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“I need you all to roll perception checks.”
The players cast nervous looks at each other, and then at the spider-themed clock on the wall of Sam’s basement dungeon. Their session should be winding down, they just finished a big mission that had taken them two more sessions to finish than anticipated, but they do in fact still have an ominous hour left before they all promised to go home. An hour that their game master seems to be taking full advantage of.
“...Why?” Tucker asks, and adjusts his round prop glasses.
Sam smirks behind her free-standing pleatherbound grimoire, and crosses her fingers in front of her mouth like the villainess she is. “You’ll see.”
Tucker rolls a three. His stat modifiers immediately lower it to a one.
“Or maybe you won’t,” Sam says as Tucker glares at his twenty-sided die like it just cancelled Christmas. “Okay gang, let’s see those rolls.”
The rest of the table rolls their dice as one, and Danny and Dani both groan as their numbers fail to reach double digits. Valerie punches the air victoriously.
“Sixteen!” she crows. “What do I see?”
Sam turns page and hums thoughtfully. “On order from lowest to highest; Tucker: since Superboy already retired to go get his beauty sleep, he has a sleep mask and noise cancelling headphones on to block out the noise from the adjoining room, where Impulse and Wonder Girl are watching... what did you decide on again?”
“Hadrian’s Last Ride,” the two half-ghosts at the table chorus.
“Hadrian’s Last Ride, right. Superboy is all but dead to the world, his bed is too cozy. Danny and Dani: the movie prevents you from seeing or hearing anything. The plot whisks you off your feet and you’re engrossed by the movie score. As for Robin...”
Sam turns the page again, back to the previous spread. “Valerie, Robin is tired from the day’s mission but as you do your wind-down stretches, you hear a hissing noise.”
“I investigate the hissing noise,” Valerie says without any hesitation, and rolls her die. “Investigation fourteen plus two, sixteen. What kind of hiss is it?”
“Another sixteen...” Sam mutters. “It’s a pressurized, constant hiss coming from the ventilation shafts near the stairwell. If you-”
“I put on my gas mask,” Valerie declares.
“You don’t have a gas mask,” Tucker says. “No way you have a gas mask.”
Valerie crosses her arms and gives him a smug look. “Robin’s prepared. He has a gas mask.”
“Robin does indeed have a rebreather,” Sam agrees. “It comes as standard equipment from the Gothamite background and is listed on his character sheet. So, Robin has his rebreather on. You investigate the source of the hiss, and just like you thought, it is some kind of gas being released into the air. You can’t recognize it by sight, or by smell obviously with the rebreather on.”
Dani raises a hand. “I want to do another perception check.”
“Go ahead, but you have a disadvantage since you’re so engrossed by the movie.”
“Alright, nobody breathe,” Dani says and commandeers Danny’s glittered purple d20 to throw both at the same time. She rolls them between her palms so that they clack together, and then releases them. Her own leaf-patterned die rolls a wonderful 18, but Danny’s poor excuse of a d20 gives her a three.
“Motherfucker!” she swears and punches Danny on the shoulder. “Your dice suck!”
“My dice roll bad for you because they know you hate them,” Danny mutters as he rubs his shoulder with one hand and gathers the two dice into his other. “I’ll try another check as well.”
He rolls, only marginally better than Dani.
“Three and a six, neither of you notice anything,” Sam declares with the air of someone who not only expected, but also predicted the outcome. “The movie’s too exciting. Everyone, roll constitution; Valerie with advantage.
Tucker groans, rolls a nine, adds his modifier, and relinquishes his die to Valerie who rolls both his gold-marbled die and her own red and black one.
Sam studies everyone’s rolls, and then rolls her own thunderously violet stone die that lands on the table with a loud thud like a death knell. “Superboy sleeps on, none the wiser of what’s happening. Impulse and Wonder Girl start getting drowsy on the couch. Soon you can’t stifle the face-splitting yawns anymore, and collapse among the cushions, while Hadrian’s Last Ride lulls you into a chemically induced sleep.”
