ISSUE #17 "Dilli Darbar: Bhavai Assassin" Game Master: Chris Players: Lewis, Phil PCs: Stand-In, Beholder Experience: 2 each Synopsis: The heroes get lured to a trap set for them by Nagula Pashtun, aka The Indian, aka One Big-Ass Evil Cobra. There, they confront some thugs and the assassin intended for Beholder, the great and amazing Dilli Darbar. Details: Beholder discovers thugs (Bert, Frank, and one more) at his apartment who are looking for his sister, Andrea. One of them is dumb enough to ask Beholder if he is Andrea. In the end, one fires at him and Beholder uses his deadliest piercing beam attack and almost kills one thug. He has a reputation with at least one of them (the PCs beat one of them up when confronting Nagula Pashtun previously). Once Beholder had them under control, he made one of them cook him a steak. He called the cops and they synchronized their stories so that a stranger burst in on them and drew a weapon, so they had to fire (and they made the story such that one of the other goons fired). The cops didn't really buy it but they detained one of the goons because he had a record. But everybody remembered their stories correctly and so Wolfie and 1 goon walked. Wolfie made the goon take them to where his sister (still on a ski trip) would have been taken if she had been kid-napped. Wolfie e-mailed Stand-In to join him. Stand asked Wolfie to scan the facility and apparantly an Indian mystic was in one huge 2-3 story garage/warehouse part of the building. He had been beating up thugs (later determined to be Nagula's personal men, like Frank and Bert). Wolfie also saw 2 thugs in back watching the room on video and set with explosive devices. The heroes went in the back and discovered it was a trap. The Indian mystic, named Dilli Darbar, was to kill "Curuthers" (the way that Nagula knows Beholder) and then if needed, the 2 thugs in the back were to blow the whole room, caving it in if needed. In the altercation, Stand-In drained strength from one thug and Beholder accidentally killed another one with a single punch. Unfortunate situation, and Stand-In was pretty pissed until he discovered it was an honest mistake. Then they confronted Dilli Darbar, an assassin who was hired to kill Curuthers. He agreed to also kill the Stand-In, and summoned a Kabuki-lamp that created a shadow minion, so that it was 2-on-2. Stand-In informed Dilli Darbar that his employer, Nagula, had betrayed Dilli and was planning to blow the whole place. That angered Dilli Darbar, who swore to return the favor. Stand-In negotiated to get the thugs to safety across the street (none were dead but all were unconscious) even though they were Nagula's thugs. Stand-In is protective of innocents, and that includes the helpless, even if they aren't normally innocent. The Stand-In also does not kill. Dilli Darbar agreed. Stand-In drained 2 of the healthiest unconscious thugs of their strength on the sly while moving the bodies. The fight started and Stand-In brought the house (by using his temporary Super-Strength to knock down many of the pillars supporting the roof) down on Dilli Darbar while Beholder fought a deadly shadow-minion inside an Arena of Shadow Briars. In the end, Stand-In was almost crushed by the toppled ruin he himself started in the fight. In fact, he was almost crushed twice. But in the end, Dilli Darbar was defeated by a giant slab of concrete Stand-In threw at him, and then saved from death by the Stand-In (even though Beholder wanted to kill Dilli Darbar badly). Stand-In destroyed all of Dilli Darbar's magic chests and Kabuki-style props and also dropped off Dilli Darbar to an emergency room. He dropped the Beholder off at an emergency room also. Stand-In alerted the police and Silver Eagle's people about a meta-human assassin, one Dilli Darbar, at the hospital, as well as the location of all the goons Dilli Darbar had hurt. Stand-In then threw Dilli Darbar's magic knives into the river, since they proved otherwise indestructible.