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alberteamllc · 5 years ago

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Father’s Day Part 2: 10/12-10/13/2019

Starring Abby as: Flinty McClintock Puffin McClintock Mungo Fungo as: Mugo Mugo Molly as: Ardis Sarmasik as: ”Tiger” Beatrice Catamount Maddie McCallister Jesse as: Bon Jean Bovi as: Bon Jean Bovi Beldric Bolton-Sarmasik Aparna “Panther” Panchali as: Armad Arcanium

“Tiger” Beatrice Catamount as: Hesperus Hapax Featuring Tartuffe Eikhorn Greg Hogswain Egg Hogswain Syrup Hogswain Tavi Feathers Tantan Weechy The Bachelor Guilotte Crevette Chanchala Chala Carmine Whistling Marcel Reinrose Astrid Insatsi Ilan Sarmasik Fiz Albertine Rosenbee-Sarmasik Salomon Six-Fingers Jag Dillweed Gniece Quoyn Quilliam “Billy Wolfgang” Adavispa Aloysius Snaxxx Bertolt Breakfist Erasmus Rosenbee-Sarmasik Yotoni Toni “Tony Pepperoni” Hasdrubal Weil Hologram Hambeaux C.A.R.B.U.C.K.L.E. Sanuwa Sawbones

Unable to quell Bovi, Tartuffe enlists Ardis to put him to bed with an interactive fable based on a favorite bardic college past-time, Jensen’s Aleatoric Combat Mnemonics. He explains the rules and instructs Ardis to play Tiger Beatrice, while Bovi insists on playing as himself. As he begins to tell the heavily abridged tale of the death of the vampire Oskar Sarmasik, Mungo barges in to take over and the two squabble and fight.

While the night stretches on anxiously for the rest of the group downstairs, waiting for the princess to arrive with news, people trickle in and out of Bovi’s room to contribute to the story. Panther interjects with her own character, a rowdy cat-person named Armad Arcanium, Chanchala seizes control of the tale to have Bovi’s in-game persona beaten to death, and finally Tiger Beatrice settle in at the bedside as Hesperus.

Meanwhile things develop in the outside world-- fires and riots begin to break out across the city as Weil’s golem continues its advance, the palace has been engulged in a macabre fleshy bulb, and every warlock bonded to the valley falls violently ill. Astrid and Ilan arrive to brief Flinty and Mungo on the situation: ever since the wave of sickness hit the warlocks, Viceroy Pitchfork has been off the grid, and every member of his private army has seemingly vanished, leaving the city in chaos and the gutted Gentle Guild unable to restore order. The Wardens are split between trying to get through the bulb and attempting to put down the worst violence, mostly Kugari and the Colonel’s gangs taking advantage of the situation. What’s worse, the Viceroy and the Peacemasters authorized the use of the golem to destroy quarantined areas-- first the Old City, then the palace.

Inside, Mungo takes inventory of the wounded and weakened warlocks, and in doing so discovers Marcel Reinrose’s surveillance. Tartuffe attempts to explain himself but eventually gives up and wipes Mungo’s memory.

Everyone gathers to figure out what to do. Tavi & co. reveal that they do have something close to a solution, a way of interfacing with the spore species that Vejovis’ spell has summoned and which constitute the actual pathogen of the plague. However to open up a channel powerful enough to banish them will require a massive expenditure of energy-- akin to the sacrifice Zimitra made decades ago during the last plague. They’ve accounted for this however and have three subjects prepared to chip in-- Tavi, Puffin, and Mungo. They explain that, best case scenario, they will be drastically fatigued afterwards, and will need an escort of strong warriors to help them get up the tower and back, as well as a fourth volunteer. Vos volunteers, rudely, but no better options present themselves.

Rumbleforce (and the Bachelor) agrees to go off and deal with the golem while the Crystal Cats escort the nerds. Astrid provides the assembled parties with a number of sending earrings so everyone can remain in touch.

With no time to spare Flinty gets Albertine on the horn and blackmails her into giving them a lift across town in her hideous horseless carriage. Flinty quickly becomes furious at her slow, safe, sane driving and seizes control, tearing through sewers and over ramps, quickly getting Albertine’s eventually destroyed car to the Old City. There, they meet with a band of Handsome Lads and the ad hoc ruling body of the island-- Bovi finally gets to meet with Billy and extend his loving sentiments. The leaders-- Billy, Gniece Quoyn, Aloysius Snaxxx, and an unnamed fourth-- have a plan to protect the island, but the spokesperson for the Handsome Lads, good old Jag Dillweed, proposes taking Rumbleforce to meet an eccentric retired halfling engineer, Yotoni Toni, the eponymous Toni of the “Toni Pepperoni” chain of pizzeria/arcades, to discuss a radical plan of his. Albertine reunites with her brother, briefly, and attempts to explain the situation with their inheritance, but he’s in no mood for this shit.

