Episode 82: "Two Will Become Nine"

Morning came, and Kobayashi hit the ground running, looking to get a fix on the situation at Chateau LaFey. He scurried around the stable, scrounging up materials with which to cast Detect Harmony. Fifteen minutes of feverish labor yielded an armful of hay and three desiccated discs of horse manure.

"If only I had some liquid to hydrate this dung, I could construct an organic matrix with which to detect the underlying energies of this strange place."

He turned to see Madmartigan in the corner of the stable, unsheathing his polearm. Kobayashi dashed over to him, brandishing the manure.

"Stop! On these! On these!!!" Placing them at his feet, Kobayashi watched with rapt anticipation. Madmartigan got stage fright.

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Having avoided nightwatchman duties and grabbed an extra half hour of shuteye, Xeno awoke to an animated discussion down below the hay loft. Takemiya, Kobayashi and Madmartigan were regarding a large arrow on the wall of the stable. It seemed to be made shit and straw. Kobayashi was yammering excitedly in Oriental. His hands were covered in poop..

"Whatever madness has come over them, it was obviously brought upon them by the ladder leading down from this fell loft. I shall make my way down by some other path."

After fifteen minutes of dumping bundles of hay over the side of the loft, Xeno had a pile he felt comfortable jumping down into. He did so with no alarms and strolled over to his comrades, absentmindedly brushing hay from his backside.

"So what do we have here? What dire omens are portended from this... strange, down-pointing arrow constructed of hay and shinola yon wall?"

"It means we must explore the cellars of the chateau," Kobayashi exclaimed with a touch of pride.

"It means there's a rapidly downtrending vector of harmonies in the area," said Takemiya reproachfully.

"It means 'Hey man, let's like, get some tea', man," mused Madmartigan.

Xeno weighed the three options with the acute mind of an experienced party leader before dismissing all three.

"I'm off to the front of the house," he quipped before taking off at a brisk pace. Kobayashi followed in a huff, his hands still reeking of Harmony.

"What a sad, strange little man," wheezed Takemiya, to no one in particular.

"I can't really comment, man," replied Madmartigan. "Let's go get some breakfast."

The two of them then ambled to the back of the chateau, where they found Miriam waiting on a large back porch. Something was obviously not right with her. Her eyes shone with an ethereal happiness.

"Gentlemen! I trust you rested well? Please come in and enjoy some of the fine breakfast meats Henry has laid out. They're all there: Bacon, Pork sausage, Ham slice, Cubed ham, Turkey sausage, Steak strips, Shredded beef, Cubed beef, Shredded pork, Chopped pork, Chopped lamb, Chicken strips, Chopped rabbit, Shredded goose, Venison steak. Come in and help yourselves!"

Miriam turned and shimmered into the back of the chateau. Madmartigan eyed Takemiya, who in turn eyed him back. 

"Was she nine months pregnant last night?" asked the monk. "I mean, I ingested a rather foolish dose of cinnamon at one point. I could have missed something." 

Madmartigan's gaze remained fixed on the yawning doorway that had swallowed Miriam whole. 

"I don't think so, man. But what the hell. All's I heard was 'bacon'." 

Madmartigan shambled towards the chateau, and the monk, shrugging his shoulders, followed closely behind. 

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Out front, Xeno discovers the Black Horsemen lurking on the perimeter of the property. Having previously lost all his fear horses and being outnumbered, Xeno strode directly at them in a huff, demanding a Word. But all he got was some more cryptic phrasing from O'Brien, the leader of the Black Horsemen.

"You will see that two have indeed become nine, and we seven stand watch to see that the One does not come again."

Xeno seemed less than satisfied, and made to escalate the situation, until Kobayashi gently persuaded him that there were other, less overtly mysterious and threatening fish to fry on the grounds of the chateau. Like the small cemetery next to the old church, for example.

"Hey! I just remembered that I can Raise Dead! Let's go!" 

Xeno stalked off towards the small church as Kobayashi hurried behind him, not totally convinced that he had actually avoided any trouble after all.

The Horsemen watched Xeno darkly, especially O'Brien.

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Back inside, Miriam is showing Takemiya the buffet, and proudly pointing out the new "Live Bacon" station when Madmartigan hears a familiar voice that chills him to the very marrow.

"Madmartigan! Takemiya! I trust you two rested well?" It was Xoe. She was sitting at the end of a long dining table, partially hidden behind a heaping pile of the rarest meats. Her chin was dripping with juices. Her eyes were beaming. She hopped down from her chair and hurried towards the men. She was in a flowing, white lace christening gown. Her belly was swollen well into its third trimester.

