I can’t recall the last time I’ve been out for a munch. Probably at least 3 months. I made the time to come out to this one, expecting to go out to the TNG group to support them. However, I ended up at the Kinky and Geeky, though I’m not exactly sure why I made that decision.

One factor would be that there’s a one shot game of the Laundry files happening at the Kinky and Geeky and I haven’t played an RPG in ages. We’ve attempted to get our Shadowrun game up and running again for a while, but without much luck.

The Laundry Files is a series of books by a British author focused on the bureaucratic solution to the problem of non-standard math allowing people to access the parts of reality where the really nasty things live. The Laundry is a department that doesn’t exist, that employs people who have seen things that shouldn’t be seen and survived. Better to give them a job and a pension rather than melting their mind while trying to wipe it.

Once again, Live blogging from an event, because that’s something that I find amusing.

We’ve all just arrived to work and we’ve been called up to Mahogany Row.  Based on the file they gave us, they want to send us to West African nation for reasons they’ve yet to explain. I’m playing a female computational demonologist, carrying an iphone with some pre-loaded spells and a laptop with some warding.

Around the table with me are a variety of other people playing other members of the Laundry. Of them, two have familiarity the Laundry and the others with passing familiarity with Lovecraftian horrors. Overall, probably a decent group for a horror RPG.

Great, our job is to rescue hostages from a Liberation army. Rebels aren’t the friendliest in the best of times, but in a dictatorship, that seems suicidal. Especially an isolationist dictatorship. No diplomatic contact in more than a few decades.

As a demonologist, I’ve no idea idea how I’d be useful in a situation like this.

We’ve got an extraction team, which might come in handy, once we find the hostages. If we find the hostages. Bloody students. Why did they get themselves in this sort of trouble? And why do the the powers that be think it’s a good idea for us to be sent in to get them out?

Oh. Right. Cults. That explains everything.

There was a dagger, it was used by a cult, and it was lost in the country before the diplomatic channels were cut off. We need to find it and recover it. We aren’t allowed to destroy it without getting clearance from Mahogany row.

The hostages are secondary priority, if that.

We’re being flown into hostile territory.

I attempt to install the Thaumometer  into my Warding Laptop to create a better scanner system. I succeed, creating a short burst scanner that’ll allow me to check a single building in a burst. So, once we find where the knife is likely being kept, we’ll be able to narrow it down in a hurry.

The Military checkpoint is nicely intimidating, like any good military checkpoint into a west African dictatorship. I’m not carrying any obvious weapons. The other members of my team have weapons, but nothing that would be a threat against the mounted guns that the guards have trained on us.

The city that we are driving through looks like a shanty town, something out of the worst of the third world. But given that they’ve been cut off from the rest of the world for decades, that’s not surprising. What is surprising is that there are some fresh power lines that have been run out to a large facility. There are also cellular towers. Given that we know they’ve been working with the Chinese to improve their infrastructure, it isn’t surprising, but it is strange, the limited nature of the upgrades.

And now we’ve arrived at a colonial mansion that has been upgraded with the latest technology. Big Screen TVs and leather couches. The place is kitted out like a 5 star hotel.

We also get a better view of the power grid, confirming that it was running out to the Chinese compound. Which has a certain alien aspect to it.

The solider in the party manages to arrange for a tour of the facilities. I stay back in the rooms to do some hacking, while the rest of the team checks out the mansion.

Now we’re in a meeting with the headman, who has decided to telecommute to the board room. So we’re in a mansion, and he’s up in a palace some place in the hills.

We’ve got a possible lead with the cultural museum. It’s possible the knife ended up there. We’ve also got a criminal mastermind, so she can probably locate the underground, and through that find the rebels and perhaps negotiate with them.

The translator, rather than asking the guard where he could shoot his gun, he asked the guard where he could shoot at him. This appears to have caused some commotion. The stealth members of the team took advantage of this to escape out over the wall. Actually, judging by what the captain said, he offered to carpet bomb some villages.

And then the translator decided to cast a crazy powerful scrying spell, by hand. And despite the huge penalty, he managed to succeed. Though this might have melted his brain. It may have also melted my Thaumometer. But I didn’t notice, because I was in the hot tub, gambling for bullets with the guards. I apparently turned my two bullet stake into six bullets. So I returned the original pair of bullets to the solider on our team.

The diplomatic officer used the Sleep-App on the necronomiphone to contact our superiors. She received some serious information, the sort that required her to gain a new clearance level.

The stealth team managed to find out that the local church appears to be controlled by the cult of the bloody tongue. The stealth team cocked their pistol, and then the guys dragging the body to the altar dropped the body and turned their guns on the stealth team, and the cultists. The stealth team managed to dive into cover, the majority of the bullets went into the crowd of cultists, who didn’t stop chanting.

They managed to escape into the night.

The translator has woken up in the morning and decided to burn the paper he had used the night before to cast the spell. He failed to notice the smoke detector, so the guards decided to come in. The guards heard the alarm and tried to enter the room. He responded with “Don’t come in, I’m enjoying my fire time.” At this point, the guard broke down the door, finding him in the bathroom, with blood smeared on his face, and dark circles under his eyes, and a bathtub filled with burnt paper.

At this point, we have a briefing. We know that the knife is in the Chinese compound, where it may be guarded by otherworldly monsters.

We know that the cult leader can use the knife to become an avatar of the bloody tongued one, who is probably an elder god of some sort. There also appear to be Ents with iron teeth. Ah, right. it’s Nyarlathotep.

 

Well, Dimestore and I got our Warhorn clearance today. We can now register for the various festivities. Well, we could, if the site was actually letting us register, which it doesn’t seem to be doing. (After a quick email to the organizer, it is now working.)

I’m wanting to do the midnight game again, as it’s an experience you can’t get anywhere else. But I wonder if that’s being selfish. We’ve done it before, maybe we should leave the slots for people who haven’t experienced a multi-table game before.

I think I want to compete in a few of the tournaments. Netrunner, for sure. Lords of Waterdeep, probably. Not sure what else would be fun.

I’ve got my tickets for the Nude Hope and Portal 2 show. Those should be good, I enjoy what the Geekenders have together in the past.

I wonder if Dimestore and I should put together a Shadowrun Missions session or maybe a game of Crossfire.

If I had access to more copies of Arctic Scavengers, running a mini-Tournament of that could be extremely amusing. Call it the Frozen North Tribal Challenge. Perhaps pick a few other games with a similar theme and make it into a charity event. I like that idea. I wonder if I can convince anyone else it’s worth doing.