>>22259038
I should say that other storytimes are welcome, (or even made/saw/played images. Whatever.)

Anyway, the initial plot was that we were recruited in a bar by a representative of the 'Wildrider's Guild', a collection of cowboys, lawmen, and so on that basically attempted to function as a combination mail and law service. Nevada-Rangers, kind of, from Fallout. Among other things they were trying to gather together people with these odd powers (Inquisitor and my Gunslinger,) and recruit them. Make sure us special individual types were working for them. Inquisitor, being bright, happy, and full of sunshine and rainbows, was totally eager and loved the idea of helping people. Gunslinger, having no money and no friends, and having been without fellow humanoid interaction for a while, figured it wouldn't be too bad, and might be a way to get some money and resources on her side. (Though she did make sure to read the contract very carefully before signing it.)


So the GM gave the two of us a guild NPC representative, (a female kitsune.. oracle, I think, at first, though he changed that to fighter when he realized Inquisitor could heal,) and sent us on his traditional shakedown run; 3x[party size] in zombies, (Never more than [party size+1] at once, and a werewolf. The context of this was that we were sent north to help a town that had reported monster attacks of some kind (Hint: werewolf problem.)

Note: It was vaguely decided that tengu, being tengu, and from pathfinders 'orient' setting, were basically chinamen in this setting. Assuming mild racism and thinking the idea amusing, I tried to make Gunslinger to be the Quintessential Sidekick. Broken english(common) and absurdly loyal, all sorts of useful non-charisma skills to support the party leader, quiet, not one to take charge, etc.

>>22259074
The zombie encounter occurred in an abandoned town, and we netted a sweet 1930s Ford pickup truck from it. (Someone had apparently kept it cared for as a hobby prior to abandoning the town, and Gunslingers Knowledge (engineering) from working on the railroad allowed me to secure some gas from the abandoned gas station.)

The werewolf was later, had apparently been terrorizing a village, and though we fought and defeated him, we found a girl chained up in his basement; she'd been bitten, but hadn't changed yet. We had just enough knowledge (nature) or GM help to figure out that wolfsbane would give her a second fortitude save, but she failed it. So we were forced to return her to her family in the town, explaining very carefully what she was and that they needed to do their best to be careful every full moon. Random villagers were kind confused as to why this was necessary or important, but we'd solved the werewolf problem and even managed to save the girl's life, if not her humanity. (Spoiler: As of current, she's one of the BBEG's bodyguards. Nothing nice is ever allowed to happen.)

Anyway, we return with our shiny new pickup truck (which Inquisitor insists we're holding on until Ford, who she assumes is its owner, can come and retrieve it,) and a mission well done. Yeah!

>>22259101
There's some other stuff, and I don't have the greatest of memories, so my accuracy is more like a scatterplot. We had another mission I can't remember the exact context of. We ended up finding a vampire-suicide cult in a temple of the sun-god. (That one who's always getting confused with Zarus. Pelar, I think.) Assuming that cultists and vampires cannot be up to anything good, we succesfully stop their ritual that would have summoned the sungod and killed them all, and instead, kill them all. (You can tell we're PCs.) We grap some loot around the place, and we meet a rather ancient gunslinger, who's become a treant.

While one might assume he thought it was a decent career choice, the implication I got was that he just became a treant, completely out of his control. At any rate, he used to be a fairly famous figure before he vanished, and he posesses one of the famed Wildcards; the Queen of Diamonds. This is forked over to my Gunslinger, and our NPC fighter shies away from it; she's heard stories about the famed Wildcards, how they carry shards of their wielder's personalities, or perhaps their own; how they can Assume Direct Control, or any other various things. My Gunslinger, however, rolls her eyes and decides that NPC fighter is a superstitious git and takes the gun. As it turns out, things are a bit closer towards my interpretation of things, but the myths and legends about Wildcards remain.

(Just to be clear, this is a complete and shameless theft from the Wildcards: Sons of the Gun setting, which I remember fondly from /tg/'s creations. This is not the actual Wildcards setting.)

>>22259304
The most long-term importance of this visit are twofold; first, a pair of spectacles that are found that allow the user to see other people's souls. A more flower 'See alignment' kind of thing, or perhaps a more in-character version of that. Inquisitor decides these are useful, and makes sure to keep them on her. The second thing would be a workparty outside the temple that was killed and exsanguinated by the vampires, and seem to have in life worked for the SF railroad guild, or something like it. They're a rival entity of our own guild, and a personal enemy of my Gunslinger- I took Flaw [existing enemy] at character creation for delicious extra skillpoints. Besides, I'm a chinese laborer, it's practically obligated.
At any rate, our boss in the guild is somewhat concerned about thier presence this far north (Or rather, this far east; they've got a rail line all the way up to Seattle, but they tend to stay near the coast.) and sends us as an envoy to go see what the hell is up. Yes, sends two of the newest and least-trusted, if not the two newest members of his organization on a espionage mission. Of course, we were PCs, and in our stupid way, possibly a bit influenced by Inquisitor's Boundless Enthusiasm, decided to go check it out. We talk it over briefly and decide to buy a bunch of supplies, load them into our sweet truck, and pretend to be merchants.

My Gunslinger, who used to work for the Railroad and knows just how crappy they tend to treat their workers, (at least, non-human ones. They're full-on fantastic racism.) decides to try and bring some supplies for the workers, and perhaps even liberate some if she can. She attempts to do this by lying to Riley and suggesting that things like blankets, food, and medicine would probably be plausible and easy to sell in our 'merchant' disguise. Literally everyone in the room passes their opposed sense motive check, and nobody believes Gunslinger.

>>22259427
I'm definitely dragging my feet and I'ma try to hurry up here;

My Gunslinger, who used to work for the Railroad and knows just how crappy they tend to treat their workers, (at least, non-human ones. They're full-on fantastic racism.) decides to try and bring some supplies for the workers, and perhaps even liberate some if she can. She attempts to do this by lying to Riley and suggesting that things like blankets, food, and medicine would probably be plausible and easy to sell in our 'merchant' disguise. Literally everyone in the room passes their opposed sense motive check, and nobody believes Gunslinger. Not one.

(Incidentally, I don't recall making a single bluff or diplomacy check succesfully in the entire campaign. Intimdate, yes, but that's because pointing a gun at someone can stack those situational modifiers. Especially when I can use one of the gunslinger deeds to auto-hit for 1d3 damage; Threats about shooting someone dead work well when you've just demonstrated the ability to pierce their ears at fifteen feet.)

Inquisitor thinks she knows what is up, though, and proceeds to go along with it, telling Gunslinger "You know you can tell me anything, right? We're friends...". Gunslinger, naturally, doesn't believe a word of that. Gunslinger's a Tengu, Inquisitor is Human, and therefore Inquisitor is party leader while Gunslinger is hired help. Gunslinger shuts up, doesn't complain, and does her job as efficiently as possible because she wants to keep it. She assumes Inquisitor is 'The Boss', and does in fact refer to her as such in her broken english.

Moving on; We have a random encounter, fight an owlbear, and find a nest full of owlbear cubs and a Wells Fargo lockbox. The lockbox is an excellent find, and provides us with quite a bit of wealth Inquisitor, under the vague misapprehension that owlbears are sapient, brings the cups with us and names them all. (The mother attacked us, but we can't kill these poor innocent creatures.)

Gunslinger, well aware that they're pretty dangerous animals, declines to comment since she doesn't have to ride in the back with them. (Actually, I think this might have been on our way back from the vampire-suicide-cult-thing. We'd figured out they were basically animals when we returned, sold off all but one, which Inquisitor insisted on keeping as Team Pet. Naturally, it died a horrible death.)

We stop on our way to Seattle (the railroad's regional headquarters, to our knowledge,) when we come across a workparty laying track. A bunch of kobolds/orcs/tengu/dwarves/[nonhumans] working the chaingang, and a human overseer.

The overseer, as the GM hurries to point demonstrate, is a wonderful guy. He doesn't believe in slavery! He opposes the Railroad Company, but figures the best thing he can do is work with/for it and try to minimize its foul behavior, because he's such a noble soul. In fact, he buys some of our supplies, namely the barrels of water we brought, out of his own pocket because the supply shipments are late, and his workers are thirsty. What a wonderful person!

Gunslinger, naturally, despises him. Here's someone who apparently realizes just how shitty her nemisis, the Company, is, but instead of deciding that they're something to be fought to the dying breath, he's decided that he'll keep taking their money, work as a low-level overseer of no import, and that he's doing good because of it. What a load of shit. We also find out that the workers families are being held back in the city, and that's why they can't escape. Fun times.

>>22259844
Overseers partner is apparently less sunshine and roses, and Overseer sent him back to try and figure out what happened to the supply train that was supposed to come. We're given a letter which Overseer hopes will his partner discharged from the company or reassigned elsewhere, and told to see if we can find him, and continue on our way to the city.

We find Overseer's Partner along the way torturing two of his minions, where their little handcart apparently got attacked and derailed. We arrive just in time to save the minions (a pair of kobolds, if I recall,) help them get their cart back on the rails and send it on its way back to camp with the understanding that the thing that attacked them unfortunately and sadly killed Overseer's Partner, and they just barely escaped.

Then we take Overseer's Partner off into the forest, Gunslinger executes him, and burries him under a stump. (Plant-powers are useful for disposing of bodies.)

We then make it into town, and go with our whole 'merchent' pretense. Fighter and Inquisitor pose as merchants, since they look/are human, and Gunslinger goes to try and gather information from the railroad's labor camp, where all the nonhumans are kept. Due to OOC misunderstanding I'm redirected to the train station, where I wander on to the platform looking for someone to get some information off of and am promptly arrested because servants aren't allowed onto the platform.

>>22260011
I decide to go quietly; in character, I think I screwed up and assume that the Boss doesn't want me to make trouble. Apparently there'll be a fine, but Inquisitor can easily afford than and come and collect me when she hears about it. Don't want to draw any more attention than I have to, or rack up additional fines. I manage to conceal my guns on my person, assuming that things would probably get worse if I was found, and let them confiscate the rest of my things. The guards steal some of my money, and a Company official shows up to go through my stuff and walk off with most of it, most impoartantly, my gunsmith's kit.

But I'm still armed and a $500 fine away from freedom, so it ain't too bad, right?

Around nightfall, Inquisitor realizes that I haven't come back and determines that I was captured. She promptly decides that Fighter and her must launch an armed rescue. She proceeds to burst into the trainstation firing. (the company cell I'm being held in the same compound.)

Gunslinger, meanwhile, hears suddenly dozens of gunshots, Inquisitor screaming, and everything going to shit. She proceeds to calmly and smoothly hold up her guard, intimidate him into releasing her, rob him of what she can (paltry exchange for what has ben taken from her,) and head out to try and rescue Inquisitor. She is, of course, too late.

>>22260047
I mentioned everything going to shit? The party is now completely separated. Nobody even knows what happened to anyone else. Inquisitor wakes up in the basement of an abandoned pre-war house, with a local Resitance-equivalent member keeping her safe. He helps her escape, and dies in the process (she had the opportunity to heal him but didn't relize he'd been injured and healed herself instead,) then ends up treading water in an underground pit until she gets too cold to do so anymore and loses consciousness.