"Gentlemen! Have you heard the news? I'm going to have a baby! Isn't that wonderful? I'm hoping for a girl, of course. I'm thinking that 'Abigail' is a perfectly darling name. What do you think?"

Takemiya was the picture of stoic calm, while absolutely all of Madmartigan's flesh was trying to crawl down the back of his trousers and escape out through the kitchen.

"Yeha, man, that's llike -hey! Congratulations! Let me just grab some tea and I can like, you know, toast the baby and, I'llberightback."

He turned and burst and burst into the kitchen, nearly bowling over Jonathan.

"WHAT THE FUCK, MAN? WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" 

Madmartigan was having his tenuous grip on reality stretched to the breaking point as it was; he didn't need a confrontation with the new owner to totally ruin his day. He threw up his hands and tried to make nice. It actually worked.  Taking a couple of jereboams of ale outside, he and Jonathan sat down and struck up an immediate friendship - even if he was oblivious to the little girl who came running through his kitchen in tears.

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Takemiya did not like how things were going inside. These pregnancies were obviously sinister, if not demonic. The lack of vegetarian items at the buffet was too much to bear. ANd now Madmartigan was cozying up to the owner of this accursed place, and with alcohol, no less. As he cast his ancient eyes about the grounds, looking for an escape from this increasingly eerie scene, he saw Xeno, with Kobayashi in tow, making a beeline for the cemetery.

He cast one final glance over his shoulder at Xoe, who had just taken a bite from what looked like a raw deer kidney, and hurried out to meet up with her brother. He knew Xeno would be up to no good, but for once he was actually a safer bet than his sister.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Xeno completed the incantation in a language he didn't quite understand. The words "ineffable" and "eternal soul" were simple enough, but he couldn't shake the sneaking suspicion that he was about to summon his uncle's fervent radiator from the Beyond. But within minutes, a silvery apparition began to coalesce in the middle of the tiny graveyard. It was a man in fancy dress.

"Don't be scared now my friend - I am Count de LaFey. This was my chateau once, long, long ago. But once I discovered my cheating wife and found that she was carrying a bastard child, I could not suffer the child to live to inherit what was mine... So, on one fateful night, I pushed the whore down the stairs and she fell down, down, down... to the crypts below the chateau. The fall had broken her neck, but the child - the child was stillborn.

"And that's when I became obsessed with a strange idea... I burned my wife, named the child Abigail, mummified the embryo and entombed her in the family crypt as a reminder of my wife's mortal sin. But now, as I haunt these grounds as the family ghost I fear I may have exorcised poor judgement."

Xeno, Takemiya and Kobayashi shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. Nothing could be heard but the humid buzzing of flies.

"Hey, what's that kid doing trying to climb out that window?"

Episode 81: Modus Operandi

Madmartigan settled down in the corner of the hallway, a silver platter full of pancakes in one hand, an exquisite silver five-tined fork in the other. The luscious, earthy smell of them overtook Madmartigan,and he dove in with gusto, savoring every bite.

The smell of them also snuck out the front door, spotted Xeno, and quickly hid itself behind a potted plant and awaited the right moment to strike. Xeno, having just fallen gracefully from the second floor window, was perhaps a little distracted by his landing and did not see the luscious smell as it leapt from its hiding place and struck Xeno a blow it the stomach. Gut-wrenching hunger overtook the gnome, and he fairly tackled the butler in an attempt to wrest the malevolent waffles from his shaking and trembling hands.

As Xeno tore into the vaguely fleshy-tasting breakfast discs, Xoe was having problems of her own. An acute cramp started to form in her midsection; the immediate effect of which caused her to pale considerably and curl up in a ball in the corner while rocking herself back and forth, muttering barely audible curses.

Takemiya eyed the buffet, and as the ancient monk's eyes caught the suspicious mound of cinnamon piled high on yet another priceless silver tray, he made a rather adolescent decision in trying to take the 'cinnamon challenge'.

He failed miserably.

The sound of the old man's hacking coughs and cracking ribs was broken by the loud PINGK! of a small metal key being expelled from the monk's lungs and landing on the cinnamon tray. Kobayashi reached into the growing ruddy cloud and retrieved a small brass key.

Kobayashi thought it prudent to Detect Harmony. After seeing a writhing baby bubbling in a bell of blood, he determined there wasn't any.

Xeno then initiated Operation Hide in the Stables for the Night, with limited success. He and Madmartigan managed to meet a young boy in a bodysuit made of a strange material, sparkling with diamonds. He called himself "King", and claimed to be hiding from his grandmother, who only arrived the night before and struck a chord of terror in the boy. Xeno immediately ignored him and hunkered down in the hay. Madmartigan hears voices from within the house. King hears them too and, in a trance, shuffles off towards the house...

