Episode 87: Xeno and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

"The transformation of excrement is one of the great secrets at the center of Carl Jung's work on alchemy - the quest to turn base material into gold. It's a universal metaphor of psycho-spiritual development, growth, and maturity. If I can look at the "excrement" of my life--all the places in me that hold the worst things I have ever done, witnessed, or had done to me--unpleasant as that may be, it is also the first step toward turning this "base matter" into "gold." Ironically, it is only by looking clearly at the "excrement" of my life that I can transform it into the "gold" of forgiveness, self-acceptance, and felt-sense of the presence of the Divine. Unless I do this, any seemingly spiritual perspective I embrace will only serve as camouflage for my denial and self-deception, which will betray me in the end."

- Jeremy Taylor, 1996

This is not what Xeno intended when he pissed into the crater where AMON once stood. Rather like the basest cur did Xeno wish to make known his displeasure with the house. But when one has courted chaos as he has, one must be careful where, exactly, one relieves himself. For even though there is a burgeoning tradition of 'urine as transformative vehicle' at DCM Enterprises, no one could have guessed just where this latest expression would take them.

It took them straight up.

Suddenly, rumbling forth from the center of the crater, a giant beanstalks shot up, up, up into the sky. Leaves unfurled and vines uncurled as it did so, until a tall, sinewy ladder stretched up and into the flat gray atmosphere. And as the party stood staring up in slack-jawed amazement, something stirred at the bottom of the stalk. The Lovecraftian Dildo Machine had excavated itself from the rubble of AMON, and it was looking for revenge. But Madmartigan was ready, willing and oddly clearheaded. He waited until the Machine got close enough then WHAM! drove his pike straight into it's steamy heart. Extracted it, even. For as the thing shuddered and died, the opalescent, moving heart of the thing remained on Madmartigan's weapon. The only real negative in the situation was the zipping fragment of metal dildo hitting Xeno full in the groin - but after the red fog of pain cleared, Xeno found his skin had been transformed into liquid steel. Not a bad tradeoff, you'd have to say...

Iryien and Takemiya noticed a cold fog was closing in on them. As they both peered into the depths of the collection of liquid water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the ground using their own particular methods of divination, they both reached the same conclusion: there was nothingness beyond the white curtains of vapor that were inching ever nearer.

"Yeah, why don't we just start climbing now, shall we?"

The climb itself was unremarkable but for two things - one, the perpetually-falling pair of XXXL lime green panties and Xeno's unwise/unfortunate/typical (choose one) decision to lick the turgid, chartreuse skin of the beanstalk itself. And while Xeno collapsed and his eyes rolled back in his head in an ecstatic vision involving lizards and spewing pink foam from his mouth, Takemiya grabbed his falling body and hauled him up behind Iryien, who had discovered the top of the 'stalk.

At the top, a canopy of leaves spread out in all directions. Iryien peeled back one rather large leaf to reveal a red velvet wonderland. A cherub-topped brass pole forest sprung up out of the plush red carpeted floor. A gold-flecked linoleum path took off in two directions, and on the other side of the path, a dressing room suddenly appeared in an alcove in the forest. Two stations, one for Iryien and one for Xoe, were set up complete with flowers, a card, and a graduated set of drawers - each holding a chain maille bikini of diminishing size.

Iryien stepped forward and after investigating (and mentally calculating square centimeters) declared that the two should don the second-smallest size.

The rest of the party suddenly took great interest in investigating the quality and craftsmanship of the linoleum pathway.

Suddenly, the brass forest parted and the eerie sexophonic sounds of Kenny G swelled up from speakers hidden in the forest. The forest parted and a long, dark runway appeared. The high pitched voice of Billy then boomed over a distant sound system:

"Gentlemen aaaand gentlemen! Here tonight, for YOUR enjoyment, I give you the goddess Iryien and her petite love slave... Xoe!"

Since the invention of the colossal drunken roar, there have only been five colossal drunken roars that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. The two women sauntered out, clad more in confidence than in armor, into the center of what appeared to be a spherical coliseum. In all directions there where men - whistling and jeering men - above, below and all around. Billy bade them to dance - but they did not. Billy yelled over the PA for them to dance, but still they denied him. When next Billy screamed for the girls to dance, Iryien raised the hand to the murmuring crowd and saith unto them that she would only dance if they crowd would convert to Geetsieism after the show.

