Real life has intervened so I will try to catch up the last 3 games with this post.

GW 12: Fridge, Gramps and Beyoh missed the game.
GW 13: Gramps and Sally missed the game.
GW 14: Fridge, Gramps and Sally missed the game.

---

Hi everybody! Wouldzee the owl here. Do you ever get behind? I don’t mean behind like when the food vendor who sells BBQ Rat on-a-stick has a sale and like a million cat people jump in front of you and you start to worry that you will never get to taste that perfect mix of sweet and savory sauce on your favorite rodent… Boy, I’m hungry now.

---

Hi everybody! I’m back and now I will try to catch up on what we’ve been doing since I got way behind. Boy, that rat was good. I should…focus Wouldzee…

Anyhoo, after we searched around the hippie camp and figured almost everybody had died and stuff, we came back into the Yew and talked with Cassini, that gangster guy who kind of runs the place. He was super worried that those robots were going to come back and take a bunch of people for slaves and stuff and I totally agreed that that would suck. Cassini told us a story about some other robots who’d come to the Yew like 50 years ago or something and they helped clean it up and were generally decent robots and he figured they might still be kicking around and willing to give us a hand with the bad robots. So he told us there was a way to contact the good robots and it was this mechanical bird and it was buried below the city in some kind of underground bunker and he figured we could go down there and get it for him and in exchange he’d give us his truck. Sally wanted more drugs instead of the truck, but we eventually came to an arrangement with him.

So we went underground and we fought some zombies and we found out like half the place was totally flooded with water and stuff, but Sally can breath water now, so she scouted around for John and I. We ran into this guy who was just called “Fish Guy” and he was hurt pretty bad and we asked him what was going on and he said he ran into this monster and it took a piece out of him and he was hiding down here. So I’m going to call the monster Guckgace, but I am only doing it because my niece, who is just barely older than a fledgling, sometimes reads this and I don’t want her to see his real name, but if you replace the G’s with F’s you’ll totally get it. Anyhow, we totally found that monster and kicked it’s slimy tail and we fought some more zombies too. We found a lot of guns and ammo and stuff that would have been really useful in a fight if they hadn’t been submerged in water for the past 50 years. We did find some cool stuff, like a power hammer that Sally took and a chainsaw that Sally was totally going to take, but I made her give it to Beyoh instead and John found some nukes and he seemed pretty happy with them. I found that bird and it was cool and we used it to call for reinforcements and they said they’d be here in a fortnight, whatever the heck that is, but John told us it is way less time than when them evil robots were going to come for slaves.

We tried to think up a plan and John decided we should try to lure the Knights of Genetic Purity into a battle with those bad robots to kind of kill two douchebags with one stone (you’ll notice I said “douchebags” instead of “birds” since I am a bird myself, that saying has always ruffled my tail feathers. Oh, I totally forgot that we found out that most of the hippies had actually escaped being killed before and I was pretty happy about that. And they’d also found Fridge and nobody really knows how or anything, but they opened up an old refrigerator and there he was. I’m not sure if he was really happy to see us again… Anyhow, we took that truck that Cassini gave us since we couldn’t figure out how to steal his nicer truck and drove off.

So I was really excited because John let me drive and we drove back to where we figured those knights would be and this time we paid the coyotes to cross their bridge instead of shooting them and I was glad that Sally had stayed back in the Yew to nurse her hangover instead of some along with us, since she may have started blasting them again. Anyhow, we stopped at the Forge and got some more ethanol and talked to our friends and then I pretended to be Sally and called up the knights and I made a complete hash of it and went off on them calling them all kinds of names and stuff and they said they were going to kill us and I was like, “You and what army?” And he was like, “The army with the hover tank about 50 miles away!” And I totally remembered that and so I was like “Over and out.”

Anyhow, we found the knights and they were camped in a valley and we drove our truck to the top of the valley and shined our lights on them and started calling them bad names and stuff and they sent two trucks after us and we were really hoping for more, so we got into this huge fight and totally took them out and got ourselves a much better truck. Then we called them on the radio and were taunting them and stuff and that guy Clasp, who we call “Dickhead, father of Douchebag” said there was no way he was coming out of his safe warm valley to chase us and he said he’d kill us again and John was nonplussed and I’ve always wanted to use that word and we weren’t sure what to do when suddenly we heard explosions and stuff and people shouting, “They’re inside the perimeter.”

So I snuck down the valley and only got shot twice and I found Tara, the dandelion lady, was totally kicking ass along with a bunch of our friends from Liberty and I so wanted to help them out. I snuck back up the hill and only got shot once and told John and Beyoh about it and they were on board for helping out and so I drove our new truck down into the camp as fast as it would go, and I was steering with my tentacles so I could shoot out the window and John was shooting things with his bazooka and Beyoh was firing his pistols, which is kind of weird since he doesn’t have eyes to, but now that I think about how often he actually hits anything I guess that makes sense.

Anyhow, we caused a lot of mayhem and I am sure I ran over dozens of people while I was swerving around and we eventually ran into this halftrack with a big gun and it was not too far from the hover tank, so we decided to “trade up” and took out the guys in the halftrack and I was totally thinking we could blast that tank with the big gun, but John and I couldn’t figure it out, but I did notice a weak spot on the tank, were the turret and main body meet and I took a grenade and flew over and wedged it in there and it didn’t do a heck of a lot and John had broken his bazooka, so he was blasting it with his plasma gun and he finally threw me his vibroblade and I jammed it in the hole and cut up a bunch of wires and crap and it stopped rotating, but it still shot the halftrack and blew it up totally. So John and Beyoh and I all managed to get up to the turret and John got it open and we jumped inside and fought Dickhead father of Douchebag and a bunch of other knights and we just barely made it out of there alive, but we killed them all and I am not too said about it since these guys are terrible people.

I totally passed out after the fight because I’d pulled a Sally and taken way too many drugs. John took f-o-r-e-v-e-r figuring out how the tank worked and it got banged up pretty bad and then he drove around the camp smashing a lot more people with it. Finally, Tara told him to knock it off and they would “clean up” so we thought we’d better get back to the Yew and Tara said they would come to help out if they could find enough working trucks and stuff to get there in time.

