVOID.
- DNM


GM : Critics are supposed to be scathing. But that review goes beyond 'scathing' to 'frothing at the mouth'



They've clearly expected a large crowd - the dance hall has been filled with extra tables and chairs, and what whispered conversations Givetti can hear all seem to anticipate the upcoming show. The room, and the stage, are dark at first, with barely enough light to find his seat. Figures, ill-defined in the shadows, move on the stage, and as they find their place behind their instruments the rest of the room goes quiet, tense with anticipation.

Concealed lights fade into life, revealing the musicians - all immaculately dressed. Some attend unremarkable instruments - a large Negro bent intently over an extensive drum kit, other men on violin and cello. More surprising are the Arabs, complete with red fezzes, and their oriental instruments including finger cymbals, spike fiddles, goblet drums and more. They play - a low note on strings at first, slow, eerie, unfolding into a traditional Eastern-sounding tune, awaiting lyrics. The singer appears, midstage - a young man, in long sleeved white shirt and scarlet waistcoat. He has swarthy skin, and long dark hair bound back into a ponytail. He has a high, intelligent forehead, intensely dark eyes, and his strikingly handsome features are marred only by some quirk of his smile, that seems to suggest he is enjoying a joke at your expense.

He launches into the words, amazingly powerful voice crooning a love song that suddenly changes to something dark and very strange half-way in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnfdIlSOHt0


He introduces himself between 'Inanna' and the next song - he's Charles Tow Aching himself, the composer and songwriter responsible for the evening's entertainment, such the last song, inspired, he claims, by liturgical chants from Mesopotamia. Circling the stage, he introduces his players, adding such unlikely biographical details as the 'fact' one of the zither-player's ancestors was once court magician to the pharaohs, or that the drummer's grandfather was a voodoo priest.

Nor are singing and composition his only skills. He moves to the edge of the stage, and draws out a musical instrument the likes of which the investigators have never seen before - it looks like a guitar, but solid, without a sounding box, studded with extra tuning knobs and switches, and valves of all things. Wires run from the base to what they now realise are large speakers at each corner of the stage.

Aching & his band launch into another number - 'The Bazaar' - and he accompanies himself on this 'electrified guitar', long fingers dancing on the strings in a frenzy of crashing howls that somehow still suit the song perfectly. It's like nothing - nothing - they've ever heard before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPyFO5ZAXKw


By the time he's done, the audience ( or at least those who haven't been to his shows before and found themselves hungering for more of this outré music ), are sitting open-mouthed. Some are swearing softly in disbelief, or turning eagerly to the various cocktails the club's proprietor is now selling in abundance. No wonder he put extra chairs on the dance floor, if he's going to sell alcohol so well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epo-m185jeo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiNfvWfM21Y


The maestro leads his troupe through other songs, including 'The River', 'The Messenger', 'Samsara' and 'Halcyon Days', adjusting his instrument between each song as he talks to the audience. All of them are chaos and madness set to music - weirdly irregular beats, words like 'chthonic', sounds that only the most charitable could describe as musical, but combine and seem somehow perfect and unspeakably beautiful, and impossible to describe, afterwards. Every few numbers some of the musicians sit out, drinking hurriedly when they aren't required for the song.

The evening closes with one last song, introduced as follows "I composed this last in memory of a man some of you might know, a local boy who was no stranger to the gossip pages. A vain man (and here he smiles at some private joke) but one who followed his dream and found only a terrible end". Only Aching & the drummer play in this one, the other musicians eagerly retreating to the waiting barrel backstage.

And the sounds from the 'electrified guitar' in this song are extraordinary - a modulated howling eerily reminiscent of the lyrics themselves, and switched from speaker to speaker until it's almost as though he's playing in three places at once

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-EsrVYcoTs


Naturally, Givetti immediately plans to see the man dead. Not only because the group have had experience of strange instruments before - to whit a curious trumpet that raises the dead - but because Aching is clearly too popular.

GM : So you want him killed because he's stealing your press?



Givetti sets out to meet up with certain Family men, to arrange the hit, and sends Santorio out to fetch McGinty and Rondale from the illegal bare-knuckle boxing match they went out to see.

GM : And when are you going to tell your hosts that you just invited an Irishman to an Italian 'gentleman's club'?
The Amazing Julius : 8-( I was more concerned with telling them that one of my guests is a G-man, McGinty being Irish completely slipped my mind.

McGinty : Look at the rack on that! And I'm not even talking about the platter of spare ribs.

The four go out to see another performance by Aching, and hopefully to see him assassinated. The small crowd that gathers to talk to Aching afterward have many questions. Such as why his music has such ambiguous meaning, or subtly mocks everything honorable and innocent.

Charles Tow Aching : Of course my art possesses a certain quality of black humour. The universe is so large, so infinitely hostile, that most minds can't even comprehend of the numbers involved. The best you can hope for is a relatively pain-free death, after bringing children into into the same world of pain and misery and personal prejudice turned into morals and laws. And yet most people go through life under the unshakeable conviction that all this *waves hand at the Universe* was arranged for their benefit. Now, you're perfectly free to regard this as tragic, or somehow admirable, but as for myself I find it endlessly hilarious.

Charles Tow Aching : A pleasure to see you here, Mr McGinty
McGinty : What? How'd you know who I was?
Charles Tow Aching : If you're trying to go incognito, Mr McGinty, you should probably avoid appearing in front-page news photos, doing muscle poses.

McGinty : Where are you from?
Charles Tow Aching : I don't know, I was little too young at the time to make a note of the address.
McGinty : Errrr...
Charles Tow Aching : I was raised in a little place outside Cairo.
McGinty : Oh, Cairo? Heard about that, terrible dusty place
Charles Tow Aching : There's also a Cairo in Illinois.
McGinty : Oh. You don't sound American.
Charles Tow Aching : I traveled a lot when I was younger.
McGinty : Oh? What kind of places?
Charles Tow Aching : All over - The Far East, Africa, Australia...
McGinty : What's Australia like?
Charles Tow Aching : Very sandy, at least the parts I saw.
McGinty : Yeah, what's with the English, always going around invading dusty places....

Charles Tow Aching : Of course, this isn't the only instrument I know - I used to play trumpet, but I gave it away. Not just a black man with a horn, me.
McGinty : Oh? I've got a trumpet.
Charles Tow Aching : Is that so? Perhaps we should play together, at some point.

Rondale is fascinated and disturbed by the electric guitar's design, which Aching claims is his own invention. The electric banjo was patented in 1910, but this instrument is something else entirely.

Aching has seen The Amazing Julius's posters around town - the one with the avatar of Nyarlathotep looming in the background.

Charles Tow Aching : About your poster, Mr. Givetti - what is that thing in the background supposed to be?
The Amazing Julius : Nepalese Attack Boar
Charles Tow Aching : Do you run into many Nepalese Attack Boars?
The Amazing Julius : Thankfully, no.

Charles Tow Aching : I suppose our shows do have certain shared aspects, Mr Givetti, but they're hardly the only ones. I'm told there's a jazz man out of New Orleans, goes by the handle of 'The Royal Pant'. Apparently he and I have much in common.

Aching also encourages Givetti to return, so they can discusses the subtleties of showmanship, and leaves him a card.

Shake It Up With
Charles Tow Aching
Bandmaster
Make Any Occasion Unforgettable
Bookings care of N. Morgan, 180 – 2456 NYC


Rondale, McGinty, and Santorio have gone home with one of the audience members - a clearly disturbed young man, paranoid and obsessive, who's been coming to every show he can, copying down the lyrics and drawing insane correlations between the songs that are stuck in his head, and tour dates, and astrology, and everything else. The amount of paperwork pinned to his apartment walls is impressive to say the least, even if most of his conclusions are paranoid fancy. One thing does stand out - Aching's tour dates do seem to correspond with a startling range of man-made and natural disasters. One such was a freak accident where a locomotive's boiler burst as it was passing a stopped passenger train, broiling the passengers alive. Rondale isn't convinced - it might just be coincidence

Rondale : He goes anywhere, bad **** happens. So? The same thing happens with us.

They head back to the club to pick up Givetti, who's increasingly worried - the hitman followed Aching out into the alley, but Aching came back unscathed and unconcerned, and the hitman vanished into thin air. Even more disturbing is the behavior of McGinty's wolfhound upon catching sight of the bandmaster. Here's a dog best known for devouring Deep One hybrids and preacher's testicles, grovelling before a total stranger - crawling forward, fawning and whining for some sort of acknowledgment. Rondale drags the dog back to the truck before Aching can do anything more than smile in quiet amusement, and the party splits up to rest and investigate Aching's background. Apparently he has a long association with disaster. He was the only survivor of an orphanage fire, for one thing....

TO BE CONTINUED

August 1924 - Once again I didn't get to run Instruments Yet Stranger, because all the groups at the guild yesterday were crowded into a single room, and me running a variety of strange and disturbing music - all of it essential to the campaign - for my players wouldn't have gone down well. *sigh* I suspect I'm going to have to just write the speakeasy scene up as an email and include mp3s of the tunes. Happily, I'd also prepared handouts for two other potential adventures in advance, so I ran The Pale God from Great Old Ones instead. Spoilers ahead.

But that didn't start until after the players and I sorted out who had what book, and who had read which. The McGinty Travelling Library have stolen so many interesting tomes over the years that the collection is becoming somewhat unmanageable, and reading them a full-time pursuit, especially since I exploded the number available with crates of other books that might be Mythos-related, but usually turn out to be occult arse-gravy of the weakest kind. They might get around to the Book of Eibon one day, but they've got Basil Valentine : His Triumphant Chariot of Antimony, and A History of Freemasonry to slog through first.

Rondale & The Amazing Julius want to start a Foundation to secretly fight the Mythos, but further complications arose with the number of artefacts McGinty has acquired - why lie, stole - and jealously hordes. He's the only surviving party member that knows about some of them. The list includes items in all three of Rondale & Guiliano's categories - 'Interesting', 'Dangerous' and ' DDH' - the latter being 'find a Deep Dark Hole and hope it never sees the light of day again'.

McGinty and Rondale are out of town at the start of the adventure, driving back to Arkham after picking up McGinty new custom-built Dusenberg Model J. The night is dark and stormy, rain is pouring down in buckets, the road ahead nearly invisible. A discussion about the need for some sort of reflectors set into the road arises.

Rondale OOC : But not if McGinty is involved. We don't want him going around decapitating cats and sticking their heads into the asphalt.
GM : No. McGinty goes around decapitating cats for entirely different reasons.

Although it would make directions interesting.

GM : 'Turn left at the tortoiseshell'

Arriving back at the business, they park the cars meet up with Givetti ( fresh out of hospital ) and head across the road to the house McGinty continues to claim as his own for no legal reason. Where they discover the phone has been ringing all evening, by somebody begging desperately for their help. Tooling up, they set off for the town square, where a dishevelled, rain-soaked and deathly pale figure is waiting. He's clearly not well, and he's about to get worse. The man staggers towards them, begging them "go to the house of the worm... destroy it!" and collapses screaming and convulsing. As Givetti and Rondale run forward to help, he splits open from temple to crotch, and thousands upon thousands of tiny white creatures like pus with spider's legs, pour out of the gaping but bloodless wound. Givetti, unsurprisingly, goes bug**** insane, and empties his pistol into the streaming mass, and flings the empty gun into the remains. Rondale, on the other hand, empties incendiary rounds into the heap. McGinty, on the other hand, is running around trying to catch one of the creatures in a bottle. Them they spend a few minutes line dancing on the bugs, trying to crush as many as possible before they can crawl and swim away through the puddles.

