Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: arsmith@nyx.cs.du.edu (Alan Smith)
Subject: [NTY] Palandun: Ods bodkins.
Message-ID: <1993May23.232457.27321@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
Date: Sun, 23 May 93 23:24:57 GMT

ADMIN: Sorry I was gone for so long, I would have warned everybody, but I       
couldn't.  Yes, this is my summer home.  Oh, could sombody mail me and let me
know what happened in the thread up till now? I have a vague idea, but I would
like to know.

Palandun listened patiently to the story of the Giant Rat adventure and watched
the person telling it get pulled into his own hat, then he stood up, mumbled
something about being sorry and needing air, and staggered out the door.

"Groan" He said, leaning against a street lamp a few blocks down the Arcade
of Unforgotten Heroes.  "Are you all right?" a voice asked.
  "Yeah!" Palandun replied, streightening up and trying to look enthusiatic,
"I feel fine.  Just came over queer for a minute there."
  "Queer?  Maybe you should see a doctor."  One of the tall, cloaked figures
which seemed to be ubiquitous in the city of Generica produced itself from
behind the statue of Norad the Watchful.  "I'll take you."
  "No, really, I feel fine!" Palandun said, wondering if he would break out
in the old Goal-Ball cheers the women of It-Atta were so fond of cheering every
time the males went out to play.  He decided to tone down the cheerfulness.
  "You are in perfect health?" The H.S. asked again.  Palandun nodded.  "In
that case..." The Hooded stranger shed it's cloak, revealing itself as a 
humanoid, with a skull for a head and rotting flesh over it's body.  It wore
a simple tunic and shorts with a sword at it's belt.  "I'll take your health,
please, Lieutenant Palandun."

That the thing had called Palandun by his rank gave him a clue as to what it 
was.  During the fourth orc war Palandun's Platoon had run into a section of
forest filled with drainers, semi-undead which leached the health of whomever
they managed to grab.  There were two ways to defeat them: the hard way, which
consisted of dicing them with your sword while avoiding contact with them; and
the easy way, which was to lop off one of your own arms or catch some vile 
disease or something, thereby reducing your own health and making you a bad
target.  Palandun opted for the hard way.
  "Not on your life...er...death!" He cried, leaping behind the statue of
Darvon, Releiver of Pain.  Gynsoo emerged from it's sheath.  The drainer pulled its own sword and walked swiftly towards it's quarry.
  "Don't make this hard, or I'll let you live." It said, holding the sword aloft
and proceeding through the statue, leaving it's clothes behind.  Palandun
blocked it's first swing, then stood back.
  "One-handed sword, huh?" Palandun remarked, more to himself than anyone else.
Gynsoo was a hand and a half sword, capable of being either wielded in one or
two hands, but not perfect in either.  Palandun decided to go one-handed too.

<Clang>-<Whack!>

Palandun's chances improved considerably when Gynsoo's cutting edge (which would
cut practically anything) got a handle on the drainer's sword and sliced it
midway along the blade, the shard flying off into the night.  Palandun pressed
his advantage, relieving the drainer of his forarm, jaw, and the top of it's
head.  The drainer went through some goofy motions and produced a mist that 
swirled through the whole area.

Palandun had seen this before, too, folded himself in his grey cloak, and moved
as silently as he could out of the mist.  The important part was to keep moving,in an unexpected-  "Erp!"  Palandun crashed to the ground, dropping Gynsoo and  
rolling, the drainer on his back.  He felt himself sickening, aging, decaying.
Palandun felt the half-sword against his throat, and this gave him an idea.
He brought his arms up to kill himself.  The drainer, not wanting a dead body
that would leech health out of him, moved the sword out of the way.  Palandun
escaped from the drainer, grabbed gynsoo, and Whacked with what strength he     
could at the joining of the legs and the body...
  "Come back here you coward, I'll bite your legs off!" The drainer screamed
as best he could after the slowly retreating Bismanian. 

Palandun staggered without sense of direction until he came to a temple, where
he collapsed before the locked gate and weakly said "help."

An acolyte appeared, examined the slumped body, and told her companion, "Fetch
Selene, we have a suppliant."