Griffin O'Callahan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
icastsword) wrote2025-03-14 06:30 pm
icastsword) wrote2025-03-14 06:30 pm
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Session 186: Dumb & Dumber
Nellie is stunned by this book. She says a lot of words. Skull thinks that’s a weird way for her to say all that. Bulk offers her a capri sun from the mini fridge. He asks what flavor? Then he says just kidding, there’s only one flavor. He gets her a capri sun. She rolls Dex to open the capri sun: dirty 20.
What does Nellie remember about Gretchen? Time to roll History: 24. Gretchen was a true NPC - very forgettable. The book talks about psychopomps as arbiters of the soul membrane, and death and anamnesis go hand-in-hand with those.
There were rules not to take any research out of the RHoM, but it looks like Gretchen made her own copies of her research. Weirdly, she didn’t seem to trust the circle of druids running the show! A large chunk of the book is written in cypher.
Skully found this book after Granny Gretchen passed, when he was younger. Bulk and Skull have theories about the grim reaper. We want to hear the theories, but Bulk tells us we’ve got to follow and subscribe. But nah, seriously, he’s chomping at the bit to share these theories. He tells us to sit down. Grab a bean bag chair, grab the couch.
Griffin sits. Everyone sits.
Bulk and Skull have been at this for years. Granny Gretchen’s notes don’t really factor in here, this is mostly theories floated by Bulk and Skull. The only possible thing that makes sense: The grim reaper is an alien.
So where does he come from? Space! Duh!
Bulk and Skull want to interview the Grim Reaper. We get side-tracked talking about the Grim Reaper’s gender. Nellie pulls the conversation back.
Pyramids!
The grim reaper showed up one day to say hi to the Egyptians. All religion is founded because the Grim Reaper showed up from the stars and was trying to help us, but because we’ve got squish brains, they had to pretty it up. The Grim Reaper comes down to all these different cultures and has to give them different stories to make sense to each culture. You’ve gotta pretty it up!
Bulk and Skull believe the Grim Reaper is going to come back one day and lead the army against the ghost god.
The Grim Reaper has to deal with the bad ghosts, who have to pass through and be cleansed. So the GR has to take all the bad juju out of the ghost god and cleanse them.
Skully thinks his grandma had an anamnesis theory - does doing a lot of bad things in life corrupt your soul?
So Jack the Ripper, right? He killed a lot of people. So when he dies, and is reincarnated with Jack the Ripper’s memories, he’s gonna be a bad person. So there’s gotta be something that scrubs that clean.
Skull posits that if there was a way to reawaken all of the terrible things you’ve done, everyone in the world would be miserable. Or evil. Or miserable and evil.
Nellie’s heard the expression, "the root of all cruelty is pain," so if that’s what you remember from life to life, you’d come out of the womb ready to stab someone in the eye!
Jericho asks where did these theories come from? From Granny’s notes, or from other places? Granny used to tell Skull stories about her soul research. Skull tries to cross-check his sources online when he researches. He likes going to old bookstores - you’d be surprised what random old stuff turns up in old bookstores. Skull spends a lot of time reading.
Jericho asks if Gretchen ever mentioned anyone else
Granny used to say she had a magic spell on the book. He thinks she just said it to mess with Skully.
NELLIE: Did she?
SKULLY: Why did you say it like that?
Nellie sidles up to Shane and elbows him. He casts Detect Magic at will. The book is magic as fuck. It’s glowing with Abjuration magic. But there are some other things that ping him around here. Specifically, some of the ghost-hunting equipment laying around is giving off divination magic.
Shane texts Nellie what he spies with his British eyes. He gives her the book back, and meanders over to take a cheeky peek at the ghost hunting equipment. He rolls to Investigate: 18.
The EMF reader, the video camera and some of the other recording devices look like they’ve been modified. Shane rolls Mechanics now: 17. This is very amateurish modification works. But there is some magic here, in the gear. It’s very slapdash, and looks like it’s been done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Shane is intrigued.
