Picking up from last session[1], our intrepid participants found themselves having acquired large amounts of currency and a singular quest: retrieve Excalibur from the Vikings. First of all, they healed themselves back up, earning the displeasure of the citizens of Hounslow due to all the touching involved.[2] The participants were swiftly expelled, and they did start on their journey northwards.
Their first stop, at a small hamlet, led into every shop available to spend their currencies and acquire accoutrements instead. At the tavern, Bark helped three bare chested Germanic gentlemen in lederhosen decide whose bratwurst is tastiest.[3] Afterwards, the participants could trade currencies, needing Whizzo Butter to buy a lucky rabbit's foot. Another village woman selling a sturdy looking ladder needed her husband located. Once again, Bark smelled out his trail - to the tavern and back - and located the fellow, well and truly dead, in the basement atop some plague dead bodies. This new form of currency was liberated and tied atop their draft horse, and also they took the guy back upstairs pretending he was dead drunk instead of just dead, long enough to buy their ladder and split.
As the participants trekked on towards north, with no particular idea about where to find Vikings, the Lady of the Lake herself arose from a puddle on the roadside, singing/rapping her instructions regarding Excalibur. Thus, the participants found out that the Vikings live in Swedeland. They need a boat.
Soon enough, they reached the Thames, and hired the first available craft: a raft laden with bricks and crewed by gumbies. Lacking any propulsion method, the raft smashed itself on the first rock. The participants swam ashore, and looked at the other available boat, a Viking longship. The captain required a luck accoutrement from each as payment, so another round of shenanigans, currency exchange and buying of rabbit's feet occurred. Mostly playing chess with some shopkeepers, at which Saint Stephen excelled.
Soon, the ship was on its way, and it immediately ran into a storm, prolonging the journey. Just enough time for the PCs to sneak into the cargo hold, discovering a large amount of treasure, crosses and other Christian artefacts, and a chained monk alleging the sacking of his monastery. Nobody cared, apparently.
Fear not, the next day also resulted in an encounter: a run-in with another Viking ship. The PCs were cordially asked to surrender themselves as prisoners to the new captain, as a measure of courtesy. Contestation immediately broke out, but another round of inspired rolling meant the 3 PCs were up against 17 Vikings.
The fight went as well as you'd expect. Dandelion called upon his muse, but was instead punished. Unable to use bardistry again, he tried spanking the vikings with nettles, to which they weren't particularly susceptible. Bark tried influencing the rolls every round, but also failed. Finally, Saint Stephen called upon his army. Hungarian scuba diver guards assaulted the ship, but they soon fell beneath viking axes. Several vikings broke into spam-songs, attracting more of their kind to the fight.
Unable to hold their own, the PCs surrendered. As a show of force, their retainers were immediately blood-eagled, their weapons and treasure confiscated, and they were dragged to the other ship, only to be released back unto the shores of Albion.[4]
Failure, for the first time. But at least we had lots of laughs and singing attempts.
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After another month or so, we picked it up again. Saint Stephen was pretty gimped and his character sheet was ritually torn up, to be replaced by Harry Potter from the previous adventuring party. But how to introduce a new character into the party? Simple! God showed up to greet our mauled participants, gave them a good pep talk, fortified Bark Howlbert to compensate for the loss of Wolfy[5], and made Harry appear out of a tree. Easy-peasy.
The participants, emboldened by divine favor, then looked around for another port. Fortunately[6], a small port city was right there. The intrepid band hid on the outskirts while their Viking former captors pillaged, burned, murdered and raped their way through the town. Walking through the scene of carnage, the participants found a single craft to board: a strange 8-man boat propelled by pedaling, crewed by an old man. After much reluctance, they boarded.
The old man turned out to be quite jolly, insisting on trying out his invention. He also had good weed on him, which the participants smoked and felt no fatigue for the first day. Several more days of pedaling through the seas followed, with the journey enhanced by good winds and flotsam washing up, to be picked up and looted. Fatigue did set in, with some exhaustion damaging the characters. At least Dobby[7] got his dollop of something nasty each day. On the final day, the shores of Svedeland were sighted, and in the evening, everybody fell out to kiss the land. They slept like the dead, with the old man and his boat disappearing by morning.
Morning came and the participants were milling about, but they quickly incurred the wrath of the HoLE. Dandelion was taken away by a priest for a confession, which he refused, so the priest's head exploded.