“Since Beyoh is not coming along and Fridge is still dead-dead, that means I’ve got only a one-in-three chance of being blasted when you screw up with that bazooka, John. I like those odds!”

“Wouldzee, you know that one-third is bigger than one-fourth, right?”

“You can’t trick me John, I totally know that four is more than three. See?” Wouldzee demonstrates by waving his tentacles around.

A long conversation follows. John sketches a lot of pie charts in the dirt with his BBQ fork while Wouldzee watches.

“I don’t get it John.”

Another conversation ensues. More diagrams are sketched. After a few minutes John purchases a pair of apples from a local vendor. One is cut into three pieces and the other into four. Wouldzee is pretty intrigued and is very happy when John lets him eat the apples.

“Math sucks John.”

Hi everybody. Wouldzee the owl here and I am so pissed off at those robot guys. They totally did a dick move on the hippies and even though some people might argue that the hippies totally brought it on themselves for bombing the robots’ train with explosive seed pods and stuff, still they didn’t have to go so far.

We got back from the Lab Rats complex and even though we were all totally beat up and stuff we decided that we’d join the big party that was going on. Sally entered this dance competition and she was in this dance-off with all the best dancers in town and one of the gangster leader’s bodyguards was this amazing dancer and I thought that was  a little weird because you think you’d hire a body guard to be a good fighter and not for his ability to cut a rug, but anyhoo the whole competition was really between those two and Sally was downing drugs like she was eating candy, but it totally paid off because she won the competition and she got a sash and this tiara and one of the judges, named Simon Cowbell, said some not mean things about her and that was kind of cool because he was sort of a dick to everyone else.

Anyhoo, while we were at the competition, the robot healer guy from the hippies came up to me and he said those evil robots from Prairie Dog Town were coming and he thought they’d totally turn him against his friends or something and that we should take all their maps and plans and stuff and then he ran off really quick. Suddenly, the loud speakers shrieked and that annoying robot guy starts broadcasting that they are attacking the Yew and that everybody better not do anything about it or they’d totally attack them too and we were like,  “No way, we’re totally going to stop you!” And we jumped on a water bug and paddled over as fast as we could.

So we see these flying robot drones, like the one I shot out of the sky a while back, and this big flying truck thing and these robots sliding down ropes and attacking the hippies and the truck and the drones were shooting fire everywhere and the forest was burning down and I thought about my matches again, but then I focused and was like, “John, we’ve got this new ice thing, can we use that on the fire?” And John started telling us everything it could do, like strengthen armor and weaken armor and it had this bazooka setting and we’re all like, “Why didn’t you start with bazooka? Bazooka, bazooka, BAZOOKA!” And John started shooting at the big, flying truck with it and I think maybe the bazooka makes time go slower around John because it seemed like he was doing a lot of different things at once. Anyhoo, one of the drones flew at us, and Gramps pegged it with an arrow, so I popped a goofball and flew at it and my rifle jammed and it set me on fire and then John shot me with his bazooka and I think I died and Beyoh rescued me then Sally injected me with some healing drugs. Then Sally died and John healed her and for some reason he had an extra arm now and I imagine that will come in handy for an ordinary kind of guy like him. Then Sally ate like half of the bag of drugs she got from that mobster and started going totally ape-shit, she was throwing her weapons around and then pulling out new ones and beating the crap out of anything that came near her and she was screaming something about breathing water and I was a little scared, but she eventually collapsed into a ball after we killed all the robots.

The Yew was totally on fire and John was trying to use his fire extinguisher to put it out, but it was pretty pointless by this time and we were all really beat up and Sally was throwing up a lot and Beyoh was not going anywhere near the fire and I think Gramps had fallen asleep or something. There were a lot of dead robots and a dead hippies and I felt pretty bad about all that and the big, giant Yew tree is totally burned down and Beyoh felt pretty bad about that and we never saw the grasshopper guy or any of our other friends among the dead people and I hope they are all ok, even the guy that can’t grow dreds. One thing is for sure though and that is those robots are total dicks and we need to deal with them and it is going to be really dangerous and I am still worried about those Knights of Genetic Purity attacking our friends in the Forge because those knights are total dicks too and we just need to decide which of them is the biggest threat and go and let them have it with the ice bazooka and hope we don’t get killed by John again.

Gramps’ & Fridge’s players were not able to make it.

---

Hi, I’m Wouldzee the owl and I am always happy when we can do someone a good turn because, to be honest, we’ve done a fair amount of bad turns, like Sally shooting those coyotes and nobody ever said any kind words over Fridge when we stuffed him back into the refrigerator and we never gave Bear Trap his motorcycle back, though I don’t feel too bad about that one because he was planning to screw us over and totally would have if Sally hadn’t freaked him out. So anyhoo, while we were in the Yew, Sally was looking for some psycho and we met these guys who said they could hook her up and they seemed like the real deal (according to John’s robot parrot), so we went to this tattoo parlor and met this guy and he turned out to be the mob boss who sort or maintains the balance of power in the city and he has a really bumpy head. He told us how he’d sent his daughter to follow that Knight of Genetic Purity whose name is Craw, but we call him “Douchebag, son of Dickhead” and I was wondering why a parent would do something like that because the reason we call him “Douchebag” is because he is a total douchebag and probably would have less compunction about killing people than Sally does when she’s gotten into some bad psycho. I was totally right because his daughter went missing and she actually did die  (like you’ll find out later, but don’t worry because there is a happy ending). He wanted to hire us to find her and I thought we should just help out to “balance the scales”, but Sally asked for a bunch of drugs and he gave her them and we needed to figure out a plan because the last time anyone saw his daughter she had gone over to the island where the Lab Rats are holed up and apparently nobody has ever come back from that place. He said we could probably get a giant water bug to take us over to the island if we asked the hippies and since we hadn’t seen those guys in a long time and Craw had talked to them too it sounded like a good idea.

