#murray critmit to you and yours

[arsonforcharlie]

tonight was the fuck squad critmit (it’s like christmas but christianity isn’t a thing in eurolia, but i wanted to use christmas shorthand- WORLDBUILDING) special, because the main plot was not going anywhere nearly consequence-free enough for the tone we wanted to nail down. it featured presents for the squad- little brooches based on magic items everyone’s character has that came with little notes from the shop owner where they got the item. (from the left, rhonia’s magic lunchbox, the bag of trading, sergei’s impervious rod with the lightup orb attached, the diadem of brothority, and maddela’s serpent fang dagger)

we also had a lot of cheese and caramel-filled snickerdoodles and chocolate and wine to the point where i made an impromptu decision to run the session theatre of the mind because we absolutely weren’t going to clear off the battle mat. (you can almost see it under the second cheese board up there. that wasn’t even all the cheese.) tonight’s adventure involved a lot of homebrewing because i couldn’t find stats for pretty much anything i wanted, and also i wrote a knock off night before christmas that i read in my best reading-to-wee-chiddlers-by-the-fire voice from this expertly-crafted prop book in between segments. they seemed to have a good time, fortunately! god i love my friends. recap and full poems under the cut

Twas the night before Critmit, and all through the inn While Jasper was putting the trash in the bin From his holiday party, an annual bash Where all of our heroes got totally smashed. He wiped up the spilled beer and swept up the glass From the breaking of windows that had just come to pass. The fuck squad was nestled all snug in their beds While visions of beautiful dresses and jewels, or hedonistic orgies, or Reaper in a bit of leather and not much else, or huge plates of mac and cheese, or hedonistic orgies again but this time a little bit closer to the ground danced in their heads. Alone or with partners, they started to snooze And settled their brains in to sleep off the booze. But then, just as slumber began to take hold, They awoke out of doors, dressed, armed, startled, and cold. The snowdrift they lay in was not one they knew And the landscape was foreign, cold, barren, and blue. A cottage ahead was the only respite From the miserable weather on this harsh winter’s night.

partway through my first reading of the poem i realized a button of my shirt was just straight up undone and busted out with “oh my shirt just popped the FUCK open” so that really set the tone for the night

(directly after i finished the descriptive verse) Sergei: “Then you see him, Shia Laboeuf!”

frankly i’m surprised we went this long without any shia laboeuf references

the fuck squad go into the cottage to warm up, and inside find an old dwarf in a red and white robe with a long white beard, drinking from a mug of hot cocoa by the fire and checking over a list. he introduces himself as klaus, and tells the fuck squad that he needs help. rhonia immediately asks “DO WE NEED TO SAVE CRITMIT” and frankly i think we could all use that sort of initiative. he says yeah, he needs help, usually he brings presents to all the chiddlers of the world-

rhonia: “WHAT????” “chiddler. it’s slang. bobbie uses it. go away.”

- but unfortunately, this year, the mean old Grunch has stolen his sleigh and his reindeer, so he can’t give out presents! the Grunch put some sort of spell on it so he couldn’t bring it back to his house with a snap of his fingers, but if the fuck squad could bring it back, he’d definitely put them on the nice list- and that’s something a few of them deffo need. he also condones a little bit of accidental murder if they need to.

sergei: “i’ll take care of the reindeer!” saida: “I’ll take care of the murder!” rhonia: “If the reindeer die I’ll turn them into skeletons and bring them back!” everyone: “NO!”

they take fur coats that are hung by the door and set off along the road towards the eggnog sea

it’s a sea made of eggnog. maddela fills her flask. rhonia starts drinking just, like, with her hands. meanwhile, sergei, saida, and yoni begin asking me where the sewage goes. i, of course, do not have a satisfactory answer because why the fuck would i, it’s a fantasy dreamscape, so that ended poorly

Saida: “RHONIA DRANK POOP! Shit-slurper.” “you know, it’s great how i don’t even need to write down your names when i’m taking these notes because each of you are so damn identifiable.”

they’re interrupted by five odd creatures, shaped vaguely like humanoids but made of an odd hard biscuity substance with what looks like icing outlining their facial features, who demand to know who they are and where they’re going. when they say they’re going to go stop the grunch, the gingerbread guards draw their weapons. before anyone can try and calm the situation, maddela just leans forward and tries to take a bite out of one of the guards. (she does later successfully get a chomp out of one.)

