Sup tg. I'm stuck on a train for several hours so let's do this.
>wat is this?
It's storytime! Enjoy.
>What's it about?
Stories from my long established group in an alternate history setting.
>where do I start?
Well you don't need to know anything to play along but if you've clicked on this thread and have no idea what I'm talking about, start here:
1d4chan.org
Typos and explosions abound.
Other urls found in this thread:
en.m.wikipedia.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
Dramatis personae:
Angus - An orc from Dundee. Originally a greengrocer but also horrendously proficient with the flamethrower he carries. The flamethrower doubles as a thermic lance.
The bard - A human, wears a kilt, plays the bagpipes. Occasionally has great ideas. The DM uses his own taste in music for what the bard actually plays (so usually classic rock or country & western).
Cruella - Essentially a Dark Eldar wych wearing more clothes. She is vicious and stealthy. Armed with two daggers and a sword that she talks to. Played by Aldous' PC's then (and now again) GF. The latter fact occasionally becomes relevant which is why it is mention it.
The wizard - Not actually magic but can command metal (iron) and summon various sharp or pointy things. Including chainsaws.
The Navvie (also called Burt) - A very large human with a hammer. He hits things with it.
Aldous with Purple Penguin
Aldous - The character of the one telling the story. A dwarven knight. Wears full plate. Carries twin revolvers and a gatling shotgun. Smokes a pipe.
The purple penguin - Moral compass and possible DM PC.
There's also the DM and all you really need to know is he's a cunt.
>Britbongsteros and the Chamber of Maximum Fuck
So this story is from not long after I got back from the US. The DM enjoying the idea of linking things up to Real Life (TM) it has a slightly more American flavour.
The party begins the story in Grimsby.
"DM, why are we in Grimsby?"
"Why is anyone ever in Grimsby, Cruella?"
"... that is oddly profound."
We have been sent here as usual by the Privy Council. The recent Cod Wars (wiki it) have resulted in an immense quantity of giant mutant cod generally causing havoc on local shipping fleets; the Icelandic Stupidly Attractive Elves have pulled a fast one and the reparations they were to pay have resulted in large quantities of wrecked boats and something weird going on.
The party sighs audibly.
Party: "DM, this is what happens every time: we turn up in some small fishing village, shit gets weird, everybody dies, organs and bits are everywhere and then we all go home for tea and medals."
>The DM looks enormously displeased.
The DM reshuffles his notes. Sighs, drinks, sighs again, drinks some more. I will translate from DM as we go.
"Clearly that is not why you, as the most excellent of the Countries' problem solvers are here."
>Ok you fuckwits, you asked for it.
"The actual adventure that I carefully planned"
>I am pulling this out of my ass right now
"meticulously, and no there's no railroading, but if you had some patience, you'd all actually get the hook in a second."
>Will you stop ruining my carefully laid out plot, I'm about thirty seconds from rocks fall and everybody dies.
The mutant cod have, it seems, after a sterling action by the SBS (Special Bastard Squadron), been defeated already (oh thank god), however it seems that their roe (fish eggs) have some very odd properties. The above (and below) are explained to us by the spectacularly moustachioed Colonel K of the SBS.
"Bloody downright weird, in fact, that's why we called you chaps. You're the experts and we were told the most expendable. We lost half a dozen men getting this stuff sealed up." Colonel K gestures at a lead lined box. "We want you to take this stuff to the Research Facility on HMS Habbacuck, it's totally classified, but it's somewhere in the Penines."
This revelation leads, as usual, to an argument.
Party: "DM! DM! Isn't that a huge boat thing?"
DM: "Yes?"
"What's it doing up in a mountain range?"
"You'll find out."
So with some exchange of papers, signatures and a very interesting handshake between Cruella and Colonel K (she apparently knows about this sort of stuff), we take custody of the boxes of weirdness.
"So it's a milk run?"
DM: "Yes, of course it is."
[Those of you who have been following these for a while may be aware of how unwise this is].
We leave Grimsby (thank god) aboard a train up to (via a lot of places) Slaggyford. [THIS IS A REAL PLACE] We have the carriage to ourselves, just us and this weird lead lined box. The party are still savvy enough to watch the thing like hawks. This train carriage is normally used for transporting gold bullion across the UK and we are essentially sealed in a bank vault with this... thing.
The urge to peek in the box is wisely restrained, we are expecting something odd to happen, maybe for the train to crash, for the roe to leak out and start morphing people into weird thing-aliens, or for martian death machines to attack. Something much, much worse happens.
>What could possibly be worse than...
We stop in what (after opening an armoured letter box to peek out) is definitely Leeds. We hear a sound,a sort of chime noise that is entirely out of place. We act entirely on very well (DM) honed instincts, weapons are made ready, chainsaws appear over the Wizard, the Navvie drinks a beer, Angus lights a cigar with his flamethrower's pilot light, the bard hums a tune, Cruella just sort of lazily opens one eye from where she was sleeping.
