UK Games Expo Fringe 2026

 

Escaping from weekend activity centres is no longer a sport! Any prisoner found sneaking out for a curry or a pint of overpriced beer will be shot on sight!

After last year's inaugural Expo Fringe there was little doubt that once more we would be spending a weekend behind the barbed wire of Stalag Luft Ackers. It really is a gem of a place, once you get past the spartan nature of the accommodation. Now that we knew what to expect we were mentally prepared for the bunk beds, harsh lighting and bracing showers, and the place felt quite homely, with an upgraded kitchen and new tables and chairs for the inmates.

The drive down on Friday morning wasn't too bad, roadworks notwithstanding, and after unpacking my gear I set up for the game of Cörk Børd that I was running. This is a an adaption of the Mörk Borg rules from Paul Baldowski of Cthulhu Hack and Dee Sanction fame and I was looking forward to seeing how the rules played out at the table. 

The theme of the game is Nordic Noir detective fiction, with a team of variously damaged investigators unpicking gruesome crimes in a harsh landscape through dogged police work and the occasional lucky break. The scenario is broken down into scenes comprising sites, suspects and situations that have to have their complexity whittled down by the team applying their skills and using their fibre. This is roughly equivalent to the hit points, attributes and damage rolls of a traditional fantasy game, but the fun here is in the narrative that comes from the dice rolls. An investigator might make a good roll only to be thwarted by a delay (aka armour) leading to the case stalling.

Scenes are linked as the case is solved and I used a physical cork board with pictures for each scene and red tape to link them using pins. We tracked the remaining complexity on a scene with dice so the team could see where they needed to focus their efforts and added evidence with extra post it notes. The delays on certain scenes caused frustration (as intended) but I think when I write some more scenarios I'd build in keys to clear the delays and speed things up (such as splitting up suspects to interrogate them separately). The players did manage to get to the tragic conclusion with only one of them cracking under the pressure. Excellent fun!

Friday night was curry night with a takeaway from the Balti Mile - loads of delicious food with plenty leftover for lunch the next day. The weather was warm too, and once more we were able to sit on the balcony enjoying a beer or three and setting the world to rights as police chased boy racers on one side of the canal and trains chugged by on the other. Simply perfect.

After a night in the bunk beds I needed to go for a walk to stretch my legs so headed off for a stroll along the canal path. If you ignore the large waste incinerator chimney then it was very pleasant with ducks and geese for company. Even the graffiti was vibrant.

Saturday morning's game was Symbaroum - another Free League game that has been on my wish list to play for a while. This has a very different feel to the other fantasy games from the Free League stable, such as the free wheeling Dragonbane or the wilderness survival of Forbidden Lands. I really enjoyed playing a shape shifting changling duellist in conjunction with a rogue treasure hunter and a goblin witch searching for proof of a noble woman's true heritage in a monastery that was home to something very nasty. Cheers to Dave (aka Bagpuss Grognard) for running with aplomb.

Another change of pace for the afternoon with Martin Cookson running Lex Arcana - an alternate history where the Roman Empire hadn't fallen but instead had persisted with teams of Custos sent to the far flung corners of the empire to investigate and fight supernatural threats to the Pax Romana. An initially straight forward case of missing shipments from a mine on a distant windswept island turned into something much weirder with attacks from nightmarish creatures that had possibly been summoned by the Pictish druids. Yikes!

The use of latin names for the skills really added to the unique atmosphere on this one and the final denouement was suitably tense.

Saturday night saw us visiting the Hilton bar for food and a drink, but it was something of a mistake. It was hot, noisy and crowded and the beer was both overpriced and not particularly well kept. We just stayed for one pint before making our excuses and leaving. We'll not be doing that again.

It was much better to sit out at Ackers again and I don't think I've laughed quite as much for ages with a lovely bunch of people with many rambling topics of conversation (and appalling puns). I can't think of a better way to spend an evening!

Sunday morning was breakfast on the balcony and an efficient clean up operation, before setting off for Expo proper. Even after a coffee I was flagging whilst walking round the huge halls packed with gaming goodies. I didn't spend too much this year but I did find a copy of the Pirate Borg starter set and a gorgeous dice set with accompanying dice bag. Definitely one I'm looking forward to running!

Home now, with sore feet and aching knees, but well worth it for a memorable weekend of gaming and camaraderie - thanks once more to Steve (aka Orlanth Rex) for organising! 

Home sweet home!

We headed back to Hendenburgh in a spirit of celebration, now the imminent danger had been removed. Even the woodlands seemed cheerier now the hounds had been banished. Krisanna took great delight in retelling the story, embellishing the account and acting out the good bits by jumping on tables.

We returned to the castle for the first time in ages, with the journey being largely uneventful but there was word of something that Leadbelly needed to discuss with us. The repairs were proceeding to plan although there was still a lot of work to do, with the castle being a hive of activity. After yet another banquet we retired to our newly refurbished rooms - Orla looked anxiously to see if there was an en-suite bathroom in her room and was angry to find that there wasn't.

Leadbelly told us that while clearing the overgrown courtyard the workers had discovered a doorway with a broken stone seal on it. When they heard noises from beyond the door, they all downed tools and refused to do any more work until it was investigated. If only there was a group of slightly hung over adventurers to hand!

The door was cracked but Bastonn soon shifted the broken pieces to reveal a steeply sloping chalk passageway leading down into the ground. Krisanna scampered ahead whilst Bastonn held a torch. We discovered a large room with three partions each bounded by an alcove. There seemed to be a pattern in the inscriptions in the alcoves, possibly related to the elements. Water removed one and earth the next. The final one had an inscription of a sun which responded to an ember from the torch.

A passage to the south led into an even larger chamber with a large carved humanoid face on the western wall, The pillars seemed to be carved into leaf patterns. The face "This presence here is most untrue, speak of nature's order or pay for this miscue." It took a but of head scratching before we solved it's riddling rhyme and heard three clicks as the doors unlocked.

We followed the passageway to the north east and discovered a statue of a knight holding a large silvery sword with golden discs set into its eye sockets. Krisanna swapped the golden discs for a couple of copper pennies just in case removing the eyes woke the statue. Bastonn investigated the sword and realised that it could be removed with a little effort and claimed it. It proved to be very heavy, weighted with lead and more than likely an executioners sword. Yikes.

