Last night our heroes were a mighty and successful band of adventurers at the end of their long careers:

• Jack Druce (Introvert Def Jam) as dwarven Paladin Gold Pockets Petersen, show-biz agent to the dungeoneering stars with an itchty dagger finger set off by mime;
• Toby Halligan (Dr. Toby Halligan is not a Doctor, Political Asylum’s Late Night Riot!) as Matsumoto, a Gen-Y Samurai who tweeted and Facebooked his every kill, but who would be shamed into ritual suicide if he was not retweeted;
• Jimmy James Eaton (One Small Sketch For Man) as Dirty Old Gandalf (D.O.G.), the hip-hop wizard whose spells were as tight as his rhymes – though he could not cast spells in the presence of cats;
• Celia Pacquola (Tie Her To The Tracks, Delayed) as Yelp, the crone who everyone thinks is ugly, but really she’s just had something stuck in her eye for fifty years; she has premonitions of past events, and there’s a secret bat in her hair which she’s never noticed.

The party had been persuaded to come out of retirement to kill one last villain: an evil sorceress. Successfully infiltrating her lair, they are trapped in a slow crushing walls trap, but as seasoned adventurers they’ve seen it all before. They take a moment to rest, and reminisce about their first ever adventure…

Many years before, the quartet were apprenticing as adventurers in their village of Josefsen when a young girl – special guest star Geraldine Quinn (Titters, Spandex Ballet) – pleaded with them to find her missing sheep, Damian, who was not only her best friend, but Josefsen’s only Justice of the Peace. The heroes investigated the nearby sheep paddock and found it suspiciously empty; they retired for a nice pot of chai while waiting to see if the sheep returned on their own. They did not – but our heroes’ chai-sharpened senses reveal a mysterious set of tracks leading into the nearby woods. There the party faced their first challenge – a huge but emaciated wolf! While Gandalf distracted the wolf with a rap about positive body image, the others managed to kill it, but it becomes clear it has eaten nothing in recent times – certainly not a plump sheep. They follow the tracks further to an ominous cabin in the woods, where they find a key hidden behind a picture of another sheep which unlocks a hidden trapdoor. Descending into darkness, they encountered a dead cat, temporarily robbing D.O.G. of his powers – a cat killed by the giant rat who guards the underground passage! The rat is despondent, however: not only is it a genetically modified mutant with a hideous face and rabbit’s ears, but it has been supplanted by its master’s new pet. They get the rat on side and it leaves them to face the wizard behind it all! The wizard is quite happy to show them the sheep…because he had turned it and the other sheep into a horrifying sheep golem! Battle is joined, Yelp discovers the bat in her hair, and the others manage to kill the beast. They cut out the parts that were once Damian, and return them to the young girl, running off before she realises her sheep is dead – and therefore not hearing her bloody swear of vengeance…

Back in the present, the adventurers realise the crushing walls are only mimed, causing Gold Pockets to pull his knife. They walk right through them and confront the sorceress – who turns out to be Damian’s owner, all grown up and thoroughly evil in her twisted desire for revenge! She begins a foul ritual, summoning something from a vile black cloud; Matsumoto tweets that he is going to slash at the sorceress, but his followers, tired of him repeating himself, do not retweet him, and he commits sepuku, aided by Yelp. As his entrails spill onto the floor, the blood of a hero disrupts the foul sigils there powering the ritual, and instead of a vicious sheep monster, the clouds bring forth…a perfect, unsullied copy of Damian! Finally having redeemed a villain instead of killing her, the heroes are happy to retire; G.O.D. records a motivational album for the kids, Yelp uses her newfound skill at decapitation to become an execution in the employ of King Joffrey Baratheon, and Gold Pockets sells the watch he stole from Matsumoto’s corpse to fund his pension. All is well at last!

Thanks to all who came along and enjoyed the show – come back next week for another amazing line-up, including Andrew McClelland (Tie Her To The Tracks, One Man Stand), Dave Bloustien (The Social Contract, Grand Guignol), Brenna Courtney Glazebrook (Better Than This) and first-time crawlers Christophe Davidson (The Time of Your Life) and Dingo & Wolf (Winning at Life)!