Meanwhile, Gunslinger realizes she can't find anyone, but among the things taken from her were her gunsmith's kit, and the keys to the pickup. She has no way to find Inquisitor, but she's pretty sure Inquisitor would want at the least the keys rescued, and Gunslinger wants her stuff back, so she prepares to break into the Company's headquarters. It's a dark and stormy night, and the best plan she can come up with is swimming to the lower levels of a skyscraper who's upper levels hold a rather classy hotel and restaurant for the local bigwigs. Swim is not trained, though, and Gunslinger ends up much like Inquisitor; freezing and drowning in the cold waves.

>>22260193
Okay, stepping it up a bit; Gunslinger is found washed up on a beach three days later, nearly dead and remarkably bedraggled. She's found by a little half-elf girl who's mother runs an inn, and is brought back to heal up despite the fact that there are wanted posters for her all over town. Inquisitor was found by some of the Resistance-equivalent, and is brought to the same inn which apparently some of them use as a base. PCs are reunited there, and are informed that the Team Mascot, the Pet Owlbear Inquisitor insisted on bringing along, was tied up outside the trainstation and beaten/starved to death in an attempt to get us fugitives to come forward over the past three days. The other party member of ours, kitsune fighter, is apparently nowhere to be found, and presumably captive. Bad->Worse.

We attempt to infiltrate the snazzy hotel I mentioned earlier, which has real working electric lights and other nifty pre-collapse stuff, by having Inquisitor disguise as a man, and disguising 4'4" Gunslinger as her young daughter. Amazingly enough... This works. Mostly. We have a nice long talk with the completely-evil local head of the company, and her sociopathic-but-less-outright-sadistic minion who ends up as the BBEG. Minion seems to see through the disguise, but informs us after his boss retires that he's interested in "smooth business", and her petty cruelties are not conducive to that; he's willing to help us take her out. Good enough news, except Gunslinger critically fails a sense motive roll, and assumes he's lying to us and that Inquisitor is just being foolishly naive to trust him.

>>22260259
He's actually being honest, though, so Gunslingers attempts to bring Inquisitor around only serve to leave Fighter as a prisoner for longer. We stealth our way up there, then have a gloriou shootout in the presidential suite at the top of skyscraper, where, of course, we kill the local head of the Company, rescue our NPC partymember, and Minion turns on us. (We would have killed him but he escaped.)

The Cruel Bint we killed had apparently used some kind of enslaving magic on our NPC partymember, and, among other things, torment and humiliate Fighter, along with making her rip out Friendly Overseer's throat and/or eat part of him. (He'd apparently ended up on her badside too somehow, and we were too late to save him. No good things allowed.)

We manage to retrieve a few things, though, namely Gunslinger's gunsmith's kit, and the keys to the truck, and we were informed that the truck was on a train and being shipped north, where some special side-project of the Company was underway. We hurried to make that train.
Oh, one of the things we got off of Evil Bint was a philosopher's stone. Wonderful item, lots of money, except for one thing; it reacted... poorly... with Inquisitor's metal-powers and was destroyed. On the trainride north she discovered she had a hungering for metal. Precious metal. Gunslinger watched in amazement as Inquisitor proceeded to eat a few hundred dollars worth of miscllaneous precious metals, and apparently felt better for it.

The train was also possibly the only thing that ended well in the entire campaign. Well, part of it. We hijacked it, stopped it, and liberated a few hundred workers who stole supplies from the train (lots of mining and digging supplies,) and decided to set off and found a town. So that town is there, even if we never found out about it IC and have never been there. We're heroes, we're accomplishing good things!

>>22260456
We head north. A few things happen. Oh, I mentioned that the train 'mostly' ended well? Gunslinger got slapped around by a kid with a shovel, and Inquisitor accidentally killed the kid's father. We made the train stop, Inquisitor drew the engineer out, and Gunslinger went around to board the engine. Due to minor miscommunication, Gunslinger let Engineer's son, who was still in the cab, get within melee range and start attacking her with a shovel. This Kid, man, this Kid.

He apparently didn't realize it was a bad idea to threaten someone with a revolver (and a weapon of myth and legend, at that,) with a shovel. He also didn't know when to stop fighting. Gunslinger, desperately trying not to kill this kid but awful short on non-lethal methods, ended up having to pistolwhip this kid down, and then three more non-consecutive times as he kept trying more shit.

Meanwhile, Engineer failed to surrender, and Inquisitor fired a warning shot. However, GM apparently knew something we didn't, namely, that someone who works in an engine is likely to get covered in coal dust, which is flammable and hard to put out. This warning shout proceeded to light Engineer on fire and kill him before Inquisitor could heal him or find a way to put him out.

We're good people. Really.

>>22260556
So after trying to use the threat of violence to secure the train, we manage to kill the engineer, capture and then lose his son (Kid escaped, and Gunslinger would run into his shovel again,) we continue north. We have a sweet fight in a town that's been taken over by the company, in which Fighter, still recovering from torture, manages to kill like forty people in one round, Inquisitor eats a bunch more precious metal, and Gunslinger, running around on six hitpoints, managest to intimidate a dozen Company enforcers into surrendering prior to being coldcocked to -2 by Kid's shovel. Inquisitor rescued Gunslinger, Kid, of course, escaped.

What the company is doing is using mass labor to mine out some legendary temple in the norther wastelands, which apparently holds or makes or something "Weapons of Conquerers". Sweet. Naturally, being villains, they're using the "Throw expendable bodies at it" to get it mined out and get past the guardians. When we sneak in and start a riot, they're busy sending kobold slaves armed with barrels of gunpowder and sticks of dynamite to blow up the final guardian.

Final guardian is apparently a sapient golem that apparently used to be human but stuff. He's ended up over here, and helps us in a brief fight against Minion-turned-BBEG from Seattle, which leaves us separated from Fighter and trapped underground in the aformentioned temple. Turns out the temple *turns people into weapons*. So there's a sweet dagger on the pedastal, but trying to pick it up means you get to replace what's currently there, as some kind of super-rad sentient magical weapon. Well, the final guardian decides to let us have it, picks up the weapon, is turned into one himself, and we can safely take this sweet magical dagger with some ancient seer inside it. Then, sealed beneath the earth, we're forced to take Mystical Portal to escape.

Good lord I'm like 40% done.

>>22260705
You better keep going

>>22260705
Mystical Portal deposits us in the woods somewhere. 'Somewhere' turns out to be fantasy-fuedal-japan-land. We apparently got depositted in fantasy-dimesion that's busy bleeding-magic-into-/being-consumed-by- our world/dimension. Here we pick up new party members, who expressed desire to join; Dark elf rogue (ninja or assassin archetype) and a kitsune... I think also Rogue.

Anyway, short version; civil war between Good Queen and Bad Warlord. Minor complication: They were apparently reversed prior to a mindraping, alignment-flipping artifact entering the equation a while back. Good Queen used to be Evil Queen, Evil Warlord used to be Good Warlord.

Solution: We don't care. Bad Warlord is acting like an ass, destroys Kitsune Rogue's hometown and apparently conscripted her boyfriend, Good Queen sent Drow Ninja to come and protect Kitsune Rogue for some reason. They function as our local guides, and we all follow Drow Ninja back to her mistress, Good Queen.

Oh, and when Gunslinger wakes up in the forest next to Inquisitor, Inquisitor is sweating liquid platinum.

>>22260730
Glad someone's enjoying it. Thought I might be talking to myself here.

>>22260764
Inquisitor is apparently in the process of taking a template, and becoming a badass platinum angel or platinum golem-thingy or something. Regardless, her metal-powers have become significantly more badass and more useful.

Anyway, on our way to meet Good Queen, we have a run-in with Evil Warlord though we didn't know it at the time. The gist we get is that the ruling family here are dragons or dragon-kin or something, and Evil Warlord/Good Queen are siblings. Anyway, what does happen is that we end up finding injured-and-unconscious Evil Warlord, attempt to heal him, leave him with severly injured Inquisitor, then the rest of the party goes off to do something and leaves them alone.

When we come back, Evil Warlord is busy chasing Inquisitor around, having made her the generic "Come to my side" pitch, and completely failing sense-motive to notice Inquisitor being alternatingly sarcastic and disturbed for quite a while before finally losing patience. Party proceeds to fight off Evil Warlord, who vanishes upon being 'killed', either Contingency-manner or due to other powers. (It's all but outright stated that these feuding siblings are incarnations/manefestations/the real and actual Bahumut and Tiamat, though they are certainly not epic level.)

The most lasting effect of this encounter, aside from everyone deciding that Bad Warlord can go choke on a bag of dicks, is that he manages to zap Gunslinger with the alignment-flipping macguffin, and Gunslinger rolls a Nat 1 for her very-easy will save.

>>22260899
My memory's off. It might have been something like a nat 2 or 3. Regardless, it was still improbably unlikely (the GM made the mindrape save pretty low, just because he didn't really want to do it to PCs,) but dice are dice. As Gunslinger's player, I was effectively told "Take three things that epitomize your character. Flip them." I took this as "Pervert them into mockeries of their former selves.".

Anyway, unbenknownst to everyone else, I was suddenly lawful/neutral evil. Neither I nor the GM were planning to tell them, but I was wondering if I could play Gunslinger well enough that they would pick up on it. Among other things, GM told me Gunslinger could now speak flawless Common, as one of those tell-tale signs that someone has been mindraped. (Oh; Gunslinger had also had a flaw that prevented me from willingly touching/being touched by other people Haphephobia or something like that. That too was suspended to serve as one of those "Help, I'm not the person I used to be!" signs.)

Being basically the toughest member of the group at this point (D10 hit dice), and also suddenly interested in private loot, Gunslinger went to search for Evil Warlord's body. (He'd been knocked off a waterfall.) What Gunslinger determined was that he'd crawled out a ways downstream. What Gunslinger DID find was A, some dragonscales (which proved to be useful,) and B, on her way back, she was contacted by some rather mysterious entity identifying itself as "The Huntsman".

>>22261074
Huntsman, along with a pack of wolves, appeared at the rim of the river canyon, gave vaguely polite, vaguely sinister, cryptic hints, and then tossed down his "token"; a small leather pouch that he instructed Gunslinger Not To Lose. This had rather extrodinary effect in the form of something like +4 Dex and +8 survival, so even though Gunslinger didn't really truck with gods or demons or fae, she figured 'Why not?'and kept it on hand. He hadn't asked for anything in return, so she was of mind to keep this 'gift', which didn't seem to have any strings attatched.

Gunslinger returned to the party, mentioned that she had reason to suspect Evil Warlord had survived, and declined to mention either the Huntsman or the dragonscales directly. The former, she asked about local myth and legend regarding; the latter she used her plant powers to seal inside her revolver handles, assuming they were worth money or could be used for something. Sealed inside her revolvers, they not only never left her person but nobody could find them. (As it happened, I found out the scales gave damage boosts of their particular elemental damage, which was certainly nifty.)

