Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 2

Previously:

Session 1

Scheduling, scheduling, my ruin, my scourge - but in the end, as they say, the boys are back in town.

Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe
Rob "The Belt / The Punisher" Wagner

We pick up where we left off last session, in the Copperbottom Theater, the party sticking up Stan Koontz and his gang of teenage miscreants in order to frame them for the kidnapping & drugging of Pinemarten's sole cop Debbie's daughter Marlin (the leader of her own, rival gang of teenage miscreants, who promised the party help breaking into the Rodnovprom mine in return for taking Stan off the board).

As Stan and the rest are teenagers, and the party are a heavily-armed team of para-political, para-military occultural troubleshooters, their intimidation is quite easy. For the first of several times this session, Auggy yanks the pin out of his grenade and pretends to throw it before sticking the pin back in. At some point Rob arrives at the Theater in a dead sprint, having been lost at the airport for an interminable period of time.

Thanks to Bart's texts to Debbie on his Blackberry mobile communication device, she arrives, revolver drawn, to that slapstick scene. She receives a confused explanation of the events that led up to that point, and orders everyone outside. The shenanigans of Bart and Auggy almost make her unload her cylinder into the party, but quick-thinking Rob flashes his old CSIS badge and fast-talks her into just-sort-of buying that Stan and his guys were involved in some international crime ring alongside Al Qaeda, or perhaps the IRA. Debbie loads the teens into her police car, puts the still completely xanned-out Marlin in the passenger seat, and drives the lot of 'em off to Sudbury, as Pinemarten doesn't have its own jail or police station.

The party decides to backtrack to the chateau where the First Annual Rodnovprom Associate Artists' Retreat massacre occured, and those fatal words: "Let's split up gang" were uttered, with Manhoman and Rob investigating one end of the odd trail of indents in the snow at the chateau, and Bart and Auggy following the other end to wherever it might lead them. It is about this point in the session that there is a prolonged tangent of the group attempting to remember and replicate what Fred and Velma from Scooby Doo sound like, and to figure out who in the Mystery Machine was cucking who.

Manohman and Rob find that the indent-trail ends abruptly at the wall of the chateau, with no apparent marks indicating that someone or something climbed up to a window - and of course as found last session there were no signs of forced entry to be found. Bart and Auggy follow the trail, the indents getting fresher and clearer as they progress, coming to resemble the sort of print that would have been left by a body curled up in the snow - though of course with five or so feet of distance between each, with no sign of interconnecting movement. It is theorized that they could have been left by a large narcoleptic toddler, or perhaps a man on a gigantic pogo-stick.

Eventually they arrive at a cottage, much more modest than the chateau, with an old man slumped over its porch, half-frozen, his head missing and his brain unspooled. A step of the stairs leading up to the porch appears explosively warped. Going around the back they find the door to the kitchen unlocked, and a pot of Brussels sprouts carbonized beyond recognition on the still-on stove-top. They notify Manohman and Rob, who regroup with them at the cottage.

They investigate the fridge, finding a ham - which Auggy stabs and Manohman takes a bite out of before clarifying that he is in fact Hindu and not Muslim. They then investigate the living room and find an old lady in an armchair, a collection of Jane Austin short stories on her lap, in much the same condition as the old man, only less frozen, as well as the very pale corpse of a middle-aged Native American (Canadian?) man, who is nude, lying on the floor.

Auggy considers stabbing the man's corpse in much the same way as he did the ham, only to be dissuaded after some conversation on whether you could stab a corpse in a place that an autopsy wouldn't discover. Manohman's examination of the corpse finds that it's got no blood in it. The party theorizes that the Native man's corpse represents some intermediate stage of processing between being alive and being decapitated. Bart snaps a bunch of pictures of the scene on his Blackberry, and is insecure at the quality of them. The crawlspace beneath the cottage is investigated, and a bit of ham is given to a raccoon. Snowmobiles, particularly snowmobiles with flame decals, are hyped up.

The party gathers in the kitchen to drink the dead man's beer and eat his ham and vegetables. Much delightment is had. Drunken and with night falling, the party heads back to the van and debates whether to abandon the almost-starting-to-sober-up Moroz, who they have been keeping captive in their van this whole time dosed to the gills on xanax, to death by exposure. Bart fakes out punching him a few times, then decides to let Moroz live, for now. Rob passes a driving test not to crash the van by a hair, and they find a motel - the Hibernation Station - to settle into for the night. They inquire about the missing horse with the pimply, no doubt drug-dealing teenager manning the desk, and he tell them that the other week a couple chickens also went missing under similar circumstances.

They plan to get in contact with Marlin in the morning. Bart and Rob bond over Bart's past trauma - he has a blurry picture which he believes to be a goblin, though no one believes him. Auggy theorizes that they might be dealing with an Irish fairy - a dullahan to be precise - which Rob gives him a hard time for before apologizing for his chronic anti-Irish behaviour.

Tune in the week after next, or perhaps more likely next month, for the next chapter of this exciting investigation. 

Case Files of the Knights of St. Phanourious: Pinemarten, Ontario - Session 1

QUIA QUOD STULTUM EST DEI SAPIENTIUS EST HOMINIBUS ET QUOD INFIRMUM EST DEI FORTIUS EST HOMINIBUS

After several delays due to me being a busy bee, me & the boys have finally started our Delta Green campaign. 

Our party is:
Bart "Codekiller" Regis
Manhoman "Dr. House" Kamaroff (portrayed by friend of the blog deus ex parabola)
Auggy "Shillelagh" Ashe

(With one more knight set to join us, when he's not giving his girlfriend a ride from the airport.) 

They're not your typical Delta Green, because I will be FUCKED before I use someone else's lore for MY games - they are Knights of St. Phanourious, a British Catholic secret society that gets stuck with the occult bitchwork of the Commonwealth.

They've been sent to the northwestern Ontario town of Pinemarten, where news of a spree of decapitations has made it through the grapevine to the knights' superiors, so they've been dispatched to investigate and solve the problem.

Pinemarten is about a workday's drive away from Toronto. Oh, there's other places in Ontario I could have used as a reference? I don't care. You are telling a man in the fires of Perdition that Purgatory is just a breath of God's love away. I'm down here for a reason.

Lakeside location, population of a couple thousand - a former booming mining town, nowadays scraping by on pensioned retirees, all-seasons tourism, logging, and a hub of remote-working techies who moved out here during the VOID lockdowns.

There's been a freak snow-storm the last few days. Everything is buried under many feet of snow. Getting anywhere, especially anywhere out of town, is a slog.

The knights roll up to the cottage (more of a luxury house) where the decapitations were reported. Strung between trees above the driveway is a(n AI-generated) banner announcing the First Annual Rodnovprom Associate Artists' Retreat. A perfunctory attempt has been made to cordon off the place.

