Death's Door 3: Deja Voodoo

Thackeray returns to the clinic after a brief but profitable tour of the Sto Plains, but wonders if he is in the right place as he is greeted by some kind of tiki bar with a preserved merfolk in a tank behind the reception desk. Shrugging this off as something that will probably make sense later, he proceeds into his surgery to await the arrival of the rest of the staff, who get dropped off by a group of friendly dwarves moments later. Clarrida Murphy returns in a distraught state, having now been employed at a restaurant to sing for customers' birthdays, a sad fate for a banshee who can't foretell death anymore. She is treated to a "Sea Breeze," a concoction decanted from the tank holding Saphy Mariana and as the fluid level drops, Saphy revives and also seeks further treatment.

Hold on. Didn't we do this before?

Indeed, yes we did, as it is revealed that the clinic staff are caught in a causal loop and if they can't find a way to break free of it, then the universe will swallow itself and reset back to this moment. The staff put their heads together to find a resolution, but only briefly as Thackeray has enjoyed a few too many mushroom-infused Sea Breezes and is seeing purple crocodiles everywhere. He has the drunken inspiration to ask Gudrum Thare, the clinic's offce-manager and tiki bar hostess, where she's getting all the pineapples and coconuts from? She reveals a portal in the storage cupboard that leads directly to a tropical island paradise and now an idea starts to form: what if they get everyone in Ankh-Morpork to go through the portal to somewhere else? Then the city will be empty when its doom befalls it and everyone will be saved! The team swings staggers into action and each take responsibility for a part of this bold plan!

• Toby visits Ponder Stibbons, research wizard, and asks for his help in amplifying the gnomes' ability to open doors to other places with a particular wiggle of their feet. Exploiting his peculiar relationship to causality, he reaches into hs pocket for a piece of paper that has the necessary formulae on it and makes note to write this down tomorrow and put it into his pocket yesterday.
  
• Count Holloway cashes in a barrel of rat checks at the bank and departs with a barrel of gold. What? Yes, people write checks on rats now, it's very mdoern. He also powers up the dancing gnomes who are gathered throughout the city, ready to perform a very tightly choreographed routine.
• Analogue makes sure all the animals of Ankh-Morpork also evacuate the city, just in case, which turns out to be largely redundant as many of them have already made their own far superior arrangements.
• Thackeray gathers a team of labourers with enough wheel-barrows to gather all the private wealth of Ankh-Morpork in the heist of the century, taking advantage of all the rich people being away from their houses as they rush through a portal.
• Celia takes a break.

Finally, after the Patrician issues a proclamation that no citizen of Ankh-Morpork is to go through the portals and endanger the city's economy by bringing back untold riches, the enitre population of the city goes through the portals and is saved. Analogue takes the children to her animal sanctuary, where they enjoy the scorpion petting zoo; Thackeray and his merry band start a new socialist state based on equally sharing the vast wealth they have stolen; Count Holloway returns to Uberwald triumphant, able to afford a properly dank & crumbling castle of his own at last, with spiders and everything; while Toby meets Death, for the last time, but also the first time. DO YOU BELIEVE IN PREINCARNATION? Death asks him and sends him back in time to be born once again!

Death's Door 2: Apocalypse How?

Thackeray returns to the clinic after a brief but profitable tour of the Sto Plains, but wonders if he is in the right place as he is greeted by some kind of tiki bar with a preserved merfolk in a tank behind the reception desk. Shrugging this off as something that will probably make sense later, he proceeds into his surgery to await the arrival of the rest of the staff, who get dropped off by a group of friendly dwarves moments later. Clarrida Murphy returns in a distraught state, having now been employed at a restaurant to sing for customers' birthdays, a sad fate for a banshee who can't foretell death anymore. She is treated to a "Sea Breeze," a concoction decanted from the tank holding Saphy Mariana and as the fluid level drops, Saphy revives and also seeks further treatment.

With all staff now aware of the imminent apocalypse, Toby dies, again, seeking further counsel with Death and the God of Causality, so the burden of actually dealing with the impending doom falls to the other staff.

