Session 15+: The Madness of Dr. Elba!

[Adminenkainen]

Session 15: Part 1

October 2, 1941. Wednesday night.

Rex Tyler, aka The Hourman, had recently had the upper hand over the corporate spies at Bannerman Pharmaceuticals, and Mr. Bannerman himself had been so pleased as to allow Rex to go out with his daughter, Regina. A night at the opera, though, had turned into a night of murder when the conductor was electrocuted!

October 3, 1941. Thursday night.

After spending a full day clearing the opera house's electrician, Hourman followed another lead back to the opera house, and found both his second suspect dead -- and the killer! Calling himself The Mask, the killer led Hourman on a merry chase through the basement and into the sewers, where giant rats attacked Hourman. The rats were doing Hourman some serious harm before his Miraclo kicked in -- then he fought off and squished the rats. Then he swung one by its tail and hurled it into The Mask before he could climb out of the sewer, knocking the villain unconscious! The Mask turned out to be the previous conductor. The new hero, Starman, also turned out to be upstairs, doing his own investigation of the murder, and had stopped some robots Hourman had managed to avoid.

October 14, 1941. Tuesday afternoon.

Johnny Thunder was having girl problems -- he was too busy to spend enough time with Elizabeth, his old girlfriend Daisy wanted him back, and his adopted daughter Peachy was in trouble again. She and some other students had been on a day trip with the wealthy socialite Mrs. Van Der Veen, until Johnny was called to come pick Peachy up at her department store. The police had been summoned as well, and Mrs. Van Der Veen was raving that Peachy had led the other students in a game of tag that did over $500 in damages around the store from broken and missing merchandise.

Johnny took Peachy back home on the bus, then rode the bus back to the store after Peachy protested not having been in some of the departments where the damages were said to have happened. He spoke his magic word, summoned his Thunderbolt, and had it read the thoughts of the department heads in those areas of the store. Sure enough, they had both used the chaos from the tag game to conspire to steal valuables from their departments, and had them stashed in a sack. The hard part was getting the police to believe him. Johnny had, apparently, zero charisma over the phone, and his every attempt to raise the rest of the Justice Society by radio failed.

That evening, when the crooks left the store with the bag of loot, Johnny had to follow them out into the street and have his Thunderbolt paralyze them. Witnesses in the street then summoned the police, and Peachy was cleared.

October 16, 1941. Thursday afternoon.

Alan Scott, aka The Green Lantern, was still selling magic scrolls to raise more money for his war orphan charity, and had made friends with Sargon the Sorcerer. But now he was in Washington, D.C., where his other friend Doiby Dickles had asked him to come break up a taxi war. After meeting with local union boss "Hefty" Martin, the Green Lantern learned that Martin had been attacked and put in the hospital. From his hospital bed, Martin asked The Green Lantern to stop the gangster "Pug" Deagan from taking over the unions, and to find out who was feeding Pug information from within Martin's union.

The Green Lantern spied on Pug invisibly and learned that Mr. Weller of the Wonder Cab Company had some connection to Pug, and that Pug was going to have men placed in the crowd at a public demonstration of the unions that evening who would incite a riot. At the demonstration, The Green Lantern put some of the rioters to sleep, but then used the microphone on stage instead of his power ring. Rallying the good union members, he was able to point out the rabble rousers and had them pinned down. Then The Green Lantern even appealed to Pug's followers to abandon their path of corruption and embrace the good unions.

Following this success, The Green Lantern stopped Weller, who tried to flee the scene, and then returned to Pug's office where he took some serious harm from a gunshot before protecting himself with his ring. After that, he made short work of Pug's hoodlums with his magic.

October 17, 1941. Friday evening.

Carter Hall, aka The Hawkman, had been training pet hawks and keeping in touch with his henchman, Greg, but largely ignoring Shiera, who wanted to wear her Hawkwoman costume to a costume party, and wanted Carter to come with her. Carter wanted a different superhero costume at short notice for the party and managed to contact The Hourman via radio. The Hourman agreed to meet him and loan his costume before the party started. At the party, Carter saw someone dressed rather convincingly like Starman, but was unsure about approaching him. It was only after Shiera disappeared that Carter learned that Starman -- and it really was Starman -- was also looking for people. Starman had chased three racketeers here and they had disappeared in the crowd at the party. After Carter returned to his car and changed back into The Hawkman, he was finally able to take stock of the situation from the air. Shiera had run afoul of the three costumed racketeers and they were dragging her off. Starman had found them, but was holding back because Shiera was their hostage. The Hawkman, however, trusted his marksmanship skills. He shot both of the men holding Shiera without harming her. The racketeers were caught and Starman allowed The Hawkman the honor of turning them over to the police.