Anyway, we eventually finally get to the town where Drow Ninja's mistress is holed up. Except... we start encountering Evil Warlord's minions in the street, and the bakery that served as the front for Good Queen's hideout was a burnning wreck. Here, Gunslinger displayed newfound levels of self-preservation and selfishness, suggesting that running into a burning building was Completely Fucking Crazy, especially considering all the bodies. Seeing as the rest of the party was Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, and a Chaotic Neutral with a pressing reason to meet Good Queen, (Kitsune Rogue wanted to know why the hell Good Queen had sent someone to watch over her and protect her.), everyone else left Gunslinger in the street despite Gunslingers well reasoned arguments.

File: 1356684357549.jpg-(306 KB, 714x979, Kyton_by_grimdiskord.jpg)

>>22261176
It turns out it's much cooler past the blazing exterior, though, and seeing a patrol of Evil Warlord's troops turn onto the street, Gunslinger starts cursing under her breath but follows everyone else in. Past all these bodies on the floor that look like they were strangled or flayed or ripped apart by chains...

When we get to Good Queen's saferoom, it turns out that she's been betrayed by one of her advisors, and was being turned over to Evil Warlord's troops. One of them, however, was present. I mentioned above that Kitsune Rogue's boyfriend had been conscripted by Evil Warlord? Here he was, apparently somewhat mindraped and turned into something resembling a chain-devil or kyton or whatever you call them. Humanoid mass with all these animate chains under his control. Cue (mini) bossfight, in which he very nearly captured the entire party before the two rogues realized they actually had a huge amount of effective ranks in escape artist.

Gunslinger, bringing up the rear, was told to grab Good Queen's body and get out of here. Suddenly completely willing to abandon these meddling do-gooders, Gunslinger was happy to do so; with some ridiculously lucky reflex saves on the way out, Gunslinger hefted Good Queen and simply booked it leaving everyone else to fight.

Gunslinger then fled back to the inn the party had arranged to get a room at, and hid out in the reserved room. Since nobody was around and Good Queen was unconscious, Gunslinger took the opportunity to go over Good Queen's body and relieve her of everything that looked valuable. Gunslinger then paced back and forth for ten or fifteen minutes, planning to steal a horse and simply leave if they didn't make it in twenty; if they didn't make it, they'd probably been captured or killed, and sticking around would only give Evil Warlord's troops time to find her.

>>22261341
The full tally of the haul off of Good Queen was some money (they used real gold pieces in this world, instead of dollars,) a pair of rings and a necklace. They all looked pretty valuable and were probably magical, and that was good. Gunslinger planned on pawning them somewhere, but for the moment, she settled for putting them inside her powderbag inside her gunsmith's kit, a rather unlikely place for anyone to look.

Of course, Inquisitor had that sweet dagger with the spirit of some ancient seer sealed within and forced to obey the wielder.

When the rest of the party came back, Kitsune Rogue was in shock, having just had to fight her boyfriend who she hadn't seen in months, and then kill him. Drow Assassin was worried about her mistress, who was unconscious and possibly even injured. Riley was worried about encountering more of Evil Warlord's troops, but they'd all mysteriously scarperd. Indeed, just about everyone in the town had... It was practically a ghost town and none of us knew why, though we had our guesses.

But Kitsune Rogue was in tears when she came back, and Gunslinger was even less a people-person now than she'd been pre-mindrape. Her response was basically, "Suck it up, ya pussy. Crying ain't going to bring him back, and it might get you killed.". Sure, she was riding that border between lawful and neutral evil, but this was relatively honest advice in her mind; Mourning people is a waste. Take vengeance if you so desire, but don't let anything impair your functioning.

You may begin to suspect that Gunslinger was not a healthy individual to begin with. You may also be right.

However, our grieving lovebird was not exactly happy to be told to man the fuck up. Her enraged response was to use her power- Wind and air, in her case- to blow Gunslinger out the window. (The room was on the second story.)

>>22261499
Gunslinger considered retaliating, but decided against it; just more proof that KitsuneRogue was just a weak and foolishly emotional girl who couldn't be trusted or relied on, and would probably become an unaffordable hindrance at some inconvenient point and have to be removed. (Gunslinger was also never one for pointless posturing, and she wasn't quite ready to outright kill someone in front of the other partymember who were still useful ablative shielding so far.) Gunslinger let herself get thrown out the window, passed a minor acrobatics check, and proceeded to roll her eyes in disgust before heading out to loot the town. Inquisitor, pouring over Good Queen in attempts to heal her, only caught the violent tail end of that exchange. She proceeded to round on Kitsune Rogue in outrage for attacking her best friend.

Gunslinger went off to loot the town, and did very well for herself. She also began to notice something was wrong with a lot of the town. There was this white powder, like white mold, almost, on a lot of available surfaces. She also began encountering the odd person, frozen in time and covered completely by the white mold. Some of them, when poked with something, disintegrated completely.

Moderately disturbed, she made the correct call of 'don't touch it'. While looting another inn, she came across a live gnome, and had a brief conversation with him; she managed to get some information from it. Namely; the jewelry she'd looted off of Good Queen was powerful juju, apparently related to her royal/dragon aspects and probably literally irreplaceable. Also, the white mold was a plague spreading everywhere, and apparently devouring the world. Also during this conversation, it was revealed that the gnome was being consumed by the white mold too, Oh, and he attempted to palm some of the jewelry. Gunslinger caught this, demanded it back, and when that didn't work, shot him. That did work, and it was returned.

>>22261594
Prior to leaving the inn, Gunslinger asked if he wanted to be put out of his misery, and received an indeterminate answer. Since Gnome apparently didn't care, and bullets were diffuclt to replace here, Gunslinger left him to crawl in the dirt 'til he died, and continued looting.

The only other thing of import she found was a bag of holding. This bag was the key, as it allowed her to store the magic jewelry she'd looted off of Good Queen without it being found. (Scrying things in extradimensional spaces is harder, or possibly less incriminating.) Gunslinger spent most of the night looting, and when she returned, there were a couple things on the schedule. The first was easy; "The world's being eaten by some kind of unreality-mold, we need to find a way back home to our world NOW.". That went over pretty well because it's kind of hard to argue with something like that.

The second part was strictly for Inquisitor, the oldest member of the party; It consisted of "What the hell are we doing with these ragtags? We need to get out of here, and we can't afford to stop off and get involved with everybody's damn problems on the way.".

This went over less well; Inquisitor's response was (in spirit,) "I am a servant of JUSTICE and will continue to bring JUSTICE to everyone I can! Nothing shall stop me from Doing Good!". Gunslinger was less than amused, especially since Inquisitor was holding on to the only way back their 'real' world. Regardless, the part congregated to evacuate from the city, and set up camp in a mill outside.

In the mill, we find some dying bodies strung up on chains, apparently people from Kitsune Rogue's destroyed hometown. Horrified, everyone gets some cryptic warnings and taunts, then one of the surviving ones that Inquisitor and Rogue let down to try and heal attempts to attack Good Queen, and Gunslinger scores her first crit of the entire campaign and oneshots it with reaction fire. Kitsune insists on taking the bodies outside to bury them, Gunslinger snarks "Good luck, the ground is frozen.", and everyone makes camp, Gunslinger starting a fire towards one wall and setting up her bedroll in the corner.

At Good Queen's request, Inquisitor uses her seer-dagger to scry on Good Queen's jewelery, and witnesses it floating in the void. Inquisitor proved to be canny as fuck, and immediately guess bag of holding or equivalent. She did not, however, have any way to locate said bag, and Gunslinger breathed a sigh of relief.

Then Good Queen informs everyone that that alignment-changing macguffin exists, and upon finding out that the party has run into Evil Warlord, she warns that someone might be affected by it. Suddenly lightbulbs start going off for people, not the least of which is Gunslinger. Inquisitor pulls out her magical soul-seeing spectacle-gubbinz, and begins to start scanning everyone. Gunslinger, suddenly cognizant of being caught between a rock and a hard place, speaks up and requests that she not be 'scanned'.

Now... My memory and narration may be lacking here, but this was a pretty heavy part of the campaign. Gunslinger has been Inquisitor's best friend and sidekick for something like two months, is the only fragment of her homeworld, and more. Vice-versa is the same, except Gunslinger is viewing Inquisitor more as 'reliable partner' than 'friend'. Inquisitor refuses to yield, puts on the glasses, and looks at both Good Queen (who admits she was not so good, at one point, prior to having her own polarity flipped,) and Gunslinger.

>>22262032
Good queen is described as something along the lines of a black, vile core, chained and contained behind walls and chains of light.

Gunslinger makes a sarcastic comment along the lines of "Well, I'm glad to see my desires enter into this relationship too.", and Inquisitor counters with "You're sick, sister."

Gunslinger says that that's all very nice and all, but she feels fine and cannot agree.
Inquisitor insists that Gunslinger is corrupted. Tainted, brainwashed, something's happened to you, your soul is in Chains! Gunslinger comments something along the lines of "Better soul than body. Don't need the former as much right now."

This back-and-forth continues and tensions mount. Gunslinger is remaining seated behind the fire, and is doing her best to give no fucks, but everyone is staring at her, and naturally, everyone believes Inquisitor. Inquisitor, in desperation, offers to let Gunslinger use the glasses and see for herself. Gunslinger politely, then repeatedly, declines as Inquisitor becomes more persistent.

Eventually, Inquisitor gets desperate. Her best friend is languishing in some kind of mental bondage, her very soul twisted and corrupted, and refusing any aid. She proceeds to draw her revolver (Inquisitor posesses a wildcard too,) and demand that Gunslinger see.

Gunslinger responds by pointing out that "I'm sitting down, I haven't touched my weapons, you're threatening to shoot me, and you call me the crazy one?".

Inquisitor's response is roughly, "Good point.", and she proceeds to point her revolver at her own head and threaten to shoot herself.

Gunslinger does Not. take kindly to such blackmail, especially from someone she held some modicum of respect and trust for even after getting mindraped.

>>22262109
Gunslinger very calmly and very slowly stands up. She doesn't look while Asassin and Rogue tackle Inquisitor and pry the gun out of her hands, she just packs up her things, and makes for the door, pausing only to say "I'm sorry you are so willing to sacrifice our relationship.". She then steps out into the blizzard raging outside, and begins walking. These people were slow, these people were weak, Inquisitor kept insisting on trying to solve other people's problems, and was using the route home as a means to blackmail Gunslinger's assistance in her pointless activities.... No longer. She'd strike out on her own. These ones were going to be overtaken by the plague, or bogged down helping every little traveller they passed on the way, and would not escape. (Seer dagger had mentioned that the world was ending in a finite number of days, and they needed to find a way out before then.)

Inquisitor, watching her friend depart, started screaming and begging for her to stay. The others let her get up after prying her gun out of her hand, and she chased Gunslinger out into the snow, pleading for her not to go. Eventually, Gunslinger paused long enough to turn to look at her and tell her to go back. In final desperation, Inquisitor produced Seer-dagger, and ordered it to show Gunslinger the truth. Make her understand.

From Gunslinger's point of view, what happened next was that Inquisitor began spasming wildly, light shining from her eyes and every other orofice, and screaming incoherently. This proceeded for a good minute, which was enough to impress Gunslinger though she still figured it might be some kind of trick or ploy. After about a minute, Inquisitor collapsed in the snow unmoving. Gunslinger looked at her a moment, then drew her gun and fired a single shot into the air before turning and leaving.