(i mention something about one of the gingerbread men having a hole in them after they were stabbed) sergei: “heh it’s a glory hole” “IT’S NOT A GLORY HOLE” yoni: “it’s the Eurolia version of american pie!”

frankly i’m just happy yoni remembered the bad continent name i made up pretty much on the spot so i could justify having a fake fantasy eurovision

Saida: “if any of you fuck a figgy pudding i’m leaving” Sergei: “Don’t worry, I generally try not to fuck food.” “Not since the incident.”

Saida: “That doesn’t count, everybody fucks a little food when they’re thirteen!”

saida uses the memory gauntlets on one of the gingerbread guards, another thing that i was not prepared for. despite getting a lot of suggestions that i dismissed as horrifying (the beard suggested going back to the intolerable temperatures of being baked to life, rhonia suggested when he got his eyes piped on, that sort of thing) she instead saw this gingerbread man hugging his twin sons, tiny tim and tiny jim, and telling them that he was happy they’d be able to go to college because he was working as a guard. apparently that was worse. whatever.

me, out of hand, discussing rhonia’s armor of bones, “You could make a full body bone strapon.” rhonia: “COULD I????”

doesn’t say she can’t

the beard, interjecting: “Just curious, is the gingerbread man, like,a  DILFY gingerbread man?”

saida, returning to the important question of whether rhonia drank poop: “What if they poop royal icing? Because if they poop royal icing that means they can use it todraw little features on each other like lil gingerbread scat enthusiasts?” “SO YOU KEEP WALKING ALONG THE ROAD”

yoni puts a bit of gingerbread into the bag of trading, and when i roll on the table, i get the “bottle of ale or wine” result, so i rule she gets some rum so they drink that with the egg nog.

saida: “I’ve had dreams where we were all together. In Todd Howard’s house. Which was also a social science facility.”

“the road veers away from the coast of the Eggnog Sea, towards several rounded mountains on the horizon.” saida “AYYYYYYY TIDDAYS”

it’s not tiddays, it’s the sugarplum mountains, but that sure doesn’t stop them from making a bunch of lewd comments about the geology

“the road leads to a field, with a weird-looking snowdrift across the middle, that looks almost like one you’d see growing against a wall.” sergei: “it’s not vaginal, is it?”

still don’t know where that one came from

“fast and the furious, vaginal drift”

there are a few snowmen past the wall, and they begin throwing snowballs at the fuck squad, who join in the snowball fight eagerly.

maddela: “can i put rocks in the snowball?” saida: “wow, you were a little shit as a kid, weren’t you?”

but maddela meant a specific rock, because she had a thunderstone. she missed horribly with it, but i commend the effort.

there was a surprisingly long discussion about what food would be best to throw at these snowmen before they found out that they couldn’t throw food past this wall of force.

“alright, sergei, you’re up, what are you doing?” sergei: “i’m doing a pressed ham!”

this is a new term for me, but apparently it’s when you moon someone and press your whole ass up against the window.

why

like why in general but why in particular would you do that with a weird magical barrier

anyway he does it and takes 6 cold damage directly to his ass

“alright, so this snowman’s aiming right for your asshole i guess.” sergei: “what? he can’t see my asshole!” “I assumed you spread your cheeks.” sergei: “why would I do that?” “instinct.” sergei: “fair.”

