Sessions 11-13

[Adminenkainen]

February 15, 1942. Sunday.

The Heroes were still in the “maze” section of the Southland Hideout, but not for long. The White Knight stopped them and suggested they split up -- leaving Blaze and Dark Lash to search for the two missing women, while the other three went to Orchard Place to see if they could free everyone there.

There was a difficulty with that -- no one knew how to get directly from where they were to the vertical shaft that led into the Orchard Place quadrangle. The solution White Knight came up with was to exit out the recently-found trap door, cross the Southland to the trap door in the hills, and go back down into the Hideout that way. The only new thing they found while doing that was opening a door and finding an abandoned room with some bedrolls in it.

The three Outsiders came down through the second trapdoor and paused in the lab beneath it, as White Knight debated with the others if they should move some of the laboratory equipment out with a wheelbarrow. They decided to push that back and kept going.

Things were going fine until White Knight decided to peak into the ceremonial chamber where they had a big fight with bloodthirsty hoodlums before. They found it occupied again -- this time by a group of 10 hoodlums that seemed to be patrolling together. White Knight managed to talk their way out of a fight and left them.

They reached the room where Theo the Ogre dwelt and checked for him, but Theo wanted no part of a rematch with Gracie and ran from them. That left them unopposed to ascend the shaft to Orchard Place the same as they had last time (WK jumps to the surface, secures a rope, and the rest climb up).

They went back to the Douglas Aircraft Factory and hot-wired a truck. The plan was to go into the village and reconnoiter incognito. Costumes and weapons went into the back of the truck. They drove into Orchard Place -- a very small town with just one church and a walled manor house that looked out of place here. They drove right up to the front gate and WK got out and buzzed an intercom. His cover story was that they had just driven through a gap in the Fog Wall from Mount Prospect -- which immediately drew the attention of the inhabitants. A dozen men, half armed with rifles, came jogging out and wanted a ride in the truck back to the Fog Wall to check it. WK said the wall closed up behind them and, sure enough, the wall was closed. The story gave them hope, though, and they knew the Baron would want to hear of it.

The leader of the squad was a man named Gill Elmore, who had been a sergeant in the Great War. Some of the men under him were also vets. They followed the man who called himself The Baron, but The Baron didn’t seem to be ex-military to Gill -- he had just bullied his way to the top.

Back at the manor, the Heroes got to meet “Baron” Ellis -- a big man wearing a flak jacket indoors and wearing a saber at his side. Ellis quizzed them on if there were any weird creatures in Mount Prospect -- because the hills that had mysteriously appeared west of Orchard Place were full of them. WK claimed only to know of “superheroes” appearing in Mount Prospect, which The Baron agreed was weird.

The Outsiders were invited to spend the night at the manor and thought everything was going great. And it was, except when they brought their guns to their guest room and were told by their escort to turn over all their bullets. When WK refused, a guard tried to beat him with a truncheon, but got punched out by WK instead. A second escort pulled a gun on them. WK tried to wrestle the gun away and wound up getting put on a hold himself, but then Batman came up and knocked the guy out. The last escort had raced off to warn the Baron.

The Outsiders stayed in their room, still confident that they could talk their way out of this “misunderstanding.” It only became clear to them that The Baron had intended them to be his prisoners when three more armed guards showed up outside their room and told them to come out with their hands up. The Outsiders came out, but Batman put all three of them to sleep with a spell. Gracie used her mastery of disguise (something we never knew about her before) to make herself look just like The Baron. The “Baron” led Batman and WK back outside safely. Instead of taking the stolen truck, they stole a car from the garage and drove out into town.

They stopped at the church, which was manned by two lay residents, Will and Teresa. WK told them his plan -- gather as many locals as possible and sneak them out to Mount Prospect through the hideout. Will estimated that meant bringing 200 people through. WK decided they needed more backup. He wanted to take one of them along to tell their story (Will volunteered Teresa), leaving the other behind to tell the locals about the plan. So the Outsiders + Teresa hopped in their car and started driving up Mannheim Road to get back to the shaft down.

En route, The Baron’s men started to catch up to them in two cars and their own stolen truck. The chase was ended by a second sleep spell (taking out the truck), a well-placed gunshot to a tire (also by Batman, taking out a car), and a lot of fast driving through snow by WK that outdistanced the remaining car. They stashed the car by the woods south of where they came in and fled into the hideout.