So we met a guy in town who could take us to see the hippies and we brought along a bunch of pizza and beer because we’re smart enough to know that we’d get the munchies later if we spent any time with those guys and we wanted to be good guests too. We saw our old friend the medical robot and we met the grasshopper that Beyoh saw in his vision and he was cool and wanted to help us out and told us that he’d had the three-legged guy (the one trying to grow dreadlocks) following Craw and he saw the crime lord’s daughter get attacked on that island where the Lab Rats live and she might be dead, but he figured that Craw was still there and so we decided we’d better get over there and see what was going on. Then we partied a little too much and Sally and I came up with a plan and I think John was too high to think of something better because he just kept giggling and eating pizza. Oh, the grasshopper had a map (and I spilled sauce all over it) and he wanted to attack this big gas refinery that was 180 miles away and he figured that’d put an end to those evil robot guys and we said we’d totally be on board with it, but we needed to deal with Douchebag son of Dickhead first and maybe take on an army of those knights and he was cool with it and gave us some exploding seed pods to help us out.

Anyhoo, we went back to town with one of these giant water bugs that can walk on water and are kind of creepy-looking and make you wonder how they can actually walk on water when they are so big and all. John said something about surface tension and I was thinking that I was tense down to my hollow bones and couldn’t walk on water so I didn’t get it. Our plan was to try and talk with this lady named Dr. Arrow, because it sounded like she was the Lab Rats representative or something and we figured Sally could talk her into helping us find the gangster’s daughter and maybe she’d be convinced that Craw was a terrible person and would work against him or at least not help him out. So, Sally and I made this big banner and I gave John my chemistry kit and we went out into the lake in front of the Lab Rats island and started doing some science because we figured that they  would surely want to talk to a scientist of John’s caliber, except John made a total hash of it and dropped one of my test tubes in the lake and I don’t think any of the Lab Rats really thought that adding orange food coloring to vinegar and baking soda to make a volcano was that impressive, but this little drone did fly out to us and told us to push off or they’d open up on us with machineguns or lasers or something since we were carrying a nuke so we decided we’d better come back later because this big party was starting up and it’d be easier to sneak around when that was happening.

We came back at night and we were trying to figure out what to do when this little drone thing flew out to us again and told us that all of the security systems were turned off and we could sneak into the dock. So we did and we left Buddy to watch the bug and I think that Buddy was pretty nervous that we’d push him into the lake because he hadn’t told one joke for the whole ride. We found these elevators and I figured they’d keep prisoners in the dungeon so we went to the bottom floor, which was way at the bottom of the lake, and I was totally wrong because there were no prisoners down there and we screwed around going to random floors below ground and not finding anything and the elevator was playing “Girl from Ipanema” and it is kind of catchy and I thought I would totally whistle this if I had lips instead of a beak. Then we went to the roof and didn’t find any prisoners either, but  when we went to the fourth floor we finally found the gangster’s daughter and I forgot to tell you her name was Lucy and she had a bumpy head like her Dad and she was in this weird container and there was this scientist and she was a bee and she was totally clueless because I asked her to release Lucy and she just gave me this weird look and I tried a few more times to explain why she had to let her go and then I lost it and pulled my Mauser and started swearing at her and she started freaking out so I finally just tied her up with duct tape and John scienced Lucy out. Then John started talking some gibberish about being her “father from the future” and she looked a little weirded out and I thought he might be hitting on her and I felt pretty awkward because he was making such a hash of it. Anyhoo, she had like died or something because she had this huge wound and I thought about how Gramps seemed to die sometimes and of course Fridge had been dead for like 500 years or something and I kind of missed those guys, especially Gramps, because he is pretty handy in a fight.

Anyhoo, we went down to the third floor and while John was sneaking around he saw this big metal wolf with glowing red eyes and the wolf totally saw him and went for his throat and we got in this huge fight with it and then Douchebag son of Dickhead came out and he had this vibrosword and he was hacking at us and he also had a black ray gun of death and I recall my Dad telling me about those things when I was a fledgling, but he said they’d totally kill you, but I got shot like twice and I only died once, so either Dad was wrong or they’ve lost juice over the years, but I can tell you getting hit by it hurt like the bejeezus and I sure hope my feathers grow back ok and that wolf kept dying and coming back alive again just like that robot we fought back in the Forge only it was even more annoying and Beyoh was flailing around with his yield sign, but he was only damaging the drywall and Sally took psycho and was smashing at the guy, but she got some insulation wrapped around the end of her hammer and wasn’t doing much damage and I thought we were all going to die a few times, but we eventually killed them both.

So after that, we got to talk to Dr. Arrow and she seemed nice, in a kind of “she’d probably be just as happy dissecting you as talking to you” kind of way, but we learned what ice was and she had invented it and it sounds super cool (literally, it is like absolute zero) and she made it a weapon and John convinced her that we could do some “field tests” for her and tell her the results and so she is letting us use it to put the smack down on those Knights of Genetic Purity and their hover tank. That ought to be something, huh? We eventually got back to the city and we reunited Lucy and her dad and he was really happy about that and Sally got a pile of drugs and she was really happy about that and I felt pretty good about the whole thing because the only real bad thing we did was duct tape that bee scientist up, but it’s not like we were blasting coyotes or anything.

Fridge & Gramps players missed the game.

---

Hi, I’m Wouldzee the owl and if you read my stories you’ll know that I sometimes get all hopped up on goofball before going into a fight because it makes me a lot quicker, even though lately I seem to normally be about as quick as I used to be on goofball when I am straight and I really scream when I’m on it, and I tried this dope that some lizard man brewed up and I totally tripped and saw things, really mind-blowing things man, but not all drugs are good because Sally took some bad psycho and got the runs and started shooting these coyote guys who were kind of douchebags, but probably didn’t deserve to be killed by a rampaging lady bug. So I better start at the beginning…

The Dandelion lady and one of the groundhogs told us they were going to make dinner for us for saving them and I thought it was pretty nice of them to do that and was a little worried that they should be cooking a big meal so soon after being crucified, but I was also pretty hungry so I kept that to myself and I gave them all the canned food I found except for the olives because I thought John would want them for his martini, but he said he didn’t want black olives in his martini and I think he’s just being difficult now. So while they were cooking the meal this lizard guy came up to us and his face was kind of melted-looking and he told us that he was one of those lizard men that are working for the robots that can make you feel like you are getting mobbed by crows and I was reaching for my Mauser when he said that he wasn’t with those guys anymore and told us how these lizard guys had some kind of a metal man prophet come to them in the dim reaches of time and he had a Helping Friendly Book and I kind of thought it’d be cool to read it and he thought that maybe his friends thought the robots were like this metal prophet guy returned and I am sure I don’t have all the details straight, but you should get the gist of it. Oh, he said he wasn’t buying it anymore and maybe we could talk his friends around or something.