Back to Nellie and Skull. "So she said she cast magic on this?" Skull tells her yeah, she used to claim that she cast magic on a lot of things. She used to cast magic on his grandpa whenever he annoyed her. He thought she just said those things because it was grandma stuff.
Nellie’s not going to try to crack the cypher right now, but she wants to roll Arcana to see if the magic is interfering with the cypher, or if it’s adding an extra layer to the cypher.
The cypher is written in lists that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. There’s a random grocery list, there’s a random recipe for bread, but certain ingredients are wrong. There’s a coca-cola substitution for yeast, for example.
The cypher could be cracked while the magic is still in place, but it would give wrong answers only. In order to truly decipher it, the protection magic needs to be dispelled.
Nellie asks if Gretchen ever mentioned having a familiar. Ant has to think about this. Skully says she had a pet for a while. He still takes care of it. I get really excited for a hot second, but her familiar wasn’t Mothman the little dog. Grandma Gretchen had a parrot. His name is Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles lives in Skull’s room.
Nellie asks if we could meet the parrot. She has to roll Persuasion: dirty 20. Skully is happy that someone other than Bulk is interested in his weird life. He could bring Meph down.
JERICHO: I can’t believe we’re gonna interview the fuckin’ parrot.
BULK: What? '3'
Jericho rolls a 27 Deception to convince Bulk he didn’t hear Jericho say the phrase, "interview the parrot". There’s nothing Bulk can roll to beat that - the highest he can roll is a 22.
Perched on Skully’s shoulder is the biggest, most obviously magic-looking parrot we have ever seen. He has purple plumage that almost radiates starlight - it looks like glitter. He’s got beautiful jet black plumage on the back of his head like a little crest.
Skull introduces the bird. Nellie says, "Nice to meet you, Mephistopheles." The bird tilts its head at Nellie and doesn’t say anything.
As a gnome, Nellie has the innate ability to communicate with small beasts. She makes squawking noises. She rolls a disadvantaged 12 Performance to not look like a complete psycho. Bulk and Skull each roll a base 12 insight.
Nellie fishes out one of the business cards she had when she worked at the astro therapy center. One of the many listed skills on the card is "Pet whisperer"
Somehow this immediately dispels suspicions.
In an attempt to take some heat off Nellie, Griffin picks up some ghost hunting equipment and asks, "What does this do?"
Bulk comes over to talk about the equipment. Shane is here too. He takes the lead in talking about the equipment. "What’s that do, then, mate?"
This is all the brainchild of Skully over here. He works on all the gear and does all the cool stuff. Bulk doesn’t really know how Skull did it - Skull’s the tech guy, Bulk is the showman. Bulk is just the face of the operation. Skull is always going around old antique shops and secondhand stores.
Does Skull have a unique talent for finding things he shouldn’t have as a normal human man? We’re going to have to ask Skull about that, but right now Shane and Griffin are talking to Bulk.
Shane rolls a 15 Mechanics. These tools are very slapdash - there are a lot of random wires and different batteries. He rolls a 26 Arcana. These batteries look unconventional. These batteries definitely look like sources of magic. They look like something you’d find in the Magmatic Realm or the Feywyld.
Shane interrupts Skullbert to ask where he got the magical battery packs. He just found them in second-hand shops. Skull was talking to some guy in a hole-in-the-wall pawn shop.
Nellie shouts out: CLOVIS? Clovis DuFour?
She brings up that we actually investigated the murder of that man. Bulk pipes up: WE KNOW. :)
Griffin knows nothing about ghost hunting. He asks Bulk to explain it in detail. Shane interrupts and criticizes him. Griffin asks Shane to please hold his questions for the end of Bulk’s explanation.
Griffin rolls a 17 Performance to engage Bulk in a series of earnest and dumb Q&A to distract at least one of the duo from Nellie talking to Skull’s parrot.
Nellie is currently glamoured. Meph isn’t familiar with her, but considering she’s speaking to him, he assumes she’s magic. She admits to being a gnome, but she can’t run around without her glamour because of Interplay. Meph spreads his wings and proclaims, "Preposterous!" He agrees with her that Interplay is a bunch of butts.