“okay, let’s say if i roll a crit he hits you right on the asshole.” sergei: “do your worst!” and that is when i rolled my first and only nat20 of the night.

sergei: “i just took like sixteen damage to my ass, i’m not wagging my dick at them.”

they defeat the snowmen (which was indeed an encounter that i think i inadvertently stole the idea for from one of the TAZ liveshows but i realized after i statted it out so i used it) and move on without any more discussion of that

the road takes them up Mount Killjoy, where the Grunch lives in his cave. in the cave, they find a snow globe with a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer in it.

they try to take it, but the Grunch comes out with his dog mark and tells them they can’t do that. before he can explain why, a bolt of shadow comes from the entrance to the cave and destroys the snow globe, knocking it out of sergei’s hand

A dwarf walked on in tracking fresh fallen snow- The same dwarf that they met only hours ago. The miniature reindeer, before the squad’s eyes, Now freed from the globe grew to regular size. More rapid than Sergei, his coursers they came And he cackled, and giggled, and called them by name. “Now, Gnasher! Now, Ripper! Now Grinder and Pain! On, Killer! On, Chiller! On Scratch and Elaine! We have nightmares to cause, and a Critmit to steal! And soon these poor suckers won’t know what is real!” His face it was shifted, past our comprehension, The unnatural show too unnerving to mention. His flesh flopping flatly like meat from a deli With his midsection roiling from chest to his belly. “Ho ho!” said the monster in the Grunch’s house, “Your mind is your prison! I’m Sanity Klaus!”

did i make this whole adventure based around that one pun? yes, yes i did. i’m a serious dungeon master.

maddela: “are the reindeer in a, uh, 20 foot cluster with nobody else around?” “that’s real specific and makes me think you already have a plan.”

“yeah, you can’t use that without hitting sergei.” saida: “well you can do that, you’ve done that once and it’s fine!”

rhonia: “I will also let you know that I have 12 hit points right now.” yoni: “I don’t care, I want to hit things”

they fight with sanity klaus and his eight reindeer, who mostly bite, and also possess a power to turn their noses into flaming hot coals. everyone is surprisingly competent at fighting when they’re in a dream and not scared of using up resources, though, and they defeat him with very few injuries except rhonia being aged up through the use of Sands of Time

where’s that gif from the remake of jamie lee curtis holding her face and going “i’m like the cryptkeeper!” because i imagine that’s rhonia when she discovers she’s 30

maddela: “They have free will! They can do what they want!” “And what they want is to bite.”

the grunch thanks them for helping him defeat sanity klaus. it turns out, on festive nights like this, it’s easier for people in the plane of dreams to cross over to the material plane. usually the grunch does it to deliver presents every critmit, and spends most of the rest of the year working to keep sanity klaus in check, but this year he got the bright idea to get someone else in to free his reindeer and try and kill the grunch for him so he can cross to the material plane and work to spread madness there

so, the fuck squad saved critmit, and they’re definitely on the nice list despite all the innocent creatures they killed

yoni flapdragon puts the base of the snowglobe into the bag of trading, and gets a huge diamond, just, like, as big as both fists. just then, the grunch claps and they all wake up.

As the fuck squad awakened that bright Critmit morn, They were healed up, restored, bit hung over, but warm When they went down for breakfast, to all their surprise Our friend Jasper had glee in his smile and his eyes He held up a sack, that merry old bloke, Labelled “Gold to replace windows that the fuck squad broke.” “Someone left me this bag, down there, under that pine, And there are also some gifts down there that are not mine!” A teddy for Sergei, one that might fit a bear And a headdress for Maddela to go in her hair Rhonia got food and a pillow for naps, And Saida got a lavalliere- that’s four elf claps! For Yoni, a collar of intricate make With amethyst stones, that would fit her wee drake. As they opened their presents, they heard in their minds A voice that the waking world rarely would find. The Grunch calling out, his voice merry and bright “Happy Critmit to all, and to all a good night!”