• Thackeray makes a deal with Saphy, who was in AM to strike a deal with the newly reopened Post Office; Thackeray promises to go and speak to the Post Master, while Saphy uses their fishy smell to attract an army of cats to battle the rats who have slowly been annexing parts of the clinic site.
• Count Holloway upgrades the glass tank Saphy currently resides in, adding metal plates to strengthen the glass, wheels so it can move about, and a battering ram on the front to clear obstacles. This upgraded "tank" smashes it's way out of the building, driven by a delighted Saphy, and gives the rats ideas on how to escalate their war with the cats.
• Celia and Analogue head to the offices of the clacks company, surmising that perhaps they are behind the thick smog that seems a likely cuplrit in the whole "everyone is going to die" situation, but when she Borrows her rat, Mossy, she gets drawn into a skirmish in the rat/cat war instead.
• Across the square, Thackeray calls upon the Post Master, who immediately recognises him as a fellow conman and they strike a deal where each thinks they have scammed the other; he leaves secure in his financial arrangements, for now.
• Earlier, Count Holloway had tried to construct a crude breathing apparatus for the now alcohol-dependent Saphy Mariana, consisting of two beer bottles glued to a hat, but fell victim to his own experments. Waking some time later in an unknown dwarf bar, he is chased from the premises when he inadvertently exposes the dwarven singing troop as frauds with high-pitched, squeaky voices.

The staff collide, literally, in the square between the clacks offices and the Post Office; regrouping, they decide they need more information about the apocalypse and an answer to the involvement of the smog hanging over the city. A visit to the Unseen University produces a brief discussion with Ponder Stibbons, an exchange of information with Hex, the thinking engine, and a walk to the top of the 888 foot tall Tower of Art to get a view of the whole city. Sizzle, the demon bound to annoy & harrass Thackeray. arrives to do just that and eats the contract he had signed with the Post Master; attempts to retrieve it go badly and he returns to the clinic with Celia, both of them in need of a shower. In the meantime, Analogue and Count Holloway have devised a fool-proof, simple technique of clearing up respiratory problems by punching patients on the nose, but medically. They go off to cure AM's dwarven population of the epidemic of high-pitched, squeaky voices, resulting in a whole choir of baritone dwarves whose singing causes the entire city to shake to its foundations.

It's time to get serious though: their investigations have revealed the existence of an interdimensional portal in the Unreal Estate behind the University, a result of dumping magical waste there. With the help of Count Holloway's recently acquired super-intelligence, they concoct a plan to throw the waste into the portal, closing the loop and saving the city, despite the super-intelligent knowledge that doing so will create a paradox that will tear reality apart. They take sensible precautions, propping the still dead Toby on a clacks tower outside the city, wearing a shirt that says "Will Be There, Will Do That" and attached to a delayed resurrection device that will revive him if everything goes wrong.

Everything goes wrong: reality folds in on itself as the last of the magical waste is swallowed by the portal, which then swallows itself, taking the universe with it. Nothing remains, not even a void, but into this nothingness steps three Auditors of Reality, congratulating themselves on their plan to get rid of this whole, inconvenient existence. Their smugness is spoiled as one of them turns around to sees a familar figure with them and asks their companions, "Does anyone know him?" Yes, Toby has survived!

Next Session: Deja Voodoo

Death's Door 1: Why Does Everyone Die?

With the first book in "The Clinic" sub-series of Discworld stories complete, the campaign moves onto the next book, Death's Door. Like all Discworld series, such as "The Guards," "The Wicthes" and so on, this features the same cast of characters but in a new story. This story begins a few months after the events of Alternative Medicine, with Ankh-Morpork now under a literal cloud, as the smoke of progress meets the fogs of Autumn and plunges the city into a week-long dark smog.

• Analogue Cockaday now shares lodgings with her nephew Cosine, in newly built affordable housing in Dragon's Landing; she receives a disturbing legal document and needs Celia Woodruff's help to decipher it as a request for a dissolution of marriage form her husband Obediah, who is still managing the animal sanctuary back in Lancre!
• At the clinic, Toby Determined examines new patient Clarrida Murphy, a banshee who no longer wails outside the homes where a death is going to occur, but finds herself compelled to wail at children's birthday parties, to the consternation of all. Toby determines to ask Death about this the next time he sees him, and with Toby's special relationship to causality, the intent is the same is the action, so he considers the job done.
• Another patient is seen by Count Holloway Harris, when a highly inebriated merfolk stumbles through the door and collapses, their condition growing worse when Celia throws water over them. This is Saphy Mariana, who is suffering from the unusual ailment that they can't breathe water, only alcohol! Count Holloway decides to pickle them for the time being, but this goes a little too well and kills the patient, but the Count is confident he can revive them later!
• Thackeray Ambrosius is away from Ankh-Morpork at this time: something to do with finances, again.

