silicon valley slayers, 3rd season finale

What better way to honor our last Buffy game than to liveblog it! What could be dorkier!

We talk about our plan to get the Holy Grail, which our sources tell us is at Google. (Last episode, after the Evil Moms' Club thing, we rode a bus to somewhere in Marin, fought a dragon, and talked to the Lord of Chaos. We've been involved with Google ever since the line outside of our Tiki Bar of Dooooooom on Castro St. in Mountainview turned into a spontaneously organizing hack-the-FBI party.)

OOC: the Acrobat entertains Hamster and Moomin with a remote control helicoptery whirly UFO thing. Chaos! Mayhem! I love it.

Chip spends a drama point to make Brigid, Dot's baby, say that she has to go with us to get the grail. We quickly whip up a kevlar baby bjorn. Stakes? check. Crossbow? check. Nappies? Check.

Roberta gates us to a weird google warehouse that used to be an ALZA building. It's full of crates and crates of things marked "ship to sergey brin" as apparently he got the collecting bug and just went around buying stuff. Chip is claiming he can "sense" the grail. He seems kind of newageily stoned out of his mind.

I spend another drama point to make him really sense it. We wander among crates with funny labels. We pass the ark of the covenant, Rosebud, and Lenin's coffin.

Lauren steps out from the empty crate! The grail (invisible to everyone but Chip) is moving away. Chip dodges the sudden explosion of google rentacops and slips away after it. Carlos slips up to the top of some crates and readies his crossbow. Lauren demands that Dot give her Brigid and yells at her for being the worst mother in the world. dot says "come a little closer and tell me that."

Carlos shoots Lauren in the back with a crossbow bolt. Blood everywhere. Lauren is dying. Iffy slashes her wrist to transfer the nanobots in her blood to her mom.

But oh no, the blood transfer means that Iffy is possessed and becomes the new agent of Shub-Niggurath! "Ahh...now this feels good... THIS is a framework."

Roberta gates to an exit (spending a drama point, getting her up to somethign like 30 on her roll) opens the door and clocks Anton. He falls over, reaches for his gun... Chip grabs his arm and gets the gun. Roberta grabs the briefcase. Roberta kicks anton in the nads with pointy toed shoes. (z-amber: Dude, roberta wouldn't wear pointy toed shoes... Me: oh yes she would. Roberta: Looking good is half the battle. Rook: Yeah she doesn't have to walk in them, she can gate everywhere. ) Max casts a binding spell on Anton... "Chip, sorry, it's going to bind you too. Chip: "Oh. sorry. it just doesn't. I'm beyond that now." They tie up Anton. Roberta throws the briefcase to Max who takes it over to Dot. Chip blithely lectures Anton about Iron John, the hairy man in the lake, and embracing your masculinity and capacity for violence in order to pursue the golden ball.

Carlos shoots Iffy in the shoulder. Banter. Lots of blood. Iffy leaps or flies up onto a crate. A flash and a bang and she seems to vaporize! Lauren is saved. Chip drags Anton to Dot... who opens the case . there are 2 identical grails. Chip tells her to let Brigid choose the grail. Roberta wants to beat up Anton. Some arguemnet about making Lauren drink from the grail. But she's okay! her back is totally healed. "But what about Anton..." (Chip's constant refrain). We make anton drink - our only liquid is some bottled breast milk from Dot's diaper bag. (We all cheer and crack up at the idea of the uber-FBI dude who's possessed by the mother of a thousand young being healed by breast milk from the holy grail.) Anton wakes up from possession.

Anton: Roberta, do you know what the penalty is for holding an FBI agent?
Chip: Oh, she knows. She's already "suffered" that penalty... hahahaha...

Iffy/Shub Niggurath says that Iffy has been bleeding over all Brin's fancy toys.. the nano is going to have an effect. (I point out ooc that the nano is going to make a lot of new agents of shub-niggurath/sheela-na-gig.)

Roberta gates lauren, brigid, and anton, and max back to the nexus.

Nina comes crashing in through the roof... she got out of the nexus and flew here...

***break***

Druidsquirrel points out she has a recurring theme of blowing up her friends, either by accident or becaus she figures they can take it and she has to do it to get the bad guys. It is excellent that the radical lesbian feminist has this as her central issue!

