Subway Station IS Hell

OK, so in our last session we were introduced to a Hellish sort of subway station - lots of disturbing and awful religious artwork depicting the struggle between Good and Evil, and a tendency to drive people nuts. To drive the point home (and because we're crazy that way), we spent the night, which largely just gave us bad dreams and a restless night.

Coming out of that long night, Bill's immortal Tony character and Jeff's Necromancer got into a fight, which nearly had them trying to kill each other. Also, Craig found a hammer somewhere (they seem to keep popping up) and started destroying the local artwork. Nobody could recall why they did these things - obviously, the place was getting to us.

After we all went home (well, those that have homes and need sleep) to get some rest, Kevin decided to look at the blog of the metrophile who we had met the previous day. He writes a lot about subway stations around Chicago (demonstrating that yes, there is a blog for everything). Reading through his blog, it turns out that in the past the place that is Samuel Luke Station was referred to as a maintenance depot - as if the station didn't exist. That past, of course, seems to have been Before the Shimmer.

After some rest and additional research, the party reconvened in the station at about lunchtime. We gathered just in time to experience a bizarre phenomenon: everything around us slowed to a stop, and one wall of the station opened up to reveal a Hellacious battlefield, filled with angels and demons duking it out. At first, we thought we had entered Dan Brown's imagination, but it quickly became reality when a really BIG demon with four eyes and a very large sword popped through the wall/barrier, trailed by two smaller but still-nasty dog/insect demon things. Finally finding something we could lay into, we did what we do best.

The resulting fight was just long enough to be dangerous. Ghost Wolf, Craig's Samurai and Brian's Carcerian all laid into the big demon as they could, while Ice Man, Tony, and Kevin's blaster Soon took on the two smaller demons. Tony managed to hold one of these off, while Ice Man and Soon took down the other one, freeing Kevin up to approach the big demon. By that time, Craig had lost a leg to the Great Big Sword, while the demon had lots a couple of eyes to Craig's blade, and a bunch of hit points to Ghost Wolf's claws. Kevin finished it off by blasting it point-blank in the face in dramatic fashion, capped by blowing his acrobatics roll and ending up spread-eagled on the floor. As reality snapped back into place, Ghost Wolf and Craig quickly disappeared through the floor (the better to hide their rather serious wounds), while others changed back to more normal forms. The lunchtime crowd apparently noticed nothing.

So now we know: this place isn't a container for a battle between good and evil, it's a portal, a weak spot between worlds. Making matters worse, it seems that it may have been 'imported' during the Shimmer to our own reality, which would explain why nobody can figure out its history and why tools keep showing up (they're popping over from the 'maintenance depot' that is supposed to be here instead). Next time: now that we've diagnosed the problem, how do we fix it?