Celia encourages Analogue to get on the coach to Lancre to confront her husband, so of course Count Holloway and Toby come too, leaving the clinic under the care of Epidermis Foxglove, the reanimated skin puppet version of Analogue. On the way, they have some narrow encounters with Death, who seems to have something he wants to say to them, and also aid Langran Bilth, a dwarf emissary returning from Ankh-Morpork with a high, squeaky voice. A tap on the head from Analogue's hammer resets him to "Antonio Banderas" mode, which still isn't right, but Langran seems quite happy with the results, so takes them the rest of the way in his personal coach, so they complete the trip in luxurious but very cramped style.

A confrontation with Obediah, Analogue's husband, leads to more confusion as he knows nothing of the divorce papers, but suggests it looks like somethng that might have been drawn up by Mr. Kipling, a travelling lawyer who was in Lancre recently. Beside making rather disappointing, soggy individual apple pies, the lawyer explains that he didn't write the document yet; rather, it looks like something he may write, in the near future, when Analogue is missing, presumed dead. Meanwhile, Count Holloway and Toby take turns dying and resurrecting each other, enabling a more complete convesrsation with Death, who wants to know why everyone dies, a philosophical conundrum they have no answer for.

A consultation with the Queen of Lancre, and occasional witch, Magrat Garlick, only shows that the letter uses retrograde ink, that is, ink that travels backwards in time. Some near future event is so huge, so important, and so intimately woven into the lives of the clinic staff, that is has produced echoes in the past before it happens.

The staff get back on the coach with seven other dwarves, following the lead of Langran Bilth in the hope of getting sexy voices of their own, so they stop at the same dwarven long hall they enjoyed hospitality at on the way out. Toby goes to relieve himself on a convenient tree but a very inconvenient door opens and he stumbles into Death's domain again. The reaper is busy at his work, picking hourglasses from the shelves and arranging them on his desk, and asks the question again: "WHY DOES EVERYONE DIE?" The only consolation Toby can offer is that it's just their time, but Death shows Toby the huge collection of hourglasses on the table, thousands of them, with the names of everyone in Ankh-Morpork and clarifies his question.

"WHY DOES EVERYONE DIE... IN TWO WEEKS?"

Next Episode: Apocalypse How?

Alternative Medicine 4: It's All Just Me, Me, Me, Isn't It?

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming for the end of the first story arc of the game, starting where we left off as panic spreads at a dinner party about the collapse of the Bank of Ankh-Morpork, while Celia investigates the alchemical factory of Dr. Frank Winkie. She discovers a goblin workforce producing shampoo made from the runoff of Dragon's Landing, but also gets chased by Todd Candiman, a disgruntled toymaker with a very realistic dragon cosplay.

Things break-up back at the dinner party and the team regroup at the clinic to discuss strategies for the following day, as the city descends into more rioting that lasts much of the night. The next day, the team returns to Dragon's Landing for a closer look for the source of the magical energy spilling out there and discover a crack in reality; they'll need a wizard to check this out. Also, at last night's party, Gail Lambshead, founder of the clinic, suggested that rather than pay Dr. Frank Winkie AM$10,000 a month for the dubious pleasure of being a member of the Guild of Medical Practitioners, she could write a cheque for AM$50,000 to put a price on his head with the Assassin's Guild! Thackeray takes the cheque and immeditaely tries to change the Payee bit, ruining it in the process, so it's left to Analogue to take it along to the assassin's guild.

After a visit or two to Unseen University, the team recruit the services of Ponder Stibbons, research wizard, and Kinrich Hardaw, who has had a very disturbing idea, that ideas themselves can come alive and become like plagues. He postulates to them that ideas behave selfishly in order to propogate & survive, with a "Me! Me! Me!" attitude, hence he has dubbed these living ideas mememes. While Ponder helps to measure and explain the crack in reality at Dragon's Landing, Lago Balmedie and his MAMMA group have begun a rally at the site, where he announces that he will return the property to it's original owners, on the understanding that they will build new housing here, and announces his intent to replace the Patrician! They also start to spread rumours about the "Vermillion Virulence," a plague that makes you turn red, then drop dead.