Heading back a locked door to the south proved to be no obstacle to Krisanna's lock picking fingers and revealed a large pool of warm water - could this be Orla's ensuite? The only thing that spoilt it was a bloody hobbit corpse floating in the pool and six weird, plant like creatures washing blood off themselves. Bastonn immediately slashed at two of them with a furious attack, whilst Orla and Krisanna managed to dodge incoming attacks, then Krisanna deftly dispatched one with a dagger and Orla fired twin arrows killing one, and a further arrow to finish the other, then Bastonn finished the last.

The corpse proved to be a young male hobbit who had probably been climbing down into the room before falling to his doom. Something silvery in the water tempted Krisanna into diving in but it was deeper than it first appeared and she swallowed a mouthful of water. Orla fished her out, and Krisanna reappeared clutching a large silver salver. The water also appeared to have healing properties, just a bit late for the unfortunate hobbit thief.

We headed east and Krisanna narrowly avoided two large spinning blades before finding a door and opened a door that opened on to a dead end. Ha ha, very amusing. Heading south led to another statue and a mirror that reflected the viewer as if they were a skeleton. Creepy. We unscrewed the statue and found a strange jar sealed with not sinister at all black wax. It proved to contain dozens of tiny copper coins.

The next room contained a weird crystalline structure with a figure trapped inside. There was a weird humming noise and as Orla approached the crystals started pulsing with light. Despite several attempts to break the crystals we abandoned it as being too dangerous unless someone had high willpower to resist any encrystallisation.

A bit more investigation of the knight room found an odd gutter seam around the room and some odd recesses at the corners of the statue. A bit of manipulation revealed four rods that we could push back up into the recesses and with a bit of fiddling revealed two more secret doors, the north one leading to another face room, this one with a bronze face with an odd wheel on the nose. Turning this revealed a secret passage leading to hidden exit outside the castle - could be handy,

The door to the south revealed more statues with copperwood blades and silvery amulets. Needless to say removing the amulet triggered a battle. Oops. Onto another mirror room with a corpse with slashed wrists and sinister reflections. Finally we reached a large chamber with a sarcophagus, blue mist and a large figure holding a crystal sword. One more battle and the crystal sword was ours! Holding the sword proved risky but wearing a handy gauntlet that was hidden in the casket. prevented any crystal growths

All hail the contributions to the roof fund and the new socialist republic.

North Star 2026

I’m still not entirely sure why SF based RPGs seem to be a minority interest at most UK games conventions, but thankfully North Star is here once again to fill the intergalactic void! This year saw 44 games on offer with systems ranging from the venerable Traveller to Alien, and pleasingly both Space:1999 and Space:1899!

Slot 1

I was running Things from the Flood for this slot, which is the teen angst sequel to the more kid friendly Tales from the Loop. I’ve wanted to set a game in Sheffield for a while, so this was the perfect excuse that allowed me to use real life locations that were just outside the Garrison Hotel where we were playing as well as the iconic (and little known) Sheffield Megatron, a cavernous storm drain hidden below Sheffield Station. I based the pre-gen characters on a set of young adults from The Archers on BBC radio 4 which provided some nicely intertwined back stories and an appropriate level of teen angst.

The players all leaned into their characters as they ventured into the hazardous flood zone around Meadowhall, facing toxic spores, dangerous terrain and robot guard sharks, to solve the mystery of why robots in Sheffield suddenly seemed to be malfunctioning. I also made use of a mock up of the Sheffield Star newspaper to give the players a set of plot hooks to follow - this had worked quite nicely in my Tales of the Old West game previously.

Cheers to the players - Amelia Francis, Guy Milner, John Ossoway, Döerte Böhler and Udo Kaiser!

Slot 2

For this one, John Ossoway was GMing and served us up a classic Alien scenario based on William Gibson’s abandoned script for Alien 3. We were playing a crew of UPP operatives returning to Rodina station to find that everything had gone dark. The story followed the expected cinematic beats, starting quietly and ending with a nerve jangling confrontation and some shocking betrayals. Some lovely use of Lego minifigs for props in this as well. 

Slot 4 

Down in the cargo hold for this improvised Traveller game, where I was playing the captain of a high class cruise ship The Darthanon Queen, dealing with needy passengers, malfunctioning toilets, bolshy engineers, bomb scares and a cargo of supposedly fossilised giant arachnids. Congrats to Jane Polwin for directing the improvised chaos and especially for the giant crocheted spider that made a guest appearance - yikes! Amelia also surprised us all when her character let out the loudest scream I have ever heard and had a standup row with one of the NPCs. 

Lunch

The Garrison hotel usually do a nice Sunday lunch, but this year they seemed to struggle with bringing the food out on time, even though everything had been pre-ordered and paid for in advance. The meal itself was very tasty, but I was starving by the time it arrived. Some people were still waiting for puddings by the time the raffle was due to start, so Dom improvised a live linkup to broadcast the draw!

Slot 5

Another change of pace for the final game, with Neil Gow adapting the vampire hunting RPG Night’s Black Agents into a Babylon 5 setting with a suitable level of intrigue as our agents investigated a missing data crystal that held a deadly secret about the outcome of the Earth-Minbari war and hints of … things … lurking in the shadows. It’s been a while since I watched the show but this makes me want to start from the beginning again!

Another great weekend of gaming and a chance to catch up with friends old and new. The usual thanks go to Graham, Dom and Shachar for seamless organisation.

Of hawk nuns and boar knights

Krisanna was feeling thirsty (and reckless as usual) so she took a swig from the Hawk font and suddenly found herself floating like a balloon - wheee! Aodhan tried the Boar font and found that his skin was thickening into leathery armour - nice! Orla was left with the defaced font and found that the water was stagnant and sulphurous - yuck.

Krisanna opened the door to the north west and saw six silent golems standing guard, apparently motionless and showing the sad face from their selection. Krisanna floated across to the opposite door, noticing a faint hum. She reasoned that there must be something good in the next room and thought that the door looked fine. She tried to open the door and got a static shock, and heard the ominous sound of a gong as the golem's faces rotated to angry. Oops. 

Orla reached for her bow and shot two arrows, fumbling and hitting Krisanna, knocking her unconscious in one shot. Oops again. The others pulled her to safety back in the font room where Krisanna took a swig of boar water - mmm, bacony skin! 

We then opened the next door on the west wall to see a room with a set of stairs heading down. Krisanna's treasure sense started tingling so she scampered down the stairs and into a stone chapel with pews and a dark red marble altar. The wall to the north was covered with frescos of hawks. The wall to the south had a large painting of a hawk headed woman with a sun halo radiating out behind her. Behind the painting Krisanna discovered a golden thurrible in a niche whilst Aodhan recovered an illustrated manuscript from the altar. Orla lit the candles and heard a distant sigh. 