Anyhoo, he wondered if we wanted to take this drug he was brewing up and he called it “split open and melt” and John totally didn’t want to take it, but I figured what is the worst thing that could happen if a guy with a melted face offers you a drug called “split open and melt”? So Sally and Beyoh and the Dandelion Lady and that sensitive artist (whose name I can never remember) all took it and man, we really tripped… We saw this city and it was like buildings emerging from a lake and suddenly the lake started glowing this green color and we all saw this, even though we didn’t know it until later, and Sally saw all these people dressed up and dancing and having a party and Beyoh was in this field and this grasshopper guy was putting mulch all around him and then I saw this huge tree and there was this warrior guy under it with a wolf and the wolf had red eyes and it freaked me out a bit, but I was cool when I finally came down, only I got the munchies and ate all of those olives and they were pretty awful.

So we were talking about this and freaking out because we had all seen the same vision and stuff and this lady tells us that we had seen a vision of The Yew and we were like “no way” and she was all like “way” and she told us that she was from there and it was kind of spilt up between these hippie-no-tech-guys (who we met before) and the Zoopremists, who are like the Animal Liberation Front on steroids, and these guys called the Lab Rats, who sometimes cause the lake to glow green, and there is this mob boss who kind of maintains the peace too and I can’t remember his name. We were totally thinking that we should go there, only there was this army marching on the Forge and then Sally got a call from her boyfriend and he told us that the knights hover tank had broken down and I was all like “a hover tank sounds really scary”, but it gave us time to go to The Yew and see if we could get some allies. Oh, and we also found out that the leader of the knights – this guy named Clasp – has a son named Craw and Craw was in the Yew looking for this stuff called “ice” and I’ve got this vague memory of someone who sounds like the guy who remodeled by nest mentioning it before, but I hadn’t thought it very important, but apparently it is, so I am glad we are on the right track now. So we said goodbye to our friends and some of them said they were going to harass the knights and some were going to try and hold out in the Forge and John took a motorcycle and Sally and I  took our centisteeds and Beyoh and Buddy rode in a cart and I forgot to mention that Sally named her centisteed “Mr. Nibbles” and makes him wear this cute little hat that he doesn’t like and we rode out for the Yew.

We followed this river for a long time and eventually came to a bridge and we needed to cross it to go onto the Yew and it looked like people were living there and we saw these three coyote guys and they were trying to shake us down for some money and then Sally started talking about psycho and they were all like, “Yeah baby, we’ll totally take some psycho instead!” So we asked Buddy to brew us up some psycho and Sally tried a little of it and she didn’t look good afterwards and one of the coyotes gobbled some down and immediately started barfing all over the place and the other coyotes were totally like, “That’s not psycho!” And they were right and suddenly we were all fighting and the coyotes were draining our “life-essence”, as the Dandelion lady would say, and we were all flailing around and I think I was really distracted by the guy who was puking because, like I said before, puking is not that big a deal for owls and we finally killed them and I felt pretty bad about it because we were totally on the wrong side of it and John ransacked their shed and found some domars and some other junk. We started riding across the bridge and more of these coyote guys came out and they asked us if we paid the toll and banged on some metal and their buddies didn’t answer them and Sally started swearing at them and then she totally blasted this guy and I was all like “No, don’t shoot!” But she didn’t care and just kept blasting at them while they all ran away and I felt pretty dirty about the whole thing and thought I should take a shower or something, but I didn’t want to wash the oil of my feathers so I just sulked a lot for the next day or so.

Anyhoo, we finally found our way to the Yew and it looked a lot like our vision and we got a ride to the market and Sally started spending all of John’s money on ammo and she wants to find some pyscho and I want to get over to where the hippies are because that is where I saw this Clasp guy and his wolf in my vision and I am pretty sure he is bad news and we’re probably going to have to fight him and maybe getting Sally some psycho before we go after that guy is not such a bad idea after all…

Fridge’s player could not make it

---

Hi! I’m Wouldzee the owl and I have an important message about… Well, now that I think about it, I guess I really don’t have an important message this week, we kind of screwed around, made plans, learned how to ride, nearly got shipped to New Berlin, Wisconsin (wherever the heck that is), and… Oh right, the beginning…

Anyhoo, we were all beat up from that fight with Gar Margon (except for John, who hardly had a poisonous butt-quill out of place), so we rested a bit and John was still talking to Buddy about finding olives for his martini and then I figured that Cueball and his gang would probably want to attack us, because they’d totally do some sort of thing like that, so I flew up the top of the church and kept watch while the rest of the guys searched around the compound for Gar Margon’s safe because the Dandelion Lady thought he had a safe with some important documents in it and John is kind of a “big picture” guy and wanted to know what is going on and Sally probably thought there’d be jewelry in it so it was easy to get her on board and Beyoh and Gramps usually just go along for the ride. So they searched around and I heard lots of banging and Sally was cursing a lot, but she’s really terrible at it and it’s actually kind of funny to listen to her try to sound tough, but the long and short of it was she talked to Beartrap on the radio and convinced him not to attack us because we’d totally kick his butt and then she talked the ear off one of those knights on another radio and I think she may have been hitting on him, which is kind of weird because he’d probably freak out if he knew he was talking to a ladybug, and she found out that they were planning on taking over Liberty since the robots had rounded everybody up and that they were going to be at the Forge in a few days and they had like a hundred soldiers or something and we had to figure out a way to stop them, because it would totally suck for us to rescue our friends from the robots only to find that these douchebags had taken over their little town don’t you know.

