Beyond the Mountains of Madness

“Beyond the Mountains of Madness”
Wings of Honor episode
Episode no.	Episode 13
Date	1998
Game Master	Carl Cramér
Characters	Diana Dale Madeleine Hazard Rex Reason
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Spoiler Alert Based on a scenario from Chaosium. Spoiler Alert

Synopsis

Acacia Lexington contacted the heroes. She was organizing an antarctic expedition to rival Starkweather's. Despite (or because of) many suspicious circumstances, the heroes joined her in her quest for the Miscatonic Mountains of Antarctica. Diana flew to Hollywood and, after a romantic evening, persuaded Howard Huges to donate a Firebrand to the expedition. Rex and Madeleine managed to browbeat a Warhawk out of Curtiss-Wright. Only one of these planes was fated to ever fly over the Antarctic.

On the ship, there is some sabotage and mystic mumbo-jumbo. A sailor jumps into the ocean, and the Warhawk is destroyed when the engine moorings break during a storm. All in all, not a good start.

Finally they arrive in Antarctica. Successful use of an autogyro to bomb the ice floes and a landing at the South pole soon cheers everybody up. But disaster strikes again as a big fire, set by expedition members suddenly going crazy, forces the expedition to cooperate with the Starkweather-Moore expedition or return empty-handed. Thankfully, dr Moore is a lot easier for three strong women like Diana, Rebel and Acacia to cooperate with than the chauvinist Starkweather.

In light of recent events, it was decided to make for the Miscatonic Mountains in all haste. During a stop over at Lakes Camp (the old Miscatonic University camp of '31), a contingent of German planes appear and land, invited by Starkweather. These contain badly needed supplies, which they will provide in exchange for passage across the mountains. It also becomes apparent that the Germans have been behind some of the thefts plaguing the expedition. A valuable manuscript from the last expedition gives hints of what is to come, and an old text by Pym raises even more fanciful expectations.

Once over the mountains, these expectations are fulfilled. On the far side, a vast ruined city sprawls, a city so huge and so old that it defies all explanation. According to Dr Tariel Nooma, the team geologist, it is older than life on earth itself! Exploration indicates it may still be inhabited, and giant albino penguins and the fearsome Shoggoths are glanced in the depths below.

After a few days, Starkweather is kidnapped. Alien winged beasts grab him and fly further into the mountains. The heroes jump into their planes and quickly take off. In hot pursuit, the heroes soon come upon a huge black tower. Landing and infiltrating the tower, a strange machine is found with Starkweather's decapitated head attached to the machine. As the heroes raise their arms to destroy the vile device, Gedney appears, a lost student unaccounted for from the '31 expedition. He tells the heroes that the machine is in fact a good thing, the only thing that keeps an evil entity known as the Unknown God in check. Just as he is beginning to convince them, savage Taslalians (subhumans mentioned in the Pym manuscript) attack, damaging the machine with thrown spears. Chaos erupts, and the heroes escape the tower.

Meanwhile, things have gone from bad to worse on the outside. Douglas Halperin, one of the pilots left to guard the planes, has gone crazy. He took the largest valuable plane, the Firebrand, and flew off, stranding most of the expedition. Diana pursues in the repaired Warhawk while the others take the last remaining plane and return to the city of the elder things.

Diana manages to corner Halperin near the South Pole, but is forced to return with only one plane. In the city, some of the Germans have gone crazy and allied themselves with the Taslalians. They lay siege to the remaining expedition members, using catapults and dinosaurs. Only the 50 caliber machine-gun salvaged from the Warhawk holds them at bay.

As Diana returns, it becomes clear that the taslalians are laying siege to the dark tower with the God Trap. Fearing that they will free the Unknown God, the heroes fly to the rescue, bombing and strafing the Taslalians into oblivion. One german kills another, as Herman Baumann is forced to kill Johann Benecke, lest the world be destroyed.

After these dramatic events, the heroes expected to rest and receive a hero's welcome back home, but their troubles were not over. On the ship home, monstrous amorph creatures appeared on the ship. They sought out the heat of the engines to feed upon, but this also proved their undoing; the heroes easily tricked them using flares. So, a major disaster was averted, the heroes returned home, and received a true Manhattan Welcome with confetti in the air and limousines on parade.