That same night, Al Pratt, aka The Atom, was on campus to meet his girlfriend Mary and her friend, Noreen Davis, who was a graduate student in the chemical physics department. Before Al could call out to them as they came out of the science building, he saw that three young, but tough-looking men who came out of the building behind them seemed to have guns trained on the girls. Al ducked out of sight, changed to The Atom, and charged at the gunmen as they herded the girls into a car. The Atom was too cocky and two of the gunmen nearly beat him unconscious by pistol whipping him. The Atom had to resort to his guns and dropped the two men with bullets. Before the third man could drive away with the girls, The Atom blew out his tires. The gunman tried to escape on foot, holding Mary as a hostage. The Atom managed to scare the man into letting Mary go and running away alone.

A motorcycle cop happened by then and The Atom convinced him to go after the fleeing gunman, who was caught shortly thereafter.

Part 2

The 24th of October was the day before the next meeting of the Justice Society, but everyone was busy was mysterious cases.

Al Pratt was in a jewelry store looking for a gift for Mary, when a suspicious man came in wanting to sell a diamond for $10,000. The man was so suspicious that the jeweler, naturally, called the police and had the man arrested for trying to fence stolen merchandise. But there was something so smug about the man as he was being arrested that Al was suspicious and followed, as The Atom, to the police station. The local police trusted The Atom and soon confided in him that the man could prove the diamond was his and had to let him go. The man loudly announced that he was going to sue the jeweler for $20,000 and headed off to his lawyer's office. The Atom had switched back out of costume, and decided to burst in on the two of them as Al and offer to buy the diamond, to see what they would do....And then Al did something I don't remember, but got a confession out of the conman. And the lawyer went crazy and jumped out the window. I'm hazy on that part too.

Later that evening, Rex Tyler was on a fourth date with Regina, which was meant to be a double date with her friends Bill and Marge. But when they showed up at Bill's house, Bill was acting insane and raving about bright lights. Without changing to Hourman, Rex searched the house and avoided Bill, but could find no sign of Marge, who had simply vanished. Without any further clues, Rex and Regina had no choice but to tie up Bill and alert the authorities.

At the same time, Alan Scott and Irene Miller were on their way back into the city after Alan spent most of his last day before the Justice Society meeting fixing a transmitter station East of Queens. But unexpectedly, a boy ran out into the street in front of Alan’s car! Unable to swerve or stop in time, Alan tapped the boy hard enough to knock him down and render him unconscious. Alan checked on the boy and used the Green Lantern ring to heal the boy. Then Alan found out what the boy was running from -- a supposedly haunted house, where men in the basement stood around a chest full of money. Alan sent the boy home, sent Irene home, then changed to The Green Lantern and investigated. Using his favorite tactic of going in invisibly, he was able to find a lone occupant on the upstairs floor, and the group of men hiding in the basement. The men had some power over the upstairs man and had taken all this money from him. When The Green Lantern attacked the men, they shot out the basement light, so they could try to escape through a secret door under cover of darkness. When he stopped them, two of the crooks went mad and started attacking The Green Lantern as if they were apes -- but all of them were still easily dispatched by his magic.

The Hawkman had rented a cabin in a valley in the Adirondacks that he dubbed Hawk Valley. Here, he helped train Shiera to fight and fly, and trained his three pet hawks. But this evening, a car drove over the east cliff overlooking Hawk Valley and hurtled the 1,000' to the valley floor! Hawkwoman dove towards it first, but it was The Hawkman who pulled out the driver just in time. The driver turned out to be a local bank president, driven to attempt suicide by blackmailers. The Hawks agreed to look for the cabin where the man was supposed to meet his blackmailers.

