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Season 4: As Yet UnnamedSeason 4: As Yet Unnamed
Reality Date: June 7th, 2008
Gameality Date: April 7, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue After Suppel's failure to seduce Clod, he returns to Merri's room to get more advice from her. Echoing Clod himself, Merri suggests that romance is important and that it might be helpful for Suppel to do nice things for Clod, such as give him candy or flowers to express how he feels. Merri also comments that there are a variety of ways of expressing love for another person, and that Kale, for example, does a lot of yelling to express how much he cares for Merri. Suppel asks if he should yell at Clod, but Merri advises against this, recommending that he try candy and flowers first. Suppel also decides that it will be helpful for him to stop shaving because Clod has stated that he is attracted to hairy women. He and Merri then discuss strategies for helping him to stop "automatically" shaving every day, such as hiding his razor from himself. Then, still feeling too upset to sleep, Merri decides to distract herself from feeling rejected by Kale by practicing some of her spells. She tells Suppel that she would like to practice her spells that regrow organs and tissue but that she does not think that any of the other party members would volunteer to have their limbs and organs removed so that she can practice regrowing them. She explains that she would instead like to try regrowing these things from Kale's severed leg, which is still being preserved in the cryochamber. When she asks for Suppel's help in getting it out of the cryochamber, Suppel responds that "it would be interesting," but asks if Merri will agree to take all the blame when Kale and Godwin find out what she's up to and get angry. When Merri agrees to this, he helps her get the leg. As Merri and Suppel are about to leave the cryochamber, Darff walks in looking for Merri. Darff and Merri walk to Merri's room together, and Darff explains that he would like Merri to make him female, because he is hoping that Suppel will no longer be attracted to him if he becomes a woman. Merri obliges Darff and, as in Suppel's case, gives Darff female genetalia and a female body shape from the neck down for a week. After "Darffina" leaves Merri's room, Merri takes a wakey-wakey bean, finds a book on human anatomy in the ship's library, and spends the night studying it and regrowing various parts of Kale. She successfully manages this, but it will take three weeks for the parts to fully regrow. Reality Date: June 7th, 2008 Gameality Date: April 8, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue In the morning, the party meets to discuss what to do about stopping Eagle-Kale and getting the time traveler back. Merri suggests that she should drive the van into Hinkerville with other party members hidden in the back. She could then find Eagle-Kale, convince him that she still believes that he is the real Kale and that she wants to help him, and lure him back to the van, where she and the other party members could capture him and take him back to the Redemption. The other party members agree that this is a good plan and decide that Darff (with the help of Suzie and another clone) and Godwin should be the ones hiding in the van. Kale does not want to go anywhere near Eagle-Kale, as he does not want to give Eagle-Kale an opportunity to reinforce his spell. Suppel and Clod decide that since they are currently the only ones who are capable of operating the controls of the Redemption, they should stay onboard. With this plan in place, the Redemption continues its journey back to Pangea, and the party members take to looting the walnut ship. During this process, Suppel finds candy and beer that he takes with the intention of using them to woo Clod. As the Redemption approaches Pangea, someone notices a dungeoncraft in the vicinity. A closer look reveals that the craft is in fact the Munchkin. There is a rush to shroud the ship, in the course of which it is only belatedly realized that shrouding isn't much good when there's another unshrouded ship attached to your shrouded ship. When this occurs to the party, they back the Redemption off out of scrying range and consider various options for how to proceed. Clod enthusiastically advocates a plan involving heading straight for the Munchkin, separating the walnut ship from the Redemption so that it continues sailing through the heavens toward the Munchkin, and then taking the shrouded Redemption around behind the Munchkin to attack it while it is preoccupied with the walnut ship. Carried away by what he regards as the brilliance of this plan, he dubs it "The Clod Maneuver." Other party members, however, are less interested in engaging the dungeoncraft in combat, and someone figures out that the shroud can be extended to hide the walnut ship as well as the Redemption. With this done, the Redemption resumes its course to Pangea, and as soon as it is within range, someone deploys the invasion portal and everyone except for Kale, Clod, and Suppel piles into the van, which Merri drives through the portal and onto Pangea. Amid madcap near-mishaps resulting from a combination of the usual difficulties of driving the van through the muddy jungle and Merri's rather poor driving skills and sense of direction, the party manages to get itself to the outskirts of town. On the way, they encounter a huge cube-shaped object jutting out of the ground (in which one of its corners is partially embedded). Curious about this strange object, Godwin tries to use his Roving Vision spell to get a look inside it, but he bungles the spell and ends up seeing out of his nipples instead of his eyes. Merri then gets out of the van, climbs up a rope ladder hanging down from an opening in the cube, and peers inside it. The cube appears to be a sort of landing pod presumably used by people from the Munchkin, but there doesn't appear to be anyone in it at the moment. Merri therefore returns to the van and continues into Hinkerville, where official-looking Kingdom of Accord guards are spotted patrolling the town. Miraculously evading them for the time being, Merri drives around until she notices a walking bush, which she immediately realizes must be Eagle-Kale. She therefore follows the bush, which heads to the shack. With the others waiting in ambush in the back of the van, Merri gets out and pokes her head into the shack, which she finds to be occupied by Eagle-Kale and a bunch of eerie pink mist. Launching into her appeal, Merri announces that she belongs with Kale--to which, oddly, Eagle-Kale replies that he thought Merri had chosen to remain with the Wose, since she didn't accompany him through the portal. Merri is obliged to remind him that he leapt through the portal and immediately closed it behind him, leaving no opportunity for Merri or anyone else to follow him. She then explains that she got herself back to Pangea as quickly as she could following his abrupt depature from the Redemption. Eagle-Kale urges Merri to go get the rest of the party and Suppel's van and bring them to the shack, but Merri claims to have stolen the van and taken off on her own to reunite herself with Kale--implying that she alone among the party members has chosen his side over the Wose's. Merri then begins trying (via seduction) to get Eagle-Kale to accompany her back to the van, but upon learning that it is nearby, he resists her wiles and asks her to return to the van by herself and drive it into the shack, for reasons that he does not divulge. After a brief battle of wills in which each tries but fails to win the other over to their particular agenda, Merri bursts into tears, proclaims that if Kale doesn't want her worship, she'll go find some other god to worship, and runs off. Fortunately, Eagle-Kale follows her, so she leads him past the van--whereupon Godwin bursts out of the van and attacks him using his Cloak of Razor Insight. Taken very much by surprise, Eagle-Kale stops and turns to address Godwin, with whom he tries to reason. While he is flapping his jaw, Godwin whacks him again. Merri, meanwhile, doubles back and leaps upon Eagle-Kale in a fury, pummeling him soundly while berating him tearfully for having deceived and manipulated her. Darff and his clones emerge from the van to help subdue Eagle-Kale as well, but Merri has managed to render him unconscious by the time they do so. At this point, a contingent of government guards approaches, and as they surround the party, their leader demands that Merri hand over Kale Ecuttel to them, as he is under arrest. Godwin quickly gets himself back into the van, and in response to insistent questions coming over the radio from the party members who are still aboard the Redemption, he quickly updates them on the siutation whilst Merri stalls. Kale responds to the news of the party's predicament by urging them via the radio to simply give Eagle-Kale up--but he then quickly adds that they should get all of Kale's stuff back from him first. Merri therefore begins stripping Eagle-Kale of his clothing and possessions. The guards demand that she desist from this and give Kale up at once, but she disregards this and continues trying to stall them long enough to recover all of Kale's things. Unfortunately, the guards very quickly lose patience with this and begin shooting at the party members with zappy weapons. As they are doing so, Godwin attempts to protect his fellow party members with a Damage Scapegoat spell, but alas, he again buggers the cheesecake, with the unfortunate result that the van becomes the "scapegoat" in place of his intended scapegoat. When Merri and Darff get hit by zappy weapons, the van's hood thus absorbs some of the damage and assumes a bashed-in state--though Darff is wounded as well. Eventually, Merri finishes gathering all of Kale's possessions, and she and the others get into the van--only to find that it won't start, presumably due to the damage that it absorbed from the zappy weapons. In desperation, Godwin--in his first successful feat of magic of the day--shrouds the area in fog, and the party runs off blindly on foot in an effort to escape, with Merri wearing Kale's stuff and carrying Eagle-Kale. Meanwhile, Clod, Suppel, and Kale have landed the Redemption on Pangea, and some of them come to town in search of the rest of the party with intent to help them out. While people are blundering around in the fog, Clod stumbles into the time traveler lying tied up on the ground, then sees to it that he is helped up and back to the ship with the party. Merri, who is having trouble finding her way through the fog, activates Kale's glowing green cloak, with the result that the guards spot her and start shooting at her again. After getting hit with a zappy weapons and taking an injury, she deactivates the cloak. Ultimately, everyone makes it safely back to the ship. Upon returning to the Redemption, Merri ties up Eagle-Kale, then deposits Kale's possessions in her own quarters. When Kale asks her for his stuff, she replies that he can come to her quarters to get it "once he's himself again." Meanwhile, the time traveler charges the bracelet in thanks to the party for rescuing him, then goes on his way. Darff, dressing in loose-fitting clothing to hide his newly feminine figure, then uses the charged bracelet to fulfill his obligations to the timeline and ensure the survival of Suppel. For reasons unknown to this chronicler, Suppel and possibly others attempt to manipulate Eagle-Kale in various ways, possibly including a revival of the "jack-in-the-box--poke" technique. Somehow, these antics end up leading to Eagle-Kale getting a faceful of Suppel's breasts. Eventually, Eagle's spell wears off, and Kale and Eagle revert to their proper and separate bodies. Unfortunately, this results in Eagle's horrible, grisly death when the tightly bound Eagle-Kale suddenly becomes the much larger Wose and gets cut into and squashed by the rope. Members of the party who possess scruples about brutal murder react with dismay. Kale then goes to Merri's room to get his belongings back from her, and Merri answers her door wearing only her lingerie and Kale's green cloak. Kale tells Merri that he just wants his stuff back, but Merri insists that they need to talk. Kale expresses that he does not trust Merri anymore and does not know how that can be fixed, adding that he can't believe that Merri would kill her father for religious reasons. Merri explains that her reasons for killing her father were not entirely religious and that she saw it as ending what she had started when she brought the jack-in-the-box into her father's home. Kale then again tells Merri that he wants her to stop following the Way of Kale and worshipping him as a god, and Merri agrees to this. Merri also offers to stop worshipping the Divine Kale if Kale wants her to, emphasizing that Kale is more important to her than any god or religion. Kale, however, suggests that she continue to worship the Divine Kale. Then, perceiving that Kale has forgiven her, Merri expresses the opinion that the most important part of making up is the make-up sex. Kale points out that they are currently surrounded by a hostile fleet, but Merri responds that it can wait. Kale agrees, and Kale and Merri proceed to have vigorous make-up sex. Reality Date: October 4th, 2008
Gameality Date: April 9, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue While Kale and Merri are having make-up sex, Merri makes the suggestion that she and Kale should sometime try having sex with her armor on. These words unintentionally activate her armor, and as it assembles itself on her, it accidentally amputates Kale's penis. Fortunatley, Merri is able to magically regrow it and ends up giving him a new +1 penis that also gives him the ability to consciously control his own fertility. However, it takes three days for it to fully regrow, and Kale chooses to spend the first painful day in his room. In the morning Darff goes to Suppel's quarters to check on Suppel's gaping head wound. While he is there, Darff makes jokes about Kale losing his penis despite having no way of knowing that this has happened. As he is making these jokes, he hears a ripping sound and sees a hole open up in the middle of the air next to him. A chainsaw falls out of the hole onto Darff, and Suppel and Darff hear voices coming from the hole that talk about their actions a moment before they do things. Suppel begins raving incoherently about "reality" and "geodon" and reaching for the hole. At this point, Merri, who has decided to check on Suppel's wound as well, arrives in Suppel's room. She finds Darff talking to a voice coming from the hole. The voice is discouraging Darff from continuing to pay attention to the hole and informs him that it's "a red herring." Darff assumes that the voice is referring to his chainsaw and starts calling it his red herring. Merri assumes that the hole is a result of Darff and/or Suppel drinking Potion Deux and chastises them for this behavior. She then picks Suppel up against his will and carries him to the medical bay to help him heal away from the dangers posed by the hole. Darff follows. Meanwhile, Clod and Godwin converse on the bridge. In response to Clod's musings about the continuing problems that the group has with party cohesion, Godwin expresses the view that the best thing for the party would be to take off in the Redemption on some mission away from Hinkerville, but with one of Kale's portals set up so that there is easy access between the ship and the town. This would have the effects of both giving restless members of the party something to work together on and keeping reckless/psychotic members of the party away from Hinkerville, where they have a tendency to do rash and crazy things that jeapordize other party members' goals. Clod approves of this plan. The two then switch to the subject of how to deal with the current situation in Hinkerville, and agree that more information is needed about what the enemy guards are doing and about the situation in general. They thus decide that the party should head into town in disguise to scope out the situation. With this decided, Clod uses the parrot communication system to summon the rest of the party to the bridge so that he and Godwin can propose their plan to everyone else. Some members of the party obey the summons, but Suppel, who is still lying delirious in the medical bay, does not, so the party relocates to the medical bay to attend to Suppel. It becomes clear that Suppel himself is the only party member who is able to heal an injury of the type that he is suffering from (by using his Pluck Wound spell)--but that due to the injury, he is too spaced out to be able to do it. Godwin therefore dons his best therapist's manner and talks soothingly to Suppel, calming him and grounding him until he is able to focus enough to pluck his own head wound. Godwin and Clod then communicate their plan to the rest of the party, and various people engage in various efforts to disguise themselves in order to carry it out. Clod borrows Merri's goblin "mask" to use as his disguise; Godwin dons his official disguise cloak (complete with face-concealing hood). Suppel possibly disguises himself in some unremembered way or other, and Merri simply decides to use her Helmet of Shifty Eyes to adopt the face of the first stranger that she sees when the party gets to town. Darff, who does not plan to accompany the party, asks Merri to make Suzie female again before she sets off, and Merri complies--this time managing it so successfully that the effect will be permanent. Clod then deploys the invasion portal to a spot reasonably close to town, and the party sets off. Darf stays behind for reasons that probably have to do with his odd obessions with Suzie and with red herrings and holes in the fabric of gameality. He has somehow gotten it into his head that if he could manage to create another hole like the one that appeared in Suppel's quarters earlier, it might lead to Suzie becoming a sentient being. Since the first hole's appearance seemed to Darff to have something to do with Kale's loss of his penis, Darff first wonders whether castrating Kale might be a way of getting another hole to appear. For no reason comprehensible within the context of gameality, however, he decides against this course of action, and instead decides to take a page from Suppel's book and beg the "Cobbler" to open another hole. In response, the "Cobbler" apparently