Session 7+: The White Tower of Shandaken

[Adminenkainen]

(Re-posted from Facebook)

We had four players last night -- Green Lantern, Hourman, Sandman, and Hawkman. The smaller attendance helped with downtime, as we rotated through solo missions for each of them (and this time I learned my lesson and only planned one mission for each of them!). In less than two hours, Green Lantern had rounded up an entire fake drug racket, Hourman (with the FBI's help) had stopped the mad scientist Dr. Dark from using his invisibility cloak to start a crime spree, Sandman had rescued a boy (but lost the father) and captured some German spies, and Hawkman had tried to infiltrate a gang of tire thieves to find a firebomber, but the firebomber got away.

The group story began at the JSA meeting, with the Spectre pranking Johnny Thunder by giving him a fake initiation mission to perform. The prank backfired when Johnny wound up captured by the "minions of Chaos" gathering around a secret tower built 150 years ago by the Freemasons to guard against this very evil. After fighting their way into the tower (from the top down), the heroes won the cooperation of a lamassu guardian of the tower, and was sent into the caves and tunnels under the tower to look for Johnny and the crackpot Johnny was sent after. Meanwhile, the Spectre is moving on ahead to face the evil at the bottom of what is apparently a four-level cave complex!

[Adminenkainen]

(Re-posted from Facebook, with additions)

Tonight was the 8th session of the Blue Box campaign. Our participating heroes were Hawkman, Flash, Hourman, and Green Lantern.

Hawkman, Hourman, and Green Lantern had just returned to the tower basement with Sandman and the Atom and spent 12 hours there healing. During that time, the Flash was finally free to come investigate and encountered Dr. Fate en route to Shandaken, NY. Dr. Fate told the Flash what to look for and what to say when he arrived, though the Flash got flustered when militiamen pointed guns at him outside the White Tower and he forgot what to say. Instead, he was taken prisoner and led in to join the others, resting at the feet of the lamassu that served the Freemasons.

By now, everyone but Sandman were rested up enough to go back into the dungeons, and the Atom stayed behind to protect him. The four heroes went exploring, found a crypt full of valuable, lion-themed gear that they decided to leave alone, and then a summoning chamber where two skeletons appeared to attack each of them. The skeletons were dispatched without too much trouble and then they headed south.
This took them to a huge chapel where a ceremony was going on. Listening in, the heroes heard that the 20 cultists inside were calling on Set and trying to summon something to stop the Spectre, who was still somewhere in the dungeon. Green Lantern tried to stop them all with a sleep spell, but it only caught five of them. The battle was officially joined when Hawkman opened fire on them with his hi-tech gun, the Flash ran in swinging with brass knuckles, and Hourman went in swinging a blackjack.

The tide slowly turned against the heroes. Green Lantern used a hold person spell on one of two spell-casting cultists, but not until after the spell-caster had turned his staff into a snake and sent it to encircle Green Lantern. Green Lantern was pinned and helpless in the clutches of the snake for most of the rest of the battle.

Most of the cultists had to discard their robes to get to their weapons, and some were revealed by their badges to be the local sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff turned out to be a brutal fighter and a match for Hawkman. Hourman popped a Miraculo pill, get tougher, and started taking down deputies one at a time with single shield bashes, but he was getting hurt a lot in the process and wound up hiding behind his shield on the floor.

Soon the cultists were down to less than half their original numbers and began to flee in two directions. The sheriff and the remaining spell-caster tried to flee east, behind five zombies the spell-caster had summoned. Hawkman shot his way through the zombies, hi-tech auto pistol in one hand and magic sword in the other, but got knocked out by the sheriff.

Flash chased the cultists fleeing south, but two of them blasted him with guns and left him moderately injured. Flash whittled down their numbers, but it came down to a seriously hurt Flash rolling around on the floor with one seriously injured cultists, and only the Flash got back up.

Flash and Hourman were applying first aid to themselves and watching the snake on Green Lantern when the cult leaders returned with an exchange offer. The sheriff held Hawkman's gun to Hawkman's head and offered to spare him if the cultists could take the paralyzed spell-caster and the snake with them. The remaining spell-caster summoned the snake off of Green Lantern -- who got the drop on them and froze everyone but the remaining spell-caster with a second hold person. The spell-caster escaped with the snake, but the heroes remained victorious in the chapel with their prisoners.

Plans to question their prisoners were put on hold when everyone realized how tenuous their position here was. They returned to the tower basement and asked Sandman to use his ring and try to summon Dr. Fate and the Spectre again.

