ISSUE #18 "Tezcatlipoca and the Prison Of Night" Game Master: Chris Players: Lewis, Phil, Robert-S PCs: Stand-In, Beholder, Husk (respectively) Experience Points Awarded: 3, 3, 3 (respectively) Synopsis: In this session, the Heroes discover the true story behind the Rat-Bat gang of Rochelle-Klamath, and they investigate the related missing persons reports at a nearby ski resort. Notes on the Rat-Bat gang: The Rat-Bat gang are a bunch of broke drug-ridden street punks that Stand-In and Beholder have run into several times in earlier adventures. The Rat-Bats transform under (previously) unknown circumstances, taking the bipedal form of a man-rat-bat hybrid. They fly around and favor the lasso for capturing other victims. They tend to hang around in the bad parts of town near underground street clubs and the like, looking for victims. Stand-In and Beholder already saved Andrea (Beholder's sister) from them once at a club, among other encounters. Notes on the Characters: * Stand-In, aka Peter Green, aka Lamont Cranston, is a comic book- and murder mystery- geek who inherited a vast fortune from relatives he never knew. Peter also inherited a magic tophat from a friend, who Peter had never known was one of a cabal of evil circus fiends known only as The Five. Not feeling comfortable with the shift in power and purpose, Peter took the name of The Stand-In. His most understood powers are clinging, power drain, rigid silken armor, gliding, and hypnosis. His personal ethics prevent him using his hypnosis powers; his ethics also make him protect the innocent at all times, and he does his utmost to save the lives of anyone, fair or foul. His public work at rescuing babies, befriending the Mounties, and defending the city have led to a certain amount of recognition in Rochelle. * Beholder, aka The Wolfman, aka Nathan Curuthers, is a poor, struggling former radio DJ ("Wolfman") who has become a techno-metal DJ for nightclubs. His reputation from both careers often preceeds him when he is in his element. After an unusual experience he is hesitant to discuss, he discovered he had vision powers, armored skin, as well as a variety of eye-beam attacks. He is constantly having to choose between being a hero or tracking down his next pack of smokes. His lack of caution in a fights has caused several deaths. Still, he has proved willing on many occasions to help a struggling city plagued by several disasters, and it could be said that he has stopped more disasters than he has started. * Husk, whose real name is not known, is a former military ops person for the Canadian government, who became a street bum lost in the bottle after having seen and done too much. Hungry and cold, he accepted food and lodging in exchange for "testing" by a hair- and beauty- products company. A terrible explosion rocked the hair-care research labs, due to tampering by the villains known as the Mad Hatter and Killer Clown (of the cabal The Five). "Husk" awoke to discover that he had become a swarm of 1000 bugs, with all the expected benefits and problems. He needs sugar to survive, and when he sleeps, he can spin a sticky mass that becomes a sweetened fascimile of human skin and hair. Husk can appear human, but when fighting crime, he often bursts forth from his sugary skin in order to help his teammates deliver justice! Details: Husk makes contact with "Mother's Bakery" by using his former government contacts and current street contacts to locate them. "Mother's Bakery" is a secret outfit that specializes in building bases or providing technology, no questions asked. Husk was asked to front some money. Husk also was called upon by Edward Boldtz, a super-powered leaper (loosely considered a villain) with a fanaticism for protecting knowledge. Among the Heroes, only Husk knows who Edward is. Edward asked Husk to help him return a book that was stolen from the Public Library by the Mad Hatter at their last encounter. Husk agreed. Husk did some research and he discovered that the book was very ancient and was written about the American Indian gods, but it was written in Latin, strangely. It was found in some obscure site in Canada. Stand-In, in his "mundane" persona as Peter Green began working on the details needed to transfer a large sum of money to an anonymous account for the Husk. This money was to be the cash advance to "Mother's Bakery" so that Husk could get the paperwork started on finding a suitable facility for the group. On his way from home, Peter (Stand-In) met a bicycle messenger at the front gate trying to give a package to Lamont Cranston. [Peter Green is the Stand-In's real name but for years he went by Lamont Cranston, named after the pulp character The Shadow. After acquiring a magic top hat and a gaggle of enemies, Lamont reverted to his given name, Peter Green, and he severed all ties with friends.] Peter pretended to be a friend of Lamont, but did not accept the Bike Messenger's package due to paranoia about his former identity. Peter then noticed that the bike messenger was apparently super-powered, since the messenger raced away at 50 miles an hour, doing things a human couldn't do on a bike. Peter proceeded to meet his Estate Manager in order to transfer the sum of money to the anonymous account. Unfortunately, Randy, Wolfman's ex-partner, showed up to