Keep goin' man!

I like this, I like this a lot.

>>22262241
>>22262307
Thank you both. I was beginning to wonder whether I was alone here again.


I don't actually have complete data from Inquisitor's point of view. What I am lead to believe is that the command she gave the dagger was something the dagger wasn't allowed to do. It had to obey its wielder, and therefore tried it, but God, Gods, or some abusrdly powerful watchdog entity intervened to punish, prevent, and make unpleasant that attempt. The end result was the shattering of the seer's soul. When Kitsune Rogue and Assassin came out to investigate the shot, they found Inquisitor's unconscious body in the snow, and hauled her back into the mill. Kitsune Rogue, who apparently had some soul-based personal macguffin or power or macguffin that gave her power, collected the seer's soul. Meanwhile, the actual dagger, remained entirely functional but no longer sapient. It obeyed, it answered questions, but it had no personality, emotion, or initiative anymore.

When Inquisitor woke up, she was... miserable, to put it mildly. She'd just had her shit slapped by a god-equivalent, the seer in the dagger had effectively died, to her knowledge, (and she had sworn to help and try to free the seer, not get her desteroyed,) and her best friend had just left her to freeze in the snow. Things... were bad.

As it turned out, she wasn't alone. Kitsune Rogue was also in her own pit of depression, having spent hte previous day killing her mindraped boyfriend, then finding what was essentially proof that nobody from her villiage had survived. (Incidentally, the villiage being wiped out was kind of our fault because we'd gotten into a fight with some of Evil Warlord's troops on arrival, without knowing anything. The villiage had been eliminated as a reprisal. We're heroes!)

>>22259038
As DM of this Game. Anon has done a pretty good time telling the storys tho parts are miss matched and skewed. All in all pretty good. I want to Mention tho that It was funny as hell in fudal japan generic place #12. That GunSlinger was like going "Do it and I shoot" Every one looked at GS and thought " You have a stick with metal on it. woopty Doo I got a Katana!" The Gnome also thought that. and got shot for it. His babble was trying to buy the damn gun to study. ( LG Wizzard) that said Fuck it if im going to die I wana steal stuff. its got to be fun if every ones doing it! All in all that whole Killing every one with out them knowing made GS a mini legend. and Drew the attention of the Huntsman ( Plot that was ignored Till Huntsman had something to say about it)

One of the things to remember on 4chan is that story times are oft not posted in by the audience, who simply wish to read it.

>>22262375
I Hated that ford. Whats that A game Purly about Railroads and a rail road company? Fuck your Railroading. Im getting me a Truck. I hated that truck. It wasnt bad till The Inquisitor Inscribed " Friend Ship Is Magic" on it in latin. It wasnt till Idk the 20th time they quoted that I Looked up what it was. Car = Target practice after that

>>22262375
>>22262473
Given your spelling, I'd believe you're my GM. And yes, Inquisitor did do that to the truck; my alternate description of Inquisitor's player is "trollbro".

>>22262386
Thank you. You're right.


Anyway, while Kitsune Rogue and Inquisitor were busy contemplating suicide (You think that's an exaggeration? That isn't an exaggeration.) Gunslinger was busy hiking hell for leather. She was damned if she was going to let them overtake her, and she spent the next twenty hours travelling as fast as she could through the hell of a blizzard. Around nightfall, after most of a night and a full day of travelling, Gunslinger came to an abandoned town, and holed up for the night by using her wood powers to barricade herself in a house, and within that house, spent her night in a closet. (moderate to severe paranoia here.)

She's woken in the morning by something large outside. It turns out to be a large, ornery, dire badger. Talking dire badger. It doesn't like Gunslinger, it doesn't care about Gunslinger, but it was ordered to collect Gunslinger and bring her back to its master. Some more questioning, Gunslinger still barricaded in the closet (it's still paranoia when you're right) determines that the dire badger is a servant of the Huntsman. Well... Gunslinger doesn't really wish to delay, but in close quarters with a bed-sized direbadger, she figures it might be worth investigating non-violent options. She agrees to follow, with some snide remarks back and forth.

In the grove, Gunslinger meets the Huntsman. Creature of the woods, primal hunting spirit, fae, whatever. It's sinister, it's strong, and it seems to keep a posse of gigantic dire animals around as it's 'court'. Glorious.

>>22262538
As it turned out, the individual the Huntsman wanted Gunslinger to take with her was an enormous dire wolf. Literally, like, taller than a warhorse. A thousand pounds or more pure, wolf-based violence. She was also relatively polite, and didn't seem to have any more love for the Huntsman than Gunslinger did. That was an excellent combination. Gunslinger and Wolf hit the road, and turned out that they got along pretty well. Neither was terribly talkative, but they were both hunters, if you will, and respectful of each other.

Then the GM panicked. This was because the road to the capital city that was everyone's destination was supposed to be something like a week's journey. Gunslinger had stolen the march, and was walking hell-for-leather, eighteen hours a day; she'd be damned if she'd let those she'd left behind overtake her.

Meanwhile, those she'd left behind, Inquisitor had just figured out that newly-braindead seerdagger could teleport her. It could, in fact, teleport everyone. All she'd had to do was ask it. So when she said, "Hey, can you teleport me to the Capital City?" Dagger went "Affirmative.". And suddenly there was no hope of even vague party cohesion.

GM solved this by having Gunslinger find a magical saddle in one of the towns she paused to loot one her way. Along with allowing her to ride, it roughly doubled the speed of whatever creature wore it- And Wolf, though proud, was willing to let Gunslinger ride her, given the clear and present danger of the plague and imminent end of the world. Provided she never spoke of it again, and never expected it to happen again. Gunslinger, who hadn't expected it to happen at all, was as polite as she could be and went along with it. She wouldn't have dreamed of asking for it, and had no intent to abuse such an offer.

Great stuff so far

I haven't had such a need to F5 in a while, keep it up OP.

I only have one question:
Why the hell didn't you make a plant-gun that shoots seedpods?

Thanks, all.
>>22262754
Because lead's cheaper and easier to find, and to my knowledge, does more damage. If I find some kind of explosive seedpod around, you can bet your sweet ass I'll do just that, though.


So thanks to magical-rail-accelerator saddle, Gunslinger managed to make it to the city roughly twenty four hours before Inquisitor&Co. teleported in. (It might have taken them two or three jumps, which meant it took them a day or three, but it was still far faster than actually beating the road.) When Gunslinger arrived, the city walls were manned with orcs, and visitors on the outside were being checked very extensively for plague. Wolf, as it turned out, could, in addition to talking, temporarily assume the shape of a humanoid as a benefit of being one of the Huntsman's Chosen. It came with neat perks, apparently, to make up for occasionaly being called to join the Hunt whether you wanted or not.

Using that to avoid extensive scrutiny, Gunslinger and Wolf waited in line to get checked, and (very, very,) grudgingly submitted to what amounted to a strip search and having half her money stolen. Her important things, including the magic bag with Good Queen's jewelry, were either unknown or unimpressive to the guards. They commented on the Wildcard Gunslinger had, but dismissed it as an odd little art piece and contented themselves with the extra entry tax they'd already extracted. Untainted, Gunslinger and Wolf continued into the city, which was under heavy quarantine. The only room she could get was in a profiteering little inn, and a room was mandatory unless she wanted to try and sleep on the streets in a city with a very oppressive curfew. (Oh, and Wolf had to be able to turn back into a wolf occasionally, and the longer she stayed in humanoid form, the more unpleasant such a eversion was.)

>>22262764
Gunslinger was actually relatively lucky in her attempts to get into the palace, though. Nobody was being let in, of course, but Gunslinger encountered a haflling pickpocket in the inn's common room. Gunslinger, who was getting extremely tired of the primitive screwheads surrounding her, proceeded to draw her gun and inform the halfling that if he didn't share the information she wantd (how to get into the palace; he'd implied there might be another way already,) she'd perforate him. (Crit fail intimidate.) He proceeded to look dubiously at the blunt piece of metal and wood in her hands, and suggest that if she really wanted to know that, (which, incidentally, was not the kind of information that she should be going blabbing about,) then perhaps she should offer payment. You know some gold, or... something...

Gunslinger, of course, found the concept of a halfling hitting on her absolutely hilarious. And after a moment's thought, she conceded that while she might be able to kill him in public because nobody else knew what a gun did or would be able to prove she'd done it, she couldn't give a warning shot, or a demonstration without drawing too much attention. And really... A hundred gold wasn't that much to pay for a secret passage into the castle, and by extension, out of the freakin' fantasy land. She paid, and the halfling explained about a secret passage his parents had told him about in the Aquaduct, that led into the castle.

Gunslinger considered that good enough news that she even tipped him some extra gold, and went off to order a small cow for Wolf and a meal for herself. She then spent the next day scoping out the aquaduct. She then returned home, happily informed Wolf she'd found a way in, and then listened with horror to the voices of Inquisitor&Co in the street outside her window, talking to the halfling.

Being the Kitsune Rogue in this; man we're aweful people and I can say with out a shadow of a doubt that both inquisitor and I were contemplating suicide via dms handwork. Grim dark to the extreme

>>22262764
http://theseedsite.co.uk/sdforce.html
Ceanothus, Oxalis, Lupinus and Lathyrus are native to North America. Oxalis is also mildly poisonous, although not to a useful extent without the aid of magic. Which, I'm pretty sure, is crucial to the weaponization of seeds in general.

>>22262800
Hmm. I may have to investigate, though I'm not sure I'm willing to try and bully the GM via superior knowledge on a topic.


The same halfling she'd bought info on the secret passage from. Right outside the inn, he seemed to be trying to sell Inquisitor&Co. information on where the only inn with free rooms was in the city. (Right next to them.) He also informed them that they wouldn't have time to seach, because it was almost curfew... It was actually kind of hysterical OOC, but IC, Gunslinger was terrified of being found, and resented the hell out of them showing up.

Inquisitor tried to insist that the Halfling should just tell them, Halfling refused, Inquisitor, tired, irritable, and wanting to get shit over with, threatened the Halfling. Halfling proceeded to shout, "Plague victims! Quarantine is broken!" and run.

Though even more hilarious especially as they tried to chase him down while evading guards, they did eventually catch up to him right as he dodged in the kitchen entrance of the very same inn, after leading them on a merry round-about chase. They caved as the guards closed in, paid a bribe, and in they went, to the very same inn, reserving a room one floor above Gunslinger&Wolf's.

Gunslinger was in a quiet terror. She did NOT want to encounter the others again, especially Inquisitor, whom she loathed and feared in roughly equal degree. Actually.... 'terror' might be the wrong word, but I'm having trouble coming up with it. She did not want the confrontation, she did not want to have to face Inquisitor down again or answer questions again. She wanted to simply get through, get out, get back to her own world, and everyone else could mold for all she cared.

>>22262795
Good lord, all of you are crawling out of the woodwork. Shoo! In-character stuff you shouldn't actually know about.

>>22262870

As a result of this, Gunslinger asked Wolf to go down and get meals that night. Wolf proceeded to do so, and in the common room, immediately sat down near Inquisitor&Co. to chat them up. From everyone else's perspective, this elven lady who joined them was... awful strange. For one, she kept sniffing. Two, she seemed to look at them like she was... hungry, or something.