Ant and Hilary re-establish Nellie’s timeline - Jonquil disappeared in 1958.
Meph remembers the accident where Joinquil was sucked into the Sea of Chaos. He tells Nellie that Skully has his grandmother’s eye for magic items. He’s quite adept - he does a lot of reading. He’s read Gretchen’s research notes cover to cover a number of times.
What was Gretchen’s specialty? She was a diviner, but she had an obsession with necromancy. She never practiced it, but she was fascinated by the concept. The boys are more interested in anything paranormal. Skull doesn’t seem to have a preference, he likes all magic.
Nellie is squawking at this bird and intermittently sighing in between. But because she’s a certified pet whisperer per her business card, Bulk and Skull are just certain she’s getting to the bottom of what ails Mephistopheles.
She tells Meph about the problem in the sewers. She tells the bird we’re going to keep the boys out of danger. He tells her "good luck - they don’t take "no" for an answer."
Meph wants the fat one to stop offering him crackers.
NELLIE: Any treat you would prefer?
MEPH: Justice.
Nellie recommends no more crackers - She tells Bulk Meph would prefer seeds and nuts. They’re better for him, and he would prefer the flavor more.
Griffin has never heard the phrase, "Polly want a cracker?" Bulk is appalled. He tells Griffin that he’s got to come over next Saturday morning, 9am, for Saturday Morning Cartoon Day.
Nellie tells Jericho she kind of wants to take on Skull as a pupil. This is a package deal, though - if we tell one, the other one WILL find out. Nellie thinks it’s more important that Skully knows than it is that Bulk doesn’t know.
NELLIE: WE COMPLETELY LOST THE PLOT! Why do you think the Grim Reaper is an alien?
Bulk already explained it - the pyramids.
Nellie wants to know what about the pyramids indicates "space" specifically, and not underground mole people? Well, if it were mole people the pyramids would be upside down.
The smart people have to roll Con saves. Shane rolls a 10, and takes 9 psychic damage from that incredibly stupid statement.
Everyone knows that one of the heads in Mt Rushmore hides a giant robot.
Okay let’s try to get back to the plot, here. Jericho finally speaks up. He tells the lads that the investigation into the sewers is smoke and mirrors.
He leads up to pulling out the dossier that Crimeny put together. It’s THICC. It shouldn’t be in a manilla folder, it should be in a binder. It’s thick, messy, filled with post-its. There’s a mini string-board, pointing to different sightings, "facts" and news articles that may or may not have anything to do with it. Overall the whole thing points to the Bourbon Street Batman being a secret shadowy cabal trying to take over New Orleans. The thing in the sewers is a trap to attract anyone who’s trying to get too close. The secrets in the sewers were made deliberately easy to find.
Bulk says he and Skully will tackle Bourbon Street Batman right after they’re done with the Sewer stuff. Well, Skully will.
Bulk explains that they’ve already got the sewer thing planned out, and they’ve been advertising and promo’ing it, they can’t just not do it!
Jericho says, "You misunderstand me." He takes the dossier back, opens it up to the page that says the sewers are a trap, and hands it back. Bulk says yeah, no, he and Skull will verify that themselves.
Bulk says you don’t just TRUST a source, no matter how vetted - you’ve got to investigate yourself. He knows this crew has been all over the city doing weird shit. He’d be a world-class idiot to take this at face value.
It would literally take the Grim Reaper themself to pull Bulk away from going into the sewers himself to find out what’s going on down there. Jericho is actively considering how much trouble it would be if we just killed these boys and hid the bodies.
JERICHO: You can’t blame a man for trying.
He wants to take a look at what’s going on in the sewers himself because it is a false flag, but he’s looking into the people BEHIND said false flag. He’s got bigger fish to fry than just make a good YouTube video.
Jericho is going to recommend - professional opinion - that you take backup.
BULK: Are you volunteering? Do you want to do a collab?
BULK: We will stick to you like GLUE. o3o
BULK: Skully, we got a collab with Jericho Investigations, I told you I could seal the deal!