Gingerly picking through the smoking remains, they find an unused postcard from the Hotel Miskatonic, McGinty's phone number, a wallet with the victim's name, address, and money, and a room key. They then head back to McGinty's truck, before realising they probably shouldn't leave the corpse there for the gardeners to discover, especially given all the evidence they left on the scene.

GM : All those silver bullets are going to make an interesting addition to an already noteworthy autopsy.
The Amazing Julius : And I've got to find my gun! It's a registered firearm!
GM : Yup. You'll find it in the chest cavity, where you threw it

Corpse disposal is required. Bagging up the remains, Rondale and McGinty drag the corpse back to the truck, despite Givetti's mental state, and Rondale stands guard ready to squash any more of the bugs that might emerge.

GM : Bad corpse! Stop! Scaring! Smithers!

Some argument arises about where to take the corpse. Eventually Givetti is forced to pay McGinty to take the remains back to the auto repair shop. Givetti acquiesces - it's the kind of thing his Family have to do all the time anyway.

The corpse is stuffed into an oil-drum along with a pile of half-bricks, and dumped in the Miskatonic before dawn. But all this running around in the rain, and coming downstairs in the morning to find Bob the Pus-Spider running around in his bottle on the breakfast table, and faced with runny eggs on top of the memories from the night before, does The Amazing Julius no good at all and he is promptly hospitalised for something that soon becomes pneumonia.

Rondale & McGinty continue their investigations without him. This includes McGinty hiring the penthouse suite at the Hotel Miskatonic so they can ransack a room downstairs, a visit to a very dodgy attorney, and getting the royal tour of a Boston asylum whilst Rondale attempts to interrogate a woman who's been catatonic for 30 years. They manage the later by claiming McGinty is there investigating things to fund when he becomes Governor. The director of the institute of course falls over backwards to assist, and promises that all his staff will vote for him too.

GM : Why limit it to the staff? There's plenty of inmates too. McGinty - The Candidate That 9 Out Of 10 Lunatics Support.

Finally exhibiting some understandable caution, Rondale and McGinty refuse to enter the house in question, and limit their first visit to exploring the grounds. This uncovers an assortment of human remains, and they decide that calling in the cops would be a good idea at this point. Let them go in the house first.

GM : Yes, those Boston police really love you these days, don't they...

A reporter turns up as well, as the police and coroner are loading the last few baskets into their police truck. Alas, McGinty and Co. neglect to ask which paper he works for - it turns out to be the one that turned against McGinty the moment he revealed his political leanings. Leading to this headline the next day :

Gubernatorial Candidate Knee-Deep In Corpses
McGinty Uncovers Further Carnage At Death House

And further complicating their investigation of the house because now there are small crowds of curious onlookers hanging around. With Givetti back on his feet they sneak in late at night, and rig up the house to explode with a combination of diesel, dynamite, and a timed detonator. Why risk exploring the house when you can blow it to bits instead? McGinty's experience as a army sapper should prove useful here. Indeed, his happy explanations about the history of sapping and the use of decomposing pig carcases, when they return to their hotel, puts Givetti off the breakfast bacon as WELL as the eggs. They anticipate headlines about the explosion in the morning paper.

But there aren't any. And sneaking in again the next night shows that somebody somehow got into the house and removed the timer. McGinty resets the bomb, this time to explode if anybody interferes with the detonator, and they retreat again.

Still nothing.

Now quite irritated, McGinty sneaks back in AGAIN, during the day, whilst Rondale and Givetti distract the morbid thrill-seekers, and sets up the house to explode if anybody even opens the doors. And falls out a window making his escape. They go to leave, and realise one of the drawbacks of their scheme when the attorney shows up trying to find the missing tenant and the keys McGinty still hasn't returned. To stop him going into the house and blowing himself and the tourists sky-high, McGinty pays him off ( all that money in the dead man's wallet is proving handy ) and they go back the hotel confident that there is now no way any mysterious persons could get in or out of the house without being blown to bits.

Which may well be the case, but the house is STILL intact the next morning. Whereupon they decide "Screw subtle", drive up before dawn, smash a window, throw a bundle of dynamite with a long fuse into the basement, and flee. In the rear-view mirror the house goes up in a pillar of flame, and having finally succeeded in their attempted to reduce the Martensen House to a pile of burning wreckage, McGinty, Rondale & Givetti go their separate ways - Givetti returning to his stage magic tour, and the others to Arkham to get back into the business of auto repair and scamming the voting public.

GM : I have to admit, the warning "Go to the House of the Worm - destroy it!" did possess a certain ambiguity

The latter are quite enjoying the newspaper the next morning, until they get to the paragraph about the huge trapdoor discovered in the Martensen cellar, and the Boston police intention to investigate it as soon as the building stops smouldering. After some debate, and more arguments about having Bob The Pus-Spider running around in his bottle on the breakfast table, McGinty and Rondale decide they can't let this situation stand, and prepare for another night expedition back to the house, with more dynamite, grenades, and a small armoury.

GM : Probably wise - the Boston police haven't had a very good year in certain respects - seven killed trying to take down the Crimson Gang and their 'Nepalese Attack Boar', more arresting the Sylvan Night cult, another three at the Mansion of Madness... and what do we learn from all this? Leave cult-busting to the professionals.



The two park well down the hill and walk up to the ruin. To their irritation, the police have left a man on watch at the wreckage. At least they can argue political techniques whilst they wait for him to fall asleep. Slandering the opponents seems like a good idea.

McGinty : My opponent has done nothing to stop Boston police exploding into pus spiders! He says an invisible monster invaded his office!
Rondale : emulating a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit 'Hello Paddy...'
McGinty : Shut up Harvey



They argue plans for their spelunking expedition, whilst I prepare to introduce a new player.

McGinty : So we're sending our love down the hole

GM: The most important skills are Library Use, Spot Hidden, & Dodge. So you can anticipate what's going to eat you, see what's going to eat you, and - in theory - avoid being eaten.



But first McGinty strangles the watchman unconscious, stuffs a sock in mouth, and leaves him propped up against a wall with a $100 dollars in his pocket for the trouble. The situation down the hole is almost as vile as McGinty's sock, with thousands of the squirming pus spiders climbing over the walls and ladder and ceiling. A few gallons of gasoline and a flare clears the bulk away from the shaft anyway, but the tunnels at the bottom head off in every direction, and if they link up to the other tunnels they know exist under Boston, might well extend for miles. The squirming things drop onto their heads and shoulders on a regular basis, but happily, both thought to bring army helmets.

Both are alert enough to prepare an ambush when they hear something larger than the pus-spiders coming from ahead. It turns out to be a man, filthy with mud and crushed creature, miner's helmets long out of power, shotgun - an automatic shotgun!!!! - out of bullets, and mind out of sanity. As far as his profoundly disturbed mind can recall, he's been down here for hours, or possibly days, feeling his way around, crushing thousands of the things underfoot and underhand, until he saw their lights up ahead. He's very very glad to see them. But unsurprisingly, he's also severely scotophobic, obsessive-compulsive, and amnesiac, demanding pen and paper so he can draw intricate mathematical calculations and diagrams at every opportunity, and reduced to panic at any threat to take away his new flashlight. He doesn't remember much. Only that something very bad was going to happen, that his friends were fighting something in the tunnels, and that he had to get away. Gates are good. There's safety on the far side of Gates. Like the one they find shortly thereafter, and step through into tunnels even larger, and even more thickly swarming with pus-spiders.

There's a ladder over here too, leading up into a farmer's cottage. And, worryingly, daylight. They could be anywhere in the world, and to McGinty's fury, it turns out to be England. At least it still appears to be 1924 - they're starting to suspect the lunatic they found in the tunnels came from somewhen else. The farmer is working his fields nearby, and is clearly surprised to see them. As anybody would be, when three-mud-covered foreigners, in army clothes and steel helmets, carrying assorted shotguns, grenades and a machine gun, turn up and start asking you if you know there's tunnels swarming with pus-spiders under your house.

The farmer does know, but apart from increasing evidence that he's not quite right in the head, seems unconcerned by the fact. Or the claim that that McGinty and friends came through the tunnels, from America.

Farmer : Spiders? Spiders? Arr. 'Course I do. Spiders. Wha abarrem? They never 'urt nubuddy.

Farmer : America? Oh arr. Long frogging tunnel. People? People? So wha, people all 'bout tha frogging things. Evrywarr.



They ask him to show them where these other people in the tunnels are, which he seems happy enough to do, despite arming himself with a rock salt-loaded shotgun first, and muttering to himself all the way.

Farmer : Furge thangering muck witchellers rock throbblin' this time o' day Ur bin oughta gone put thickery blarmdasted zones about, gordangun, diddenum? Havver froggin' law onnum, shouldnum? Eh? Eh? Arn I?"



Hearing the sound of a child crying in a side tunnel, McGinty and Co. demand a detour. The child is Elspeth, the farmer's grandaughter, who seems very glad to see him and clutches to his leg, even though, she claims, it was Grandfather who brought her down here in the first place and told her to wait. He pats the child affectionately on the head, and asks if the men still want to see the other people in the tunnels. They'd rather get the girl back up into the house first, so they retrace their steps, and Grandfather heads up first, opens the trapdoor, and helps his granddaughter out of the hole. Then slams the trapdoor down on McGinty and the rest, heaving sacks of grain or something on top of the hatch.

Cursing their gullibility, McGinty stays at the top of the ladder, trying to shoot his way out. Down below, Rondale and Santorio note a marked increase in the activity of the pus-spiders, and the sound of something large moving in the darkness. Santorio shrieks "It's coming! It's coming!" and scrambles up the ladder, trying to push his way past McGinty at the top, even though the hatch is still closed. Rondale is pursuing closely, because he threw a flare and saw what was coming.

Despite all the screaming and panic and the loathsome plasticity of the thing oozing slowly up the shaft behind them, McGinty manages to heave the hatch open with a superhuman burst of panic, and they tackle the farmer to the ground before he can shoot them, grab Elspeth, and run for their lives. Not least because the thing, now filling most of the cottage, seems completely unconcerned by all the grenades and incendiary rounds and machine-gunning and magic they try to use against it.

Which is when things get strange. Stranger. Their flight peters out, and they look at each other in some confusion. They can't remember what they were running from.

McGinty : Why were we running?
Rondale : I don't know. I was running because you were running.



Cautiously sneaking back to the bend of the road, they see the cottage in ruins. They remember the tunnels and the pus-spiders and gunning the farmer down, but can't for the life of them remember what it was that provoked such panic and destruction. They decide they should try and find some authorities to hand Elspeth over to, and head down to the nearby village of Camside to report to the police, and send a telegram to America asking for some way to get home. McGinty, instead, heads to the pub, to insult the local beer and try and pay with American dollars. The publican holds his tongue, partly due to McGinty being grossly over-charged for the pint, but also because he's still carrying the machine-gun.

Rondale is trying to explain what happened to the town's constable, after given his name, and Office of (US) Naval Intelligence ID. His efforts are not helped by the arrival of McGinty and Santorio.

Constable : And do you have a hunting permit for that shotgun, sir?
Rondale : No. That's why I haven't been using it.
Constable : Perhaps you could put it on the counter there?
Rondale : *puts the freshly-fired weapon on the shelf, and goes on to explain the situation at the house, where a shot-gunned corpse awaits the arrival of the authorities*



McGinty arrives, still drinking his pint, mud-covered, and bearing his machine gun.