Speaking of the Vermillion Virulence, Lord Vetinari shows up at the clinic with some apparent victims, who are examined by Count Holloway, who discovers that it is real and now he has it too! The city is in uproar and it seems likely that the Patrician will have to step down and let someone else take the job; already, as a result of a meeting between Kinrich Hardaw and Mandan Barr, the power of mememes has grown exponentially, resulting in a wave of Communism gripping the city, causing the Assassin's guild to slash their prices to AM$50 per inhumation!

The power of mememes comes to the rescue, however, as Count Holloway discovers placebos and walks the streets, healing those infected with the Vermillion Virulence by speaking like an absolute authority on the cure for it and dispensing said cure, which were really peanuts rescued from a pub ashtray. The clinic makes an attempt to stand in the way of Lago Balmedie's plans, but popular support has given his campaign too much momentum, even after they neutralise his dragon & plague plans. They do, however, manage to repair the fracture... well, move it might be more accurate, as Analogue and Thackeray use the former's retrophrenology to relocate the crack into the latter! Almost as an afterthought, Thackeray persuades his personal torment demon Sizzle to tear up the contract with Lago Balmedie, because it technically only promised him the position of Patrician for life, so he and Dr. Winkie end up getting inhumed by Casey Crawford.

Just for Fun

I worked out a number of NPCs I wanted to use in this campaign in advance, to fill various roles in the story and the roster of employees/patients needed for the clinic. Some of these names were just made up to sound "Discworldy," but others had their origins in word play. Here's a few notable ones who we probably won't see again.

• Lago Balmedie: You've no doubt all heard of "Maralago" but did you know the owner of that resort also owns a golf course at Balemedie in Scotland?
  
• Dr. Frank Winkie: So, the Winkies are a race of people in the magical Land of Oz, hence effectively 'Dr. Oz'; I just threw in the 'Frank' as a trtibute to another Oz.
• Todd Candiman: tribute to Tony Todd, the original Candyman, another boogeyman haunting the streets of an urban ghetto.
• Dydon Harlyn: the clinic's first patient, whose name breaks down into the same elements as 'Lyndon Hardy,' author of a book that has a lot of sympathetic magic in it.
• Kinrich Hardaw: same principle as the above; who else was I going to name the inventor of mememes after than Richard Dawkins?
• Mandan Barr: the God (?) of Rumour's (?) secret idenity derives from mangling the phrase "I heard it from the man down the pub," but 'Mandan Pub' would have been a bit too obvious.
• Justin Enterica: sufferer of the peripatetic boil, whose name... actually, I'll save this one, his full story is yet to be told!

Next Episode: Death's Door

Alternative Medicine #3: Blind Dates

 A new patient calls in at the clinic, or more properly is dragged there by his wife Donica Grace, who complains that her banker husband Caldon Grace is giving away their possessions to charity, in the form of donations to the convent of the Sightless Sisters of Sek! Count Holloway consults with Caldon in Uberwaldean so his wife won't understand them and learns that he is trying to impress a pretty new nun he has a crush on. This simple revelation has repercussions for all the staff members for the rest of the day.

• Thackeray persuades Caldon that he needs to make a much larger donation to the convent to impress his sweetheart, and so they set off to the bank to take a large amount of gold from it and give it to Sister Bennitta Qulp.
• Count Holloway and Analogue decide that Donica needs to feel more appreciated and should just make her husband jealous of the attention she gets from others, so they set out a convoluted plan to find her a lover.
• Celia senses that Caldon is also tied into the strange form of magic she has sensed around their previous patients, Dydon Harlyn and Lago Balmedie, but their wigs were the cause of their ailments and Caldon doesn't wear a wig.
• Toby has an appointment with Justin Enterica, who has a peripatetic boil: it comes and goes, appearing in a different place every night and vanishing by morning, but always exactly the same boil. Toby's attempt to examine Justin leads to acquiring the boil himself, but it becomes entangled with his unique relationship to causality, causing temporal copies of the boil to appear all over his body!