So we kicked around some plans, but I’m not sure we ever came up with anything solid, but we did figure we should get our friends from that bunker because a lot of them can scramble people’s brains and it’ll really help to have them here scrambling brains if we get attacked and stuff. So Sally and I rode up to that bunker place on a couple of centisteeds and I am totally trying to figure out why they call them centisteeds because they only have eight legs and even Beyoh knows that eight is less than one hundred and I am sure that they had more legs when I was a fledgling, even if it wasn’t a hundred back then either, but maybe they mutated or something. Anyhoo, we totally got our friends back down to the Forge and everybody is cool and has some food and stuff now and we’ve totally done the right thing by helping them out and I think my Mom would be totally proud of me and say something like, “Wouldzee, I am totally proud of you!”

Anyhoo, while Sally and I were out riding, John was poking around the Forge and he found this steel door and he could hear something banging around behind it, but he waited until Sally and I got back before he rounded up the guys to take a look and we knocked, but nothing answered, so we busted in and found this robot packing all kinds of stuff into cardboard boxes. So John says to me, “Wouldzee, let’s do an experiment. Why don’t you move one of those boxes?” And I’m totally like, “Wow, John is asking me to do science!” So I move one of the boxes and this robot freaks out and comes at me with a pricing gun and I am so worth more than $11.99 (especially if it is Canadian money) and then he tried to fold up Gramps so he’d fit into one of those little padded envelopes that make you wonder how a company could justify $10 shipping when the padding really doesn’t do all that much and the corners of you book end up being all smashed and you really wish you hadn’t been such a cheapskate and ponied up for priority instead of media mail because at least it would’ve been put in a box that way. So we bashed the heck out of this robot and it totally went lights out and then suddenly it’d spring back to life and I’m totally thinking, “Wow, what a pain in the tail feathers! Now I know how the guys fighting Gramps feel when he keeps waking up after they pummel him to the ground.” But we eventually smashed it up so bad that it stopped moving for good and we found some cool stuff and Sally has a really nice dress that kind of clashes with the jewelry that she found, but it’s not like many people have good fashion sense around here anyway since most of them seem to dress in old hockey equipment with spikes and stuff.

Fridge’s player could not make it.

---

Dear Fridge,

Hi, it’s your friend Wouldzee the owl here and since I was in the neighborhood, being as we totally took out those Knights of Genetic Purity, who had kidnapped the Dandelion lady and one of those groundhog guys, I thought I’d check to see if you had gotten any less dead and wanted to hang out with us again, but you still looked totally dead to me and the inside of the refrigerator we stuffed you into kind of smelled like bad sushi, so I figured that I’d just write you a letter in case you got less dead later and wanted to know what your old friends were doing.

So we sold some of the motorcycles back to those warthog guys and their leader, Bear Trap, told this other guy, Cue Ball, to follow us because he wants to get the rest of his bikes back and we’re not really into helping him out with that. So we started walking towards the Forge because we know that the Dandelion lady and one of those nice groundhog guys, they brought us dinner when we were back in Liberty screwing around with the ruptured oil pipeline, had been taken prisoner and we kind of liked those guys and the Knights of Genetic purity are total dicks and they’d probably kill them and stuff, so they totally needed rescuing. Anyhoo, we’re walking towards the Forge, like I said, and Bear Trap calls us on the radio and asks us if we are going to the Forge and we’re like “yeah” and he’s all like “no way” and we’re like “way” and he’s like “you’ll get killed by this dude name Gar Margon and I won’t get my motorcycles” and we’re like “so?” and eventually we make a deal with him and he says that Cue Ball will create a diversion at 2 AM so we can sneak into the place and release our friends and we’ll give them a motorcycle or something. Oh, and somewhere along the way we found Gramps too.

John said the Forge looked like a real tough nut to crack and I know about cracking tough nuts, because when I was a fledgling my mom used to have me crack nuts for dinner, with my giant beak, on account of my dad throwing out the nutcracker we used to own, the one that looked like a soldier with a bad under-bite and its eyes kind of followed you and was just generally creepy. Anyhoo, the Forge is basically a walled off section of an ancient town and it had these spotlights on each corner and automated machinegun nests and there was this sniper up in a church bell tower and we figured that if we just ran up there we’d probably get cut down by the machineguns, so John and Sally came up with a plan to have me sneak inside the compound and cut the power to the spotlights and machinegun nests. So 2 AM comes around and this big explosion happens and Gramps wakes up and asks what we are doing and Beyoh says he hadn’t been paying attention when they made the plan and even John was getting ready to shoot somebody and draw attention to himself, but I totally stuck to the plan and popped a stim and sneaked up to the compound and got inside without anybody seeing me.

John had told me to cut the power, but he didn’t give me anything to actually do the cutting, but I thought I’d figure something out once I got inside and I totally did, but first I had to shoot the guy who was on guard duty next to the spotlight, because I tried to push him over the wall, but he didn’t fall and he started yelling for help and called me a demon and I guess I can see his point what with the tentacles and all and then he pulled out a gun and so I took a goofball and popped a cap in his ass and he totally fell of the wall. Anyhoo, after I shot that guy, I blasted the spotlight and then this other guy across the street opened up on me and I flew over there and blasted him and then I picked up his sword and tried to cut the power line like John told me, but I got a bad shock, so I dropped the sword and shot out the spotlight instead and then I shot the machinegun so it got stuck and then I saw my friends running over towards the wall and then I got shot by that sniper and it totally hurt, but I sucked it up and flew over there and he had a laser pistol and almost killed me, but he didn’t so that was pretty cool and let him have it.

I saw my friends had got up onto the roof where I’d blasted the first spotlight and they were fighting with some knights and those guys were all yelling something about a “ghost tree” and Gramps was screaming “get off my lawn”, which was kind of weird, and I didn’t recall that being part of the plan. So I looked around and I saw a gas station and I thought about my matches, but then I thought to myself, “Wouldzee, you should stick to the plan. The Dandelion lady is totally depending on you.” So I stuck to the plan and I spied this building that I figured might be a good jail and I flew over to it and searched it and nobody was inside and then Sally came in and she broke down a locked door with her sledgehammer and we saw it was a jail, but the prisoners weren’t there any longer and I thought I could track the Dandelion lady by following those little white floaty things from her head and when I did that I noticed they led back to the church and the rest of the guys were still screwing around half way across the compound and so Sally and I ran over to the church to free the Dandelion lady.