rob the bank because he needed money. [Randy was swallowed by the food critic Bertha Luckett, after the Mad Hatter transformed her from a stuck up old lady into a 30 foot tall raging monster with a penchant for swalling pedestrians. The Heroes defeated Bertha in a previous fight, and she regurgitated her snacks. Randy was one of the survivors. Over time he has started to loose his skin, leak heat and acid, and he has lost some body parts too, but he hadn't been seen in person for ages until now, and his condition had become very advanced.] Randy had killed a bank guard with his acid/heat touch. Stand-In talked Randy down from any more violence and tried to get Randy to turn himself in. Randy agreed to stop fighting but refused to be captured. Still, Stand-In managed to drain Randy to unconsciousness with his draining powers, before Randy could burrow/melt through the bank floor. However, the backlash from acid damage rendered the Stand-In unconscious. Fortunately, Mounties arrived quickly on the scene. They had professional respect for Stand-In as a local hero, and they prevented anyone from unmasking the Stand-In while he was unconscious. Stand-In and the Mounties shared some bonding time, albeit brief, over a mutual respect for horses and one another. Wolfman (Beholder) was wandering home in his neighborhood and noticed a couple of the Rat-Bat gang coming out of a Mexican Tamale place. Beholder took eye-beam shots at them, but he accidentally destroyed the van of the chef. It turns out that the chef was some kind of mortal incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, although Beholder didn't know it at the time. The chef/god aided Beholder in fighting the Rat-Bats despite the fact that the Beholder destroyed the Chef's van. The mystical chef gave Beholder a feather and told him to place it in his mouth when he needed to "see clearly" and then left. Beholder took a captured Rat-Bat home for questioning, but first he put the feather in his mouth and did some channel surfing. The Beholder was again mastered by his own unquenchable impatience. He did discover some interesting things about certain celebrities, such as which were truly good, and which were evil, etc. He then questioned the Rat-Bat gang member and discovered the Rat-Bats must perform a ritual human sacrifice to their "Dark Lord" every time one of them transforms into a Rat-Bat, and the transformation only lasts for the night. After a little more "persuasion" in the forms of optic blasts from the Beholder, the Rat-Bat revealed the general whereabouts of the cave. The cave is located in the mountains near the ski resorts ... where Beholder's sister Andrea had been for several days on vacation. Beholder thought she hadn't returned because of their argument about whether or not she should go to college, but then he realized she must be in danger. When checking the papers, the Wolfman (Beholder) discovered that people had been going missing in the area of the ski resort off and on for some time, so Wolfie calls the Heroes together to save his sister. The group purchased some survival equipment from an outfitter before heading up the slopes. They bumped into some of the Shaolin Punks (regional band) at the top of the ski lift. They found a remote cave with Q-tanium, an unusual material that Beholder can't see through with his N-Ray vision. The cave was 60 feet or more up a sheer cliff face, but they had ropes, climbing gear, and 2 of the Heroes can cling to surfaces, so they quickly entered the top of the cave entrance. They discovered a shaft leading down 100 feet into a dark chamber filled with stalagmites, rock outcroppings, mushrooms, hundreds of twisty crawlspaces and tunnels, and some ancient ruins as well as a small altar. Here they discovered an injured hiker, Jeramy Straton. Jeramy explained that he had learned the location of the cave from a book that had information about American Indian gods in Latin. Husk realized that Jeramy Straton was part of the original team that found the book on the original dig at a different site. Information he gleaned from the book before it was turned over to the museum allowerd him to find the current site, which was apparently Olmec in origin (which predates the Aztecs by some time). He and his party explored the site only to discover terrible traps and a cult of Rat-Bat boys. Only Jeramy survived, and he had been living off mushrooms and was unable to leave the cave due to a broken leg. The Heroes took him, via their clinging powers, to the top section of the cave, and fed him and made him warm. Suddenly, Wolfman realized he couldn't see *through* Jeramy (which often happens with Magical beings such as the Stand-In, etc). He mentioned this and Husk immediately punched Jeramy "just in case", which upset the Stand-In, but fortunately Jeramy was just knocked out. Then the Beholder realized it was probably the diet of mushrooms from a magic cave (the whole area was made of Q-tanium and radiating magic). After Jeramy woke up, Husk apologized, and the party left him at the top cave in relative safety. However, at Jeramy's recommendation, the Heroes took his notebook because there were supposedly Olmec traps and ruins deep inside. At this point, the game ended because the hour was running late. It continued in the next game.