This time, both wizards came. They helped heal the heroes. The Spectre explained what route he had taken to go down deeper and left to continue his search for what he believed to be an avatar of Set deeper in the dungeons. Dr. Fate said he could go no further for he and the Freemason's lamassu knew each other and had some pact of noninterference between them. He could stay behind here, on this side of the lamassu, and help heal the heroes one more time after another 12 hours of rest.

Before they could leave, the heroes were searched by the militiamen, who were looking for the "Eye of St. Michael", an amulet and relic somehow stolen from the tower in the last 24 hours. Other things had happened during the heroes' downtime. A statue had disappeared from one cave and a new one had appeared in another, seemingly offering them visible and invisible gems. The heroes decided to leave this stuff alone again.

Ready to go further, the heroes went in another direction and found many caves full of giant rats the size of corgis. After the knock-down, drag-out fight in the chapel, it was a relief to just stand back, watch Hawkman riddle rats with bullets, and then rush in and mop up what was left. But there were an awful lot of rats in these adjoining caves, including one "magic rat" the size of a pit bull that could only be hit by Hawkman's magic sword. While Hawkman chased the magic rat and finally dispatched it, the others found a secret bottom in a rusty chest and found -- more gems.

[Sandman]

That sounds truly outrageous.

[Adminenkainen]

((Reposted from Facebook))
Last night was the ninth session of the Blue Box Campaign, featuring the Justice Society of America! And, for a nice change, we had all six players present -- accounting for all the founding members short of Dr. Fate and the Spectre (who I don't let people play!).

The main plot is to go through these giant underground levels beneath the White Tower of Shandaken searching for a captured Johnny Thunder, but the majority of last night's session was a concentrated effort to find and "save" the Sandman. The Sandman didn't actually need saving, he was wandering through some safe and empty areas in the southeast corner of hideout level 1. But it still took the Heroes a long time to track him down and then, once reunited, finish mapping the safe areas.

Which was well and good until they found the curtain of fog. The Sandman went through it to investigate and found a giant domed chamber, but also found that the magic fog served as a one-way door and he could not rejoin the others. Further, a giant gelatinous monster was bearing down on him with murderous intent. Luckily, Hourman and the Atom came through and helped defeat the gelatinous monster by pinning it under a heavy weight.

But why didn't the others follow through? They were sure they could find a way around the fog curtain if they went north, east, and south, and came around behind where that passage seemed to lead. Instead, they found a complex trap involving illusions, magically sticky metal webbing, and a giant robot spider that Green Lantern, the Flash, and Hawkman were pretty easily able to dismantle. But there seemed to be no way to reach the others this way, so they gave up on that plan, returned to the magic fog curtain, and walked through.

South of the giant domed chamber was a square chamber where a pivoting statue magically changed fog curtain exits into stone walls. The Heroes tried the west curtain -- but Sandman fell into a pit. They tried the east curtain and found a tunnel that wound all the way back to the giant rat warrens they had mostly cleared out last time. They did have to defeat 8 more giant rats, but the wholesale slaughter seemed worth it when the Atom recovered a magic sword from the pile of rat poop in the room...and the Sandman found a thermos. At this point, others were willing to search the rat poop mounds as well, but found nothing else. And even though there were more tunnels in the giant rat warrens, the Heroes decided they probably had the best loot from them now and left to return to the area east of the pivoting statue chamber. On their way there, they encountered a walking crystal statue able to shoot magic missiles, but easily shattered it.

Turning south, they found a second giant domed chamber, this one housing a giant stone statue, comically dressed in real clothes. The statue was actually alive and demanded their belts. It took all their belts and gave them all fresh belts it pulled from its hat. The living statue, called Sam, told them that it had once been a giant on another world, but after nearly dying in battle it had prayed to the dark god Set to spare him -- and was cursed with everlasting life as an animate statue, forced to obey the commands of any priests of Set who came across him. The priests brought him here and left him here to guard this intersection, for the priests who likely were holding Johnny Thunder used all four doors from this chamber on occasion. Now, the trading of belts was an older order Sam was compelled to carry out and it was meant to shame him, but Sam did remember he had three magic belts somewhere in his hat, though he could no longer remember what they did. Sandman, the Atom, and Hawkman all got magic belts, though none of the belts immediately did anything with donned.

Meanwhile, Hawkman flew down a shaft to a deeper level 70' below and encountered six half-man, half-animal leaping undead things. He shot at them from above until they fled.