Theo was still avoiding them, so they had no trouble getting through the hideout until snaking through the narrow 5’ passage that led north past the giant spider lair. They saw flashlights ahead so they tried going a different route. They went west down a long narrow passage and found an unfamiliar north-south hallway. Unwilling to do a lot of exploring, WK turned them around and they went back. By the time they returned to the snaking passage, the flashlight-wielders were gone.

They emerged on the surface through the lab and walked back to town. It was late afternoon, so they returned to their house. Darklash was there, as she and Blaze had given up on the maze soon after splitting off. They agreed to see Mayor Besander in the morning.

February 16, 1942. Monday.

What WK asked of Inge Besander was another squad of men to go with them. This time, instead of making the emergency council assign a squad to them, they agreed to post in the local newspapers that they needed a volunteer force in two days time. They actively promoted the cause over the next two days, capitalizing on their local fame (and the fact that there were no outstanding warrants for any of them anymore).

February 17, 1972. Tuesday.

What they got was a whopping crowd of 30 -- half of them deputies from the earlier raid and half of them just people who knew people trapped in Orchard Place and wanted to help.

February 18, 1972. Wednesday.

The Outsiders led their fresh troops into the Southlands to the House and used the main entrance through the garage (the garage had subtly changed again). Down in the hideout, White Knight and Dark Lash went first, followed by a group of deputies, with Batman accompanying the less-trained friends in the middle, and Gracie and Blaze taking up the rear behind the rest of the deputies.

WK and DL spotted tripwires in the hallway ahead of them and deactivated some traps. But, as Gracie and Blaze were passing the side rooms, those doors flung open and armed men emerged. It did them little good emerging, because Blaze’s fiery blasts and Gracie’s fists soon brought down all 13 hoodlums holed up by the main entrance -- though both heroes were lightly injured from bullets.

[Adminenkainen]

Session 12

Pre-game notes: The weather has been warming up for the past six days, melting half the snow. The temperature reaches 36 degrees for two hours on the 18th. Also, the tunnel dug under the Fog Wall, after several days of being watched, fills in with the Fog.

February 18, 1942. Wednesday.

The Heroes were marching through the Southland Hideout within a company of 30 volunteer rescuers. It was very similar to a strategy they had tried before, only this time the key would be not splitting up their forces. And this time it worked. They managed to get the entire company through the hideout to the Orchard Place entrance without encountering any further opposition after the front entrance. They avoided getting lost by sticking to the path they knew best.

Theo the Ogre was still in his lair, but recoiled in fear at the sight of Gracie. The White Knight tried his best to recruit Theo, but Theo couldn’t understand the concepts WK was throwing out at him, like being nice to people. Ultimately, the Heroes came up with another stratagem -- recruit Theo to tackle The Baron for them.

The trick would be getting Theo -- and 30 people -- up through the 30’ high shaft to Orchard Place. WK hopped up the shaft again, secured rope, and lowered it down. This time, the company had also brought a 20’ ladder. The plan was for everyone to climb the ladder and then only have to climb the last 10’ by rope. This plan seemed way too dangerous to 10 of the volunteers, who then volunteered to stay behind and guard the shaft. The remaining 20 made it up safely. But when it came time for Blaze to carry Theo up the ladder, their combined weight was too much for the ladder. Blaze caught the rope in time, but Theo landed and hurt himself. An enraged Theo began chasing the remaining volunteers away and most of the Heroes jumped or climbed down to deal with Theo more thoroughly. But the fight was over before it begun when Batman cast a sleep spell and put Theo to sleep. The errant ogre was tied to his stool and gagged.

Meanwhile, Blaze was up top with the 20-man team in the still-largely unexplored Orchard Place quadrangle, and observed there were three large bonfires spaced out down the south side of Algonquin Road, east of here. When the others rejoined him, they checked the woods to the south for the truck they stashed there and found it had been reclaimed by the Baron’s men.

Blaze wanted to ignore the obvious sentry posts marked by the bonfires and lead his men through the woods to Orchard Place, but the others were more concerned about those sentries. So it was decided that White Knight and Darklash, their best sneakers, would sneak up on the sentries and see what the situation was. Everyone was good with this plan -- except Batman.