Making their way inside, the knights find a trio of corpses in isolated positions in the house, all neatly decapitated (and getting pretty ripe) - their nerves and brain-matter "unspooled", for lack of a better term, into decomposing fans stretched out from their necks. They find no signs of forced entry, but outside find indents in the snow, each 5-10 feet apart, as if something about human-sized had lain down in the snow - though their are no footsteps or other such tracks between the indentations.

They stumble upon a duo who'd been hiding in a closet for a while - urban romantasy series authour Sam Fishbourne, and Rodnovprom PR specialist Nelya Stasiuk. They're both thirsty, hungry, tired, smelly, and don't seem to know much about what happened to the others - they stumbled across Jaythan Daniels' (zoomer influencer & sports-betting analyst) corpse and hid. Nelya gives them some info on Rodnovprom's operation in Pinemarten: they're turning the old mine into a grow-op for psychedelic mushrooms for pharmaceutical applications, and Nelya sees it as a spiritual, enlightening mission.

The party takes Nelya and Sam into their custody for further questioning, and drive into town. They come across a diner, the Lucky Mouse, and bring the pair inside for food and coffee. Auggy orders one of everything on the menu, and the waitress - an old Filipina  lady named Alice Ortiz - pours them coffees with a shot of vodka added when she notices how rattled they look.

Local person of houselessness Moroz stumbles into the diner, mumbling to himself about how he "got out" and how "it's all one thread". Nelya notes that Moroz did some design for the Rodnovprom website before losing his mind from drugs. He reacts poorly to Bart addressing him in Surzhyk, which prompts Bart and Manhoman to violently restrain him and drag him out to their van - and also get the address of the local cop, Debbie, from Alice. Nelya and Sam take this opportunity to bolt out the back.

Manhoman force-feeds Moroz a xanax to chill him out, and they interrogate him some more, not getting much actionable info in the process.

They drive to Debbie's house, and witness her arguing with her daughter on the porch. Debbie claims the argument was about "family business", which Bart intuits to mean literally a family business, and one that's not above-board if she's being so evasive about it. They plant the idea that Moroz, in a drug-fueled frenzy, may have been responsible for the decapitations. Debbie complains about being busy handling a horse theft from the property of local rich person Chloranthy Williams-Wynn, but gives Bart her number.

They follow after Marlin to an abandoned skating rink, and bust down the door. The gang of rowdy teenagers within tries to scatter, but Manhoman fires his revolver into the ceiling and tackles Marlin, force-feeding her xanax like he did Moroz. She too is hauled to their van. Moroz recognizes her as the one who sold him drugs, but she claims to have only sold regular-ass downers, and that he probably had some latent mental illness that was activated by a bad trip.

The party settles on the plan of breaking into Rodnovprom's restored mine, but Marlin warns them that the place has serious security - the Norsefire company. They negotiate for her gang's help in breaking in, and she agrees that if she takes out rival teen gang leader Stan Koontz for her then she'll go along with the plan. They drive to Stan's hideout, the Copperbottom Theater, and after getting there zonk out Moroz and Marlin with more xanaxes. The front door's locked, and the doorman asks for a password, so Manhoman acts like a violent maniac, claims to have killed Marlin, then shoots the lock off the door. They enter, intimidate some teens with Bart's excessively high-lumen flashlight, and find Stan watching auteur director Richard Brace's gladiator movie Blood on the Wheat. Manhoman tries to convince Stan's guys that Stan hired him to kill Marlin, which none of them buy. Bart texts Debbie on his Blackberry device that Stan had kidnapped and drugged Marlin. The session ends here, with the party debating what to do with the semi-conscious Marlin to convince her mom that Stan really had done that.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Retrospective

Session Reports:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

The Mysteries Unveiled 

This was the first game I've run in a while, and the first in a longer while that wasn't a oneshot or somesuch, that actually concluded instead of petering out.

I came up with the idea for this campaign after reading the manga Summertime Rendering, by the great Yasuki Tanaka. If you know, you know. Had I written it today, Tanaka-sensei would likely have made it into the honourable mentions of my best mangaka list.

Main takeaway: I love my boys! We had a good time.

Now for the critical part:

The scope of this game was bigger in its conception versus its execution. This is due to two factors: writing it all up - which I'll touch on again in a bit - and the difficulty in getting everyone in the group together at the same time consistently.

Originally, the scale of the campaign in terms of both timeline and number of mysteries to investigate was bigger. I intended to structure it like friend of the blog Ardent's Everlasting Summer campaign (or like the World of Horror videogame that Ardent based this campaign structure on) - a variety of seemingly-independent mysteries that culminate in a link to the overarching meta-mystery. The Branch of Mag Mell was conceived as warping physics across the island of St. Fiachra's, leading to things like a cave that contained a portal to the past (and there was to be a multi-generational household secretly composed of the same guy at different points in his subjective timeline who had an uneasy truce with the duplicate conspiracy).

I still think the time loop format would iron out a some of the potential weaknesses in a mystery game such as bad puzzles or clues - it would just need a more-robust timeline than the one I was working with.

We ended up not being able to put together weekly sessions regularly, ending up more bi-weekly. Combined with the writing issue, this made me scale things down so that we could actually finish the campaign with reasonable likelihood & in a reasonable length of time. The breakneck pacing of events in the town was a holdover from when discovering and utilizing the time-cave was intended to be a key part of solving all the mysteries, and remained convenient with the shrunken scale.

The writing issue - I dislike prep only slightly less than I dislike writing session reports. Several sessions were frantically and loosely plotted out an hour before they started. Ideally, I would go through life constantly both moderately drunk and in an adrenaline rush, but alas. This was the great weakness of myself and the campaign.

There were a few moments where having prepped visuals would have helped greatly with players visualizing the scene - such as the cavern beneath the church. An actual map of the town instead of listing points of interest would have helped with both travel times and giving the players more to work with in terms of plotting their investigation. Lack of a map also hampered the impact of the break-down of the town into anarchy - making it more of a glossed-over background event instead of requiring a change in mindset from leisurely driving around to fighting, running, or hiding between every block.

I have been watching the classic television show The X-Files, and that has given me thoughts about structuring investigation. If I were to do it again, I would compartmentalize the conspiracy more - divvying up knowledge of what exactly is going on between characters, so that there was less of a strict duplicate/non-duplicate knowledge divide, so that one interrogation, exposition, or murder wouldn't reveal the whole thing on one hand, and so that chasing a lead like the Blue Giant Crew wouldn't lead quite so nowhere.

Part of that issue with non-compartmentalization of the conspiracy is that I forgot about the character Finnigan O'Flannagan, who was meant to be the human hatchet-man of the duplicates - I will say he died as part of the mob in the house fire set by St. Fiachra's children.

I would also increase the materiality, the immediacy of the conspiracy - for example, the kidnappings were purely background events, and one could've been made into a random encounter that would have allowed the players to risk following the kidnappers to the entrance to the cave system and so on. "Who does what and where they do it at", in the immortal words of Charles Manson, to put it succinctly. Practical details. Adding more moving parts to the conspiracy, like weapon smuggling, money laundering, etc., as things happening in the world and as levers of it for the players to notice, investigate, and fuck with would also be good additions.