“Hey, I protest!” Danny protests. “Impulse is a speedster, he shouldn’t be affected by sleeping gas that easy!”
“And Wonder Girl’s a demigod!” Dani adds.
“Actually, that just means you’ll wake up and recover faster,” Tucker points out, sheepish when two pairs of suddenly green eyes turn to glare at him. He hides behind his Villains and Vigilantes playbook.
“Tucker is right, you two are out like a light but it won’t be forever. While the rest of you sleep, our well-prepared Robin’s rebreather is working flawlessly. What do you do?”
Valerie considers this. “Robin calls for his teammates,” she decides. “He’d check if they’re alright. I try the intercom.”
“You try the nearest intercom, but it doesn’t work,” Sam narrates.
“Alright, then I’ll try comms,” Valerie says. “Come in Superboy, come in Impulse and Wonder Girl.”
“The message goes trough but you get no response.”
“Yeah, cos we’re all asleep,” Danny snorts.
“I interface with the cameras to see if I can see what’s going on.” She rolls a nine that her modifier rounds up into an eleven. “Aw man.”
“You can’t access the Tower security network from your wrist computer like usual,” Sam tells her. “You can see that the system has been overridden and shut down, but you can’t do anything from here.”
“I go upstairs, then,” Valerie says, looks at the map laid on the table, and picks up and moves the upcycled Hamburglar toy serving as her minifig around. “I use the south staircase. Robin goes to check on Impulse and Wonder Girl first.”
“You go upstairs, but the door to the common room is shut by the same override that’s preventing you from accessing the cameras.”
“I go get the magnetic clamp lever to pry the doors open.”
“The what?” Danny asks.
“What, the magnetic lever clamps?” Valerie turns to give her ex-boyfriend her best approximation of the People’s Eyebrow. “They’re magnetic clamps that can be used to-”
“I know what they are, but since when do we have them?”
“They are clearly marked and mentioned in the premade Titans Tower map’s itinerary,” Valerie tells him, like he’s stupid. He’s acting like it, and deserves it for interrupting her. “You’d know if you read any of the lore Sam gave us.”
“It’s literally freely on their website, you don’t even need to pirate it,” Tucker says.
“In my defense, My character’s named Impulse, not A Well Thought Out Plan,” Danny defends his apparent lack of reading comprehension. “I skimmed the lore.”
“Oh good, he’s skimmed the lore,” Tucker rolls his eyes behind his prop glasses. “Thank god for that.”
Danny lets out a defeated sigh at his best friend’s vicious mockery, and slumps back on his seat. The movement dislodges the orange biking glasses tucked into his fringe and drops them on is nose.
“Can we get on with it?” Dani asks. “The clamps?”
Sam rolls her heavy stone d20 again. “The clamps are not in their designated spot. Someone has taken them and not put them back.”
“I bet it was Impulse,” Tucker mutters under his breath.
“Keep that up and see if I save you next time we run into kryptonite,” Danny kicks Tucker under the table.
“I go to the surveillance center, then,” Valerie says and picks up her minifig again to plot a route few floors down on the map, all the while fully and purposefully ignoring the two teen boys playing aggressive platonic footsie right next to her.
Sam leans over her pleather grimoire to look at the map, and then rolls something secret behind the book. “You go down the stairs alright, but as you’re passing through the lounge, the lights suddenly go out.”
“I pull out my staff,” Valerie says and grabs the broom handle everyone told her not to bring after last time, “and switch to night vision.”
“You hear something in the darkness to your right,” Sam narrates, “where the windowless night is absolute. There is a screech like metal dragged against metal, and you can make out footfalls of heavy boots that are no longer hiding.”
Sam reaches into her pocket under the table, and her face is a thundercloud of menace as she pulls out a minifig and deposits it on the table in front of Valerie’s red-green-yellow Hamburglar-Robin. The players around the table all exclaim as the new figure masterfully crafted from reassembled and repainted action figure parts takes center stage.
