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...

Episode 84: A Chateau In Darkness...

The image of tentacles dragging Kobayashi and the dead boy's body underground had barely had time to fade from Xeno's retinas before the wan, pathetic figure of Missy appeared in a window right behind the macabre scene. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked up and locked eyes with the gnome. She threw up the sash and wailed: "Can you help me????????"

Xeno immediately took guard, brandishing his cold-forged iron graveyard spears, prepared for whatever the sobbing blonde girl might be able to muster. Takemiya, sensing that some sensitivity might be called for, waived off Xeno's impulse to fireball the chateau and stepped towards the girl, offering help. But when the house itself opened a doorway where the window once had been, and Xeno saw the girl standing in a long, forbodingly-carpeted hallway, Xeno renewed his threats against the chateau, and nearly got decapitated by some flying slate roof tiles for his troubles. 

With a stern 'quit horsing around before you get yourself killed' look, Kobayashi followed Missy into the house and up a hidden spiral staircase. 

"It's Grandma," wept the girl to the old monk. "She's just arrived, and she's horrible, and she's doing something to my mother, and I think King was involved..." The two listened (Xeno had now, begrudgingly, caught up) while they climbed, and had now reached a second floor hallway. It was menacingly carpeted, lined with a rogue's gallery of fatal portraits, and completely sheathed in the most malevolent shade of mahogany imaginable.

At the end of the hall, the tinkling notes of a music box could be heard. Missy froze. 

"That can't be him... I saw him die!" Xeno crept silently towards the sound, grave spear drawn and ready to strike. 

The music stopped. The door opened.

"Hi guys! What's going on- OOOF!"

Quick as a whip, Xeno unleashed a spear strike right into King's solar plexus. With a strange splintering sound,  King fell onto his back, clutching his chest in pain. He raised a hand to protest, but before the words "What the fu-" could spring from his lips, Xeno struck again, this time... to the lips. Blood, spittle and teeth flew everywhere, as the boy fell back and onto the carpet. Blood oozed onto the plush, patterned pile but the carpet only gained credibility and style. Missy slid to the floor in mute agony as Xeno bent over the boy to loot the body. He found the splintered music box which had saved King from the first attack. A tiny ballerina lay within the shards of wood, as well as a diamond, faceted and almost perfectly spherical. Xeno pocketed them, and three of the boy's teeth as well.

Just then, a door in the middle of the hall opened, and the most eldritch of women appeared. Her silvered head swung quickly around to take in Xeno, the boy, the mutely blubbering Missy and Takemiya. She turned to the monk and with sharp, cold eyes whispered in a voice as dry as papyrus and smelling of Werther's Originals:

"What's such a dashing and comely gentleman doing outside my boudoir?" She stretched a skeletal hand out to Takemiya's shoulder and guided him towards the door from which had emerged. "Come, come into my room and let's have some tea..." Takemiya found her suggestion irresistible, even as he could see, out of focus and over her shoulder, Xeno being hauled bodily into one of the portraits. But this was not the first, nor second, time he'd seen Xeno get sucked into a wall fixture, and everything had turned out OK...

So Whistler's Mother had been a bit of a bitch, and her cold, clammy hands had no doubt taken liberties with Xeno while hauling him into the painting. He'd walk with a limp, and he was pretty sure he could skip his next prostate exam, but he also knew that he gave as good as he got, which meant Whistler would soon have a brother...

Xoe was sitting at a sturdy kitchen table, bathed in the smear of low sunlight that had squeezed its way through the panes of lead-lined glass that framed the scene. A maid in a starched white hat poured cream into a glass at her side. She turned as Xeno entered, and with a demure nod, whisked herself out of the room.

"The food here sucks," she intoned, chin dribbled with bright red smudges. "It all tastes of linseed oil and chalk. But still I must eat, as my child is ever hungry for more and more and more." Her hands were in constant motion, moving from her plate to her mouth to her grease-stained gowm. Her belly was huge. She didn't look up from her meal.

"Is there any way out of here?" Xeno blurted out a little more nervously than he intended. he had always prided himself on being cool when the going got weird, but this had now gone so far past weird as to be utterly certifiable. Xoe lifted what he hoped was the remains of a very large turkey leg and pointed off to his left. 

"There's a door over there," she said through a mouthful of greastle. "But it's one of those Dutch ones. Mind the knobs." Xeno slid over to what he hoped was less an exit and more of an Exit. Stage left, even. He pulled on a knob. The door swung noiselessly open to reveal an utter black nothingness. He glanced back over his shoulder to take one last look at his sister. She still hadn't looked up from her meal.

And that was not, in fact, a very large turkey leg.

"Screw this place from behind," he muttered as he plunged into the great dark unknown... 

Takemiya, being a monk, had avoided the undisciplined distractions of female attention for well over six decades. But even his untrained carnal senses were telling him that Grandma was all over his shit and if he wasn't careful, they'd be making the Heavenly Banging Cannons before too long. He was already suspicious of the tea, and as his eyes scanned the room for a neglected houseplant in which to dispose of the liquid, he noticed more than a few things. Firstly, there was no bed. Secondly, there was a wheelchair in the corner that looked as old as Grandma herself. Thirdly, there was a rocking chair in the middle of the room. Not only was that a weird place for a rocking chair, but there was a small spot of dried blood on the arm...

"So, my dear, will you be staying here for long?" Grandma batted her eyelids at Takemiya in a manner that would have made Ted Williams blush. "No," he said uneasily. "In fact, we are just waiting for our friend to finish her breakfast, and then we'll be going..." Grandma froze. An eerie glint came to her eye. "Oh," she whispered. "Her time has almost come... Amon will soon see the return of it's rightful heir before long. Let us go see."