White Knight and Darklash were observing two sentries with military-grade arms and armor by the first bonfire, when Batman got impatient and charged the sentries at super fast speed. Batman and the sentries got in a firefight, which forced WK and Dl to come out of hiding and get involved. Their tactic was that WK would distract the sentry by missing, and then Dl would follow up with a sword stab. One sentry went down and the other stopped fighting, but refused to surrender his gun. Batman cast a charm spell on the sentry to get his sub-machine gun, and commanded him to stop the two additional sentries running from the next fire.

Everyone (which now included Gracie, who showed up later) stood around and watched as the charmed sentry did his best to talk the other two out of getting involved, but wound up getting shot himself in the process. Now everyone had to get in on this fight and stop the other two, using much the same tactics as before. This time they knocked one out and the other surrendered. Batman had just time enough to administer first aid to his “friend” before they had to decide what to do about the third sentry outpost. Darklash convinced the others that they did not want these sentries in their way on the way back, so they took on the last pair. This time, WK’s punches were more effective, and Batman got too gun crazy and murdered one by spraying a full round of bullets into him at point blank range.
The five remaining sentries were left tied up by a bonfire.

Meanwhile, Blaze was still navigating the woods with his 20 men. At the center of the woods, they found a tall, broad hill 100’ high with a strange, egg-shaped building atop it. Blaze went to check it out and found it was the home of a small, strange cult calling themselves the Odd Fellows (despite one of them being female). They seemed to think of this space within the Fog Wall as some kind of afterlife and this was their refuge where they could while away their time with games of chance and not worry about the scarier details of this afterlife. The female “sister” was the only one from Orchard Place, the elder “brother” was the owner of this house and came with it from where it once stood in Utah, and the others came from some locations in between. Blaze invited them to come with to Mount Prospect if they wanted to, and in return they warned him against eating the poisonous berries outside. Of course, his troops had been gathering berries all this time.

The Outsiders were easily able to follow the trail of Blaze and his men and came upon the same hill and the same building. They made the inhabitants the same offer, but met the same resistance to leave (they were debating whether an exit from the Fog Wall even fit in their new dogma).

Soon, the Outsiders were reunited south of the woods (it was easier catching up because of the trail of dropped berries). They headed straight for the church, where a crowd of 50 had gathered and had been hunkered down for over a day waiting to be rescued. Some of them went out to alert more villagers who wanted to hear what the Outsiders had to say about the rescue. More filtered in over the next half-hour, asking for proof of where they came from (the Heroes had not brought any, other than the testimony of their neighbors) and more details of what was going on.

While the others were making their case inside, Blaze was standing guard out front (there were also an overflow of people standing outside the church discussing their options). It was then that a truck pulled up and The Baron’s men told everyone to disperse.

One by one, the heroes heard a commotion outside, but Blaze had the situation pretty well in hand. Some of these troopers had tear gas grenades, but Blaze would set them off in their hands with fire and engulf them in their own tear gas. The driver tried to hit Blaze with his truck, but then Batman emerged and shot the tires out from under one side of the truck. Gracie had been holding back a lot this day, but she did some hardcore grappling here. Soon, they had all seven rounded up and locked in the back of the truck they came in (Blaze bent some metal around the handles).

In case more troopers turned up, the Outsiders had to move up their timetable. They left the church with the 60 men and women who were determined to leave already, separated into two groups. They made their way cross-country through the farmland west of Mannheim Road -- only to be met by sniper fire. It was coming from at least one of the surrounding farmhouses. White Knight commanded his group of troops to lay cover fire for his fleeing refugees; the second group used the same tactic, but with Batman adding a Wall of Fog spell (his first time using it) to give cover from one of the houses.

The snipers had succeeded in picked off some of the refugees -- three were saved, but two died right away from injuries. Luckily, there were ladders nearby to use as stretchers. Soon, everyone was at the shaft that led down under the wall (not even the dead were left behind). It was a laborious project to get everyone down below, but they succeeded.

Down below, mobsters had rallied and engaged the 10 volunteers left behind in a firefight. Two of the volunteers were dead and two more seriously injured. Again, everyone was brought with.

It took a long time to move almost 100 people through passages that were single file in some places, but eventually everyone reached the laboratory unopposed. Only, this time, there were actually scientists in the lab.

Blaze was quick to question these men, all of whom worked in the chemistry department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They all believed they had been captured and were being held by mobsters somewhere in Chicago, and had been for the past five weeks. Blaze realized that meant they were late arrivals, coming after the Fog Wall went up. But to everyone’s astonishment, these men had heard nothing about the Fog Wall or Mount Prospect’s plight. The scientists knew Anton “Lieutenant” Herschel and had been commanded by him to duplicate a “potion”. They had a small sample of it with them.

