Meet the Heroes
Olivia: A concert promoter who happens to be one of the richest women in America. She wears Gucci outfits and isn’t afraid to flaunt her money or her feminine… wiles to get her way. A good shot with her 9mm Glock, she would rather talk her way out of a tight spot, and she has the charms that make her perfect for the task.
Beverly Abyssinian: Beverly is the owner and operator of The Cat’s Meow, a cat cafe. Also secretly a mistress of magic, and only recently discovered that she is the rightful High Queen of England because she was given the blade Excalibur by the Lady of the Lake. Despite this, she hasn’t let it go to her head and prefers to let King Charles run things while she manages her cafe and moonlights for Department 7.
Raven Blackthorne: Raven is a full-fledged witch, complete with a familiar (“Charlie”) and powers to match. She runs an apothecary when not working for Department 7. Raven believes in being prepared for every situation and is seldom without her bag of tricks, which contains all the necessary materials for summoning, dismissal, or making a soothing cup of tea.
Samantha Strong: Samantha is a former Marine and hasn’t neglected arm day since leaving the Corps. Sam is as strong as the proverbial ox and a crack shot with her pistol or AK-47. Though she tends to be quite impulsive, she has a good heart and would risk her own life to save someone in danger, even if she didn’t know them personally.
Delilah: Delilah is anything but a city girl, preferring the rugged wilderness to the urban jungle. A skilled survivalist, she can hit a 3-inch target at 25 yards with her bow and could track a white rabbit through a raging blizzard. Of course, she isn’t without her quirks, including a strange obsession with Actual Cannibal Shia Lebouf.
Reverend Jason Flint: Hailing from the backwoods of Tennessee, this fire and brimstone reverend sees demons at every turn… literally. He is gifted with sight that can penetrate magical or mundane disguises. He is also a snake handler and carries three venomous snakes with him at all times. His prayers are often answered, so maybe there is something to his beliefs.
Benjamin: Benjamin is a police detective with the NYPD. Naturally, his department has no idea that he also works for Department 7. Benjamin follows the letter of the law, if not the intent, but can be a bit abrasive.
Mongo: A firefighter by day with the NYFD, he moonlights doing investigations for Department 7. His tasks are made easier by his psionic abilities to read minds and bring up a protective field. Brave and courageous, Mongo exemplifies the finest traits of the New York Fire Department.
Fiadh Ferguson: Fiadh (fee-ah) is the team’s resident gadgeteer. She is a master of scrounging materials and putting them to uses that the original designer never intended. Fiadh is also armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and is not afraid to use it to help get a point across.
Linda McIlwain: A Canadian citizen, Linda has dual citizenship and is a highly skilled gymnast. Inexplicably, she is also a pretty good lockpick and can deal with security systems as well as any security specialist. Linda prefers talk and thorough research to action and is never without a plan.
The Story Thus Far…
New York City, the Big Apple. But it is infested with rot. The forces of Shadow dwell within the city, hiding in plain sight. That big thug over there in the trenchcoat, that’s a bugbear. That gas line explosion that occurred yesterday, that was a fireball. And that giant sewer rat? Yeah, that’s a wererat. Some (un)lucky few can see the forces of Shadow for what they really are. They learn to recognize the signs. These individuals are recruited by Department 7, a top-secret agency that doesn’t really exist, at least not on any government records.
Department 7 works to undermine the Shadows, to protect the public from them, and to maintain the veil. Our heroes were recruited by Department 7 for exactly that reason. They now alternate their regular jobs with missions given to them by the agency, almost all dealing with the supernatural in some shape or form.
In the course of their missions, they have seen and done some amazing things, not the least of which is traveling through time (both to ancient Japan and France in World War I), going into alternate dimensions, visiting England, Australia, and Romania, and facing off against a horde of dinosaurs in the New York sewers! One of their number has learned that she is the true High Queen of Britain (by right of Excalibur). They have encountered demons, Nazis, and a headless horseman. They even had a run-in with the famed Jersey Devil and the tulpa known as Bloody Mary.
In their most recent exploit, they are facing a new menace, one made up of the city itself! The Concrete Lord was an ancient evil buried in a vault beneath the city, but it has recently escaped, and its minions are wreaking havoc. The thing must be stopped, and that means striking at the source. The heroes have determined the location of the vault and are working on getting inside, but their efforts are not unnoticed…
18 March 2026
The heroes located the vault beneath a construction site. On arrival, they were confronted with six humanoid creatures that looked like humans, made of a blend of flesh and concrete, scuttling across the ground on all fours. The group made swift work of the concrete crawlers and took the elevator to the lower level, where lay the vault.