Much ado follows, with many diversions and distractions from what might loosely be thought of as a plot, including such highlights as:

• Count Holloway enlists Analogue's help in resurrecting a dead rat: this is a success, but it also resurrects Analogue's dead skin cells, when she leaves her hand in the electric eel tank. This results in the creation of a floppy, skin-puppet copy of Analogue, henceforth known as Epidermia Foxglove, who becomes the new caterer for the clinic.
• Thackeray goes to the bank with Caldon and Analogue and acquires the gold; they then team up with Celia to take this to the convent, which currently has a lot of construction work taking place. They meet Sister Bennitta, a novice who joined the order last month and now wears the Holy Blindfold, but they also learn that the nuns donate their hair to make wigs! A little further digging reveals that Sister Bonnitta's shampoo is the source of the unknown magic, but there are still questions to be answered.
• Count Holloway and Toby put their plan into action, which involves taking iconograph pictures of corpses in the morgue so that they can present these to Donica Grace and get her to choose the one she is most attracted to, so that they can resurrect that one to send him on a date with her! This simple, flawless plan inexpicably encounters a few hiccups: first, the pair find prior patient Dydon Harlyn dead in the mrogue and second, they also find currently alive clinic employee Toby Determined dead in the morgue! Putting these troubling discoveries aside, they take their pictures and leave, headed for a social gathering hosted by Donica Grace, where they take her to one side and show her the images of dead men.
• Toby and Count Holloway contemplate how to get out of jail (no text missing here, that's how the session went as we played) and hit upon a genius plan! If Count Holloway temporarily kills Toby, the guards will take him out of the cell, where he can be resurrected and then come back to rescue the Count! This plan works better than they could have expected, as Toby wakes up in a drawer in the morgue which is then pulled open as himself and Count Holloway take pictures of the corpses! Toby plays dead so as to not break causality, then returns to the jail and terrifes the guard into releasing Count Holloway.
• The gang finally make it to the dinner party of Gail Lambshead, the patron whom they have never met, where they mingle with luminaries of Ankh-Morpork society, including the Graces, Lago Balmedie and Dr. Frank Winkie, creator of the shampoo that has caused so much trouble. Celia sneaks out of the party, while Toby flirts with Donica Grace (and also his boils are cured remotely when Justin Enterica applies a mushroom poultice to himself at this time.)

Two last twists occur at the end of this narrative, with the shocking announcement that there's been a run on the bank, causing panic at the dinner party, and Celia discovering a gutter carrying the runoff from Dragon's Landing leading right into the alchemical laboratory of Dr. Frank Winkie, but nothing leaves from the other side.

Next Episode: It's All Just Me, Me, Me, Isn't It?

Alternative Medicine #2: Mamma Told Me Not to Come

Continuing my short campaign of Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork, the staff of the Lambshead Clinic for Indistinct Medicine were having their morning meeting to catch each other up on yesterday's shenanigans, when a new patient demanded to be seen immediately. This was Lago Balmedie, an entrpreneur afflicted with [BEEP] verbal censorship. Celia got to work on diagnosing his condition, making a connection between his wig and the Voodoo Wig of Harlyn Dydon from the previous session, while Analogue administered treatment, i.e. she tapped him on the head with a hammer.

Meanwhile, Toby found a golden envelope on his deck, containing a card with a set of numbers printed on it; decoding this lead him to the Assassin's Guild and one Casey Crawford working the desk. Checking the ledger for the day, Casey found that Toby had a site visit booked, to case the joint and provide an estimate. The site in question proved to be the cemetry though, specifically a gravestone with Toby's name on it! Casey thoughtfully distracted Toby and then whacked him on the back of the head with a cosh: Toby awoke a little while later in the afterlife, apparently, with the God of Causality looking down on him and demanding to know why he was here early! The God offered to adjust the celestial calendar and move the date of his death to 'Today', but Toby politely refused and instead walked through the door the God indicated would take him back to the land of the living. Walking through the door, Toby entered his surprise birthday party, with all his colleagues from the Clinic there! Naturally, this was the suprise party Toby will/had organised for himself.

