Post by Adminenkainen on Dec 4, 2017 4:29:50 GMT
February 7, 1942.
Under Des Plaines.
As Batman and Gracie were hearing voices from behind the locked door, Batman noticed the ogre he had put to sleep with his spell was waking up. Batman tried to shoot the ogre in the head, but it was a a grazing hit. Gracie whipped out her trusty shotgun and let the ogre have it when it was getting back to its feet, but the sturdy ogre was still only lightly injured. But it was still scared and ran away from them the way the Heroes had come.
Without the ogre to deal with, Gracie battered down the door and found three men locked in a cell. One was a Gordon Clustier, a clerk working for the Maine Township Assessor’s Office (out of Park Ridge -- from the other side of the Fog Wall). One was Michael Mann, a restaurant manager from Des Plaines. But the third was a gnome named Gimfinkle. They all told stories about how the ogre had seized them in the night and brought them here. The Heroes had no choice but to abandon their quest to find Carl Alscher and buy spells from him so they could get the prisoners to safety. Michael headed straight home. Gordon borrowed $2 from Batman so he could get something to eat. Gimfinkle was happy to hear that the Heroes knew his cousins and asked Gracie to reunite them (since Batman was being rude to him).
That evening, the five Heroes reunited at a dinner to discuss what they had learned during their afternoon downtime. Batman and Gracie had found that Alscher’s guardian ogre was keeping prisoners, possibly under Alscher’s orders. Blaze and Darklash had interviewed the families of the two still-missing women in the Southland Hideout and found them handling the long wait surprisingly well. White Knight had come up with no leads yet on fingerprints -- but Chief Wittenberg wanted to see the hideout with them and would go if Mayor Besander allowed it, and Besander had told White Knight he would consider it.
February 8. Sunday.
Blaze encouraged Batman, instead of sneaking into the Burning Tower from underneath, to do what he’d done and toss messages to Alscher through one of his windows. Blaze suggested a steel thermos, and then left on his own mission. Batman wrote a note, acquired a steel thermos, and then went back to the Burning Tower (again with backup). It was two hours before Alscher used the same thermos to throw a note back out. It said to meet him tomorrow -- and to leave his ogre alone. Batman threw another note in asking about the ogre’s unethical behavior, but no response came.
Blaze, White Knight, and Darklash went in search of a film projector, which they found at the Central Standard School (grades K-8). They borrowed it and went to show the film they had found in the Hideout to John Pullmann, Station Master at the Chicago Northwestern Railroad Station. John was able to identify the mystery man in the movie right away -- it was none other than Stanley H. Pierce, the legendary stockbroker who chose to go into hiding when the government came for his gold stockpile, and was said to have buried his fortune. The film was taken three years ago at the train station, but John remembered this as the last time he ever saw Stanley. Stanley had come to meet four strangers at the train station, claiming to be assayers, but John’s intuition told him they were suspicious characters.
While Blaze stuck around to chew the fat with this acquaintance, White Knight and Darklash got in WK’s car and patrolled, looking for trouble, when they noticed almost no one else was out driving.
That evening was the emergency council meeting the Heroes had requested from the town leaders. Batman gave up waiting for Alscher’s reply so he could attend it. The civic leaders -- Mayor Besander, Mayor Garland, the acting mayor of Park Ridge (Orvis Thompson), Police Chief Wittenberg, Captain Becker, and captain of the Park Ridge police force (James Jordan) were thrilled to hear about the possibility of tunneling under the Fog Wall. Initially the Heroes proposed testing this theory on the Fog Wall between Mount Prospect and Orchard Place. During a heated debate with Captain Becker about tearing down the hideout (when the Heroes learned the council had access to two sticks of TNT they were saving for an emergency), Blaze had a sudden inspiration. He suggested testing their hypothesis on a safer section of Fog Wall, just north of the connection between Mount Prospect and Des Plaines. This suggestion was received with enthusiasm and approved unanimously.
The mayors also gave Chief Wittenberg permission to go to the Southland Hideout with the Heroes, accompanied by two additional bodyguards.
February 9-15. Monday-Sunday.
Things began to happen quickly now.
Batman went to meet Carl Alscher just outside the ogre’s lair. Alscher claimed that the ogre was the least of his servants and had been largely forgotten; Alscher had left the ogre to fend for itself and it took it upon itself to collect people for food. He assured Batman that the ogre was being punished for what it had done, which was good enough for Batman -- Batman wanted spells! Alscher agreed to teach him Charm Person, Detect Magic, Charm Animal, and Find Traps, for just $700 and 1 week of his time.
During that week, Blaze and White Knight spent a lot of time trying to identify mobsters by fingerprint or mugshots and had no luck -- until Darklash showed up and spotted right away a record for Anton Herschel, the “Lieutenant” of the Southland Hideout. The record showed he had been arrested three years ago in Des Plaines for racketeering and the record named two accomplices -- Michael Dunslan and Elizabeth Donner. Blaze recognized Michael Dunslan as one of the racketeers he had been chasing on New Year’s Eve. Elizabeth Donner had turned witness against Herschel in exchange for her freedom -- and she still lived local.