I would have liked to put more emphasis on the survival elements, but got the sense my players didn't really like that part. Personal difference rather than an objective flaw of the campaign I think.

A dhaoine uaisle, uaisle na hÉireann - go deo na ndeor! ^{(D'fhéadfadh sé go bhfuil an neamhbhásmhaíocht á hithe ag planda i ndáiríre)}

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - The Mysteries Unveiled

Session Reports:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

Centuries ago, a ship of Irish settlers bound for the New World ran aground on an island in the Atlantic Ocean that shouldn't have been there. The settlers identified this island as Mag Mell, the Irish Otherworld. Few survived it. One of those that did survive was the man who would come to be known as Father Donnchad. He and the other survivors repaired their ship with lumber sourced from the island and set sail again - and Donnchad brought a branch he cut from a plant there: the Branch of Mag Mell.

These settlers would in the end reach the New World, and there found the town of St. Fiachra's. 

Planted in the briny sea-cave below the island that St. Fiachra's was being built on, the Branch of Mag Mell grew into an odd sort of carnivorous plant - it ate animal matter, but at the same time excreted a vegetable imitation of the animal matter it consumed. This imitation, this duplicate, also bore the memories and personality of that which was consumed to spawn it.

Donnchad believed the Branch to be a gift from God - the fulfillment of His promise of the Resurrection. Donnchad was the first human to be consumed by the plant and replaced by a duplicate, and over the years his duplicate would convince others to be consumed as well - the duplicates were free of the diseases and degradations that afflicted their originals, and Donnchad would shape his branch of Christianity in St. Fiachra's to predispose its people into accepting this, and to identify their duplicates as themselves. The duplicates weren't entirely ageless, however - after enough time they would be compelled to take root connected to the Branch and enter an endless dream. Donnchad didn't quite avoid this fate - he figured out a way to trick the Branch into consuming his duplicated form and spit out yet another duplicate, his memories and will surviving through the centuries even as "he" died over and over again.

The town ensured its prosperity by offering this rebirth to wealthy, old, and/or sickly individuals in return for a substantial donation. The last such client taken by the town's duplicate conspiracy was Johnson Bronson, who had recently survived a brush with cancer. However - Johnson's chemotherapy-weakened immune system let him get infected by the fusarium fungus, an infection which can affect both animals and plants. When Johnson was consumed by the Branch his fusarium infection was copied over into his duplicate, and from his duplicate spread throughout the Branch and its duplicate-network. 

Not really understanding what went wrong, the duplicates convinced themselves that the Branch was weakening because it had only been fed the old and sick. They began a campaign of kidnapping young and healthy people from St. Fiachra's and the region around it, feeding them to the Branch and then destroying their duplicates so they couldn't snitch. When this didn't work and the duplicates kept getting sicker they split into two factions:

Donnchad's faction, who accepted the sickness as God's judgement and the Branch's "immortality" as a false temptation sent by the devil.

Crabatt's faction. Ingestion of processed portions of the Branch in alcohol rendered people hypnotically suggestible towards the duplicates, and the duplicates were already primed by Donnchad's branch of Christianity to accept identity theory with regard to their selves. Crabatt figured that if he got people drunk enough for long enough, he could make them think they were him, and make them think that his memories he told them about were their own - he could effectively huisheng them. Faced with the choice between giving that a shot or being stuck in their degenerating bodies, most of the duplicates who could still walk at that point in time joined Crabatt.

In the end, due to the actions of the Private EyeNTJs, Johnson Bronson was found, Donnchad killed before the sickness could get to him, and Crabatt and his cronies - or rather some people who now thought they were Crabatt and his cronies - fled St. Fiachra's to an uncertain future. 

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 5

Previously:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

We start the session off with Fisherman Chuck - identifying himself as Old Man Rather - guiding the party into the St. Fiachra's Finest Ale brewery's parking lot. His player returned, Billy respawns in the back seat of their stolen police cruiser.

After some tense back-and-forth, the Private EyeNTJs exit their vehicle and follow Chuck into the back of the brewery, where they see a small crowd of St. Fiachran townies bearing improvised weapons & open tall boys, along with two rows of chairs facing each other - seated on one row are some sick-looking elderly St. Fiarchrans, including Mr. Crabatt, whispering to some townies tied to chairs and being force-fed beer across from them.

Panthera LeSharp - who previously had identified himself as Crabatt - crosses the room to talk to the party. The party tries to figure out what exactly is going on, and Panthera/Crabatt tries to convince them to undertake a mission for him, offering information and money. When they inquire about Panthera's wife a tear rolls down his cheek, but Crabatt's able to regain control by drinking more beer. Billy especially is interested in the implications for P/C's new existence for his identity, continuity of consciousness, etc., but P/C seems unconcerned about such philosophical things, saying that evolution is always necessary to survive.

Panthera/Crabatt wants the party to bring the elderly bodies to something beneath the church, that he says should be able to renew them. He says that to him the party's expendable - not in the sense that he wants to kill or betray them, but that he won't mind nearly as much if they fail and die compared to himself or his compatriots. He alludes to the danger of the ferals in the caverns, and that they'll be able to figure out what happened to Johnson Bronson if they go down beneath the church. When pressed on why he needs the old body renewed, he says that his bodies have different capabilities, showing the difference in their warmth and blood.

The party agrees to help, and they load the bodies of the elderly folks into their stolen police cruiser. Then they bring the bodies to the police station's jail and lock them up inside.

They speculate on Bronson's fate, suggesting that he's probably now a "moss-man". Shorty picks up a Maglite in the police station, and discuss how they will break the news to Bronson's mistress if her man has become a man of moss. They drive to the church.

At the church they roll their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire off the stairwell, and Shorty shines his new Maglite down the hole. Much brighter & more focused than their insect-repellent candle, he's able to see the size of the cavern below the church, and spies the iridescent tines of something like outstretched fingers, antlers, or bare branches poking out of the darkness deeper down.

Shorty's flashlight attracts the attention of a horde of the monsters below, which begin making their way up the stairs spiraling up around the wall of the cavern to the stairwell. The party throws a molotov to block off the stairs with its fire, then rains down the rest of their abundant supply of molotov cocktails to burn the horde in a carnival game out of hell.

The hellish conflagration of the molotovs illuminates a depression in the middle of the cavern filled with seawater flowing in from a grotto, as well as the thing growing in the center of the grotto - an iridescent, alien-looking "tree" like a spindly Rorschach blot.

They wait for the flames to burn down, then with their newly-acquired shotgun and pistol blast the few monsters of the horde that survived the flames. They find themselves on the floor of the cavern in a forest of the humanoid vegetable growths, posed like they're crucified all facing the "tree" in the cavern's center. The Private EyeNTJs find a stone bridge across the sea water-filled divot leading to a platform around the base of the "tree".