Krisanna opened the door to the east, disarming a trap in the process, revealing a room with 4 sarcophagi that set Krisanna's treasure sense tingling, She sang a hymn from the manuscript which seemed to lighten the atmosphere. She opened one of the doors to find a floating hawk nun who disapproved of our adventuring ways. A bit of questioning told us about sealing magic and they seemed happy for us to use the banishment scroll, although they did ask for some chamomile tea to go with a biscuit. 

We returned to the other set of stairs leading down to the boar knights who seemed happy to let us pass when they heard that we'd woken the hawk nuns. Bastonn offered them employment as castle guardians once we'd finally banished the tyrant. We followed the east passage to a room where a black and shriveled heart was suspended in chains. An inscription above the door read : 

Beyond these doors lies the corpse of Lucius Tarquinius, the tyrant of the hunt. May his bones turn to dust. May his flesh moulder. May he never rise again to trouble the living. 

After some debate, Aodhan read the scroll as the heart started to beat more strongly. We realised that we needed to open the door using the chains on either side. The tyrant slowly materialised and offered us many temptations to free him instead of banishing him whilst Aodhan tried to read the scroll. Things rapidly started to go wrong as the tyrant started overpowering our will and Aodhan fell asleep mid banishment. Krisanna leapt into action and poured a healing flask into his mouth. The tyrants wife Lucretia appeared and tried to drain Orla which she resisted. Bastonn rallied our spirits and attacked Lucretia in turn revealing her true form. 

Orla managed to knock Lucretia's deadly lyre to the floor, but the ghosts of the hounds were now materialising - time was of the essence as they tried to attack us. Makander parried one attack and absorbed the other on his armour. Bastonn desperately tried to parry a bite and attacked Lucretia again finally banishing her. The hounds fell to our assorted knives, swords and arrows. Orla managed to fail another dual shot losing her arrows. Thrice oops!

The remaining hounds desperately tried to bite Aodhan one last time as the tyrant turned into a giant flaming skull. Aodhan finally finished the ritual and the tyrant was banished once and for all! 

Designers & Dragons Vol 3 by Shannon Applecline

 This exhaustive history of the RPG industry covers the fate of the companies that were founded in the 1990s as well as the trends and developments during that decade. 

The most interesting thread covered one of the biggest players in White Wolf, publishers of Vampire : The Masquerade and related games. I had been aware of these games from someone I knew who took them very seriously indeed, but they clearly brought a lot of new people into the hobby and made good use of ideas like metaplots across different games and crossovers with fiction and LARPing. 

The other major story was the financial implosion of D&D publishers TSR and their acquisition by Wizards of the Coast, who were in turn gobbled up by Hasbro. Their story is something of a roller coaster with the new third edition of D&D and the associated D20 licencing agreement leading to something of a bubble as many other smaller publishers rushed out a slew of D20 compatible games only to have the rug pulled out from under them as the terms of the licence were changed, followed by a 3.5 edition with significant differences. 

Financial pressure from Hasbro led to a series of redundancies at WotC including venerable names and lead designers, just as they were working on the innovative but critically panned and short lived 4th edition which seemed designed to appeal to players of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft as well as tactical miniatures games. This in turn led to the rise of Paizo with their Pathfinder game which was effectively good old D&D to all intents and purposes, and which at one point looked like it might even eclipse the original game. 

It was definitely a turbulent time, but it set the foundations for things to come later. 

Grogmeet 2026

For the second year running, Grogmeet took place in January in Manchester, this time in the new venue of the Brickhouse Social Club. On the plus side, it's really nice to have something positive to look forward to in the middle of a gloomy January but the downside was that (not surprisingly) it was flipping freezing! In fact the weather very nearly derailed my travel plans with heavy snow across the Pennines cancelling a swathe of trains. Fortunately I was able to cancel my original tickets and take an alternative route via Leeds which was fortunately snow free. 

I checked into my hotel and dropped off my bag before heading to the venue which is conveniently located almost next door to Manchester Oxford Road station in the heart of Little Ireland, apparently written about by Engels as the most deprived area in England at the time with a life expectancy of 18. The arrival of a large number of grogs in the area must have pushed up the average age of the currently mostly student population by a significant number though. The venue was on three levels - a central bar area serving some nice beers and pizzas throughout the day, a downstairs club room with suspiciously sticky floors and subdued lighting, and an upstairs roof terrace which was a bit chilly with the patio style doors letting a draught through. Still, there was ample space for games which was the main objective of the weekend!

My first game of Friday afternoon was a classic Call of Cthulhu scenario from White Dwarf called The Bleeding Stone Of Iphtha, run by Jim McCarthy of Raspy Raven fame. The opening section was set in the old area of Jerusalem in the 1930s with twisty streets and untrustworthy contacts, before moving on to an ill fated archeological dig somewhere in the desert where things got suspiciously squamous. As the daylight faded outside, the bar staff switched on the light over our table which turned out to be very like the Colour from Out of Space!

Rolling back the stone

What dread horrors lie within 

The tomb of Iphtha?

A quick bite to eat and then onto the next game which was an epic multi-character scenario from the twisted imagination of Kehaar involving terrorists hijacking a non-stop train from Aberdeen to Penzance, with mystery viruses, escaped mutants, numerous suspects and various problems to overcome on a meticulously plotted blueprint of an authentic British Rail train from the 1980s which stretched the length of a bar top in the corner of the room. 

We alternated between scenes on the train of our crack squad of UNIT commandoes taking out the terrorists with backup support from the analysts back at headquarters radioing in advice as they checked the passenger manifest for clues. Excellent fun, and the bar top was a good excuse to enjoy a pint or two as things got steadily more chaotic.

UNIT assault squad

Code: Cassandra Protocol

Storming the night train 

I headed back to the hotel and eventually managed to make sense of the instructions for the room heating and got some kip. A fortifying breakfast and then a quick walk to the venue where the queue of (let's be honest) not exactly young grogs were waiting in sub zero temperatures for the bar staff to open up and let us in. Fortunately we were able to start more or less on time and I unpacked all the bits I had bought for the game of Tales of the Old West I was running.

