Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [BH] Artimian is only mildly embarrassed Message-ID: <1gmk0rINNggh@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> From: cj841@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Chris Steiner) Date: 16 Dec 1992 06:57:31 GMT Things have not been going very well. ArthSplunt and his friends had just broken into a warehouse of Mant- Kayu, a rather nasty technomancer, at the request of the local Nunnery. Most of them survived the defences, two out of six had died, and they were just about to split up the leftovers. "Yo, Arth," Harlek said. "Check this stuff out to see if Mr. Kayu's touch has tainted any of it." Arth nodded, pulled a pair of glasses from the inside pocket of his third cloak, and put them on. Of course, magic radiated from everything in the warehouse. He walked around a bit, as if he knew what he was doing. The only noteworthy auras were around a katana, a digital watch, and an android. The glow around the katana was expected. I was a metallic green twisting covering the blade only. "That's another mech-cutter. Worth keeping if we get any more swordsmen with us." The glow around the watch was one he hadn't seen before. It was pulsing from pink to orange and back again. He noticed Karl was rubbing his wrist, roughing up the newly healed skin. He'd lost his last watch, and hand, recently to a rather nasty but little dragon. Arth decided to not mention it. Karl would discover what it did eventually. Or he would. The android's silver and blue aura was shrinking towards the left hand, tracing psuedo-circutry paths and growing more intense as it went. ArthSplunt pulled a medallion from his belt, put it over his neck, and waited patiently to see if it would explode. It didn't. The aura withdrew into the hand and stopped, as if waiting for someone to order it. /Ah, a real item! I wonder what it can do?/ He picked up the Mech-Cutter and sliced the hand off just above the wrist. "This looks interesting, I'll keep it to examine later." He then put the medallion and the hand into his belt. The split up the rest of the stuff as usual. First come first serve and anything you can carry or ride you can keep. No loading of vehicles until everything is spoken for. Finally, they loaded up a jeap and two motorcycles and headed back to camp, three and a half hours into the woods. Harlek was preparing supper and Julian was sparring with Karl when ArthSplunt remembered the hand. He stood away from the fire. /5 foot radius should be safe enough./ He pulled the hand from his belt and stared at it. He felt the thing begin to build up power, but it paused. /Ah, so is has several functions./ The hand began to hum and a sphere of electricity formed around Arthsplunt, blinding him. The crackling of the ligntning persisted for a few moments, then suddenly stopped. He looked up into a dark alley in some strange city. A short humanoid woman and an average humanoid male were staring at him. All he could bring himself to say was, "Oh. That's what this does." /Area teleport with absolutely no falesafes. I wonder if this also crosses dimensions./ A clattering draws ArthSplunt's attention to Julian's arm and the other limbs surrounding the circle of grass he was standing in. /First thing's first, gather what's mine, then have introductions./ He walked over and picked the sword out of Julian's hand. He looked around and saw nothing else that was his. "Greetings," he said, stepping out of the grass between the two humanoids. "My name is ArthSplunt Griwald I." With a practiced motion, he flipped his second cloak back uncovering a quarrel, popped the cap off the quarrel letting a bright light fill the alleyway, stuffed the sword in the quarrel, recapped it, and shrugged his cloaks back in place. A worried look crossed his face as the image of the two legs standing just outside of the hole regestered in his mind. He guestured back to them and said, "That wasn't a friend of yours, was it? I'm terribly sorry if it was." ArthSplunt Grigwald I - Probably the most inexperienced and the most frequent dimension hopper the cosmverse has seen.