From: pcalvert@economics.adelaide.edu.au
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: ...sage [does it matter?] reads Zia's invite
Message-ID: <1992Jul13.120937.1@economics.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 13 Jul 92 02:39:37 GMT

Characters: ...sage, Zia, cc: deathwatch invitees

ADMIN: This is occurring about a day after ...sage's meeting with Iglyarch.
I am posting it now to keep in line with Kadrys, 'Raelf, Zia and anyone else
invited to the deathwatch.

A small bell tickled in a pouch at his side.

He opened the pounch and took out a small box, and opened it.

Tipping it up a scroll fell out. The scroll was too big to have fitted
in the box, but it still looked real.

It *was* real. ...sage's box was not an ordinary one. It was connected to
its twin in the Dragon's Inn by an extradimensional space, a tiny pocket
universe.

The scroll was sealed in black wax, a geometric pattern inscribed upon it.
It looked like a torus made up of interlocking circles, but following the
lines with his finger, it turned out to be one continuous line.

He broke the seal, long white fingers cracking through the black wax.
The scroll unrolled to reveal a script that ...sage had not laid eyes on
for more than a hundred years, and that was only by chance, while
researching some ancient elven religious texts for a long dead friend.

The script was precisely written, and very formal in nature.
The ancient cryptic language was hard to decipher, being full of hidden
meanings and multi-layered allegories, but the gist of it was an
invitation, to ... um, ah, a deathwatch.

"My god!" thought ...sage. "I haven't been to a death watch in over a
century, and that was nowhere near as formally treated as this one."
It was a small village nestled in the Barrier Peaks of Oerth when the
village priest had asked for ...sage to witness his passing from the
cycle of life.

It was signed Zia and a list of names underneath that.
The name Zia didn't really ring any bells, though he had heard it
mentioned in the Inn several times.
"These must be Zia's previous incarnations," thought ...sage, tracing his
finger down the list. It stopped about halfway down and he gasped. The name
written there seemed to be familiar but he couldn't place it.
The cloud in his memory, hiding his past, was fogging up again, making any
recollections that the name might bring elude his grasping mind.

He rerolled the scroll and silently said "Yes, Zia, I'll be there."

							...sage