As it happens, she was. For one reason or another, Good Queen had caught Wolf's eye. Specifically, Good Queen was a dragon, or dragon-kin, or something, and Wolf knew it. And in her mind, what opponent could be more worthy than a dragon? To test herself against such a foe was something immediately tempting to Wolf, and quite a bit of her creepyness was directed at Good Queen.

Meanwhile, Good Queen was actually somewhat terrified. A, Wolf was creepy as sin, but B, the jewelry Gunslinger had stolen from Good queen was actually a significant part of her power; the items were literally bound to her, and she could sense their location... provided they were on the same plane as her. (The magic bag was not.) But without them, she was basically crippled, and had been relying on her servant, Assassin, (not to mention Inquisitor,) to protect her.

So of course, everything climbed into the handbasket when Wolf ran into Good Queen on the stairs right outside Wolf(&Gunslinger's) room, lost control, and reverted into an eleven hundred pound dire wolf on the spot. Good Queen promptly screamed and fainted.

>>22262945
The handbasket quietly entered freefall as Wolf dumped Good Queen on a bed, then turned back into a wolf and basically lay down on to/next to Good Queen. Her response was "Nah, c'mon, brah. It'll be cool, watch." Sure enough, in a minute when Good Queen woke up, she took one look at the titanic wolf on top of her and immediately passed out again.

Inquisitor had heard the scream, however, and came running. She poked around for a moment, looking for signs of a struggle and so on, but didn't find any. Momentairly thwarted, she instead turned to Seerdagger, and asked it whether Good Queen was in one of the rooms nearby, then proceded to narrow it down to one. She then knocked on that door. Gunslinger, of course, knew what was happening, and hid under the bed in vain hope that the situation could still be resolved. Wolf assumed humanoid form again, walked over to answer the door, and Inquisitor let herself into the room at gunpoint, demanding to know why Wolf had abducted Good Queen.

(Again, my memory is poor, and I'm a bit fuzzy on the initial proceedings here. I might simply be making this up to fit with the order of events.) Wolf proceeds to explain that Good Queen had passed out on the stairs- she didn't know why- and she'd taken pity on the poor (delicious) thing and brought her inside to her bed, to let Good Queen recuperate. Inquisitor warily took that as an answer and then suspicously asked why Wolf was in a two-bed room if she hadn't been expecting guests? Wolf replied that she had a.. partner, who was rooming with her.

Handbasket arrived in hell when that seemed to hit Inquisitor like a cinderblock. Inquisitor damn near staggered and sat down on one of the beds, uncomfortably close to Gunslinger's hiding spot. She mentioned that yah, she'd had a partner too, and... she was gone. She'd been possessed by some alien power, she wasn't in her own right mind... But even given all that, it was her fault. She'd tried to force her partner to... It'd been her fault. She'd made a mistaken, in her attempts to try and help her friend, she'd driven Gunslinger away from her.

Gunslinger, meanwhile, listened to all this in what amounted to an agonizing hell of awkwardness beneath the bed. Hearing what had been her best friend break down about her, to a random stranger... Listening to it proved unbearable. It drove her to try and escape, sneaking out from under the bed, with half a mind to confront Inquisitor, and the other half to flee, if possible.

Gunslinger actually had a remarkably good stealth skills. In fact, they were better than Inquisitor's, by a rank or two. Inquisitor, however, had that Inquisitor thing that grants teamwork feats even if your allies don't have it, and had been using the one that allows you to take an ally's stealth roll if it's better than yours. The net result was that when Gunslinger rolled a Nat 1 on stealth, and proceeded to bump her head coming out, stand up, and be forced to glare at inquisitor and simply dare her to comment, Inquisitor's response was "Aww, c'mon, G. You always knew I was better at the stealth-things than you were." (True, but only due to stealing Gunslinger's stealth rolls whenever Inquisitor rolled badly.)

>>22263117Again, my memory betrays me, and I'm not sure how, excatly the conversation went, which disappoints me becasue again, this was some pretty heavy stuff. I think Inquisitor tried to extend the olive branch, and Gunslinger quietly wanted to accept it, but her pride prevented her from reaching out for it or meeting Inquisitor halfway. As a secondary tack, Inquisitor produced the magical soul-seeing glasses, and handed them over.

She said she'd tried to destroy them, but being wood-frame, it was beyond her metal powers to do so- If Gunslinger would oblige her, she wanted them destroyed. In her mind, being able to see people's souls was a bad thing- Too much information, made her biased. And it might even be wrong, they were just some silly artifact they'd found... But either way, it had contributed to Inquisitor making a huge mistake, and driving Gunslinger away.... Which, incidentally, she was sorry for. So, so sorry.

I'm missing a lot of the dialogue here, but... This was hard hitting. Gunslinger might be evil, but she still had empathy, and she remembered caring about Inquisitor before. She liked having backup she could rely on, even if she didn't want to place value on friendship. And secretly... Secretly, she really did. So somewhere in all this, Inquisitor apologizing, Gunslinger wrestling with her own feelings, and maybe a little bit of telepathic prodding by Wolf, who expressed the view that everyone needed a pack, and Gunslinger shouldn't abandon hers; somewhere in all that, Gunslinger decided to bite the bullet, man the fuck up, and put on the spectacles.

Gunslinger looked at Inquisitor first. After all, Inquisitor had looked at her, even without her permission- Not that Inqusitor made any effort to deny it. Indeed, she invited scrutiny, and Inquisitor's player described her as a brilliant core of light with seams and cracks slowly spreading over it. Inquisitor had not been having a good couple of days, regardless, and even she was showing the wear and tear.

Then Gunslinger looked at Good Queen. As Inquisitor had seen, she saw the lightless core bound in the metaphorical chains and imprisonment of what her exposure to the Alignment-switching MacGuffin had done all those years ago. Wolf, who had given permission and was caught in the view anyway, showed as two colors two; a chaotic gray morass on one side, but a darker, more sinister tone on the other. (OOC, the GM informed me she was somewhat schizophrenic, with two semi-distinct personalities.)

The last thing to do, of course, was to look at herself. Something Gunslinger wasn't quite brave enough to do; instead, she drew her guns and looked at them. You know how a lot of 'western' plots are basically oldschool samurai movies with reskinned setting and location? The whole myth of the sword being your soul, or if you subscribe to the gunslinger ethos, your gun? Gunslinger wasn't terribly religious, but she had a shade of superstition, at least where her guns were concerned.

Her mundane revolver showed nothing. It was, in fact, just a gun. The Wildcard, though, the Wildcard was an extension of its wielder. Their myth, their legend, their weilder's and their own, were one. And so, when Gunslinger looked at the wildcard, she saw the state of her soul, exactly as Inquisitor had described.

>I'm like 75goddamn% done, what the hell.

>>22263224
To put it mildly, that was jarring. Gunslinger's response was to rip them off and nearly throw them across the room, but settle for tossing them back to Inquisitor slightly more forecefully than necessary, and then trying to justify what she'd seen to herself. "They're broken." "Doesn't work." "Lies." She muttered that sort of thing out loud. It hadn't shown anything from her revolver; surely that meant they didn't work? Surely it was just magic. Inquisitor could have identified them wrong, it might have been... been made wrong, yeah! It...

Even panicked as she was, Gunslinger couldn't lie to herself about it. She knew Inquisitor was right. She knews what must have happened, exactly as Good Queen decribed. She'd been weak, her mind had been infiltrated, bent, broken to another's will, or at least that of the damn artifact. She was no longer herself, or herself was not who she had once been... Everything began to come apart at the seams. Essentially, she broke down in a sort of existential nightmare.

Inquisitor, filled with sympathy for her friend, but unable to really help, patted Gunslinger on the back and told her she believed in her, Inquisitor would help her, she wouldn't abandon Gunslinger. All of that essentially fell on deaf ears as Gunslinger was locked up in trying to figure out who she was, who she had been, what had been changed, what had been affected, what had been *done to her mind*.

Inquisitor sadly excused herself, pausing to inform Gunslinger and Wolf where they could find her and the rest of the party. A few minutes after Inquisitor left, Gunslinger managed to pull enough of herself together to stand up, with intent to head down to the common room and buy something exceptionally strong and alcoholic. Her complete plan, as far as she could think, was to get that exceptionally strong drink, and then spend the night sitting in the dark with that in one hand and her revolver in the other.

(Incidentally, if you're counting, that's three PCs driven to the brink of suicide.)

Wolf, however, was in the room. And for all 'being a wolf' mattered, she was pretty intelligent, could at least imagine a little of what Gunslinger was thinking; Her decision was that, No, this was not something you handled by yourself. She acted by essentially grabbing Gunslinger, disarming her, and then holding her down much like she'd been doing with Good Queen, because you did not let someone in such a state on their own.

(For this reason, probably more than any other, Gunslinger ended up with enduring and abiding loyalty for Wolf. She doesn't know what would have happened if it wasn't for her, but she knows that Wolf may very well have saved her damn life there.)

The next day, Gunslinger is up early, with bleary pink eyes, and desperate not to meet the other party. She heads down to get breakfast, and sits at a table, basically completely tuned out. She doesn't even notice for several minutes when Inquisitor notices her, and quietly sits down across from her. When she does eventually notice, what is there to even say? Eventually, she manages, "Sorry.", croaked in a dry and ragged throat. When Inquisitor, taken aback to the point of almost being speechless asks, the clarification is "You were right.".

Inquisitor proceeds to practically wake the building up, overjoyed and crowing about how she has her friend back. She does assist Gunslinger in avoiding contact with the others until she's cleaned up and looking better, and explains to the others that Gunslinger is part of the group again, oh, and has their way into the palace. The others are less inclined to rejoice, but Good Queen is mildly relived, now that Wolf has finally let her go, and everybody likes Inquisitor, so they're at least somewhat happy for her, if not Gunslinger.

>>22263402
They infiltrate the palace. Once they're inside, though, they pass a single rather ornate door that is the object of much dread on Good Queen's part. According to her, it's the vault of her ancestors; the dragon spirits, the royal family, etc. all are apparently stored in there upon death. She could, theoretically, go in there and attempt to ask for their blessing. Theoretically. But... dragons are anything but reliable. Anything but charitable. And very, very powerful...

At this point, Kitsune Rogue, who at one point picked up a shadow dragon egg in a brief encounter glossed over/forgot back up there somewhere, (just after the encounter with Evil Warlord.), and she approached these ornate dragon-inscribed doors with some interest, egg in one hand. She brushed a hand over the doors, as if comparing them to the egg she held, and examining what, in all honesty, was probably one of the wonders of her world. (The outside of one of them, at least.)

This was a mistake.

The doors fly open, and writhing claws of a dozen spirits lash out, seize the egg, and snatch it into the darkness before the doors slam in the party's collective faces. Everybody rounds on Kitsune Rogue, and probably gives her more flak than she deserves. (IC or OOC, I wouldn't have guessed that would happen. I wouldn't have messed with the damn doors, but there was basically no way of knowing that could happen.) Good Queen, totally shaken, explains that that was a horrible thing; the egg we have was a 'live' dragon egg. The crypt is full of immensely powerful ancient dragon specters. They'll fight over it, but eventually one will successfully force its way into the egg, killing the current 'occupant' and securing itself rebirth into the world. That would be a Bad Thing, more so if the world wasn't ending imminently anyway.