The "tree" appears sickly and withered - veins of black like in the bodies of St. Fiachra's elderly thread through it. At its base it bears two cysts, on opposite sides - sticking out of one is a man's lower body wearing a smart pair of slacks, and sticking out the other is a man's naked upper body covered in a webbing of black growths. They pull out the lower body, which separates from the "tree" with a gross sucking sound, revealing it to be dissolved or digested or somesuch from the pelvis-up.

The party goes around to the other cyst and pulls the webbing from the upper body's face, revealing it to be Johnson Bronson - their quarry, their payday.

Johnson says he can't feel his legs, that he's been stuck down there for so long he can't even remember how long it's been, and begs them for help. Walter electrocutes the crotch of his detached lower body with their taser to confirm there's no sensation.

In conversing with Johnson they learn that he chased rumours in wealthy circles that there was something in St. Fiachra's that could cure any sickness and grant longevity. He paid the town an enormous sum to allow the "tree" to consume he so he could be reborn, but something made the process fail halfway.

The party attempts to pull Johnson out of the "tree", giving him the barrel of their shotgun to hold on to, but as Billy predicted this ended poorly - with Johnson missing his lower body, his viscera spilled out onto the ground when they yanked him out. Shorty freaks out and blows Johnson's head off with the shotgun. 

They debate how they're going to prove they found Johnson to his mistress, but luckily find his wallet with his ID in his pocket. Walter sketches the scene, then they exit to the sun rising up over the sea onto the ruins of the church.

At the police station they call the hospital of a nearby city to send an ambulance for the sick elderly that they left locked in jail, then they went back to the brewery to talk to and maybe murder Panthera/Crabatt.

They ecounter P/C and a gaggle of other fellows armed with improvised weapon on the street outside the brewery. Panthera/Crabatt transfers $1,500 to their business account as payment - saying that since they didn't bring back their renewed bodies, he couldn't give them much in return. He threatens them never to talk about what happened in St. Fiachra's to outsiders, saying that Panthera isn't his only body now, and they won't recognize him if he comes to them. He claims to want to be the oldest, richest man in the world - but with the sickness of the "tree" and the loss of his 'original' body it's unclear how he'd manage that. The party schemes several methods to kill off P/C and the others in a way that won't let the people still in the brewery building escape, and eventually resolve to make some more molotovs and return.

The party spends $485 on gasoline, and $15 on assorted slurpies and mixed-soda drinks. When they return to the brewery it is deserted. They drive around town looting whatever hasn't been looted, and then leave. The town's fall to anarchy is blamed on it being cashless, and a 15-minute city.

They meet with Johnson's mistress, who is pleased to hear he's dead as that means she gets all his money. She pays them $50,000. Their financial woes solved, the Private EyeNTJs remain financially-solvent for another quarter.

The end.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 4

Previously:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

The session in which I realize Pepto-talk was semi-autobiographical.

This session the player of Billy was unable to make it. Billy was ruled as absent because, and here I quote Billy's player:

"His grandmother got into the rabbit food again. She has recently developed a habit of replacing all the contents of the cardboard box-contained food items in the house with rabbit food, so he has to rush home (maybe via bus?) to replace the food stuffs. She says she heard about this lifestyle-hack on a podcast, but Billy hasn’t been able to track it down. It’s possible though because the lead content maker of the podcast—Clorox—has recently had their show pulled off streaming services as it’s being admitted as courtroom evidence in the suspicious death of the show’s host’s wife. It’s very strange—she died by falling out of the host’s private plane. Incidentally, the host’s famous sign off is the reason for the courtroom admission: every show ended with "And remember! The worst way in the world to die is by falling out of a fast-moving plane from super high up!""

We begin the session at the Blue Giant Crew's flophouse, with Quasar Mike, Stim Jackson, and Wheeler reeling from the news of Pepto-talk's death. The party debates bombing St. Fiachra's church with their car as the children suggested - Shorty isn't against the idea, but doesn't want to leave any evidence leading back to them. I feel the need to stress that the children are children and not terrorist geniuses.

They leave the flophouse and seek out a vehicle that isn't theirs to potentially use for the car-bomb. My understanding of the size of small towns and the amount of time it would take to drive places in them is brought into question. They find an unlocked pickup truck, because apparently just leaving your car keys hanging from the mirror is totally a thing that happens in small towns. In the pickup's glove-box they discover a package of menthol cigarettes - banned in America under the fascist Obama administration.

As the Private EyeNTJs searched the town they found it in anarchy - people barricading their homes, children pelting adults with rocks, mass looting, etc.

The party drives by the church and finds Officer Dimbly having a mental breakdown outside it in her patrol vehicle. She says she saw Sheriff Trudy and Father Donnchad tossing bodies into a pit in the church, and that the owner of St. Fiachra's brewery, Mr. Crabatt, left with the other elderly who could still walk under their own power. Walter gives Dimbly $5.00 to get herself some icecream, and Dimbly leaves the scene. Walter lifts Shorty up to look through a window, and Shorty's able to confirm that Donnchad and Knowles are in fact carrying the bodies of the sick down some stairwell that was hidden underneath the church's altar (which can slide back and forth on rails or somesuch). 

The party returns to the Blue Giant Crew's flophouse to find Stim gone, and Wheeler arguing with Quasar. They take advantage of the two's more paranoid beliefs, as well as their resentment towards the townies & their emotional volatility after Pepto's death to get the two to agree to commit a terrorist act - driving a car-bomb into St. Fiachra's church.

For God knows what reason the party decides they need to disguise Shorty as a child, and so raid an already-looted gift-shop for a beanie hat and a jaw-breaker candy that Shorty glues to a stick as they could not find a giant lollipop. He goes to a rendezvous point told to him by the violent child delinquents of St. Fiachra's, and finds Dunkey arguing with Clarence - their leader - claiming that the adults aren't changelings, but human beings who bleed like them.

They load the improvised explosives the children had gathered into their stolen pickup, then get Quasar Mike and Wheeler and head for the church. Quasar Mike and Wheeler ram the front steps of the church at the same moment that Trudy Knowles poked her head out to see what the commotion was. They fail to jump out of the pickup in time, and so they, Trudy, and the front of the church are obliterated in the explosion, along with the sick & elderly lying on the church's back pews. 

Shorty sneaks in through the back and brains Father Donnchad with his horseshoe - and sees that the inside of Donnchad's skull resembles the inside of that tuna Fisherman Chuck pulled up the other day more than the wrinkly pink of a human brain. He and Walter then go down the stairwell that was hidden under the church's sliding altar. They descend into a huge cavern overgrown with moss and other such plant material that smells like the sea, only to retreat back up to the church when they hear word salad-y grunting from below. Officer Dimbly returns to the church following the noise of the explosion, and agitated almost shoots the Private EyeNTJs. They convince her to check out the stairwell beneath the altar, but this turns into an altercation with some humanoid creatures following the sound and light up the stairs that results in Dimbly getting her throat bitten out and the Private EyeNTJs slamming the altar back over the stairwell.

They notice some of the comatose elderly who survived the car-bomb beginning to twitch and utter word salad, and so siphon off the fuel from their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire to immolate them and the church. 

