Fridays at Home Sub-Campaign

[Adminenkainen]

((The player of Ragar the Palindrome had to split off and game solo, or at least it started out that way. The following summarizes three play sessions. Hopefully everyone will be playing on Sundays again at some point in the future.))

September 12, 1941
Fort Devens, Massachusetts

Ragar was being debriefed at Fort Devens by Col. Charles Myers when a man dressed as a U.S. Army parachutist crashed through the window and attacked them both in the colonel's office. Ragar bested the man easily -- so easily that he killed the man. That made it hard to answer the question of who the man had come to kill -- Ragar or Col. Myers? Ragar stayed to investigate and met a woman who claimed to be the parachutist's sister, plus a man who claimed to be the doctor -- Dr. Goth -- who was treating the brother and his neuroses. Ragar followed the pair back to a secret hangar, defeated them and their thugs, and learned that this was a group of Nazi spies seeking to demoralize the Army by assassinating officers. While searching the farmhouse by the hangar, he also found a treasure map.

Studying the treasure map, he learned that it was made by a sailor who found a magical treasure hoard on Cuba hundreds of years ago. Ragar decided to go.

While preparing to go, Ragar encountered a magic-user from Norway -- though actually an alien from another dimension (actually a second character) -- who wanted to help Ragar. Ragar took a leisurely boat ride to Cuba so he could spend more time trying to learn the language of his talking magic sword. He now could manage some rudimentary conversation with it.

In the mountains on the east end of Cuba, Ragar found the ruins of an old Indian temple.* He plucked diamond eyes off a statue and it animated and attacked. It was tough, but Ragar wrecked it to pieces. It was really tough finding the secret door shown on the map, but Ragar did and preceded down to a lower level shown on the map.

Below, they found a giant carved face that seemed to exhale strength-sapping vapirs. They found a room full of weird-looking mold. Wary of it, Ragar tried to burn it all away, but it defended itself with a poisonous spore cloud that killed the magic-user. Ragar went on alone. And then he fell down a deep pit trap.

It was while recovering at the bottom of the pit trap that Ragar heard there were others who had followed him down here. He knew the Nazis were interested in this map, but this seemed to be a hired company of international mercenaries. Ragar wasn't going to take any chances; he just assumed they worked for the Nazis. So he climbed out of that pit while the mercenaries went back up top to make planks for crossing the pit, and went ahead to the next room to set up a grenade trap for them.

At a T-intersection, Ragar had to break down a wall to follow the map, but he did and he came to a room where six men who appeared to be natives from centuries ago were just now dying on the floor. Ragar managed to save one of them, but did not wait until the man revived. He pressed on -- and found the treasure room. There was a lot of gold, gems, and jewelry here in boxes, guarded by only undead skeletons -- but it was when Ragar tried to remove a magic spear and shield mentioned on the map that he released a demon guardian. The demon was tough, but so was Ragar. Ragar beat the demon down until it had to disappear to escape him.

After resting a little, Ragar started to head back -- but found the demon waiting for him there. It had killed the Indian Ragar had saved, seemed healthy again, and looked ready for a rematch. And that was when the commandos finally showed up -- or at least a group of four of them. To chase the commandos off, the demon roared and it filled everyone with fear, including Ragar. He ran, fell into a pit, and nearly died.


Now it so happened (thanks to a little retconning), that Ragar had sent word of where he was going back to his friends and mailed them a copy of the map. While Gray Condor and Magnifica went on ahead to Trinidad for their adventure, they had dropped off Omega Blaster and Dr. Masque in Cuba. It had taken some time, but they did eventually find the temple and the underground level. They ran into Ragar at the deep pit trap, as Ragar was trying to slip out with just some of the treasure. Now that he had more help, they went back for the rest of the treasure. Then they agreed to check out the rooms they had missed.

In a sealed crypt, they found a wraith and dispatched it with the magic sword and magic missiles before it could hurt anyone, and then got more treasure from it. And in another room, they all ran into the demon again. The demon proved tough for all three of them, but it had to flee once more, vowing some future revenge. Before it fled, though, it had worked some magic on Omega Blaster that left her enraged and needing to attack even after the demon was gone. Luckily, Dr. Masque was able to paralyze her with a spell before anyone came to more harm.

The demon had been sitting on top of one last treasure box, but when it was opened it was trapped and released a fireball. Ragar went unconscious and Dr. Masque was moderately injured. There was treasure inside, but it all turned out to be illusory.

Still, they had netted quite a haul. They returned to Havana by boat (the fleeing commandos had stolen Ragar's car) and had the treasure appraised. It turned out that the best treasure (other than the magic spear and shield) had been the statue's diamond eyes, which were quite valuable.

But now that this was over, Ragar wanted to head back to the states and see if he could pick up the trail of the Nazi spy ring (they had confessed to working under the Red Skull's orders). Omega Blaster and Dr. Masque, intrigued, wanted to tag along.

It was now October 5, 1941.

((*Totally fudged that; it seems the indigenous natives on Cuba did not build with stone.))

[Adminenkainen]

October 21-24, 1941
Boston, Massachusetts

((I wasn't thrilled with how this one panned out. There were a lot of story elements that never linked together. I'll just quickly summarize them here.))

Omega Blaster, Ragar, and Dr. Masque were all in the Boston area looking for fresh clues to pick up on the subversive organization responsible for sending the mercenaries to Cuba after Ragar, and attacking Fort Devens in September.

Ragar was invited back to Fort Devens and was talking to Col. Myers when a secret tunnel was finally found under the base. This, to Col. Myers' mind, explained how the would-be assassin had got onto the base. Ragar explored the tunnel, which ran for almost a mile to some train tracks, but found no clues as to how the tunnel was dug, or by whom. So he just caved in one end and recommended the Army booby-trap the other end with mines.