>>22263499
Gunslinger, however, being a tengu, has pretty strong feelings on the matter, and is insistent on retrieving the egg. Whether or not she likes dragons, What the hell, hero. You just got a child killed. Good Queen says she could, theoretically, go in after the egg, but she's very obviously terrified of the prospect. Inquisitor wants to save it, but doesn't want to force Good Queen to go in, and Gunslinger speaks up to say "Screw you, I'LL do it, just let me in!".

This is apparently enough to guilt Good Queen into doing it herself. (she explains she can't send others in; they're her ancestors, she must do it.) She steels herself as best she can, Inquisitor casts a few minor buffs she has available to herself, and Good Queen opens the doors, steps inside. The slam behind her with a hollow sound. For a few minutes there is silence, then the screaming starts.

Everyone basically leaps into action the same way, trying to open the damn door. It doesn't open, and when pressured even more, it begins defending itself with spectral attacks. The realization hits that this isn't going to work, but the terrified, panicked screaming, which is very definitely Good Queen, doesn't stop.

Well, The others don't know what they can do. But Gunslinger... has one last idea. She doesn't want to have to do it, but... It's something she's grudging about, but still willing to do for Good Queen, who Gunslinger remains a bit fond of. She sets down her pack, reaches into the magic bag, and pulls out Good Queen's jewelry.

>>22263569
Everybody, of course, is watching, and she can practically hear the pieces snapping together in Inquisitor's mind, but she ignores them as she removes her own gear to put on Good Queen's stuff. (Adventurers will always have bling, if only for practical purposes. Like a ring of water-walking that Gunslinger was really happy to acquire, considering that the last time she went swimming she damn near drowned.) At the very end, under a final suspicion as to what is required to get through the gate, she extrudes one of the dragonscales she'd been carrying in her revolver grips, produces a knife, flays a small patch of her skin (through the feathers, presumably,) and presses the dragonscale to the wound. Nobody stops her, and so prepared, the portal opens for her.

The vault is sepuchural and dim, but in the distance Gunslinger can see Good Queen being assailed by a posse of what look like small, draconic-looking imps. They're pretty tough, though, and it takes a few cylinders of ammunition for Gunslinger to carve a path to Good Queen. Around her, she can hear the dragon spirits and the echoing voices of Good Queen's ancestors.

Now might be a decent time to mention: I cobbled together a vague 'religion' for Gunslinger to add flavor and character. The essential gist of it was ancestor worship, namely, that all your ancestors looked down on you, and, provided you were a suitably respectful individual (and maybe even if you weren't, because family is important,) they'd lend you a hand here or there. You might call upon an ancestor who had been a notable general for luck in battle, or one who had been a vilified bandit for help eluding watchmen, but the essential gist was that they were all your ancestors. They might look after you more or less if they liked you, but you were still their descendant, and there was a baseline. Family is family.

>>22263628
So, given that, the sight of Good Queen's ancestors basically shriving her apart via their little imp-minions was downright repulsive. No ancestor should do that to their descendants! Throughout this experience, Gunslinger called out Good Queen's ancestors and did her best to insult, belittle, or reprimand the for being such horrible relatives. Being spirits of super-ancient dragons, they completely ignored Gunslinger.

Or mostly, at least. In the varied millieu of voices, things could be heard, almost a train of discussion. "WEak. She is WEAK." "Injured. Crippled. Her power stolen." "Foolish to have let it go." "Powerless." "Weak."

As Gunslinger approached, however, and possibly as Gunslinger began to call the spirits names, or otherwise harrangue them for their behavior, a different thread appeared. "Other one. On her behalf." "Weakness." "Strength. Strength in others, not just strength in self." "Relying on the strength of others?" "Using. A resource to be drawn upon." "Tested. It must be tested." "Tested." "Tested."

Though I gloss over it a bit here, what followed was a pretty badass fight between Gunslinger and a spectral ghost of a dragon, apparently serving as the champion of those who kept calling Good Queen weak, and Gunslinger serving as the champion of those who weren't. A pretty palapble buff was added during this, and, as narrated, while Gunslinger fought the coal black dragon specter, she was in turn infused with radiant light as the champion of Good Queen and those who sided with her.

Holy fucking shit OP, write a novel why don't you.

>>22263735
I said it was going to be a horrifically long affair. And you haven't been up all night typing it.

>>22263678
So, a fairly solid fight, and one that might very well have killed Gunslinger if it wasn't for the bonus HP. Victorious, though, and as the specter disappated, the dragon egg was returned to Good Queen, Good Queen was unhanded and healed somewhat, and some final words were spoken to Good Queen by her ancestors, who Gunslinger still held in utter contempt. Gunslinger lends GoodQueen a shoulder, and they stagger out together. To Gunslinger's surprise and horror, her feathers retain some of the white from her champion-blessing, and she ends up looking like her black feathers have white frosting around the edge. Gunslinger, naturally, is horrified and angry at being messed with by this magic, to the point of almost wishing she hadn't gone in after Good Queen. (Not quite. In hindsight, she considered beating the collective ass of the malicious ancestors to be it's own reward.)

Then there comes the tricky question of whether Gunslinger should give back that jewelry she happens to be wearing. Gunslinger manages to convince the others, no. They go to destroy Evil Warlord and his polarity-flipping macguffin; the implication (that Good Queen is utterly terrified of, incidentally,) is that if it is destroyed, the changes it affects are reversed. Gunslinger reasons that if Good Queen becomes Evil Queen when that happens, they don't want her to be at full power.

This undoubtedly hurts Good Queen a bit, but in Gunslinger's mind, Gunslinger has done enough for Good Queen and Good Queen can suck it up. She should be glad she still has feelings that can be hurt.

>>22263810
Continue onwards; there's a pretty brutal fight with Evil Warlord (who loves traps), which at one point sees both Good Queen and Gunslinger hanging from traps and ropes at the top of the ceiling. (sixty plus feet up.) With Good Queen bleeding out next to Gunslinger, and unable to descent to be healed, Gunslinger does the only thing she can think of to try to keep Good Queen alive; forks over the necklace on the vain hope that the whole "Oh, that jewelry was part of me, it's intrinsic to my power," etc was not just bullshit. It actually does save her, and also gives her some power back that allows her to contribute to the fight. Gunslinger comes very close to asking for said necklace back after the fight, but doesn't on the assumption that it would not happen.

Anyway. Evil warlord defeated, evil plan stopped, passage back to realearth secured. Wait, what was his evil plan anyway? As it turned out, he was engaging in human sacrifice and some torture, all that fun stuff, in attempts to open a lage, stable portal through which he could evacuate his capital city and forces. So yeah, in stopping the villain, in securing our lives and way home, in rescuing the girl who'd been the plot coupon to get home, we'd just doomed several thousand people to death by world-collapse.

We, ladies and gentlemen, are the heroes.

We crash back through into our reality, and all the non-natives to it do not have a good time. "Are unconscious for three days"-do-not-have-a-good-time. Which is unpleasant for Wolf, especially, since I believe I mentioned the longer she stays in humanoid form the more unpleasant reverting is. And she'd been in it the whole time she was unconscious.

CONTINUE.

>>22263847
Oh, right, but the destruction of horrible alignment-flipping artifact. That's destroyed; Inquisitor shoots it apart with her handcannon she named 'Liberty'. Which is nice, but when the time comes, Gunslinger can't quite bring herself to want to change back to her old self. Sure, she didn't want this thing tampering with her mind in the first place, but... She's who she is currently. If she changes back, will her current self cease to be? Will she... die? So when the artifact is destroyed, she can't bring herself to want to change back, to try and throw off whatever it did to her. While she can face down bayonets or bullets, she can't bring herself to do this, and her cowardice damns her. Even if no one else knows, she knows she was a coward, she knows she didn't try to change. She knows. She'll always know, and never be able to try again.

This, along with finding out that she got mindraped in the first place, is what started her drinking habbit.

Then there's the matter of the remaining jewelry. Gunslinger doesn't want to return it; Good Queen who's still Good is now pretty insistent and finally wants it back. Assassin, as her minion, naturally supports her, and Inquisitor does too. Gunslinger faces them down, and thinks very carefully. her eventual conclusion is that she could take either one of them, or even both of them, but not both of them with Inquisitor's healing abilities included. Grudgingly , resentfully, Gunslinger caves and gives up the remaining rings.

>>22263895
So the first major sign of how long we've been gone is the truck. We find it where we left it, overgrown, wrecked completely, and robbed. It's pretty jarring, especially since it was practically Gunslinger's baby. With much, much effort, and the negotiated aid of a local dryad, we manage to get the truck working again. It is at this point that Trollbro, using Inquisitor as his avatar, decides to have "la amistad est magia" emblazoned on the front of the car, using Inquisitor's metal powers. I cannot into other languages, and I suspect Trollbro used google translate himself, but I believe it was meant to mean "friendship is magic". Less in the pony-manner and more because Inquisitor was an inquisitor serving no god but the platonic ideal of community. Regardless, when GM finds out, it pisses him off immensely.

So, Inquisitor uses seerdagger to try and find out what to do, and witness the home town and guild hall of the Wildriders, that guild that was our original plothook and allegedly we were part of, at some point, eight years ago, and realize that it's busy being shelled, and under siege. Obviously, we must ride to the rescue. With our newly reconstituted pickup truck, we drive.

It's a long, long way south. We stop in Seattle, and encounter what is essentially a band of slavers, hunting down non-humans who've fled enslavement and such to the south. We proceed to make lower the average lifespan of their profession noticeably. Inquisitor extracts the promise from the survivors to try their hand at another trade, and they are released. While here, though, we encounter some of the nonhumans the slavers were hunting, and everyone, including Gunslinger, does what they can to give them a hand.

>>22264003
One of them that Gunslinger encounters is a white tengu. When they first found mention of him- 'one white tengu', written in one of the slaver's books, I assumed they had seen Gunslinger at some point and were talking about her. It was not so; apparently this bloke was just a rare breed of tengu who'd been caught by the blokes. A bit of a talker, probably a bard, he not only recognized Gunslinger somehow, he insisted upon giving her a gift in thanks for hsi rescue; her original Wildrider's badge, that she'd lost in her near-drowning experience in the very city.

It wasn't exactly the most momentous thing, Gunslinger hadn't exaclty missed it, but it was pretty neat. I'd like to say this is because Gunslinger isn't much of a people-person, but it's probably because I'm thick as a cinderblock, it only occurred much later that Whitey had A, known Guslinger's name, (and recognized her,) and B, happened to have her original badge on hand. It would have borne invesitagation even then, when it occurred, but alas, there was no time.

We've a siege to catch! So we all pile back into the truck and drive hell for leather. Inquisitor, who very recently drove for the very first time, insists that they should switch off, but Gunslinger doesn't really trust her driving at night. This is succesffully avoided as Inquisitor decides that while everyone's piled into the truck, it's time to start swapping histories, since nobody really knows anything about anyone else.