The scientist did agree to be rescued, and even went back to get a fourth scientist. They all escaped into Mount Prospect, where Mayor Besander was eager to greet the refugees. He offered to find housing for them, as the town had for the airplane refugees earlier, and he thanked the heroes for their bravery, and for keeping the casualties as low as they were.

Blaze was eager to put the scientists to work with the pharmacists working on pill identification, but something else was more pressing now.

Some time had passed since the large pond was drained in the Southland. There had been something large in the ice and the dirt at the bottom that they had waited until it warmed up to investigate ((note: this was a retcon of what actually happened)). What they found was -- an old rusty street car. They entered it and found another surprise, that the only thing in it was an antique magic lantern (an early slide projector). There was a tray of 22 slides under the lantern and some of the Heroes felt compelled to try projecting some on the wall of the street car.

Darklash went first and projected three images -- a gem, an idiot, and a star ((her INT dropped by 4 and her DEX went up by 2)). Before leaving the street car, she stumbled across a pile of 50 gems that no one had seen there before.

Batman tried the slides. He projected a comet, the vizier, and the knight ((he will gain a level after his next fight and Megan can get told to her the solution to any one dilemma she chooses)).

Blaze tried one slide. He projected a key. Before leaving the street car, he spotted a treasure map that no one had spotted earlier.

WK and Gracie abstained from trying the strange magic lantern.

[Adminenkainen]

Session 13

February 20, 1942

"I am investigating places where people began showing up when the fog wall appeared,” Darklash said. “I know of one who showed up here on the first day but have there been any others since?"

She asked this in Wille’s Tavern, where she had first appeared in Mt. Prospect 50 days earlier. Adolph Willie reported that none had since that first day, but that his neighbor (the Busse-Biermann Hardware Store) had something similar happen towards the end of January, with a man found hiding in the backroom of a locked store who should not have been able to get in there.

Darklash had a weird feeling of deja vu about the place, but could not pin it down to anything in particular. She decided, though, to check around all the other places in town where she knew of people, including her teammates, appearing. Oddly enough, she found each building did have something in common -- each had a stained glass window, either large or small, that depicted a star (and sometimes more, but always a star). There was only one standout exception -- the onion shed that The White Knight said he appeared in. But not far from the onion shed was the Crofoot Manufacturing Company and, sure enough, they had a stained glass window with a star.

Batman, meanwhile, was sparring with Lyle, his very own Robin. Batman was winning, but it wasn’t easy -- Lyle was a good scrapper for just a kid. Batman, as just Dean, went to find a seamstress in town who could sew a Robin costume and found one who would do it in 2 days for $5. He paid her $20.

Blaze was having the 4 gems appraised he found in the treasure chest his map had led to -- $250 each. But the main thing he was waiting for was for Batman to cast a spell for him the next day.

White Knight told everyone about how he wanted to go after The Baron and set up a base in Orchard Place.

February 21, 1942

Batman cast Read Languages & Magic on the cloak Blaze had found in the chest and found it was a Cloak of Good Luck. When Blaze tried it on, it turned flame red in color.

Blaze was intrigued with Darklash’s new line of investigation and went along. They questioned the owners of the buildings with the stained glass windows to see if they knew anything about who made the windows, but what they found was that no one had ever noticed the stained glass windows until pointed out to them (except for the church windows). Blaze touched the windows to make sure they were real.

Batman decided Robin needed a shield, one that was metal and lightweight. He contracted the idle workers at the Crofoot factory to build it for $50.

February 22, 1942

Darklash and Blaze decided they needed to check out the Tavern in the Southland to see if it had a stained glass window, and they invited Batman and Robin to come along. Batman wanted to arm Robin with a revolver, but Darklash and Blaze were so opposed to the idea that Batman relented and only gave Robin a knife instead (and Darklash loaned him brass knuckles).

The Southland was all mud and melted snow now, so it was easy to spot lots of tracks around the Tavern. And then they heard children playing in the tavern’s front yard! Peeking, they saw six boys playing baseball. They are Lyle’s age and younger, but Lyle had never seen any of them before. The boys scattered to go hide, but there was really nowhere to hide except behind the tavern. Blaze activated his super-speed and herded the boys into a corner so they could be questioned.