Yotoni has become a reclusive mystic in his cluttered garage, having flavor-blasted life until it became death, and kicked creation up a notch until it ate its own tail and embraced the generativity of destruction. In short he turns his back on pizza and animatronic characters in favor of enormous bombs and miniature tanks fueled by pizza grease and nitroglycerine. He shows them his bodacious masterpiece, a series of seven components which can combine into one fully-loaded war-machine. By turns incredulous, terrified, and delighted, Rumbleforce divvies up responsibilities. Bovi calls dibs on being the blue one and becomes the left leg, Flinty stridently demands to be the head, Ardis, crammed into an iron lung and doused in Trauma Sauce, is the heart. Albertine and the Bachelor volunteer for the arms, and Beldric drunkenly insists on being the dick (Toni obligingly lets him control the robot’s tail). Fiz bravely offers to be the remaining leg. They clumsily take off towards the bay and the slowly approaching golem, where Weil perches, controllings it moves with the help of the helmet.

Things go poorly. First the robot blunders and falls into the water, then the Bachelor recognizes his boss as the pilot of the golem and begins to sabotage the whole thing, snapping off Albertine’s rocket hand and throwing it into the ocean, then sabotaging his own controls however he can. Rumbleforce runs damage control on his nonsense, Bovi by sending Hambeaux up to seize the reins, Flinty by summoning her new familiar thing to scramble the Bachelor’s brains. He eventually gives up and ejects. Meanwhile the Bachelor closes the gap and begins to savagely dominate the Rumblebot in melee, tearing off the tail and severing the leg. Bovi responds by kicking a hole in his hull, and after Albertine perilously leaves her damaged cockpit and crosses over to the Bachelor’s empty one, she and Flinty combine their attacks to take out the golem’s arm and heavily damage his outer shell further. The two colossi continue to tear each other apart again as Ardis struggles to reroute maintenence to where its needed most. In the midst of this she succumbs to the LCL or whatever and dreams of the day her father abandoned her-- but in this dream she meets Gus Flank, who begs her to rescue him from Weil and end his spree of carnage. He offers to lend her more power and she accepts.

Weil’s golem is on its last legs, so he gives one last final assault, decapitating the rumble bot and rendering the remaining arm useless, before personally running across to the robot to finish things. Ardis notes this and clambers out of the chest to meet him on the damaged neck. He taunts her for making her last stand alone, and flaunts his connection with the helmet, using its enhanced senses to effortlessly dodge even her most skillful attacks. However, eventually her friends join in from below however they can-- Albertine shouting inspiring words from the water, and Flinty, from the bridge, using her familiar or whatever it is to heal Ardis and distract Weil. Eventually Ardis lands a hit, and then another, shocking Weil and sending him into a fury of smites. Between his rage and a few well-placed potshots from the Bachelor, relocated to a roof across the bay, Ardis is reduced to her last few hit points when Weil suddenly freezes mid-swing, the helmet refusing to cooperate, overheating rapidly. As he sears his hands trying to tear the helmet off, Ardis presses her advantage, darting around him with Beatrice’s rapier until, badly burnt, confused, and terrified, he makes his escape, abandoning his golem and Pitchfork’s plan.

In the aftermath, however, the Old City Court’s own contingency plan goes through and the entire island fades from existence, unfortunately (?) with Albertine on it. Flinty is pessimistic and annoyed at Bovi’s hopefulness, and they take the moment of calm to check in with the other group. The halflings have been separated from the Crystal Cats by a rapid growth in the plant defenses around the palace, and have fallen back to Crystal Cats HQ, while the Cats themselves remain trapped within the palace ground. Rumbleforce decides to hijack a boat and go back to the mainline to pick up Mungo’s crew.

At the Cats HQ, an unusually helpful and cheerful Chanchala helps clothe and feed refugees from the chaos. Rumbleforce checks in with everyone and then Flinty goes to investigate. She discovers some shocking things-- first, that “Chanchala” is just a projection and that the “real” Chanchala is her shadow, which is off somewhere feeding. The projection explains that the warlocks’ pacts have been displaced by something else, a byproduct of the plague or otherwise some creation of Vejovis. Any one of them could be a potential enemy. Sawbones is still in her monstrous form, and everyone speculates that it has to do with her bonding to her haunted dad. Ardis reminds everyone that she has a bottle of Dad’s Elixir from way back when Vejovis was just an eccentric ally, and Mungo recklessly chugs it. Everyone is horrified except for Tavi and Puffin, who explain that due to a serum distilled from Vos’ blood sample, this will just allow him to try to communicate with the colony creature of the spores. Mungo moves off to burp in peace at the spores, while Tavi administers the serum to Ardis and Flinty in preperation for their final assault on the palace.

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