It was the second outing for High Stakes in Silver City and I managed to set the pace on what is effectively a mini sandbox setting with various options that the players can follow depending on how they want to tackle the problem of an impending foreclosure on their ranch from a silver tongued bank manager. I'm still planning to write this one up properly and have a couple more ideas for tweaks to make and maybe give a few more options for the prospector character to choose from. Cheers to Jim, John Ossoway, Chunky Duff, Cottonmouth MCR and Aerkane for getting stuck into their characters and knowing when to take risks which led to an appropriately tense showdown at the poker table and ensuing gunfight.

Would you trust this man
Charlatan, carpet bagger
Stephen B Elkins

The final game of the weekend for me was Shiver run by Debbie - this involved a visit to a new theme park set inside the hollow earth, like a cross between Jules Verne and Jurassic Park. It was very atmospheric with some great game mechanics involving custom dice and a ticking doom clock. I particularly liked the dinosaur themed table cloth too! I was struggling a bit with the low light levels in our corner, so I think a portable lantern might be an idea next year. 

Golden ticket kid

Exploring the Hollow World

Wow! A dinosaur!

Saturday night was rounded off with a nice Italian meal and then a pint in the traditional snug of the Lass O' Gowrie in the company of friends old and new year, and a toast to those we have lost. 

Cheers once again to Dirk, Blythy and everyone else involved in organising yet another excellent meet. See you all next year!

2025 in TTRPG

I played in 97 TTRPG sessions this year - didn't quite make the 100 but I think it was definitely a good year. My personal highlight was playing in the epic multi-table Gatsby and the Great Race which I wrote about here. A weekend at our UK Games Expo fringe event came a close second as well as the usual compliment of Garrison cons and Owlbear. Online saw me running The King of Santa Fe campaign for the Wednesday group as well as regular games of Dungeon Crawl Classics, Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Forbidden Lands and the number one slot is taken by Dragonbane.

I played 25 different one shots too - most of them new to me:

• Be Like A Cat
• Cthulhu by Gaslight
• Cthulhu Dark
• Cypher System
• Dagonbane
• Dead Metal Rhapsody 
• Delta Green
• Dialect
• Golden Heroes
• Ironsworn Starforged
• Kaiju Fighting
• Laundry Files
• Liminal
• Lost Unicorn Star Trek
• Maelstrom
• Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
• Rivers of London
• Ronin
• Spirit of '77
• Star Trek Adventures
• Starfinder
• Tales from the Loop
• The Agency
• Traveller
• Wildsea

Designers & Dragons: The '80s by Shannon Applecline

This is second volume of Shannon Applecline's history of the roleplaying industry, this time covering the 1980s - from the boom years to the almost inevitable crash at the end of the decade. I dropped out of the RPG hobby about half way through the 80s, so this was a fascinating history, both for the parts I knew and the bits that I didn't. 

The format is the same as the first volume, being a potted history of the companies that started during the period, the personalities and the products that were released from the blockbusters to the bombs. Particular highlights were the history of Steve Jackson Games - one of the few companies from that era still running in pretty much the same form - and the story of almost being shutdown by secret service agents who thought that the Cyberpunk setting for GURPS was an instruction manual for real life hackers.

It was also interesting to read about how veteran wargaming companies Avalon Hill and SPI dabbled their toes into the RPG industry before the latter was taken over and shut down by behemoth (at the time) TSR., effectively wiping the entire board wargaming hobby for good. There are many stories of takeovers and legal wrangles, showing that just about the only people who were really making money in the end were the corporate lawyers.

There are also positive stories too, with small press publishers making a mark, some continuing today and some being the launch pad for game designers who would go on to other things, such as Jonathan Tweet  who went from founding Lion Rampant with Mark Rein-Hagen and creating the hugely influential Ars Magica to being the lead designer for D&D 3e.

An essential reference work for the era.

The Grognard Files

The Grognard Files podcast was responsible both for re-igniting my interest in roleplaying games after emerging from my personal deep freeze back in 2015 and also for connecting me with some of the loveliest people around to play games with at the annual Grogmeet conventions in Manchester. The podcast is hosted by Chris Hart, otherwise known by his roleplaying soubriquet of Dirk the Dice, aided by co-host and lifelong friend Blythy. The pair bring amiable charm to proceedings as they talk bobbins about games from back in the day and today, as well as in depth interviews with gaming luminaries from around the world.

The latest episode features a fascinating discussion with Magnus Seter about the history of role playing games in Sweden which was of particular interest to me. Looking at my gaming over recent years shows that things like Dragonbane, Vaesen and Tales from the Loop from the Swedish company Free League have loomed large. They seem to have a unique charm and quirkiness that things like D&D (at least in its current incarnation) are lacking for me. This also reminds me that I really need to find an opportunity to play Mutant : Year Zero at some point - ironically one of the few Year Zero engine games that I have yet to play. 

I highly recommend that you give this episode a listen, then explore the previous ten years (helpfully summarised here), and maybe I'll see you at a Grogmeet one day!

Swedish RPGs (with Magnus Seter) - The GROGNARD Files

The end of Sly George

We began the adventure by looking at the ruined tower, the upper floor almost completely missing. There were armed and armoured guards patrolling the remaining battlements - they were wearing similar gear to Sly George's mercenary pals so we were pretty sure we were in the right place. There seemed to be well established tracks (human and horse) leading to the south east.

The sun was setting and the mercenaries were lighting torches. Krisanna volunteered for a recon mission on the grounds that Sly George must have accumulated a fair stash over the years. She snuck up to the tower and climbed up to one of the unlit windows, finding the middle floors pretty much absent. She climbed up the inner wall to the 3rd floor and peeked up to see Sly George and Valeria, drinking wine and looking very cosy. She purloined their rope ladder so they couldn't get down in a hurry and returned to the party.

We all snuck up to the wall and Aodhan cast a pillar spell to lift himself and Krisanna into position for an ambush. He cast a wind spell down into the middle of the bandits, scattering them like nine pins and Krisanna followed it with a flask of acid splashing four of them. Arrows from Orla and Bastonn's sword put paid to the rest of them. Tough on bandits and tough on the causes of bandits!

Sly George tried to negotiate from the top floor where he was trapped, offering gems in exchange for his life. Krisanna was sorely tempted but Bastonn gave him an ultimatum - surrender and throw yourself on the mercy of the witches or face another fireball. He realised the game was up so he surrendered and we escorted him to the witches cottage to face his fate. 