tells him that holes in gameality are created when people do something called "metagaming"--which Darff attempts to divine the meaning of by looking up "gaming" and "meta" in Suppel's encyclopedias. Equipped with this odd collection of inexplicably acquired and dubiously coherent notions, Darff then sets about attempting to babble about things that he knows nothing about, among other impossible tasks. When Merri uses her mask, as planned, to borrow the face of a passing stranger on the way into town, the stranger unfortunately notices, freaks out and makes a fuss about it. Unfortunately, the fuss involves calling to a nearby guard from the Munchkin, at which point the party scatters to avoid a confrontation. Merri then decides to head back to the ship to borrow Suzie's face rather than using that of the inconveniently ornery stranger. Impatient with this whole side-tracking delay, however, the rest of the party goes on without her. They first head for the site where Suppel's broken van was left the previous day. Discovering that it remains surrounded by armed guards, Clod and Godwin manage (with some difficulty) to convince Suppel that attempting to recover it is not immediately feasible. The three then head to City Hall in the hope of finding out what the situation is there and what, if anything, Kale's underlings might be attempting to do about Hinkerville's latest enemy occupation. Meanwhile Merri, who has accomplished the borrowing of Suzie's face, returns to where she left the rest of the party, only to find that they have gone on without her. At this point, Darff somehow inexplicably intuits that Merri needs help locating the rest of the party, so he radios her and informs her that Godwin, Clod, and Suppel are currently approaching City Hall--a fact of which Darff is not actually aware. Much to Darff's delight, this impossible deed causes another hole to appear in the air near him. He and Suzie climb through the hole and find themselves in some kind of control room with consoles that sport strange polyhedral knobs. For some reason, there is bumping of control knobs, and a variety of extremely odd things happen as a result of it. First, Merri is instantly transported to the other party members' location--and oddly, she is wearing eyeglasses when she arrives (though she doesn't seem to find this at all odd). Second, the word "fucker" appears, tattoo-like, across Suppel's forehead. Third, Clod suddenly transforms into a duck. And fifth, in a great moment of triumph for Darff, Suzie seemingly transcends the limitations of her nature as a mindless clone and begins talking to him. After taking a moment to react to all the weirdness, Godwin, Suppel, Clod, and Merri enter City Hall (Clod finding that even though his speech comes out as nothing but quacking, the other party members nevertheless understand him). The party tracks down a city official, who frantically inquires about Kale's whereabouts. Merri informs him that Kale is currently "indisposed," and Godwin asks him about what, as far as anyone knows, the occupying force seems to want, and whether anyone has come up with anything that might be done about it. The official replies that the guards seem to want to apprehend Kale, and agrees with the party that preventing this from happening would be good. The party also learns that in Kale's absence, the machinery of government is more or less flailing about helplessly, and nothing is being done about the town's situation at present. Godwin swallows his qualms and proposes investigating the current state of the clone army with an eye toward using them to defend the town against the armed guards. This suggestion is greeted with general approval, and Clod the Duck is dispatched on a reconnaissance mission to find out whether or not the clones are in fact still alive. Meanwhile, back on the Redemption, a female dwarf shows up from somewhere connected somehow with Darff's hole in gameality. Claiming to be a Game Mechanic, the dwarf chews Darff and Suzie out for messing things up and orders them out of the control room, commenting that someone named Ratia is going to be very angry if she finds out about their shenanigans. Once Darff and Suzie have climbed back through the hole, the dwarf closes it up and then somehow departs. En route to "Clontopia," Clod the Duck spies a guard and decides to shit upon him from above. When his aim proves untrue and his fecal deposit misses its target, he decides--having discovered that he is still able to wield weapons despite his new form--to try something else. Dive-bombing the hapless guard from above, he lets out a loud "Quack!" and whacks the guard in the head with his mace, rendering him unconscious. Quite pleased with himself, he then loots the unconscious guard before proceeding with his reconnaissance mission. Arriving at "Clontopia," he finds most of the clones alive, but unconscious and generally in bad shape due to not having eaten very recently. He then heads back to the Redemption, as does the rest of the party. Before going to bed for the night, at least some party members (notably Clod and Godwin) talk over the possibility of mustering the clones as a defensive force. Despairing of the feasibility of this plan in the face of the overwhelming force at the disposal of the enemy, however, Godwin soon turns to brainstorming alternative approaches involving infiltrating the Munchkin and accomplishing something via subterfuge and/or assassination. Merri, for her part, informs the rest of the party (except for Kale, who is still in seclusion) about her project of growing a new Kale from his old severed leg, since it occurs to her that it might be possible to deal with the authorities' interest in arresting Kale by giving them her Kale "clone." Godwin and perhaps others are duly shocked to learn that Merri is cloning Kale. Before any solid ideas for what to do have been thought up, however, everyone gets tired and goes to bed. Reality Date: October 18th, 2008
Gameality Date: April 10, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue In the morning, Kale emerges from seclusion and the party reconvenes for more discussion of plans. Said discussion is immediately sidetracked, however, by the consequences of more crass jokes about Kale's genital mishap being made by someone (in this case, Clod) who has no actual knowledge of the event. For the third time in two days, a mysterious ripping sound is heard and a hole opens in mid-air. Out of the hole steps a man dressed in strange attire who appears rather disoriented and befuddled. Incorrectly assuming that this man is another "Game Mechanic," Suppel casts his befriending spell on him, but in the confused exchange that follows, it soon becomes clear that the man (who gives his name as George Tenet) is not a "Game Mechanic" and, in fact, has no idea what's going on. Meanwhile, Darff reaches a hand through the hole and fiddles with one of the polyhedral control knobs. Apparently as a result of his fiddling, Kale suddenly grows breasts. This dismays both Kale and Merri, and Merri orders Darff to undo whatever he did. Darff complies, and Kale's breats go away. After a short time, a "Game Mechanic" does show up. Darff and Suppel immediately begin questioning her about the previously mentioned "Ratia," and in response, the irate mechanic informs them that Ratia is the god of system mechanics and that she does not take kindly to people tearing holes in the fabric of gameality and messing with stuff in the mechanosphere. Possibly in response to an attempt from Suppel to cast his befriending spell on her, she also subjects Suppel to the indignity of becoming monkey-faced. Eventually, after much chaos involving mysterious voices from beyond the hole and whatnot, the mechanic once again lectures the party about metagaming, then repairs the hole and departs. Shortly thereafter, the events surrounding the appearance of this hole begin to grow hazy in the party members' memories, soon to be forgotten entirely. Meanwhile and/or after all of this, discussion occurs about what to do about the armed guards occupying Hinkerville. Godwin is still interested in coming up with tactics involving infiltrating the Munchkin, but Kale is staunchly against attempting anything of the kind, declaring that any such plan would be futile and/or far too dangerous--though he doesn't really have much in the way of alternative approaches to offer. The discussion thus goes nowhere until Clod the Duck gets it into his head that more reconnaissance is needed and announces that he is setting out with a radio to scope things out in town for a second time. On his way to town, he sees several of the guards' landing pods taking off and reports this to the rest of the party via the radio. Then, after experimentally attempting to fly up into the heavens himself just to see if he could (but failing), he proceeds to Suppel's van's location. Finding it now unguarded, he informs the rest of the party. Since discussion of what to do about the guards is appearing increasingly moot at this point, it ceases, and the party joins Clod the Duck in town. There is now no sign of armed guards anywhere. Since Suppel is insistent about bringing his van back aboard the Redemption immediately, some members of the party return to the ship and deploy the invasion portal to a point relatively close to the van's location so that it can be driven through and onto the ship. While this is going on, Merri investigates the old "storefront" shack to see if it is still filled with swirly purple mist, but finds that it is not. After taking care of the van, the party heads for City Hall, where people are happy to see Kale but less happy about the "menagerie" accompanying him (i.e., Clod and Suppel). In response to inquiries about why Kale and company have a duck and a monkey with them, Merri--who, of course, doesn't remember the real reason for her companions' current states--claims that the party is starting a traveling circus. Other party members chime in to explain that the "animals" are actually companions of theirs who have been affected by mysterious magic. Meanwhile Kale and Godwin compare notes with the city officials about the guards, who appear to have simply picked up and left for reasons that aren't terribly clear. Discussion turns to the question of the impact of the brief occupation on the town, since some of the guards were observed carting things off and since everyone is puzzled about why they abruptly departed without achieving their objective of arresting Kale. Godwin volunteers to gather information from the townspeople about things that might be missing, and Kale assigns him a task force to help carry this out. Reality Date: October 18th, 2008 Gameality Date: April 10-12, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Downtime ensues. During it, Godwin and his task force complete their survey and learn that a small amount of looting did in fact occur--and that worse yet, some townspeople were arrested and taken away by the Kingdom of Accord guards. Alarmed by the latter discovery, Godwin gathers additional information and studies it for patterns in an effort to determine why the people that were taken were taken. His conclusion is that there was no particular pattern or intentionality behind the arrests; rather, the people who were taken were simply those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meanwhile, other party members fill the downtime with various pursuits of their own. Merri and Suzie spend some time getting to know each other, and at Merri's prompting, Suzie decides to reject her "slave name" and adopt a new name for herself. She chooses the name "Thymie Herb." Also, Merri--at least partly at the prompting of Godwin--spills the beans to Kale about her project of "cloning" him from his severed leg. Kale, of course, is a bit appalled initially, but his reaction is not terribly extreme--especially after Merri explains that she is doing it as a way of practicing her tissue regrowth spell so that she'll be good at it when called upon to use it to replace things like party members' lost legs, livers, penises, etc. Kale does, however, comment that Merri has been getting a bit "creepy" lately. Merri also works on the cloning project some more during the down time and manages to decrease significantly the total amount of time that it will take for the clone to grow. In addition, she and Kale give the latter's new "plus one" penis a test run. Finally, Clod ceases to be a duck at some point during the down time. (There's also a philosophical discussion between Suppel and Godwin that needs to be described here.) Reality Date: January 10th, 2009
Gameality Date: April 12-15, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Upon learning from Godwin that Hinkervillian citizens were apparently abducted by Kingdom of Accord guards, the party begins brainstorming ideas for what to do about it. After attempts to use the Redemption's technomancy to ascertain which way the Munchkin might have gone when it left the area fail, Merri suggests that the party go to a populated area and simply advertise the fact that they are looking for the Munchkin. Kale, however, labels this plan "a bit half-baked," and Godwin feels that it's even less wise than that. Merri then tries to pick up on communications between other ships in the heavens in hopes of hearing something that might clue the party in to the Munchkin's whereabouts, but she is unable to pick anything up owing to the fact that there are no other ships anywhere nearby. She thus again urges that the party go to a more populated area, and after some discussion, the party agrees to head for Luchorpan and see what, if anything, they can manage to learn there. After informing Kale's underlings at City Hall that the mayor will be away for several days to try to find a way of recovering the missing townspeople, someone who is reasonably competent at flying the ship gets it under way. During the three-day journey to Luchorpan, the downtime continues. Godwin spends part of this time in Hinkerville (accessible from the ship via Kale's portal, which leads to his mayoral office), where the work of his task force is not yet finished. Merri's Kale clone finishes growing during the journey, but proves (rather predictably) to lack volition or intelligence. Merri thus freezes it in the cryochamber for the time being. Also, Thymie continues to bond with Merri during the journey. Clod gets some kicks at various points from provoking Suppel by mocking his monkey-facedness, which on one occasion leads to a confrontation in which Suppel angrily grabs Clod by the beard. For some reason, Clod briefly wonders during this confrontation whether he and Suppel are perhaps having a romantic moment. Also, Suppel at one point gets it into his head that Merri, too, is mocking him, even though Merri has not actually said anything to or about him. He therefore glares angrily at Merri, who--thanks to her Helmet of Shifty Eyes--glares back at him with his own monkey face (until Suppel demands that she remove the helmet and she complies). When Clod proves unable to resist continuing to mock Suppel, Kale and Godwin try to restrain him, reminding him about how much Suppel "fucking hates monkeys" and warning him that he's risking a violent outburst from Suppel. Reality Date: January 10th, 2009 Gameality Date: April 15, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Upon arriving at Luchorpan, the party docks the Redemption, and some of its members (notably Merri and Kale) begin asking around in the heavensport about the Munchkin. In Merri's case, this takes the form of wearing her goblin "mask" and accosting random passing strangers with the question "Where's the dungeoncraft?" For some strange reason, this tactic does not yield results. Kale and Merri thus decide to leave the heavensport and try their luck elsewhere, and Kale gets the idea of going to the local "recruitment office," where he pretends to be interested in joining the military and attempts to subtly pump the recruiter for information about the Munchkin. He fails, but in the process he does learn the interesting tidbit that dungeoncraft are apparently actually powered, in some way, by the presence of the unlucky bastards in their dungeons. After this, Kale gets another idea; he suggests to Merri that she find a local "bounty hunter office," pose as a bounty hunter looking for work, and see if she can get herself hired to hunt down Kale. With Thymie tagging along, Merri proceeds to do exactly that. Asked at the bounty hunter office to demonstrate her prowess by sparring with a sumo leprechaun, Merri doffs her armor (beneath which, as usual, she has nothing on but lingerie) to wrestle with him and makes a good impression by successfully pinning him. Thymie is then asked to make a similar demonstration, but fails to impress. Merri, however, claims that Thymie is her sister and that they work as a team. The person in charge somewhat reluctantly accepts this and suggests that the pair join some kind of adventuring party that is about to set off on a dungeon raid or some such thing, with the stipulation that due to Thymie's unimpressive "tryout," they will have to split a single share of the take. Merri, however, professes disinterest in this and instead asks about the targets with the highest prices on their heads. Upon being shown a list that has Kale's name on it (with a bounty of 2000 crowns), she comments that she thinks she might know where to find this "Kale Ecuttel" fellow and asks about the procedure for turning him in and claiming her bounty should she manage to capture him. She is told that if she can bring Kale in, the bounty hunter office will contact the authorities, who will then come to take him into custody and pay out the bounty. While all of this is going on, the rest of the party members do various things of limited import. Godwin and Suppel spend some time sorting books; later, Godwin drinks his dwarven lunch beer, gets a bit tipsy, heads into town in search of a not-too-terribly-short prostitute, and gets himself laid. Darff decides to look into the possibility of acquiring illicit and possibly magical weapons, so he discreetly asks around until he has ascertained the whereabouts of a dealer in black market weapons. When his knock on the door is answered, he blurts out "I would like to purchase an illegal weapon." For some strange reason, the door is then slammed in his face. Attempts to try again--including an attempt involving a disguise--all fail.