In the vault, they found themselves in a long hallway, choked with vegetation, lit by emergency lighting. Raven burned the vegetation away with elemental manipulation, and a concrete crawler emerged from the conflagration, spoiling for a fight. Samantha made short work of it. With the vegetation cleared, they discovered that the plants had collapsed a side wall of the corridor. They also found that the vegetation was slowly regrowing. They wisely decided to don gas masks.
With Samantha in the lead, they entered the hole created by the plant matter and emerged into a meeting room, where they were immediately beset by two more concrete crawlers. These were quickly taken care of, but the one that had been hiding beneath the table leapt out and attacked Samantha. Fortunately, her reflexes proved too fast for the creature, and Olivia squeezed off a round from her Glock, putting the being down.
From the meeting room, they pressed on into a server room, where another of the creatures waited, which they easily dispatched, and progressed to an office where yet another waited. Again, it was put down, and they decided to go back to the meeting room and try a different door. They entered a door that had been burst open by the plant matter and were confronted with another concrete crawler. Reacting quickly, Olivia fired a single shot that threw the creature back across a deck, into an office chair, which swiveled around twice and deposited the crawler against the wall, dead.
They discovered a refrigerator in the corner behind the door, an older model. Opening it, they found only spoiled food. They left the office and went back into the corridor. They proceeded to follow the corridor until they came to another door. This one, they opened (and dispatched the requisite monster) and found another short passage that led to the public bathrooms. The door to the ladies’ room was ajar.
Not wanting to leave any potential foes behind, they kicked the door open and were confronted with another of the concrete crawlers. They blew it away and turned to leave when another of them came through a collapsed wall! This one resisted the first shot, but the second finished it off. They continue their explorations…
25 March 2026
Still in the ladies’ room, they took the time to check the stalls, Samantha kicking open each door, AK-47 at the ready. The place was now empty, so they retreated to the hallway and entered the men’s room. That proved to be an error. The place was a mess, with an odd green fungus covering the floor. Carefully avoiding the fungus, they checked the stalls, dispatching a concrete crawler that was crouching on the toilet.
Back in the main hallway, they proceeded south and around a corner, taking down another two concrete crawlers before entering a lab of some sort. The place was overgrown with vegetation, but Raven took care of that problem with a cone of fire. In what was left behind, they took a few samples from various containers, hoping to find out what kind of experiments were being conducted down here.
Proceeding through the lab, they entered an expansive room with lots of equipment and spots of overgrowth. They immediately spotted two crawlers, and these were quickly killed, but they were caught by surprise when two of them suddenly appeared from the foliage right behind them! Samantha reacted quickly, flipping her AK-47 to automatic and spraying both.
A third crawler was spotted behind a console, and Olivia drew a grenade from her purse and called out, “Fire in the hole!” She tossed the grenade right on target, blowing the obstruction (and the crawler) to bits. With things finally quiet, they begin to survey the room…
1 April 2026
They pressed on into the room, ever pushing forward. When they came to another set of doors, hidden behind some foliage, Beverly and Raven cleared the plants away using fire manipulation. The doors exposed, Samantha again performed opening duties. Behind the door was a room so full of foliage that the size of it could not be determined.
The group entered and immediately ran into another concrete crawler, but Samantha dispatched it before it had the opportunity to react. Raven threw a fireball that cleared away a lot of the excess foliage, but also revealed an odd figure; a humanoid with skin the color and consistency of asphalt. In its hands, it held a piece of steel rebar. It swung the makeshift weapon, hitting Beverly hard enough to cause her to step back. Fortunately, her flak jacket absorbed the worst of the blow.
Samantha snapped her weapon to a ready position and opened fire, but the bullets seemed to have no effect on the creature. Then Olivia took careful aim and shot it right between the eyes, dropping it almost instantly. A search of the remainder of the room revealed some chemicals that might tell what they were attempting to do with the uncanny foliage after analysis.
The group was discussing what to do next when they received a call from their sponsor, Marcus. There was trouble in an abandoned subway station downtown. The heroes investigated and found an empty terminal surrounded by police, who were saying that a strange creature was holed up in the station. They described sticky black tentacles that showed incredible strength.
The station was quiet. An abandoned car sat across from the turnstiles. Then suddenly, the subway car was lifted into the air and flung aside like a toy. Behind it was a massive pile of ooze with several tentacles extending from it. Raven sensed arcana coming from it and realized that only magical means or high explosives would be sufficient to damage it. This was their final quarry: the Asphalt Lord.