They safely locked him in a cupboard and handed over the scroll that we needed to banish the Cryptwood tyrant and his hell hounds. We never did work out where they produced the scroll from as they were all in the nip as usual. They also agreed to owe us a favour if we needed their help at some future date.

After offering Valeria (the Miller's wife and ex-squeeze of the unlamented George) a job as a house keeper at Castle Bastonn we headed back to the tomb, pausing only to unfog the last spaces that we hadn't explored on the map. One of them was an unpromisingly looking pool that we didn't fancy camping beside so we headed into the forest where we had a bit of cover. This was a good move as a strange figure emerged from the depths in the night and set off to hunt. Krisanna was very tempted by the gold coins seemingly scattered at random around the edge but the others dragged her away from the obvious bait.

She sulked for a bit but was cheered up by a stone henge-like dolmen with flowers growing under the stones. She stepped through the arch to pick some flowers and returned ten minutes later, dressed in fine robes carrying a baby seal. She looked older than the young halfling that she used to be but as Aodhan tried to determine the magic that had transpired he saw a different reality through the archway - the world of fairy! Krisanna had no memory of the fifteen years that had mysteriously passed. 

We headed back to the tomb, determined to clear out the place and put paid to the Cryptwood tyrant once and for all. We remembered the rooms we had explored before and found the rooms we had explored before, and stairs leading down to the next level. We followed the corridor and opened a door to see a figure reclined on a couch plucking a lyre. She seemed to be suspiciously transparent - a g-g-g-ghost!

Invincible Compendium One by Robert Kirkman

 Mark Grayson is, by all appearances, a regular American teenager struggling with the usual adolescent concerns of schoolwork and girlfriends. However, he has a secret - his dad is Omni-Man - the most powerful superhero on Earth. When Mark turns seventeen he also gains superpowers - flight, super strength and all round invincibility, so he assumes his superhero soubriquet of ... INVINCIBLE!. 

This is a fun superhero romp, with some fun twists along the way. It's not quite superheroes in the real world in the style of Alan Moore, but the fights are noticeably bloodier and more impactful than typical superhero comics. Invincible and his super team mates regularly get pummelled to a pulp and costumes usually end getting shredded and needing replacing.

I mainly picked this up out of interest because I am looking forward to playing the licenced RPG from Free League which is based on this setting, but it is generic enough that it could easily be adapted to any superheroic setting without too much work. 

Designers and Dragons: The '70s by Shannon Applecline

The seventies can rightly be called the golden age of role playing game design. The history of TSR and the creative duo of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson is well known (and was also covered in depth in 'Of Dice and Men' by David Ewalt), but Shannon Applecline takes a slightly different approach by cataloguing the significant releases of role playing games and associated products by all of the companies founded in the seventies as well as the monolithic TSR. Thus we get histories of Flying Buffalo, Games Designers Workshop, Chaosium, Judges Guild, and the UK Games Workshop as well as a raft of smaller companies and personalities. There was an unsurprising amount of cross-fertilisation of ideas as designers moved from company to company or influenced each other in various ways (from friendly collaboration to personality clashes and feuds ending in lawsuits).

Although this book is the first of four in a series covering the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s respectively, each company started in the 70s gets their full history in this volume, so we see TSR's rise and fall, the dogged persistence of Flying Buffalo  and resurgence of Chaosium in recent years. It's more of a reference encyclopedia that is fun to dip into than something that you might read cover to cover in one go, but it's an entertaining piece of history, particularly for those of us who started in the hobby at the end of the 70s and heard second hand accounts of the mighty deeds of those legendary figures.

Furnace XX

Furnace has now been running annually at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield for an impressive twenty years, and this one was was bigger and better than ever. The huge amount of behind the scenes prep work from Dom, Elaine and Graham really paid off as everything ran smoothly, even with the inevitable last minute cancellations of some games due to one thing and another. 

The dining area on the main floor of the hotel was opened up for games for the first time, with eight tables available plus the trade stalls from Patriot Games and All Rolled Up. Everything was nicely spaced out in a bright and airy space, in addition to the usual tables in the upper jailhouse and dungeon, allowing for a noticeable increase in the attendance. Everybody was given a commemorative dice tray and I also managed to snag one of the very smart themed messenger bags which are perfect for carrying notes, rulebooks and dice.

This year I was running Tales of the Old West in slot 1 with a scenario that I had written as an experiment as a sandbox setting with various plot threads to pull at, hinted at in a handout newspaper. There was surprising little violence as the players got stuck into the challenges of keeping their ranch running, but I made the mistake of losing track of the time and had to rush the ending to get to a suitable conclusion. I'd definitely run this one again, I think.

A charming neighbour

Pays a social call with an
Ulterior motive 

Looking for an ace
High stakes in Silver City
Never bet the ranch

For the afternoon session I went for a game I'd never heard of called Dialect run by Sarah Dovey. We were playing as robots, abandoned on a dying Earth, waiting for humans to return. The twist with this game is that you get to invent and use new words to narrate the experiences of your characters, played out in short scenes. I decided that I was playing a simple maintenance droid tasked with cleaning dust from the windflower turbines that supplied power to our colony and my daily chores became the ritual of Chorly. The conclusion of the game was thought provoking and surprisingly moving.

Abandoned robots

Following their programming
As language evolves 

A simple machine 
Windflower Chorley complete
Hope of membrance 

Sunday morning was a play test of a forthcoming Kaiju Fighting game from Gav Thorpe, with a strong emphasis on teamwork and a nifty playing card based resolution mechanic. I think this is definitely one that I will be looking out for when it's announced officially.

Alpha Base attacked
An unknown Kaiju menace 
Team Force assemble!

Cryostasis breach
Major biohazard threat
Decontaminate 

The final slot was a chance to play Tales of the Old West instead of GMing for a change. I relished the opportunity to play an impulsive young gunslinger and we managed to track down the outlaws and even the odds by some tactical play. Excellent fun - a tip of the stetson to Dom for running!

Bobby Garrick shot
His wife Annie’s been kidnapped 
Damn Corrigan gang 

By dawn’s early light
An outlaw caught with his pants down 
An easy bounty 

See you all there next year!

Of Silver Nuggets and Brain Spiders

We followed the passage way to a solid looking steel door, the surface of which was covered with ominous looking scratch marks, presumably from doomed miners. The door was locked but the key that Krisanna had found earlier fitted perfectly, so we went through into a large chamber with bunk beds. It looked like a safe and comfortable room except for the skeleton hanging from a noose - yikes!