In another meanwhile, Thackeray went to negotiate the bill with Harlyn Dydon but arrived at the architect's office to find it boycotted by Cosine Cockaday and others, protesting the way their property had been taken out from under them. Thackeray took a moment out of his schedule to stitch up the scratches across Cosine's face, noticing in the process that they resembled the marks left by a dragon's claw. After that interlude, he went into the office and pushed Harlyn for a payment, subtly suggesting that the truth about Harlyn's wig might get out if he didn't pay up; Harlyn was in no position to argue, literally, as he collapsed to the floor, choking, so Thackeray helped himself to some golden ornaments on the desk and left. In actual fact, these trinkets were intended as a bribe for Sizzle, a demonic entity that had been contracted to beleaguer him but instead took the bribe and pointed Thackeray towards Mandan Barr, the God (Maybe?) of Rumours (Possibly?)

Back with the mainish plot, Analogue and Celia thought it would be a good wheeze to follow Lago Balmedie to his meeting with the consortium that had bought out Dragon's Landing for redevelopment, as they had left him with some post-treatment total honesty. It turned out the consortium was a political rally of some sort, united by their desire to Make Ankh-Morpork Magnificent Again, known as MAMMA for short. Unfortunately, Lago's brutal frankness had the crowd on his side, cheering him on and begging for the opportunity to give him their money. Even Celia and Analogue got caught up in this, finding themselves back outside 5 minutes later wearing MAMMA badges. Celia had gotten another whiff of strange magic about the proceedings, suggesting something larger was going on.

Further investigation by the clinic team... well, it didn't exactly go the way they wanted. A swift revisit to the Dragon's Landing site lead to Cosine Cockaday's revelation that he had been attacked by a dragon! This rumour began to spread like widlfire around the city, along with one about the River Ankh rising, but most people ignored this and decided to panic about the return of the dragon instead.

• Thackeray met with the God (maybe?) of Rumours (possibly?) in a bar that mostly sold erotic peanuts and found favour in the divine presence of a shadowy figure in the furthest corner, who told him that something more powerful than magic was at work in the city and their troubles were being driven by an idea. The God pointed him towards Kinrich Hardaw, a wizard who had committed himself to a sanatorium and refused to speak to anyone.
• Celia, Analogue and Toby went to see Lady Sybil Ramkin at the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons, to seek her opinion on the dragon rumors flying about the city. She poo-pooed the idea while allowing them to pet Floofy, an adorable swamp dragon who only caused burns they could easily treat. Not only did Lady Sybil direct them towards the university for answers, she also promised to get them an invite to dinner with Gail Lambshead, their mysterious patron who was behind the founding of the clinic.

With the city in panic over the rumoured return of the dragon, a large crowd had gathered around the walls of Unseen University, demanding that the wizards do something, or blaming them for the whole thing. The clinic team decided to enter through the simple ruse of hijacking a sedan chair belonging to one of the high class citizens here to consult directly with the wizards about the whole situation. Naturally, this turned out to belong to Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, who calmly stepped out of his chair to introduce his abductors to Mustrum Ridcully, Arch-Chancellor of Unseen University. Of course, the Patrician had known what was happening all along and had arranged for the clinic team to meet the wizards for his own inscrutable reasons.

The team now have a purpose: find out what in the Nine Hells is going on in the city and put a stop to it, or face the Patrician's attention! Gulp! He might... talk to them!!

Next Episode: Blind Dates

Alternative Medicine #1: Keep Your Hair On

I've started running a game of Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork at my local ttrpg club, the Milton Keynes Roleplaying Group, after successfully pitching to enough players who wanted to take part. Here's the pitch that got them hooked:

Existing in a previously unknown back street of infamous Ankh-Morpork, The Lambshead Clinic for Indistinct Medicine offers hope to those whose ailments respond to neither traditional nor modern methods. The staff* here will do whatever it takes to treat your condition, whether that's praying to the Small Gods for an intercession on your behalf or replacing the inefficient organs of your body with exciting new versions of their own design! Bring us your tired, your sick, your broken, but above all, bring us your money.

Alternative Medicine is a game set in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, using the quickstart version of the rules for Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork from Modiphius. This is a fully trait based system, with characters defined entirely by short, descriptive phrases about their backgrounds, skills, interests and baggage: there are no numbers involved at all! There are still dice though, with players rolling a d4, d6, d10 or d12 against the GM, who always rolls, um, you know, the other dice.

