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