We opened up the door to the church and I almost hurled, which as I’ve mentioned previously is not that big a deal for owls, because the knights had crucified the Dandelion lady and that nice groundhog who brought us dinner and Gar Margon was there in his power armor with a scary-looking gun and there was this egghead priest guy screwing around with some kind of device and I was thinking that these guys are total douchebags and they really took it too far this time and I sure wish that Gramps or John or anyone except Sally was here with me now, because Sally can’t hit the broad side of a barn with her gun. But we opened up on them and got into this huge battle and I was hiding behind Sally for part of it and I think that I was on fire for a little while too and Sally kept missing every shot and I wasn’t doing so hot either and Gar Margon’s armor kept absorbing my bullets in its force field and eventually the rest of the guys showed up and Beyoh threw rocks at first, which didn’t seem very effective, so he switched to his Yield sign, which didn’t seem much better, and John was giving them dirty looks and Gramps waded in there swinging his crutch around and occasionally taking a nap and I almost died again, but we finally killed them.

The Dandelion lady and the groundhog were really messed up, so we got them un-crucified and tried to heal them up and John did some science on the device that the egghead was working on and he told us that it was a tactical nuclear device and Beyoh and me looked at him funnily and then he explained that it was a big bomb and then he made explosion noises for Beyoh so we all got it. Apparently we were all this close (imagine me holding my talons really close together) to evaporating in a mushroom cloud and John saved us by totally melting that priest with a dirty look. I think he just said it because he really wanted Gar Margon’s plasma rifle, but since he is the only one smart enough to use it we’d have given it to him anyway… John thinks we can use this nuke to take out the robots at Prairie Dog Town and that the E-M-P might disable them and I know John is always spelling things out for me and Beyoh, but that’s only three letters and I still don’t get how an “emp” can take out a robot, but I am too embarrassed to ask him about it now.

Anyhoo, I sure hope you can get less dead soon and if I find some time, I’ll see if I can move your corpse to a bigger refrigerator that doesn’t smell as bad.

Your friend,

Wouldzee

Fridge and Gramps players could not make the game.

---

Hi, I’m Wouldzee the owl and I have some important tips about exploring junkyards. First, if you find an old robot chances are leaving it turned off is the wise thing to do, I mean, it’s not likely you’re going to turn on a rampaging death-bot or anything, but rather you are going to be terribly disappointed when he tells you he can mix up a dry martini and then fails to deliver. Second, if somebody tells you they see “glowing things” moving around in the junkyard you should probably run away, because chance are they will be giant, radioactive dogs that breath clouds of radiation and get you all irradiated and cause some of the hair to fall off your head and maybe even lose some of the quills from your butt.

Anyhoo, we were talking to Jesmond the groundhog and he told us he’d seen some glowy things moving around the forest maybe an hour away and I think maybe one of my great, great grandparents was a magpie or something because I’m usually interested in stuff that is bright and shiny, but on the other talon I was thinking, “Wouldzee, maybe those glowy things will blow up if you light them on fire,” so we had Jesmond lead us back to the place. We couldn’t see anything through the woods, but we found a chain-link fence and we climbed or flew over it and stumbled around for a while and we found these barrels of goop, but it didn’t burn and I fell in an old car and John eventually tripped over this robot and then he turned it on and it was speaking Canadian at first, but it eventually learned our language and it told us that its name was Buddy and it could make drinks and John ordered a martini, but Buddy told us that it needed ingredients and we were all disappointed that we couldn’t get liquored-up and then it started telling jokes and he may as well have been talking Canadian because they were s-o-o-o not funny and then he told us this lame joke about a dog and suddenly there was a dog behind us and then a bunch more circled us and then they attacked.

The dogs were really mean and they breathed radiation and I thought I was going to die so I flew up into the air and started blasting them with my Mauser and I was watching John get all these terrible burns and his hair was falling out and now he’s got this mole on his cheek that I don’t like the look of. We really sucked at fighting, but finally we killed most of them and the one ran away and everybody was feeling like throwing up, which as I’ve said before is not that big of a deal for me, and we only had one dose of Rad-Away and we gave it to John because he totally looked like he might die any minute. We found the den those dogs lived in and it smelled pretty awful, but we went down into it and found a dead guy (like totally dead and not like Fridge who wasn’t totally dead for a while at least) and a shopping cart with some bricks and a telepathic parrot and some power armor that Sally totally claimed and some other stuff too.

Anyhoo, we were all really tired and stuff and knew we’d probably have our asses handed to us if we tried to break into the Forge and free the Dandelion lady and other folks who the Knights of Genetic Purity had captured so we finally decided to call Bear Trap and make a deal to trade him those motorcycles for some Jet and Rad-Away and ammo for our guns and we came up with some elaborate plan to meet them and stuff and I figured this was game over for us, but Bear Trap did an honest trade, only John’s telepathic parrot overheard him tell his boys to track us so he really turned out to be kind of a douche after all. We’d planned to go back to the bunker to see our friends before heading to the Forge, but that is totally not going to happen know that we know we’re being tracked, so we’re going to head straight to the Forge and hopefully the pig men and the knights can use each other for target practice while we sneak in and rescue our friends.

Beyoh, Fridge & Gramps players did not make the game.

---

Hi everybody! Wouldzee the owl here. Remember how last time I wrote I said I really wished someone had a camera to take a picture of me blowing up that tanker car because I’d never do anything that cool again in my whole life? Well, I still haven’t done anything that cool, because blowing up a tanker full of gas has got to be in like the top ten list of cool things you can do, but I did do something that I would totally like a picture of because it was so awesome and I totally must have looked like some sort of superhero, ninja badass when I did it… Oh right, start at the beginning…

So we rescued all these people and they’re all tired and hungry and kind of beat up, because those lizardmen had cattle prods and were zapping them and stuff, and none of us wanted to get caught by those robots in Prairie Dog Town who were like driving around looking for us (or so we thought), so we stayed in the woods and it was night and I’m nocturnal and we were really sneaky, even John, so they didn’t find us. Anyhoo, we were resting one morning and suddenly this thing comes burrowing up out of the ground and it’s got tentacles with poison quills and like three legs and a beak or something and it wants to eat us, but we’re all like “no way,  go find a three-headed gazelle or something” and it still attacks us, so we start tearing it apart, except for Sally, who can’t seem to hit the broad side of a cthonian with her sledgehammer. She finally gets frustrated and starts yelling at it about how bad ladybugs taste and she’s totally right, there was this one time when I accidently swallowed one of those Asian beetles, you know, the ones that look like ladybugs and I almost puked, which in retrospect is not that big of a deal for owls since we cough up pellets all the time and anyhoo, she tells it to go off and hunt elsewhere and it totally left us alone after that.