And with that, Grandma led the monk out of her room and down the stairs to the kitchen. They left Missy quietly sobbing in the hallway. There was no sign of Xeno.

Episode 83: A Bad Idea for the Ages

Kobayashi watched the figure of King dissipate into a silvery mist on the floor of the cellar of chateau LaFey. As a chill ran up and back down and back up his spine once more, he heard footsteps and a hideous giggling from the top of a long, steep set of stone stairs to his right. Gone were the strange, rubbery tentacles that had dragged both he and the dead boy underground after King's fall from the second floor. Now all that was left was the monk, and the cold, menacing tomb with the open top that bore the name "Abigail".

The monk quickly scurried to the back of the tomb, away from the approaching stranger. Sitting with his back to the cold sarcophagus, he reached into his tunic and retrieved the only weapon he had on him: the empty wine bottle from the church basement. He heard the footsteps draw closer, and as they reached the bottom of the stairs and made their way to the tomb, Kobayashi swung into action, leaping up from his hiding place and hurling the wine bottle straight... 

...through...                                                     

                                ...the Count.

Not his ghost, mind you - but through the living Count de LaFey - alive and a few years younger, if not a little more crazed-looking. For in his arms was a small, desiccated figure that was also completely unaffected by the bottle as it whizzed through and smashed to a thousand pieces at the bottom of the stairs. The Count took no notice of the bottle or the monk, he just kept talking to it, gibbering a bit, and stray gobs of spittle drizzled down and christened it with his madness.

"Yes, my little one, yesssss.... Here we are and here you will be for the rest of Time, haha. No inheritance for you, no lands, no riches, no nothing, you putrid little thing... Just a box, a cold, cold box... One with your name on it, my dear..."

The Count then set in to a fit of maniacal laughter that, had Kobayashi been outfitted with a reel-to-reel tape deck, a microphone, and some electricity, could have provided excellent source material for Danish Gothic metal acts for centuries to come.

Once the Count ceased to cackle, he placed the mummified infant into the sarcophagus and pulled the lid closed. He then clapped his hands in glee, turned on his heel, and strode back upstairs, striding quite safely through the green shattered remnants of the wine bottle.

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Meanwhile, Madmartigan had just successfully gotten a Vidalia onion into a jeroboam (with only minor injuries) when a window opened on the second floor of the chateau, and an ancient and eldritch woman craned her chelonian neck over the railing and hailed Madmartigan with the most dreadful whispering voice as he'd hear again in all the rest of his days.

"You... Madmartigan... Get in here now... Grandma has made you some tea... Come inside and join us... Join usss... JOIN USSS..."

The primative forebrain of Madmartigan (responsible for logic and rational thought) turned to speak to the reptilian hindbrain (overseeing the more basic functions of the mind (namely fucking and fear)). But before the forebrain could whisper "May I have a word, please?" the hindbrain leapt to the attack, sank all of its hundreds of teeth into the forebrain, and then humped its brains out.

Invisible strings tugged at Madmartigan's limbs and drew him inside, past Xoe (who was still packing away the increasingly rare meats at the buffet) and upstairs to a long hallway lined with some seriously sinister carpet. The patterns would have surely hypnotized him, had he not already been under some dark and malevolent spell.

A hand shot out of the nearest doorway, and Madmartigan was pulled into a dark, mahogany-lined bedroom. The musty smell of death assaulted his nostrils, while the heavy scent scent of furniture polish went through his pockets looking for loose change.

"Here you go, my friend..." A cold, parchmenty hand reached out to him and gave him a teacup on a saucer. Grandma, even more wizened and corrupt-looking up close, smile up at him with a dark and foreboding twinkle in her eye. "Hold out your cup, while THEY pour you some of THEIR sweet, sweet tea..." Madmartigan turned to see a yellowed, chipped floral teapot floating through the air towards him. He suddenly felt very, very thirsty...
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Alone at last, Kobayashi found himself wondering exactly what the hells was going on. If that wasn't the Count's ghost, then why did the bottle pass through him? Was he dead? No, he was pretty sure he'd know if he was... He remembered something Takemiya said at the beginning - something about the chateau being out of time, unstuck in time, something about time... was he witnessing the past? The Count was obviously quite mad... could this scene be behind his current undead status?

Kobayashi decided to have a look in the sarcophagus. With some difficulty, he pulled the heavy stone lid inside. What he saw made his blood run cold: a small, mummified infant. It was lying in a copper-lined compartment within the stone edifice. Around it's neck was a silver chain, and on the chain was an amulet in the shape of an eye. The eye itself was a diamond that matched the sparkling brilliance of the one he'd found in King's music box - but deep inside the stone was a black, iridescent iris that glittered with it's own menacing light. Kobayashi stared, both horrified and fascinated, when the lesser of two bad ideas struck him and he removed the tiny brass key from his robes.

Holding the key, Kobayashi carefully hooked the chain with the key and pulled it up and around the mummy's shrunken head. The monk slowly lifted the necklace up and away from the ghastly thing when it suddenly exploded in a puff of ancient linen, rotten flesh and evil stem cells. The ensuing cloud obscured Kobayashi's whole head and upper body, causing him to inhale, and then cough out, old, rotten baby particles. As he went down to one knee, the screeching laughter of an evil child could be heard.

"This could be bad," thought the hacking monk.

As the laughter and fleshcloud died away, Kobayashi figured he better act, and act fast. He quickly casted about the crypt for materials to Detect Harmony. "Hmmm, let me see... Broken music box? check. Diamond the size of a d30? Check. Evil-looking eye pendant? Check. Shards of broken glass? Check."

Kobayashi arranged the odd collection of items and began the ritual chant.

Kobayashi rolled a 1.

The DM did a little dance.

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.

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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...