The boys were all sons of mobsters in the Hideout, sent her to entertain themselves for the day where they would be safe, while something “big” was happening. The boys normally lived in quarters somewhere in the hideout, as did the five girls who were inside playing with dolls. Darklash managed to go in and coax the girls into talking and became the good cop to Blaze’s bad cop.

They also learned from the children that, while the children had been in the house over the hideout recently, they had seen no sign of the nomes (though the children knew them as munchkins). As curious as the encounter with the children was, the Heroes decided it was best to leave them here and let their parents pick them up later. But so wrapped up in interviewing the children were they that they almost forgot what they had come for -- to check for stained glass windows! Indeed, they did find a stained glass window with a star, but not only did Darklash find one on the ground floor, but Blaze found one on the upstairs floor (the upstairs rooms showed signs of occupation, but nothing of value). Now they had another mystery on their hands -- if one window made a house into some kind of “portal site”, what did two windows mean?

Instead, the Heroes went straight for the house next, to see if they could find out what happened to the nomes. The house was perhaps the farthest yet in time -- 1996 -- and this time had no robot defenders. Batman played with a strange television hooked up to a typewriter in the bedroom. There was no sign that the nomes had ever been here, though the Heroes knew they had been (the House looked like a model home again, as it always did when it was uninhabited).

For answers to where the nomes had gone, the Heroes headed down into the hideout, through the garage entrance. They were careful to check for traps where they had encountered some before, but finding none moved on -- until Darklash opened the door to the couch lounge and set off an explosion! Darklash was seriously injured by the blast and everyone else was hurt. Worse, Batman had stocked up on offensive magic and had only one healing spell ready, which he used on himself instead of Darklash.

It seemed like time to go rest instead of time to explore, but the Outsiders pressed on anyway. Blaze in particular wanted to check in on The Spook, but when they returned to his lair, it was abandoned. Then Blaze wanted to try the magic lever that had opened the way to Des Plaines. He pushed the lever closed and open again, wanting to see if it would open a second gate through the Fog, or just the same one. He then pumped the lever a bunch of times to see if he could open multiple gates. When they returned next to Des Plaines, they learned that the gate in the Fog had shut and then reopened, trapping one traveler in the Fog. The rapid pumping of the lever had no additional effect.

February 23, 1942

A good night’s sleep had helped, and today Batman had more magic healing available that he distributed more fairly. But Darklash and Blaze were still not up to full strength yet, so returning to the hideout was put off until the 24th.

Batman and Robin picked up Robin’s shield and then went looking for trouble. Their daytime patrol took them through largely empty streets of Mount Prospect and up and down the largely underdeveloped Northwest Highway. It was, however, outside the gas station on Northwest Highway, that trouble came looking for them! The Baron, uninterested in waiting for his eventual confrontation with the Heroes who had vexed him, had come hunting for them on his own. Wearing a civil war uniform, but speaking in a thick foreign accent, he challenged Batman. Drawing the saber he wore, the saber’s blade burst into flame!

Batman answered the challenge with blazing guns, but all of his bullets either missed or deflected harmlessly off The Baron. Batman changed tactics and tried to hit The Baron with a sleep spell, but a powerful slash of the flaming sword disrupted the spell. Then, before The Baron could press his advantage, Batman managed to get in a quick charm person spell -- and The Baron was suddenly very cooperative (and more than a little homosexual). Batman patted him down, found an expensive pocket watch, took the sword, and handcuffed The Baron. Then he led The Baron to jail and turned him in.

Everyone was astonished when Batman and Robin got back to base and shared their tale, but none more so than White Knight, who had been arguing for days that they needed to go back to Orchard Place and deal with The Baron, and now it had been done without him!

February 24, 1942

Everyone was feeling much better today, so Darklash and Blaze were able to join Batman and White Knight as the four of them went to the jail to interrogate The Baron. They found The Baron, stripped down to his long underwear, but waiting for them patiently in his cell. Batman took a photograph of The Baron like that. They questioned The Baron and The Baron questioned them and it became clear that The Baron did not know how they all got there, but was convinced that they had been brought here to fight each other. The Baron’s origin story was that he had been a mercenary working out of Morocco when he blacked out on January 1 and appeared in Orchard Place. It was then that The Baron surprised them all by wrecking his way out of the jail cell and attacking Batman, the charm spell evidently no longer affecting him! Batman’s sleep spell only succeeded in putting Robin to sleep. The Baron shrugged off a fiery blast from Blaze, moved from the cell into the narrow hallway with amazing speed, and tried grappling Batman to get his sword back. As he concentrated on holding and punching Batman, everyone laid into him with their swords and fists. Everyone got in some licks and soon The Baron was smarting enough that he tried to run out of the jail to escape, but a stab in the back from Darklash rendered him unconscious.