We’d been planning on taking the refugees to Liberty, but John, who is pretty smart for an ordinary guy, reminds us that there is that bunker only a few miles away, and it is totally full of food, so we decide to head there in the hopes that less people will starve to death or something. While we were walking that Cue-ball guy or whatever he is called, tried to get us to tell us where those motorcycles were and we were totally not helpful and he threatened that Rebar or whatever his name was, was getting antsy, but we were like “whatever” and hung up on him. I’m not sure why John leaves the radio on, I think he just likes to screw with those guys… Anyhoo, eventually, we crossed the trail that the big truck made when it went to Liberty and we noticed that there was some recent traffic on it, like only a few hours ago. So we think, “Uh oh, those robots really aren’t looking for us, they are totally going to Liberty, we’d better get moving to help them out”. So we drop the refugees off at that bunker place, give them some food and stuff and warn them about the raccoons, who might bite even though they are kind of cute, then we take the motorcycles and ride away.

So we drove back into the woods on that trail leading to Liberty and then we heard something crashing towards us, so we hid the motorcycles and I flew up into a tree to see what was coming and I saw one of those trucks the robots were using to haul prisoners driving towards us. I jumped on the top of the truck and cut open the tarp to peek inside and I saw Cashton and a bunch of other folks from Liberty and this robot and a bunch of those lizardmen and all the people from Liberty were like holding their heads and moaning and looked just awful and stuff. So I thought to myself, “Wouldzee, you’ve totally got to do something about this,” and then I made some really cool “special ops” gestures to Sally and John and they looked confused, but they often look confused when I talk to them too, so I figured they’d “got it” and then I swung down and grabbed that robot!

So then I’ve got this robot like totally tied up in my tentacles and I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, this robot is w-a-a-a-y stronger than you and he’s going to break out any second. I wonder if you could throw him under the wheels of the truck?” And then I hear a voice inside my head, and it sounds like the guy that remodeled my nest, and it’s like, “That sounds like it might work.” And so I totally threw the robot under the truck and it was all c-r-u-n-c-h and the truck bounced around and I swung inside and pulled my Mauser and told those lizardguys to freeze or I’d blow their fricking brains out and they totally froze and I was thinking “Wouldzee, you rock, I wish someone had taken a picture of you doing all that stuff because you probably looked like an action hero or something!” And then that robot got up and shot me in the back with his gun, which was a total dick move because I wasn’t even looking at him and it really hurt too!

Anyhoo, Sally and John got on their motorcycles and came roaring up to help out, and Sally pasted that robot with her sledgehammer and John BBQ-forked it good too and I was all like “that’s what you get for shooting me in the back, you SOB,” and then I noticed those lizard-guys had lit up their cattle prods and so I got all hopped up on goofball, grabbed one of them and was clawing at his eyes when I got pushed out of the truck by a telekinetic force and then I realized that I was in the open and it was day and I’d probably get mobbed by crows and I kind of freaked out. Sally pulled out her whip and wrapped it around that robot’s throat and started dragging him along behind her motorcycle and then dropped him under the truck, but she totally messed up and he didn’t get run over, but I didn’t say anything because her heart was in the right place, and John raced up to the truck and was giving those lizardmen the stink-eye and a couple of them totally melted, which was pretty gross.

Anyhoo, we finally killed them all, but they had it coming for being slavers and all, and Sally and I were pretty seriously messed up, but John only had a couple of quills out of place. We screwed around with the truck and finally got it to stop and got the prisoners out and John found this weird box that was giving everybody inside the truck a migraine and we all talked about migraines for a little while and somebody said you get them less frequently when you get older and somebody else said that was BS, but we all decided they sucked and then we talked to Cashton and found out that Liberty had been raided and most of the people were taken prisoner and were probably already in Prairie Dog Town and I was all like, “I told you so,” and felt pretty self-satisfied that my prediction had come true, but all the gloating was spoiled because the people of Liberty were all taken hostage and even though they were way too complacent, they still shouldn’t be forced to work for some robot overlord building a railroad or something.

So we decided that we should decide on something and we figured our best bet was to send Cashton and the other folks back to the bunker to rest and then go to Liberty to see if anyone was still alive and while we were doing that, one of the groundhogs and that sensitive artist guy showed up and gave us the low-down about Liberty being totally overrun and how only a couple of people got away and how the Dandelion lady was totally captured by those robots and I am sure that Beyoh is going to freak out when he hears about it. So now we’re in a pickle, because we have to figure out how to rescue our friends, and also a bunch of other people we don’t know, from Prairie Dog Town and some of the people we already rescued can fight, but they don’t have any weapons and Sally thinks she can get some power armor at the Forge, but those Knights of Genetic Purity totally control it so we’ll have to figure out how to take them down I guess.

Fridge and Gramps players missed the game.

---

Hi everybody. Wouldzee the owl here and I want to talk to you about explosions. Explosions are really, really cool, well I guess they really are kind of hot, but I mean they are a lot of fun to watch and especially fun if you are the one that caused them and I totally caused two major explosions all in the same day and you really need to hear about how I did it!

So, we were riding in the back of that truck and I noticed that Gramps was gone and Sally said he’d said something about taking a nap back in the barracks and we totally left without him while he was sleeping and I was kind of sad, because even though he is grumpy, he is our friend and all. I hope a raccoon doesn’t crawl through the tunnel where all those zombies were and bite him because Gramps will totally mash the poor little guy and don’t you think raccoons are kind of cute, with their little bandit masks and stripy tails and stuff? Oh, and John had found a walkie-talkie in the saddlebags of the warthog leader’s bike and he got it working and we talked to this guy named Cue Ball, who really wanted the motorcycles those pig guys were riding back, but we weren’t really inclined to help them out because they are dicks.