As soon as Merri and Thymie have returned from the bounty hunter office and informed the rest of the party of Merri's success there, Merri is ready to turn around and head right back to the office with the "captured" Kale clone in tow. Other party members object, however; some are concerned that claiming that she "might know where Kale was," then returning with him in her custody an hour later, might look rather suspicious, and the problem of the clone's lack of marbles is also fretted over. Kale himself is worried about the implausibility of his capture by Merri at all, as he is apparently incapable personally of imagining circumstances in which he could conceivably be vanquished. Albeit with difficulty, Merri is eventually persuaded to wait until the next day before hauling her "captive" in. Meanwhile, Kale hits upon the idea of administering an herb to the clone that will put him into a coma, so that Merri can claim to have tricked him into ingesting the herb and the clone's unconsciousness can cover for his status as a mental vegetable. For some reason, Darff is dispatched to a local herb shop to look into acquiring the needed herb. After getting a price quote, Darff returns to the rest of the party to get money from Kale to pay for the herb. Upon returning to the shop, he is asked by its proprietor what price he was previously quoted and responds with a lie that he then proceeds to stubbornly stick to even though the proprietor clearly knows that he is lying and is unwilling to sell the herb for the claimed price. Eventually, the proprietor asks Darff to leave the shop, whereupon another party member is obliged to go to the shop to make the purchase. Irked by Darff's behavior, the proprietor of the shop charges a higher price than the one that he originally quoted, just to be ornery. Reality Date: January 10th, 2009 Gameality Date: April 16, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue The next day, the herb (whose effect is expected to last anywhere from one to ten days) is administered to the clone, who loses consciousness as intended. Merri then hauls him off to the bounty hunter office, to the surprise of the person who runs it. He promises to contact the appropriate authorities, but notes that it will take them a couple days to arrive on Luchorpan. Merri thus arranges to bring her "captive" back in once the authorities have arrived. Reality Date: January 17, 2009Gameality Date: April 16, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue While Clod is mysteriously afflicted with a fleeting conviction that zero is greater than two, other members of the party debate whether or not to actually attempt to deliver up the faux Kale and collect the bounty once the authorities arrive. Kale--whose signature paranoia is, for the moment, suppressing his trademark greed--is opposed; he points out that the purpose of the "bounty hunter" ploy was merely to bring the Munchkin to Luchorpan so that the party could infiltrate it, and argues that actually collecting the bounty would be unnecessarily dangerous and would delay action on the primary goal. Godwin, however, somewhat uncharacteristically argues in favor of collecting the bounty, as, unhampered by Kale's rampant paranoia, he doesn't perceive that doing so will be particularly dangerous or time-consuming--and the money might come in handy. Most other party members agree with Godwin, who ultimately wins Kale over as well. Reality Date: January 17th, 2009 Gameality Date: April 17-18, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Largely in deference to Kale's worries, an elaborate scheme is cooked up during the course of the next couple days, replete with precautionary measures, in order to ensure that the bounty collection fails to result in the death and/or capture of any party members. Otherwise, these days of waiting for the authorities to arrive pass as down time. Reality Date: January 17th, 2009 Gameality Date: April 19, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Though this chronicler doesn't really remember the details, presumably the party detects the arrival of a ship of some kind (not the Munchkin itself, I don't think), and concludes from this that the time to go collect the bounty has arrived.
The invasion portal is deployed to a point some distance away from the bounty hunter office. Suppel goes through first, and stealthily approaches the office, near which he climbs a tree and positions himself to serve as a hidden sniper should things go badly. Thereafter, Clod, Godwin, Darff, and Merri & Thymie (with the Kale clone in tow) go through; Kale stays behind for obvious reasons. Darff remains near the portal to ensure that no random individuals wander through it and onto the ship, and also to guard the party's escape route. The rest of the party heads, as unobtrusively as possible, in the general direction of the bounty hunter office. Once they are reasonably close to it, Godwin casts his Roving Vision spell and checks to make sure that no form of horrible death (or certain capture) awaits Merri and Thymie inside the office. Seeing that it is occupied merely by a pair of routine-looking functionaries, he advises Merri and Thymie that the coast is clear. The two of them then break cover and, accompanied by a bug from Godwin's Bug Shell, head for the bounty hunter office (clone still in tow), while Godwin and Clod lurk in the cover of a clump of trees or some such to watch, listen, and be on hand to assist if needed.
When Merri and Thymie reach the office, the exchange of "prisoner" for bounty goes smoothly until Merri, for some reason in in a context and manner that has been forgotten by this chronicler, reveals her identity. Hearing this, Godwin advises Clod (as well as Suppel, via radio) that Merri has done something foolish, and all three of them tense for battle. The bounty hunter functionaries, however, visibly freak out upon realizing with whom they are dealing, and begin backing away from Merri, slowly but anxiously. Emerging from the building, they climb onto a wagon parked just outside. Suppel, unsure whether they are simply fleeing or perhaps heading off to sound some kind of alarm, hesitates briefly, then decides (against the advice of Godwin via radio) to shoot them. Deftly, he nearly drops his gun, then falls face-first out of the tree in his effort to catch it. Meanwhile, the bounty hunter functionaries make good their "escape," and the party reunites and heads through the portal back to the Redemption. As far as this chronicler recalls, though, Merri did get the money before letting her name slip out (right?)--though what became of the Kale clone, I dare not say (did the fleeing wusses take him with them?).
By monitoring local ship communications, someone (Merri?) discovers that the ship that (if I'm reconstructing this all correctly) arrived earlier is now departing to rendezvous with the Munchkin somewhere. Triumphantly, the party follows this ship in the shrouded Redemption for the rest of the day and through the night. Reality Date: January 17th, 2009 Gameality Date: April 20, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue The Redemption continues covertly following the ship that is leading them to the location of the Munchkin throughout the morning and arrives in the vicinity of said dungeoncraft midway through the day. Also in the immediate vicinity, there is a bunch of swirly, colorful mist similar to the time-magicy mist that some party members recently encountered back in Hinkerville in connection with Eagle-Kale. Some mucking about with the mist via invasion portals perhaps happens, briefly, at this point.
For lack of a better idea, the party "decides" to attempt rescue of the captured Hinkervillians by deploying the invasion portal to an arbitrarily selected part of the Munchkin and setting off en masse on a blind trek through what, predictably, prove to be its dungeons. A decision is made to leave Relic on the Redemption's bridge withi a radio to watch over things and alert the party should any trouble arise. However, just as the party is about to head through the portal and onto the Munchkin, a Darff from the near future suddenly appears and warns them not to leave Relic alone on the Redemption, because he will steal the Godspeed Drive and wig out. Dismayed, members of the party immediately confront Relic, who (of course) denies having any intention of doing any such thing. Nevertheless, Kale escorts Relic through the portal leading back to Hinkerville, feeling that in light of future-Darff's warning, Relic cannot be trusted and should be removed from the ship. Along the way, he scolds Relic and demands that Relic give him various items--notable a scroll of deity-summoning--that Kale seems to regard as belonging to the party. Then, after a brief discuss of the remaining options, it is decided that Clod will remain behind while the rest of the party goes traipsing off through the dungeons.
The room on the Munchkin into which the invasion portal opens proves to contain a gruesome collection of severed body parts stored in jars and barrels. In an adjoining room, there is a large ogre who seems to keep vanishing every time he takes a step--then reappearing seven seconds later. Via a sequence of events that is not well-remembered, this ogre is slain, and it is determined that all the vanishing and reappearing is due to the fact that he is wearing "seven-second boots." Darff appropriates said boots. During the process of dispatching the ogre, a mystical echo from an alternate timeline leads Godwin to feel a brief burst of indignation toward Suppel, as though Suppel had done something reckless that directly endangered Godwin's life--even though no such event actually occurs. The room with the ogre is found to have a doorway leading into a corridor. At some point around this time, some kind of large, irritating rat creature that says "fuck" a lot is encountered. Some party members seem to find this rat important, or at least intriguing, and follow it as it scurries off into some kind of large chamber that is filled with lava but has a ledge around its perimeter above the lava that can be walked upon. At some point, Suppel ties up the rat creature and "gives" it to Thymie, for reasons not presently known. A dagger is also taken from the rat and found to have nasty magical powers; if someone is struck with it, its trip will separate itself from the rest of the dagger and worm its way through the victim to his or her heart.
In addition, somewhere along the corridor, a door is encountered that has a poem inscribed upon it but no apparent mechanism for opening it. Using his Roving Vision, Godwin peers through the door and sees a room with a bunch of smallish floating orb-creatures on the other side. Keeping relatively quiet about these lest his companions should conclude that they are "welcoming orbs," he looks further and notices a door leading from the orb-occupied room to still another room that contains naked people who are dancing. Their dancing has a somewhat hypnotic effect, and one particularly attractive female naked dancer seems to beckon toward Godwin (despite the interveneing walls/doors), who feels mystically drawn toward her and the other dancers. Though Godwin intially resists this effect, one of the other party members (perhaps Thymie?) meanwhile works out that the poem on the first door is a riddle, which (she?) proceeds to solve, causing the door to open. To Godwin's dismay, various party members then wander through into the orb room and begin engaging the orb-creatures in conversation (though thankfully, no one seems to think that they are "welcoming orbs"). The orb-creatures seem mostly interesting in playing ping-pong, and some party members agree to participate in this activity with them, though exactly what this entails is not remembered by this chronicler. Meanwhile, Godwin alternates between urging the party to ignore the stupid orbs and get on with looking for the captured Hinkervillians, and wondering whether perhaps he should instead check out what's going on beyond the next door (where the naked people are). "Ping-pong" somehow goes badly, and some degree of combat ultimately breaks out with some of the orb-creatures, but details are not known at this time. Reality Date: January 30, 2009Gameality Date: April 20, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue In one way or another, the party eventually disengages from the orb-creatures and moves on. Much pointless wandering of the dungeon and bickering about where to go and what to do ensues. Godwin tries using his Roving Vision to shortcut the exploration process by checking areas of the dungeon out from afar, and in the process, he notices a room in which a rope hangs from the ceiling, with a sign on the wall next to the rope that says "Pull for omnipotence." Curious, he advocates heading to this room to investigate, but most other party members oppose the idea.
The party's wanderings take them to an area in which a number of signs have been posted in an unfamiliar language. Godwin, drawing on bits of lore from books that he has read in the past, theorizes that the language is "Green Goblin" (though he is unable to actually decipher any of it); Darff, pulling bullshit out of his ass, is certain that it's actually "Red Dragon," and feigns the ability to read it. Meanwhile, tiring of the non-step babbling of the tied-up rat creature, Kale has a fit of anti-redemptive temper and slays the poor fucker. This provokes uproar among other party members, who manage to guilt Kale into reviving the creature with some kind of herb. Though alive, however, the creature--whom the party now abandons--is left in a bad way.
The party comes to a room that has three passages leading out of it (in addition to the one through which the party enters), each of which is labeled with a sign in the aforementioned language. Darff pretents to translate the signs, one of which, he claims, says "Cheesekace Factory." The passage labeled by this sign exudes a strong odor of feces, so the party chooses one of the other passages to explore. The sequence of events following this becomes difficult to recall accurately, but it's probably that while exploring this passage, the party sees some kind of boulder or other stone blockade being pushed into place ahead of them, blocking further progress. A similar thing happens somewhere behind them, too, leaving them trapped in a short stretch of corridor. Amid talk of Kale using his wall-deleting spell to extricate the party from this predicament, Thymie futzes around with something that she notices on one of the walls of the passageway, or something, with the result that the passage begins rapidly filling up with sand that threatens to suffocate everyone. Eventually, after much bickering and unaccountable delay, Kale deletes the blockade ahead, saving everyone. Beyond it, if I've reconstructed events correctly, are a bunch of goblins who are upset both about the party's intrusion of their home and Kale's vanishing of their boulder-or-whatever. Somehow placating the goblins somewhat, the party makes various inquiries about the layout of this region of the dungeon, to which the goblins respond by referring the party to an allegedly all-knowing individual whom they refer to as "Shit-Hauler." Godwin loses patience at this point, concluding that the goblins are of no use as a source of information--but other party members ask additional questions about "Shit-Hauler" and seem interested in locating the mysterious individual (whose whereabouts prove to be unknown to the goblins).