The four available Heroes went to meet Donner at home, but she wasn’t there the first day. The next day they came back and learned Donner had gone to the Mount Prospect Public Library with a male friend. When they reached the library, they found Donner -- and Herschel (who had been allowed to escape before) -- ransacking the collection. Darklash kept Donner under watch while the other three cornered Herschel and kept him from hurting anyone before he could be knocked out. The Heroes called for the police to come get Herschel, but let Donner off the hook (despite White Knight’s reservations).
Donner knew what Herschel had been looking for -- a book called Under the Old Oak Tree. Suddenly, the legend about Stanley H. Pierce burying his gold under an oak tree made a new kind of sense. The Heroes looked through the book and found a folded-up map with a conspicuous ‘x’ on it. The Heroes went digging at the spot between Henry and Central Roads and found a box containing $30,000 in gold.
Flush with cash, the Heroes went back to investigating matters in the Southland. Darklash made sure to bring lots of sandwiches to the gnomes. Gimfinkle had been welcomed back by his cousins and was helping Bolto and the others. They would soon be done repairing the buried machine and were mostly sure it was not going to blow up and kill everyone.
Finally, the day came. The machine was activated and it opened a concealed canal between the large pond to the southeast and the depression the ruins and the buried machine were in. The Heroes figured out what was happening and cleared out of dodge before the depression flooded. But…the Heroes could make no sense out of why it happened. They waited until the pond was mostly drained and dredged the bottom of it. They found a large boat’s anchor and a waterproof box holding chestnuts, that might or might not have had something to do with the grove of chestnut trees to the south.
The Heroes also took Chief Wittenberg to see the House. The inside of the House had changed yet again, with really awful shag carpet and metallic wallpaper. There was also a large, silent black bear without eyes in the kitchen. It nearly killed Darklash as they surrounded it and attacked, but they managed to bring the (undead?) bear-creature down. The gnomes, which had followed the Heroes in, were eager to claim the House as their own.
Finally the 15th came and Batman returned to them, with his new assortment of spells learned. During his week with Alscher, he learned that Carl had family on the other side of the Fog Wall, and that Alscher had sent a “silent stalker” to recon the Southlands for him (but Batman, characteristically, shared none of this with the others).
Instead, the reunited Outsiders, plus Chief Wittenberg and his bodyguards, went down into the Hideout to finally look for the missing women. They checked the first rooms in the Hideout and found four hoodlums holed up in them -- but Batman took them down immediately with a Sleep spell.
Blaze suggested that the Chief should escort the prisoners back upstairs, where they were handcuffed and left for the gnomes to guard. The Heroes, meanwhile, would press on into the maze to the south…
Under Des Plaines.
As Batman and Gracie were hearing voices from behind the locked door, Batman noticed the ogre he had put to sleep with his spell was waking up. Batman tried to shoot the ogre in the head, but it was a a grazing hit. Gracie whipped out her trusty shotgun and let the ogre have it when it was getting back to its feet, but the sturdy ogre was still only lightly injured. But it was still scared and ran away from them the way the Heroes had come.
Without the ogre to deal with, Gracie battered down the door and found three men locked in a cell. One was a Gordon Clustier, a clerk working for the Maine Township Assessor’s Office (out of Park Ridge -- from the other side of the Fog Wall). One was Michael Mann, a restaurant manager from Des Plaines. But the third was a gnome named Gimfinkle. They all told stories about how the ogre had seized them in the night and brought them here. The Heroes had no choice but to abandon their quest to find Carl Alscher and buy spells from him so they could get the prisoners to safety. Michael headed straight home. Gordon borrowed $2 from Batman so he could get something to eat. Gimfinkle was happy to hear that the Heroes knew his cousins and asked Gracie to reunite them (since Batman was being rude to him).
That evening, the five Heroes reunited at a dinner to discuss what they had learned during their afternoon downtime. Batman and Gracie had found that Alscher’s guardian ogre was keeping prisoners, possibly under Alscher’s orders. Blaze and Darklash had interviewed the families of the two still-missing women in the Southland Hideout and found them handling the long wait surprisingly well. White Knight had come up with no leads yet on fingerprints -- but Chief Wittenberg wanted to see the hideout with them and would go if Mayor Besander allowed it, and Besander had told White Knight he would consider it.
February 8. Sunday.
Blaze encouraged Batman, instead of sneaking into the Burning Tower from underneath, to do what he’d done and toss messages to Alscher through one of his windows. Blaze suggested a steel thermos, and then left on his own mission. Batman wrote a note, acquired a steel thermos, and then went back to the Burning Tower (again with backup). It was two hours before Alscher used the same thermos to throw a note back out. It said to meet him tomorrow -- and to leave his ogre alone. Batman threw another note in asking about the ogre’s unethical behavior, but no response came.
Blaze, White Knight, and Darklash went in search of a film projector, which they found at the Central Standard School (grades K-8). They borrowed it and went to show the film they had found in the Hideout to John Pullmann, Station Master at the Chicago Northwestern Railroad Station. John was able to identify the mystery man in the movie right away -- it was none other than Stanley H. Pierce, the legendary stockbroker who chose to go into hiding when the government came for his gold stockpile, and was said to have buried his fortune. The film was taken three years ago at the train station, but John remembered this as the last time he ever saw Stanley. Stanley had come to meet four strangers at the train station, claiming to be assayers, but John’s intuition told him they were suspicious characters.