After cutting down the unfortunate miner who had had a tragic demise, Krisanna investigated a burlap sack which contained a curious device with poles that slotted together and a bronze sphere that could be suspended from them. Krisanna poked it for a while but couldn't get it to do anything interesting. Orla found a wrapped up tube that we thought might be some sort of dynamite which could come in handy.

Krisanna heard something come from the tunnel and quickly shut the door, locking it for good measure. We could then hear scratching from outside then went away. It seemed that we were not alone in the mine! We opened the door and spotted fresh scratch marks in the steel.

We followed the passageway to the east, where we could smell fresh air, but with an ominous chittering glass like sound coming from another passage. We tried sneaking past but Makander fell flat on his beak creating a racket - fool of a duck!

From out of the passage came a horde of brain spiders the size of spaniels on spindly legs with crystal fangs that were sharp enough to scratch metal. In the panic, Orla somehow managed to shoot an arrow into Bastonn! In turn Bastonn also managed to fumble his attack, getting his sword stuck in a spider. Fortunately the remaining spiders scuttled off into the darkness.

The tripod seemed to be pointing up the other passage way, so we followed it to the north into a debris filled area with broken tools and mining spoil, and beyond that a tangle of dead bodies. One of the miners was clutching a silver nugget the size of a small child!

As we were mentally calculating how rich we were, the bodies started to move - were they zombie miners? Even worse than that, they seemed to animated by something inside them! Fortunately the horde was no match for Orla's rapid arrow fire, but then their heads exploded unleashing a swarm of tiny crystal spiderlings. Both Makander and Krisanna panicked and were unable to stop spiders from creeping into their brains, reducing their intelligence. Some swift stomping and bashing flattened the swarm but our heroes were left with headaches. Bastonn split the ingot into manageable chunks so we could carry them out.

We followed the fresh air again into a vast cavern. Krisanna investigated a perfectly circular pit, seeing spiders crawling up from the depths. This was the time to use the dynamite! The stick tumbled into the depths and then a vast fireball exploded upwards catching Makander full in the beak - oh noes!

Some swift healing from Bastonn helped patch up the severely singed duck, but he was looking in a sorry state.

We killed two spiders who were wrapping up a bat, and followed the fresh air which led to the ventilation shaft, where we also found a strange fossil, but somehow made our way back up to the surface.

We used Aodhan's magic boat to get back to town as quickly as possible to see if the doctor could cure our brain spiders. Makander recovered (mostly) but Krisanna was left in a coma!

After sticking her in a somewhat ramshackle sweat lodge she eventually recovered but seemed to have permanently lost some of her skills (and she wasn't great at bushcraft and languages to start with).

Of Dice and Men by David M. Ewalt

People have always played games, going back to the very earliest days of civilisation. Conflict of various sorts has been a popular theme, with chess being the prime example, which developed into elaborate war games used to teach strategy to officers during the Napoleonic wars. HG Wells is known to have taken these ideas and refined them into a game that could be played with toy soldiers on your dining table, and this spawned a whole hobby of painting large armies of lead figures in painstaking detail. 

Sometime in 1967 a war gamer called David Wesely ran a popular Napoleonics game called Braunstein where players were assigned an individual character to play instead of an army. Another gamer called Dave Arneson then took this idea into a fantasy setting in his invented world of Blackmoor and he used a set of battle rules called Chainmail written by Gary Gygax. Arneson shared his ideas with Gygax, and between them they produced Dungeons & Dragons, a scrappy box set that would go on to revolutionise the world of gaming.

David M. Ewalt uses this book to tell the history of D&D, illustrated by examples from his own gaming experiences, firstly as a kid and later when he returned to the hobby as an adult. He takes a journalistic approach, visiting large games conventions and even trying his hand at live action roleplaying, an idea that had previously filled him with horror at the idea of dressing up and running around with a foam sword.

The history of D&D is told chronologically, detailing the company TSR that Gygax set up, the sidelining of Dave Arneson to cut him out of royalties, the arcane boardroom battles and financial chicanery as the company experienced rapid growth and then plateaued, followed by Gygax's own ousting. TSR was eventually rescued from financial collapse by another company called Wizards of the Coast, who were in turn snapped up by the business behemoth Hasbro. It's a fascinating story and takes us up the release of D&D 5th edition which would see a renaissance in the popularity of the game during the 2010s, the sad passing of Gygax himself in 2008 and the GaryCon convention set up in his memory.

This is a good book for anyone with an interest in the history of D&D or who wants to know what playing the game is like. The sections about Ewalt's own games may be a little cringeworthy for more experienced players but there was enough here to make it worth reading for me. 

Of course, the story of D&D doesn't end there, but that's a tale for another book.

 

Of Grumpy Trolls and Exploding Mines

We woke in the morning to the smell of gingerbread with glittery sparkles coming from the chimney. The cat was happily devouring a pigeon in the yard. It hissed as we passed but was (slightly) mollified by a saucer of milk.

Krisanna knocked politely and the door was answered by the smaller of the three witches (still in the nuddy!) with delicious cooking smells coming from kitchen. Both Makander and Krisanna looked a little concerned at the size of the oven which could easily have roasted a duck or a halfling. Yikes!

Fortunately it was only cookies in the oven, and the bacon appeared to the traditional pig variety and not anything else. We offered to do some chores around the house whilst asking about the dogs and Sly George, who turned out to have been even more of a rotter than we thought, having jilted Esme the witch for some trollop from the village. They offered a banishment scroll (effective for dogs and tyrants) in exchange for the head of Sly George.

We looked at the map again and we reasoned that George and his cronies must be in the tower at the north of the map. Krisanna took a gingerbread biscuit for later, whilst Orla and Bastonn looked to trade some loot with the crones. They also told us about the magic face changing cloak that George had pinched that was supposed to have been a betrothal gift.

We headed north, determined to uncover a little more of the map. We heard a dozen hounds running through the woods but we had enough time to climb up into the trees before they arrived. We passed the hunting lodge and further on we encountered Ralph the hermit by the stream doing his ablutions. Krisanna offered him a gingerbread biscuit but he was more worried about fetching his bath robe.

We spent the night in the trees and then spotted a suspiciously clean stone bridge with a grumpy looking troll taking tolls. He was very cross about being double crossed by a pixie who had crossed without paying his silver shilling. Fortunately he took payment from us and was happy to let us across, passing the debt on to us to collect.