In an effort to locate the fabled "Shit-Hauler," some members of the party (definitely including Kale and Merri) decide to explore the passage that the party encountered earlier that wasn't labeled "Cheesecake Factory" and that smelled of feces. It turns out that the passage leads to a chamber that is apparently used by local dungeon inhabitants for relieving themslevs; a number of holes in the floor appear to lead to an area below from which the overwhelmingly unpleasant smell is emanating. At least one party member (perhaps Thymie?) is unable to refrain from vomiting upon being assailed by the odor, and thus makes a swift exit from the chamber. Also in this chamber is a small bell, which Merri decides to steal. This decision seems to upset Kale greatly--so greatly, in fact, that he threatens to break up with Merri if she goes through with it. Confident that he is merely being a drama queen and won't really leave her over so trivial a thing, Merri goes ahead and takes the bell anyway, provoking Kale to throw a tantrum and dramatically proclaim that their relationship is over. Predictably, however, it only takes him about fifteen minutes to get over it and forgive her.
A short while later, the bickering and aimlessly wandering party stumbles across a female goblin who turns out to be the much-sought "Shit-Hauler." Apparently, she's just a goblin who has chosen to make a living by collecting and disposing of dungeon inhabitants' waste for a fee. In addition, the stolen bell turns out to belong to her (apparently people ring it to summon her), so Merri decides to give it back to her. For one reason or another, the party follows "Shit-Hauler" to a chamber containing what she refers to as a "node." Ribbons of energy emerge from I-don't-recall-where, converge, and plummet down into a well in the center of the room, or something like that. Descrying and investigation via Roving Vision lead the party to the conclusion that this "node" might provide access to other, non-dungeony parts of the ship; in particular, Godwin spies a wizardry bay "down the well." To "Shit-Hauler," however, the node is apparently just a convenient place for disposing of her cargo--which she does, then departs.
The party decides (due to a retroactive decision on the part of this chronicler) to get some sleep in the "node" room, and then see about the possibility of traversing the "node" in the morning. Reality Date: January 30, 2009 Gameality Date: April 21, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue In the morning, the party decides to try lowering Merri down into the well-like "node" on a length of superior rope. Unfortunately, there comes a point when mysterious forces begin buffeting her around as she is being lowered down, causing her pain and injury and forcing the party to haul her back up. Next, Kale decides to try descending rapidly by running down the side of the well using his Catsfoot Charm, hoping that if he goes fast enough, he won't suffer many ill effects. This proves successful. However, as he passes through the node, he hears some kind of voice saying something about redirecting unauthorized materials--or something at least vaguely similar to that--and when he emerges from the other end, he finds himself not in the wizardry bay that Godwin spied on the previous evening, but rather, in a cell that is also occupied by a dead donkey and a rather considerable amount of fecal matter. Outside the cell, there is a large and presently inert golem.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party has no way of knowing what fate Kale has met, so Suppel decides to go after him. Merri has realized that her injuries were mainly the result of having been wearing armor while being buffeted about by the forces in the node, so Suppel theorizes that going down on a rope should actually work for a non-armor-sporting individual such as himself. He, too, is successful in traversing the node (although if this chronicler is not mistaken, the rope breaks in the process, or something), and he joins Kale in the crap-and-dead-donkey-containing cell. Just after he goes, it occurs to Godwin that it isn't much use to keep sending individual party members down too find out what's below if those that go have no way of communicating witih those above--whereupon it also dawns upon him that he should have given either Kale or Suppel one of his bugs. Deciding to send a bug down after them, he ponders ways of protecting it on its way down, and if this chronicler remembers accurately, he ends up putting it into some kind of small container filled with whipped cream (to protect it from the node's forces and cushion its landing at the bottom). Down below, Kale is initially puzzled by the strange object that falls through the node, but investigation soon reveals its purpose, and he relays to Godwin where he and Suppel have found themselves.
Kale and Suppel spend some time fuzting about with trying to find a way to open the cell door--and possibly some other stuff, too. At one point, one of them uses the bug to request that Darff's chain saw be sent down to them. Judging it unwise to simply drop the chain saw into the well, and under the impression that lowering it on a rope will produce the same effect (because of how Suppel's rope broke when he went down), the party members at the top decide to lower Merri--this time sans armor--down the well, holding the chain saw. This seems to work, and whether or not the rope breaks in the process is not remembered. When she gets to the bottom, Kale scolds those at the top for sending Merri down instead of just sending the saw, for some obscure reason. In addition, the chain saw proves not to have been needed after all, nor does anyone ever explain why it was requested in the first place.
Eventually, those below hit upon the idea of using Merri's ship-in-a-bottle to get out of the cell. Suppel gets into the bottle, then someone sets it next to the cell bars with its neck protruding out between them, and then Suppel emerges from the bottle outside the cell. Crossing the room, he opens one of two doors out of it and sees the wizardry bay that Godwin spied earlier via Roving Vision. Said bay is prsently filled with large numbers of Munchkin wizards. Suppel then turns his attention to looking for a way to open the cell to let everyone else out, but no method of doing so becomes evident, so for some reason, he decides to rejoin the others in the cell. The trio at the bottom then decides, for reasons that may or may not exist, that the rest of the party (Godwin, Darff, and Thymie) should join them in the cell, so they use the bug to instruct said individuals to jump down the well, assuring them that they will be caught in a sheet at the bottom. This plan is carried out. Immediately after the last of the three has descended, Clod suddenly falls through the node as well, having apparently irresponsibly abandoned his Redemption-guarding duty, boarded the Munchkin via the invasion portal, and then roamed the dungeons until he somehow inexplicably located the rest of the party. Before anyone has much of chance to scold him for this, however, the golem outsid the cell suddenly activates and begins advancing toward the cell door with apparent intent to enter the cell and mash its contents to a pulp. Reality Date: February 13, 2009Gameality Date: April 21, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Chaos erupts as the party attempts to deal with the attacking golem. At least three or four separate and sometimes incompatible strategems get attempted by various party members, displaying a total lack of coherent group goals--but details are sketchy in the memory of the chronicler. Kale, having used his Catsfoot Charm to pass through the node, is still running around on the ceiling and does something with a rope; Godwin tries to protect everyone via a Damage Scapegoat, but others (notably Clod) insist on attacking the golem, rendering Godwin's efforts (and expended ambrosia) wasted and futile. Much fecal matter is slung about willy-nilly, and various other things happen that this chronicler doesn't remember well enough to even attempt to mention them. Ultimately, the golem is somehow defeated, with the fecal matter having, unaccountably, played a key role, and the party members find themselves free of the cell somehow--one supposes probably because the golem had opened the door. However, they now find themselves distracted by a strange creature calling himself "Gollum" who suddenly appears out of yet another rip that manifests in midair, apparently as a punishment inflicted by some power beyond the bounds of gameality for the heinous meta-crime of meta-mispronunciation of the word "golem." Various irritating antics ensue, but miraculously, the distraction goes away somehow before too long. Meanwhile Godwin, who is the only party member who seems dismayed about Clod having abandoned his post and the Redemption currently being totally unguarded, tries to interrogate Clod about what the hell he's doing here, but Clod mostly evades and brushes aside such questions.
As previously noted, the room currently occupied by the part adjoins a huge wizardry bay occupied by an enormous number of wizards. Magical observation of these wizards reveals that they appear to be engaging in some kind of big ritual. The party wants to get past them to some kind of smaller control room--preferrably without being captured and/or killed in the process. Godwin repeatedly suggests that Suppel use his befriending spell to enlist the aid of one of the wizards, but everyone ignores him. Instead, Clod saunters into the wizardry bay and, drawing on his backgrond and relying on the uniform that he still wears for plausibility, attempts to pass himself off as Munchkin personnel and to fast-talk some wizards into coming with him back to the room occupied by the party--presumably with intent to have the party subdue them and steal their uniforms, or something. However, he fails to be very convincing and is unable to get anything much to happen.
At some point, Clod informs the party (without volunteering any details as to how) that he has somehow determined the current loation of Ongle aboard the ship, and that he's relatively close by. Instead of finding this at all suspicious or odd, most party members suddenly go nuts about the idea of hunting Ongle down and killing him. Clod also chooses this moment to reveal to the party that Ongle brutally murdered his mother at some point in the past and that this is why he personally is motivated to kill Ongle. Also, around this point, Merri suddenly becomes unaccountably passive and lethargic. Godwin checks out the spot where Clod claims Ongle is located using his Roving Vision and discovers that Ongle is not, in fact, located there--to which Clod replies that nevertheless, he recently was located there. The party members' inexplicable failure to have noticed as of yet that there is another exist from the room that they are in stops being the case at some point, and knowledge of the layout of the area that has apparently been mystically divined by Clod is used to identify a route via this exit to the control room that the party wanted to get to that doesn't involve going through the crowded wizardry bay. Most party members now consider their actual destination to be the spot whre Clod said Ongle would be, which is accessible from the room the party was originally trying to get to. Meanwhile, it begins to become apparent that the ritual that the wizards are engaged in has to do with taking some of the swirly time-anomaly mist from the heavens into the ship and doing something unknown with it. In one of the room through which the party passes en route to their destination, the party is confronted by the bizarre and rather grisly sight of an unfortunate individual who has some kind of giant octopus attached to his head that appears to be sucking the life out of him. When Godwin begins trying to help the poor fucker, all other party member react as though he is behaving like a raving lunatic who has utterly gone off the deep end--despite the fast track, and despite also the fact that many of the objecting party members routinely disrupt and threaten group goals by behaving in a far more insanely reckless manner without consulting anyone else first. Some of these hypocritical party members physically prevent Godwin from taking any action. As the party is about to move on, however, a Munchkin crewperson enters the room, spots the party, does a double-take, and hastily retreats. For unfathomable reasons, the fact that the party's presence has now been detected--and that armed guards are therefore likely to be headed their way shortly--convinces some party members that Godwin's "utterly insane" impulse to help the guy under the octopus has suddenly become a good idea, so they spend a few seconds attempting to carry it out. Godwin suppresses an intense urge to smack each and every one of his companions, and instead flees the area along with those party members who are not sticking around to risk their asses for the octopus victim. Attempts to help the poor fucker fail for one reason or another--or perhaps are simply abandoned for no particular reason (who can say?)--and everyone eventually vacates the room.
Arriving moments later at the spot where Ongle is supposed to have recently been (which turns out to be an elevator), the party--divided, bickering, and clueless--hesitates uncertainly, despite (or perhaps partly because of) a general sense that the universe expects them to intuit what they should do next. Reality Date: To Be Filled In LaterGameality Date: April 21/February 22, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Godwin's reluctant use of Roving Vision enables the party to locate Ongal, who is in a nearby room and who appears to be engaged in some kind of occult ritual involving the orangeish fog from outside the ship, which is being piped in due to the previous activities of the Munchkin's wizards. A tired, frustrated, bitter, and ambrosially drained Godwin begins journaling, praying, and stewing as the rest of the party concocts a bizarre scheme to kill Ongal with Suppel's exploding feces (carried by a suicidal clone ordered to his death). The party implements this plan with some apparent success, but not before the ritual concludes concurrently with a tremendous and disgusting explosion, and the party is sent back in time roughly two months, to February 22, 3270. The party members find themselves in the places where they had originally been back on that date, having somehow replaced their own past selves. This means that Clod is on the not-yet-(re)appropriated-by-the-party Redemption, and everyone else is in Hinkerville (which is still in the main cargo bay of the Munchkin), with lots of confused goblins all over the place. For meta-reasons, Thymie mysteriously takes the place of Thana (there having been no Thymie in this time period). Various confused runnings-around transpire in an attempt to take over the Redemption and prevent significant alterations to the timeline. Meanwhile, Clod (who initially appears in the bathroom, but as his future self takes his place, finds himself without any waste to extract) rejoins his military coworkers in an attempt to help his companions-to-be take over the Redemption. His odd behavior quickly causes his coworkers to grow suspicious of him as he messes around with the invasion portal. Shortly, Clod overhears that Ongal is on his way to the Redemption, and that he seems to be severely damaged. Communicating with Clod via radio, the party infers that Ongal has been transported back in time in a manner similar to that of the party members (that being the purpose of Ongal's ritual). It appears that as he was virtually destroyed by the party's schemes, his plan to capture them immediately was in large part thwarted. Reality Date: To Be Filled In LaterGameality Date: April 21/February 22, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue It becomes apparent in some way that the time-travel mess in which the party is currently involved was some kind of attempt by Ongal to undo the damage that the party did to his schemes two months ago by appropriating the Redemption and messing up the sale of Hinkerville to the Keepers of the Omnicodex. Everyone makes her or his way to the Redemption much more easily this time than in the original timeline due to Clod's assistance with the invasion portal. Ongal and the individual sometimes referred to by the party as "chicken-man" are on the bridge, and the party gathers outside of said locale and pauses to consider options. Then they all go to the floor above the bridge, where Kale makes a way-too-small hole in the floor and party members start dropping down onto Ongal & chicken-man one by one, while others stand around uselessly because they can't get through the hole. Ongal is still in a bad way from the fecal explosion, and when combat ensues, a fatal blow is delivered. Right before expiring, Ongal says something like "Thank you for breaking the spell"--presumably referring to the time travel spell that has everyone stuck in the past and was unsuccessful in accomplishing Ongal's goal of stopping the party from appropriating the Redemption, though if there is any benefit to Ongal resulting from the end of the spell, it is not clear). Everyone then immediately finds themselves back in the present, and some kind of non-physical essence is seen to depart Ongle's broken husk of a body and float away. Clod claims possession of the corpse.
