Who Is Ellen Part 4

El Goonish Shive Newspaper Story Arcs
Previous	Who Is Ellen Part 3
Next	Nanase and Her Fox

Who Is Ellen Part 4 is the sixty-second storyline chapter in EGS:NP. It started with the EGS:NP Comic for 2022-11-19 and ended with the EGS:NP Comic for 2023-08-15. It continues the storyline Who Is Ellen and shows Nanase, George, Rich and Larry playing a role playing game with Ellen as game master; in the game the player characters are investigating the theft of the mayor's pet chicken.

It is canon.

Summary

In the game the player characters were asked to go downstairs to interrogate the guard who had been missing. Nanase's character was scared of the stairs. Nanase rolled a die for her character going downstairs and it rolled a one, so her character fell down the stairs. Larry, Rich, and George also rolled ones so all of them rolled down the stairs together.

The player characters were healed by a cleric who was a friend of the mayor and happened to be visiting, that Ellen invented to heal the player characters. Larry jumped to conclusions about the cleric. Then the player characters met the guard, who had been missing because he was ill. Larry accused the cleric of cursing the guard to get him away while his minions stole the chicken. Nanase noted that this was a simpler explanation than the thieves taking advantage of a lucky opportunity. Rich agreed that the cleric was the villain and so did George's character, even though George realized that Ellen had just invented the cleric to heal the player characters. Ellen decided to run with Larry's idea instead of the original plan. The mayor was outraged by the accusation against his cleric friend; when Ellen roleplayed this, she struggled to come up with a name for the cleric and considered many names before settling on "Marik". George's character used her detect magic spell on the guard and detected a curse. Ellen told Rich that the curse wasn't contagious but Rich said his character would keep that to himself since he suspected that his character might be mistaken.

Larry decided to use his character's persuasion skill to ask the mayor to tell the player party about the cleric. Ellen said that he didn't have to act what he would say, which made Nanase happy. Larry said he had trouble roleplaying as his character would have to take advantage of her attractiveness but couldn't outright flirt. Rich suggested that Larry's character didn't need to actively flirt as she could just act concerned about the chicken. Ellen said that Larry would succeed regardless of how he rolled. He rolled low, so Ellen said that his character succeeded solely because of her looks. The mayor told the party that Marik owned an abandoned mine that the villains might be using; Ellen planned for the player characters to end up in the dungeon where the chicken was held even if they went looking elsewhere. George decided to buy a pickaxe before going to the mine.

Rich said "Thank god Larry's hot" because Larry's character managed to persuade the mayor thanks to her looks, and was shocked when he heard himself saying it. His shock subsided when the others didn't mock him; instead Larry and George talked about the attractiveness of Larry's character and Nanase and Ellen said that they suspected that people agree with them because of their looks. Rich was surprised as he was used to people going out of their way to enforce masculinity norms at every opportunity. Ellen took Rich away to talk in private and told him that she understood that he found it weird that Larry was playing an attractive woman but that he was expected to play along with it and Nanase would be impressed if he did. Rich decided that it was more important to impress attractive women than enforcing masculinity norms. He realized that his friends who would mock him for acting as woman characters were jerks, that it was their fault that it was hard to run games with them, and that Ellen is a good game master.

Before the party entered the mine all the players decided to buy pickaxes. George asked Rich about the animal sacrifice ritual and Rich said that he didn't know but was only able to recognize red flags; George joked that it involved literal red flags. At this point Nanase started picturing the other player characters, but she still pictured her own character as herself. She was annoyed that it was hard for her to think from her character's point of view.

At the entrance of the mine Larry's character (who was lucky with the die roll) saw cart tracks, goblin tracks and a cart. George told Nanase that the goblins in lore of the game were created by a god as a parody of the other mortal races. Larry said that the goblin activity would be to great a red herring; he was told off for metagaming. Ellen looked up why the adventure had goblins working for the villain and was disappointed that it didn't bother to have an in-story justification but ony used goblins because they are level-appropriate cannon fodder. Thus Ellen decided that the evil minions would not just be goblins.

When the party entered the mine, Nanase's rogue looked for traps and found a tripwire that would trigger a trap. When they went further into the mine there was a fork in the tunnel. Rich suggested that they should go to the path that seemed to be a side area to look for loot; Larry told him off for metagaming.

When the party went further into the dungeon, the player characters overheard three minions arguing about why they stole a chicken. As Ellen roleplayed as the minions with open eyes, Nanase resolved to get into character too. Thus her character shouted a challenge at the enemies. The other players were confused as her rogue was supposed to be a stealth speacialist. Ellen described the three minions, a human, a dward and a goblin. Rich decided to stay behind with the other player characters except Nanase's He though Nanase had a plan but Nanase was confused at first; then she decided to retreat past the other player characters. When Rich attacked the minions chasing Nanase's character, he made a lucky roll so he knocked out two minions. George attacked the third minion and knocked them out with another lucky roll.