Increasingly cautious constable : And do you have a license for that weapon sir?
McGinty : Sure thing - here ya go *hands over licence, which has his full name and address*
Constable : This is an American licence, sir.
McGinty : Yeah, that's right, we're from America.
Constable : I... see. And when did you arrive in the United Kingdom?
Santorio : About 90 minutes ago? We came through a tunnel.
Constable : I.... see. If you gentlemen could come through here? Just wait in this cell a while while I make you some tea and make a few phone calls.



The way McGinty exploits his accent to exercise his dislike of English cops - referring to him as Orificer & C*ntstable - does nothing to help matters. Although he does hand over his weapons when asked.

McGinty : OK, here ya go *hands over Tommy-gun*
Constable : *adds it to the pile* Thank you
McGinty : Oh hang on, I suppose you'll be wanting this too? *holds up grenade*
Constable : *accepts it gingerly* Is there anything else, sir?
McGinty : Oh yes, this one too. *waits until Constable has his hands full* Gettim! *jumps the officer and punches him unconscious



The trio make their escape out the back window, avoiding the small crowd now gathered outside the building to watch, pausing only to punch a neighbour out with one hit and steal the copper's wallet.

McGinty : We're gonna need some English money, after all.



Escaping the subsequent manhunt by hiding under hedgerows and sneaking along until they reach the nearest town, and hole up in an abandoned house until nightfall, and Rondale can summon an invisible monster to fly them home. He'd summon a Winged Spirit Of The Air instead, but McGinty left the whistle back in Arkham. Santorio spends most of the wait inscribing Gate calculations on the walls, or at least the ones McGinty hasn't copied the summoning ritual onto. The flight back to New England isn't much fun either, what with the rubbery, invisible tittering mouths slobbering all over their skin, and the speed of thousands of miles an hour over the moonlit Atlantic, and Santorio's shrieking scotophobia. They were very lucky the night was cloudless enough to cast the ritual, given the police arrived at the house seconds after they started.

Now comparatively relaxed, McGinty and Rondale settle down to interrogate their new pet lunatic about his origins, and go through his wallet. It includes his Boston address, Drivers Licenses and ONI identification dated ten years in the future. But he can't remember much about how he got to tunnels under Boston in 1924. He remembers he started in tunnels under Boston, because some kind of Bomb was going to go off... and there were deadly white flowers... and that the tunnels were not as safe as he and his friends had hoped, and that his friends were holding THINGS off whilst he completed a spell...but his memory remains deeply confused.

They do try and get some important information out of the poor guy though. Such as who wins the World Series Baseball this year, and which stocks to invest in. Santorio vaguely recalls that New World Industries do very well, and McGinty buys $10,000 dollars worth. Also, they want to know if McGinty wins the upcoming election. Alas all Santorio can recall is that something happened to one of the candidates... and that there was some scandal... and McGinty had to leave the country suddenly, just after the elections in January 1925.

He does recall he was recruited by ONI in 1925. Something was happening in Egypt? It involved a mummy... but the rest is a blank.

The trio try to recall what it was that they were running from. They can deduce it was something large, and very scary, and probably immune to anything they tried against it. This makes them unhappy, and they resolve that the next time they find themselves overseas they'll hunt monsters that aren't immune to bullets.

McGinty : You know what always helps me remember? Breakfast! Go make some.

McGinty : I know! How about Australia. I hear they have drop-bears there that eat campers.
Rondale : Drop-bears.
McGinty : Yeah, they're animals, they can die
Rondale : But it's Australia
McGinty : Well maybe some have got into America now.
GM : Sneaky immigrant drop-bears
McGinty : Yeah. F***ing immigrant drop-bears.



An Arkham police officer arrives at the shop - they've just received word that one Patrick McGinty, given this address as his own, and two associates, are wanted for murder and assault in the UK, and they've come around to enquire as to his likely whereabouts. They're quite surprised to find him there. United Kingdom to the US in less than 24 hours? Impossible. McGinty uses this opportunity to mock ruthlessly.

McGinty : So I was here in Arkham the very same day I supposedly killed somebody in England? ****, I must be a good shot.
Cop : Yesss. Sorry to bother you Mr. McGinty.
McGinty :*turns and points finger West* Look! I'm killing somebody in Japan now! Bang! Bang!



Rondale & Santorio head back down to Boston to see if Santorio is living at the same address in 1924. He is, and as 1930s Santorio hides and gibbers in the car, Rondale talks to the gentleman, a scholar and historian who knows nothing about ONI or the Mythos, apparently. Rondale pictures the report he's going to have to write up for his superiors.

Rondale : *headesk* F*** my life



McGinty heads over to Martensen House to pick up his truck - which, thanks to amazingly good luck, the police haven't found yet. The police themselves, of course, did not react well to their watchman being assaulted, and went into the tunnels to apprehend those responsible. From what McGinty can gather, they took one look at the squirming mass of pus-spiders, and despite the footprints leading into the hole and not coming out again decided "**** this" and ordered the hatch concreted over.

McGinty is of course quite pleased with the incredible success with which they survived the last day's events, and the fact that it's apparently not going to cost any more lives.

McGinty : We arsed through that completely cheeky.



Of course, back in the UK, the police are investigating another ruin and shaft...

Late July, 1924 – In which the Mansion of Madness casts a long shadow over the sanity of our investigators, not least of which is McGinty inviting an Eldritch Abomination to move into his house.

Some asides :

McGinty : Of course Julius likes tools. That’s why he hangs out with us.

Julius’s Player : The mosquitoes! They’re huge! I swear that one had Boeing stencilled on the side.
Rondale’s Player : Just look out for the one stencilled “Airbus”



Scattering in various directions after fleeing the mansion, carrying armfuls of mouldering books as they do so, McGinty and Rondale return to Arkham, bearing the unconscious Dr McPool with them. There, for reasons best known to himself, Rondale deposits the woman in one of the guest rooms, and locks her in. Naturally, upon waking in a strange house, after the events at the mansion, and hearing a horrible non-stop screaming from the walls, her first reaction is to try and escape out the window, failing utterly, and is found in the backyard with two broken ankles.

Understandably questioning Alicia’s sanity, McGinty bandages her up and moves her back into the ground floor of the house. Her apprehensions are hardly soothed by lengthy speculation about hidden doors, and heavily armed monkeys.

McGinty : *humouring the lunatic* Were you trying to fly?
Alicia : *glares* Not I was not trying to fly
McGinty : Were you trying to land?

GM : I’m picturing you opening the back of the truck and a horde of chimps with aviator’s helmets pouring out waving trench guns and revolvers.
McGinty : McGinty’s Monkey Army! I’ll teach them not to make me Governor! We’ll take the zoo first. Go, my pretties! Free your brothers, and arm them!

McGinty : Now, no more jumping out windows – doors are what you come in and out of.



The screaming only she can hear doesn’t stop. Rondale diagnoses tinnitus, caused by the storm of gunfire and explosions that ensued at the mansion. He’s completely wrong, but never mind.

Julius : It’s actually a tiny, tiny woman stuck in her inner ear hairs
GM : So where is the microscopic sub with the laser?



Come the dawn, McGinty and Rondale go about a normal day. This starts with dusting the entire house with corrosive sublimate bedbug powder, de-lousing the wolfhound, and checking the mosquito screens. McGinty has recalled the curse the hyena-werewolf thing laid on him a few years back, in the event he ever interfered with its plans. Breaking his leg with a voodoo doll probably counts. This is followed up with a few rounds of boxing practise with the teenaged burglar that McGinty hired to work at Rondale & McGinty’s Electrical & Automotive Repair. The lad is understandably apprehensive of entering the ring against McGinty.

McGinty : Don’t worry lad, you won’t last five minutes.



A significant amount of McGinty’s income comes from equipping and repairing the many vehicles bootleggers use for smuggling booze. One result of this is an increasingly large pile of car tires piling up alongside the building. His proposed solution is to buy the Arhkam Rubbish Tip.

GM : Ok, why?
McGinty : It’ll be a moneymaker. Privatise! Plus I’ll install an incinerator. That’ll get rid of the car tires. And other things.
GM : *facepalm* I should have seen that coming.
Rondale : Yes, yes you should have
GM : How many ways do you have to dispose of inconvenient corpses now?
McGinty : There’s that plot down at the cemetery; the tip; the vegetable garden...
Julius : And the advantage with the incinerator is if you throw in a few car tires no-one will notice the smell of roasting meat.
GM : And if you’re really desperate there’s that stone arch you have in the basement.
McGinty : Yeah! Although you have to be quick with that one. So you can shove the corpse through and close it again before the monsters come out.
Rondale : I can picture the scene – me holding the corpse, you ready to open the Gate – ‘Ok, on the count of three.. no, ON three... one.... two... THREE!’
GM : I’m more interested in how many things are gathering on the far side to take advantage of this regular supply of fresh meat.



McGinty furthers his political aspirations by meeting with various movers and shakers in Boston and Arkham. After one such meeting, he comes out to find a figure sitting in his Packard. Drawing a gun, McGinty sneaks up and demands an explanation, only to discover that he’s talking to a six-foot-tall white rabbit with waistcoat and fob-watch. Apparently its name is Harvey. McGinty thinks this is amusing enough to play along and the two drive up to Arkham enjoying a long chat about friendship, reciprocity, and the dark crystal McGinty took from the smoking corpse of Josephine Garsetti, after being hired to recover it by the late unlamented Ezekiel Crater. McGinty even offers to let the bunny stay at his house, thereby allowing an eldritch abomination access to this reality.

Rondale and Dr McPool don’t find the situation amusing, and they don’t even know about the abomination that’s installed itself in one of the upstairs bedrooms yet. They’re just alarmed that McGinty is talking to a six-foot-tall bunny that no-one else can see.

Rondale : Oh God, the alcohol has finally done for him, he’s got the D.T.s
McGinty : What are you talking about, he’s sitting right there!
Rondale : McGinty, there’s nothing there
McGinty : You’re a fooking looney
Rondale : Of course, we’re completely insane because we can’t see a six-foot-tall white rabbit named Harvey Wallbanger



Over the next few days Rondale despairs for McGinty’s sanity and ops to sleep across the road at the shop ( lucky for him ) and McGinty spends time at the classier local speakeasy to continue his politicking and talk the council into selling him the tip. Dr McPool cuts a rug on the dancefloor, despite being confined to a wheelchair.

McGinty : And this is Alicia McPool. As you can see I broke both her legs to stop her getting away.



Alicia and the rest are also concerned that McGinty flatly refuses to let anybody else even touch the crystal he acquired. According to one of the books they acquired, and Harvey, the crystal is the key to great power, and is the source of the sudden rush of power and charisma McGinty has been enjoying since he stole it.

GM : Yes, you certainly do seem to be very popular these days – you even have women wanting to fondle your stones.
McGinty : They’re always after me lucky charms.



McGinty, searching the house for Rondale, discovers the Thing that now occupies one of the bedrooms, and is understandably upset. Harvey placates him by pointing out that he and it are essential the same, that McGinty did invite him to stay, and that he only wants to be McGinty’s friend and teach him how best to use the powers of the Dark Stone. All he has to do is bathe it in the blood of the next person he kills, just like Garsetti and Crater used to do. McGinty in turn insists that his extradimensional houseguest move to the greenhouse, which it is compliant enough to do. It’s not like the outbuilding wasn’t already a deathtrap, anyway. Rondale comes around the corner of the house to witness half of the conversation McGinty has with the bunny only he can see or hear.