Anyhoo, the truck eventually turned onto some railroad tracks and we were like totally minding our own business when suddenly it starts rocking around like it is being hit so we look out the back and see these three guys, riding on sword beetles, are totally trying to pop the tires. Sally convinced them to stop and we got to talking and I totally figured that one of my friends was going to pull out a pistol and shoot one, but we just talked instead and it was kind of nice. These guys are some kind of “save the earth” hippie group and wanted to blow up the truck because it was polluting with its exhaust fumes and I totally said something like, “Won’t blowing this up and having the tires burn and stuff be worse than just letting it drive around for like ten years?” And they we’re all trying to come up with some justification for their actions, but I think they really just wanted to see it blow up and were just too “save mother earth” to say so. We told them that they couldn’t blow up the truck until we found out where it was going to, and I figured “this is where things will go to hell” and even released the safety on my Mauser, but they totally knew where it was going – a place called Prairie Dog Town which is a stupid name since it is built on an island and there aren’t any prairie dogs living there which is probably good because they’d probably drown digging their little tunnels below the water table – so we told them we’d help them blow the truck up.

John scienced up some kind of a booby trap with this old motion detector thingy he found and a bunch of explosive fruit that the hippies had with them and then we all jumped on the back of a sword beetle and rode away to watch the fireworks. While we were riding, this flying drone things comes at us and the beetles burrow into the ground straight away and John and Beyoh went with them, but me and Sally got dumped on the surface and this thing totally opens up with a Gatling gun and shoots Sally and me, but we shoot it back and damage the heck out of it and then, as it is flying away, I shoot it one more time and it totally crashes into the truck and sets off the explosive fruit and the whole thing goes ka-boom!!!  I was totally pumped up and didn’t even mind that, that was the last bullet in my rifle because it was totally worth it and the hippies were really impressed and probably thought I did it on purpose, though I am pretty sure it was pure luck and I’d have only a 1-in-20 chance of ever doing something like that again. Oh, and John tried to take credit for it because of his booby trap, but I don’t think anybody bought it.

Anyhoo, the hippies rode off and told us that if we were ever near their town, Yew, we could totally crash with them because they think we are cool. I was really happy that we didn’t kill them because they were fun dudes, even though the guy with three legs really couldn’t pull off his dreadlocks and probably should have just washed his hair because he kind of looked like an idiot. After they left, we decided to go and scout out Prairie Dog Town since the hippies were pretty sure that the guys working there were bad news. It is totally run by robots, with lizardman enforcers and they are like enslaving people and stuff and they will probably come to Liberty and enslave those guys too, they said.

So we waited until dark and then walked along the railroad tracks a ways to where we could see Prairie Dog Town and it’s all on an island in the middle of a river and it looks like there was an ancient city down there once upon a time, but they are not using all of it and it has a wall around it and is full of robots and lizardmen and stuff so we can’t just charge in there shooting without getting killed.

Anyhoo, we’d just about decided to pull up stakes and head back to Liberty when we hear a train rumbling down the tracks and it’s pulling some boxcars and a couple of tanker cars and it stops at the top of the bluff overlooking Prairie Dog Town, on account of the rails leading down to the town are at a pretty steep grade. So these lizardmen hop out and open up the boxcars and start hauling these people out and the people are all in chains and stuff and don’t look happy and we figure they are going to be used as slave labor in Prairie Dog Town and we see some trucks driving up from the town, so that kind of confirms it. I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, we should probably do something about this because these guys shouldn’t be making people into slaves.” So it’s not too hard to convince the rest of the group to fight the lizardmen, but we got all smart and Sally started doing this suggestive dance and all the lizardmen were like totally staring at her and John was staring too, but the rest of us snuck up and got ready to attack.

I saw their leader and I totally crept up on him and stole his keys and started unlocking people, but then it sort of seemed like Sally and Beyoh and John were getting their asses handed to them while I was screwing around, so I gave the keys to the prisoners and got hopped up on goofball and jumped on the leader guy and was clawing at his eyes and stuff and he tried to scare me with images of getting mobbed by crows, but it only worked for a little while because it was totally night and crows don’t fly at night and I’m kind of a shredding machine when I am hopped up on that stuff and I made short work of him while the rest of the gang started beating down the other lizard guys and the prisoners were busy setting themselves free and stuff. It was pretty awesome and we should have had time for a few high-fives, but John “glass half empty” Smith says those trucks are getting close and they’ve got those tough security robot guys driving them.

So I’m thinking to myself, “Wouldzee, we’re in deep doo-doo if those guys have guns, so you’ve got to think of something and now.” So I looked at the train again, and I saw those tanker cars and then I thought about my matches and then I looked over at John and I knew he’d tell me “no”, so I decided not to say anything and flew up to the top of the tanker and I opened it up and it was gasoline and I was totally like “Yes! It’s not milk or something that won’t blow up.” And then hollered at John to get the prisoners moving and he looked a little freaked out, but he and Sally and Beyoh totally got the prisoners moving and when I figured they’d gotten far enough away I lit a match.

Kablooey! It totally exploded big time and I’m pretty sure it ruined their train and it killed a bunch of those robot guys dead and it probably would have killed me too, but I got even more hopped up on goofball and flew really fast so like only my tentacles got scorched a little, but I’ve had worse sun burns on them, and it was totally awesome and there was no way John could claim credit for it and it’ll probably be the coolest thing I’ll ever do in my entire life and I wish we’d found a camera so someone could have taken a picture because I’d totally like a picture of me doing that.

Anyhoo, I couldn’t sleep after taking two hits of that jet stuff and that was ok because I’m nocturnal and we walked all night to put some distance between us and Prairie Dog Town and I got to talk to a lot of the people who’d been captured while we walked. They were all from some village whose name I can’t remember – taking all that goofball didn’t help. They were like all for going in guns blazing to rescue their friends and stuff, but Sally convinced them that they would probably all get killed and that we should go back to Liberty and figure out what to do next so we are totally going to do that.