Sky High: Starwhals!

We returned to our superhero campaign last week. The first half of this session was a confused, muddled mess of space narwhals haunting the steam tunnels. The less said about this, the better.

Also problematic was the lateral thinking puzzle. I thought it would be interesting to have a weirdo pose riddles to the PCs. Putting aside the fact that the weirdo posing riddle thing never works, I underestimated how well known the riddle was. Zod’s player was in Gifted & Talented classes from an early age, just as I was, and I had heard the riddle a million times, so I figured he had too. But no.

(It’s the one about the man who lives on the twelfth floor and takes the elevator down to the lobby every morning. But when he gets home, unless it’s raining or there is someone else in the elevator with him, he takes it up to the tenth floor and walks the remaining flights of stairs. Why? A: Because he’s too short to reach the button for the twelfth floor. If it’s raining, he can use the umbrella to press the button.) Apropos of nothing, I imagine the man in the riddle looking like Peter Dinklage in the Station Agent.

Like I said, I thought this riddle was extremely well known, and the plan was to let Lily try to solve it, with Zod providing hints and prodding her in the right direction. But it didn’t work out like that. They weren’t even in the right county with their questions. After ten minutes of painful flailing, I just said that Summer looked up the answer on her cell phone.

We broke early and had the rest of the session the next day.

Booster Gold wanted to meet with Amy and Zod at the local hangout, Nothin’ but Empanadas.

At the restaurant, the group meets Asami Sato and her technical advisor, Gadget Hackwrench.

Yes, that Gadget Hackrench.

At another table President Dog is dining Lady and the Tramp style with Lucy Junior, and their date is not going well.

Gadget tells the team that they’ll need three components to fix the Ewok ship, a power source, materials and operating system.

For the Power Source, the team will have to steal it from Doctor Doom, who will be guest judge at the school’s science fair, at Doctor Mordred’s request. Amy will be Asami’s personal aide, and Zod will be Doom’s.

For the Operating System, they’ll have to get it from a self-aware robot.

For the materials, they will have to go undercover in a Stark industries manufacturing plant.

I'm looking forward to the next session. The first part of this one was a mess, but we've got at least three sessions of good adventures to look forward to.