The Hawks split up to look, so The Hawkman found it first -- but the blackmailers had super-science on their side and he was struck by a (luckily weak) lightning bolt from an antennae tower mounted outside the cabin. Rather than try to confront the blackmailers inside directly, The Hawkman tried to use strategy and sneak in through a back window. That was when Hawkwoman found the cabin and, though she had seen the lightning strike from a distance, thought she could swoop down to the front door before being struck. The Hawkman had to subdue the blackmailers quickly and then flew Hawkwoman off to a nearby hospital to be treated. When he returned, The Hawkman found one of the blackmailers missing and the other one rendered somehow insane.

Johnny Thunder had finally found a new job in the past two weeks, working for a concrete contractor. It had gone well until earlier today when he took Peachy to work and she tore open cement bags that had sand inside them. Johnny had come back tonight to confront his boss at a construction site. But first, Johnny ran into someone else on the site. The two men both wanted to talk to the contractor, so they joined forces and went in the office. When they found the contractor with his head on the desk, they weren't sure if he was dead or asleep. It turned out the man was asleep, but when they woke him he acted insane and raving about the light. Johnny had to paralyze the contractor, but the other man disappeared without a trace.

October 25, 1941. The day of the meeting.

The first thing that came up was-- what the heck happened to Doctor Fate? He was wearing a half-helmet now and acting completely different. But he knew things only Dr. Fate would know. Everyone just had to let it slide.

Everyone was present other than The Flash, but that was ignored as well.

Next, the Spectre brought up that they had been in violation of their charter since adding Johnny Thunder. The Society unanimously approved to eliminate the 8-member rule and talked about who to recruit. The Atom in particular was good at throwing out suggestions -- Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, Starman, Captain Marvel, and Daredevil would all be sought out and asked if they wanted to join soon.

But then Dr. Mid-Nite showed up. This new mysteryman had also encountered a crime wave incorporating madness, but had succeeded in tracing the cause of the madness to the invention of a mad doctor named Dr. Elba. Dr. Mid-Nite had, further, synthesized a cure. (When we left off,) The Society had decided on how to separate into three teams to go back and investigate each of the scenarios they were involved with yesterday, and use the cure to help solve each mystery. The teams were a) Hourman, Johnny, and Hawkman, b) Atom, Green Lantern, and Dr. Mid-Nite, and c) Sandman, Spectre, and Dr. Fate.

[Adminenkainen]

Session 16

The Flash had been on a spaceship belonging to the Spider-Men of Mars for some time and had, finally, forced them to turn the ship around and take them back to Earth. But at the end, just as they reached Earth's atmosphere, the aliens managed to eject the backup bridge the Flash and three other Earthlings were on. If the Flash didn't solve this, the bridge would crash on re-entry! He and a Dr. Jennings had identified some machines in the room that would help, but the aliens had disabled power to the crucial machines. The Flash had to hook up power from unessential machines to the essential ones, find out from the ship's computer that the back-up bridge had its own re-entry rockets and parachutes -- but that the controls for these were locked under the floor, find a way to get under the floor, fight a robot under the floor, unlock the controls, fire the rockets, guide the bridge in for a landing in the Gulf of Mexico, and then race out when the hatch popped on impact with the other three (who were all knocked unconscious by the impact, even with the rockets and parachutes) before the bridge flooded and everyone was electrocuted by short-circuiting machines.

The Flash succeeded, with only light injuries. He was racing the other three to shore when he passed a U.S. Naval ship and got brought aboard. He managed to convince the captain that the wreckage was top secret, but that he needed help retrieving it. The Flash wanted to secure a mystery handheld device on the bridge, and the robot under it, even though they were both broken.


Hourman and Hawkman teamed up to solve the problem of Bill Ford. After giving him Solution K, Bill revealed that he hadn't done anything to his missing wife -- she'd been kidnapped! Gus Gluck, Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Department of Transportation, was looking to buy Bill's successful bus company and, when Bill wouldn't sell, was going to try for force his wife Marge to sell it to him.

But the Dept. of Transportation wouldn't be open until Monday and this was Saturday, so the two heroes decided to deal with Hawkman's leftover mystery -- what had happened to the second blackmailer in the cabin in Mohawk Valley? When they arrived, they immediately wrecked the lightning tower so they could approach the front door safely, but they were also seen from the window. When they broke in, there seemed to be no one there. But Hourman correctly guessed there was a concealed trap door. Hawkman's wings lowered him down to where the missing blackmailer and three other compatriots were holed up. Hourman joined them quickly after taking a fall on the ladder when his cape tripped him up. But they made short work of the blackmailers and captured them all.

