#oxventure

It is Boxing Day in Milton-on-Sea, the time between Christmas and New Year, in the 90s. Tourists are thin on the ground even in the summer, and now, it’s like a ghost town. In the centre, there’s a model village recreating the town. Kids can come here to catch up after Christmas Day. Corey and Torey arrive with Clive Barker, the family Yorkshire terrier. Torey, a conspiracy theorist, put an advert in her magazine for teens to investigate a mystery. Keegan the transfer student arrives to join in. Corey dubs them the Mystery Conspiracy Crew, MCC. Keegan moves around because his parents are marine biologists, so maybe they can investigate a fish mystery – Torey says fish are government drones. Keegan asks if they have twin telepathy; Corey and Torey disagree.

They decide to find a mystery to solve. The twins remember there was someone else who said he was going to meet them, Rollo (real name Christopher), who’s late, which isn’t like him. They head for Rollo’s house. It’s very well-decorated in that part of town, but there’s also a police car with flashing lights outside Rollo’s house, the policemen talking to his parents. MCC cycle past slowly, attempting to eavesdrop. Keegan fails to hear anything, but the twins hear the policeman ask when Christopher was last seen, and he went out to get the paper in the morning and never came back for lunch. The mother sees them and calls them over, as she knows Rollo was planning to meet them. MCC learn Rollo vanished, not abducted in the night by aliens, and Corey promises to find him. The policeman is unconvinced, but assures the mother there’s people looking, and gives Corey a card with the station’s number.

As they prepare to move out, Corey and Torey see a black, animalistic shape dash across the street. Torey grabs Clive Barker so he can’t chase it. Keegan didn’t see it; he mentions his parents were working on Christmas Day. Corey thinks Keegan’s parents are making fish people and kidnapped Rollo as a test subject. But first, they chase the black shape on their bikes. They find two girls from the primary school, Sarah and a younger girl. Sarah waves to Torey, and Corey asks about the shape; Sarah thinks they might’ve seen a dog, not a fish-boy, then the younger (Emily) corrects them that it was a wolf. It was headed towards the sea or the pier.

They ride off, Corey waxing lyrical about his favourite series of children’s mystery novels. They reach the Victorian promenade and pier, which has not well withstood the test of time. Everything’s shut up for Christmas, but the security hut is manned. The twins ask the guard if he saw anything. He didn’t, and he doesn’t want to bother going into the back to check the tape. Corey keeps the guard talking while Torey sneaks in the back, but she trips over. Torey and the guard argue, until Corey starts yelling that the guard hit him. The guard plays the tape for them to shut him up.

There is indeed a black shape dashing across the pier and into the arcade, but the guard cannot see it. Keegan begs to be allowed into the arcade to play Street Fighter 2, and Corey starts yelling about being hit again. With some really good rolls, the guard directs them to a back entrance. Mike and Andy get carried away simulating a bout of Street Fighter, before Ellen reminds them to enter the arcade first. The door isn’t fully closed; they pass through a staff locker room and into the games room with penny pushers and other games. Corey and Keegan keep getting distracted from searching for Rollo by the prospect of Street Fighter 2, but Torey thinks it’s government brainwashing, so while the boys play, she sneaks around to investigate. She finds deep scratch marks on the wooden floor leading to the way they came in and then going back and forth. There’s bits of dark fur caught in a penny machine. Clive Barker sniffs around a lot; Torey offers him some fur, and he heads off to where the really old, antique penny machines are. As she approaches, she hears some quiet crying. It’s Rollo.

He’s wedged himself in between two machines, and is sobbing barely coherently about a big black cat. The boys join in coaxing him out, and there’s a mewing from behind them. They turn around and see two giant eyes in the dark staring at them. Torey compares it to the Beast of Bodmin Moor. Corey suggests they back up slowly and get out. Rollo is babbling about socks and jumpers, and this reminds Keegan of when he lived in Iceland, and a legendary yule cat who’d hunt those who don’t get clothes for Christmas. Corey thinks it’s a property developer.