Deputy Hoffman had witnessed all this (though could do nothing to join in, in the narrow confines of the hall outside the jail cells) and was terrified by the question that came next -- what should they do with a super-criminal who could bust through locked doors? Batman brought up the practical, but unethical solution of killing him. They even went to Mayor Besander’s office to ask the mayor about the legality of killing him. Besander said this was a weighty issue, but possibly within the scope of the emergency powers the combined mayors had given themselves; Besander would have to contact the other mayors and see if they wanted to form a tribunal to judge the merits of killing him.

They still had to do something with The Baron in the meanwhile, and it was Blaze who came up with another solution -- wrapping him in chains and keeping him suspended so he could get no leverage. But even this would only be a stopgap measure until they could find a more permanent solution. Someone suggested calling on Carl Alscher, the Wizard of the Burning Tower, for a favor. So later, in Des Plaines, Batman threw a metal thermos through the upstairs window with an unusual request on it. A response came back the same way. Carl said to bring The Baron around to his secret entrance and leave him there in the first room and go. More, Carl wrote that he knew Batman’s friends had killed his “silent stalker” and so this was the last favor he would do for them.

With The Baron disposed of, it was time to go to Orchard Place and see about wrapping things up there. The Outsiders returned to the hideout, but entered through the laboratory entrance this time. They were surprised to find The Spook was now using this room as his base! He and his remaining apprentice had taken over this space, but were still unaware of the trapdoor on the landing above it. Blaze showed them where it was, so The Spook could use the secret cave as an even better base.

The Spook had useful information too. He knew the two missing women were with prostitutes who answered to Mr. Gould, and he knew the general location of where the prostitutes were. Further, he had witnessed the “big event” the children had talked about from the other day, and it was a meeting between “Mr. Big” and some boss from the next level down in the hideout. The Spook could not get close because the two men were so heavily guarded, nor could he hear what was said, but he could see that of the two of them, one appeared to be a normal man, but the other man had a cyclopean eye and horns.

The Spook was asked to take on the task of freeing the women, as the Heroes moved on to Orchard Place. They proceeded south, facing no resistance -- even when they ran into Theo the Ogre again. This time, Theo said he had thought long and hard about the things The White Knight had told him and decided that, if the Outsiders were the toughest people around, that he should be on their side. Theo was left guarding the shaft as the Outsiders ascended up to Orchard Place.

The Outsiders headed straight for the Baron’s manor and Gracie wrecked down the gate. There were three armed guards in the courtyard (including Lt. Gill Elmore, who WK had talked to before), who all were willing to discuss conditional surrender after seeing Batman’s photograph of The Baron incarcerated. The deal they worked out was that the guards at the manor would be left alone, so long as they did nothing to interfere with the evacuation of Orchard Place, to which the guards agreed. Further, Blaze told them there was work for them in Mount Prospect if they wanted it, which Gill agreed to consider.

February 25-27, 1942

Over the next three days, the Outsiders worked at going around to all the farms door to door and trying to convince people it was safe to leave. The nights were spooky in Orchard Place, with lots of wolf howling coming from the unexplored western half of the region where the strange hills had arisen. The Outsiders did explore the Douglas Aircraft factory and raided it for more food and tools and siphoned gasoline from the remaining vehicles. They even paid the manor guards $200 for three-fourths of their gasoline stockpile. The cultists in the Ebner Woods were still not interested in leaving, nor were most of the remaining residents, who were too traumatized to leave their homes. But 50 more were willing to make the journey to safety.

As for exploring, the Outsiders did check out Spring Grove, but found nothing unusual there and decided to explore no further. Instead, they led their new wave of refugees out on the 27th -- and thankfully encountered no opposition on the way through the hideout. Theo did terrify a lot of people, but Theo was put in charge of squashing the giant spiders and the large weasels and told where to go to find them. They left through the lab and met The Spook there again. He had news -- he had found the missing women. The married woman did want to be rescued and came home, but the other one found her new life oddly liberating and refused rescue.