Rondale : So the greenhouse will have an eldritch abomination in it?
McGinty : Sounds like a plan!
Rondale : Where’s the rock, McGinty
McGinty : Er... in the safe in the greenhouse.



Rondale, now certain that this is not going to end well, elects to get Alicia the hell out of town, and try to get The Amazing Julius up here as quickly as possible. There were a few rituals in an ancient scrapbook they’d ‘acquired’ earlier that might be very useful here. At the very least it’ll take two people to hold McGinty down as they strap him into a straightjacket.
Rondale stops by Amy and Lucy’s flat in Boston en route to Alicia’s home.

Rondale : Hi Lucy... McGinty’s not here! Put down the bottle!



Meanwhile, McGinty goes about business as normal, despite regular advice from a spectral bunny. This business includes a visit from an obvious G-Man, nosing about after bootleggers, and clearly incredulous about the modifications to McGinty’s fearsome battletruck.

Undercover Prohibition Agent : What’s with the cow-catcher? And the whitewalled tires? And the hatch in the roof of the cabin?
McGinty : You ever been caught in a blizzard? The white-wall tires keep the snow off better. And the cow-catcher pushes the drifts out of the way. And if you DO end up in a snow-drift you can climb out the hatch and get out that way.
GM : .... you jammy git.



Guiliano manages to find a gap in his busy tour of the Tri-State area to drive overnight up to Arkham, bringing along one of his pre-prepared devices and his notes for the Seal of Solomon, apparently an extremely powerful version of the Elder Sign that will permanently bind an entity into a now indestructible item, as long as the entity is actually present, and only at massive cost to your soul, even assuming the spell works. The smaller box he’s bringing isn’t the only one he’s prepared in advance.

Julius : There’s that coffin in the basement! You know, the one with the plaque that says ‘Reserved for previous occupant’



McGinty attempts to justify his intention to bathe the stone in the lifeblood of his next victim.

McGinty : It’s hungry. It’s a fooking big rabbit. I tried carrots but it wants blood.



They do manage to persuade him to fetch the stone from the greenhouse, despite Harvey’s insistence that McGinty can’t trust them near it. With good reason, since despite McGinty’s armed refusal to hand it over, Guiliano had a hypnotic compulsion prepared to make sure that he did.

Guiliano attempts to flee, as Rondale attempts to hold down the now enraged McGinty, and both fail. Ignoring the intervening glass, the mad Irish bastard launches himself through the car window and pummels the Italian magician unconscious, but soon succumbs to a dastardly attack from behind by Rondale. Who then shoves Guiliano into the passenger seat and takes the wheel, fleeing town ahead of certain vengeance.

The Amazing Julius OOC : I can just picture a policeman coming down the street now – McGinty, stinking of booze, clutching his groin and rocking and hissing over and over “Don’t listen to the rabbit, don’t listen to the rabbit”
McGinty : Ooooh, me lucky charms!



Alas for Rondale and Guiliano, McGinty soon succumbs to the influence of the Thing ( for one thing the theft of the stone has left him spiritually gutted ), and guided by the voice in his head boards the battletruck and roars off in pursuit. Rondale is naturally horrified to see the view in the rear view mirror of the cow-catcher, and McGinty’s fury-twisted face peering over the top, bearing down on their vehicle at speed. Shaking the Italian awake and screaming at him to start the binding spell, Rondale attempts to stay ahead of the truck and fails, and is driving off the road, narrowly missing trees and rocks, and frantically arms himself as McGinty brings the truck around and lines up to ram them dead.

The first round of gunfire does nothing – McGinty armoured the truck for a reason – but the second takes out a wheel and leaves McGinty’s truck stuck in a ditch. That doesn’t stop McGinty, who is climbing out the hatch in the roof and heading into the back of the truck to fetch his machine gun, as Rondale desperately steels himself to murder a friend, and Guiliano completes the ritual and prays he has enough psychic ability to contest the will of an Abomination and survive the experience. Also, that the entity actually exists, and isn't just a product of McGinty's deranged imagination.

Happily for most of those concerned, he does. Although all three are utterly shaken by the experience, Guiliano needs to be hospitalised, and Rondale has to admit that an angry McGinty is the most terrifying enemy they’ve yet had to face.

After some delay, and sans Amy, but with a new player and a reappearance by the infamous Lucy Smith.

When last we met, McGinty & Rondale had dived from a second storey window, Amy, half stupefied herself, was dragging a shell-shocked sheriff out by his collar, and McGinty & Rondale were bleeding and battered as they ran around the house frantically firing incendiary rounds through every window. This is the point when they heard the screams for help from upstairs, and realised that they'd probably just left the man they'd come to rescue inside the house they just set on fire. Incidentally, making 5 counts of arson that the authorities can connect to McGinty. Not counting the ones they can't.

McGinty : That's just me arsin' about.

The Amazing Julius : I've got an Arts degree, thank you!
Me, GM : And a police record

McGinty : We don't have Molotov cocktails, we have Warmth Enhancers.



A rescue is enacted, and with the Sheriff catatonic and his deputy totally outclassed, they have no difficulty in putting everything down to the actions of the cult leader the Boston Police have been hunting down. Two mob goons that have been hanging around are extremely unhappy about all this police involvement, even though they're only there to give McGinty $2500 for another little errand he was commissioned to perform. But not, presumably, as unhappy as they were later when something tore them limb from limb on a lonely Pennsylvanian road, mere minutes after McGinty's fearsome battletruck almost drove them off it. Possibly it was the same thing that landed on the roof of the truck later, and ripped the gun hatch off the top of the cabin.

Safe driving practices

Me, GM : You're going to try to restrict McGinty's access to alcohol?
McGinty : I'd like to see you try
Rondale : I'll fight monsters, but I'm not going to fight you!



New character, Dr. Alicia McPool, a linguist at Radcliffe, and friend of Amy Wells and Lucy Smith. My wife, of course, instantly puts her notorious Smut Field back into action, with speculation as to why she was over at Lucy & Amy's apartment when the Boys rocked up.

Lucy OOC : Is she a cunning linguist?



McGinty et al don't make an overwhelmingly good impression on Dr. McPool on their arrival, as they deposit the catatonic Amy on her bed in Cambridge and prepare to head back up to Arkham to investigate the aftermath of the third robbery attempt ( the one McGinty hoped to thwart by rigging his house to explode ).

Rondale : At least he's dressed. He could have been wandering the streets drunk and naked.
Julius as McG : 'Wait... wait... I've got my underwear on... that means I'm awake.'

Alicia : *eavesdropping on the whispered conference between McGinty and his co-conspirators* Thing in the truck? What thing in the truck?
McGinty OOC : It's something new. Call a GPS



Once again, despite having done the police's job for them, and despite the trail of dead and mutilated bodies that turn up wherever he seems to go,. McGinty somehow turns this all to his advantage, and gets the police to hold yet another press conference in his honour. And announce his candidacy for Governor of Massachusetts. Alarmingly, his policies would seem to have high popular appeal. And he has a long list of people he can influence or blackmail to achieve it. They also run into another person they know, a flapper they met at a speakeasy a few nights before. Her friend has gone missing, after sneaking into the office of the owner on a dare. This is probably not good, but McGinty and friends nonetheless think it a better idea to spend the next few days Resurrecting Colonel Lancaster; being worried by the discovery that the third burglary attempt involved something flying in through a second storey wall and shrugging off 24 grenades with no obvious injury and the theft of the Voodoo Doll he'd used on the hyena-thing he had a grudge against; writing reports to ONI; recruiting political advisers; and buying a $20,000 Dusenberg J complete with custom hatbox.

McGinty : It's for Heady LaMarr there *jerks thumb at Lancaster's Braincase*



Whilst Rondale is on phone to Agent Landing at ONI

McGinty : Don't forget to say 'McGinty for Governor'

Alicia : *eyeing the damage to the truck* What did that? It almost looks like something tried to rip the roof off the cabin.
The Amazing Julius : Nepalese Attack Boar. There's been a rash of them.
Alicia : *prodding Lancaster's Braincase, which is wisely keeping schtuum* And what's this?
McGinty : That's... er.... Look! Squirrel!
Alicia : *long pause* You are a very odd man



Alicia like so many of the other investigators, has an interest in the occult. Unlike them, she's convinced that the more mainstream stuff actually works. They find this blackly hilarious.

The Amazing Julius : Why bother standing around a cauldron? THAT *points* tradition needs you to dance naked under the moon.
McGinty : Oh, yes, do that one, do that one! ... er, sorry.



All this time spent, and the missing flapper hopefully still alive ( well, she was alive ), the group truck up to the eponymous Mansion in the title. Whereupon scenes of such horror, filth, and degradation ensue that McGinty is persuaded NOT to take credit for this one, and they grab any books that look interesting and flee, before the police arrive to investigate the machine-gun fire, explosions, screaming, and the like. Alicia, alas, does not take the evening at all well, and the fortunately amnesiac Lancaster has to be dragged out. I do not envy the police when they arrive and discover the ghastly remains that have been left behind.

Dark Heresy continues - several hundred human POW continue their defence of the crash site, waiting for their Tau captors to actually do something, whilst just over the rim several hundred Ork and Ork Freebooterz settle their differences before turning on us.

Polonius : Well, we did run into an Ork Nob, and survived.
Rosenkrantz : He gave me a love tap. With an axe.
Guildenstern : He hit me in the back of the forehead.
Polonius : The back of the forehead???
Guildenstern : That's how hard he hit me.



Funnily enough, the extra bullet hole in Guildenstern's skull seems to have knocked him back into a semblance of sanity, or perhaps not, since he has a plan to blow up the Freebooterz' Killkruiser, before the Freebooterz, or as he puts it "the fish-driving greenskin pukes", head off to tell all their mates about the "Grate Fightin' Wot Dere Is On Dis 'Ere Moon".

Polonius : Whilst your enthusiasm is gratifying perhaps we should leave the tactical decisions to the actual officers?

Clearly the Major is out of his mind too, since he thinks this is a good idea and gives Guildenstern a field promotion.

Guildenstern : I thought your Ogryn bodyguard was supposed to be carrying you around
Major Schott : He's busy
Rosenkrantz as Ogryn : Incy-wincy spider, climbed up the waterspout...

Polonius : If it's the kind of thing that only one man in a million could achieve, it's just as well that the Imperial Guard serve in regiments a million strong

Major Schott : Let the orks get away and they'll just come back bigger and stronger and it'll all just bite you on the arse. Then rip it off.

Guildenstern : *To the other POWs* Anybody that wants to know what we're up to is welcome to ask
Polonius : Whereupon we'll thank you for volunteering.
GM : Thus ensuring nobody asks. Well done.



Last meals before the mission

Rosenkrantz : I'd rather not get food poisoning the night before we head out. So I'll be sticking to what I know.
Polonius : Corpse starch it is then.
Rosenkrantz : Does anybody have a peg?
Polonius : No, we haven't been able to wash our clothes in weeks either.
Rosenkrantz : I meant for my nose



The plan is to present a booby-trapped shipping container of guns and grenades to the Ork mercenaries, and hopefully persuade them to carry it all into their armories aboard ship. Prayers before we go out, and ritual inscriptions on weapons.

Guildenstern: *hums the traditional Kringle Carol of Demolition*
Polonius : *sings* Let it blow, let it blow, let it blow!

Rosenkrantz : And I'll write 'Merry Kringlemass' on the bomb



To the cargo walker pilot volunteered for the mission

Guildenstern : If you give the plan away I'll shoot you myself.
Pilot : If I give it away it's most likely because I dropped the crate and it went off! There won't be anything left to shoot!
Guildenstern : If I find a bit, I'll shoot it!

