Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: aaron@space.ualberta.ca (Aaron Humphrey)
Subject: Nirvan[Low City]: What does a mindblast do, anyway?
Message-ID: <1992Jun28.005009.16513@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca>
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1992 00:50:09 GMT

The fog that threatened didn't quite appear.  It seemed to be concentrated
nearer the center of town, i.e. the Dragons Inn.  Typical...  But Nirvan had
no trouble tracking Slythe in his headlong flight across the rooftops.

Then Slythe stopped suddenly and leapt back down to the ground.  Nirvan
slowed.  What was this?  He heard voices, one Slythe's and one another...
He crept to the edge of the roof he was on and peered over.

Slythe was talking with someone in a robe.  A mage-type, Nirvan would say.
Sage or Seer or somebody like that.  One of the Wasters, anyway, and probably
Slythe's boss, from the reaming-out he was getting.  There were a couple of
guards with him--Nirvan'd seen them at the Spitting Cobra once or twice.  And
They were dragging somebody along with them, who looked extremely bored at all
the goings-on.

He caught the word "mother" spoken once.  Then the crowd below turned to go,
and Nirvan suddenly realized they were on the edge of the deserted section of
Low City.  Right near here was that gap between buildings too wide to jump...
Then the mage-guy glanced briefly in his direction.  Oops.  Nirvan flattened
himself down lower on the roof, hoping he hadn't been...

PAIN!  PAIN!  PAIN!  PAIN!  FIRE!  AGONY!

His brain!  It was on fire!  His head!  He whimpered.  A series of images
flashed across his brain.  Emerging from warmth and darkness into light and
cold...pain in his mouth, something sharp...his father, hishand holding a belt
and rising and falling...staring at a hot coal in his hand, his mother making
sure he didn't drop it...being kicked in the back and stomach and chest and
legs by bullies, and walking home afterward...the pain as the Low Town's best
excuse for a priest exacted his payment in Nirvan's body...the agony at
finding Hanneke's body on the street, bloody, gutted and almost faceless...

He whimpered again.  The images blurred, blessedly, into more concrete pain.
Fire on all his nerves.  He twitched and gibbered and drooled.  He barely
noticed as he slid off the roof and crashed to the alley below--it was just
one more source of pain.

Except when his head hit the ground.  Then blessed oblivion came.  Nirvan
didn't know how lucky he was to be spared the nightmares that would have come
next...

ADMIN:  So, anybody else want to get brainblasted by Seer?  ;-}  Oh, and is
there anyone left in Low Town who might find Nirvan before the adventooers do?

--
---Alfvaen(a.k.a. Aaron V. Humphrey)
Canadian Network For Space Research, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
"One part Be My Lover, one part Go Away"  ---Bonnie Raitt
Current Album--Robert Plant:Now And Zen