Xoe is no longer around, either.

Meanwhile, the monks explore the old church, finding an even older priest, a graveyard, and the bell that just rang thirteen. The find the bell, when rung, rings silently - but discover a silver purse, a friendly rat and a walled-up wine cellar.

Kobayashi also hears voices coming from the house, and return to the stables. There, they spy on the house and see a young woman -not Miriam - in the window. This other woman gazes at the moon through an upstairs window, then is guided by the hand inside, into the darkness of the room.

She is spotted some time later, swaying hypnotically down the stairs. The whole thing seemed so unreal...

Everyone then proceeded to hunker down for the night, setting up alternate watches.

Nothing much of note happened.

The morning came...

Episode 80: Mission Impossible

The dust had barely settled before Xeno was heading down the stairs to recover his hat. He'd worked too long, too hard, and had eviscerated too many giant-kin to let it be lost to Chicken Heart now.  Even as he made his way carefully down the steep and perilous natural stairway he was not troubled by the fact that the thing that currently had his hat was a giant, ravening beast. He also failed to notice that he was descending stairs quite easily, having been transformed by the magical chicken feed into a larger, more humanoid size. And so complete were his thoughts of revenge and recovery that he didn't notice his sister descending the stairs behind him until she's landed in the mud at his feet - concussed, cocooned and strangled by her own garroting wire.

"Where is this mud coming from?" Xeno asked no one in particular. He looked up into what should have been the ceiling of the large subterranean caver. It had begun to rain.

Madmartigan was next down the stairs. "Hey, man, should your like, sister be that, you know, like, blue?" Xeno looked down dispassionately. "Blue. Like she knows what it's like to feel blue. That was my favorite hat."

Madmartigan let the weird wash over him like the cold, dark rain was beginning to, and quickly bent down to undo the wires around Xoe's neck. After a moment he had managed to free her and she seemed to be breathing. 

"Gimme that," Xeno spat, and he hoisted Xoe up in his arms and trudged off in the direction of the chateau that rose out of the forest like a purple mole on the skin of an acquaintance who you'd quietly urge to see a doctor. It's windows were dark. There was a smell of old flowers.

Meanwhile, the monks were having a really bad time. Takemiya had managed to displace himself by about three feet, and when he tried to have the two act independently, he just managed to pull himself over the precipice and into the forest below by a shimmering blue chakra slinky. 

Kobayashi had even less luck. Becoming fed up with his ineffectual nature, he decided to channel a little Xeno and bring some chaos to bear on the situation. Problem is, Xeno isn't so little anymore. So when Kobayashi found out that Billy had a sheet of "Unkle Terd's Hot Pynk Blotter Acid" on him, the monk bade him to ingest it forthwith. The last Kobayashi saw of him was a sparkly streak as Billy leapt into the void. 

Kobayashi then decided to perform a similar leap, gracefully launching himself from the precipice and into a nearby pine tree.

Problem was he failed to launch himself, then missed the tree.

By the time both monks recovered, Billy was seen streaking towards the chateau screaming "I'll fuck anything that moooooooves!"

Later, the party would find his pants.

By the time the rest of the group had gathered itself together and shuffled off to the chateau, most everyone had been brought inside the estate of Jonathan LaFey and his young fiancee, Miriam. There, the butler served up warm tea, scones, and very special pancakes and everyone (apart from Xeno, who lay in the mud, nearly got eaten by Chicken Heart, and gained a very special umbrella) warmed up and was just starting to feel normal again when...

Episode 79: Chicken Heart

"The second worst thing you can do to a creature is kill it. The worst is to get Xeno to hate it."

When Xeno is done with something, he's done with something - and such was the case with the mostly broken glass pyramidal chicken coop. Xeno fired up his Forked Finger of Doom and with an atypically well-placed fireball, brought the thing down in a smoking ruin. The dust, smoke and burnt feathers had hardly settled, however, when a muffled cry rose up and out of the rapidly cooling slag heap.  17

"Hey, man - I'm tryin'a sleep!"

Billy was quickly sent in to the sizzling mess to extrude what appeared to be a rather large human wearing plate mail and covered in tar and feathers. 17

"Hey man, thanks for the rescue and all, but can you help me find my flaming monkey?"  17

And so it was that Madmartigan and Lance joined our intrepid adventurers. He was immediately helpful in letting the party know that they were indeed in Undermountain, and on the third level down from the surface. He had been guiding another group of adventurers when he was set upon by a particularly fearsome foe, and had fled smack dab into the middle of the demonic chickenherd's flock. 17

"Fucking chickens, man..."