Skully is trying to play it cool but he is physically vibrating. He’s elated. This boy is high Int, low Wis. Nellie has been talking to him about his special interest hyperfixation - he’s just happy to have someone to talk to about this stuff.
Next time we play we’ll work out the logistics of taking these clowns into the sewers.
What does Nellie remember about Gretchen? Time to roll History: 24. Gretchen was a true NPC - very forgettable. The book talks about psychopomps as arbiters of the soul membrane, and death and anamnesis go hand-in-hand with those.
There were rules not to take any research out of the RHoM, but it looks like Gretchen made her own copies of her research. Weirdly, she didn’t seem to trust the circle of druids running the show! A large chunk of the book is written in cypher.
Skully found this book after Granny Gretchen passed, when he was younger. Bulk and Skull have theories about the grim reaper. We want to hear the theories, but Bulk tells us we’ve got to follow and subscribe. But nah, seriously, he’s chomping at the bit to share these theories. He tells us to sit down. Grab a bean bag chair, grab the couch.
Griffin sits. Everyone sits.
Bulk and Skull have been at this for years. Granny Gretchen’s notes don’t really factor in here, this is mostly theories floated by Bulk and Skull. The only possible thing that makes sense: The grim reaper is an alien.
So where does he come from? Space! Duh!
Bulk and Skull want to interview the Grim Reaper. We get side-tracked talking about the Grim Reaper’s gender. Nellie pulls the conversation back.
Pyramids!
The grim reaper showed up one day to say hi to the Egyptians. All religion is founded because the Grim Reaper showed up from the stars and was trying to help us, but because we’ve got squish brains, they had to pretty it up. The Grim Reaper comes down to all these different cultures and has to give them different stories to make sense to each culture. You’ve gotta pretty it up!
Bulk and Skull believe the Grim Reaper is going to come back one day and lead the army against the ghost god.
The Grim Reaper has to deal with the bad ghosts, who have to pass through and be cleansed. So the GR has to take all the bad juju out of the ghost god and cleanse them.
Skully thinks his grandma had an anamnesis theory - does doing a lot of bad things in life corrupt your soul?
So Jack the Ripper, right? He killed a lot of people. So when he dies, and is reincarnated with Jack the Ripper’s memories, he’s gonna be a bad person. So there’s gotta be something that scrubs that clean.
Skull posits that if there was a way to reawaken all of the terrible things you’ve done, everyone in the world would be miserable. Or evil. Or miserable and evil.
Nellie’s heard the expression, "the root of all cruelty is pain," so if that’s what you remember from life to life, you’d come out of the womb ready to stab someone in the eye!
Jericho asks where did these theories come from? From Granny’s notes, or from other places? Granny used to tell Skull stories about her soul research. Skull tries to cross-check his sources online when he researches. He likes going to old bookstores - you’d be surprised what random old stuff turns up in old bookstores. Skull spends a lot of time reading.
Jericho asks if Gretchen ever mentioned anyone else
Granny used to say she had a magic spell on the book. He thinks she just said it to mess with Skully.
NELLIE: Did she?
SKULLY: Why did you say it like that?
Nellie sidles up to Shane and elbows him. He casts Detect Magic at will. The book is magic as fuck. It’s glowing with Abjuration magic. But there are some other things that ping him around here. Specifically, some of the ghost-hunting equipment laying around is giving off divination magic.
Shane texts Nellie what he spies with his British eyes. He gives her the book back, and meanders over to take a cheeky peek at the ghost hunting equipment. He rolls to Investigate: 18.
The EMF reader, the video camera and some of the other recording devices look like they’ve been modified. Shane rolls Mechanics now: 17. This is very amateurish modification works. But there is some magic here, in the gear. It’s very slapdash, and looks like it’s been done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Shane is intrigued.
Back to Nellie and Skull. "So she said she cast magic on this?" Skull tells her yeah, she used to claim that she cast magic on a lot of things. She used to cast magic on his grandpa whenever he annoyed her. He thought she just said those things because it was grandma stuff.