Next, there is probably an attempt on the party of some party members to track down Chicken-Man and attempt to engage "him" in combat--unless that occurs at some other time and this chronicler is confused (which is possible). Whenever it happens, Chicken-Man is cornered in a closet of some kind, and Kale deletes the floor, but ultimately Chicken-Man gets away.
After this, the party blunders around, largely in the elevators of the Munchkin, trying to find someplace safe to rest without success. Ongle's security access is found not to be active. Godwin, who is exhausted and severely ambrosially depleted, continues to whine about it.
Reality Date: April 25, 2009Gameality Date: April 21, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue As the party continues to search for a place to rest, Godwin becomes unable to maintain consciousness any longer, so he retreats into the ship-in-a-bottle and goes to sleep. The other party members, mistaking Godwin's exhaustion and irritability for suicidal depression, decide to send Clod into the bottle as well, charged with the task of watching over Godwin to make sure he doesn't commit suicide.
In an area of the ship that seems to consist largely of storage rooms, the party encounters a member of the Munchkin's crew: a female sprite who monitors the golems in this region of the ship. To avoid tipping off the Munchkin's crew as to their whereabouts, members of the party attack the sprite, and Kale is able to grab her without much trouble. He then binds and gags her. During this process, his "manhandling" of the sprite provokes a jealous protest from Merri. Meanwhile, Darff peers into the room from which the sprite apparently initially emerged and observes that it contains a large number of barrels.
Entering the room, members of the party feel safe enough to take a breather and thus allow themselves to become sidetracked from their goal of finding a place to rest. Various antics of questionable wisdom ensue. Darff chooses this moment to test his voice-changing ring using Ongle's larynx, causing the paranoid Kale to momentarily panic as he becomes concerned that Ongle is somehow once again living and has tracked the party down. Kale also becomes aware that Darff has taken up Merri's previous practice of writing up new tenets of the Way of Kale based upon things that Kale says, and the predictable heated argument ensues. Dragged into the disagreement, Merri slaps Darff at Kale's request, then acts upon Kale's additional request that she stop Darff from continuing to write down tenets by pick-pocketing the Way of Kale scroll from Darff and giving it to Kale. Meanwhile, Suppel feels the need to open one of the many barrels in the room. Climbing up to the top of a tall stack of them, he opens one of the ones in the top row and throws the cover to the ground. When he does so, hot yellow steam begins pouring out of the barrel and filling up the room. Kale, somehow sensing this even though his back is turned and he is distracted by his argument about the Way of Kale, immediately spins around, grabs the lid in midair, and quickly hurls it back to Suppel. Suppel, however, disastrously flubs his effort to catch the lid, loses his balance, and begins falling to what looks to be his certain death. Thinking quickly, Darff writes Suppel off as a goner within a mere fraction of a second, and not wishing to actually witness his horrible demise, he activates his Seven-Second Boots to skip over the event. Meanwhile, Merri and Kale choose, without hesitation or any need to communicate their shared goal, the rather more heroic course of leaping into action to save their falling comrade by stretching out Kale's purple cloak between them and catching Suppel in it. Thanks to them, Suppel survives--though he does suffer a broken arm. While Suppel proceeds to pluck his wound, Kale replaces the lid on the barrel.
As the party turns its attention, at last, to the subject of where to hide the ship-in-a-bottle so that they can rest safely within it, Darff peers into another room adjoining the barrel-filled one, observing it to contain a golem and some kind of container that, based on his misinterpretation of the indentifing mark on the exterior, he assumes to be filled with "virgin tears." Meanwhile, Suppel continues plucking wounds, but sustains a new one of his own when his attempt to pluck a wound of Kale's fails. Eventually, the ship is hidden behind some barrels but on top of a tall stack of other barrels, and the party enters it. Suppel then becomes curious about what the ship-in-a-bottle's "location" is--relative, one supposes, to a presumed miniature world inside the bottle. In an effort to find an answer to this question, Kale searches the ship for maps, but fails to find any. At some point, at least some party members actually get around to lying down and getting the needed rest that was the reason for having looked for a place to hide in the ship-in-a-bottle in the first place--though naturally, Merri seizes the opportunity to seduce Kale first. Indeed, Merri and Kale engage in sex a total of three times during the course of the "night"--at least one of which is initiated by Kale. Darff passes the night interrogating the captive sprite, apparently via a seemingly incompatible combination of techniques involving his voice-altering ring and Ongle's larynx: on the one hand, pretending to be Ongle, but on the other hand, pretending to be torturing Ongle horribly with his chain saw. He learns that the sprite's immediate superior officer is an Officer Leary, and that this Leary in turn reports to some individuals known as the Pendulum Sisters. He also manages to get the sprite to reveal the necessary runes for modifying the command parameters of the golem in the next room.
Feeling oddly refreshed after only three hours of what must have been intermittent bursts of sleep interspersed with bouts of sex, Kale rises and sets about attempting to research the current "location" of the ship-in-a-bottle using the positioning of the stars as evident from the deck of the ship, as well as by continuing to search unsuccessfully for maps. However, he does find a magical feather pen somewhere that writes in the air. Inspired by Kale's discovery of a magic item on the ship, Darff spends some time looking for information on technomancy, and Suppel spends some time looking for magic items.
Reality Date: May 16, 2009Gameality Date: April 22, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue When the rest of the party finally awakens after getting enough sleep, everyone exits from the ship-in-a-bottle. When some party members notice a slight temperature drop in the area, and others discover an adjoinging room containing large, transparent tubes that appear to be desiged to transport the barrels and/or their contents to different parts of the ship, it is surmised that the tubes and the hot steam in the barrels are components of the system that heats the ship, and that this system is not currently being tended to owing to the fact that the person who is supposed to be tending to it has been tied up and stashed inside the ship-in-a-bottle. Meanwhile, some party members become disgusted with Clod for hauling Ongle's corpse around on his person and demand that he stow it in the ship-in-a-bottle. He therefore does so. While in the ship, he takes a moment to creepily and intimidatingly give the tied-up sprite the impression that he might free her if she agrees to have sex with him. After doing this, he hallucinates an unpleasant meta-debate over the ethics of his behavior.
Meanwhile, Suppel has managed to gain control of the golem by following the instructions gleaned from the interrogation of the sprite. He fashions a sort of saddle that he straps to the golem so that he can ride it, and tests out his control of the thing by ordering it to perform various actions. These include some kind of attempts to break down or smash through doors and walls. Suppel also decides--having apparently learned nothing from the previous day's near-fiasco resulting from his opening of a barrel--to commit the suicidally insane act of commanding the golem to hurl a barrel across the room with all the tubes in it. Fortunately, the rest of the party becomes aware--via impossible meta-knowledge resulting in great strain to the fabric of gameality--that he is about to do this, and quickly retreats into one of the other rooms. Also fortunately, the thrown barrel fails to burst open--though it does strike one of the tubes and damage said tube.
At some point, the party is distracted from its miscellaneous shenanigans (as well as from any actual productive doings that may be going on) by the sound of singing off in the distance. Clod's suddenly uncannily keen hearing discerns that the sound is coming from a group of six dwarves--two female and four male--who are carrying equipment and heading toward the party's location. The party quickly hides behind barrels in the barrel room. When the dwarves arrive, however, they notice the damage done to the door or wall or whatever by the golem and realize that something is amiss, so Clod leaps out of his hiding place and tries to bullshit his way through the situation. When this attempt fails, he suggests that the other party members assist him in dealing with the dwarves, and Merri and Kale respond by emerging from hiding and engaging the newcomers in combat (while Darff once again activates his seven-second boots). Before combat gets too far, however, Clod manages to appeal to the dwarves' fundamental dislike of their superiors and bond with them as a fellow dwarf to the extent that they decide to give the party a pass and not report them to anyone. He tries to get them to go one step further and actually join the party, but they decline. They do, however, provide the party with some information about the Munchkin via one of the scroll panels.
Finally, the party turns its attention to the question of what to do next. There is a general consensus that it is important to find a way to get back to the Redemption and establish some reasonably stable means of getting back and forth between the two ships, since rescuing Hinkervillians and eventually escaping would seem to be impossible without such an ability. There is talk of trying to access and use the Munchkin's landing-pod cells, but the party learns from from the dwarves that these can't be steered or controled in any way once they are jettisoned from the ship. Godwin speculates about the possibility of finding one of these pods that can hopefully be launched in the general direction of the Redemption, getting into it, launching it, and then lassoing the Redemption from it--but everyone else is highly skeptical of this plan (and probably for good reason). Clod suggests a plan of some kind that doesn't receive much consideration from anyone else having something to do with "sifting through shit." Finally, it occurs to Darff that Godwin's book that can be made to be a book on any given subject could be used to learn as much as possible about the Munchkin (especially its layout), and that this would probably be very helpful both in locating Hinkervillians and in finding a way off the ship and back to the Redemption. Godwin is somewhat reluctant to use up the last charge on the book, but everyone seems to agree that this plan is a sound one, so it is more or less settled upon. Reality Date: May 30, 2009Gameality Date: April 22, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Following a small amount of additional convincing, Godwin makes his magical book into an as-thorough-as-possible reference guide to the Munchkin, thereby instantaneously gleaning much information about the ship. Alas, the information confirms an unfortunate fact also mentioned by the dwarves: that the "dungeony" areas of the ship, in order to perform their function, must remain mysterious and labarynthine, and therefore have never been mapped. Thus, no knowledge of their layout is imparted by the book. In any case, Godwin quickly sets to work taking copious notes on the information that he has gleaned, with special emphasis on maps and layout. If memory serves, among the non-layout-related tidbits gleaned are the facts that the Munchkin is the flagship of the Kingdom of Accord's military fleet, that it is commanded by Ongle, and that an individual identifiable from the book's description as being the person whom the party refers to as "Chicken-Man" is the second in command.
Armed with new knowledge about the layout of the Munchkin, the party again ponders what to do next. Some party members show more interest in attempting to take over the ship than in continuing to pursue the party's original goals, but the resistance of other party members, combined with the overwhelming defenses discovered to be in place around both Ongle's quarters and the bridge (but especially the former), prevents this idea from being acted upon. Still, no one seems to have much of an idea about how to get back to the Redemption--much less find and rescue the Hinkervillians--so the discussion devolves into the usual pointless bickering. After a while, however, Godwin--as he mentally sifts through all the information that he gleaned from the book--realizes that there is a room relatively close to the party's current location that is labeled "Spoils Room." As this room seems to potentially offer the party an opportunity to steal a bunch of possibly useful loot, he informs the rest of the party about it, and everyone agrees on the immediate goal of looting the Spoils Room.
Upon arriving outside the Spoils Room, the party finds the door closed and locked, but unguarded. However, either from the knowledge gleaned from the book or possibly via his Roving Vision spell, Godwin ascertains that there are two guards posted inside the room. Thinking it unwise to loiter in plain view in the corridor outside the room while discussing plans for looting it, the party piles into a closet opposite the door of the Spoils Room and holds its discussion of tactics there. Godwin, to whom the deed appears fairly simple and straightforward, advocates a plan consisting of Kale deleting the door to the room, and the party rushing in and subduing the two guards. Others exhibit rampant paranoia concerning all the things that might potentially go wrong and spend some time trying to concoct much more cautious and elaborate plans, but this doesn't really lead anywhere. For mysterious reasons, a disembodied voice from beyond the bounds of gameality is at one point heard to advocate throwing Suppel into the Spoils Room, but everyone wisely ignores this. At length, Godwin manages to convince everyone else to go with his plan. Kale duly causes the door to vanish, and the party rushes in, catching the guards utterly by surprise and subduing them without much trouble. The guards get tied up and added to the collection of prisoners inside the ship-in-a-bottle, and the considerable amount of loot in the room gets collected up as quickly as possible. All party members except for Clod then enter the ship-in-a-bottle, and Clod, using directions supplied by Godwin, carries the ship-in-a-bottle to another closet that's not too far away but also not in the immediate vicinity of the Spoils Room. He then joins the rest of the party inside the ship/bottle, and like a true party of adventurers, everyone gets seriously down to the business of divvying up the loot:
However, not long into the process of divvying up the loot, everyone gets tired and decides to call it a day. Reality Date: June 20, 2009Gameality Date: April 23, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue In the morning, there is a resumption of loot-divvying. Among the loot, a bunch of very unconventional and initially mysterious spellbooks are noticed, and although Godwin is skeptical of their reality, someone figures out that they can be used to imbue the staves that are also found among the loot with magical powers. This prompts most party members to begin perusing them with great interest, and several hours are spent in this way. Godwin, however, spends most of this time reading his book about the Munchkin and therefore forgetting all the information that in imparted to him.
As Merri peruses the spellbooks, an idea occurs to her. Tired of being pregnant and worried that her ability to be adventurey is going to be severely adversely affected as her pregnancy continues to develop, she has been privately pondering whether there might be a way to speed the process up. With the help of the spellbooks, she comes up with a plan involving sending her fetus back in time within her womb, while simultaneously giving it the ability to occupy the same space occupied by its past self without causing damage to either. She enacts this plan--which has the effect of retroactively causing everyone (including Merri herself) to have been wondering, for the past two months, why she apparently became pregnant several months before the first time that she ever had sex. When she tells the rest of the party what she has done, this "long-standing mystery" is solved.