The cat runs around them, blocking the way to the door. They start gifting each other pieces of clothing, which calms the cat, and it wanders away to start sleeping. Torey takes a photo with her disposable camera. The flash agitates the cat and the photo is too blurry to be convincing. Corey spends an adversity token to find out this is an actual, otherworldly cat.

They try to run out; Corey and Keegan reach their bikes with Rollo, but as they look back, a line of gnomes are carrying Torey. Corey tries to crash his bike into the gnomes but fails, then the boys ride after the gnomes, Rollo on Torey’s bike with Clive Barker. As they catch up, Keegan tries to pull Torey away and fails. Torey fights back against the gnomes but cannot get out. The gnomes claim to be the yule lads, who are taking her home to Grilla. Corey tries to remember his mystery novels, but these seem to be garden gnomes turned into supernatural beings unlike anything he’s read of. He finds an improvised catapult among the stalls, and shoots some projectiles at the gnomes, which drop Torey and run away.

Torey asks Rollo why his neighbour’s gnomes came to life. The neighbour just comes down every winter to rest. There’s a scream, and they decide to investigate, Rollo balanced between the milk crates on Torey and Keegan’s bikes and Clive Barker with Corey. The gnomes appear to be heading back to Rollo’s street. As they go, Keegan explains about Grilla the Icelandic troll who eats children. Torey wants to know if the Icelandic government are doing a cover-up. Rollo nearly falls off the baskets, but Torey uses her knack to stabilise him.

As they go, they find Emily, who is in tears because the gnomes have taken Sarah. Corey scolds her, and they continue on to Rollo’s street. The house which previously had lots of gnomes, and now only has quite a few gnomes, is dark. They see an orange glow from the kitchen. Corey boosts Keegan over the garden wall, and he unbolts the gate. All four sneak round the back. There are grotty net curtains that Torey peeks through, and sees into the kitchen. It’s been modified to expand into the conservatory, which features a bubbling cauldron over a fire, and a giant shape; hooves, a cloak that moves like with the movement of more than one tail, the deeply wrinkled face of an ancient being. Torey holds her nerve and takes a photo with her camera – without flash. There are gnomes all around the kitchen, and in the corner, she sees little Sarah, absolutely petrified.

Torey reports back, and Corey says they have to rescue Sarah and capture Grilla. There’s a catflap, and Corey proposes Keegan knocks on the door and runs away, and they sneak in the catflap to rescue Sarah. And he can do it repeatedly until they’re done. Keegan is very good at knocking and running, so he does that, and Corey leaves Torey on guard while he sneaks in.

Corey gets stuck in the catflap, but the doorbell calls Grilla away. Torey boots Corey through the door. He gets in and sneaks towards Sarah. The cauldron is held up by some chains, and looks precarious. He successfully shuffles Sarah around and posts her through the catflap. Torey receives Sarah, who is distraught. Corey suggests burning the house down with Grilla inside. Out front, Grilla doesn’t open the door but looks through a peephole and roars in frustration. Keegan decides to do it again. Corey and Torey plot how to upend the pot over Grilla, including a lawn decoration disguised as Sarah. He sneaks the decoration in, the gnomes still distracted playing around, and slides it in just perfectly. Corey uses Treasure Hunter to find a useful object (Mike suggests machine gun) and finds a five litre bottle of sunflower oil, which he pours into the cauldron. Keegan rings the bell again, and this time plans to confront Grilla. It turns out that Keegan has been injected with electric eel serum by his marine biologist parents, and he does a lightning attack a la Street Fighter. Grilla is badly shaken and stumbles back to the kitchen, where the gnomes have made a mess and Corey has trapped the cauldron. She knocks the cauldron down on herself, and the oil catches fire.

There’s quite the commotion. Keegan can see the living room is covered in dust sheets, contrasting the chaos. The twins call Rollo and Sarah to run away and they all sprint around the front again, and Keegan tells them about the electrocuting. Corey decides everything Torey believes must be real, and at Keegan’s suggestion decides to invent the internet to share theories. Somehow he passes the roll, so Ellen rules he will in later life have an internship with Tim Bernard Lee.