***

Roberta gates back to the Nexus with Anton. Her mom is there.... they realize Nina's gone.

Cut back to the warehouse. dot climbs up on the crates which are shaking horribly.
a voice, "INdifference is silent support for the ones in power... the ones who reign!" a mecha-arm smashes through the crate! Grinding! everyone speculates what the hell this is...
A giant mechanical head of Lenin crashes... "the hated are corrupt... but i would not exchange... peace..." (um, i miss it.)

Whump blames me for the nano-lenin thing. Um???

Rook is skeptical of the silly. We defend the silly a little. Whump can't help it. He apologizes and says it will be toned down. I think if Rook were gm-ing this episode we would all go home crying and searching our souls... I point out it is like the comic relief in shakespeare and the crying part will come afterwards.

Roberta comes back... where is Nina? Oh. wait. Rook retconned the part about nina crashing through the roof so that didn't happen. oops!

Carlos shoots Lenin with a crossbow. Oops a 13, not so much. He misses. Lenin rips an electrical conduit out of the ceiling and says something insane about the electrification of the people. Carlos (rolls 23 with drama point) dodges! Chip punches lenin, yelling about how he embraces the way of the warrior and his shadow side. Misses with a 13. Lance (druidsquirrel's 2nd char, the demon from another dimension who is a star wars fan) spends a drama point for a cinematic and beautiful light saber slash.. cloak billowing... and hits! Lenin yammers about cinema and circuses. Dot attacks! Lenin attacks! More quite strangely appropriate wikiquotes from whump/Lenin! Chip uses his weird new "in tune with the universe"-fu to make the packing crates that have nano-shub-niggurath blood on them burst into new shoots and grapevines all twining up, like the myth of Dionysus on the ship, to wind around Mecha-Lenin's arms and legs. "lenin! when you're walking through the swamp you just have to believe that a path will open in front of you!" Lenin: "One must always always try to be as radical as reality itself." and he pounds his fist on the ground creating a huge shockwave. (We all do a dodge roll.)

Lance grapples with Mecha-Lenin. Dot uses the Key on Lenin. Crash! Dive roll under him, coming up, pulling with the key... The vines are still creeping up to grab his feet. So Dot topples him over. Carlos shoots crossbow at Lenin's head (18, second attack on him, grappled and on the ground.) a hit! 21 damage. (whoa!) "crossbows are dangerous... a lot of velocity on that..." Lenin struggles against Lance's grapple and yells, "Not to go forward means to be thrown aback!" druidsquirrel rolls a 19 but fails... and goes flying. Chip does a grapple roll (a 17!) to continue binding Lenin with the vines. He's now bound except for one arm.

Some discussion of the ark of the covenant and how to take it... (Rook has left the room to deal with kids.) Iffy walks up, takes the key, and in russian says, "Everythingn good and ehlpful, when brought to extremes, can and usually does become evil and harmful." (wow bill!!!! so perfect!) Everyone worries... can chip control the vines? how did he do that? Lance understands... "the force is strong in him!"
Suddenly Roberta, wandering around the warehouse, sees fiona come out of a mirror . she has a silver arm. (!) (Fiona is the queen of faerie and we have a sort of a History.) The way I look at it, roberta, you owe me. "no... you owe me." "i let your brothers live." "You killed my cousin. the one relative i have who's worth..." "there's this whole thing of intrinsic human value i just don't get." "there's t his whole thing of deficit financing. you're a businesswoman... we could always make a deal. i understand your'e nina's godmother..." Fiona brings up Tad - she wanted him to replace Ned. Now she wants Nina! "no. fucking. way." "then what are you going to give me." "why should i give you anything?" Roberta spends a drama point to reach into the mirror and pull Fiona through! (surprise!)

Me: what's with the silver arm?
Efveryone: Kat ate it!
Me: Oh yeah! (That used to be somebodyorother's fucked-up werewolf character and we brought her back for a cameo.)

Roberta makes Fiona swear on a cross to leave her family and friends alone.

(In the background we briefly describe the cinematic fight scene with crossbows, dot in full force slayer mode, and lance with the light saber leaping around as they fight the giant animated statues.)

What we need is to disinfect everything from Shub Niggurath's blood.

Holy water!!!!