The crowd fell silent.

The crowd wondered exactly what kind of commitment this would entail.

The crowd then weighed that against the benefit of getting to see these two shake their collective thing.

And right then, right there, 80,000 men converted on the spot.

Billy continued his tirade, and even went over to the light technician and tried to shut down the show. But as soon as he reached over the sound tech to turn of the music, a beer bottle whistled through the air and smashed into a million pieces at his feet.

This was construed as "an instructive act" by a number of drunken converts.

As bottles and ashtrays whistled through the air, Billy pulled the sound tech - a matronly woman by the name of Madge - back towards the exit, using her as a human shield. Glass flew everywhere, and as Billy slunk away, cursing Iryien and his horrible luck, Iryien willed the music to resume and she danced...

Meanwhile, as the boys loitered back in the brass pole forest, everything went dark. Madmartigan felt the presence of other creatures, and quickly Kobayashi confirmed that they were being approached by what looked like three bouncers in night vision goggles.

A melee ensued.

Takamiya employed his Supa Gro Powa and readily dispatched two. Xeno lowered his head and charged the third thug, intending to groin him with his helmet.

But for the third time that night, Xeno rolled a 1.

Xeno sprinted towards the thug. He lowered his head. He aimed at his thigh. And he hit him... right in the holster.

There was a big BOOM.

And Xeno knew no more...

Episode 86: The Fall of the House of AMON

So it broke down like this:

After Xeno gained access to the house through the bulkhead, he was followed by Saladin and a shrunken Chickenheart. At the bottom of the stairs they met a drunken, belligerent butler. Words were exchanged and a headbutt was proffered. The butler did not emerge victorious.

As the remaining three made their way to the crypt, a catastrophic event was occurring on the second floor of the house. Somehow, Madmartigan had managed to put up just enough resistance to the Machine to cause a critical buildup of pressure in it's steam housing. The resultant backflow of superheated, super-pressurized steam, applied to a moving matrix of steel, wood and rubber parts caused a sort of 'tactical explosion' that targeted the room's more structurally integral parts. It also helped that Iryien had now arrived, and with her expert assistance, yet another thing was destroyed. The room collapsed, taking Madmartigan and the Machine with it, straight through the dining room and into the cellar below...

...to where Saladin had just discovered the mewling, screeching infant Abigail. She was in the sarcophagus, crawling across the body of the poor, cursed (and now quite dead) Miriam. Saladin tried to soothe the infant, and produced pie charts demonstrating the scientifically-proven advantages of a nuture-over-nature approach to child rearing. But it was at this point that the Black Horsemen charged into the cellar and whisked the child away to the chapel in the forest. There, the old kindly priest was awaiting with a tiny coffin and seven silver spikes (the better to nail you with, my dear).

O'Brien, the leader of the horsemen, as well as the rest of DCM then proceeded to nail the infant's squirming little body into the coffin, thus preventing her from rising from the grave to haunt the world ever again.

Probably.

And as Kobayashi hammered the last nail home, a loud crash from outside caused everyone to rush out the chapel door and watch as the house of AMON collapsed in upon itself, until nothing was left but a rubble-filled crater.

Xeno then walked to the crater's edge, undid his tunic, and urinated into the bottom of sinkhole.

Episode 85: Xoe's Wind Breaks, Abigail is Reborn, and Madmartigan Gets the Short End of 17 Sticks.

When the smoke cleared, only one thing was certain. Xeno's fireball had struck again. Two charred corpses, a partially-melted monk, and the distinct odor of fried chicken everywhere. Xeno wasn't quite sure how he'd made it from the Vermeer to the back yard, but it was always his belief to fong first and ask questions later. 

And right now the question was: "Why is the chateau glowing purple?"

Madmartigan knew. For even as the long, slithering tendrils receded from his brain, he knew that Amon was angry. THEY were angry. Abigail was coming and Grandma would not be there to greet Her. This put the house in a Very Bad Mood... 

Iryien had been languishing in the Steam Pits of Urg when the call came. To her, it had sounded as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. She bolted upright, sending her towel hurtling through the murky air and into the face of Borgat, minor deity of Feldspar VII. "Sorry Borj, gotta run. Xeno has killed his sister again."