The house is on fire, and as it’s a semi-detached, Rollo’s house is now also at risk. They return Rollo to his parents; his mother is delighted, and they tell her there’s an electric fire next door, so she calls the fire brigade. The firefighters eventually figure out it’s an oil fire, but it’s too late for Grilla.

Another house on the street has another model village, but Grilla’s house is now blackened.

Notes from pre-show podcast commentary: It’s Jane and Andy again. They highlight that Ellen’s only prior DMing was Teatime Adventures. For Andy, this is one of the busiest weeks of the year, so he’s tired but doing well. They’re recording shortly before Christmas, and Jane has been seeing things about “animals know to sleep when it gets dark early, why are we being more active?”, but she thinks it’s more to oppose the darkness. Andy thinks it’s a time of good times and seasonal food; he goes through his favourite Christmas food. Jane is going to go see the new Avatar, and he and Jane have mixed feelings about that particular cinema. They move on to the Christmassy set dressing for filming this one-shot, and Jane thinks it looks really pretty on screen.

Notes from post-show podcast commentary: Andy loved the yule lads; Jane thinks it sounds like a bunch of guys out for a night on the town. She explains “Twixtmas”, the time twixt Christmas and New Year when there’s few regular activities and obligations change, and it’s a strange free-floating time; Andy remembers a lot of cycling around when he was boy in that time. Andy looked up the yule lads, and there are indeed thirteen of them with specific names for the specific mischiefs they do. Jane loves the idea. She sent Andy a link to a Swiss spa hotel with a Krampus festival. The town, Milton-on-Sea, is inspired by any number of seaside towns where the tourists have moved on and so are mostly empty, so they compare solo trips. As they wrap-up, Jane announces a post-Christmas sale on their merch store.

This is a bit of an odd one; I’m not sure how much I like it. The characters all had particularly strong personalities, possibly a little too strong. I think it kinda overrode Ellen a wee bit.

Regarding Rollo, I can actually think of a reason why that might be his nickname. It seemed to me everyone’s twelve, thirteen, right? So secondary school. An awful lot of secondary schools start first year history with the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, so it’s reasonably likely the first time the twins really met Rollo might’ve been in that class. Now, some generations before the Normans conquered England, I can’t be bothered looking it up to check the details, they were Norsemen (Vikings) raiding north France (specifically Normandy), until the French king, who was nicknamed the Fat, I think Charles the Fat, can’t quite remember for sure, made a settlement agreement with the leader of these Norsemen, who was called Rollo. Rollo and his men were granted the land they’d been raiding, in exchange for a level of fealty to Charles. During the signing, as a little ritual to symbolise the fealty, Rollo was told to kiss the king’s foot. Rollo wasn’t going to do that, so he got one of his men to do it, who did it by picking the foot up to his lips rather than stooping all the way to the floor, tipping Charles backwards in the process. Or so the legend goes, I don’t know how well attested that is. Anyway. That sounds like the kind of thing a history teacher might get a class of eleven year olds to play-act to get them interested in history. If Christopher was given the part of Rollo and was a little too enthusiastic with lines such as “I am Rollo, leader of the Norsemen”, that might result in him gaining such a nickname.

After that interlude into Norman history, I don’t actually have much to say about the Icelandic folk lore. It sounds rather bizarre to me, but maybe it’s just that I don’t have the cultural context. It is rather interesting, even though I don’t understand it.

Them deciding to give Keegan electric eel powers at the end was a bit of a jolt, but quite fun. I do feel like there’s plenty of potential for more here; it’s not quite so final as, say, a round of Dread (my word, can you imagine trying to do a campaign using Dread? Shudder). That said, the sudden electric powers feels like the kinda thing a GM allows when they’re not going to have to deal with it again later.

So yeah, it’s a decent little piece. A nice Twixtmas listen.

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