After this they head to the police station, and using a key they find in Sheriff Knowles' office unlock the armoury, finding a pistol, a shotgun, ammo for those weapons, a taser, and a bullet-proof vest. Walter uses a police station computer to watch videos of how to hot-wire a car, then applies his knowledge hot-wiring a police car that's parked in the lot.

From the police station, with their hot-wired police car, the party drives over to the brewery. They find the road blocked by Panthera LeSharp, and rather than run him over engage in conversation. Panthera acts even stranger than usual, and identifies himself as Mr. Crabatt. They don't really pry into that, and drive back to the Bannock & Boobrie. There they rearrange the room 180° so that the desk is placed over the trap-door, thereby preventing most things from getting through it.

They empty out some bottles from the inn's bar, and drive with them to the town's gas station. There they lie to the station attendant, claiming to have been deputized by Trudy (hence the police car), and receive some spare gas cans, a shovel, and enough gas to fill their bottles to make Molotov cocktails.

Driving over to the smoldering ruins of the church, they use the shovel to clear a wide-enough path through the rubble to make way to the stairwell where the altar once stood, then drive their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire over the stairwell to block it off.

The Private EyeNTJs drive back to the brewery to firebomb it and take care of the last entrance to the cave system beneath the town that they know about, and this time find Fisherman Chuck blocking the road. They talk to him, and Chuck makes a disconcerting reference to himself as Old Man Rather instead of Chuck, and mentions the need for living things to continuously evolve to survive. For some reason I cannot explain through the lens of reason, the party accepts Chuck's invitation to enter the brewery, and the session ended with them pulling into the brewery's parking lot.

The session ended a few minutes early because I really had to poop. I try to keep sessions in the range of 2 & 1/2 hours, with 15-30 minutes of casual talk at the start, because that is my operational limit. People who do like 4 hour sessions are, to me, insane.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 3

Session 1

Session 2

The party awakens once more in the Bannock & Boobrie, only to find Miss Marble comatose in the lobby, with Officer Dimbly attempting to bring her to the church, on Sheriff Knowles' orders. They offer to help, and while carrying Miss Marble to Dimbly's car she deliriously asks the nice gentlemen to keep people out of her office. While rooting through Miss Marble's pockets while Dimbly was occupied inside the inn, the Private EyeNTJs find a ring of keys, $40.00 Canadian (equivalent in value to approximately R$3 Brazilian reals), and some gross old people candy that had been collecting lint in there for some time.

Dimbly thanks them and goes on her way, cautioning the crew that St. Fiachra's was heading into some dark times and they'd best get out of town while they could.

The team agrees to check out Miss Marble's office, and with her keys locks up the Bannock & Boobrie and unlocks the office. The office shows signs of struggle - several struggles, in fact, some of them old enough that the scuffs and scratches left behind were full of dust. They check through the filing cabinets in the office, finding that documents relating to certain guests' stays in town had been doctored - sparsely in past decades, but ramping up significantly in the last year, with Johnson Bronson's name among those whose guest records had been altered.

Walking around, they discover a hollow space hidden under the rug - and I learn in real life what distinguishes a rug from a carpet. Beneath the rug is a trap-door, with fingernail-tracks dragged through the flooring towards it.

After some debate, they decide against cowardice and descend down the trap-door, and find themselves in a cave. They use the thread from Billy's sewing kit to keep track of their path, and use the bug-repellent candle once more to light their way. Going deeper into the cave, they find it unnaturally lush, with moss and suchlike increasing the deeper they got, and almost-animal veins threaded through the greenery. The party speculates that they have entered into the scrotum of a kaiju - a sort of giant, Japanese monster - and agree that the real kaiju is in the White House.

They come to a larger cavity within the cave. They spot vegetable growths resembling the silhouettes of people, and Shorty cuts off a sample from one and see if the rest react. Fortunately, they do not. He notices that the growths have threads of some black substance growing through them.

The Private EyeNTJs follow a groaning sound and find Pepto-talk curled up under a small outcropping and bleeding to death, looking quite mauled. Pepto-talk tells them they fell down their diarrhea-hole in the flophouse and ended up in these caves - and then while trying to find a way out was attacked by a monster.

A humanoid figure appears at the edge of their candle-light during the conversation. After a failed attempt at dialogue it attacks - revealing itself to be a malformed elderly person, with innards similar to the tuna that Chuck pulled up last session where its skin's been damaged.

After a tussle in which Shorty's throat is nearly torn out, Billy knocks the thing's head off with a baseball bat. Examining the head they find it's got teeth made of vegetable ivory, which is a real thing look it up. Shorty takes a sample of the head as well, and they go to check on Pepto-talk.

They discuss plans to rescue Pepto, but it becomes clear the poet is on their last breaths. They regale the group with their final poem: 

"Fixin' the material conditions,
That was my mission.
I found the sub-structure,
It made me go grrr!
I'm gonna die..."

And then expire. The Private EyeNTJs take Pepto's journal and make sketches of the cave, the growths, and the monster, and put the samples Shorty had taken into a plastic baggy Pepto had been keeping joints in.

Exploring the cavity, they find it branches into three other paths - one going deeper, and two going off from the sides. The vegetation gets even denser on the deeper path, so they take one of the sides.

Blah blah blah, they walk through the cave for a while, blah blah blah, and eventually end up in an artificial chamber below the brewery. They find dollies and barrels in the chamber, the barrels containing the algae stuff that Shorty had seen in the brewery yesterday. Climbing the ladder to the trap-door, they hear two inebriated men standing guard in the room above. Shorty uses the imitation skills he learned in the circus to mimic the roar of a lion, scaring the guards into going into another room - they don't know what's beneath the brewery, only that it's dangerous and that they should never go down there.

Ascending into the brewery, the party finds themselves in a store-room, with lots of empty beer cans discarded about and some improvised weapons leaning against barrels and boxes. They head back to the Bannock & Boobrie through the cave, and looking over the map of the cave they'd made in Pepto's journal find that the deeper paths converge below St. Fiachra's church.

Outside the inn they are called into an alley by Dunkey Blart, one of the town's evil delinquent children. Dunkey confides that the adults of the town have been replaced with changelings by fairies, and that fire is one of the only surefire weapons against them. He asks their permission to load up their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire with improvised explosives, so that it can be rammed into the church where the adults are gathering & detonated. They turn down the children's plan, but remain open to working together on other schemes.

The session ends with the Private EyeNTJs driving back to the Blue Giant Crew's flophouse, to return Pepto-talk's beat poetry journal, notify them of Pepto's death, and offer their condolences. There they reunite with Quasar Mike, as well as meet other BGC members Stim Jackson and Wheeler. Quasar Mike is put off at first by the party's Protocols of the Elders of Zion-esque story of conspiracy and underground tunnels, but quickly comes around. The group shares Pepto's final, samurai-like death poem, and the Crew make plans to turn Pepto's diarrhea hole into a shrine & art gallery dedicated to Pepto & their work. 

