Slain by Elf

The pirate ship bringing the iron ore, and maybe mithril, comes in to the cove. We see the pirates on the ship, as well as their captain, who 'has a mean-looking parrot'.

'So do I', says Pasha, about his re-summoned minion for the occasion. 'Well, he's small and cute.'

'In a fight with this one, you would definitely come second.'

'I dunno, my parrot can deliver touch spells.'

'No, you would come second.' With a little trepidation we spring our trap, for what it's worth. We basically hide a bit, and rush out to attack when the pirates start disembarking.

I shoot my bow from where I'm hidden, getting a solid hit on one of the pirates coming down the gangplank. His cry of 'argh!' echoes around the cove.

'At least he hasn't alerted the other pirates', I mumble to myself.

We get a surprise round on some bugbears we've sneaked up on. One gets stabbed in the back, the other two are engulfed by quite a damaging fireball. All in all, it's an effective surprise.

'You don't see any more bugbears, but we're going to stay in initiative.'

'Why's that?'

'No reason.' Our spider-sense tingles, and we don't stray far from cover as, sure enough, some more bugbears appear from a tunnel further ahead, including one that looks a bit more threatening than the others.

'I'm going to blind the boss', says Pasha, casting a spell.

Rolling a 1 on the saving throw produces a yelp from the bugbear. 'He's immune to a lot of things, but blindness isn't one.'

'That's one of my favourite bardic tunes.'

'The ship transports iron ore.'

'...what?'

'Iron ore.'

'Or what?'

'What?'

'Mithril?'

'No, iron ore.'

'Iron or... mithril?

'Just iron ore.'

'...what?'

The ore from the Iron Island looks like it is brought to the mainland through an abandoned castle overlooking the coast. On the assumption that the operation will be guarded, we try to sneak around to scout the location, rather than stomping in blindly.

The walls of the castle are not entirely intact, which allows us the opportunity to sneak in at a few places, but could also make our presence more obvious to anyone looking for intruders.

At one point, we want to get past a particularly big break in the wall. Helped with the use of a Space Marine miniature, Pasha comes up with genre-confusing way of continuing. 'I'll jetpack over the gap.'

'Over the what?'

'The gap.'

'So there's a collapsed section of wall, and your plan is to jetpack over it so that you won't be seen?'

Our adventuring guides us towards the Iron Island, where our new dwarven ally, Herbie, escaped and where lots of other slaves remain, working to extract minerals from the quarries there. The main problem is how to cross the water between us and the island.

We find out from Herbie that a ship regularly transports the ore from the island to the mainland, which seems like our best chance of getting to the island ourselves. Of course, getting passage on the ship may not be straightforward, at least once we reject the obvious choice of offering ourselves as slaves.

'I have criminal connections', says Nerrick, 'I may be able to contact the smugglers'.

'Bear in mind your location, and that these pirates will be enemies of the state', warns the GM.

'Well, yes. That's why they're pirates. If they weren't enemies of the state, they'd be the navy.'

The artefact we find in the dream world returns with us when we awake. Good, the second one is ours. As we return to Cairo by train, Tobias takes some time to analyse the artefact.

Tobias looks like he understands what the artefact is, and manages to activate it. Unfortunately, doing so causes a small, energy-based explosion, which shatters the windows in our train carriage. Such an effect could be handy at times, but now is not one of them.

Naturally, a guard comes by to see what the commotion is. We manage to bluff our way out of the situation quite well, complaining about the defective carriage, and manage to get moved to another one.

Not quite having learnt our lesson, and partly because only Tobias can do it, I want to see if I can use the artefact. Not activate it, just see if I can.

'Tobias can guide you, so give me an Occult roll, an easy check, so with +20.'

'96. That's a fail.'

'Or you can try against Cthulhu Mythos.'

'Is it still an easy check, at +20?'

'Nope, flat check against Mythos.'

'Okay. Ah, 03, that's a success by 2. Yeah, that's right, choke on your drink, Mr GM.'

I understand the artefact independently of Tobias's guidance. This may come in handy, because we reach our destination and find that we have been followed by the weird cultists somehow, and that they are holding people hostage until we hand over the artefact.

'Do we negotiate for the artefact?'

'Two of us know how to activate it. I could use all 8 of my magic points and just blow it all up.'

'Well, maybe not all of Cairo.'

'Hmm, good point. We don't know if the power scales linearly or on a logarithmic scale.'

'Yes, all we know is that 1 magic point blows out nearby windows. 2 points could destroy the continent of Africa, and 3 obliterate everything out to Mars. Let's call that Plan B.'

Drinking some strange concoction some strange man gave us, we find ourselves in some kind of dream world, one that is familiar to our investigations. We follow the path before us and eventually come before Apep, a massive worm that we have to defeat.

We know from our research what we need to do, and advance. Knowing what to do doesn't mean we can do it, but never the less we start beating back its many heads, subduing it little by little, and throwing chains over it as per the myths we uncovered.

It's a strenuous and hazardous battle, but we are victorious! Five chains pin Apep down, and the worm is pulled back in to the earth.

'We defeated Apep, think of the XP!', says Tobias.

'There isn't any.'

'Oh, it's only a dream, isn't it?'

'And the Cthulhu RPG.'

We manage to sneak somewhere we're not supposed to be. Good work, fellow investigators! Now we just need to get past a guard, to continue our investigations. But how?

Maso has an idea. 'Why don't we fill the basement full of tear gas, and...'

'Because we're in the basement', I say.

'Without gas masks', adds Tobias.

'And don't have any tear gas.'

'But apart from that, it's a good start.'

'Oh yeah! I crush the Sneak skill check! I move like the wind! ...what was the other check?'

'Listen.'

'I fail.'

'You don't say.'

'You walk in to the hospital. It is a normal, relatively busy hospital, and as you noticed from the outside it has three floors; the ground floor, and two floors above that.'

'Yes, I am familiar with how buildings work.'