The Fiendish Four have discovered an insidious plot that will devastate the city and only they can stop it. That will require facing the governor and his minions, both demonic and human. Before they storm the castle, so to speak, the Fiendish Four need every edge they can get. This means investigation, interrogation of minions, and other dirty tricks. Anything to even the odds. Will their work be enough or will they be doomed before they even start? Find out in the penultimate episode of the campaign!
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Teela wanted to record audio so she could compare the voices of everyone at the school to recordings of the Caped Corvid either from the news or from some of the phone calls to the Honey Badgers, didn’t she?
Got it in one!
Two things
One: “I got a fever and the only thing that will cure it is some more Balgrin”
Two: is it scary that every time he uses impossible beauty on the kids i have this uncontrollable urge to chant “Mr A.!”
Random slogan generator is the best generator. Thank you for making my morning, Caleb.
I’m too busy laughing to have useful thoughts about this (but if I were gonna have one it’d be that I found all the clues about what was Really Going On kind of baffling, didn’t understand it until it got openly exposited)
Did any hints of ‘What Is Really Going On’ get dropped before the last episode?
Because this part of the plot feels like it’s just popping out of nowhere.
I feel it needs a little foreshadowing earlier in the game. Or at least some small hints so that the players can go “Shit! So that’s why that happened”. For example give a throwaway line saying that the governor tours the school right after the zombie apocalypse or some such. Just so that the governor exists in the players mind before he turns up as the main bad.
One thing I don’t understand: If the Vishrak (sp?) had stayed out of the Archfiend’s way, why would the Archfiend’s plan have lead to them becoming the janitors of Hell? Sure, the Archfiend could become incredibly powerful and maybe the new leader of Hell, but he was already ahead of the Vishrak in the hierarchy; wouldn’t he treat them like the rest of the devils as long as they didn’t oppose him? Or is every devil other than the Archfiend going to get demoted to janitor?
I viewed the ViShrock’s motivation as purely based on Pride. Sedichal’s influence, combined with brother Raal’s inevitable betrayal, screwed them out of souls they’d been corrupting for years. The public damnation of Blant would also make the superpowers = demons connection known, making further corruption harder in the future. Lastly, demons aren’t known for cooperation. Screwing over Sedichal raises them in the heirarchy and serves as an act of envious hate, which they are all about. And ultimately, according to the rules, demons become servants of their host gets sucked to hell, and hosts always get to call the shots. If the demon can’t dissuade the human from trying to stop the arch fiend, it’s best to go all in merely as a means of self preservation. The goal was to build a climax that saw the hellbinders in sync for completely opposed motivations, the humans out of a desire to protect and redeem themselves, the demons out of petty envy, pride, and selfish fear.
Penultimate means “last but one hundred” right?
So question, if this were a Coen Brother’s flick, who would play Mr. Garcia? Was that John Goodman?
John Goodman would be best as Toxic Asset.
Ken Jeong is Chan Smith
Master Debater is John Lithgow
Alison Brie is Mrs. Ledbetter
Caped Corvid is Charles Dance (Tywin from GoT)
Oh man, that is an inspired choice for a Caped Corvid. Kudos Ross.
Oh, good episode. I’m hoping that if things go really bad in the final showdown, Teela might show up to kill the Caped Corvid, and accidentally save the day.
Alternate for Master Debater: Stanley Tucci http://imgur.com/gallery/GvOR9
whaaat, Toxic Asset is obviously the Gary Oldman cameo
but with John Lithgow I cannot argue
“Frank, you’re in agony around this guy.”
that’s weird
“He can’t even lie!”
wait a minute…
“He won’t even use his powers-”
*screams internally*
if that’s all what I think it is, that plan is hideously poetic
Good lord I am loving this campaign more and more as things heat up. My only real regret is it looks like it’s going to come to an end soon.
I fully support the idea of giving Teela a trust fund, I’d love to hear some post game antics after she goes full on batman. Also I must find some random quote generators now.
While this one turned out quite good & with the new threat early on going after one of the crew, I’m surprised later with one evil action they didn’t just aim in the direction of that new threatening character for that downward spiral. Wasn’t expecting how this one turned out near the end, was thinking of some angel/human half-breed but the plan is much more nefarious so it will be exciting to see how this one turns out.
Why don’t they just go to the angels? I know the demon laughed at the idea and the Archfiend’s plan revolves around capturing an angel, but in the end it’s probably going to come down to the Fiendish Four slugging it out with the Archfiend and his minions, and they’d have a lot better chance with some angels on their side than without them.
Just thought of something as soon as I posted – there’s a way the ViShrock could beat the Archfiend without ever confronting him. They just have to capture two angels for themselves.
@Taltos
“Just?” Friend, I know we made it *sound* easy, but the only way we managed to survive that particular dust-up was by sheer luck mixed with crazy risks and pure, unplanned chaos. Angels are hard to take on, period.
But yes, capture a couple angels. Kidnap two people who are possessed by Our Blessed Lady Of Smackdown, somehow keep them quiescent while we figure out how to open a portal to Hell, push them in, jump in after them (after shedding the mortal husk and/or dragging the mortal with, of course) and live secure in the fact that we’ve bagged two angels between the four of us to the Archfiend’s 1:1…
Wait, wait. His ratio’s still better. Good idea, we’ll call that one Plan B; we still gotta thwart his Sinisterliness and his plot to kidnap the angel first, otherwise we’re still second-rate.
Always be the Batman, Teela.
Full stop What.
I was kidding about getting two angels – I thought it was the sort of ridiculous idea that extreme player logic could come up with.
And I said “Why don’t they just go to the angels?” because I thought it was a funny parallel to “Why doesn’t anyone ever just go to the police?”. It’s been a few months since the fight with the Christian Strongmen, at least one or two should have recovered, they’d definitely be interested in stopping things, and since they’re angels they couldn’t backstab anyone. And like you say, even one angel is serious business, so adding even one more could be a real wrench in the works.
I’m not criticizing your roleplaying at all, I think the decisions everyone made were very much in character and have been really entertaining to listen to. Plus having NPCs slug it out isn’t necessarily the most fun, and I really like the way everyone at RPPR usually puts having a good time over in-game tactical advantages.
Taltos, friend, we are a rather ridiculous group. ^_^
The last comment was a summation of the discussion between Bill and me while en route to the game; we were discussing options and trying to figure out a workable “Plan B” as well as “Plan C, D, E, and possibly F.” The snark is an inherent part to the brainstorming when the various letters include dangerous, foolish, risky, or all of the above (except for Our Blessed Lady Of Smackdown; that was one of the albums from Ross’s High School Ska band.)
But yes, we could have handed that one off to the angels and ran away. Assumed new identities in some country somewhere else, put this whole thing behind us… but where’s the fun in that? Besides, the odds were 4 v 5 with just us; with the angels in play instead of us, it’d be 2 v 5. If these lackey-demons are anywhere near as lucky as we are, they’ll overpower the angels without ever bothering the Archfiend at all.
Logically, we should have washed our hands of all of it the second we started the whole damned thing.
Also, I actively encourage criticism of my roleplaying. I won’t get better if I don’t get called on my mistakes; as a matter of fact, my side-story for this whole campaign can be summed up as “Solving problems via killing will only create more problems.”
Awesome game. Where did you find the aphorism generator?