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 2

It's still happening. People are still having fun. I like to have fun.

Session 1

We rejoin our intrepid investigators at the flophouse of the Blue Giant Crew. There is some chit-chat, some further inquiry into the nature of the Procyonian menace, and then the Private EyeNTJs head out.

Sheriff Knowles is waiting for them in her patrol car outside. She appears sick, with black veins in her eyes. She tries to pull something on the party, but they pass their saves. I think. My notes for this session are sparse and it happened a while ago. Knowles warns them to stay out of trouble because she's got her hands full with the town's children acting up and people freaking out about the disease spreading. They also meet Knowles' assistant Officer Dimbly, who is much friendlier and of a normal human body temperature. The cops respond to an emergency call about people barricading a street with furniture and drive off.

Uhhh I think after this the Private EyeNTJs go to the police station because they know the cops won't be there. They run into the station's secretary, Charlene, talk to her for a bit, and then pussy out about breaking into the station.

From someone somewhere sometime, maybe Charlene, they hear that a man by the name of Panthera LeSharp came to town looking for his missing wife Cheetah.

So they look around town for Panthera, and make their way down to the docks, where a fisherman - Fisherman Chuck - is showing off his latest catch: a big tuna with a whack interior. The fish looks normal on the outside, but on the inside is a mess of green and black growths that even to the non-fish-expert would not resemble any organs a fish should have. Chuck tells them he's going to cook it up in a fish fry that evening, and that they should come by for it.

Fortuitously, Panthera had been living out his van not too far away, living off the scraps the fishermen gave him. Panthera tells them that his wife went missing on a girls' wine-tasting trip near St. Fiachra's, disappeared right from the AirBnB she was staying at, with only a chillingly cut-off voice message and a couple of cans of St. Fiachra's Finest Ale kicked into a bush for a trail. The Private EyeNTJs ask a few other things I can't remember, and promise to keep an eye out for Cheetah. Panthera tells the party that he believes that St. Fiachra's is full of Georgists, that these Georgists were responsible for his wife's disappearance, and that Georgists were Hitler's real target, that Georgists want to instate a land value tax because they want to grind everyone up into fertilizer to use on their land.

Oh yeah and the party notices that St. Fiachra's Finest Ale has a similar smell to the freaky fish that Chuck pulled up at some point.

Based on the beer-clues, the party decides to check out the town's brewery. They find the place closed due to lack of available personnel, so Shorty tries to sneak in through the rooftop ducts. As fellow gentlemen and business-owners, Walter and Billy are able to distract the brewery's owner Mr. Crabatt from noticing Shorty sneaking around in the ducts, and convince him that they're trustworthy enough to watch the establishment while he goes and runs some errands. They deliberate breaking into the brewery's cash register, but decide against it.

Shorty discovers some barrels in the brewing area containing what appears to be live algae, which shares a smell with the beer and the beer's mash and the freaky fish, etc. Also he finds a journal which suggest Mr. Crabatt has been experimenting with mixing the algae-stuff  into the mash, with solid recent success.

The other two do something, but also Shorty goes back to the docks to scope out the fish fry. He pretends to eat the fish & drink some beer, and notices that Panthera has been drinking heavily and seems much more friendly towards the townsfolk, particularly Mr. Crabatt. 

Fisherman Chuck takes a shine to Shorty and cautions him to take care, because people with dwarfism were Hitler's most hated enemy, that he only killed other groups of people so that people of dwarfism didn't cotton on and get away, and that far-right-wing sentiments were on the rise in Canada according to the CBC. He also says something about the soul being interpreted as one's psychological identity in St. Fiachra's interpretation of Christianity, but I forget what exactly.

At some point Mr. Crabatt becomes aware that his brewery has been broken in to, but rather than blaming the party blames the town's children. Mr. Crabatt exclaims that exterminating the children of Europe was Hitler's true goal, and that so many adults got caught up in it because people were shorter back then. He rouses up a lynch mob of drunken adults, who leave the fish fry to go chase down some children. The children engage the mob in a fighting retreat as the Private EyeNTJs follow the action in their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire - at one point almost getting their windshield smashed by a rock, but fortunately it flew right through the previous hole that was smashed through their windshield by a rock.

The children retreat into a house, the drunken adults are lured inside after them, and the house is set on fire, with children escaping by jumping out a 2nd-storey window onto a pile of mattresses out back. Some children spot the party, and recognize them as human based on the fact that they were able to touch the hag-stone unharmed.

Tuckered out by a day of adventure the party returns to the Bannock & Boobrie, where its normally-bubbly owner Miss Marble seems to be coming down with something. They pay for the room for another night, and go to bed.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 1

As this: https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-seven-mysteries-of-st-fiachras.html

The session was run using a cut-down version of the esteemed deus ex parabola's G24 system. Modifications may be made as the need arises. 

The party - the private investigation firm: the Private EyeNTJs - were strapped for cash, fishing for crumbs lost between the cushions of their office's couch for sustenance, when they received one final mission that could save their financials. The immortality-seeking multi-millionaire Johnson Bronson was missing, and his mistress Olga Russkihunnipottz wanted him found. His last known location? A sleepy little town on the coast of Newfoundland called St. Fiachra's.

Comprising the elite ranks of the Private EyeNTJs are:
-Walter Watts, a good ol' Southern boy who lost his fortune on horse gambling and whiskey.
-Sheriff Shorty, whose parents operated an underground freakshow in New York which he snitched on & thereby escaped.
-Billy "Big Rig" Riggus, the son of a roofer who died in the line of duty. Mocked in the roofing company locker room, Billy decided to follow his dream of doing good.

They rolled into town on a dark & stormy night in their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire, bantering about Big Rig's grandma's lamb marrow bunt cake.

They came up on an inn, the only lights on in town at this hour - the Bannock & Boobrie. Frightened by the inn's mascot's resemblance to Toucan Sam, and assured that in an rpg one can do anything, Big Rig smooched the other two members of the EyeNTJs 200 times on the lips (if you're too woke for lines & veils this could happen to you).

The inn's owner, a gracefully-aged woman who went by Miss Marble, welcomed the party (they, being gentlemen, tipped their hats in return) and seeing their sorry state offered them a free round of beers and a spare room. Watts recognized Miss Marble as the heiress of the Marble shipping fortune, and realized that she's aged very gracefully indeed for a woman who should be in her 90s. Being a Southern gentleman, he makes a pass at her. Big Rig shakes her hand in gratitude, and even through his rained-on chill notices Miss Marble's hand is cool to the touch.

The party leaves for the bar-room & collect their pints. A few local figures are hanging about. A big bearded teddy bear of a man comes up and introduces himself as Finnigan O'Flannagan. He says he hopes they enjoy their stay and don't cause any trouble in the peaceful & prosperous St. Fiachra's. A blue-afro'd man with a Star Trek visor calls over and tells them to stop letting the lame-o locals bother them. The party decides to split up and talk a bit to everybody.