Inquisitor finds herself going first, and recounts how she came from way south, near the old San Diego area, and her father (piss on his grave,) was a small-time bandit chief with pretensions of legitimate authority. Her mother had been his forcible bride, and had eventually snapped, killed Inquisitor's father and fled with Inquisitor after the father had killed the second of Inquisitor's siblings.

With a less brutally serious tone, Inquisitor continues saying that after that, they travelled all over the place, and her mother was always a healer and trying to help people; that's where she learned it, and that's why she's always wanted to do good too.

In the awkward silence that follows that story, Inquisitor admits that, yeah, she hadn't been too eager to share that, but hell, she wants to know about everyone else, and it seems a fair price. Gunslinger especially, who's been with her for the longest and whom Inquisitor probably knows the least about. With some badgering she gets what she wants; Gunslinger recounts how her family lived in Reno for most of her life, and while she didn't have a father, she had her uncle's families, and they were very close. Most of all, though, she had her brother.

Tengu usually are pretty good at languages. (One of the racial abilities gets you two languages per point of linguistics, instead of one.) Gunslinger, was not. She'd always had trouble speaking common, (though that'd vanished when she'd been mindraped, and had stayed gone since she'd stayed mindraped too.) and that was somewhat awkward for a Tengu, who was always basically scavenging around the rest of society. Her brother, though, her brother had been able to speak everthing, and he'd been able to speak to anyone, at that. He didn't get in fights because he could persaude just about anyone that they were the best of friends. A real talker.

>>22264205
He got her her first job, and when the railroad pushed up through the mountains and began hiring workers from Reno he'd gotten a job with them, and, at her insistence, gotten her hired as a machinist's assistant. Things had been good, but rapidly gotten worse; pay kept dropping, conditions kept dropping, and so on. The Company discriminated heavily against non-humans.

So her brother had started agitating and organizing. And he'd done it too, damn well. Eventually, forced to negotiate, the Company had promised better conditions and better pay, but only if work restarted immediately. It'd been a bargain, and the very next time her brother went down in a basket with a stick of dynamite, it turned out to have a very short fuse on it, and he never came back up. The Union fell apart, the promised conditions never came, and things went back to getting worse. Gunslinger knew very well that it was the Company that had killed her brother.

Gunslinger spent the next few years as basically a small-time bandit, roving around and doing her best to oppose the Company wherever and however she could. She'd ended up drifting away from the rest of her family to keep from drawing attention on them, and fought a private war for six years, to essentially no effect. This was accepted and digested by the others, and they drove on yet.

Of the others, Kitsune Rogue didn't really want to share her backstory, (or claimed we already knew it,) and Drow Assassin said she was willing, but she wanted more time to prepare herself and it before sharing it. Couldn't really do anything about it, so we simply accepted. The others fell asleep, and Gunslinger continued driving through the night.

>>22264213
(Forgot to say; Wolf and Gunslinger had a brief discussion, and had basically no intention of spreading word of the Huntsman in this world as they'd been asked. The side effect of this, however, was that though Wolf was still intelligent, she could no longer assume a humanoid form or communicate. As the last of her powers faded, though, she communicated this to Gunslinger and Gunslinger vowed to help her find a solution.)


Eventually, we got there, in the wee hours of the morning. Gunslinger knew this becasue she could literally see a massive dome-shield over the town, and shellfire raking it. Sadly, it was early in the morning, and Gunslinger was very short on sleep, so her decision was "Eh, I'll wake the others when we get within a mile or two.". As it happened, what actually woke them was the lonesome little shell that cam whistling down on the truck.

When *everyone* woke up, the truck was a flaming, upside down wreck. Some of the passengers had been thrown clear, some had not. Gunslinger was the first to awake; she stood, surveyed the scene, then at half health due to close encounter with an artillery shell, she ran into the blazing wreckage to try and pull other people out. She didn't really want to, of course, but somebody needed to do. Inquisitor began to assist too, when she woke, and much more effectively due to being mostly metal.

The final person to be rescued was Good Queen. She was trapped under the truckbed, which was upside down. Located by her screaming. Naturally, we managed to lift it a bit, and tried to pull her out. At which point she started screaming louder. Apparently, a piece of metal was lodged in her back, and because we, the players, weren't trained EMTs, we'd just paralyzed her. (The GM actually informed us that he gave her a fortitude save, inceased the DC by 10 because we'd tried to pull her out, and she'd failed by three. We're heroes.)

>>22264252
Jesus, this queen that queen got dealt a pretty brutal card. Has been most of the game it looks, as well.

>>22264273
As I said, the subtitle for this campaign should be "Nothing good ever happens. Ever."

>>22259038
source on the third picture?
I've been colecting kenku pictures for some time and never came across that one

>>22264299
Here you go. I'll take a brief interlude here to mention a few things;

A, the theme song to this campaign (and the theme for Inquisitor,) is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDYdtljigLs ;
It's basically a song about how more and more shit keeps happening to the poor bastard, no matter what. We're the poor bastard. Replace 'Memphis' with 'Seattle' and it's us.

Second; the slavery in this setting is based off of rings. The system has a controller ring and the subservient ones, very Tolkeninan of it, and initially the subservient ones were just a constant status and locator beacon that couldn't be removed. Eight years on now, they also carry wonderful things like forcing the bearer to obey orders, or causing a slave to melt if they removed it without the proper keyword. (Yeah, we found that out the hard way. We're good people.)

File: 1356706806053.jpg-(162 KB, 1000x906, Kenku9.jpg)

>>22264299
>forgot image.

>>22264284
>As I said, the subtitle for this campaign should be "Nothing good ever happens. Ever."

Inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire ?

File: 1356707133184.jpg-(30 KB, 269x404, 1282991603550.jpg)

>>22264341
thanks!

>>22264379
For all I know.

Okay, trying to wrap this up rapidly; Turns out we approached the siege without proper protocol, so the dropped a shell on us, then sent a jeep out to investigate. Naturally, even in our state, we proceeded to slaughter the jeep full of mooks sent to investigate, at which point our GM tries to guilt us for slaughteing a bunch of poor conscripts. Fuck that kid. They were trying to kill us, so not even Inquisitor had any issues killing them right back.

What proceeds to happen is a very drawn-out rescue/countersiege. The shield falls basically right as we get there (and it wasn't like we could have shaved any time off the trip,) and with creative efforts, we manage to liberate the besiged camps. Quite a lot of the besieging soldiery are conscripted and enslaved non-humans, with the wonderfu enslaver-rings.

Also, quite a lot of them seemed to think Gunslinger was a legend. Gunslinger, the Jailbird (referring to the rather brief stint in the Seattle clink,) liberator of thousands... Yeeeah. Needless to say everyone else, Inquisitor especially, found it hilarious. Gunslinger very definitely been the sidekick to Inquisitor's protagonist back then, but somehow Gunslinger was the one remembered.
So we free a bunch of dudes, rescue what was our old organization (we spent a full month before getting dumped in a different world and timeskipping eight years.) and suddenly have a hell of a lot of mouths to feed. The suggestion by someone who knows the terrain is an abandoned castle nearby that could probably be used as a makeshift shelter, maybe even the root of a village. This involves, among other things, some of the goddamn kobolds we rescued "upgrading" the jeep we'd captured as the replacement to our truck, to work without keys. And then proceeding to drive it off to the castle while we were taking care of the last encampment of enemy troops. Fucking kobolds. Gunslinger was not amused.

>>22264432
Getting pretty close to done. 2-5 more updates, I think. I'm probably underestimating, though.

Also, apologies for my spelling. It's... not even very early in the morning anymore.


Anyway. We get there, we do some stuff, Gunslinger, who looted a bunch of good scotch from the siege camp's officer's mess, sets up at the jeep to try and fix the kobold's 'upgrades'. Eventually, though, she's called inside to join everyone else.

Alright, I'll forcibly slow myself down here and cover a few things. One: This castle we'd found looked completely identical to Evil Warlord's castle from the other world. Abandoned, but creepily identical. Two: As part of Good Queen's reward from her ancestors that I forgot to mention, she was allowed access to what were basically the ancestral treasure vaults. Everybody got one item. Gunslinger didn't intend to take anything at all as a show of contempt for said ancestors, but was persuaded to use her one item for someone else.

Drow Assassin's item had been a super-badass katana. This katana had recently proved itself to have a pretty high ego score, and Drow Assassin had proved herself to roll Nat 1s on 2/3 ego tests. What had been determined was there was a very powerful, high-level dragon sealed in the sword, or perhaps that was the sword. It was totally happy to help DrowAssassin and arguably us by extension, so long as DrowAssassin kept killing people. We're a fighting band, so that's likely, but that's still rather ominous, especially considering that the reason the dragon within wants this is because, if the sword kills enough people/eats enough people's souls, the dragon will fully awake.

>>22264518
Disturbing element number two; within this eerie replica of Evil Warlord's castle, Kitsune Rogue had found a similarly sinister gauntlet. SHE, TOO, failed her ego roll (initially, at least,) prompting massive suspicion on everyone else's part as a soul trapped within it Assumed Direct Control. Some chasing later as 'she' tried to escape, and we eventually caught up with her. Kitsune Rogue, allegedly back in control, informed us that, combined with her wierd soul-collecting power/artifact, the gauntlet allowed her to interract and communicate with the souls she'd been collecting. Among which were that of her boyfriend, from way back when, and her father, which was the soul in the gauntlet initially. This prompted that sort of three-way Pointed Meeting Of the Eyes between Gunslinger, Inquisitor, and Drow Assassin, but it's hard to prove someone else is crazy, and apparently the guantlet doesn't come off.

Alright, both of those are pretty unpleasant, but what can be done? Annoying elment: One of the individuals rescued from the siege camps was the girl who, way back in >>22260259, was the one to find Gunslinger washed up on the beach. I forgot to mention, near the very end of our time in Seattle, we returned to that inn to find it burning down in front of a mob. Inquisitor and Gunslinger naturally braved the burning building to try and save half elf who was the propietor, and her daughter, an eight or nine year old. The daughter had had her leg trapped under a beam, and the GM's description was to the effect that she'd never run again. Which was a shame, because we'd never seen her when she wasn't running somewhere, and she obviously loved running. But she was a cripple. Because of us. (As opposed to being dead, which would have been if it wasn't for us.)

Holy fuck walls and walls and walls of text.

Reading it all.

File: 1356708985648.gif-(87 KB, 450x165, good people.gif)

I made a thing for you, OP

>>22264598
>>22264623
Thank you both. People like you make this worth it.
(And totally saved.)


Her +8 years version had been in one of the siege camps Gunslinger had busted up, found unconscious. Gunslinger had personally slung the gal over her shoulder, and run hell-for-leather out of bombardment range. When we finally got back and started trying to evacuate everyone, she was giving us a very, very cold shoulder. She continued to do that afterwards, and regardless of what the others though, Gunslinger decided she fit neatly into the mental pigeonhole labeled "bitch; ungrateful".

Whatever. Afer an afternoon of attempting to repair the kobold's damage to the captured jeep and intermittent drinking so as to, among other things, dull some of those pressing things in Gunslinger's mind, and a few other things such as chasing down Kitsune Rogue when she got possessed by her new item, everyone retired into the castle. There, Drow Assassin requests everyone's attention and says she'd like to share her backstory; The party gather's round, for storytime, she shares, and she expresses the sentiment that, regardless of where she came from, the partymembers are all her current family, and she'll fight or die for any one of.