Oh fuck no.
No no no, there's no mistaking it.
Americans.
I'm aware a lot of Veeky Forums's population is actually American, so as a refresher, America in this setting is composed of a huge number of tiny microcosms of strange magic (think each State is something different); the Indian nations are a thing, there are regular crusades from the East Coast into the Indian West, every slice of Americana can be found and chances are it'll shoot you.
We gather round the vision ports, staring out. We've only ever actually met the one American, so this is interesting for us too.
We see a group of what can only be described as Marines. Quite a lot of them in fact.
We know Brit(bongsteros)ain is somewhat skint following events in Ireland and elsewhere, to the extent that we have had to seek funding via sharing research and knowledge with our colonial cousins, but we had not quite expected this.
Serried ranks of Marines stand in front of some very peculiar looking olive drab vehicles. They stand on two legs and whilst they're the dimensions of a man, are about the size of a two cart horses standing atop one another. The weird squat vehicles are festooned with guns (think space marine dreadnought in olive drab with white stars on it).
In front of them all stands one very, very big marine. Somewhere a bald eagle cries as he snaps a salute. He's handsome, square jawed, and entirely gorgeous. Cruella comments "Just what I like." The lads are less than amused.
The marines start to board the train, they don't however approach our carriage, but clearly they're going to the same place. The Navvie and I decide to go and talk to them.
The Marines we establish are from the Pennsylvania protectorate, all of them big lads - nearly big enough to challenge the Navvie in arm wrestling. All far too clean cut. They press cigarettes and even stockings on us, saying they're for our lady friends. "We all just wanna be friendly" (as always I can never do the accents), but there seems to be something a bit off about them. The Navvie and I can't quite place it.
The square jawed officer smiles as he spots us, he's covered in medals.
"Well now howdy. What ya'll got here?" [sorry can't do the accents].
We establish this is one Smedley Butler (google it). He doesn't seem very happy with us, or specifically my (I'm a dwarf) existence.
"What are you doing in this carriage?"
I expect better of DM than some thinly veiled Dwarves = African Americans fantasy racism.
"You people"
["What do you mean you people?"]
"Better get out of this carriage, we don't take kindly to spies.
We show him our bona-fides, he mulls these over.
"I don't see any stars and stripes on here, the council of 13 States wouldn't sanction this. Out."
Things get a lot less friendly very very quickly. At bayonet point we are ushered out.
So we've met some Americans, anyway, we arrive shortly after in Slaggyford. The Americans march off in the same direction we apparently want to be going. We can already see HMS Habbakuk in the distance. Somehow the edifice of Pyekrete has found its way between the banks of the river South Tyne, just north of Knarsdale Hall.
It looks like an extra mountain that has just kind of... fallen out of the sky. The jet engines that festoon its surface give a possible hint as to how it got here.
Requisitioning a horse and cart, we get our box up to the Habbakuk, impressed at the number of American troops and indeed flags that seem to be around the place.
Our little bit of little England seems to have become Airstrip One.
We arrive at the tunnel that leads aboard the Habbakuk. Inside, as we (well Angus) carry the box of mysterious roe, we see an awful lot of Americans, and Germans, and Danes (weird eel things) along with a bunch of other nationalities - and of course identifiably different American states. There's nary a union jack to be seen. We're well out of our comfort zone here, but of course UK PLC is skint and we need their help.
What can very quickly be identified as Alan Turing bustles up to us and checks our papers.
We are amazed by the facility, some sort of elephantine octopus cum zebra is electro-prodded into a cell as we watch, meanwhile bits of Martian are shuttled past on a little cart, it seems like every single possible strand of weird in Britbongsteros leads here, and none of it is British. We aren't entirely sure how we feel about this.
The interior of the Habbakuk is a hive of tunnels and activity, it seems everywhere we look there's something strange going on, connotations of the BPRD, the lobby in MIB, and I'm sure there's something in Harry Potter about this, but I've never read the books.
Turing deigns to start giving us the tour.
"The Habbakuk was a seagoing vessel, as you all know (we didn't really) until about eight years ago when an early experiment in teleportation resulted in our current positioning."
This is actually a tradition in the RN, as, if you're posted to a shore facility, it's still technically an HMS (I think this is for pay reasons), so for example you might be at the facility in Weston Supermare, which is called HMS Birnbeck, or, you might AWESOMELY be at HMS Brontosaurus which is at Castle Toward.
The whole place has a very real vibe of Cave Johnson
So what does this mean for us? Well, apparently not much, it seems like there's lots going on and we aren't part of it, there's all kinds of fantastic science which we can observe, it's fascinating in a way, but we're used to things trying to eat our faces by now. What's this about?