Gluck was harder to find. On Monday they went to Gluck's office -- with the Flash, who was back now and had joined up with them -- and found four hoodlums there. They beat the guys up and found out that Marge was being held on a houseboat docked off Staten Island, but that Gluck was hiding out on the road in his prized car. So they went to the boathouse, beat up the hoodlums there, and rescued Marge.


The Sandman and Green Lantern teamed up to deal with their leftover missions. They used Solution K on the hoodlum, Whitey Wolf, Green Lantern had caught under Mr. Baker's spooky old house and Whitey was furious his gang had betrayed him. Whitey ratted out the rest of his gang, who were holed up in a warehouse in Queens now. It was a gang of eight (three of them GL had already captured, now out on bail), but magic and sleep gas took them down quickly.

What took a long time was trying to track down Professor Elba. Whitey had bought the madness serum from Elba in an office in Albany. The heroes went to Albany, found the office, searched the office, talked to the landlord, talked to the neighbors, talked to local doctors, talked to the mayor of Albany (he was a big Sandman fan), talked to the people at the Albany Airport, and figured out only that Elba had been planning to go to Egypt, but didn't go -- at least from Albany. But all this took days.

In the middle of the Elba investigation, which was going frustratingly nowhere, the Sandman and Green Lantern went to New Jersey to deal with the Sandman's leftover business. In his case, he had an insane photographer and two thugs who didn't seem to know anything useful locked in a cabin. They used the Solution K on the photographer, found out who his boss was, and quickly wrapped up ring of con artists. Although they had acquired the madness serum through a different middle man, the trail still led back to the Albany office, where the trail went cold.

It was only after meeting up with the rest of the Society and comparing notes that they were able to piece together that Professor Elba was none other than Dr. Able!

[Adminenkainen]

Session 17

In the following days, the Justice Society read Able's diary and learned of how he believed he was being instructed by a being called Ammon, from faraway Egypt. All evidence pointed to Dr. Able/Professor Elba being in Cairo, Egypt, looking to meet this Ammon and mass produce his insanity serum there.

The Spectre went on ahead to Cairo to look for clues. Dr. Fate and Dr. Mid-Nite would remain stateside to watch for more criminals using the insanity serum. The others used their FBI contacts to arrange an emergency flight to the British-occupied Gaza Strip, as close as they could get a plane from the U.S. into Occupied Egypt.

Once in Gaza, The Sandman, The Flash, The Hawkman, The Hourman, The Green Lantern, The Atom, and Johnny Thunder acquired a civilian truck from the British Army and drove into Egypt. Their hero uniforms were unrecognized by the Italian troops, who were amused and let the heroes go through unopposed after seeing their passports.

Tracking down Able seemed like it was going to be difficult, even with the help of the assistant to Alexander Kirk, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. There were reports of madness afflicting locals within a certain radius on the southeast part of the city, but nothing linking the victims together. Luckily, the Spectre appeared and explained all.

Ammon was possibly a reference to a 12th century prophet who believed in only madness. Ammon was buried under The Citadel. Sure enough, The Citadel (built in the 12th century by Saladin) was built right at the center of the area where the occurrences of sudden madness had happened. The Spectre had not only found this out in the National Library and Archives, but had found a partial map of The Citadel's dungeon, leading to Ammon's tomb. And this time The Spectre planned to come along. The Hourman would stay behind at the embassy and see if he could get access to a lab to synthesize more of Solution K in.

At The Citadel, though the other heroes rightly guessed which tower of The Citadel the dungeon was beneath, it was only with The Spectre's help that they were able to all get past the illusory wall that hid the dungeon entrance. It was then that The Spectre began to disappear -- his new host needed him back in the U.S. Before he left, he suggested The Atom remain behind to guard the entrance (since there was a lot of Italian soldiery about).

Descending, the remaining five heroes found a two-way intersection at the bottom, while the map had shown three ways. This was their second clue (besides the one marked on the map) that there would be multiple secret doors in this place. They even saw a light under the pair of double doors ahead, but they felt their top priority was following the map to Ammon. When they reached the tomb on the map, they found it guarded by six undead skeletons that they easily dispatched. Indeed, because they were so easily dispatched, and because Dr. Able was not here, and because the sarcophagus was trapped with a spear trap, the heroes concluded that this was a false tomb and Ammon was hiding elsewhere. They still had a spirited debate about the rightness of taking the treasure out of the tomb, but decided to return it topside to give to the authorities.