While Blaze stuck around to chew the fat with this acquaintance, White Knight and Darklash got in WK’s car and patrolled, looking for trouble, when they noticed almost no one else was out driving.
That evening was the emergency council meeting the Heroes had requested from the town leaders. Batman gave up waiting for Alscher’s reply so he could attend it. The civic leaders -- Mayor Besander, Mayor Garland, the acting mayor of Park Ridge (Orvis Thompson), Police Chief Wittenberg, Captain Becker, and captain of the Park Ridge police force (James Jordan) were thrilled to hear about the possibility of tunneling under the Fog Wall. Initially the Heroes proposed testing this theory on the Fog Wall between Mount Prospect and Orchard Place. During a heated debate with Captain Becker about tearing down the hideout (when the Heroes learned the council had access to two sticks of TNT they were saving for an emergency), Blaze had a sudden inspiration. He suggested testing their hypothesis on a safer section of Fog Wall, just north of the connection between Mount Prospect and Des Plaines. This suggestion was received with enthusiasm and approved unanimously.
The mayors also gave Chief Wittenberg permission to go to the Southland Hideout with the Heroes, accompanied by two additional bodyguards.
February 9-15. Monday-Sunday.
Things began to happen quickly now.
Batman went to meet Carl Alscher just outside the ogre’s lair. Alscher claimed that the ogre was the least of his servants and had been largely forgotten; Alscher had left the ogre to fend for itself and it took it upon itself to collect people for food. He assured Batman that the ogre was being punished for what it had done, which was good enough for Batman -- Batman wanted spells! Alscher agreed to teach him Charm Person, Detect Magic, Charm Animal, and Find Traps, for just $700 and 1 week of his time.
During that week, Blaze and White Knight spent a lot of time trying to identify mobsters by fingerprint or mugshots and had no luck -- until Darklash showed up and spotted right away a record for Anton Herschel, the “Lieutenant” of the Southland Hideout. The record showed he had been arrested three years ago in Des Plaines for racketeering and the record named two accomplices -- Michael Dunslan and Elizabeth Donner. Blaze recognized Michael Dunslan as one of the racketeers he had been chasing on New Year’s Eve. Elizabeth Donner had turned witness against Herschel in exchange for her freedom -- and she still lived local.
The four available Heroes went to meet Donner at home, but she wasn’t there the first day. The next day they came back and learned Donner had gone to the Mount Prospect Public Library with a male friend. When they reached the library, they found Donner -- and Herschel (who had been allowed to escape before) -- ransacking the collection. Darklash kept Donner under watch while the other three cornered Herschel and kept him from hurting anyone before he could be knocked out. The Heroes called for the police to come get Herschel, but let Donner off the hook (despite White Knight’s reservations).
Donner knew what Herschel had been looking for -- a book called Under the Old Oak Tree. Suddenly, the legend about Stanley H. Pierce burying his gold under an oak tree made a new kind of sense. The Heroes looked through the book and found a folded-up map with a conspicuous ‘x’ on it. The Heroes went digging at the spot between Henry and Central Roads and found a box containing $30,000 in gold.
Flush with cash, the Heroes went back to investigating matters in the Southland. Darklash made sure to bring lots of sandwiches to the gnomes. Gimfinkle had been welcomed back by his cousins and was helping Bolto and the others. They would soon be done repairing the buried machine and were mostly sure it was not going to blow up and kill everyone.
Finally, the day came. The machine was activated and it opened a concealed canal between the large pond to the southeast and the depression the ruins and the buried machine were in. The Heroes figured out what was happening and cleared out of dodge before the depression flooded. But…the Heroes could make no sense out of why it happened. They waited until the pond was mostly drained and dredged the bottom of it. They found a large boat’s anchor and a waterproof box holding chestnuts, that might or might not have had something to do with the grove of chestnut trees to the south.
The Heroes also took Chief Wittenberg to see the House. The inside of the House had changed yet again, with really awful shag carpet and metallic wallpaper. There was also a large, silent black bear without eyes in the kitchen. It nearly killed Darklash as they surrounded it and attacked, but they managed to bring the (undead?) bear-creature down. The gnomes, which had followed the Heroes in, were eager to claim the House as their own.
Finally the 15th came and Batman returned to them, with his new assortment of spells learned. During his week with Alscher, he learned that Carl had family on the other side of the Fog Wall, and that Alscher had sent a “silent stalker” to recon the Southlands for him (but Batman, characteristically, shared none of this with the others).
Instead, the reunited Outsiders, plus Chief Wittenberg and his bodyguards, went down into the Hideout to finally look for the missing women. They checked the first rooms in the Hideout and found four hoodlums holed up in them -- but Batman took them down immediately with a Sleep spell.
Blaze suggested that the Chief should escort the prisoners back upstairs, where they were handcuffed and left for the gnomes to guard. The Heroes, meanwhile, would press on into the maze to the south…