Further north still and we finally found the silver mine - hurrah! Krisanna was skipping from one foot to the other with excitement and couldn't wait to go down the ventilation shaft, but boring Bastonn insisted we search the buildings at the top first.

We found some interesting gloves and vials of acid in the first room, then a dark office room with book cases and desks which Krisanna searched finding mechanical pens, a large iron key, a sheaf of paperwork (which turned out to be ownership papers for the mine, now out of contract)

Bastonn lowered Krisanna down the mine shaft finding the miners shattered elevator at the bottom. Krisanna proudly claimed the mine for herself!

The passage proved to be full of dead bodies and poison gas which exploded, causing slight singeing. We found a notice warning us to extinguish flames if we smelt gas - ooops!

Of Hunting Horns and Strange Sausages

The morning was an uncomfortable experience with all of us (save for Orla) changed in strange ways. The cosy cottage was now an abandoned ruin and instead of the cooked breakfast that we had been expecting we had dry rations and whatever Orla could hunt. Krisanna was feeling glum but cheered up by her new woolly socks - a present from the Spirit of Small Gifts.

We headed south into the forest, not having much luck foraging through the day, but in a stroke of luck Makander stumbled over the perfect camp site for the night and for once it didn't rain! Dry socks all round.

The next morning dawned with just a hint of a chill in the air. Krisanna was relieved to be back to her normal size, as was Bastonn, but Makander still had mysterious red eyes. We remembered passing some strange pillars marked with magical script so we took a diversion for Aodhan to check them out. He spent some time and managed to decipher two useful spells.

After another night at the premier campsite we headed north east to find an old tree with an opening at the base and a boulder split in two. Krisanna's treasure sense was tingling so maybe this was the silver mine that we had been looking for? OK, so there were some faded warning glyphs on the boulder and the stairs looked a bit slippy and there was a funny smell of bones too.

There were pictures on the walls of the wild hunt with ominous images. Krisanna could make out sounds of a large animal (or animals) in the dark - yikes! Krisanna and Makander crept back out and then Krisanna tooted the hunting horn to see what would happen. Apart from a blood curdling note nothing happened, so Krisanna went back down and threw a biscuit into the darkness. In response two fearsome looking dogs bounded out of the gloom, two fast for Krisanna to evade. Fortunately Bastonn killed one with his mighty attack and Makander jumped to save Krisanna from being mauled.

Dogs despatched we explored the next room, which contained a pool of blood and a slightly gnawed arm. We found a room with a sinister mural (featuring a surprised looking adventurer), a staircase with bloody bits and a final room which had a non bloody staircase so we took that one.

This led to a room full of iridescent beetles (soon encrispified by Aodhan), a mysterious mechanical creature with four faces and more mysteries until we concluded that we really needed to speak with the crones to find out how to defeat the dogs.

We skirted the edge of the woods, until we chanced upon a meadow with immaculate vegetable gardens, flowers and fruit trees. Orla noticed a large black cat on a window sill and flying monkeys.

Krisanna knocked politely on the door to be greeted by three witches who were completely in the nip! Crikey! We asked for some milk and eggs for our breakfast in the morning, politely declining the sausages which looked a bit ... unusual.

We camped for the night outside the rose bushes, disturbed only by a strange creature wandering about in the garden. Curiouser and curiouser.

Don't Eat the Fae Food!

We returned to the secret door, and squeezed through a narrow, be-spider webbed tunnel into another spooky room, filled with creepy crawlies. Makander patted his pockets, wishing for a flame thrower. We found a very dead skeleton, clad in fancy looking armour with a mirrored shield which we thought might come in handy for reflecting nasty gazes. Unfortunately the skeleton was quite as dead as it first appeared and it attacked Makander!

Krisanna tried to sneak around, feeling very scared, and was even more scared when it's head swivelled round and it swatted her. Fortunately Bastonn managed to smash it to pieces in one mighty blow.

We followed the corridor which ended in a secret door that led into the inside of an iron maiden with eyeholes looking out into a torture chamber. We found the catch to open it and stepped out, finding a table full of instruments of pain. Another sign of the depravity of the Cryptwood tyrant! Unusually there was a black stone knife that was shiny but not the right kind of shiny.

We returned to the main room and investigated the small door to the east, which Krisanna checked and opened into a smallish room with a small stone altar with a bronze statuette of a small humanoid figure. Krisanna went to the check it on the off chance that it might be valuable and realised that there might be a trap just as something slimy fell on her head. She managed to dodge some of the worst effects but it still burnt her armour and cloak.

Bastonn jabbed at the ooze with his flaming torch, to little effect. Orla threw one of her bottles of Dragonfire whisky at the creature and lit the alcohol with the torch, but that fizzled away with a horrible stench. We beat a retreat into the room to the north and grabbed the chest that we saw in there and realised that we need to escape before the slime burnt its way through the door.

On the way out Krisanna spotted another secret door, with sacks of coins, an ivory drinking horn and a silver pepper pot carved into the shape of a head. There was also a black lacquered box, a fancy girdle and a leather pouch containing 6 rubies. We had time to check the large chest, which contained a jet black hunting horn.

The sounds of schlepping from the north encouraged us to get a move on so Makander and Orla each grabbed a handful of coins, doing rather nicely. Bastonn discovered his softer side, trying on the girdle and found it to be surprisingly comfortable and befitting of a Baron.

We camped for the night and woke to a thick pea-souper of a fog that made navigation tricky. We headed north following the river until we found a partially ruined tower. It looked to be heavily guarded so we gave it a wide berth. Krisanna took charge and confidently led the group the wrong way in the fog, getting lost in the trees. We avoided a bear cave before finding a grotto with a primitive statue bowing its head towards a depression carved into the rocks which had what looked like some things that might have been precious including a pearl necklace. Krisanna swapped the silver pepperpot for the necklace and noticed that the statue looked angry and it was now raining. Oh dear.

We looked for somewhere to camp, and heard a crashing as a bear appeared through the trees with a swarm of bees surrounding its honey covered snout. We climbed a tree and so did the bear, fortunately not the same one. We did manage some sleep in the tree.

Back to exploring, through scrubland and nettles where we saw a neat looking whitewashed cottage with smoke rising from the chimney. It turned out to be a pub run by an ogre, serving three very drunk pixies and a thin, pale hooded figure playing cards. We ordered some ale, which was followed by a meal of dumplings, forest vegetable stew and a hot acorn pie.