Pilot : I'm not going to get it, but I'd have liked to retire from the Guard with a stack of money and and five blondes.
Rosenkrantz : Well, I suppose we could put a wig on one of the Orks...

Guildenstern : Does anybody here speak Ork?
POWs : *Everybody carefully avoids volunteering*
Guildenstern : Does anybody here dribble Ork?



Shocking revelations about Guildenstern's personal history

Rosenkrantz : You were married???
Polonius : To a human???
Guildenstern : *glares at Polonius*
Rosenkrantz : I'm sure Brother Polonius merely meant you were married to your job. Isn't that right, Brother Polonius?
Polonius : Exactly. It's not like they had sheep on Kringle
Guildenstern : *scribbles down Polonius's name on a scroll* Oh, you are so going on the Naughty List



Mission successful, but now we're being hunted by the Tau Fire Caste, who are a bit upset we blew up our supposed allies. Let alone the question of where we got all the guns and grenades in the first place. Guildenstern surrendered to them, but you can imagine how the interrogation went, especially after he said he wanted to talk to his skull for legal advice. The Water Caste psychiatric counselors are going to be enduring loooong sessions with him. The rest of us manage to get aboard a MagLev train from the Tau spaceport to the human settlement of Archangelesk but realise the Fire Caste are going to be waiting to search the train when it arrives.

Rosenkrantz : *attempting to radio the train crew* Come in, come in, this is Rosenkrantz of the Kringle regiment, come in!
Train's tech-priest crew : Hello, this is a train?
Rosenkrantz : Can you please slow down, we need to get off before we reach Archangelesk
Train's tech-priest crew : *baffled* Why?
Polonius : Put it this way, Private Rosenkrantz - 'There are extraneous organic elements that need to be removed from this vehicle as quickly as possible'
Train's tech-priest crew : You mean you, don't you?



Alas, they're happily to remove us. Without slowing down the train first. The cargo pod we're hiding in is launched off the train whilst we're still travelling at 100kph. Some of us survive, and Rosenkrantz immediately starts giving the survivors orders.

Polonius : You know, they'll really have to promote you soon, so you can get away with that.

She, rather wonderfully, drew a pic of dozens and dozens of the Infinite Tub guests

Drhoz as Vitus is at the start of the second row

http://www.mamabliss.com/blog/?p=850

At GhenghisCon, running an assortment of Cthulhu adventures to amuse and enlighten the poor innocent fools, I mean, convention-goers. A bonus - the venue is a red-brick university building well-infested with vines, leadwork windows, and antique library books. Nicely atmospheric.

Running - Kevin A. Ross' "A Pale God" from Great Old Ones, chosen because of the excellent recording at Yog inspired me, and because I don't mind wiping out all my players at a con game.

'The Haunting', because of course I'm going to run the all-time classic for the newbies

and 'The Flophouse Fatalities' - a homebrewed, that I knew would work well in under 3 hours, and a nice little mystery ending with more questions than it managed to solve. No quotable quotes, but I was very impressed with the intelligence and foresight of the players in that one.

In all sessions the investigators were amateur parapsychologists emulating Harry Price et al and ghost-hunting for fun. It very swiftly stopped being fun. For one thing the events out at the bandstand in 'Pale God' were so horrifying that one PC spent the night staring at a small white thing walking around and around inside a bottle, whilst he himself worked his way through several more, of gin. In the morning he swore to tell the police everything, but his obvious intoxication didn't leave a good impression.

Drunken Jock : Eats you up inside! The Worm! In the bottle! The thing in the bottle!
Sergeant : Riiiiight... That's that Mexican drink, isn't it?


Not that it was all ghastly, at least at first glance. A certain amount of gossip was started in Arkham, for example, when a local doctor and one of his unmarried nurses book a room at the Hotel Miskatonic. Admittedly the shenanigans involved breaking into the room next door, as opposed to anything lewd, but that won't stop the rumours. And being seen driving through town with a large tribal spear strapped to the Model T roof, and wearing a safari helmet and miner's lamps, attracted considerable attention too.

Are we wearing university blazers? We can pretend it's part of a scavenger hunt.

One of the students develops a slightly deranged affection for some of the specimens - 'Frederick' & 'Isobel' - and wants to see if she can breed them as pets.

Me, GM : Um, that would probably be a really bad idea
Her : Why?
Me, GM : You've seen how they breed
Her : *Remembers the screaming, the hysteria, and the state of the corpse.* Oh yeah....



Scenario ends with two of the investigators coming back to the house in question, to find one of their compatriots fleeing for distant parts, one gibbering and preparing to burn the house down, one missing entirely and one gibbering alone in the dark with no idea how he got there or what happened. He finds out a few weeks later, but derives no posthumous satisfaction from the knowledge.

Jock OOC : Guess I acquiesced to It's demand. 'Give me your sticky white... love bits'

And the classic, The Haunting, which ended with attempted murder, madness, and suicide, thus ensuring that the evil reputation of the Corbitt house will continue forever, especially since they managed to catch the sound of the first round of carnage on wax cylinder.

It started well.

Quincy the Grad Student : So why did you get into ghost-hunting anyway?
Professor OOC : I saw Erotic Ghost Story once and I want an erotic ghost story of my own.

Looking at PC photos.

Geek : He looks extinguished.
Me, GM : EX-tinguished???

Quincy the Grad finds a good way to detect ghosts and other supernatural manifestations - by bashing things with a hammer. Eliot the Geek is left in the haunt room to document everything, measure the room in minute detail, set up a wax cylinder to record - and photograph the blood oozing from the hammer hole in the wall.

Me, GM : He really is your party's bitch, isn't he.

Alas, the furniture objects to his continued presence. Running back to the haunted room and looking down at their mangled friend.

Quincy the Grad : Perhaps he was tired of living?

After carting their friend off for a long convalescence they decide they should hit the library for further research. Finding a worm-eaten copy of the Liber Ivonis

Quincy the Grad : Shall I do Detect Ghosts on the book? *waves hammer*

Quincy the Grad : *to hardware clerk* I want your finest, cheapest ladder!
Me, GM : You can always put it on your expenses
Quincy the Grad : I want your most expensive ladder!

This all proves most useful, and they return to the Corbitt House confident of their imminent success.

Instead the four find themselves locked in the basement, defending themselves against demonic possession and worse, one unconscious and stabbed in the intestines, one shot in the knees, one stark-raving bonkers, and one dead having blown his own brains out after a glance at whatever was through the hole in the wall. And all this because they discovered Corbitt's diaries, wanted to cast the spell in it, and went looking for his ceremonial knife. They found it. Then it found them.

Me, GM : The Professor has apparently gone insane and is trying to stab Quincy to death. On the other hand, you all know what Quincy is like so stabbing him is entirely understandable.


The Corbitt House's reputation for decades of madness, suicide and bloodshed continues...

Dark Heresy - Several hundred human POWs holed up in a crater with a Rok full of Goff Orks just over the horizon, looking for a fight. Major Schott feels our best option is to deliberately attract the Ork's attention so they don't head off after the civilians. Happily, the terrain is slightly in our favour - a ravine runs through the crater rim, and would be a good chokepoint if the Orks attack.

Major Schott : So you'll be acting as the cork in the bottle
Guildenstern to Rosenkrantz : Hello, Cork
Rosenkrantz to Guildenstern : Hello, Bottle



Luckily, we form a good team to reassure the men that they will be well looked after.

Polonius : Rest assured, the Private here will take care of your physical life, I can guarantee your spiritual life, and Brother Guildenstern will deal with your death, should that become necessary.
Guildenstern : *Cocks pistol and looks around for deserters. *



Brother Guildenstern is actually looking forward to the fight. This is probably the brain damage talking

Guildenstern : I'm going to get me a pet Squig!
Polonius OOC: Is it entirely wise to have a pet smarter than you are?
Guildenstern : Sure is. I can dump it in your tent at night.



Less happily, all we have for armaments are Gretchin stubguns that we managed to wrest off the greenskins earlier. Thus, we are dispatched to beg assistance from a Void-born religious settlement off over the other horizon. Arrival at their landing platform -

Rosenkrantz : Nice pad



The architecture is typically black, gothic, and spiky.

Rosenkrantz : Reminds me of home. And band-aids.

GM : Can somebody check whether it would violate the Guild Code of Conduct if we roleplay through half-an-hour of flagellation in honour of the God-Emperor?

GM OOC : The ritual is conducted to hymns by the ancient Terran poet Devo
Polonius OOC : Whip it, whip it good.



Fears are raised about the fate of anybody captured by the Orks.

Polonius OOC : Save a bullet for yourself, Brother Guildenstern, we all know how pretty you are.

Cyborg Tech-Priest : I must return to my ritual duties *clanks off*
Rosenkrantz OOC : And I must dance the Robot *dances*
GM : *headdesk*
Rosenkrantz OOC : Did you really ever expect us to take this game seriously?



Some inspirational carols for the troops

Polonius : On the first day of Kringlemass, the Emperor gave to me, a knife with a very sharp blade
On the second day of Kringlemass, the Emperor gave to me, two autoguns, and a knife with a very sharp blade
On the third day of Kringlemass, the Emperor gave to me, three heavy stubbers, two autoguns, and a knife with a very sharp blade
Rosenkrantz : Yes yes, Brother Polonius, there are people dying on the front here
Polonius : Fiiiiive frag grenaaaaades

Major Schott : This is going to be like the Battle of Stalingrad
Rosenkrantz : *looks blank* Stalingrad?
Polonius : Isn't that that agri-world on the far side of the Damocles Gulf?
Major Schott : No, no, Stalingrad was on Holy Terra
Polonius : During the Age of Apostasy?
Major Schott : No, this was back in the Second Millennium
Rosenkrantz : *boggles* Did they even have guns back then?
Polonius : Of course they did Private Rosenkrantz, the Emperor would have taught them. The Emperor has always been with us.
GM : I just gave Stalingrad as an example, OK? The Imperium can probably give us thousands of examples just as bad.
Polonius OOC : We know. We're just taking the piss :D



Brother Guildenstern inspires the troops and some rocks, by shouting at them and waving a gun.

Guildenstern : You will hold the line! You are all either troopers or sandbags!

GM : The rebreather masks also have visors
Polonius OOC : 'Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?'
Guildenstern OOC : 'Well you can just stay here, bitch'

GM : Most of the troops still only have improvised weapons, such as rocks and crowbars
Rosenkrantz : If it's good enough for Saint Gordon Freeman, it's good enough for you

Call of Cthulhu, opening the year with a bang. In which the players shoot a house and set fire to an enemy, and the opening salvoes in an intercontinental magical war between Vitus of Clan Scorpion and McGinty of Clan Mad Irish Bastard.

June 1924 - First half of Fred Behrendt's Mansion of Madness from Mansions of Madness. In which a collector of some really creepy paintings has gone missing, and they volunteer to track him down. It'll get Lancaster out of the house, for one thing, even though he's still just a brain in a jar.

Elsewhere, Agent Landing of the Office of Naval Intelligence has put together a brief file regarding one Jackson Elias, occult writer. According to the investigator's pet spook, he's just arrived in Nairobi, and has a subject for a new book in mind - apparently not all the members of the infamously ill-fated Carlyle Expedition are dead! And according to Elias it looks like a cult was involved!