Sheriff goes to sit with O'Flannagan and Trudy Knowles (the actual sheriff). While initially hostile, she and Sheriff bond over their dislike for the big city. While asking about Johnson, Sheriff intuits that Trudy is lying about never having met the guy.

Meanwhile, Big Rig sits with the blue afro'd Quasar Mike & his companion Pepto-talk. Pepto, a radical beatbox poet, regales them with the following lines:

What we supposed to do when the rich take our shit,
When I go to my grandma's my cap gets knit!
Capitalism? More like crapitalism!
Maaan FUCK Donald Trump

before excusing themself to go to the bathroom, as speaking truth to power triggers their IBS. After they go, Mike rants to Big Rig about the Procyonians - psycho-electrical beings from a remote solar system who come in two types: blue, who are good, feed on the plasma of interstellar space, and want to enlighten humanity so we can join them in fully-automated luxury gay space communism, and red, who are evil and feed on the plasma in human blood. He goes on to accuse auteur director Michael Bay of stealing his notes on the Procyonians to write his blockbuster Transformers film franchise. In a moment of clumsiness Mike knocks over Big Rig's pint, but while leaning over to clean it up whispers that the party should meet his group, the Blue Giant Crew, at their flophouse on the edge of town the next day to discuss Johnson's disappearance.

A crash of glass resounds outside and the party rushes out to find that the windshield of their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire has been smashed in. They see small figures scampering away into the storm but decide not to pursue, suspecting these figures to be gremlins. They find a tarp to cover the hole in their windshield, and find it was smashed by a large stone with a hole worn through it.

Returning to their drinks (and a refill for Big Rig), Watts goes to talk to the local priest, Father Donnchad. Watts finds Donnchad's hand to be as cool as Miss Marble's. They discuss theology and Johnson Bronson - Donnchad claims not to remember Johnson in particular, as rich people were always coming into town to try and buy out the secret to the town-folk's longevity - some, such as Miss Marble, even deciding to stay. When asked about the windshield, Donnchad says that local children have become prone to mischief and vandalism ever since a sickness starting spreading through St. Fiachra's, as the community is psychologically unused to infirmity.

The Private EyeNTJs took a huddle, to theorize & discuss their next moves. They agreed that the town was full of heretics, but couldn't decide whether they were good heretics or bad heretics. They decided that the local beer was bad news, and luckily Watts had a full canteen of water to sate their thirst. Their going theory as to what caused the strange sickness afflicting the town was that Johnson Bronson was using a Chinese weather sickness machine on it. They reiterated their company goal of bringing an analytical, logical mindset to Southern congeniality and manners, though it's revealed that the "NTJ" of the company's name has nothing to do with Myers-Briggs, but rather that the "J" stands for the initial of Watts' Aunt Jemima.

Not wanting to risk going out into the storm with a busted windshield and potential gremlins about, the party went to their room for bed. 

Checking their room, the party found it had been meticulously cleaned. The only objects of interest (besides the two beds, more comfortable than any they had slept in for weeks) were a cross hung up on the wall, which had branches arrayed along its top, and the bible in the bedside table, which had unusual revisions mostly to Genesis and Revelation which emphasized the garden of Eden.

They cycled watch throughout the night, with a duck call as their signal if trouble came a'knocking. Fortunately, nothing happened and they were able to rest up.

Come morning, the party sought to figure out their breakfast. They didn't have a penny to their name, and being factual & logical Southern gentlemen refused to resort to thievery. Big Rig remembered he left a banana under the driver's seat of their 1993 Ford Aspire, and he and Watts went to grab it. Miss Marble notices Watts carrying the big rock that had smashed in their windshield and recognizes it as a hag-stone, something used to ward away fairies.

They find the banana had partially rotted, and squeeze out the banana bits but keep the peel. They consider going to the Blue Giant Crew for food, but debate whether Pepto-talk had slipped out of the washroom and been the one to wreck their car.

Growing hungrier, and without a dime to their name, the party headed to the Blue Giant Crew flophouse on the edge of town. The cold autumn wind blew in through the hole in their windshield, but any bugs that might've slipped in were kept at bay by Watts' bug repellent candle. They found Quasar Mike ripping a bong atop a moldy beanbag chair on the porch of a dilapidated manor. Ushering them inside, they found the interior of the manor as wretched as the outside, and suspiciously leftist. Quasar provided the party with a family-size pack of blue Vegan Puffs™. He said that Pepto-Talk was around, but had engaged in another session of political beat poetry and was therefore evacuating their bowels through a hole in the basement.

He also regaled them with further confusing details on his Procyonian theory, and although he confirmed that Johnson Bronson had made it into town before disappearing insisted that the man had been converted into a red Procyonian and was responsible for the disappearances in the area, having fed on people for their plasma. After Quasar Mike showed the party his terrible artwork, the session drew to a close. 

The last ~1/3rd of this session went beyond what I prepped. Got a better feel for prep material => playtime now.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's

My group's usual DM seems like he could use a break... been brainstorming something to run... which is this:

A sleepy little coastal town in Newfoundland - and yet:

1. St. Fiachra's elderly population (these days most of its population) exhibit remarkable health! Locals attribute this to its spring-water - and in fact a health spa fed by St. Fiachra's spring operated on the island until the '80s - but outside reporting tends to claim that their diet rich in fish and seaweed is to thank for this.

2. Befitting a town founded by Irish immigrants, St. Fiachra's is awash with fairy-lore. Big circles of mushrooms sprout across it, said to be portals to the otherworld. In a darker vein, the town is rumoured to be haunted by a fetch, a sort of doppelgänger who appears to people before dragging them to hell!

3. St. Fiachra's high incidence of reported strange phenomena like lost time, astral projection, lights over the ocean, and crabs doing un-crab-like things has attracted a stream of aficionados of the weird over the decades - spiritualists and Forteans a while back, nowadays more UFO-seekers. They congregate in a bohemian flop on the edge of town, and tend to get on the locals' nerves.

4. The people of St. Fiachra's practice their own peculiar sect of Christianity, which among other things rejects the book of Revelation, and instead teaches of an eighth day of creation when God will restore the garden of Eden and return humanity to our prelapsarian glory. The whole town has been under an interdict from the Catholic church for over a century!

5. Visitors to the town often report being frightened by noises that seemed to come from underground. Locals joke that these noises are made by the sluagh na marbh - the "host of the dead"!

6. The region around St. Fiachra's has had one of the highest disappearance rates in the province in 2025. The latest & highest-profile of these disappearances was immortality-seeking multimillionaire Johnson Bronson.

7. The sole exception to the town's otherwise-impeccable health - a disease of yet-unknown cause has been spreading in St. Fiachra's. Symptoms vary, but tend to include lethargy and confusion. The disease's spread has coincided with a spike in xenophobia in the once-tourist-friendly place, problematizing its study. The prevailing theory is that it is something like Minamata disease, caused by contamination of the town's fish supply by the nefarious communist Chinese.

