February Flight of Fire Monkeys

Monk and his significant other Kelly, K-Bell from here on, flew into town last week to celebrate our clique's big get-together the Troll Hoot. I posted a long write up at the PeryPub forum, so here I'll copy and paste the highlights and throw up some pictures.

Well Monk and K-Bell flew in on Thursday afternoon. We spent the day when Robin got off work, touring Shaker Heights and Cleveland's Near-West side of town.

Friday of the Hoot was very kewl. Being snowed in at a hotel has a rather pleasant surreality to it.

We sat in the swimming area and bask in balminess while thick snow fell outside. After getting caught up and making necessary introductions, Kelly-Bell to Mandy and Steppenwulf, we ordered pizza before slipping into the evening game. The dining area being our gaming room so we put the tables together as we wanted, complete with a side table for food and drink. We decided to keep the beer in the trunk of Robin's car as opposed to doing the garbage can full of ice routine-- I played beer boy for whoever wanted one whenever Monk, the GM, had a smoke break.

Saturday reminded me that schedules are merely guidelines in the greater scheme of things. The hotel was clearing out for most of the morning, apparently a lot of people were trapped by the storm. I started my game up around 11am where I had time enough to get out the plot-points and get the party into Monk's upcoming "the Dread Plane of Heck." I explored my take on "dark elves," goblins and other tidbits from what I call the Big Dark. Steppenwulf's goblin samurai was more than helpful. What was most fun was that my giant trap-door spider trap worked like a charm, much to Monk's Haruld A-Viking character dismay.

The Hoot's traditional "Big Lunch" took place at the nearby Cracker Barrel. Yeeg, but there was some corn bread muffins.

Getting back to the Hoot, Steppenwulf's Rift's game "Hell Comes to Space." We played a USAF Reaction Team (para-rescuers and forward operations facilitators) at the start of the great Armageddon that would shape the world into the Rift's universe that Palladium fans know and love. Yes, we did the prequel. The "space" part of "Hell Comes to Space" was that our team parachuted from low orbit into the disaster area. It was like a true Starship Troopers, as in from the book, moment.

Smokes and Jokes, and Monk moved us into "The Dread Plane of Heck." As a co-author of this developing scenario, I was impressed with the work that Monk had done for it. He wouldn't let me know any details to his portion, so my character, the resurrected Haruld A-Viking, was discovering as much as the other PC's around him. The session ended rather quickly, maybe forty minutes or so, and it was barely 7:30pm.

So the rest of the night was a bit of swimming, downloading gamer videos from YouTube to more fully indoctrinate K-Bell into our degenerate sub-culture, and ordering in dinner. Just before 11pm we had our secret ballot as to who was everyone's favorite GM, and Monk won by a single vote. As I presented the man with the 2010 Ken St Andre Best GM Award, brought to us this year by Michelob Ultra (literally it was the label to a bottle that I had in my hand), the women just went wild. As we all know to be anointed by Ken St Andre is like being adopted as the prodigy of a pagan sex god. Finally able to calm the weaker sex down enough to refit the breakfast nook into a place where people would want to eat the next morning. We concluded the Hoot for yet another year.

At 4pm on Monday, Peryton and I dropped Monk and K-Bell off at the airport after a late lunch. The Hoot was definitely over at that point. Checking my emails and facetube notes, I saw Steppenwulf was feeling the same way. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But I can't get all mopey, I only have five other events to get ready for for. One less than two weeks away.