Despite the difficulty of running your business when you're a head in a jar, word HAS reached Lancaster, via the rare book network, of an odd development in the trade. Somebody in Cairo is sending out standing orders for any rare or unique Arabic texts on Astronomy & Magic they can get hold of. And they're willing to pay a premium.

And McGinty also received word that somebody broke into his farmhouse/Warehouse 23 in Charing Cross. The burglars searched the house top to bottom but they weren't caught, alas. Nor did the the neighbours get a good description of them. By an odd co-incidence somebody bearing an exact resemblance to the minion used by the hyena-headed werewolf-thing that repeatedly kicked McGinty testicles up into his abdominal cavity, a few years back, came sniffing around Rondale & McGinty's Automotive & Electrical Repair shop whilst McGinty was out. They were apparently attempting to track down and purchase a unique Arabic text on Astronomy, Maths, and Magic they for some reason thought McGinty had acquired.

One thing McGinty has acquired - or at least acquired legally, with actual money and receipts changing hands - is a funeral plot.

McGinty : In case I need somewhere to hide a body in a hurry
GM : *headdesk* I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding someone to fill it.



He also blows $1400 on an apartment in Arkham for his friend Kelley and his vampire sibling Hal. And lets them stay there rent free. Thus turning a large pile of stolen gang cash into a tax write-off for himself.

GM : How does he keep doing this? He does things that at first glance seem outright insane, and they all turn out to be brilliant ideas.
Lancaster's player : He's a Drunken Master of life.



Back in Massachusetts it's good to know that the Boston Police are good for something - they've just broken up an occult group that was planning a human sacrifice! Too late for the victim, alas. Two of the members were taken alive by the police, but the leader apparently got away. In other occult news, Mina "Margery" Crandon, wife of a wealthy Boston surgeon and socialite, Dr. Le Roi Goddard Crandon was submitted as a candidate to Scientific American magazine, as a medium who could demonstrate telekinetic ability under scientific controls. Her séance circles include luminary members of the Boston upper class and Ivy League elite. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave her significant credibility. She's became so popular that her prayers are read by the US Army. And Committee Secretary Malcom Bird has leaked to the press that the Committee are leaning toward a positive vote - it looks like she's the real McCoy!

GM : McGi... Lancaster's Brain. I was about to say McGinty's Brain... but what brain would that be?

Rondale : I don't have any problems with my sister dating, I just don't want her dating any occult types or anybody remotely connected to the Mafia.
GM : So Irish gangsters, Jewish gangsters, Yakusa, Triads, and the Union Corse would all be fine?



Threatening to tell Lancaster's daughter everything that's happened to him if he doesn't agree to be sawn open like a tin of beans, reduced to calcined powder, and reconstituted as a probable vampire.

McGinty : *holds up Lancaster's jar* This is your father's brain. *holds on his head like a hat and dances around* This is your father's brain on McGinty

GM : What about your late brother, Amy?
McGinty : I could bring him back for you.
Amy : No! Just no!
McGinty : Not even to ask his ghost if he's happy?
Amy : No!!! I just hope he isn't lingering, that's he's gone to wherever people finally go when they die!
GM : I suspect he means he could bring your brother's ghost back whether it wants to or not
Amy : Oh god! *hugs knees and shakes*
Rondale : McGinty, let's not violate natural order today, ok?
Amy Wells : But McGinty casting any spells whilst sober is against the nature order!



To the considerable shock of the Detective Sergeant that's been handling both the kidnapping and the the cult cases, McGinty and company soon make significant breakthroughs in both, AND correctly identify the informant the police has been protecting with a false name. All this and still find time to play Lancaster's canister like the bongos. And are promised $2500 by seriously ill mob boss Zeke the Geek Crater if they can track down and return a stolen crystal carving.

GM : And having just expertly milked you of everything you know of the case without saying more then ten words, Crater continues.

Rondale : What's the difference between crazy & eccentric?
GM : About $20,000 a year



Lancaster's Brain usually occupies a hatbox on long-distance travel.

Rondale : It's got a lock on it.
Lancaster : It's the only hatbox in America with chains.

Lancaster OOC : Oh god, I asked her prop me up on the dashboard. I'm the first bobble-head in history.

Amy : Let's just get Lancaster's Resurrection over with, shall we???
GM : You really want to risk him coming back as a vampire, like Hal?
Amy : ... that may have been an accident....



On Star Trek sanitary facilities

Amy's player : The Enterprise plans show hundreds of crew... and one toilet.
Rondale's player : I guess the queue must get pretty long sometimes.
GM : Nah, after some of the things Kirk puts the ship through they just need the laundry
Amy player : Still it's better off than the Klingon ships. They have none.
McGinty's player : Guess that's why they call them Klingons
Everybody else : *facepalm*

Lancaster's player : No wonder they're so mean-tempered. They've been holding on since they left the homeworld.



Watching McGinty smoothly pretending to be a normal concerned citizen when somebody breaks into the Arkham house they've been illegally occupying.

GM : I still can't understand how, with all the things he does, he still manages to maintain a Credit Rating in the high 70s. It must his Irish charm. Or whenever people get near him they suffer catastrophic brain damage from the alcohol fumes.



Whoever broke into Bernie's old place ( or what WAS Bernie's place before McGinty frightened him into fleeing the country ) apparently searched it from top to bottom, finding one of the secret room... and punching a heavy steel door out of it's frame. McGinty leaps to the conclusion that it must have been the hyena-thing and his human minion, and digs out the voodoo doll that featured so horribly in the New York case. On the other side of the world, Vitus's leg suddenly breaks. Happily for Vitus, it's the work of moments to figure out where the attack originated ( yet another 01 roll! I must be getting two or three of these a session the last few games!) and dispatch a response in kind. Less happily, McGinty has had time to rig the saferoom with a crateful of grenades, whilst he himself heads back down to Boston and anticipates a phonecall from the police about his house exploding.

Amy and Lancaster's Brain have been having their own problems. Such a rather alarming thing that's been knocking on her apartment door. And third-storey windows, trying to get in.

The Thing is less than clear-spoken about its nature or mission.

McGinty : Hey! You! Where's Keetling!
Thing : Where the wish is father to the thought.
McGinty : An address would be nice

Rondale : Right! Let's go!
McGinty : t' wot?
Rondale : Muskrat Falls
McGinty : t' wot?
Rondale : In Pennsylvania!
McGinty : t' wot?
GM : You're just calling him that deliberately, aren't you?



But once interstate things start going slightly awry. For one thing Rondale empties a dragon's breath shotgun round into an unarmed woman as soon as he sees her. In front of a Sheriff. And then uses a normal round to blow a doorlock off and kick his way in. Which is when the room beyond unfolds into infinite space and impossible light poured down on them from above.

The session closed with Lancaster's view from the dashboard of the truck - McGinty & Rondale diving from a second storey window, Amy dragging a stupefied sheriff out the door by his collar, and McGinty & Rondale ignoring their injuries as they run around the house frantically firing incendiary rounds through every window....

For Fans Of The Foul Tempered Gnoll, a new tag - Sic Vitus Est. Revisit all your favourite stories about one of the Guild's more memorable utter bastards. http://drhoz.livejournal.com/tag/sic%20vitus%20est

Started a third campaign, with the same GM as the D&D, and two of the players from the Cthulhu. It's a Dark Heresy game, the Warhammer 40K universe. It's also a prime example of why you don't let your players come up with the background.

Based on a few random rolls for inspiration, the PCs homeworld was an icy lifeless desert, with a few arcologies clustered around the polar icecaps. It's also a Shrineworld, dedicated to the worship of one of the Heroes of the Imperium. What did this hero do? *rolls some more* Drove off the Eldar.

Aaaand this was when Murray started getting his migraine. Because on the basis of these rolls, the saint is clearly St Nikolas, who thousands of years ago drove the vile elves from the North Pole and lead Humanity to it's triumph on this icy world Kringle. And on behalf of the Emperor on Holy Terra, St Nikolas watches everything we do. If you're on the Good list you get lumps of coal. It's a very cold planet, after all. If you're on the Bad list you get frag grenades, sans pins. Among the holy relics of the saint are a pair of Lightning Claws. You probably don't want to know what we came up with for ceremonial regalia or the fighting songs of the planet's Imperial Guard regiments.

Anyway, most of this is background because the planet in question was recently annexed by the Tau Empire, and the population sent to reeducation camps before transferal to resettlement townships on a world deep inside Tau territory. The three PCs are among the POWs - one army tech, by the name of Rosenkrantz. One lobotomised commissar/preacher by the name of Guildenstern. And at this point I decided why fight it, and named my own noble-born cleric Polonius.

The lobotomised preacher is being played by my brother Ian, elsewhere known as Suna, or as Mandible, or as Paddy McGinty. This is all the warning you should require.

Brother Guildenstern : Onward, Men of Kringle! Remember the sacred example of Saint Nikolas as he led the fight against the wicked Xenos scum! Onward! Never surrender! Never falter! The eye of the Emperor is upon you, through his vessel Saint Nikolas!
Brother Polonius : *sighs* And the sad thing is he's saying all this to a flock of chickens.

Brother Polonius : We have to wonder just how much of his brain they removed. I'm picturing a tiny little alien sitting in his skull, operating a joystick.

Brother Polonius OOC : You don't have to be a flagellant, Brother Guildenstern. You punish the rest of us enough, just by existing.

Brother Polonius : Now now, Brother Guildenstern, we've been through this before. Of course the Emperor and Saint Nikolas talk to you through the skull of your predecessor. But what do we do first? We check your hand, remember? See everything we wrote down? Yes, I know number 2 is 'Kill All Xenos' but we don't have to do that right now.

April to July, 1924. The Descent of Various Other Boots, and Dinner Invitations.

McGinty intends to further educate his colleagues in the Mystic Arts, despite the fact they want nothing to do with the calling up of eldritch entities, the sheer lack of time to do so, and McGinty small problem of rampant substance abuse.

GM : So you're going to teach them spells. When you're drunk.
McGinty : I can wait until I sober up!
GM : *To the others* You'll never learn the spells.

The Boston newspapers devote their front page to the capture of the Crimson Gang. As Amy discovers, this includes a large photograph of her friends, with McGinty doing muscle poses over the bound and beaten bodies of Pat Malone and the other gangsters.

Amy Wells : *facepalm*

One conversation does come around to recreational reading. Rondale recommends HG Wells.

GM : You won't like it. It's written by an Englishman.
McGinty : I'm not reading that!
GM : But England does get stomped half flat by Martian war machines.
McGinty : So England gets fooked up? I'm going to read it right away!
Rondale : There's got these three-legged things that go around England burning cities down...
McGinty : Three legs? Sounds like the Irish to me!



Of course, their triumphant success has assorted consequences over subsequent months. Including a testimonial dinner hosted by the Boston Citizen's Committee, a invitation to attend the Veteran's Dining Club for McGinty & Rondale, a invitation to join the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight, and membership of the Magician's Circle for The Amazing Julius. Also thousands of begging letters, reporters nosing around, relatives coming out of the woodwork looking for cash, burglary attempts, and one lawsuit for the wrongful death of a Boston fence. Also smug Virginian sheriffs. And a plague of vampirism.

One of the horde is a Irish clergyman who makes the nearly fatal assumption that McGinty is Irish Catholic. Unluckily for him, McGinty has an Irish Wolfhound

McGinty : Growler! *points at the priest* Testicles!

The lawsuit is also dealt with. By McGinty going to a prominent Boston law firm and putting them on a multi-thousand dollar retainer to deal with it, and any similar problems that might arise.