Nellie’s not going to try to crack the cypher right now, but she wants to roll Arcana to see if the magic is interfering with the cypher, or if it’s adding an extra layer to the cypher.
The cypher is written in lists that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. There’s a random grocery list, there’s a random recipe for bread, but certain ingredients are wrong. There’s a coca-cola substitution for yeast, for example.
The cypher could be cracked while the magic is still in place, but it would give wrong answers only. In order to truly decipher it, the protection magic needs to be dispelled.
Nellie asks if Gretchen ever mentioned having a familiar. Ant has to think about this. Skully says she had a pet for a while. He still takes care of it. I get really excited for a hot second, but her familiar wasn’t Mothman the little dog. Grandma Gretchen had a parrot. His name is Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles lives in Skull’s room.
Nellie asks if we could meet the parrot. She has to roll Persuasion: dirty 20. Skully is happy that someone other than Bulk is interested in his weird life. He could bring Meph down.
JERICHO: I can’t believe we’re gonna interview the fuckin’ parrot.
BULK: What? '3'
Jericho rolls a 27 Deception to convince Bulk he didn’t hear Jericho say the phrase, "interview the parrot". There’s nothing Bulk can roll to beat that - the highest he can roll is a 22.
Perched on Skully’s shoulder is the biggest, most obviously magic-looking parrot we have ever seen. He has purple plumage that almost radiates starlight - it looks like glitter. He’s got beautiful jet black plumage on the back of his head like a little crest.
Skull introduces the bird. Nellie says, "Nice to meet you, Mephistopheles." The bird tilts its head at Nellie and doesn’t say anything.
As a gnome, Nellie has the innate ability to communicate with small beasts. She makes squawking noises. She rolls a disadvantaged 12 Performance to not look like a complete psycho. Bulk and Skull each roll a base 12 insight.
Nellie fishes out one of the business cards she had when she worked at the astro therapy center. One of the many listed skills on the card is "Pet whisperer"
Somehow this immediately dispels suspicions.
In an attempt to take some heat off Nellie, Griffin picks up some ghost hunting equipment and asks, "What does this do?"
Bulk comes over to talk about the equipment. Shane is here too. He takes the lead in talking about the equipment. "What’s that do, then, mate?"
This is all the brainchild of Skully over here. He works on all the gear and does all the cool stuff. Bulk doesn’t really know how Skull did it - Skull’s the tech guy, Bulk is the showman. Bulk is just the face of the operation. Skull is always going around old antique shops and secondhand stores.
Does Skull have a unique talent for finding things he shouldn’t have as a normal human man? We’re going to have to ask Skull about that, but right now Shane and Griffin are talking to Bulk.
Shane rolls a 15 Mechanics. These tools are very slapdash - there are a lot of random wires and different batteries. He rolls a 26 Arcana. These batteries look unconventional. These batteries definitely look like sources of magic. They look like something you’d find in the Magmatic Realm or the Feywyld.
Shane interrupts Skullbert to ask where he got the magical battery packs. He just found them in second-hand shops. Skull was talking to some guy in a hole-in-the-wall pawn shop.
Nellie shouts out: CLOVIS? Clovis DuFour?
She brings up that we actually investigated the murder of that man. Bulk pipes up: WE KNOW. :)
Griffin knows nothing about ghost hunting. He asks Bulk to explain it in detail. Shane interrupts and criticizes him. Griffin asks Shane to please hold his questions for the end of Bulk’s explanation.
Griffin rolls a 17 Performance to engage Bulk in a series of earnest and dumb Q&A to distract at least one of the duo from Nellie talking to Skull’s parrot.
Nellie is currently glamoured. Meph isn’t familiar with her, but considering she’s speaking to him, he assumes she’s magic. She admits to being a gnome, but she can’t run around without her glamour because of Interplay. Meph spreads his wings and proclaims, "Preposterous!" He agrees with her that Interplay is a bunch of butts.
Ant and Hilary re-establish Nellie’s timeline - Jonquil disappeared in 1958.
Meph remembers the accident where Joinquil was sucked into the Sea of Chaos. He tells Nellie that Skully has his grandmother’s eye for magic items. He’s quite adept - he does a lot of reading. He’s read Gretchen’s research notes cover to cover a number of times.