Explosives proved somewhat effective, revealing something in the creature’s flesh. While the group fought against it, Fiadh noticed that the creature had a gemstone embedded in it. Figuring that it must be important, she grabbed the stone and tossed it to Raven. Raven did not hesitate; she threw the stone hard against the pavement. It shattered, and as it did, the Asphalt Lord began to harden.
It became solid and crumbled away to dust. The heroes had been successful.
At this point, we decided to take a break from this campaign for a short while. We will be starting an Elfquest RPG campaign on Wednesday nights.
3 Jun 2026
We resume our Shadows of New York campaign with a bang. It begins with Olivia walking down the street when she is bumped into by a man dressed in a trench coat in 85-degree weather. Both tumble to the ground, and before Olivia can say anything, he shoves a small box and a book into her hands and says, “This is for you and only you.” Before she can struggle to her feet, he is around a corner and lost in the crowd. On examination, the book is a leather-bound tome of considerable size, locked with a brass clasp and lock. It has a strange yellow sigil on the cover that seems vaguely familiar to Olivia, but she can’t quite place it. The box is a plain, black cardboard box with a yellow ribbon and bow securing it.
Needless to say, Olivia contacts her friends almost immediately (after pausing long enough to Google the image on the cover, to no avail). The group is puzzled, as the sigil seems familiar to them as well, but no one can place it. They want to find out what is in the box, but Olivia refuses to open it, and the group believes that if it were meant for her and her alone, only she would be safe to open it. They finally decide to visit the free clinic up the street and borrow their X-ray machine. A few moments later, they discover that the box contains a piccolo. Meanwhile, Linda hacks the traffic camera to see if they can get a clear image of their mystery man. Olivia’s face is as clear as day, but the man’s features are inexplicably blurred!
The Reverend Jason Flint is curious about the book, but neither does he trust it. He suggests burning the book. This will be the first time he gives this warning. It will not be the last. Using a nail file, Linda picks the lock on the book and unlocks it. Another argument ensues over whether it is safe for someone else to open the book. Eventually Jason picks up the book, opens it, and shows it to Olivia, figuring that doesn’t violate the rule, since he isn’t reading it himself. The book is handwritten in neat, concise paragraphs. Olivia does not recognize the language within. In fact, no one does.
Another Internet search confirms what Jason feared. The book is written in Enochian! Jason slams the book shut and again suggests prolifically that they destroy it. He explains for the benefit of Beverly, who does not understand his attitude, that Enochian is an ancient tongue, believed to have been used by the fallen angels in the Bible. He insists again that the book be destroyed, but Raven is not so certain. They ultimately decide to keep it in a safe place while they figure out what to do next. The book is doused in holy water, sealed in a box full of salt, and warded with a seal of warding.
The next day, they awaken to a headline that has astronomers in a tizzy. Aldebaran, the “eye” in the constellation of Taurus, has moved slightly and is brighter by a magnitude of 500%! More discussion on the book follows (with Jason again suggesting destruction), but it is decided that the book is safe for the moment. They go to Club Xanadu, a neutral meeting ground for magical beings with which they are acquainted, and ask the half-demon bartender Tanya if she knows anything about the book or the box. She replies in the negative. They do finally open the box to find a silver piccolo. Delilah suggests trying to “play” it with canned air, but this idea is nixed. Showing Tanya a photo of the cover of the book, she, too, feels that the symbol is familiar, but she can’t quite place it. She also confirms that she can read Enochian.
The next day, they awaken to find an odd article in Playbill. Last night, at several different theaters, the actors stopped mid-line and began reciting lines from another, unknown, play. It lasted only a few moments, and the actors do not recall having done this. Among the strange words they speak is “Carcosa”. Another Internet search reveals that Carcosa is the mythical plane of madness, associated with none other than He Who Must Not Be Named, Hastur! This is further reinforced when Olivia has another strange encounter: a blank alleyway now holds an archway leading to an ornate door, flanked by two figures, covered head to toe in scarlet. They beckon to her, whispering that the King in Yellow awaits her, and that she should not keep waiting he whom Emperors serve.
Returning to Club Xanadu, they decide to ask Philadrix (“Phil”), a silver dragon that frequents the bar in human form, his opinion. Phil confirms that it sounds like the work of Hastur and tells them that the book might be the only way to prevent Hastur’s coming. They ruminate on this as outside, grey clouds gather, blown in by some unseen force…