The Amazing Julius : This may be the smartest thing McGinty has ever done.
McGinty : Release the lawyers!
The Amazing Julius : Lawyers! Testicles!

The plaintiff's case is eviscerated, McGinty counter-sues for defamation, and after that the two legal firms settle down for a nice lucrative four-year-long case arguing over discrepancies in the original serving of writs.

GM: It's going to be the legal equivalent of the Great War. Four years of trench warfare whilst you sit at home and quaff port.

The testimonial dinner goes well, despite the speechifying. Afterwards McGinty exercises his incredible chameleonic abilities and gets involved in a discussion of political influence with the Boston elite. Leading to the alarming possibility of McGinty running for office.

GM : You'll make a fine congress-critter. You can pass yourself off as a fine upstanding citizen despite being an utter ****.

His proposed platform for election. Repeal the Volstead Act.

GM : 'A beer in every pot.'
McGinty : Drunk people cause less crime! Because they're too inebriated to know what they're doing.
Julius : ' I speak from long personal experience'

Guiliano does not have quite so good a time. Not least because one of the people he's talking to blames all of America's problems on immigrant Catholics. Despite an increasingly incandescent rage, he gives the bigot one last chance to STFU.

Julius : I'm Italian and Catholic. My Parents are Italian & Catholic. My Grandparents were Italian and Catholic...
Bigot : *baffled* Why would you go and do a thing like that for?

Another bigot comes to visit Amy at home. Sheriff Gifford from Virginia, who by this point has proven that the investigators lied about the various deaths out at Styvesant's Folly, and probably smuggled a wanted man out of the state, and almost certainly murdered William Killferny. Luckily for Amy et al, the Powers That Be down in his part of the country are willing to let all this slide, since five visiting Yankees getting killed wouldn't do the county's reputation any good, and they didn't want no uppity Africans hanging around with their contrary ideas anyway. Other excerpts from the Sheriff's friendly warning, which left Amy gaping.

Sheriff Gifford : Now young Billy there.. he was a good boy, a good God-fearing boy.. but he didn't have the brains the Good Lord gave an eggplant.

Sheriff Gifford : I saw what your Irish fella did to that ****** you shot. Young Billy was lucky he didn't end up with more holes in him than a Siamese hooker.

Another problem - the young man McGinty Resurrected has been turning increasingly carnivorous, gorging himself on barely cooked bacon, pork chops, etc. And his vital signs are weird - a heartbeat of 40 a minute, blinking about once a minute at best, skin strangely coarse... McGinty, Rondale & Guiliano aren't completely surprised when the Arkham Gazette starts reporting late night attacks by a madman that goes for his victims' throats. Happily, they've already had Hal hospitalised, and it doesn't take too much to convince him to sneak into the blood bank every night instead. A temporary solution, true, but at least nobody has to die. Again.

The Amazing Julius's new magic show opens to a full house. It includes a sword cabinet trick with tommy-guns, and making McGinty and Rondale levitate out of their seats. But the latter is only because Guiliano made a very convincing simulacrum of the 'Nepalese Attack Boar' appear out of thin air.

The Veteran's Dining Club dinner is a much more solemn affair, with McGinty, Rondale and the other guests quizzed in detail about ways to improve the fitness of soldiers, and how to avoid another Great War, etc. The food's quite good too. Pork Medallions with broad beans and a nice Italian Red. The hosts seem very sincere when they say they're looking forward to having McGinty and Rondale over for another meal.

And, last of the events on their busy social schedule, initiation into the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight. Rondale declines, especially after he's told they'll be blindfolded for the ceremony, but McGinty & Guiliano are eager. For one thing, Amy's father is a member. And even if the lower levels of the lodge are an entirely secular networking and fund-raising organisation, Guiliano is certain the heart of the organisation is secretly dedicated to saving humanity from the Mythos.

McGinty : It's just a bunch of ****heads dancing around in robes! We'll fit right in!
GM : Yes. We all know McGinty is a noteworthy ***head.
Amy Wells : *nods sagely*

D&D. Sad to say, with Al the Wizard's player off GMing for a new group, most of the quotes are from me. Ah well.

GM : Are you going to sing the song of Arjhan's battle against the dragon?
Tarmikos : I'm not doing the song, no.
Rumbaba : What, you're going to use interpretive dance?



As it turns out, yes, yes he was.

The Feast of Corellon and simultaneous encroachment of the Feywild looms.

Rumbaba : Buy one reality, get one free.

Tarmikos : Hope ( party's Tiefling Paladin ) isn't here.
GM : Yes, you're completely Hopeless



Trouble in town - Goblins from Rumbaba's estranged clan are pummelling a halfling thief senseless.

Rumbaba : Oh good, this must be a friendly beating. They're not using edged weapons.
GM : Yes. It's not like they caught him screwing the hexer's woman.
Rumbaba : *looks guilty* Yesssss. Admittedly you only need one small knife in that case. Well, not that small.



Forced to intervene before his friends & his clanmembers turn on each other, Rumbaba instantly attracts all the ire of the aforementioned hexer. And the rest of the group find out why Rumbaba has been so keen to avoid his people.

Rumbaba : Hey! Adultery takes two people, alright? Well, sometimes three. And that one time, four.

Rumbaba : I'm sorry I slept with your woman, okay? Well, I'm sorry you found out.

GM : The hexer is going on at some length about how he's going to cut your genitalia off, bake them into a huge sausage, and force-feed it to your father.
Rumbaba : It's not my fault you're undersized!

Rumbaba : You loved your woman, I loved your woman, surely we should be on the same side!

Goblin Skullcrusher : *explaining to the authorities* He's an outlaw from the goblin lands, for moral crimes.
Rumbaba : It was only a few dozen times, alright!

Goblin Skullcrusher : He's not even a good street performer.
Rumbaba : Hey! I managed to juggle your women pretty well!

GM : So you all go to bed.
Rumbaba : I go to somebody's bed.

Adrie : You goblins love fighting, don't you.
Rumbaba : Not me - I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Brass band monks on fire. On Segways. Playing Phillip Glass.

http://www.youtube.com/v/KYykpRRuHQM

D&D 4th Ed, Rumbaba and company, dealing with the stolen Sanguinary Orb they found and really should return to the owner or his next of kin, and other trials, such as lissome twin elfgirls.

GM : So he was a 'family man'
Rumbaba : But was he a made man? Like a flesh golem?

Rumbaba : Maybe the wizard that used to own it died of natural causes, and these sods just looted the corpse. But then, murder IS natural causes for wizards.

Tarmikos : We've had a magical jade falcon deliver a message for us to go meet the Master of Spring, within the Feywild
Rumbaba : It's the Green Bird of Trouble

GM : So if you see Fomorians doing evil things to bunnies, you can intervene
Rumbaba : Or indeed evil bunnies doing things to Fomoroians.



Attacked by freakish tentacle things from the far planes

Rumbaba OOC : Lovecraft on absinthe

GM : The food's a bit richer than you're used to. A CON test might be in order.
Rumbaba : I haven't even noticed what I'm eating. I'm still smitten with the elf twins.
GM : *headdesk*
Rumbaba : Well you have to admit they're a great cure for flying psychic undead platypus attack.
GM : Rumbaba seems to be still entranced, or paralysed. He can't take his eyes off the elf-twins
Tarmikos : *sighs*
Rumbaba : I sigh too, but for different reason.

Master of Spring : Greetings, investigators.
Rumbaba OOC : Wrong game system.
GM : Really? And just who was recently attacked by tentacle monsters?



Rumbaba's gift of the gab fails him

Rumbaba : We feared the owner was dead, given the possessors in who we currently... found it... possessed.



The Master of Spring casts Hold Person on Rumbaba and summons the court portrait painter. He's never seen a blushing goblin before.

Rumbaba : Well, at least this way I get a massage to stop cramp afterwards. So, bonus! *hopes for elf twins*

Eladrin Paladrin : If you ever turn undead, I'll behead you cleanly.
Rumbaba : Gee. Thanks.
Hope : And if it were you I'll return the favour.

GM : One of the twins rubs you down. The other hangs back with a towel to make sure you stay down. *mimes horrified expression, flailing at Rumbaba with towel*
Rumbaba : No happy endings for Rumbaba

Arjhan : I had a strange dream last night...
Hope : I think I had the same dream. There was darkness surrounding me...
Rumbaba : Really? There were elf twins surrounding me in mine.
Arjhan & Hope : *description and interpretation of enigmatic shared dream symbology*
Rumbaba : OK, I'm confused. What does this have to do with elf girls?

Hope : I'm a paladin of the Sun God! Dishonour doesn't mean a t...
Rumbaba : Doesn't mean a thing to you???

Rumbaba : Hey! I do have SOME self-control. That other elf girl didn't even need to use the towel.



Rumbaba is not looking forward to police duties during the imminent Feast of Corellon, on the equinox.

Rumbaba : Something nondescript to wear would be nice. When you're being vomited on by drunk druids on the balcony, you don't want to be wearing your good clothes.
GM : It's not Spring Break
Rumbaba : *pointedly reminds him of the date* Oh yes it is.



Rumbaba has other reasons to avoid town - he's spotted some of his clan members in the crowd

Rumbaba : You know how it is. Family things.... in-law things.... potential in-law things.... crossbow wedding things....

This week's Cthulhu - "One In Darkness", by Doug Lyons and L.N.Isinwyll, from Great Old Ones. And to my incoherent raving disbelief, my damned Karma Houdini players not only managed to get through an unusually deadly scenario without so much as a single scratch, they prevented all but one of the deaths that should have been a certainty, AND all got massive rewards to sanity, cash, public appreciation AND magical power at the end of it.

On the other hand, the three player-characters this week did manage to sow a certain amount of mistrust of each other this week, mostly on account of the rich racial epithets that they were throwing at each other with abandon, and increasing suspicion about what McGinty has really been up to with his new and not inconsiderable magical ability.

Anyway, whilst he had a few days off from building a four-engine speedboat for a rumrunner ( they were waiting for more airplane engines to arrive ) McGinty decided to finally try out this Resurrection spell that Lancaster's Brain has been trying to teach him. He has a suitable candidate, too - the brother of the New York lunatic he's been keeping locked in the secret room in his house in Arkham. The late brother he's been keeping in a chest freezer in the next room. Reading up on the elaborate procedure, McGinty makes a few inquiries and decides to best place to cast the ritual is the Unvisited Isle in the middle of the Miskatonic River. Naturally, those of us that knew about the history of the island in question were left with bulging eyes and stupefied expressions, but despite many rolls by me the spell went off without a hitch, and without anybody noticing him setting the thing up. They probably noticed the sudden freak storm, madly howling dogs across half the town, and the earsplitting voice that bellowed something arcane out of a churning sky, however.

You bet this is going to have consequences. For one thing McGinty is completely ignorant of the side effects of a successful Resurrection, but will shortly be hearing news of what he's just unleashed.

But after reuniting the brothers, and understandable catatonic withdrawal of one, McGinty is back off to Boston's South Side for a midnight showing of his engineering project to his occasional 'legitimate businessman' employer. The demonstration is interrupted by the arrival of 20 armed police in the street outside. Amazingly, they're not here for McGinty, or his boss. They're here to apprehend the Crimson Gang, currently hiding out in a building further up King-of-Ireland Street. Somehow, storming the building turns into a rout, with some of the gangsters escaping, 7 cops dead, and many of the corpses in distressingly incomplete condition.