We joined the mysterious elf who dealt a hand of cards and somehow managed to win a large amount of money off of us, giving only infuriatingly cryptic answers about the crones, the barrow and the hunting horn, as well as a final tantalising hint about the silver mine (with ominous things beneath).

At breakfast the next morning we all seemed to have been affected in different ways by the fae food - Bastonn had lost half his weight, Makander had red eyes and now Krisanna was as big as a troll. Oh no!

-

Parlay or Par-tay!

A cold and miserable night, with the damp getting into every crevice left everyone exhausted. Krisanna picked the left side of the villa to explore, with everything covered in moss and barely recognisable. We could just about make out some weather worn frescos of some large black hounds loping through a forest leaving red footprints. Mmmm, suspicious.

There was a large tree growing through the roof of the first room. Makander spotted some glowing masks hidden amongst the roots while all Orla spotted was a midge that flew into her eye. Krisanna wanted to try one but Makander insisted on a more cautious approach. 

The masks turned out to be suspiciously life like (and somehow warm) alabaster death masks of various figures, male, female and androgynous, including one with a crown. Could this be Lucius the Cryptwood tyrant? Suspiciouser and suspiciouser. 

Leaving the stairs for now, we looked at the next room with a stone door and some more detail visible in the frescos with some horrific looking dogs. Krisanna knocked politely and entered, seeing some old books and a heraldic crest on the wall depicting a rearing brown bear with an oak crown. She found an old genealogy book and a stoppered tube. Meanwhile Aodhan heard huntsmen approaching so we bravely hid while they rode into the courtyard. One of them shouted what sounded like 'Elora' which was answered by someone at the other end of the villa. 

Krisanna greeted them to see if it was Sly George but the leader claimed to be someone called 'Dave'. Elora turned out to be in a sorry state but we didn't have anything to heal her grievous wound. We decided not to attack 'Dave' and shared a bit of information about the hounds. 

They rode off and we continued exploring the villa, finding a bath house with a more or less intact ceiling with another fresco of three mermaids with green eyes. There was a large wheel that turned out a sort of tap and turning them unleased a torrent of stagnant water which was swiftly turn off. The last room contained two very dead flying monkeys. Yuck.

It had been too long without treasure so Krisanna wiggled her nose and confirmed that there were shiny things waiting downstairs. We made our way down into a dark chamber with more frescoes visible. This one had several figures of different kinds, each one mutilated in some way. Even more yuck.

We followed the sound of running water into a room with a pool with some ominous splashing from something moving around (and possibly squawking). We then headed east, then north into a room with broken glass and a wall lined with mirrors. Krisanna immediately went to check her reflection noticing that something was snoring. She unfortunately crunched some of the glass and the snoring stopped. Fortunately whatever it was went back to sleep. 

The mirror turned out to be magic containing Lord Lucius himself, claiming to be king of all the woods. He tired of Krisanna's attempts to find out about his treasure and the mirror exploded, as the sleeping beast exploded from the passage to the north. A eagle-bear! (Definitely not an owl bear - who would believe something stupid like that?)

The Eaglebear was tough, but Krisanna managed to back stab it while Aodhan loosed off a surprisingly effective fireball followed by Bastonn's dragonslayer move covering Krisanna in entrails. Yuck yuck yuck.

We pushed on into its lair, with some grim taxidermied heads on the wall. Krisanna straightened the crooked bear's head and was rewarded with a satisfying click from somewhere (possibly to the west) where (possibly) there were some animated skulls playing I spy. We took them out to a nicer spot (with more choices for I Spy words) and in return they told us of a secret door in the bottom shelf of the ossuary.

- 

Of Wyvern livers and sweary fairies

We headed south-east, then south, reaching the edge of the woods where a strange smell of sulphur was in the air by an area of hot springs. The water looked invitingly blue but the steam was a funny yellow colour. Even Orla wasn't tempted to go for a dip.

We carried on a little further, looking for a camp site, when Krisanna spotted an old willow tree with an X carved into it. TREASURE! A bit of digging turned up a dagger with a pearl handle and a large uncut gem the size of a pigeon egg. There was also a substantial pile of coins worth 300 crowns. 

In the night we heard seven people - six humans and a wolfkin - approaching. Was it Sly George or the mercenaries? Fortunately they didn't spot us and headed off to the north. The rain set in, and we settled down to a damp, but fortunately trouble free, sleep.

We explored further to the south east, finding what looked to be a ragged nest containing large pink, spotted eggs. Krisanna spotted something flying at speed towards us - maybe a wyvern? Didn't we need a wyvern liver? Krisanna reacted quickly, throwing a knife and scoring a hit. The beast replied with a terrifying roar as battle was joined. As it swooped in, Makander caught it with a massive blow under the wing, killing it in one strike! After a bit of head scratching, he also managed to butcher the beastie and extract the required liver.

Heading north, we saw pillars of rock inscribed with strange, geometric patterns that we couldn't barely make sense of. Perhaps it was high draconic and magic somehow? We made a note to revisit here, but luckily found a dry and sheltered spot to spend the night. 

More exploring the next day led to the discovery of a dead person, possible one of the ones we'd seen the other night, with his throat ripped out and a wolf (or large dog) print nearby - uh, oh! Krisanna and Makander took the first watch, almost nodding off when there came a huge blast of a hunting horn nearby. A restless night left us all tired and we ended up getting lost in the trees, losing the trail, before finally spotting the giant stone archer that we had seen through the trees previously. 

Krisanna tried to climb it, but slipped and fell, thankfully being caught by the rope she had tied off at the midsection. She eventually made it to the crown, spotting the landmarks we had previously visited as well as  a ruined tower, a derelict villa and a makeshift stockade. The statue didn't come to life in the night but we did spot a strange, large cat watching us in the morning. Another day of exploring turned up the battlefield where the hunter had lost his men, and then a very sweary fairy called Hootenanny turned up the next morning. She told us how to find the Thirsty Sprite pub with the landlord Grolk and eventually flew off somewhat unsteadily.

We visited the villa next, finding it in an overgrown and run down state, covered in green flockulence (whatever that means!). There were ten humanoid statues dotted around the courtyard, too covered in greenery to be recognisable. Makander selected a large stick from the forest, poking the statues finding that the green goop swarmed up the branch and attacked!

Twisted faces appeared in the weird green pseudopods, with screaming mouths! Krisanna somehow managed to hit herself with her own dagger somehow. The slime proved to be tough and at one point it sucked Makander into its maw, but Bastonn eventually managed to kill it. Phew!