Backtracking, the heroes found another secret door that led into a secret hall. To the north was a blank wall and to the south was a pair of double doors -- which were invisible until the room was entered. Sandman and Johnny crept north, to check for a secret door there, but the floor caught on fire and burned them both. Johnny fainted from the heat and the pain and had to be carried out. Hawkman flew to the north wall and searched there, but also was burned when he had to stand in one spot too long. Turning their attention to the south end, Sandman crept towards the doors -- and vanished from sight. Green Lantern, Flash, and Johnny (who was healed by Green Lantern) all chose to follow the Sandman and also disappeared. But when Hawkman tried, he did not disappear. He reached the doors and busted them open, only to find a blank wall.

What had happened was that the other four heroes were teleported above ground -- 40' above ground, and dropped to the pavement outside the tower. Johnny and Sandman were both unconscious, Green Lantern was seriously injured, and Flash was badly hurt as well. They warned the Citadel guards not to let anyone in and limped back to their hotel to rest and recover.

Meanwhile, Hawkman kept searching the tomb complex, thinking his teammates were still down here. He headed west, was injured in a spiked pit trap, and then found a series of dead ends with a magic skull embedded in the wall at the end of one of them. When the skull didn't seem to do anything, he returned to the main entrance and tried the first secret door they had passed earlier. Here he found a pool of golden liquid in one room that he was too suspicious of to approach, and in the next room found a mummy that seemed to be alive, but was pinned to the wall and could not be killed with bullets or mace. When he decided to ignore that, he was confronted by seven armed men outside the secret door who told him to surrender. A firefight ensued and, incredibly, an already hurt Hawkman lost.

The next day, the four heroes returned to the tomb (they did not think to ask Atom or Hourman to come with them). This time, a pit trap opened in the stairs leading down and Sandman and Green Lantern fell down a chute. Flash tossed a rope to Johnny and sped down the chute after the others to catch them, but their extra weight pulled Johnny down the chute and they all fell down into a room. In the room with them were two "crocozombies", as Flash dubbed them, but the crocozombies were easily dispatched. They searched and found a secret door that led out to another room.

This next room contained three odd statues, which animated and came towards Flash when he approached them. Green Lantern and Johnny were not going to take any chances with these statues, they both struck all three statues with lightning bolts. Two statues crumbled before they had a chance to attack, while the third one (with a spherical head) fired a heat ray at two of them before destroyed. After that, the heroes did not even want to chance touching the rubble. They skirted wide around and found stairs leading back up. They led to a secret door -- on the other side of the burning/teleporting secret hall.

Back on the west side of the secret trapped hall (they ran straight through and took no damage), Green Lantern found signs of Hawkman's tracks, leading west. Sandman and Green Lantern too fell into the spiked pit trap. This pit trap was no end of trouble for the heroes -- Green Lantern was unconscious afterwards and had to be hauled out with rope. Flash tried to leap the pit, but fell in due to his already sustained injuries. Everyone eventually crossed this deadly pit, but even after Green Lantern was revived with magic, everyone was pretty badly hurt again. They found the magic skull Hawkman had and found what it could do -- when Flash touched it, he was filled with magical fear and ran away. The heroes were sure this skull was important, but were not ready to deal with it further.

Escaping from the pit trap and this western portion of the tomb complex, Green Lantern got the idea of using his magic to locate Hawkman's wings (Locate Object). This took them to the mystery doors that had the light under them earlier. They could hear a generator running behind those doors now too. Going in, they found a chemical lab with 20 Arabs working to produce the insanity serum -- with five armed guards standing around an unconscious man tied to a chair.* The guard were quickly dispatched. The workers were all prisoners, being forced to do this work for Dr. Elba. Elba himself was not here; he apparently spent hours on end consulting with Ammon elsewhere in the tomb complex. The man in the chair was Hawkman! They freed him and found his gear in a locker. The heroes escorted everyone out of the dungeon, told the authorities about the illusory door and to guard it, and then all left to go heal up again!

(*Hawkman had woken up earlier, but insulted the guards when they could not be bribed to give him back his weapons and wound up getting knocked out again.)