Not long after this, Merri's water breaks, and she announces that she is about to have her baby. A certain amount of panic ensues, but Godwin quickly takes charge of the situation and issues orders that get everyone else contributing usefully rather than flailing about helplessly. With Godwin playing the role of the delivering doctor (or midwife?), Merri gives birth to a baby boy, whom she promptly names Batavian Ecuttel. Immediately following his birth, Kale suffers one of his periodic hallucinations of an imaginary Clod, who steals the baby from Godwin's arms, dashes above-decks, and hurls him overboard. Freaking out in a serious way, Kale chases after "iClod," slays him, and then leaps overboard in an attempt to rescue the illusory version of his child. Meanwhile, a non-hallucinated individual suddenly materializes next to Godwin, who is, in reality, still holding the baby (which has by now wrapped in the nearest vaguely suitable cloth item--namely, the poo-disposing trousers). Though it takes them a few stunned and confused seconds, Godwin and Merri recognize the new arrival as a grown-up Arugula. While everyone is still struggling to digest this strange development, Arugula asks if he can hold the baby--his half-brother, after all--and with Merri's consent, Godwin hands Batavian to him. A second or two after this, Arugula vanishes as mysteriously as he initially appeared--taking Batavian with him!
Naturally, this turn of events prompts everyone to freak out quite a bit. Merri is terribly distraught. Kale, once someone or other manages to get him back aboard the ship and set him straight as to which distastrous events have, and which have not, befallen his newborn son, explodes with rage. Folowing a brief bout of panicked and baffled brainstorming, it is decided that Darff should use his time-travel bracelet to go back in time and warn the party of what is going to happen, so that they can prevent it. For mysterious reasons, however, when Darff activates the bracelent, he does not travel back in time; instead, he finds himself in a strange room, filled with strange objects and strange-looking people seated around a table. There, he is told that he has been brought to the mysterious alternate realm that Suppel refers to as "reality." One of the people at the table introduces himself as the Cobbler, and another says that he is Darff's "player." These strange individuals instruct Darff that Merri, Kale, and the rest of the party must let Batavian go and not attempt to retrieve him. The one calling himself Darff's player (who, incidentally, mentions that he is the Cobbler's brother) then gives Darff an exotic beverage container known as a "Star Trek Collectors Glass" and a twenty-sided polyhedron termed a "D20." After this, Darff is summarily returned to gameality, where the rest of the party greets him with anxious and baffled stares. When he tells them what happened, there is a general protest and lack of acceptance, and some party members begin indulging in wild speculation about the possibility of summoning this "Cobbler" and demanding some answers from him. Reality Date: July 11, 2009Gameality Date: April 23, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Kale decides to use a scroll of deity-summoning to attempt to summon this mysterious Cobbler fellow who is apparently in some way behind the abduction of his and Merri's son. Others are skeptical that this will work, but Kale is in one of his "I'm utterly determined to do this, and nothing can possibly dissuade me" moods, so he ignores all doubts and takes action. Besides, he has both Merri and Suppel cheering him on. To the surprise of most, the scroll apparently works, and an individual calling himself the Cobbler appears in the party's midst. Darff immediately verifies that this individual is indeed the same one who spoke to him when his attempted time travel was diverted into "reality." Though rather oddly dressed, the Cobbler for the most part seems to be a fairly ordinary person, utterly lacking any spectacular aura of power, a grandiose manner, or even equipment for fashioning footwear. He does, however, prove to have a somewhat off-putting habit of uttering difficult-to-follow descriptions and pronouncements into the air, as if addressing and responding to invisible entities around him. In any case, Kale--who, despite having declared his intention to "have words" with the Cobbler, is actually in no talking mood--loses little time in rushing at him with obvious violent intent once he has appeared. Despite having often expressed, in the past, the desire to gain control of the Cobbler, Suppel for some reason attempts to restrain Kale and prevent him from attacking. Merri, however, successfully retrains Suppel in order to allow Kale to assault the Cobbler. When Kale rushes at the Cobbler, he finds himself suddenly rocketing into the air, somersaulting over the Cobbler's head, and landing on his feet on the other side of him. Trying again only results in the exact same thing happening a second time. Meanwhile, Suppel sustains a minor injury in his scuffle with Merri, Darff (as usual) skips ahead seven seconds using his boots, apparently so as not to be present during any possible combat with the Cobbler, and Godwin begins a journal entry entitled "The Weirdest Fucking Thing That Ever Happened To Me."\
Eventually, Kale either calms down or is successfully restrained, and talk ensues between various party members and the Cobbler. The Cobbler "explains" that Batavian has been taken from them because of the needs of another "campaign" taking place in the past, or some such thing, and that the decision to take him in this way was not entirely up to him. No one grasps what he means by much of this very well, and there isn't much acceptance. He then assures Merri and Kale that Batavian is very much alive and happy, and tells them that they simply must accept that he is gone. He mentions that he himself serves as Batavian's "player" (via some kind of cosmic role-alternating ability, presumably), and that Merri's "player" is also a Cobbler and that she in some way governs Batavian's destiny. This bit of information seems to mollify Merri somewhat, as she takes from it the notion that some mysterious "higher part of herself" is looking after her baby. Additionally, viewing the Cobbler as a kind of god, and Batavian as somehow divine as well by virtue of being "played" by the Cobbler, Merri concludes that she has fulfilled her alleged destiny to give birth to a deity. This though brings her a sense of relief. Kale and Merri are also assured that Batavian will know that his parents love him and wanted to take care of him, but were prevented from doing so by outside forces. Also, the Cobbler gives Merri a scroll that has an image of Batavian as an adult and shows what he is doing at any given time. Then, after also imparting various other details about "reality" that some feel (or at least meta-feel) that the party would have been better off not learning (and also mentioning that the deity-summoning scroll only worked to summon him because he "allowed it to" even thouh he's not a god), the Cobbler disappears and the members of the party find themselves awakening as if from a dream. At least some of them either forget or at least become somewhat hazy on at least some of the details of this bizarre incident afterwards.
When attention once again turns to the question of how to get back to the Redemption, Darff helpfully mentions that he can produce a potion that will allow one person to teleport there. This prompts the party to come up with the plan of relocating to a room that Godwin identifies as having openable panels permitting exit from the Munchkin, then having Kale teleport onto the Redemption, maneuver it into a position just outside of this part of the ship, and retrieve the rest of the party via the Redemption's grappling roots. Once again, everyone but Clod heads into the ship-in-a-bottle, and Clod sets off toward the room in question, stowing the ship-in-a-bottle in his backpack. Unfortunately, as he proceeds toward the destination, he encounters a Munchkin officer who appears to recognize him. Oddly enough, in fact, this officer behaves as if Clod represents some kind of large threat that she fears. Before Clod can react much to her, she quickly turns around and runs back the way she came--which is also the direction in which Clod is headed. Clod then informs the rest of the party of this development via one of Godwin's bugs, which prompts Suppel to exit the ship-in-a-bottle with intent to pursue and waylay the officer. Since Clod put the bottle in his backpack, Suppel's exit from the bottle causes said backpack to burst apart at the seems, scattering Clod's possessions all over the floor. Ignoring this, Suppel takes off and attempts to give chase, but the person who turned and fled after seeing Clod proves not to be readily findable/catchable. Meanwhile, in response to Clod's irate protests about the fate of his backpack and his stuff, other party members exit the bottle and help him to collect it up quickly. Darff resists an urge to help himself to some of Clod's belongings in the process.
Regrouping, the party proceeds toward its destination at top speed. Upon reaching an elevator that leads to the floor where said destination is located, Kale heads back into the ship-in-a-bottle to grab one of the tied-up Munchkin crewpersons that the party has recently captured, intending to use said individual's hand to get the security panel to open the elevator door. While waiting for him to emerge, the party is unfortunately spotted by a pair of guards, who are heard to comment to each other along the lines that they "didn't realize that 'they' had made it in this far," apparently in reference to the party. Members of the party including Suppel and Clod engage the guards in combat; Clod's contribution consists of throwing at them a mysterious object from the "spoils room" that has been determined to possibly be a grenade and that promises a "surprise" when thrown. Upon its impact with one of the guards, a bunch of monkeys burst into existence and restrain both of them--much to the party's delight. When Kale emerges from the bottle with one of the captives and gets the elevator door opened, an attempt is made to pull the guards into the elevator and therefore out of sight of any additional guards who may show up, but the monkeys render this effort difficult, so instead, the guards are sent into the ship-in-a-bottle. What becomes of the monkeys is unlcear; perhaps they scamper off? Kale follows the guards into the ship-in-a-bottle in order to get them subdued and secured--a task with which Merri, who has remained inside the bottle all along because she is recovering from having recently given birth, assists him. Merri disarms one of the guards, Kale intimidates both of them, and interrogation ensues.
Meanwhile, before the rest of the party is able to get the elevator under way, its doors open and three individuals enter. Much to the party's surprise, these individuals appear to be exact duplicates of Darff, Thymie, and Merri! Confusion ensues as the party members question the duplicates (whom they initially suppose to be future selves) as to what in the name of the gods is going on, and the duplicates react with bafflement to the party's ignorance, prompting many of the party members to conclude that the duplicates are fantastically stupid versions of themselves. The duplicates seem to believe that both they and the party proper are involved in some sort of mission, and appear to find the party's questions and behavior just as baffling as the party finds the duplicates' behavior. In an effort to determine whether the duplicates really are alternate versions of the party members, as opposed to mere look-alikes, Darff tries punching his alternate self. When this act fails to cause Darff himself any pain, he concludes that the look-alike must really be a version of him, reasoning that his curse doesn't activate when he attacks himself. Just to be sure, however, he also asks his alternate self the name of his grandfather. When the alternate Darff responds correctly, Darff concludes positively that the look-alikes are genuine versions of the party members (albeit apparently stupid versions). Eventually, the party and the group of duplicates part ways in mutual bafflement, each group being in the midst of carrying out one urgent operation or another. Kale and Merri, meanwhile, manage to glean some information bearing on the mysterious duplicates from the guards whom they are interrogating inside the ship-in-a-bottle. It seems that the Munchkin is currently under attack by a large number of ships and has been boarded by numerous individuals from these ships, all of whom are copies of the party members! Uncertain what to make of this bizarre fact, Kale informs the rest of the party of it, and is in turn informed of the encounter with duplicates that has just taken place. Having seemingly learned all he can from the guards, Kale eventually releases them--along with all the other prisoners from the ship-in-the-bottle--and joins the rest of the party outside the bottle, as does Merri.
Shortly thereafter, the party arrives at its destination, which proves to be a kind of weapons room containing large catapults situated in such a way as to be able to hurl barrels out through openable panels in the ship's outer hull. There are also a bunch of barrels, at least some of which Suppel determines, via descrying, to be "offensive whammies." In addition, a mollusc-shaped zephercraft has crashed into the Munchkin and is protroding in through its outer hull here. This ship's hatch is open and a gangplank is extended down from it into the Munchkin. Intrigued, the party investigates the mollusc ship and finds duplicates of Kale and Godwin on board. These duplicates behave much as the previous ones did, and nothing useful is gleaned from them. Giving up on sorting out what is going on for the moment, the party therefore exit the mollusc ship and proceeds with the plan for returning to the Redemption. Kale imbibes Darff's potion, which teleports him back to the ship. Clod, Godwin, and Thyme all promptly tie themselves to things as a precaution against being blown out into the heavens when the panels get opened, and Godwin repeatedly advises the rest of the party to do likewise but is ignored. Clod and Godwin then both independently work on figuring out how to get the panels open, while Merri examines the presumably explosive barrels and tries to figure out how she might be able to open one of them, Suppel concentrates on preventing Merri from killing everyone in this manner, and Darff does gods-know-what. After a few moments, Clod manages to figure out the controls for opening the panels and starts to open them, only to be assaulted with protests from those party members who have not bothered to tie themselves down and thus suddenly find themselves in danger. Irritated, Clod obligingly closes the panels and demands that said party members cease their non-plan-related futzing and get themselves tied down, already. Once they have all done so, he again opens the panels. By this time, the Redemption is maneuvering into position out in the heavens just beyond the Munchkin's hull. Kale duly grapples each party member into the ship with the grappling roots, and the party rejoices at finally having managed to get off the Munchkin and back onto its own ship. Three of the "offensive whammy" barrels are also appropriated at the instigation of Suppel and Kale. In addition, Darff promptly heads to the bridge and scans the area for zephercraft, finding somewhere between eight and fifrteen of them all in the process of attacking and/or invading the Munchkin and in varying states of damagedness. Reality Date: August 1, 2009Gameality Date: April 23, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Having been cut off from the Redemption and therefore also from Hinkerville for too long, Kale and Godwin feel that it is important for Mayor Kale to check in on things back in Hinkerville now that he is once again able to do so. Merri, who fancies herself vice-mayor, chooses to tag along; Clod, Darff, and Thyme all accompany them as well, for reasons that are not clear. Godwin, who would have liked to accompany Kale, reluctantly opts instead to stay on the ship with Suppel so as to reduce the number of people who will be traipsing about City Hall, as well as to keep Suppel--who is designated to remain on board because he is capable of operating the ship--company. When Kale and his entourage pass through the portal into his office, they find a staff person named Braze there working. She seems pleased that the mayor has popped in, and expresses a need for more regular communication between Kale and his staff. Kale apologizes for being out of contact so long and promised to try to avoid future recurrences of the situation. He then updates the staffer in a general sort of way about the party's progress with the mission of rescuing the abducted townspeople. In turn, Braze informs Kale that there have been wingless dragon attacks on the town during his absence, and apprises him of the status of ongoing--but painstakingly slow--efforts to get walls built around the town to keep the dangerous beasts at bay. Realizing that this matter can't be put off any longer, Kale resolves to use his spell to help get protective walls completed as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, his staff makes him aware of the mountains of paperwork that have piled up during his absence, so he sets up a work area on the bridge of the Redemption and authorizes his staff to bring him papers to sign via the portal. While Kale is attending to all of this business, Merri looks into whether or not the town's old newspaper is currently being produced, and when she learns that it is indeed being started up again, she places a "birth announcement" for Batavian. After doing this, she contemplates graffitiing the still-under-construction protective walls along the perimeter of the city with images of her son, but ultimately--with Kale's past requests that she not flagrantly violate Hinkervillian law and make a mockery of his mayorship echoing in her brain--she decides instead to attempt to go through official channels to accomplish her intent. She therefore works on getting a committee started to spearhead the project of carving an official memorial mural in honor of "lost Hinkervillians" (among whom she includes Batavian) on the wall.