What was Gretchen’s specialty? She was a diviner, but she had an obsession with necromancy. She never practiced it, but she was fascinated by the concept. The boys are more interested in anything paranormal. Skull doesn’t seem to have a preference, he likes all magic.
Nellie is squawking at this bird and intermittently sighing in between. But because she’s a certified pet whisperer per her business card, Bulk and Skull are just certain she’s getting to the bottom of what ails Mephistopheles.
She tells Meph about the problem in the sewers. She tells the bird we’re going to keep the boys out of danger. He tells her "good luck - they don’t take "no" for an answer."
Meph wants the fat one to stop offering him crackers.
NELLIE: Any treat you would prefer?
MEPH: Justice.
Nellie recommends no more crackers - She tells Bulk Meph would prefer seeds and nuts. They’re better for him, and he would prefer the flavor more.
Griffin has never heard the phrase, "Polly want a cracker?" Bulk is appalled. He tells Griffin that he’s got to come over next Saturday morning, 9am, for Saturday Morning Cartoon Day.
Nellie tells Jericho she kind of wants to take on Skull as a pupil. This is a package deal, though - if we tell one, the other one WILL find out. Nellie thinks it’s more important that Skully knows than it is that Bulk doesn’t know.
NELLIE: WE COMPLETELY LOST THE PLOT! Why do you think the Grim Reaper is an alien?
Bulk already explained it - the pyramids.
Nellie wants to know what about the pyramids indicates "space" specifically, and not underground mole people? Well, if it were mole people the pyramids would be upside down.
The smart people have to roll Con saves. Shane rolls a 10, and takes 9 psychic damage from that incredibly stupid statement.
Everyone knows that one of the heads in Mt Rushmore hides a giant robot.
Okay let’s try to get back to the plot, here. Jericho finally speaks up. He tells the lads that the investigation into the sewers is smoke and mirrors.
He leads up to pulling out the dossier that Crimeny put together. It’s THICC. It shouldn’t be in a manilla folder, it should be in a binder. It’s thick, messy, filled with post-its. There’s a mini string-board, pointing to different sightings, "facts" and news articles that may or may not have anything to do with it. Overall the whole thing points to the Bourbon Street Batman being a secret shadowy cabal trying to take over New Orleans. The thing in the sewers is a trap to attract anyone who’s trying to get too close. The secrets in the sewers were made deliberately easy to find.
Bulk says he and Skully will tackle Bourbon Street Batman right after they’re done with the Sewer stuff. Well, Skully will.
Bulk explains that they’ve already got the sewer thing planned out, and they’ve been advertising and promo’ing it, they can’t just not do it!
Jericho says, "You misunderstand me." He takes the dossier back, opens it up to the page that says the sewers are a trap, and hands it back. Bulk says yeah, no, he and Skull will verify that themselves.
Bulk says you don’t just TRUST a source, no matter how vetted - you’ve got to investigate yourself. He knows this crew has been all over the city doing weird shit. He’d be a world-class idiot to take this at face value.
It would literally take the Grim Reaper themself to pull Bulk away from going into the sewers himself to find out what’s going on down there. Jericho is actively considering how much trouble it would be if we just killed these boys and hid the bodies.
JERICHO: You can’t blame a man for trying.
He wants to take a look at what’s going on in the sewers himself because it is a false flag, but he’s looking into the people BEHIND said false flag. He’s got bigger fish to fry than just make a good YouTube video.
Jericho is going to recommend - professional opinion - that you take backup.
BULK: Are you volunteering? Do you want to do a collab?
BULK: We will stick to you like GLUE. o3o
BULK: Skully, we got a collab with Jericho Investigations, I told you I could seal the deal!
Skully is trying to play it cool but he is physically vibrating. He’s elated. This boy is high Int, low Wis. Nellie has been talking to him about his special interest hyperfixation - he’s just happy to have someone to talk to about this stuff.
Next time we play we’ll work out the logistics of taking these clowns into the sewers.