Despite the news coverage, and a reward that rapidly climbs to over $20,000, Rondale & Guiliano are initially reluctant to help McGinty track down and eliminate some competition. For one thing, Guiliano & McGinty differ entirely on who should be considered culpable for the New York Incident.

McGinty : Ignorance is no excuse.
The Amazing Julius : I'll remember that.
GM : Quite. We all know somebody in this group that's ignorant. *all turn to glare at McGinty*

Regarding previous Incidents of which Guiliano was hitherto unaware

The Amazing Julius OOC : I've already learned - DON"T ASK

Alas for Guiliano's fondest wish to have had McGinty along on last week's Flophouse Fatalities case, just see if McGinty really would have helped himself to glass after glass of wood alcohol -

McGinty : Yeah, heard all about that from Rondale. Apparently the still was busted. Pumping out the wrong stuff.
The Amazing Julius ( other end of phoneline ) : *silently curses*

Guiliano has other reasons to avoid McGinty's scheme, too. His 'Family', for one, and his career as stage magician entertaining holidaying New Yorkers in the Borscht Belt.

The Amazing Julius : If I go around apprehending Irish gangsters, and the word gets back to my neighbourhood but leaves out the Irish bit, I won't be breathing for long.

The Amazing Julius : Some of us work for a living, you damn Mick.
McGinty : Don't lie, you've never worked a day in your life. Selling your arse on street corners isn't working.
The Amazing Julius : Selling my arse on street corners would be easier. Some of those ladies from the Old Country can be a bit grabby.

By the end of the week the escapees are still in hiding, and the reward has climbed to $40,000. That's tempting enough to get Rondale and Julius into Boston, which is crawling with hundreds of cops and militiamen, some of whom are towing field guns around. They're taking the manhunt very seriously. Happily, McGinty splashed out for a quality hotel, so they can eat in their rooms and won't have to disturb the other patrons as they read the morning's papers and McGinty boasts about his latest achievements. Such as all the stuff he's learned from the Honore-Balfour's Cultes de Goules.

McGinty : You don't speak French, do you?
The Amazing Julius : No, I only speak real languages.

McGinty : *demonstrates his new fluency in the glibbering, meeping languages of what the book describes as 'Our Family From Below'*
The Amazing Julius : You drank from the drainpipe, didn't you?

McGinty : Oh, and I can raise the dead now.
The Amazing Julius, & Rondale : *stare*
Rondale : Wait, is that to do with that trumpet Amy and Lucy won't let you use?
McGinty : Oh, no. Now I can point at a corpse, and tell it to get up and go kill those fellas over there.
GM : How very ... suspicious. McGinty's been in Boston for weeks, he's suddenly flush with cash, and last week the rest of you had that little encounter with a moonshining still and the walking dead. That tableau of Zombies Playing Poker is just the kind of thing McGinty would do, too...
The Amazing Julius, & Rondale : Hmmmmm *eye McGinty suspiciously*

Rondale : I don't need to understand my enemy. I just need to understand how to kill them.

In the apparently unlikely event something manages to kill McGinty, after everything else else I've thrown at him, funeral arrangements are considered.

GM : If the alcohol hasn't killed him yet...
Rondale : I know. The .38s would probably just get him angry.

Rondale : Dragonsbreath rounds are the way he would have wanted to go...
GM : With his alcohol content you wouldn't even need that.
Rondale : True. Just throw a match.

Curious news items - Apparently the gang's leader sent threatening letters to two art dealers demanding they hand over certain statuary. But this story is promptly retracted as a hoax in the the next edition. They head down to the Boston Leader, McGinty already the worse for drink, but so far is somehow avoiding the long-term effects of his problem.

GM : Eight in the morning and he's already swaying.
McGinty : It's an inner-ear problem. There's not enough alcohol in it.

GM : You take no precautions regarding the quality of what you're actually drinking.
McGinty : Yes I do! I brew me own!
GM : I rest my case.

The party splits up, and to my alarm their befriending of a fired reporter, romancing of phone-operators, waving fist-fulls of cash at art-dealers, and talking their way into police records, breaking and entering, and harassment of low-life losers, leaves them in possession of the curious serpentine bookends and everything they need to track down Malone and the Crimson Gang in less that a day.

GM : Just how much money do you carry around?? It's not a moneybelt, it's a bloody flak-jacket made of $20 bills.

GM : Apart from that, the only thing you know about the statuary is that an Irish gangster is willing to kill to get them back.
The Amazing Julius : *eyeing McGinty* An Irish gangster already has them.

The Amazing Julius : *leaning thoughtfully on his cane* It's not easy pimping in the 1920s. And if you make any comment about Charity being the first of my stable I will thwack you.

Alas, one of the people the investigators threatened left it a little too late to follow the advice they gave him, and turns up shot dead. Still, they're moved so quickly that everybody else is still safe, for the moment. Julius, the reporter, and the cab driver wait out in the street whilst McGinty and Rondale tool up and move in to investigate the likely hideout.

And this starts the bit that makes me want to cry. They elect to circle the building clockwise. The gangster on watch was, by chance, doing the same. So as McGinty and Rondale moved around trying all the windows, the watcher was working his way around the other side of the building, completely oblivious. They spot somebody twitchily asleep on a sofa inside, and attempts his first casting of yet another spell - Mental Suggestion, a hypnotic compulsion of formidable strength. McGinty wanted him to come open the window. Instead, McGinty lost a large chunk of his own mind, and developed sudden amnesia.

GM : McGinty was peering in through the crack in the glass, and making strange gestures and muttering disturbing gibberish under his breath. Now he's suddenly straightened up, and is looking around himself in obvious bafflement.
McGinty : I'm going to get meself a drink. *heads for the gate*
Rondale : *slaps hand over McGinty's mouth and hisses explanations before they wake up any of the gangsters*

He needn't have bothered - the gangsters sleep through it. *headdesk* And being reminded of the $40,000 at stake soon gets McGinty back on track.

The Amazing Julius OOC : I'm not surprised. He's used to coming around in strange places and asking 'how the fook did I end up here?'

In the end, they manage to get a window open, and climb in, and pummel Malone unconscious, and kick another sleeping gangster in the head until same, before anybody else in the building is even aware of their presence. After that it's mostly down to gunfire, and to my growing incredulity they not only take three of the gangsters alive, bound and gagged, but they find another small fortune in Malone's stash. Which McGinty proceeds to stuff down his shirt.

GM : Guess I wasn't joking about that flak jacket

Outside, the triumphant trio lash the living captives onto or into the cab, and decide to have a good long gloat.

GM : Malone is staring daggers at you. Clearly he wants to say something, probably a fine selection of old Irish colloquialisms.
McGinty : Aw, now isn't that nice. I bend down and pull my sock from his mouth. Now what did you want to tell me, Pat, hmm?
Malone : *stares viciously at McGinty and spits two syllables* N'GRAL
*all hear what sounds like a heavy steel object being flung aside with some force, and a pig-like squeal of unearthly rage*
McGinty : ...aw, fook...

Thus begins the climax of the adventure. A scene I was sure would give me a gratifying amount of carnage and insanity to keep me warm at night, as they pile into the cab and scream at the driver to Go! Go! Go! as they are pursued across South Boston by a shrieking black hairy thing with poisonously green glowing eyes, McGinty and Rondale leaning out the back windows with machine guns and Julius screaming at the driver to keep his eyes on the road, and motorcycle cops and militiamen pour forth like enraged army ants.

Driver : What? What? What's after us?
The Amazing Julius : Nepalese Attack Boar! Keep driving!!!

Rondale, at least, does go slightly bonkers, and develops an unnatural fixation on the power of the Thompson machine gun.

GM : The way it judders in your hand, the way the barrel is so long and hot, you just want to pump bullet after bullet into the body of the thing....

Eventually they resort to magic. This is even better as far as Rondale's new perversion is concerned. He feels so potent. To my even greater incredulity, it works brilliantly. By the time the adventure has gone nicely circular and they're back on King-of-Ireland Street at midnight frantically trying to find McGinty's boss, the thing has been so injured that even as it's tearing the cab apart McGinty and Julius manage to take it down, despite being almost unconscious from exhaustion. And the cab driver loses only a single point of SAN for the experience. A single point??? Talk about unflappable!!!!

It gets worse, for me. Even after they split the huge reward between themselves, and earn appropriate kudos from the Bostonian public for their heroic takedown of the Crimson Gang and it's leader, McGinty shifts as much gratitude as possible onto his employer, thus easing that man's entry into Bostonian High Society. The Amazing Julius is guaranteed sell-out performances for the rest of the year, if he can turn his experiences into a stage show. The police, already furious about the investigator's interference in the case, are now doubly so, since despite obvious gangsterism, as prominent citizens and heroes they now can't be touched. And when the players roll their SAN rewards and make their "How Sorcerers Get That Way" checks for all the spells they were throwing around, they not only succeed on the majority, but they maxx out!!! It all goes to Rondale's head. Or one of his heads, anyway.

So as a result of their unbelievably good rolling this week the player characters are now all rich, highly esteemed, magically formidable, and have copious sanity and POWER points to spare.

At least they didn't get to roll any of the other SAN rewards, or I would have cried. And Malone's family is still out there. And they're NOT happy.....

Rumbaba : Adrie can stay here and keep the wolves cowed, and other zoological wordplay.

Why setting the woods on fire is a bad idea

GM : Smokey the were-bear turns up and beats the ****ing **** out of you with a shovel.

Adrie transforms to carry a prisoner

Adrie : I don't want any jokes about him riding me bareback.
Rumbaba : *puzzled* There's an alternative?

Mysterious monster is killing livestock. It has talons.

Rumbaba : Well, we've narrowed it down to probably not mammalian. Unless it's some construct like a bear with giant dodo legs, or something.

Rumbaba : It's not a gelatinous cube.
GM : Obviously. They don't fly.
Rumbaba : Gelatinous zeppelin?
GM : That's a good idea...
Rumbaba : I've just violated Rule One, haven't I?

Tarmikos : And not knowing what it is is making it even more scary.
Rumbaba: I'm sure we can reassure the locals if someone will just tell me what the Latin for '****ed if I know' is.

GM : Knock - useful spell for those wizards that keep locking their keys inside the tower. Whatever happened to the days of 'Speak friend, and enter'?

Dragonborn cleric : There are ancient rituals to appease dragons...
Rumbaba : But you can't get the virgins these days.
Dragonborn cleric : And what would you know about virginity?
Rumbaba : I know it doesn't seem to last when I'm around.

GM : Frightful peasants ... I mean presence
Rumbaba : That anything like 'the people are revolting'?

Rumbaba : I can't run, my knees are knocking too hard.
Arjhan : Dragon! These lands are not yours! You are not bronze!
Rumbaba : Ok, NOW I'm running

Grunhart Junger, adolescent trespassing dragon, claims to be here with permission.

Grunhart : I am a guest of the one who walks half in Terra Firma, half in Fey! The Master of Spring! You know, that dude.
Rumbaba : Yup, he's a teenager alright...

Grunhart & Arjhan the Dragonborn get into a shouting match.

Rumbaba : If they had external genitalia they'd be waving them at each other by now...

Rumbaba : We've already informed the authorities that there's a dragon hanging around. Barakus and the other bronze dragons are not going to be happy that it's green.
GM : It ain't easy being green.

The Master of Spring isn't happy either, and insists the dispute be settled with ritual combat.

Rumbaba : I'll go find some sponges and a bucket then...

Post-match party - amazingly, both contestants survive, although I'm certain Grunhart is going to be out for revenge. Anyway...

Rumbaba : So, how many people go blind from the illicit plum brandy?