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