“No way!”
“What?!”
“That’s-”
“Is that the fucking-”
“The Red Hood stalks out of the shadows,” Sam says with malicious glee oozing from every pore. “His blood red helmet gleams like a polished skull in the dim emergency lights, and he’s dragging a crowbar along the wall, slowly and menacingly and it makes a sound like nails on chalkboard.” She drags her long, painted nails against the tabletop for ambience.
“You’ve flown too far from the nest, the Red Hood says,” Sam says with her best ghost story voice, which has made everyone seated at the table cling to their pillow during a sleepover at least once. “Do you want to see what happens to little birds that fly too far?”
“How the fuck did he get in here?” Dani exclaims, and reaches out across the table to frantically pat Valerie’s hand. “Ask him how he got in!”
“I ask him,” Valerie says, swats her hand away, and musters her best Danny impression, which at this point is so good it’s uncanny. “Red Hood, why are you here and how did you get in?”
“Hmm,” Sam hums, “Roll persuasion.”
Valerie rolls, and the entire table holds their breath. The die lands on an eleven.
“The Red Hood chuckles, amused by your bravado,” Sam says, ad gives them the creepiest, deepest most ominous chuckle a teenage goth in a dark basement can muster. “Didn’t daddy teach not to leave ghosts in the machine?”
“Sam, you promised this campaign wouldn’t have any ghosts,” Danny groans. Sam, in turn, levels him with an exasperated stare.
“Do you want to know why he’s here or not?”
Danny shuts up, goes as far as to mime zipping his lips up, and Valerie goes for her d20 again. “I want to check if he’s a ghost or not.”
Sam allows it, and Valerie’s black and red dodecahedron clatters across the table once again.
“Eighteen,” Sam reads out. “He’s as physical as they come, and your mentor would have told you if he was a ghost. No, this is something else. Roll for initiative.”
Everyone rolls, even though Danny, Dani, and Tucker can’t begin trying to wake their sleeping characters up for a good few rounds yet.
“He’s going to kill you,” Dani says as Valerie rolls a four. “Robin had a good run but there’s no way you’re going to survive this guy on your own.”
Valerie frowns, and glares at their game master, who looks way too smug for this not to have been planned to be a duel from the start. “You’re up to something,” she says.
“Always,” Sam grins and picks up her hazardously sharp d4. “The Red Hood leaps at you with a long knife.”
Red Hood’s first swipe misses, as does Robin’s first swing of his staff, but the villain’s second strike lands.
Sam twirls her tetrahedron of doom, and throws a one. “The Red Hood catches you in the shoulder,” she narrates. “Your armor takes most of it, but the blade is sharp and cuts through.”
“I hit him in the knife arm with my staff while it’s still close,” Valerie says and demonstrates with her broom handle, which nearly hits Danny in the head. Then, with a bit more care, she swats her dice across the table.
It’s a natural twenty. Tucker whistles appreciatively, and Dani high fives her across the table.
“Oof, that hits,” Sam says. “Roll for damage.”
Valerie flings her d8 at Sam, but it bounces harmlessly off her grimoire and settles into a seven in the middle of the table for all to marvel at.
“Robin hits Red Hood on the forearm so hard he’s forced to drop his knife,” Sam tells. “It clatters away and skids out of reach. I see you have some training, the Red Hood leers. Good, beating a defenseless child wouldn’t send a message. Then he uses his action to backflip away from the reach of Robin’s staff.”
“What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Danny stage whispers to the table at large.
“What message is he trying to send?” Dani asks. “And to who?”
“He’s from Gotham,” Tucker says. “If anything, he should be leaving a message to Robin, but Sam’s too sneaky for this to be that simple.”
Sam just grins at him, all teeth and innocent-like.
“This isn’t about Robin,” Valerie says, “is it?”
Sam grins wider, eyes crinkling. “Your turn. What do you do?”
Valerie twirls her die between deft fingers. “I try to keep him monologuing.”