[Adminenkainen]

Session 18

November 4, 1941
Cairo, Egypt

Three days had passed. The heroes had spent them healing and resting, administering Solution K to the insanity victims in the city, and trying to lure the Italian Army away from the Citadel. The heroes had to go back in and find Dr. Able, and this time everyone who was in Egypt was going -- The Sandman, The Flash, The Hawkman, The Hourman, The Green Lantern, The Atom, and Johnny Thunder. They still wished to avoid entanglements with the Italian Army, so they went into the Citadel with their costumes hidden, some looking like tourists and some dressed in stolen Italian soldier uniforms. The tourists would get annoying and be hauled off by the fake guards to the basement -- which is where they wanted to go. The chief architect of this strategy was Hourman, and it worked like a charm.

The Hourman and the Atom had not been through the illusory wall yet and, like Flash, had trouble disbelieving in it -- so they were all three hurt again being "pulled" through the "wall". Down below, in the hidden tomb complex, Sandman wanted to check on the insanity serum lab, but found a grenade trap had been placed on the doors. He and Hawkman were hurt. With over half the heroes already injured, there was talking of pulling out and resting again, but instead the heroes persevered.

The plan now was to start at the north end of the complex and systematically work their way south, checking everywhere for secret doors. They went to the three rooms that only Hawkman had seen before. In one of them was the living mummy pinned to a wall. The Atom jumped up, lifted the necklace and amulet off the mummy's neck, and the mummy promptly "died". The Atom kept the jewelry. In another room, Green Lantern looked into a pool of gold liquid and saw a woman's reflection. She scowled at him and then disappeared (after a successful save vs. spell). Everyone left the pool alone after that.

Moving south, the heroes went through the lab to a north passage. Sandman sneaked in to check out the room to the north of there and found a big room with many heads in jars. As more heroes came into the room, the heads all started to gibber at once. The gibbering had a magical effect and Atom, Sandman, and Johnny were all affected. While Sandman and Johnny were initial lulled into a stupor, the Atom started attacking his friends before going into a stupor. The affected heroes were dragged south into the north-south hallway and were trying to figure out what to do with them when Green Lantern spotted a gelatinous cube approaching them from the jar room. The heroes staged an ambush for it in the lab and quickly cut it down with their collection of magic swords.

The heroes ignored the jar room after that and found a novel way of freeing their friends from their stupor -- punching them until they snapped out of it. With that done, the heroes moved south to a T-intersection, where they knew they had never gone west. They found that ended at a dead end, which seemed awful suspicious in this place. So they took turns searching the end of the passage for secret doors and, when they failed to find one, slowly moved back down the hallway searching it -- until they found one more, back at the intersection, leading south.

Through this door, they found Dr. Able/Professor Elba's hidden bedroom (he wasn't home), then a throne room guarded by a wight and four zombies. The zombies were dropped quickly, mostly by the Atom's sub-machine gun, but the wight took a bit longer to take down. Lastly, the throne room guarded a room with a dirt floor -- and Prof. Elba talking to a living mummy that Elba called Ammon.

A battle royale began, with Ammon causing three waves of two undead ogres to rise up out of the dirt floor. At first, Flash, Hourman, GL, and Johnny kept wiping out the ogres while the others focused on the mummy (GL took Elba out of the fight immediately with a Hold Person spell). But Ammon could take phenomenal amounts of damage (actually their guns weren't hurting it) and the others slowly had to join the fight to take him down. Finally, Green Lantern had enough and ordered everyone else out of the room. GL flew into the air and unleashed a lightning bolt on the mummy. Since the mummy had been nickel-and-dimed down to 6 hp, it was utterly destroyed.

There was treasure in the room to collect and the heroes might have left after collecting it, but GL happened to cast a Detect Magic spell and discovered there was powerful magic coming from a hole in the floor under a stone box. Uncovering the hole unleashed an invisible stalker on them -- and the battle was back on! Lots of people were still injured, and The Atom went down in the fight with the stalker, but it was still outnumbered six to one and went down, right after Hourman covered it in dirt to make it less invisible. And the object it had been guarding -- a book! Though buried in an ancient Egyptian tome, the book was written in a language that was not hieroglyphics, on vellum sheets when the ancient Egyptians had no paper. Reading it later, the spellcasters discovered it was a Book of Infinite Spells, written by one Thoth-Amon.