Big Gay Orcs - Solo Play

Should orcs have only one eye? Should they bob their heads as if pigeons to achieve depth perception? Recent orc discourse which led me to the game Big Gay Orcs by Grant Howitt claims yes.

Link to game here: https://gshowitt.itch.io/big-gay-orcs

This is the story of the final day of the orc Ugly Bastard, and of his fellow-orcs in the fortress of Bloodripper Bastion. They're all gay also, but the other orcs look like this:

So it's not that gay.

Ugly Bastard has a reputation for furiousity, yet on the inside he's fearful. He is a master weaponsmith, and his driving motivation is to become the next warlord of the horde, since the previous warlord was assassinated.

There are five named NPCs in the fortress (and some unknown and insignificant number of nameless other orcs):
-Furbog the wilderness ranger
-Dalthu the omen-scryer
-Stugbu the warlord's ex-bodyguard
-Hoknuk the beast-speaker
-Varthug the axe-thrower sergeant

Now for Ugly Bastard's relationships with them:
-UB despises Furbog for witnessing a moment of UB's cowardice
-UB respects Dalthu for his ambition
-UB is jealous of Stugbu for his close relationship with the previous warlord
-UB despises Hoknuk for not giving him a cool war-beast to ride
-UB is frustrated by Varthug for refusing his advances

Bloodripper Bastion is the last obstacle between the armies massing on the horizon and their orc-city, presumably where they keep the orc-women. Between certain death and being nagged by those friggin broads they face an impossible choice. Dusk is falling. They will not see the dawn.

Ugly Bastard has spent the last few days hammering out some last arrowheads for the Bastion's defense. He's bored, he's sweaty, he's terrified. He chugs some fermented sow-milk, and decides he wants to die without regrets. He decides to hit on Varthug, that tease.

It's a partial success - Varthug agrees to go behind the barracks to touch butts. However, UB's reputation for furiousity works against him: Varthug doesn't want to be sore for when the fighting kicks off. Scared of rejection, UB shows a tender side, and Varthug gets +1 mark against UB - that'll be bad if Varthug dies or flees. In the afterglow UB gets 2 hope, leaving him with a total of 22. If his hope runs out it's game over.

While UB and Varthug were canoodling, an event kicks off. Because UB didn't do anything to protect the fortress the event's a bit worse than it otherwise would have been. Stugbu flees against the rays of the setting sun. The guy didn't have any marks on Ugly Bastard, so UB doesn't really care.

With Stugbu - one of the Bastion's best fighters - gone, the mood darkens. Where there is talk, it is most often of who was expected to flee next. Still riding high from his hook-up with Varthug, UB ignores this, and goes to propose un petit peu de frottage (as the French say) with Dalthu.

Dalthu agrees, but only on the condition that afterwards Ugly Bastard do something to help with the Bastion's defense. While they are getting it on, Hoknuk gathers his wargs and beast-riders charge out the gates for a suicide attack, which accomplishes nothing because Hoknuk is chienne faite (as the French say). Post-nut clarity hits UB and Dalthu hard - UB realizes he should build barricades or something, and Dalthu regrets letting his dick do the thinking for him.

The sun fully disappeared beneath enemy lines, Ugly Bastard dismantles furniture and other non-essentials to shore up the gate and create barricades for fall-back positions should the gate fall. He gets the fortifications up solidly and in decent time, but shivers the whole time as he hears the sounds of Hoknuk and his sally getting slaughtered, revealing his fear to Furbog, Varthug, and many other orcs besides.

Unbeknownst to any, an enchanter in the enemy camp ensorcells Varthug's heart, using his loss of respect for Ugly Bastard as the chink to get in.

Ashamed, unmanned, and desperately needing a distraction, Ugly Bastard propositions Furbog. Furbog taunts him, laughing in his face and demanding to know where UB's infamous battle-rage had gone. Ugly Bastard cries and goes to hide in a pile of hay. He loses 2 hope from the experience, leaving him at 20.

While UB is sulking, a couple goblins return from Hoknuk's valiant charge with an injured enemy in tow. The cheers upon the goblins' return rouse UB from his hiding place. He decides that if goblins can be war-heroes, then he can win over Furbog.

In fact he does! UB and Furbog make out in a puddle of mud by the boar pens, restoring a whopping 4 hope. Unfortunately and inconsequentially (given their impending deaths) UB also contracts oral herpes from the encounter.

In a stunning display of lack of inter-departmental communication, an arrow sails over the wall and nails Varthug in the neck, taking out the enemy's man on the inside. UB and Furbog are making eyes at each other and returning to the main force as this happens. UB is left stunned, as he had caught feelings for Varthug. He loses 7 hope, leaving him with 17 remaining.

Wanting to forget the horrid sight of his one-time lover drowning in his own blood, Ugly Bastard drinks some more fermented sow-milk and barges into the hall of omens, raring to "tie the knot" with Dalthu (as the dogs say). Dalthu, against his better judgement, agrees, but at the same time castigates Ugly Bastard for both his avoidance of the siege and his rampant horniness. At this point the mélange of extreme emotions in so short a time had almost completely fried Ugly Bastard's brain, so this scolding only made UB fall for Dalthu more. Together the orcs suffer the little death, preparing them somewhat for the big death that was soon to follow. Enemy forces muster around Bloodripper Bastion as they lie in each other's arms. The experience restores 5 hope to UB.

Starting to really feel the fermented sow-milk now, Ugly Bastard double fists two bottles more and mounts the stairs up to the ballista. He chugs them while firing off bolts wildly at the enemy. He misses every single one, and the orcs who witness it agree: Ugly Bastard isn't furious, he's crazy and stupid. Reaching back for another bolt and missing entirely, UB tumbles off the ballista-tower and crashes through a wagon at its base. Bruised, cracked, and full of splinters, UB takes 5 damage to his hope, leaving him at 17 again.

It was a lucky break, as these things go, as moments after falling an enemy siege engine provoked by UB's wild fire blasts the tower to pieces. He loses another point of hope as debris rains around him (remaining total 16).

Basically feral at this point, Ugly Bastard decides to clamber over the wall and just start shanking dudes. He gets a few, but overall this was a poorly thought-out plan, and he just barely gets back to the bastion alive with 9 hope left and quite a few new bloody wounds.

He really shouldn't have bothered coming back, because while he was out and fucking about the enemy's main force breached the gate and slaughtered his comrades. When Ugly Bastard witnesses this he falls to his knees and doesn't even resist as squad of spearmen stab him through the heart, his soul as dry as his balls.

To recap the fates of our characters:
-Ugly Bastard: Speared many times over while bleeding out
-Furbog: Killed by invaders after gate was breached (times hooked up with: 1)
-Dalthu: Killed by invaders after gate was breached (times hooked up with: 2)
-Stugbu: Fled the Bastion (times hooked up with: 0)
-Hoknuk: Dead by suicide charge (times hooked up with: 0)
-Varthug: Took an arrow to the neck (times hooked up with: 1)

In Review:

Happy Pride Month.

Bonus: Orc Fortress Name Generator