ISSUE #22 "FrostMare" Game Master: Phil Players: Chris, Glenda, Lewis PCs: Mr. Clean, Golden Girl, Stand-In (respectively) Experience Points Awarded: 3, 3, 3 (respectively) Synopsis: Golden Girl is haunted by a Frosty Demon that steals children. Investigation unites the heroes, leading them to an abandoned Amusement Park filled with Frost Demons. Across the street, the heroes discover the true monster at FrostMare Enterprises. Details: Golden Girl was attacked by a Frosty spirit that manifested in her garage. The spirit had a frosty scimitar that it used to deadly effect. In the end, she had Mr. Clean help her defeat it, but it kept coming back and eventually they had to abandon the house. Golden Girl heard the spirit of a deceased child call to her and she discovered that children were vanishing into the 25 cent quick rides that are just inside grocery stores and shopping malls everywhere. Investigation led to the discovery of an old Amusement Park on the river where a terrible accident / spill had happened. The Park was abandoned and a company, FrostMare enterprises, was the owner. First the heroes (Golden Girl, Mr. Clean, and Stand-In) showed up at the amusement park. They went in, bought tickets (certain things still worked) and explored despite the un-natural sense of dread they felt. They fought several Frost Spirits but they were overwhelmed and had to retreat. After retreating, they noticed FrostMare Enterprises had a light on and a figure was watching them. They pretended not to notice and hid down the street. Stand-In went back to do a scouting mission. He looked in the warehouse window and saw row after row of the kind of ride that had been stealing kids outside the grocery stores. The man went into some closed door that, when opened briefly, had an eerie glow coming from the room. Later the man came out while Stand-In was watching. A holographic or mystical image of a child appeared on one of the kids rides and the man tried to lure the boy with the cookie. Apparently the boy solidified and appeared for real in the warehouse! The Stand-In yelled to his companions down the alley and burst in. The man threw the cookie at the kid or charged the kid (I forget) and in an attempt to block / distract the evil man, Stand-In threw his top-hat. Sadly, it captured the kid and sent him into the Top-Hat dimension that Stand-In had been afraid to explore. At that point, Stand-In's companions arrived and the three of them fought Frost Demons, an invisible FrostMare spirit, and the man himself. After barely defeating a villain that seemed to have every single power "in the book", the heroes explored the room with the green glow. It was a gateway to a pocket dimension. Stand-In was the one who made the journey into the pocket dimension because it required great force of will to navigate the otherworldly stairs without being sucked into the ether. Stand-In discovered that the evil man had crucified a bunch of children and hung black amulets around their necks. Most were dead but one was alive. Stand-In began the arduous task of hauling the bodies back. I *believe* during this time that in anger Mr. Clean may have slain the unconscious man because of his great evil. Again, this upset Stand-In because it didn't bring the children back and it didn't help anything. Either way, the government (Canadian or American? I forget which side of the river it was on; American I think) was called in because a bunch of crucified children was a crisis beyond the characters to deal with. Families had to be informed and medical care was required for the survivor. (Or were there 2 survivors?) Some of the players had solo stuff go on before and after this, I don't recall all of what happened. I do know that the other players visited Edward Boltz (secretly The Toad; but nobody knew in character at this point) to ask some questions about the Tattoos on the lead singer of the Shaolin Punks, and about an ancient box Golden Girl found, and some other weird stuff. Beholder, Golden Girl, and Mr. Clean (played this one time by Lewis, since Chris was running the game) met at the bookstore. Stand-In never showed up because he got teleported (essentially) to India and was stuck there for a week. Stand-In however had to go into the Top-Hat dimension to rescue the boy he had saved / trapped earlier. It was Stand-In's first time. He used a rope and secured himself but discovered he could lift himself up and down in the hat's dimension with ease. It turns out that it wasnt just a hat's dimension but an entire alternate dimension that had stormy winds blowing through. Beneath the Hat's portal was a floating rock / island of some kind that had a fireplace with a living fire newt for keeping the fire going, and a desk, and a bookshelf with books on it, and other things. Stand-In found the kid and managed to get him out and to a missing persons shelter. Stand-In came back and discovered a scimitar and discovered the weird creature that had been interacting with him before. The weird creature was a huge floating blob off in the distance in the dark with tentacles with eyes on each tentacle. The tentacles would come near when the creatures wanted to communicate. Stand-In traded cokes for another damaged scimitar that the creature knew about. The books contained some weird other-dimensional mathematical language with a relationship to Hindustani. Stand-In took the scimitars up to his house by escaping out of the top-hat. Then Stand-In came back down into the alternate dimension and tested summoning the hat to him when in the other universe. It worked but Stand-In was screwed. Entering the hat from that dimension led him to an old Hat Shop in INDIA. It had been closed for perhaps 20-50 years or more and was bricked up. There was a small opening in the ceiling that was at ground level in an alley but no way out and Stand-In was too weak to break out. Eventually after 2-3 days of no food and only the trickles of water he could catch when the rain fell, he got a man's attention. The man contacted the police and owners of the building. The police looked on and did nothing as the owner tried to get Stand-In to pay to be freed. Stand-In immediately agreed, which had the owner get greedy and double the price. Stand-In then refused and told them that with a dead body on their hands, they couldnt afford to let him rot and die. The store owner told him quite the contrary, life was cheap in this city in India, and so everyone left Stand-In to die of starvation. Later, however, the man who initially found Stand-In came back. Stand-In paid the man (Stand-In keeps $2000 on him at all times) some money to go bring him as many living dogs, preferably 6-8, as the man could. This intrigued the man, who probably expected Stand-In to eat them. The man came back with a cart, 8 dogs, and 2 helpers. The helpers were curious too. The smallish dogs were put through the window slit and, there in the darkness, the 3 men saw lightning flash and heard the yelps of dogs. The two helpers fled but the curious man stayed to watch. Stand-In had only drained them of their strength using his powers. Stand-In then ripped the bricks and escaped. He thanked the curious man just as the Police showed up. The 2 startled helpers had summoned the police who were nearby. To Stand-In's delight, the policeman who showed up was the one who had looked away as he was coerced into paying money to escape and then left to die. Stand-In ran up the walls to the ceiling carrying the man and broke all his fingers (or something like that). Stand-In wont kill and he is protective of innocents, but he is vengeful. Stand-In took the policeman to the street where he would be found. Then in an act of vengeance against the man who owned the building and who left him to die, Stand-In used his drained strength (from both the dogs and the policeman) to do several million or more American Dollars worth of property damage to the building, which was really an entire city block owned by the one man. Stand-In, being wealthy, then used his connections to arrange travel to get back from India to Canada. Counting all the time it took him to nearly starve to death, escape, wreak vengeance, and return home, about a week passed. When he returned, one of the scimitars he left in his home (which originally came from the pocket dimension) had wreaked havoc on the interior of his house and destroyed about 40% of his comic book collection. Stand-In managed to capture the one flying scimitar and trap it in a desk drawer in some cement.