Meanwhile, Darff, Thyme, and Clod quickly grow bored with mayoral business and decide that they should have stayed on the Redemption rather than accompanying Kale after all. They therefore rejoin Godwin and Suppel, and the question of what to do next about the Munchkin situation is discussed. Clod is gung-ho about taking over the Munchkin, but has no actual plan to offer regarding how to go about doing so. Godwin, for his part, feels that the party really needs to find out what is up with all the duplicate-party-members who are attacking the Munchkin, so he suggests that the party try kidnapping one of them and interrogating him or her. His hope is that having one of the duplicates in the party's custody in a controled situation might make it possible to get more coherent answers out of him or her than they have been able to get from any of the duplicates that they have questioned so far. Liking the sound of this plan, Thyme suggests targeting an alternate-her for abduction, on the grounds that she would be one of the easiest to subdue and coerce information out of. Others generally agree on this approach, though Merri announces that she has a staff of mind-reading obtained from the booty room that might make actual abduction of one of the duplicates unnecessary; the party might be able to learn what they need to know simply by asking questions of one of the duplcates and having Merri read the unexpressed surface thoughts that the questions stir up. It is therefore decided to try this on the first duplicate that the party encounters--but if it should fail, to proceed with the original plan of kidnapping one of them (preferrably Thyme, and definitely not Kale). The party initially contemplates using the invasion portal to board one of the ships crewed by their duplicates, but when this fails due to the smallness of said ships and the difficulty of targeting the invasion portal precisely enough to board any of them, they decide instead to return to the Munchkin via the grappling roots and seek out one of the duplicates running around on the Munchkin. Godwin therefore apprises Kale of the plan and requests that he assist by operating the grappling roots from his position on the bridge, where he is still doing mayoral paperwork.
Upon being deposited back in the Munchkin's weapons bay, the party observes that the mollusk ship is still present, but the gangplank has been retracted and the hatchway closed. While Darff tries knocking on the hull of the ship, Godwin uses his Roving Vision spell to scan its interior and learns that it is currently occupied solely by an alternate Darff, who is sitting on its bridge and apparently fiddling idly with its controls. Deciding that the alternate Darff would be a decent quarry, the party contacts Kale via radio and asks him to come and make a hole in the ship's hull so that they can board the ship and acquire said individual. It is decided that Suppel will return to the Redemption via the grappling roots so that he can then operate the controls to lower Kale down into the Munchkin. This is carried out, and Kale proceeds to cast his spell on the hull of the mollusk ship--but unfortunately, the act apparently triggers a defensive spell: several spiny projections on the ship's hull prove to be weapons and begin blasting the living crap out of most of the party. The weapons misfire in their attempt to shoot at Thymie, and Clod and Kale suffer relatively minor hits; Darff is seriously wounded, and Merri and Godwin get splattered all over the Munchkin's weapons bay. Sensing imminent doom, Clod activates his Staff of Mighty Power, which has previously been determined to have the ability to summon a "powerful being" who will do the summoner's bidding. The "powerful being" turns out to be a foul-mouthed, machine-gun-toting sloth, who immediately opens fire on the mollusk ship with a self-impressed exclamation of "Mutha-fucka!" Meanwhile, Kale puts up a sturdy wall between the party and the ship, protecting everyone (exceprt the sloth) from the deadly weapons. While Darff begins attempting to heal injured party members (starting with the teetering-on-the-brink-of-death Godwin), Suppel, back on the Redemption, aims the ship's weapons at the mollusk ship's weapons and fires, managing to put them out of commission. A moment later, the alternate Darff who is aboard the mollusk ship emerges and apologizes for his ship's automatic defenses--and gets himself shot to hell by a maniacal sloth for his trouble. Clod then calls off his sloth, and the party attempts to save alt-Darff's live (except for Darff, who concentrates on looting his alternate self). Suppel operates the grappling roots to get everyone back aboard the Redemption, wounds are plucked and lives thereby saved, and alt-Darff (who is still in critical condition) is taken to the medical bay. Along the way, it is discovered that being assaulted with plucked wounds causes Darff orgasmic pleasure rather than wounding him.
Following some much-needed rest, Kale heads to Hinkerville to work on the city walls while the rest of the party turns its attention to interrogating alt-Darff. From the latter's reaction to Suppel, among other things, it quickly becomes apparent that the alternate party members are all followers of the Way of Kale. Getting much in the way of answers from alt-Darff proves impossible while Suppel is in the room, so he is obliged to depart and merely listen at the door. After these preliminaries, the party learns that the alternates are apparently a bunch of random Kaleists to whom the divine Kale appeared at some point in the past, offering each one of them the opportunity to "become" one of the members of the party, be powerful, and serve Him. In fact, Godwin ascertains that the day on which alt-Darff reports having met the divine Kale and become alt-Darff was the very day on which the party (led by Godwin) enabled the divine Kale to take form and vanquish Ignoramius. Upon learning this, Godwin feels a powerful sense of culpability and dread. Anyway, alt-Darff--whose initial bafflement at the party's questions has abated somewhat since the presence of Suppel has made the party's claims to be the "originals" seem somewhat more plausible--does not, unfortunately, know exactly what it is that he and all the other alternates are ultimately trying to accomplish at the divine Kale's behest. Meanwhile, Merri has been attempting to read alt-Darff's mind during the interrogation, but has proven unable to properly activate her staff. As a result, she insistently informs the rest of the party several times that alt-Darff is hideously evil. Eventually, however, it becomes apparent to her that she is not reading his true thoughts, so she lets the matter drop.
After the interrogation of alt-Darff (during which Kale rejoins the rest of the party at some point) is finished, the party heads to the bridge to ponder their next move. Shortly, the Redemption is hailed by the Munchkin, which now seems to be under the command of a Kale. Original Kale responds to the hail, and alt-Kale asks him questions abuot what the Redemption is up to and why its crew is not currently cooperating with the carrying out of "the plan." Kale makes some effort to throw his weight around and at least implies that he is the "original" Kale in an effort to evade these questions, but alt-Kale seems unimpressed, and the exchange does not go particularly well. Meanwhile, the hail has brought to the party's attention the fact that the Redemption is no longer shrouded, so Suppel attends to the re-shrouding of the ship. After Kale's conversation with alt-Kale, other party members criticize him for not having made more of an all-out effort to assert independence from the duplicates on the grounds of being the "original" Kale and/or the Divine Kale--but Kale defends himself, aruing that these ideas would not have worked. The party then retires for the night (after arranging a rotating watch). Reality Date: August 8, 2009Gameality Date: April 24, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue During the night, most (perhaps all) members of the party experience mysterious dreams and/or visions of possible divine origin. The dreams of Suppel and Darff essentially advise them that other party members are having interesting dreams, and that they should ask about these dreams in the morning. They therefore do this, which prompts the other party members to relate the nature of their various dreams and leads to a general discussion of the possible significance of some of them. Speaking up first, Thyme describes a dream in which two mysterious, glowing green balls of energy appeared to be fighting each other. Godwin expresses the opinion that the green balls of energy represent the Divine Kale, and there is then much speculation as to whether the dream means that there are somehow two Divine Kales who are at odds with each other, or if it represents some kind of internal conflict or division within the one known Divine Kale. Kale himself seems to leap to the former conclusion, but Godwin points out that it is very consistent with the spirit of the (insane) Way of Kale (as well as other bits of evidence) for the Divine Kale to exhibit a kind of duality and appear to be somehow divided against himself. Further supporting this interpretation, Kale then relates that in his dream, the Divine Kale expressed a wish for Kale to take him back in time--but also said that he (the Divine Kale) will resist being taken back in time. Furthermore, the Divine Kale apparently asked Kale to make sure that the Kaleists are worshipping him "properly"--implying that he perhaps feels that his followers are astray in some fashion. All of this further fuels speculation about what is going on with the Divine Kale(s?) and the Kaleists. Next, Godwin relates what he describes as the most disturbing dream of them all--a dream in which the presumed-vanquished Ignoramius appeared to him. While acknowledging the reailty that Godwin will no longer serve him, Ignoramius asserts that Godwin's new deity "does not have the answers that Godwin seeks" and that the path currently being pursued by the Divine Kale's followers will lead to some (naturally unspecified) catastrophe. Hinting that he and Godwin have compatible interests with respect to the Kaleists despite their diametrically opposed general philosophies--but of course, not deigning to actually explain what those compatible interests might be--Ignoramius implies that it would behoove Godwin to turn against his deity and try to stop the Kaleists from doing whatever it is that they are doing. Given the compatibility of this advice with at least part of the directive given to Kale by his divine alter ego, Kale wonders whether it was really Ignoramius who appeared to Godwin, or perhaps just the Divine Kale masquerading as Ignoramius--but Godwin is convinced that it was really Ignoramius, and questions what the Divine Kale would have to gain by appearing as the detested God of Ignorance instead of as himself. As talk begins to focus on the question of just what it is that the party-duplicate Kaleists are up to that various divine powers seem so bent on the party stopping them from doing, Merri--who initially denied having had any dreams during the night--admits that she was told by the Divine Kale in her dream that their mission has to do with "controling the heavens." Unfortunately, this tidbit is rather too cryptic (and Merri is rather too evasive about the details of her dream) to mean much to anyone, so no one ultimately pays it much heed. Meanwhile Clod, for his part, relates that he dreamed that the party leaped into an attempt to take over the Munchkin with absolutely no plan of action, but nevertheless succeeded. However, this sounds so much like precisely the ill-advised course of action that Clod was advocating the day before that not everyone fully trusts that he really did dream this and isn't just claiming to have done so in an attempt to lend credibilty to his reckless agenda.
Following a brief discussion of what to do next, the party decides to contact the Munchkin and have another go at making nice with their Kaleist duplicates. Details of this effort are confused, as it gets recorded that Merri makes the attempt, but this chronicler also seems to remember Kale making an attempt. If the latter is accurate, Kale fishes for information while again attempting to assert the party's right to independent action, but alt-Kale merely insists that the Redemption dock aboard the Munchkin--which Kale, naturally, refuses. Merri's attempt, on the other hand, apparently consists of trying to talk alt-Kale into letting the party onto the Munchkin's bridge--but failing to convince him to allow this. One way or the other, exchanges with the Munchkin culminate in an ultimatum from alt-Kale that the Redemption either cooperate, leave the area, or prepare to be fired upon. The party therefore decides to make a show of departing the area, then re-shroud the ship once it's out of scrying range and double back. This plan is carried out. Next, the party makes preparations to once again infiltrate the Munchkin. While Clod works on deploying the invasion portal to a suitably non-dungeony part of the ship, Suppel turns himself invisible with the help of a potion from Darff so as not to give the party away as the "originals" by his presence among them, and Kale deploys the long-forgotten "Flunky in a Bag" and instructs the flunky to guard the invasion portal and alert the party via radio if anyone (including the party itself) attempts to come through it. If, upon alerting the party in this way, he receives appropriate instructions from them, he is then to prevent the incursion by shutting down the portal. Though there is some uneasiness about the reliability of the flunky, the party then proceeds through the portal.
The room into which the portal has been deployed turns out to be a laundry facility. Before leaving it, the party stacks a bunch of somethings up in front of the portal to hide it. They then leave the room, close the door, and post a sign on it announcing that the facility is "out of order." They then set off down a corridor, meeting various duplicates of themselves from time to time but not seeming to draw any undue attention from any of them. To ensure that they will be able to identify each other and tell each other apart from all the duplicates, Kale tears up a sheet into several small scraps and gives one to each party member to use as a covert signal. Meanwhile, Godwin consults his maps and works on getting his bearings; eventually, he identifies where the party is on the ship and figures out how to head for the bridge from this location.
Upon arriving outside the bridge, the party boldy strides thereonto; Godwin makes a point of moving very purposefully and looking busy so as to appear natural. There is one duplicate of each party member except for Darff and Suppel present. Merri sidles up to alt-Kale and attempts to activate her mind-reading staff inconspicuously, but unfortunately, almost everyone on the bridge notices. When challenged, she claims that she is just practicing activating the staff so that she will be able to do it correctly when she needs to. Alt-Godwin is skeptical and things she's up to something, but alt-Kale defends her and tells alt-Godwin that he doesn't mind if Merri reads his mind. Meanwhile, Merri manages to learn a few things about the Kaleists' plans via the staff--though what those things are, who can say? While this is going on, an alt-Darff arrives on the bridge, apparently in search of doughnuts. Darff joins his alternate self in this quest. Also, Suppel invisibly uses the bat communication system to send a message to someone elsewhere on the ship asking about the location of the abducted Hinkervillians, and Clod, reasoning that the fewer alternate party members there are on the bridge, the better, uses his Pearl of Breath Crisis on alt-Godwin in the hope that he will leave when he notices that his breath smells really bad. After a while, alt-Kale for some reason tells Merri--who perhaps is annoying him--to go make out with the other Kale on the bridge (i.e., the "real" Kale). While obeying this directive, Merri takes advantage of the situation to quietly relay to Kale what she has learned from the thoughts of alt-Kale, and the two begin plotting a violent takeover of the bridge, even though no such coure of action has been decided upon by the party as a whole. At some point, a messenger bat arrives on the bridge and delivers a message about its sender not knowing anything about the location of the abducted Hinkervillians. Since no one but Suppel knows that this is a reply to the query that he sent out, almost everyone is confused by this message (though some members of the party do figure out what must be going on). Around this point, invisible Suppel whispers a reqyest to Godwin that he leave the bridge so that Suppel can invisibly follow him and they can discuss options. This happens, but no particularly memorable or useful discussion ensues. Meanwhile, Clod's clever plan for getting rid of alt-Godwin bears fruit, as the latter, noticing that a terrible smell is mysteriously emanating from his mouth, excuses himself from the bridge. Shortly thereafter, Godwin and Supple return to the bridge.