That hits Gunslinger pretty hard. She's always been a "My family, right or wrong", type, and in her own words, "Family is *family*." The suggestion that this person is family is...

Well, it makes her feel pretty horrible. She's spent time arguing with, resenting, and occasionally (verbally) sniping at this fellow party member. When... in DrowAssassin's own words, she considers Gunslinger family and would fight or die for her at the drop of a hat. Not only that, but she lumped Inquisitor in the same group, and Inquisitor definitely deserves as much as anyone else in the party, if not more.

>>22264667
I'd have made a fullsized version, but I'm at my office computer so have to make do with that.
Still reading avidly, by the way.

>>22264667
Both of these people are effectively family, and deserve a hell of a lot better than Gunslinger has been giving them. Seeing as family (and vengeance for a family member) is one of the things Gunslinger holds dearest in life, this is... a bit of an upset, and something she is not at peace with. Something she feels intensely guilty about.

Before Gunslinger can find something to say about that, though, (and she was damn well about to,) something else comes up. One of the rescued guild members asks a question (Did you go get the thingy from the battlefield I told you you needed?) and it's answered. "Yeah, we got it off of Crazy Eddie's body, and Gunslinger claimed his Wildcard.". (Dual-wielding goodnesss. Touch attacks with a full BAB is awesome, if you're using advanced guns.)

That kid I mentioned a bit above decides to interrupt here. (Remember, Gunslinger might be slowly working her way back towards 'good' the hard way, but she's still evil at this point.)

Kid goes "What? How DARE you! You CLAIMED it off him? He stayed here, he fought! He didn't run away and HIDE for eight years like you did!"

Just to reiterate, the party had just saved the lives of everyone in the room, and Gunslinger had just saved Kid's life specifically. Personally.

File: 1356710473302.jpg-(1.03 MB, 986x3213, There Are No Heroes Left (...).jpg)

>>22264766
If Kid hadn't been on the other side of the room, Gunslinger would have pistolwhipped her on the spot. Even more than just being rude or ungrateful, this kid is demanding that Gunslinger fight for her. Acting like she expects, or is ENTITLED to being championed by Gunslinger. As if a chance meeting and getting her life save once eight year ago- arguably after saving Gunslinger's life when Kid found her washed up on shore- garaunteed that Gunslinger would be forever obligated to fight for Kid and whatever cause Kid aligned with. That Kid deserved to be fought for simply because she existed.

In short, she acted as if she was trying to convince me that there were no heroes left in man. Or at least half-elf.

So Gunslinger's response is to stand up and turn around very slowly, and then begin very purposefully walking across the room to Kid. Inquisitor does too, though she desperately shoots Gunslinger a "wait, let me deal with it" look. Gunslinger allows Inquisitor to get the first word in. (Incidentally, it is stated that as the two approach Kid, it starts getting hotter. Gunslinger gives no fucks, and Inquisitor has DR vs fire, but apparently Kid is a pyromancer or something, and the pair's approach was enough to scare her. Inquisitor goes first, and critically fails a diplomacy roll. The result is something along the lines of, "Look, kid, I know it was eight years to you, but it was about a mont to us. Look at us, do you see any difference? We're sorry we vanished like that.". Kid is not impressed.

"Oh yeah? What about her?! You're just lying!". 'her' is punctuated by pointing at Gunslinger and Gunslinger's 'frosted' look to her feathers. No, that's not the sign of tengu old age, that's apparently a sideffect of being someone's holy champion. But it's still a rather sore point that you're poking there, kid...

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>>22264837
YES more

>>22264938
Sadly, this is basically the end. One more.


>>22264837
So. With Kid moments away from being savagely beaten with a revolver, we're interrupted by one of the surviving senior officials of the guild, who mostly-politely tells the kid to shut up, and then offers to start explaining what's happened in the past eight years to us. Okay, we're game. Been wanting the crash-course on current events for a while, and this is one of the things capable of reigning in Gunslinger's temper at the moment. Lots of news, generally terrible, and the news that the Minion who'd betrayed us in Seattle, tried to kill us, failed, escaped, and we'd faced him again near the buried temple, that bloke was now in charge of pretty much everything. The Kitsune Fighter NPC from way back then? She'd apparently been captured, enslaved, and was now his personal bodyguard, and had been for several years.

Oh, and her kids were over there, in the corner; apparently, from her and that Sunshine-and-Rainbows Overseer who's throat she'd been made to rip out. Just about exactly 7.25 years old, you do the math. But they were valuable kids; technically heirs to the iron industry the BBEG currently based his power off of. Great.

But we're learning things, right? We know a little more now, we might be able to make some intelligent decisions at some point. But now that that's done, there are things that need to be gotten back to; Gunslinger owes Inquisitor and Assassin an apology of some kind, and a reciprocation of their gestures. If Kid is even thinking about opening up her mouth again, she deserves pistolgrip-to-face. If-

"Oh," says guy we were just listening to, "Gunslinger, I got something for you."

Huh?

>>22264989
"Yeah, some tengu came by and dropped it off a few years ago. Didn't know whether you were alive, but asked me to hold on to this just in case, and pass it on if you ever turned up. Said they'd gotten by alright, whoever they are, but were in hiding. Hoped you were alive."

What.

Inside this little pouch turn out to be a small bundle of elderly dried herbs and spices. Nothing particuarly valuable, except sentimentally; they're from home. Gunslinger's home. The home she hasn't been to in three years, and the family that hasn't seen her in eleven.

Family, remember. Family is everything, always has been, to Gunslinger. Why, her whole personal vengeance crusade was because her brother was murdered. She was just feeling horrifically guilty for not realizing that two people considered her honarary family and not reciprocating properly. And now, all of a sudden, she realizes that this myth she's been hearing about, rumors flying about [Gunslinger] the Jailbird, crusader against the Company, who vanished eight years ago....

They'd known her name. They'd known her. And evidently, that'd been enough to find her family. It hadn't occurred to her. It should have, but it didn't. It was all her fault. As of what, two years ago, her actual family hadn't seen her in nine years, but was busy hiding from the legacy she'd left them. Real considerate of her. Her, who had lectured the others on occasion, about how family was *family*.

To say this sandbagged Gunslinger would be putting it mildly. It was basically a revelation that, to her, was worse than anything else that had happened so far. Sure, people died, but ancestors knew their own. But she... What had she done?

>>22265011
Severely shaken, Gunslinger staggered out of the castle's main hall to go sit on the front steps, and fished one of the bottles of whiskey she'd looted out of her coat on the way. Kitsune Rogue was probably the only one to see her leave. Her parting comment was a snide "Going to go drink?" to which Gunslinger did not respond, and probably didn't even notice.

Gunslinger sat down on those steps and cried, sobbing like a child. Everything that she'd held dear, she'd evidently forgotten, betrayed, or otherwise discarded. Her comrades she'd failed to treat as such, her family she'd forced into hiding, all of it.

Wolf noticed Gunslinger's departure and moved to comfort her, as best she could. King of like a dog comforting its owner, except in this case the dog weighted more than a dozen times its 'owner', and using the word 'owner' where it could hear was probably not conducive to long life. Gunslinger ended up spending the night drinking and having a complete breakdown. Wolf did her best to comfort Gunslinger, of course, but there's only so much you can do without being able to speak or communicate. And hell, Gunslinger didn't even feel good about Wolf. She hadn't made any progress in her attempts to secure Wolf a way to communicate, she felt infinitely indebted to Wolf and useless in return. Everything Gunslinger had held dear was a hollow lie she'd been telling herself, and goddamn had she fucked up.

And that, all... Idon'tevenknowmany posts of that, is the full context for the request I posted over in the drawfag thread >>22257521. Goddamn it's been a long haul. I suspect my quality's been dropping as it gets less and less early for me, and I don't really feel that I've adequately articulated the reason this hits Gunslinger so hard, but I've done what I can.

And while Gunslinger is occupied with this, everyone else is having a bath, getting cleaned up, and socializing. Hard battle the other day.

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>>22259038


So.

Yeah.

Thank's for sharing, OP. Now we know the background behind that picture.

I think it was worth the time to hear it, and thank you for spending the time to share it with us.

You do know you now have an unspoken obligation to share with us what happens after, right?

Right.

Happy campaigning.

>>22265190
This.

Nice ride, OP. Was a fun read. I hope you do indeed tell us how it ends, when it does.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/22259038/

"Playing a Tengu Gunslinger. 116 full-length posts to describe a single "Made, GM saw, Played" picture. Lengthy, deep-seated story of a character's descent into tragedy."

Jeez. 116 posts. You really did go all out, OP.

File: 1356714216616.jpg-(6 KB, 182x253, ooooh.jpg)

>>22265349
Nice

Damn OP, that was an incredible (long, but felt justified.) read.
Next time you come back for story time and I damn well hope you come back for story time, I eagerly await more tales of Gunslinger.

>>22265349
I am motherfucking crazy. I am convinced.

>>22265244
>>22265190
I.. I have to tell you how it ends, too?

You people are monsters.

A few random things that may have slipped my mind; we also were told that Kid actually was no longer crippled, though she still had burn scars up and down her legs. The reason for this was that her mother went and bargained with a sinister-sounding individual known as Prophet. The mother was petrified, and apparently remains with Prophet in that state, but Kid's legs were healed. This contributes to Gunslinger thinking of Kid as some spoiled, over-entitled bitch.


And thank you for archiving. I'm not sure what I'd have done if I had to re-post this at some point. Possibly contemplate suicide myself.

Oh, and I hear GM has two or three people playing in a separate group, as a bunch of actual-badguys down south in the SF region. (Where we're headed next.) They're apparently busy gestapo-ing it up and black-bagging people in the middle of the night.
They at least get to enjoy it when they ruin people's lives.

>>22265459
WHOOPS I MESSED UP IT'S ONLY 58 POSTS OH WELL

But yeah, look up "tengu gunslinger" on the archive at any point to find and repost it! Or Tengu. It shouldn't be too hard!

Fuck yeah, tengu.

I've got a tengu character with a 200 page backstory that I'm just waiting to drop in a game this weekend.

>>22262473
>The Inquisitor Inscribed " Friend Ship Is Magic" on it in latin
The next character I create will have this inscribed on a Power Maul, and she will try to befriend everyone she non-lethally KO's with it.

Holy shit, OP. You are amazing, and thank you for allowing us to end the year with one last great piece of Storytiem.

>>22266813
DM here. Should I grab every one. one day Compile all the text and arange the story. Maybe get my players to clean up my language skills and post it? The Whole party is pretty good at Typing and language its whats allowed them to make these characters feel alive imo.

>>22263402
>crowing
Dohohoho.

Good (and long) storytime, OP.

Speaking as the Drow (and now half-dragon) Ninja/Assassin it this tale I'd like to say you did a fantastic job retelling the thrilling story (personally I think it's trilling but I may be a bit biased)

>>22262473
>>22264003
Spanish, apparently. (Latin would be 'amicitia' rather than 'la amistad'. Spanish should use 'es' rather than 'est'.)

>>22272410
Pardon me. I believe that's what I meant, but I was rather tired by the time I got to that part.