Hero and villain continue to battle, but a slew of mediocre rolls keeps either from doing too much damage to the other. Valerie fumbles three charisma checks in a row and fails to keep her opponent monologuing. The fast-paced action has the entire table on the edge of their seats, and the peanut gallery misses the time they get to start trying to rouse their characters from their sleep.
Then, when Robin has only three hit points left, Valerie rolls a seventeen.
“I hit him in his stupid helmet,” she says while gleefully white-knuckling her broom handle. “Hard as I can.”
Sam rolls behind her grimoire. “He blocks- oooh, he does not block,” she says. “Roll damage and strength.”
Valerie shakes two marbled red-and-black dice in her hands, and lets them fly. Two damage, twenty for strength.
“Nat twenty!” she cheers and swings her broom handle around again. This time it really does hit Danny in the head, but neither of them notice.
Sam stares at the dice like she can’t believe her luck, then rubs her hands together like a bluebottle presented with a fresh corpse. “There’s a mighty crack that echoes in the dimly lit room, and Red Hood’s helmet splits cleanly in twain. Dazed, he shakes the two halves off his head like a dog, revealing dark hair shot through with white though his face is still in shadow. He chuckles again and says, You’re good. But it won’t save you in the end, like it didn’t save me.”
Then she rolls again, raises her eyebrow, and rolls a few more times sneakily behind her cover.
“I want to roll a history check,” Valerie says. “I have a feeling.”
She rolls, and barely scrapes onto the side of success by the power of Robin’s intelligence modifier.
“The Red Hood raises his head, and you see his face,” Sam narrates. “He’s wearing a domino like yours, but you can see a jagged scar running across his face, from jawline to temple. It’s not a face you’ve seen, exactly, but there is something familiar about it. A face you think you’ve seen in pictures, once upon a time.”
Valerie slams her open hand to the table, startling Tucker. “Is he fucking- is that- you bastard!” She fists both hands into her hair and pulls it over her face. “Of course. Jesus Christ.”
“What?” Danny asks. “What just happened?”
“Who is it?” Tucker asks.
Valerie sweeps her hair back where it’s supposed to be, and takes a deep breath. “Jason Todd,” she speaks in Robin’s Danny-impression voice.
The table explodes.
“Jaso- THE Jason Todd???”
“HE’S BACK????”
“Wha- how- What the fuck-”
Sam lets them riot at the tumultuous return of Jazz’s old dead character from a previous campaign she played with them until she left town for college, before silencing the table with one commanding sweep of her hand. “So, they told you whose death shroud you’re wearing, Jason Todd says.”
“What did you do to our boy?” Danny demands.
“They never shut up about it, Robin says. Did he spend his turn being dramatic? I want to hit him again.”
“You’re heartless,” Tucker balks.
“He killed eight people” Valerie says and shakes her head. “The Jason we knew would never. He’s Sam’s NPC now.”
Sam looks, if possible, smugger than ever. “He’s mine now, yes. And he did spend his turn monologuing, you can try to hit him.”
Valerie rolls her dice, and Robin’s staff misses by a mile. She swears.
Then Sam rolls. The Red Hood does not miss. The table at large cringes.
“Red Hood grapples Robin and slams him down into the ground, and... ohh, I’m going to need a constitution saving throw here.”
Valerie rolls, and fails. Spectacularly.
“The force of the impact knocks Robin’s head hard against the floor. It does...”
Sam’s heavy gemstone d4 pirouettes on the table. Everybody holds their breath.
“...two points of damage.”
“Motherfucker,” Valerie hisses. “Did I get a head injury?”
“You are now dazed.”
“I try to kick him. Tucked, gimme your d20.”
Tucker passes her his die, and she rolls both for a disadvantage. Her polyhedron lands on an eleven, and his on a five.
“Goddammit.”
“You try to kick him, but you’re positioned awkwardly and fail to do anything that might remotely hurt in your dazed state.”