Ellen told the players that the knockouts would be non-lethal. Rich decided to tie up the minions. Nanase was surprised that her character had rope to tie them up and noted that she had so much equipment that it should be hard to carry. Then Nanase admitted that she had acted on impulse and thanked Rich for salvaging the situation by coming up with the ambush. She explained that she had difficulties getting into character because she is bad at acting and that she made a character who is unfamiliar with the game world because she is unfamiliar with it. That made Rich disappointed that Nanase wasn't as perfect as he thought but he didn't say anything.

George suggested to Nanase that she should consider what she had in common with her character and what her character had that she wished she had. Thus Nanase considered what she had in common with her character but realized that they were different as her character didn't know about magic before arriving in the game world whereas she was a magic user who had to keep magic secret. Then the group talked further about the option to make non lethal attacks. Nanase realized that she was happy that the game allowed her to fight without hurting any real people and without killing any characters, which helped her get into character.

Thus Nanase was eager to go further into the dungeon to fight more enemies. Rich suggested that they should stay in the room where they were to look for loot; Nanase objected to stealing from people who were only suspected of being involved in a nefarious plan. When the group continued, Ellen misremembered the chicken's name; she explained that she is bad at remembering names.

Then Nanase talked to Larry about tactics for her rogue. The party decided which order they would go: Rich's paladin would go last but the other characters would get behind him in case of a surprise attack from the front.

After Nanase's rogue found another tripwire trap, Ellen rolled dice without explaining why. The party was ambushed by enemies from the ceiling. Nanase was excited to fight but found the fighting less exciting than she had expected. She thoyught about why she didn't enjoy the fight.

George realized that he recognized this adventure as one he had heard on a podcast and was confused by the changes Ellen had made. He realized that the next part would be the final fight against the big bad and more of his minions. Indeed, Ellen described a room where a chicken was held.

On the wall of the room there was an Egyptian hieroglyph inscription. Nanase's character told the other player characters that she recognized the inscription. Ellen told Nanase that the chicken didn't look like a fancy chicken. Nanase had an idea of what the enemies were doing and came up with a plan. Nanase's character pretended to read the inscriptions on the wall. Nanase's character loudly said that the party should leave to make sure that the enemy would hear it.

Marik entered the room holding a fancy chicken and accompanied by seven minions. Ellen was unable to describe what the fancy chicken looked like and each of the players pictured it differently. Marik threatened the chicken to make Nanase's character to explain what the symbools on the wall said. When George asked if he had stolen two chickens, Marik said that he had bought the decoy chicken. Marik said that he had been given a mission from his god to bring Nanase's character there and complained that it was made harder by Larry's character finding her first, and explained how he came up with his plan. When Marik asked Nanase's character what the inscription said, Nanase's character ran away.

Four of Marik's minions followed her while Marik and the other three minions stayed to fight the other player characters. George's sorceress attacked one of the minions; he didn't manage to knock out the minion. Rich's paladin protected the sorceress. Larry's character was angry with Nanase's character for leaving; that made Nanase sad and Larry explained that his character had abandonment issues. Ellen recalled how Elliot used a cheat code to win a video game boss fight and found it unsatisfying. Thus she decided to give Nanase a challenge. One of Marik's minions threw a rock which hit Nanase's character, which threw off her balance. Nanase decided to roll through a tripwire. Her character barely escaped being caugh by the trap while the enemies were caught.

It took time for Nanase's character to cross the trap and by the time she returned, the other player characters had defeated Marik's other minions. Marik tried to kill the chicken Maribel but Maribel struggled and knocked out Marik. Larry's elf managed to get the chicken to hop into her arms.

Larry suggested that the party should adopt the decoy chicken as team mascot.

Nanase said that they hadn't figured out what the hieroglyph inscription meant and George suggested that the player party should destroy the wall with their pickaxes. and the other players went along with it. Ellen resisted the temptation to have something anticlimactic happen and instead said that something the player characters couldn't see rushed past them. Then Ellen wrapped up the game. Nanase noted that they had a sequel hook; Ellen said that she need time to sort out the story.

Rich declared that Ellen is good at running games; Ellen was briefly confused before she remembered the challenge. Nanase noted that Ellen had stopped closing her eyes while talking in character and Ellen compared it to Elliot's acting in the review show; George, who still believed that Ellen and Elliot are the same person, suspected that their transformation spell involved a personality shift that would cause them to see themselves as different people. Larry said that he is a fan of the review show (Mr. Tensaided introduced him to it in Squirrel Prophet) Nanase talked about her experience of playing the game. She also said that she was hungry and Ellen suggested that they should go to the nearby restaurant. When George asked if she meant that she and Nanase would go to the food place, Ellen clarified that she was inviting all of the players. George was surprised that he was invited to hang out with the others and Rich was impressed with success at talking to women and decided to continue acting like Ellen encouraged him to do during the game.

While the group was walking toward the food place, George saw Cheerleadra flying past them. When he told the others, Ellen acted surprised even though she knew that Ellen had asked Edward Verres for permission to fly around doing superhero-style patrolling. As George knew that Elliot is Cheerleadra, he concluded that Ellen isn't Elliot but still thought there's something weird about her. George fantasized about running off like a superhero and transforming into a superheroine similar to Cheerleadra. Nanase asked Ellen if running the game was as easy as she remembered; Ellen thought it was but she realized that it could have been more difficult and answered diplomatically to Rich.