The Replacement JLA: Dick Grayson's Hair

We had another session of our super-hero campaign on Saturday.

When we had last left the characters, they had just finished a recruitment drive to get some of the remaining characters into our replacement Justice League, as the bulk of the previous Justice League, themselves replacements for the original, actual Justice League, got themselves blown up when the satellite headquarters was destroyed by aliens.

Or did they? Since we now had some members who could make their way into space, Blink, Jade and the Eradicator all flew up to the satellite to see what they could learn.

The characters had helmet mounted cameras, so that those of us on earth could see what they found. What they found was a pair of parallel lines with a bunch of scribbles between them scrawled on the wall of the meeting room.  Ray realized that it was some kind of a magical inscription but had no idea as to the specifics.

We decided to consult Beatrice, a woman we knew from an earlier adventure. She told us that they were transportation runes for a spell to travel across dimensions and instructed us how to go about assembling an artifact that would let us learn the destination.

We needed to go to the Grove on the Path of Souls with the artifact, which had three components.

The first was the Container itself. It was in a Tomb of Horrors type complex beneath Central Pennsylvania, but Beatrice's map was good enough to provide targeting information for Blink's accurate teleport, and, true to his name, he blinked in, then blinked out with the first component in hand.

When he was doing this, Katy and Beatrice were watching a Justin Bieber concert on TV. Beatrice brewed up a potion that gave Katy Bieber Fever. Any male she looked at would have the appearance of Justin Bieber. Katy was thrilled.

The container itself was the receptacle for the other components. The next was the "tears of an innocent". Beatrice cautioned us that we'd have to know the innocent in question. Ray taunted Katy, but was unable to get her to cry. (Some demon he is.)

And this is where the game gets interesting. Our superheroes characters decided to find a kid, make her cry and then collect her tears. So you have the titular head of the Justice League saying things like "I'm waiting for a child to be...alone."

I suggested that he yell "I killed Santa Claus with my cock!" but what he actually did was skulk around an ice cream stand until he found a little girl by herself.

Casey: "Hi, I'm Blink. What's your name?"
Eric as the girl: "I'm Amanda."
Casey: I knock the ice cream cone out of her hand.
Eric: She cries.
Casey: I collect her tears.

I was laughing so hard that I was crying myself. He did buy the girl a replacement cone. We are heroes after all. 

When we got back, Beatrice stressed that we needed to know the person who gave us the tears. Blink said "We know her name is Amanda." Beatrice asked if we knew anything more about her. Ray said, "We know she likes ice cream."

The final ingredient was a light source, so we dropped a glow stick in there. I observed that this was turning out like the botched Resurrection Ritual from the opening sequence of Duckula.

This was just to assemble the device that would let us follow the path to the Grove. We still needed the components for the locating ritual we'd perform once we got there. Blink tracked down Red Robin and  asked him "You wouldn't happen to have any hair or toenail clippings from Batman?" which would ordinarily be a creepy question, but didn't even make it into the top ten for this time around. Red Robin said no, he didn't have any with him, but he gave us the location of Nightwing's apartment so we could get some hair off his comb. Blink went to the apartment, learned that Dick Grayson uses a ton of hair product and got the hair.

Obligatory

He returned and we called in to the Eradicator to tell him where we were going. The Eradicator is a Kryptonian super robot. Eric voices him with this mellifluous even tone, like the world's smoothest radio DJ crossed with Frasier Crane. ("I'm listening.") He's coordinating our communication, which I think is mildly insane, because he's this PL 15 monstrosity who could probably kick the combined asses of the non-PC Justice Leaguers all at the same time. I'm more concerned that he's a plant, given our earlier trouble with Kryptonians, and putting him in that position gives him even more ammunition to fuck us over if he's so inclined. Not that anyone ever listens to Josh.

Beatrice did her part and set us on the Path to the Grove.

Katy scooped up the other two and flew at a brisk pace just above the path. Since they still looked like Justin Bieber to her, she would occasionally kiss them on the back of the head. We ran into a couple demons and skirmished for a few rounds before we figured out that there was nothing to be gained by fighting them. I was ready to zip the group past them, but Casey did me one better simply by teleporting us to our destination.

Unfortunately, a fallen angel was there waiting for us and wanted payment in the form of something that mattered deeply to us. We talked amongst ourselves over Ray's network, we talked to him, but he was cagey and wouldn't tell us what he wanted. Eric was dropping hints that we'd be insane to attack him, and we caught the hints, but we did it anyway, because that's just how we roll. Eric used the stats for Ares, a PL 16 beast and probably among the top 5 toughest guys statted out in the two Heroes and Villains books. He was carving us up, but allowed us to back off. Blink surrendered his bravado, and as payment, the angel took his voice.

Rächen performed the ritual and we learned that the Justice League must have been truly desperate, because when they ran, they ran...to Hell.