Turing continues: "What are we doing here? Well, science, every single thing that makes no sense in this world, comes here, every single item, book, critter, it gets dissected here, and, hopefully, we can learn from it. One day, we might even be able to use this knowledge to develop the cause of humanity."
>Turing starts taking us for a little walk through the containment units, highlights include
>unit 63 - Mountain Negre: a bizarre disappearing teleporting rock bouncing around its containment sphere
>Unit 34 - A tank full of... goldfish? That somehow swim in philosophical notation
>Unit 14 - Moondust? Not sure, it is however, slowly painting pictures of people on the toilet
>Unit 138 - A mass of cogs and vacuum tubes, shifting, trembling and changing, apparently it's eaten 19 people
>Unit 252 - Bits of our friend from the antarctic
>Unit 991 - A hamster
>Unit 5477 - Explosive lemons
>Unit 7899 - A bookshelf. It's surrounded by skeletons.
The list goes on.
The facility is a fascinating place, the Habbakuk is a repository of every single weirndess and some we have never encountered, a small herd of sentient moa that enjoy poetry, a vase of flowers that happens to enjoy melting eyes, all of that good stuff. Just as we're starting to get comfortable (and drinking some alien drink called "kwafee"), touring takes us past cell 777. It's empty.
"That shouldn't be empty." he says
Right anons. I'll leave this up for about half an hour while I find some lunch and then post some more.
By the way. user may find this interesting.
Sounds like SCP to me.
Oh I remember you you had a pretty good story, monitoring the thread.
It's rather similar to start with indeed.
That's kind of you user.
>what do you mean that shouldn't be empty Mr Turing? What should be in there?
Oh nothing much. It's rather peculiar really. 777 contains or should, the only living dunkleosteus we have ever discovered.
>we beg your pardon?
Several adventurers try to smoosh their faces to the glass porthole at once.
>I remember that fucking fish.
Peering in (so I'm told - being a Dorf I can't really see without standing on something) there is murky green water. Angus knocks on the window.
Something very large and full of teeth (and rather familiar floats up into view, directly on the other side of the reinforced glass.
>DUNCAN!
>who is? Homicidal fish from adventure in Arabia.
Hang on didn't we kill this thing?
>Mr Turing where did you get this from?
>hmm? Oh 777? A few months ago it rained fish in London (this actually happens en.m.wikipedia.org
As the only member of the party not currently eyeball to eyeball with Duncan (pic related is how he'd be looking through the window). I instead decide to make the best of a bad situation by staring at Cruella's backside and chatting to Turing. Turing being a bong should be able to give some clues as to the American involvement.
How long have the been here Dr?
>a few months. Not long after Ireland.
What do they want?
>They've been quite generous so far, helping for fund the facility. Smedley seems to hope to find something here that'll assist with the Indian Crusades. I'm not so sure about the representative of the 13 States though.
At this stage it's handy to discuss some more of the politics of the US. The 13 States are new England ish and currently ruled over by the democratically elected (via one vote, cast by himself) Andrew Gut-Punch Hickory Duelling Jackson. Who has had a very interesting political career. While the East Coast is fantastically wealthy (thanks to ice mining - especially when ice across andili around Lake Eerie has (remember those local magical fields?) Different flavours or properties. Other wealth has been created from either natural resources or abuse of those magical pockets. For example one Gerald Ford has (before coming to visit Britbongsteros) built his motor vehicle plant with the hell pits of PA at one end as a foundry, the lower gravity up near for assembly (despite the banshees eating the odd worker), and then relies on the eternal night of McAdoo which seems to literally eat light to colour his new vehicles - any colour as long as it's black.
Anyway all this money flying about finances the Indian Crusades (which haven't gotten very far) and there's plenty trade with the South which is in theory in union with the 13 States but has different political goals, though the south while heavily industrialised often proclaims against the Indian Crusades and indeed moralizes on the 13 colonies, the Yankees generally are dismissive of the confederated States (run by some fucker called Kingfish Long) dismissing all that booklearnin and gator based clean energy (I'll explain that one later) as irrelevant to the realities of life fighting and sometimes enslaving the injuns. Though to be fair the indians do the same.
Anyway there's political tension between the two economically, culturally and spiritually, also in their attitude to Europe as the South views themselves as another European nation, the Northern 13 States consider themselves very much their own people, recently there has been a lot of anti Europe sentiment in the northern press, "Human not European" and similar. So the presence of the Americans in Britbongland is a bit tricky. Especially with the lend lease ships britbongland may buy in return for land cruiser technology and 50 years of repayments (with interest).
I'll tell you about what happens West of the mississippi another time.
This post is missing the word "shenandoah"
Aand this is the sort of shit that makes britbongsteros great.