As the participants were regrouping, a Viking fisherman came to the shore, and half-greeted them, but then clamped his mouth shut and started pointing excitedly in-land. The participants decided that he was charmed, or was otherwise leading them into danger, so they stuffed excrement into his nose. That was completely logical at that point, to make him open his mouth. Still, the guy did not want to talk. The participants tortured him to death, then Harry cast Speak with the Dead[8] to find about the Svedeland's Wonderful Telephone System. The participants found a tent with somebody shouting inside, so they set the tent on fire and recovered the dead Viking's body later.
Noticing the long rope formerly connected to the tent's pole, Dandelion improvised a horn to talk into, while also faking a Svedelander accent. The Svitchbord operator could not answer any questions, but connected Dandelion first to the wrong number, then to Titty Wang, the writer of the newest epic regarding the Sword in the Spam. Dandelion impersonated her brother, Otto, and she invited him over for a short review of her work.
The participants travelled to Titty's home town, getting lost on the way and having to eat Dobby, much to Harry's dismay. Titty put on a show, at the end stabbing a mime pig with a foamcore sword. The participants proposed to bring her a large block of spam for added realism, and she gave them the location of Cleaveland in exchange. The participants travelled to Cleaveland and killed a Hansper Hobgoblin on the way, taking its shoes.
Finally, Excalibur was in sight - atop a 70m high tower of spam! The participants noted the village full of people, and decided to disguise themselves into Vikings. Harry tried sorcery, but failed many, many times, only turning Bark into a large, red haired, pony tailed Northman. Bark then approached the village, and bought spare clothes and horned helmets for his companions, in exchange for 6 plague-dead bodies, sold as pig carcasses.
Finally, all disguised, the participants approached the tavern in the center of Cleaveland. Through the roof of the building, the tower of spam grew ever taller towards the sky. A successful Lorefulness check revealed no sculptures of mooses among the decorations. Speaking of mooses sent the Vikings in the inn into a panic. Dam Karol, shield maiden of Cleaveland, invited the participants for a round of mead to calm things down. Dandelion spiked her drink, making her talkative and reveal the entire story. She had hired somebody to steal Excalibur to serve as her spam slicer... but the town shaman messed up the spell intended to make the sword only wieldable by Karol, instead creating the tower of spam.
Having 0 patience for all this, the participants convinced her to hack a bit of spam out of the tower for eating, and also so it wouldn't pierce the sky. She offered up her axe, but nobody could wield it. So Harry turned the table on which the spam rested into a giant spider, while Dandelion played his lute to distract the Vikings. The spider crawled away, the Vikings panicked, and the tower of spam fell on the bartender. In the general chaos, the participants ran to the end of the tower but couldn't pull out Excalibur.
Looking around, Bark noticed a large number of mooses in the woodland around town. The participants ran to the outskirts, and Harry mindcontroled an alpha moose. Still, the animal wouldn't come into town. Once again, Bark's Lorefulness came into play, as he noticed the ring of scattered moosebane leaves. He broke the circle, and the mooses stampeded into a town of panicked Vikings. With the mind control now working, Harry made the animals eat the spam around the sword, then the participants packed up the blade, mounted a moose and rode away.
On their way back, the participants stopped once again at Titty's, giving her a block of spam in exchange for finding a ship. Once again, the sword would not come out of the spam. They carefully cut around it this time.
The Viking crew taking them home bragged on about their intentions of killing a monastery's worth of monks and taking away their gold, so the participants, being forced to play good Christians by the HoLE persona, slaughtered them all. Thankfully, the journey home was uneventful after these happenings.
The participants inspected the sword and contemplated keeping it, but decided on returning it to Arthur anyway. They were met by a weeklong festivity, complete with jousting and feasting, and of course, lots of rewards, both monetary and accoutrement-ary.
[1] Which was several months ago in real life.
[2] Saint Stephen and Dandelion had their mouths fly off to have a different adventure in a cartoon.
[3] One was white. One was black. One was latino. All were blond and blue eyed. This scene went exactly as you'd imagine.
[4] That is medieval England, you uncultured swine.
[5] Only after getting the creeps looking at the Catholic werewolf.
[6] On the roll of a 6.
[7] Harry Potter's faithful familiar.
[8] Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
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