But not that the flock was no more, Madmartigan agreed to lead the party up to the surface... if he could just remember which way he came in. 17

"Yeah, out of here, we like, take a right and... is that like, a dead dude? Naw, man, I think it must be THIS way, yeah- Hold on a sec... Does anyone else hear that?"

Madmartigan froze like a dog listening for a whistle only he can hear - then suddenly bellowed "GET OUTTA HERE, MAN!" and took off at top speed down the hallway - only to come face-to-maw with... 17

Chicken Heart.

Bursting through a section of dungeon wall as if it were the last three sheets of toilet paper the morning after free burrito night at "Disreputable Sanchez' All Night Burrito Bin" was the largest, meanest, toothiest and certainly unrotissiereiest chicken anyone had ever seen.  17

Madmartigan froze. Or he would have done, had he not already been travelling at top speed down a slick stone hallway towards a ravening monster that had just violently appeared a mere 20 feet in front of him. So he did what anyone would have done. He tried to use his glaive-guisarme to pole vault up and over Chicken Heart's head. 17

It will come as no surprise to you that he was not successful.

In fact, Madmartigan was now splayed on the beast's nose, legs dangling tantalizingly in fron of the monster's hungry mouth, while his weapon lay on the floor some 15 feet away. Clinging on for dear life, Madmartigan's nerves finally hit the breaking point as most of the indigestible parts of a "Disreputable Sanchez Bargain Bucket" finished it's inexorable journey through the fighter's gastrointestinal tract at least two hours too soon. 17

Rushing to the stinking knight's aid were Kobayashi, who employed the Jade Hand to a rare 86.666% efficiency and sizzled Chicken Heart's ankle and Ragnar who, while failing to connect with his Dwarven Berserker Rage, managed to get punted down the hallway by the giant fiend, taking Billy down the hall and down the stairs in the process. 17

Seeing two of his friends coworkers associates down and out at the claws of Chicken Heart, Xeno charged into the fray, ululating a battle cry worthy of a chicken feed-wielding gnome. 17

It will come as no surprise to you that he was not successful.

Xeno in fact tripped, spilled and slid his way underneath the beast, and prepped his hat for the Gutting of Destiny. Takemiya quickly joined him after a rather nimble display of monkish cartwheeling and glaive-guisarme retrieval. The two aimed a double attack at what they hoped was the soft, unprotected underbelly of the great beast. 17

It will come as no surprise to you that they were not successful.

The did, however, manage to rankle Chicken Heart just enough so that as Madmartigan was attempting to clamber up and over the monster's head, he instead was jostled by the annoyed beast and instead slipped down off it's nose and landed with a wet schlup on the hungry beast's tongue. But luckily, due to his recent inundation in 'secret sauce', Chicken heart was not interested in gulping down the beleaguered  warrior. 17

That bought Xoe just enough time to sneak in, clickitty clicketty her Dagger of Venom and strike... 17


It will come as no surprise to you that she was quite successful.

So successful, in fact, that the pain she inflicted was so great that Chicken Heart screamed - screamed so hard that the entire contents of his stomach were brought up in one hot, miasmic geyser - one that shot Madmartigan down the hallway, surfing on a tidal wave of bile, avian stomach juices, random humanoid body parts and armor - right into the recently-recovered Ragnar and Billy. 17
#downthestairs #again

Reeling backwards in pain and surprise, Chicken Heart stumbled towards the weird outcropping of rock from whence he came - and reached out and grabbed the nearest thing to try to break his fall. Unfortunately, he came away with a clawful of angry gnome. As the two toppled over the precipice into a strange, subterranean forest. Xeno steeled himself for the inevitable impact by aiming his pointy hat down Chicken Heart's maw; and when they hit, Xeno's hat got him right in the gizzard - and the impact was so great that it caused Chicken Heart to expel the remaining air from his lungs and propel Xeno up, up, up to the precipice with a thud. 17

Rejoicing at the reappearance of their friend coworker associate, the rest of DCM gathered around Xeno and thanked the gods for his safe return. Xeno, however, just stepped to the brink and peered down into the dark and foreboding forest, scanning the murky silence for any sign of the great demonic bird. 17

"Well, we're gonna need to go down and get that hat back."

Episode 78: In the Hall of the Chicken King

Being transformed into an undead chicken has never been considered a positive career move.

Don't mess with his chickens

But after being lost in an unknown subterranean level of Undermountain, set upon by a demonic chickenherd and sprayed by chaotic lightning, their current status could be deemed  by the party as "not too shabby".

