Episode 7: Strange Heists Aship at the Circle Q

## Cast

Season: 1

GM: Deydey

Characters: Penny, Rowan, Claire

Setting: Carson Creek, CO

Synopsis: The hunters helped an alien named ISS get its spaceship back. It was hidden by Mahmoud Shariari in a secret basement under his arcade, along with dozens of other ominous artifacts.

Previously, in Episode 6, our heroes met a cute kid-sized extraterrestrial, ISS, who just wanted to go home. This time, they continued the 80s homage by helping it retrieve its spaceship from under the local arcade. The only thing standing in the way was the owner, Mahmoud Shariari, an apparently normal middle aged guy who was about to have a very bad day.

On the way out of the motel, Penny split off from the group to liaise with local law enforcement, much to Claire's disgust. The sheriff was perplexed by the whole experience, but took her warnings under advisement, and stayed out of the way for the rest of the episode.

Meanwhile, Claire and Rowan went to the arcade and attempted to blend in. Rowan soundly beat Claire at Ultra Rooftop Warrior IV, and in her frustation at losing Claire accidentally unleashed her powers, making the lights flicker and replacing the game's graphics with hyper-realistic skeletons. Mr. Shariari came to fix the machine, and said some very disrespectful things to Claire, in spite of having no way of knowing this was her fault. She quietly put a curse on him, and then hung around to distract him so Rowan could scout around for the basement.

Rowan found the door to the staff area easily enough. The door from there down into the basement was locked, but two minutes spent drawing runes with magic chalk sorted that out. There was a breakroom, and they located Mr. Shariari's lunch to steal later. Then they found a long hallway leading deeper underground, with ominous locked doors on either side, and at the end of it a huge, dark room full of mysterious artifacts. Having never seen a horror movie, they went into the huge dark room alone, and were immediately captured by a nameless eldritch force.

Upstairs, Penny arrived, and took over distraction detail from Claire, performing a repeat of their annoying insurance agent act. Claire went off to see if there was another way into the building, and found a back door guarded by a very friendly dog. She gave it some sausage and telepathically asked if she could go in. The dog agreed, but warned her that things that go through that door get trapped. Claire followed the same downward path as Rowan, but since she had seen a horror movie, she turned back from the huge dark room, hoping Rowan would be back upstairs and they could go together.

When she rejoined Penny, it was clear that Rowan was missing, and Claire lost her shit. She tried a somewhat dodgy spell to find them, but something in the darkness below repelled her, and she and Penny were transported out into the woods with ISS. The three of them made their way quickly back to the arcade, bribed the dog with a bigger sausage, and descended into the basement. Claire scared off Mr. Shariari by sending him a telepathic message in a really creepy voice ("GET OUT!") and using the curse to make a light bulb explode over his head. And Penny used a chemical flare to find Rowan and ISS's ship in the huge dark room.

Rowan was suspended in a column of wind by an unknown entity sealed inside a metal sphere. Claire, not one to make good choices when her friends were in danger, climbed right on top of the sphere to get close enough to pull Rowan out of the column, and but luckily they both escaped. Meanwhile, Penny helped ISS get back to its ship, and tried to prepare it for flight. Unfortunately, Penny soon noticed that someone (probably Mr. Shariari) had sabotaged the ship, probably accidentally, and serious repairs would be needed to be spaceworthy. The kind of repairs that were best made somewhere other than a vault full of unspeakable horrors.

Their first plan for getting the ship out of the vault was the simplest: blast a hole in the ceiling with a combination of Rowan's fire magic and Penny's explosives, then use the ship's antigrav to levitate out. Penny helped ISS raise the ship up to the ceiling in preparation for this, but right before striking the spark, it occurred to Rowan that the rubble from the roof might damage the containment on one of the terrifying abominations below. Instead, they proposed a spell to shrink the ship down to pocket-size. The spell required a material component, a particular rare spice, but fortunately Rowan knew that spice was used in the preparation of the cake Mr. Shariari had in his lunch.

Claire and Rowan went up to the breakroom to take the cake. Mr. Shariari confronted them on the stairs with a shotgun, and evidently felt it was his duty to shoot them both so they couldn't tell the media about his awful monster dungeon. Claire tried to reassure him that they weren't going to talk, being monster hunters themselves, but Rowan cut the conversation short by sealing him inside a cage of fire. Then they stole the cake and did the spell.

ISS was able to repair their ship, and blasted off for home, to tell all their friends about the huge kindly aliens who had helped it. The team went off to get some cake of their own, and while they were eating, Claire tried to telepathically contact the entity in the sphere, but it read her mind instead of vice versa. And finally, the dog used Mr. Shariari's burning cage to roast its big sausage, and had a very nice meal.