Nina casts a spell to collect all the blood in one place:

whump: into the grail!
we all argue OOC...
I think nina would do it! into the false grail!
Rook makes her do it.

me and z-amber ooc debate punk vs. goth. punks are into vengeance. goths are chill.

some confusion... is the false grail here ? we decide yes.
rook eloquently describes the little rivulets of blood coming up into the grail!
carlos and roberta pour holy water into it!

The false grail cracks!
Fiona laughs diabolically.
Carlos: I'm sick of this shit!
Fiona: Carlos, if i were you, i'd go outside.
Carlos shoots at fiona.
Lance intervenes.. that is against the jedi code of honor! Lance slices the crossbow bolt in mid-flight.
"What was that about?"
"She's pledged her neutrality"
Iffy: Guys! I just checked earthquake.usgs.gov! Everyone get out of here! She flies straight up.

Roberta gates us back.

The san andreas fault shears on a 50 mile line from cupertino on a 50 mile line all the way up! secondary breeches all along the calaveras and the hayward! (We suddenly decide that in-game time, it's 2 days ago, so that it's the 100 year anniversary of the SF quake.)

Rook declares that at this moment, Josh's wife dies in the hospital - the ghost who powers the nexus! The power of the Nexus starts fading.

We're back at the Nexus. There's a knock at the door. It's Starhawk! earthquake is still happening...

We run out into the street!

It's dark, gas main breaks start exploding, thousands of car alarms go off...

Carlos: Did we just trade Lauren's life for the lives of all these people...
Max: it's still not ethical to kill one person to save a bunch of them! take organ transplants, for example....

Starhawks says the hayward fault runs right thrugh the campus! Thank god you let me through... I was going to ask you guys, now that you've gotten rid of shub-niggurath... this is horrible, but if shub-niggurath had taken your daughter... The Ascender, well, Shub-Niggurath isn't only person who is going to want the Ascender. Other peopel are going to try to take you or influence you or convert you to evil. So before the nexus fails...

josh comes up. chip says "hey! josh! I can see you! cool! and they shake hands."
weirdness... because he's the ghost of the nexus!
max does some spells and realizes chip is dead and has been for several weeks.
I feel fine! better than ever in fact!
turn out lights... more spells, everyone sees little lines of crackling purple life force running from everyone to chip.
(some ooc consternation and discussion. chip could go into the nexus! )

Everyone says they want to keep chip alive... but! if they do it turns out they'll all die within a year. Chip says it woudl be dumb to try! He doesn't want to be a zombie vampire sucking life force out of his friends! Besides, being the nexus woudl be the ultimate trip and he's done every possible drug he could find and would probably end up in jail.

Starhawk, nina, max, carlos do a spell..but actually... in the end Chip just steps across the threshold of the courtyard, shakes hands with Josh again and then steps into the nexus and his body falls over. (Cut to funeral)

Comments

[elswhere]

Wow. This is fascinating and only partly incomprehensible! Now I kinda wish I'd stayed around to observe, though I had a nice time here too.

[Iris]

Didn't you once say that you never watched Buffy when it was on tv? That is obviously for the best as all this is even more exciting.

[badgerbag]

For your amusement Iris: I based my golden-hearted DJ character on a combination of me and the Acrobat's brother. (I did *tell* him I was doing it...hoping he wouldn't be insulted by all my exaggerations and distortions...) And, a little bit, an old boyfriend of Minnie's who dropped out of college during the Boom to be a Java programmer but whose life got out of control. Chip started out being about 18, very slutty, always optimistic, often taking tons of random party drugs from his handy Altoids tin... a "club kid". Basically, Dot's annoying little brother.

This game was a great finale to 3 years of playing Buffy. Our characters evolved a lot over time. Rook says he's going to put up all the episode guides into a LiveJournal community so that we the players AND we the characters can add the commentary track. We had in-character blogs, not very well kept up. Mine was here.

I had forgotten that Chip's attempt to do magic... which he completely made up... went awry and made him have a "disinhibition" effect on everyone in a 50-foot radius, back in the first season of the game, and that's what got Dot (Rook's character) and Max (druidsquirrel's character) together in the first place.

[sythihbew]

I felt him. That she scanned diane lane gallery the next day when anim message appeared on the.