Since that lead was a bust (or so Ragar thought), he spent his time after that buying a villa for himself in Boston.

Dr. Masque was researching a city councilman, Michael Dixon, who claimed he was supporting an anonymous scientist on an invention that would "end all war". From his research in the Boston Public Library, it seemed Dixon was an honest politician. But Dr. Masque never got to meet him because, by the next morning the newspapers all said Dixon had been abducted from his home. Pretending to be police, Dr. M went out to Dixon's home and learned a lot of clues about the strangely pink-skinned abductor. After meeting up with Ragar and coming back with him, they learned enough clues to tie the mysterious scientist to a local, closed factory that has since been converted into a munitions factory. After the factory security refused to cooperate with letting Ragar and Dr. M onto the property, they were sure that something suspicious was going on at the factory and planned to come back that night.

Meanwhile, Omega had been driving around, looking for trouble, when he spotted a plane drop an incendiary grenade on a passing train! Omega pulled over, but was distracted by two armed men who pulled up behind him. The men explained that they were railroad detectives (of which Omega was very suspicious) and had been watching for the plane, but got here too late. They believed the plane belonged to Burke "Bugsy" Archer, a racketeer playing a high-stakes protection game in Boston. Rather than seeking help from his teammates, Omega decided to hog the glory (and the xp) for himself. He drove around for another hour, looking for trouble, then thought to go to the airport and found the plane there (after breaking into the private hangars). He tied up a night watchman who bothered him, broke into a locked footlocker, and found more incendiary bombs. But instead of contacting the police, Omega went to confront Archer in his downtown penthouse. He blasted and beat up eight thugs, only to find out that Archer wasn't there. But someone else did arrive. Showing up via autogyro on the roof was Boss Wakefield, a political bigwig in Boston. Omega bluffed that the thugs downstairs had implicated him already; Wakefield bought it and offered Omega a huge $50,000 bribe if Omega would help him retrieve papers from a wall safe. They spent a long time searching the penthouse for the combination before Omega agreed to bust it open. The papers proved collusion between Archer and Wakefield on the building of a hospital on Archer's land. As tempted as Omega was by the bribe, he decided to do the right thing and turn Wakefield over to the police.

It was dark by now, so the sky outside was lit up by an explosion.

The explosion was caused by Archer, who was up to his old tricks and firebombing the munitions plant because it didn't pay him protection money. Luckily, Ragar and Dr. M escaped the plant in time and followed the plane in Dr. M's car. They arrived at the airport, blew up the plane, and took Archer and his pilot prisoner (though the pilot was a fairly tough fighter, he was no match for the two of them).

But something else was at the airport that night -- three monstrous centaur-like creatures, only half-alien and half-spider, armed with electric stun spears. Ragar and Dr. M didn't have too much trouble putting them down. In fact, they thought the encounter was some kind of weird coincidence and didn't pursue the how or the why of these creatures being there. It actually tied into everything else that was going on, but none of the heroes had found information linking things together. The missing Michael Dixon was never found either, and the trail might now be too cold...

[Adminenkainen]

((This was a short, 1 1/2-hour session that wrapped up the previous scenario))

November 3, 1941
Boston

Omega Blaster, Ragar, and Dr. Masque stayed in Boston, watching for fresh leads on their dangling plot threads. It came today, with a prison break at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Norfolk. Eager for action, the heroes all arrived as quickly as possible and found the situation already being resolved. Ragar helped bully some inmates back into their cells, and then the warden wanted to talk to all of them.

MCI was holding the alien spider-men here that Ragar and Masque captured a week and a half ago, but a man with pink skin (the man who abducted the councilman?) walked in, distracted the guards with flash and smoke grenades, and rescued the spider-men. The guards observed the delivery truck the escape happened in and even the license plate. But the heroes drove (and flew) around for awhile and came up empty, until Masque spotted a search party on the side of the road searching in a copse of trees. The truck was abandoned there and the heroes guessed the villains took the nearby railroad tracks east (away from the prison). After following the tracks for 20 minutes, they found they passed a well-lit, enclosed, ranch-like property. Within the high fence, Omega spotted six spider-men. The heroes dove in to attack and it looked like it would be another easy win -- but then one took down Dr. Masque with a stun-spear. Then, even though Omega was flying, a stun-spear was thrown at him and stunned him out of the sky. Ragar was alone, but all the spider-men were either injured or down already. It could have gone either way.

But a new option presented itself. The least injured spider-man removed his costume and turned out to be the pink-skinned man -- and he wanted to parlay. He said his name was Carthoris, and he was from another planet, as were the spider-men. The spider-men had attacked Ragar and Masque when they were searching for Carthoris (before they were allies). Carthoris had abducted the councilman and his scientist friend to help him with repairs on the spider-men's spaceship, but he was more interested in allying with the spider-men to get them off of Earth than to get himself home. Indeed, he confided in the heroes that he thought it possible the ship would only crash if they tried to escape the planet in it.

The heroes convinced him to turn on the spider-men now, and he used the ship's weapons to stun them all outside. By now, police were converging on the property from all sides and poured in to raid the place, but first Masque concealed the ship with an illusion to look like a collapsing barn. The heroes hoped to keep the ship for their own. But Carthoris now told them he had other plans -- not trusting humans with the tech, he had set a self-destructive sequence on board when he fired the weapon that was already melting the ship to slag. Ragar rushed in and collected what trophy items he could carry out, and added them to their stun-spears and a heat raygun they had already collected. Carthoris leaped away, vowing to return home via a secret route "out west".

Ragar offered to hire the rescued scientist.