Xeno was feeling petulant and peckish - so he pecked around the back of the cavernous coop to find a snack. He, of course, did so. And what the multicolored chickenfeed lacked in flavor it more than made up for in restorative zeal - and before you know it, Xeno was his old, hat-stabbing self again.

The rest of party, however, chose the wrong time to venture out of the nest and were soon caught up in a skeletal lord's hot pursuit of some fresh meat.

"Are you playing D&D?"

Drafted into his service, the rest of DCM soon was forced to pounce on the fallen men-at-arms, rip open their spleens and drink their fluids.

This was generally interpreted as free license to loot.

It was here too that Kobayashi had enough and went on the offensive. That is also generally interpreted as a sign to duck and cover...

...and rightly so - for as the Bringer of Death to Campaigns showed up, it took a particularly clever bit of trident wielding by Billy to slay the skeletal lord and save everyone for another day.

Episode 77: Skyfall

Exiting palace
Early morning fog bodes ill
Ancient monk rolls 1

A sinkhole appears!
Dude, a totally deep hole
Ends in tears and glass

A downy landing
Reveals many bloodshot eyes
Fuck, they were chickens!

Typical entrance
The demonic chickenherd
Confused, seeks justice

The party rallies
Some bruises and broken bones
Kobayashi hurts

The Jade Hand, jock itch
"You just executed the
Wank of Destiny"

Xeno's icy pick
Fails to impress Chickenherd
He ends up all wet

Kobayashi tries
To grapple horns, tweaks nipples
Having rolled a 1

Demon gets angry
Tries to hit Kobayashi
Breaks forearms instead

Supa Gro Powa!
Takemiya lashes out
Head almost comes off

A Xeno reprise
Stabs demon right in the heart
But then rolled a 3

Lightning everywhere
Dead cells reanimated
Frankenstein chickens

Wandering outwards
Undead chickens seek answers
Find smoke, blood and doom

Xeno Clucks Up

You know that feeling when you try to step up the last step on the stairs, except you’re already at the top, and for a split second it seems like you’ve just stepped off the edge of a precipice, until your foot finally thuds down extra hard onto the landing? Imagine living in that split second every moment of your life. One of two things would happen: You’d either become a follower of The Way of Mrs. Cosmopolite, accepting that life is entirely unpredictable and there was no point in looking for order; or you’d go screaming into madness.

Or just maybe, you might try to balance on the knife edge between the two. One hand wide open like a child’s for any and all possibilities; the other gauntleted in mail and magic and clenched around a dark star of fire and chaos. Maybe, you’d become Xeno.

Really, he would have been more surprised if something hadn’t happened after leaving the prince’s presence. As he was daydreaming about attaching an enormous pair of raven’s wings to his pointy hat, and subsequently sweeping down from the steppes with his band of implacable mounted warriors upon an unsuspecting populace; and further distracted by wondering if maybe somewhere in the couloir du temps he’d accidentally gotten daydreams intended for a mighty barbarian plains warrior, who himself was at this very moment wondering why he was in an alchemist’s shop fondling an alembic, Xeno didn’t really notice why a hole punched through what was seeming like the increasingly fragile surface of Lungfish Isle should choose that moment to open up underneath them all, but he certainly didn’t consider it...unexpected.

He landed alive and covered in chickens and, crashing through a glass pyramid notwithstanding,  as that was pretty high on the happy end of the scale of positive outcomes to being dropped into some Abyssal region, he came up feeling positive about life.

“That looks like a friendly enough fellow,” he thought, as the slobbering demon approached him. “Hi!”

It didn’t take too much being punted around like a recalcitrant chicken to turn the switch in Xeno’s head to “overload,” and while he was taken down hard, he came up swinging, with a distressingly cold spear of some sort welded into his hands. “Ah well,” he thought. “The true artist creates with with the medium to hand.”

“Listen, punk,” he snarled. “I’ve shat out, killen, eaten again and shat out again bigger demons than you before breakfast. Bring it.” After divers alarums, Xeno found himself with a vulnerable-looking demon on the ground before him; a rising chicken population and nowhere to go but up. “Insert spear A into heart B,” he thought. “What could go wrong?” But just in case, he reached out with his chagnomic powers, drawing on his own cold darkness, channelling it into the spear thing for a decisively killing blow, preferably a spectacular one, too.

ZONG.

You know that feeling when you try to step up the last step on the stairs...? Sometimes, you think you’re about to fall; sometimes you realize what happened; and sometimes, well, sometimes you just know you’ve been turned into an undead hellchicken.

“Crap,” said Xeno, who did so, liberally, and went to look for something to eat. “Ooh! Demon entrails! Nummy.”

bawk.