Thank you also for mentioning HMS Brontosaurus (I knew about shore establishments with HMS prefixes, but not that one) and Slaggyford (which is hilarious. Though I don't know it would be to someone outside the UK)
>shenandoah
The airship?
Anyway the 13 States rep is a young (for a senator) Richard Nixon. He has a waggling cigarette holder and is every bit the roaring 20s personified. He has taken an entirely acquisitive approach to his time in Bongland, in his view bongland is about ready to become the 51st state.
Sorry that was a tad cryptic. What I meant was this post:
Needs Shenandoah the place inserted about in this sentence "the lower gravity up near for assembly"
This one: en.m.wikipedia.org
Anyway I hope all that makes some sort of sense. At least of a fashion. What I'm trying to say with all that is that relations are rather murky.
Anyway so that's a whole lot of information being dropped on user at once. Tldr = Americana have ulterior motives. Cool boat full of weird shit.
The party have a great time looking through more and more of these bizarre cells and critters. Imagine being let loose in the warehouse from Indiana Jones
We learn some more about the other nationalities that are around in the Habbakuk who it seems are present for similar reasons (I.e. American money).
After much exploring Turing invites us to watch the roe being put into its cell (remember that's why we are here).
The facility has been fascinating, also nothing has tried to eat our faces, there haven't been any aliens (outside of their cells) or ghosts, monsters, critters or indeed ectoplasm spewing time rifts. It's been incredible to learn about all these monsters and things while discussing American politics. Turing has been altogether bro tier.
We watch some diving suited (as in old style diving suit, remember NBC suits haven't been invented yet) men start to unbox the roe on the other side of some nice thick armoured glass. Angus is eating a biscuit, Cruella has a ham sandwich, it's all far too civilised.
>there are doilies
We all are expecting the following to happen. Smedley Butler will somehow go mental and decide to steal something or kill us all, or maybe some insane shit will escape and start eating some people. I mean come on that's how it works in the movies right?
The fourth wall being more of window in britbongsteros makes us even more suspicious.
Or indeed, actual Richard Nixon is here.
Instead we are chatting pleasantly with Alan Turing and everything is fine.
The roe is safely planted into a nice sturdy cell. We realise we have no idea what this shit does but no one spills it, no one explodes. It's far too simple.
>Awooga Awooga
Said the alarms onomatopoeiacally.
This was just what we were expecting. Some squiggly thing is out there raping faces and taking names.
Chairs fall back as the party stand up as one. Guns and other accoutrements of violence being readied in a clatter.
The DM is smiling. Why is the DM smiling? Guys...
I say this reasonably often in britbongsteros.
>it's never easy.
It isn't. It really isn't.
Turing had been facing away from.us. he turns back toward us. At least his head does. His body remains in place.
Like an owl he looks straight at us each in turn. "It never occurred to you what the Habbakuk was did it?"
Clearly Turing isn't human and as the roe is fed into some sort of distillation unit (you can see it whirring through a blender and around lots of tubes) gas starts to rise from.beneath the window. No one manages to resist the stuff except dwarves, being lower to the ground get affected last by this sort of thing. (Pissed on a rag doesnt work either this one is skin based) I manage to spam solid slugs at Turing and the window before succumbing. Turing speaks with some care as I go down. "It never occurred to you that this is a repository for all of the strangeness in the world. You who have survived sof much, you all who seem to have been touched by the gods (he means our fate point system) you're too dangerous to be allowed to roam free."
>Later.
The DM has us all roll some dice. He then ponders. Then he hands the bard a four pack of beers, tells him to pick up his phone and frog marches him to the cupboard under the stairs in my house.
I wish he'd done this year's ago ton be honest. The Bard's player is told he's going to be in there for at least 45 minutes but can if he wants shout things at us as we might hear him. On his return the DM asks Cruella if she might mind stepping out for a moment (the DM has over the years learnt that Cruella has literally no scruples about girl on man violence). Cruella elects to go for short drive to the shop on the understanding that every few minutes she calls, is out on speaker phone and screams swearwords down the phone.
Back in character, the Navvie wakes up first. Alone and locked into a cell. There's a window and a little letterbox thing that evidently food would come through. He has a bucket. He's stark naked. He can hear two things, the gentle hum of the recessed, grill covered, and nigh on impossible to get to, lights and a posh girl screaming "CUNT" at the top of her lungs every so often. The Navvie takes this with his typical laissez faire attitude.
>DM: You're also sober.
The DM takes his drink off his player.
The Navvie decides it's time to escape.
Now user(s) I'll manage at least another post or two but then I need to drive back to my place of residence so will be gone maybe an hour. I'm going to keep shitposting all night though so if anyone is following this live do please let us know.
Excellent, I grew up 15 miles from Slaggyford and can confirm it's a real place.