PCs will be practitioners or consultants in unorthodox areas of biology & medicine, such as these suggested starting points:

• A Witch or other practitioner of headology
• An Igor, skilled at all kinds of organ transplants
• A Priest capable of praying illness away
• An Undead, with experience of the other side
• An Assassin, consultant on poisons and "accidents"
• A Troll, providing a very different perspective

All is not well in Ankh-Morpork, which is business as usual for the city and a great opportunity for you, but the forces of destiny and coincidence are weaving their threads, and the Clinic is caught right in the middle of the closing web. You all have your parts to play, along with a guild of snake-oil salespeople, a wizard with a strange idea about ideas, an embittered toymaker and rumours of the Patrician's imminent retirement.

*Legal advice from the Guild of Lawyers requires the Clinic to inform all prospective clients that our staff have not earned the titles of 'Doctor', 'Nurse', 'Medic', 'Paramedic', 'First Aider', 'Coroner', 'Responsible Adult' or 'Gravedigger'

Last night saw the first session of the game take place, which consisted of a chunk of character creation and then a lot of absurd running around after patients of the clinic. The breakdown of the player-characters is:

• Celia Woodruff, a mycelial witch who believes that mushrooms are the answer to most of life's problems, ignoring the fact that they also create many of those problems. Celia is her own guinea pig for testing new treatments and she is very diligent about trying out the mushrooms on herself. When she is in contact with reality, she takes care of her pet rat Mossy, who acquired a magnificent green coat when he fell into the River Ankh and bounced.
• Count Holloway Harris, an irritatingly sane scientist from Uberwald, who just has no luck with the typical accoutrements of his profession. Like most Uberwaldean scientists, he just makes it all up as he goes along, but always attracts the wrong type of weather for his experiments: he needs a nice fresh storm, he gets a lovely day for a picnic in the park.
• Analogue Cockaday, a rural domestic goddess (not literally) whose life was changed forever when she was kicked in the head by one of her pigs and her whole outlook was changed overnight. Converting her farm & family to new vegan principles has not been easy for her, but she has come to Ankh-Morpork to share her passion for retrophrenology* with a wider audience.
• Thackeray Ambrosius, self-proclaimed opulentologist, he takes money from the rich, thus relieving them of the terrible burden of having more money than him. He might get around to sharing the wealth with the poor someday. We also learned that one of his ex-clients almost put a price on his head with the Assassin's Guild, but dire finances limited this to a price on his foot.
• Toby Determined, born nine months prior to a night of passion between a couple of reannual crop farmers, most of his life is lived in the wrong order as he feels the effects of things before their causes. As a medical practicioner, he finds conditions that match the symptoms his patients report, exposes them to the cause of the condition and then cures them of that.

*Analogue hits people on the head with variously sized hammers in order to give them those personality-defining lumps & bumps that contribute to the melting pot of Ankh-Morpork!

The focus of the first episode was Dydon Harlyn, a successful architect with the contract to redevelop the Dragon's Landing site, who was plagued with mysterious physical injuries, such as his arm suddenly twisting and breaking in front of witnesses at the clinic. A lackadaisical investigation eventually revealed that his teenage daughter had made dolls using her father's old wig and given them out to her school chums, inadvertently creating a whole set of voodoo dolls! The team gathered all the dolls and safely neutralised them, but some danglng plot threads remain, that will be revisited over the course of the campaign:

• Celia, an experienced witch, observed that the accidental creation of voodoo dolls isn't how witchcraft works, leaving her perplexed over how this happened.
• Toby paid off Dr. Frank Winkie, a representative of the newly founded Guild of Licensed Medical Practitioners, but the clinic is now expected to pay another AM$50,000 every month or face closure!
• Finally, Cosine Cockaday, a relative of Analogue who she had met that day at a protest over the Dragon's Landing redevelopment project, was seen late at night, drinking while brooding over the wasteland where his home once stood. His fire was blown out by a mysterious gust of wind and the last we saw of him was as he was engulfed in the shadow of a dragon's wing!

Next Episode: Mamma Told Me Not to Come!