Dani inhales sharply though her teeth, producing a hissing sound. “He’s gonna kill you. Robin the third had a good run, but he’s dead.”
Tucker echoes her sentiment, but Danny keeps giving their nefarious game master doubtful looks.
“Red Hood has guns on him, though,” he points out. “He’s not using them. This has to be some Vlad shit."
“Jason Todd wants to fuck his mom??” Tucker balks.
“Ew, no!” Danny says and swats his friend in the arm. “I mean doing creepy villain shit to a teen hero to get some kind of scheme going.”
“Wait,” Dani says. She thinks for a second, and then a mostly metaphorical lightbulb goes off above her head and she slams her fist onto her other hand. “He’s trying to traumatize the Batman! He’s using the psychological impact of his own traumatic death by recreating the scenario with Batman’s new protégé to crush him emotionally!”
“Damn, I should start doing that,” Danny says.
Sam’s heavy d20 loudly rolling across the table interrupts everyone. It lands on a seven.
“What was that for?” Valerie asks when Sam just stares at it and doesn’t immediately do anything.
“That was for intimidation. I was really hoping to get a good one for this one.”
“Maybe his voice cracks mid-monologue?” Tucker suggests.
“...Eh, okay. You may be good, the Red Hood says and pulls out a knife which he points at you, but you’ll never be good enough. He can’t watch out for you forever. You will slip up, just like you have today, and you will die-” Sam says everything in Red Hood’s ominous growl, except the last word which she squeaks.
Valerie snorts. “I call him a bitch.”
“Roll intimidation.”
Toss, clatter, stop. “Nineteen. Bitch.”
Sam covers her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “He, uhh, takes a step back. Your vitriol and refusal to give in to what he’s doing even in your defeated state is making him doubt his actions.”
“He killed eight people but got intimidated by Robin calling him a bitch?”
“I’m just that good,” Valerie says. “I’m throwing insight. I want to know what he’s thinking.”
“That’s... a twelve with your modifiers. You’re used to reading faces through masks, but the light is dim and you did hit your head pretty hard. He looks... annoyed. Something that was supposed to happen here, didn’t happen. He says, do you think being a little shit will save you?”
“I want to insult him,” Valerie says.
“Wow, you’re being mean,” Dani says.
“He was mean to me first.”
“Do you want to say something specific, or just vaguely insult?” Sam asks.
“I want to insult him properly, gimme a second”, Valerie says, and hems and haws for a moment. Then she snaps her fingers and lets her d20 fly. “Robin says, skill issue.”
Tucker wheezes, and then chokes when the die lands on twenty.
“No fucking way,” Danny says.
Sam stares at the die like it betrayed her. She stares it for a good long while. Rolls, blinks, and lets out a deep, deflating sigh that lands her face first into an awaiting facepalm. “Red Hood got a nat 1,” she groans. “He... I don’t know. Starts crying and leaves? What do you do when this happens?”
Danny hits Tucker on the back to help him breathe between coughing and laughing, and thus fails to stop Dani from falling off the chair. “I would definitely leave if that were me,” he says.
Sam lies down on the table behind her grimoire and groans. “It was going so well! I had a plan, a great plan!”
“When have we ever stuck to any plan?” Dani asks from under the table.
“Never, that’s when,” Valerie says and sticks a fisted hand under the table, where Dani proceeds to bump it with hers. “So he just, what. Leaves?”
“I... guess?” Sam says and skims through a few pages of her notes, and then sighs. “Eh, we’re out of time anyway. The Red Hood, tears welling up in his mask-covered eyes, takes a few more steps back before turning on his heel and running away. The darkness of the corridor swallows him whole. Same time next Tuesday.”
Then she snaps her grimoire shut and starts gathering her scattered dice like nothing happened.
“Wha- you can’t just stop there!” Tucker gasps.
“I can and I will,” Sam says. “Stick to the plot next time.”
“But Sam, we’ll never be able to!” Danny groans. “The dice make the decisions!”
“Skill issue,” Sam says.