Presumably, Kale and Suppel communicate covertly in some way, and Kale brings Suppel up to speed on the unbelievably violent plans that he and Merri have been cooking up without the knowledge or consent of anyone else. The two of them then wait for an opportune moment, which they both spot when Darff draws the attention of various bridge occupants by telling a racist joke. Just as Darff is delivering the punchline, Suppel opens fire with two guns and manages to kill both alt-Kale and alt-Darff instantly, while Kale puts alt-Thyme out of commission in a rather less lethal manner. While assorted others both among the party and the alternates experience a moment of stunned inactivity, Suppel proceeds to attack alt-Clod, and Darff loots the corpse that was an alternate of himself (which has now, in death, reverted to being a dead version of whoever he was prior to becoming an alternate Darff). Kale walls off the entrance to the bridge to prevent anyone from reinforcing the Kaleists present, then presumably continues being violent (but the details go unrecorded). Merri, for her part, tackles her alternate self, and a protracted wrestling match between them begins (with both of them clad in nothing but lingerie). Clod attempts to use a "staff of shape-changing" on alt-Merri, but nothing happens. Alt-Clod, unfortunately, activates his Staff of Mighty Power, causing another machine-gun-toting sloth to appear--this one intent on gunning down the party members. Alarmed, Godwin casts a Damage Scapegoat spell in the hope of keeping everyone alive (using the captain's chair as the scapegoat). Kale's effectiveness in combat suffers a bit of a dip around this point when he sees "i-Clod" come barreling onto the bridge with a machine gun of his own and start shooting everything that moves. While Thyme takes a page from Darff's book and first ties up, then loots her alternate self, and Darff himself moves on to looting the body that was alt-Kale (finding, among other things, a map to the bathroom and a checklist of crimes to be committed), the two Clods engage in fisticuffs and Kale attempts to disarm the sloth. Resisting Clod's efforts to restrain him, alt-Clod then unfortunately summons a second machine-gun-toting sloth. Fortunately, Suppel then manages to disarm the first sloth. Various injuries probably get inflicted, but end up damaging the captain's chair instead of their targets. Suppel tosses the first sloth's machine gun to Thyme, then proceeds to work on disarming the second sloth. Alas, he gets stabbed by alt-Clod. Determined to prevent any more of the extremely threatening sloths from being summoned, Godwin uses his Fact Eraser spell to make alt-Clod forget that he had the ability to summon them. Meanwhile Darff, who has run out of corpses to loot, sits down in a corner and descries. Reality Date: August 29, 2009Gameality Date: April 24, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Combat continues, with Kale stabbing a sloth, Thyme shooting at a a sloth with a machine gun, Darff still sitting in his corner and descrying, and the two Merris continuing to brawl with each other to little effect. Darff learns that a porcelin gnome statue that he looted from someone seems to be a magic item whose purpose is to ridicule people's genitals. Clod uses a magic item to turn alt-Clod into a beaver, leaving only alt-Merri and the two sloths still alive and active among the party's adversaries. In his first act of violence during the combat, Godwin joins in the attempt to dispatch the sloths by attacking one of them with the power of his mind (using his Cloak of Razor Insight). With machine gun bullets flying wildly throughout the room, both Darff Merri take hits; Suppel, meanwhile, fills one of the sloths full of lead, prompting its demise. The second sloth shows an inclination to retreat shortly thereafter, freeing all party members to turn their attention to the ongoing wrestling match between the two Merris, whom they work together to separate. Predictably, each Merri then attempts to convince everyone else that she is the "real" Merri, and when the actual real Merri backs up her claim by pulling her identifying scrap of sheet out of her bra and showing it to the rest of the party, alt-Merri quickly infers the scrap's significance and has the wits to accuse real Merri of having stolen it from her. A moment of hesitation follows. Kale tries to identify the real Merri by asking the two of them what the name of Merri's son is, but Darff blurts out the answer, rendering the test useless. Soon, however, it occurs to Suppel to try his Wand of Weirdo Detection, which quickly clarifies which of the two Merris is a "PC." Then, upon being recognized by the party in general as the true Merri, Merri proceeds to punch her alternate self squarely in the face, breaking both the punchee's nose and her own finger.
A burst of healing, bridge cleanup, moral recrimination, and general bickering then ensues. Godwin lodges a predictable complaint about all the unjustified violence, observes that Kale has apparently abandoned his quest for redemption, and expresses his frustration over select party members unilaterally deciding to take the Munchkin from the Kaleists by force. Equally predictably, everyone else pretty much blows him off. Kale focuses on the extreme urgency of the need to clean up and conceal all traces of the battle on the bridge so that the party can go on posing as party-alternates and no one will know that anything has happened. For some reason, the task of tying up alt-Merri falls to Godwin, who does the best inept job of it that he can manage, then deposits her in the ship-in-a-bottle. Clod busies himself with collectiing blood from various corpses to use with one of his magic items. Clod loots the beaver that was previously his alternate self, and said beaver is presumably dealt with in some unknown way. Eventually, Kale removes the wall that he put in place to block the entrance to the bridge. When he does so, three messenger bats that have apparently been waiting outside the door immediately fly in. What their messages say, and therefore how the party reacts to them, will have to be filled in here later. History does record that Godwin prays at approximately this point, but doesn't mention why or about what.
Next, still craving more information about exactly what it is that the Kaleists are up to, the party discusses interrogating alt-Merri. Merri suggests that Kale should be the interrogator, since he can use his "influence" over her to get her to spill the beans--though she also orders him to "keep his hands off her." Kales thus heads into the ship-in-a-bottle, while most others remain outside in case anyone else should show up on the bridge. However, either some form of communication is emplyed (be it a bug or the radios), or Suppel simply follows Kale into the ship-in-a-bottle and eavesdrops on his interrogation efforts from another room. Despite Merri's advice, Kale tries to use intimidation and trickery on alt-Merri, pretending to be an alt-Kale and to think that alt-Merri might be original Merri and demanding that she prove that she is "one of them" by telling him what their plan is. When alt-Merri proves insufficiently moronic to fall for this, Suppel decides to help by bursting into the room and "attacking" Kale in an effort to convince alt-Merri that the latter really is an alt-Kale. Alas, while the two of the brawl, alt-Merri manages (predictably) to get free of her bonds. She then joins Kale in attacking Suppel. Eventually, this semi-fake combat ends in some kind of victory for Kale--but alt-Merri still remains unconvinced that Kale is on her side. Kale then tries covertly dropping his identifying strip of sheet and pretending to think that alt-Merri dropped it, and using this as a pretext to demand that she prove she's part of the plan. When this ploy works just as well as all his other efforts, however, he finally changes tactics and tries being warmer toward alt-Merri. Alas, this only leads to alt-Merri expecting sex, and when Kale proves unwilling, she begins storming off, forcing him to subdue her and tie her back up. After this, the rest of the party becomes involved in the effort to get information out of alt-Merri, whose unwillingness to reveal any information is overcome by Merri using her mind-reading staff to read the thoughts that the party's questions call to her mind. Initially, alt-Merri distracts herself (and therefore also real Merri) by fantasizing about Kale, but after Merr calls her a "hussie" and slaps her, the party finally actually gets somewhere. Through a series of questions, they learn that the Kaleists' ultimate goal is to take over the entire Kingdom of Accord, and then institute the Way of Kale as the official state religion, all in order to make the Divine Kale the most powerful of all the gods.
Through an unremembered sequence of events that may or may not involve messenger bats, the party learns that other Kaleists are impatiently waiting for "them" (or rather, the bridge crew whom they just killed and/or captured and are now impersonating) to show up outside Ongle's quarters and spearhead the next phase of the master plan, which involves finding a way inside. After erasing alt-Merri's memory of having met them and re-invisiblizing Suppel, the party therefore sets off for the door to Ongle's quarters, where they find a large group of alternatie-thems assembled. Finding themselves in the awkward position of being expected to have a plan for how to gain entry to the quarters, various party members make various relatively lame attempts to wing it. For instance, learning the no one has yet simply tried opening the door in the usual way, Godwin orders alt-Clod to do so. Reluctantly but obediently, alt-Clod grasps the doorknob, only to be thrown violently against the wall on the other side of the corridor and getting his head smashed open. While others look on in horror, Godwin rather lamely apologizes, and Merri springs into action to save alt-Clod's life by growing him a new head (+2, with a skull of steel and the ability to grow highlights in his beard).
Kale threw rock at door, nothing happend. Thymie threw a rabbit at the door, nothing happend. Alt-Kale tried to vanish the door, got a headache. A flunkie was sent to open door, thrown against wall, died. A bunnie was thrown at the handle, flew back. Rock too, same result, Clod used his shuttlecock of fire on the door. Minor damage. Merri pulled a pong and underwear out of cap. Godwin prayed, Suppel, Kale, and Darff went to get a golem. Golem began to hit the door. Godwin prayed. Golem took out door knob. Flunkie opened door, another door was behind it.
Reality Date: October 11, 2009Gameality Date: April 24, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue 2nd door has writing on it, 2 gargoyles, and 8 doornobs. Supple is retconed to have been knocked unconsoious by stray rabbit, and Merri promptly puts him in the Ship-in-the-Bottle. Door says "You have 3 questions to ask the gargoyles. Consiquences will be dire if you get it wrong. One alwasys lies and one always tells the truth.". Thyme asked her sword of helpfullness for help. It was a mistake. She puts it away. Alt-Merri aproached the door to ask "Are Kale and I going to be married in a month?" but didn't. Breadstick appears out of nowhere. Darff takes it. Godwin (we think) solved the riddle door. He opened the door. Another chamber lay beyond covered in tile. Clod tried to dance across the room and failed. Merri tried and succeeded. Godwin persuaded some Alts to stay behind (Merri and Thyme). Thyme, Darff, Alt-Darff, Clod, Kale and Alt-Kale followed suit. Kale set up to "accidentally" kill Alt-Kale. Merri went back to help Godwin. Kale hit Alt-Kale for 3 degrees. Combat began, Alts vs. Non-Alts. Thyme attacked Alt-Darff, Alt-Darffed dodged. Alt-Darff traveled back in time to warn everyone of the real parties betrale. Melee happed. Darff traveled through time further, and took Alt-Darff's bracelet and gave it to Darff. Kale continued to kill Alt-Kale. Clod helped. Godwin launched a knowledge seeking fireball at Alt-Kale, setting him ablaze. Merri ran to Alt-Darff and knocked Godwin off herself. Alt-Kale tried to kill Merri with Death Wand, failed. Clod finished decapitating Alt-Kale. Party talked to door. Kale's penis was wagered by Clod. Kale slapped Clod for 3 degrees. "5 people are going to a church, it starts to rain. The four that ran got wet, the one that stood still stayed dry. How is this possible?". It was a funeral. Kale declared himself to be going through the door. Everyone got to go instead. Came to huge room. Alarm sounded. Mirror cocked us off. Statues came alive, and an Ongle like enemy sat up and said "Please help me". Statues kill new Ongle, and then bandage his body. Godwin put on his cloak, then ran and attacked Ongle's body. It passed through like an illusion. The floor opened under the sarcofogus. Clod attached the illusion. The bridge came on the mirror. Asked what was going on. A portal was opening outside the Munchkin. Godwin roving visioned through the floor. Saw passageway. Kale suggested plugging the hole with the Munchkin. It was done. Clod shot the sarcofagous, damaging it. It continued into the portal.
Reality Date: November 1, 2009Gameality Date: April 24, 3270Cobbler: ineptsegue Discussed the next corse of action. Kale sat down on Ongle's golden throne. Looting was decided upon. Godwin descryed the resurection equipment. It was MAGICAL. Merri found a small cauldron. It creates meals. Suppel found a scabbard and dust bunnies. The scabbard auto draws when a drawn weapon comes within 5 feet of it. Clod examined a jewel behind the tabernackle. Then began mining gold. Thyme found a vase and a ring box. Darff descryed the ring, it is capable of storing 2 ren points, where these ren points are renewed differently. Kale descryed the throne. The throne allows the sitter to asteral project. Darff descryed the vase. There is something very good inside (morrally). You can dispense virtue through it. Kale descryed Godwin's equipment. We learned Ongle is a Lich. Merri put the gold throne in the ship in the bottle. Kale then descryed Clod's gem, it was part of the resurection equipment illusion. Kale used the throne to project himself, but was unable to leave the ship. Fish tacos were made. iKale talked to Kaleists, learned they knew about us. Planned for next course of action. Alts began to wall us in, we worked on a plan of escape. Kale deleted floor beneath sarcophogus. We all jumped down. Kale continued to delete walls to escape. We came out in some crew quarters, turned Kale invisible, and he ran on the ceiling back to the Redemption with us in the ship on the bottle. Merri was tinkering with the godspeed drive. Kale found her. Most of us slept, but a shaking thing happend (we were under attack), and we all went to the bridge. Clod accidentally locked the ship controls trying to dodge. We got hit by a barrel. Suppel tried to clear ice with the tenticles. Godwin made fog. Kale flew the ship away. Went to a star. Godwin drank beer. Clod collected hard liquor. |
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