Takemiya limped over to his acolyte and recoiled in horror. Kobayashi's face had taken another ghastly blow, and he could even see where three of his teeth were missing through the place where his lips had once been. But a strange idea came to the monk's mind, and he reached into his robe and withdrew the three teeth he had picked up from the bloodstained carpet; three teeth that had once belonged to the dead King...

Chickenheart stumbled back into the edge of the wood, its tiny mind reeling from the pain. What the fuck was that? it thought to himself. Who just lights up the night with a fireball like that? I mean he had friends right next to him when that thing went off... The giant undead chicken paused for a minute, blinked, and tried to push back the pain. Wait one fucking minute...it thought to itself. Since fucking when can fucking I talk? 

It was right about then that the party heard a scream.

It wasn't the short, staccato scream of someone meeting a terrible end. It was the long, drawn out scream of a woman in labor, giving birth to her own personal terrible end. Abigail was being reborn, and it was time for the final showdown.

It was Madmartigan who acted first . He was no stranger to strangeness, and a chateau that was not only angry, but glowing purple was one of the strangest things he'd seen all week. The tea had finally stopped fogging his mind, and he was determined to be decisive and why is that window opening up AND SUCKING ME INTO IT AAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH??!?!??!?!?!??!??!??!?

Kobayashi? The monk had had some hard times of late, sure... but his recent embracing of the Chaos of Action was bound to pay off sooner or later. That's right, sleeves rolled up, caution to the wind and plunge right in and why is that patio rising up AND FORMING A TOOTHY MAW AND SUCKING ME IN AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH????!?!??!?!?!??!?!??!

Xeno didn't let the fact that two of his mates had been eaten by the chateau stop him from his plan of attacking the chateau. Hat on head he charged at the thing, and only a haunting, echoey voice in his head stopped him from fonging the thing to the ground.

"Seek thee the cellar." Was this a trick? A demonic ruse? If so, it was a pretty clever one - telling him just where to penetrate it's defenses instead of just snapping him up like it had the other two. But something told Xeno this wasn't a trap - told him it was some other benevolent force assisting him in his quest to bring this sorry affair to an end... and he was right. For the strange chaos that follows Xeno had grabbed hold of Chickenheart and opened his mind to the dimensional nexus that was the Chateau LaFey, had enabled him to see through the physical walls and into the three-layer timecake that the house had become.

A gentle nimbus of light came into being and grew in the air above Xoe's charred corpse. As the light grew, it became evident that two figures were at the heart of it, and one was MUCH bigger than the other. The big one was the first to emerge from the portal. Saladin hopped down to the ground, looked around quickly and assessed the situation. Corpse. House. House eating people. Xeno. Two monks, one horribly disfigured. Giant undead chicken. Ancient memories stirred in his lumbering Athasian brain. Then he turned on his heel, stepped over Xoe's body and headed towards Xeno. That's where the action will be, he thought to himself.

Iryien emerged from her warptunnel. Looking around she found Xoe's charred body on the ground, just beneath her hovering toes. The brutality of Xoe's corpse contrasted beautifully with the understated elegance of Iryien's recent manicure. Jazzmeen over at 'Jazzmeen's Nail and Beautye Parloure" had gone above and beyond this time, and it really showed - in fact I think she'll be getting a little something extra at Christmas, don't you know. Anyway, the contrast was so starkly beautiful that a tear came to Iryien's eye and she shed it; it fell with a splat onto the pile of ashes that had once been a cheeky gnome with a thing for knives...

Xeno found the bulkhead that led to the lower levels of the chateau. "Say anything, and the door will open," spake the voice in his head.  Xeno looked down at the rusty doors and thought about how things have gotten away from him a bit of late. "Anything," he muttered hoarsely, and the great doors swung outwards with an ominous creak. He shrugged. "Typical." He paused, sighed quite heavily to himself and then plunged into the opening.

Speaking of plunging, the House had sucked Madmartigan into one of the upstairs bedrooms. Quick as a flash, he found himself bound to a pair of wall sconces by an extraordinary length of woolen scarf. As the sound of a steam-driven machine from hell reached his ears he turned to see...

The Thing That Should Not Be

Madmartigan's cries could be heard for miles that night:
"FLÜGGÅƎNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN! FLÜGGÅƎNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN!!!!"

Never roll a 1 at Grandma's house...