From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Feb 23 10:26:02 1994 Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Path: netcom.com!csus.edu!wupost!math.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!news.ecn.bgu.edu!psuvax1!hsdndev!cfanews!cfatrw.harvard.edu!rudnick From: rudnick@cfatrw.harvard.edu (Bret Rudnick) Subject: [VampQ] Sands of Tea Time Message-ID: Sender: news@cfanews.harvard.edu Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0] Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 15:44:18 GMT Lines: 231 ============================================================ [VAMPQ] Sands of Tea Time, or, Loaf of bread, iced tea, and two souls, please. Admin [The cast of characters for the [VampQ] thread: Character Created/Managed by --------------------------------------------------------- Ja'nis arsmith@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Alan Smith) Bluestar Dreamer (in absentia) Gemini (Feline familiar of Bluestar Dreamer) Moria Runecaster Master Hawk Rathan Barbar Morning Reaper Ah (Blood spider created by Rathan) Turion "Mr. Sinister..." a salamander (Turion's Travelling Companion) Billy the Torch JGE103@PSUVM.PSU.EDU Matte Kudasai Matt Hebert Tomonobu Fujiwara rudnick@cfatrw.harvard.edu (Bret R. Rudnick) Synopsis: After retrieving specimens of the Vampire Orchid, the object of their quest, the group are forced to journey through Hell to get back to Generica. After a series of individual ordeals, they find themselves reunited in their attempt to return to Generica] Admin [As always, comments/questions welcome.] ============================================================ One by one each member of the group found their way to the smallish room in which they were reunited. Since Matte had arrived at the room, she had been hot and tired. She and Tomonobu had struggled through areas of Hell that had surprised even her. As she looked around the room, she could see the wear on most of their faces. Thank the gods that this trip was nearly over. Or so she hoped. "Well, it seems the worst is behind us! Which means the best is yet to come...." Matte tried hard to keep a light tone in her voice. She thumbed toward the far doorway. "Looks like we've only one choice. What cha say we get this over with?" There was a chorus of agreement and various nods, and Matte opened the door. The door opened onto what appeared to be a vast desert. The sun (or _a_ sun) was high in the sky, and waves of heat struck and washed over them. There was no discernable sign of life. No birds (not even vultures), no lizards, no snakes, no insects. "This truly is Hell, all beach and no ocean!" Rathan complained. "Well, I'll just carry this board just in case we run across some gnarly waves," the insectoid said to no one in particular. The party trudged on, through miles and miles of trackless waste. The heat was merciless, and although they had marched for many hours, there was no sign that the sun had moved at all. [I could really go for an iced tea right now, particularly an Iced Delight,] Rathan thought. The surfer summoned forth the lines of chaos that composed the Logrus. The insectoid sent tendrils to all points of the compass in search of a glass of iced tea. Well actually, he sent out eight tendrils equally spaced as there was no magnetic pole to distinguish north or south. After half an hour passed, Rathan came to the realization that the likelihood of finding water, let alone iced tea, was frightfully dismal. [Oh well, I might as well leave this behind. I can always pick up later,] Rathan thought to himself, as he positioned his surfboard. Bluestar shielded his sunburnt eyes with his hands. "There's something ahead, on the horizon," he said hoarsely through chapped lips. As the gap closed between them and the object it eventually became apparent that what Bluestar initially saw was a kind of tollbooth. There, in the middle of the featureless desert, was a small covered structure. An attached gate was in the lowered position. On the porch of the tiny building sat a very large, mean-looking troll wearing nothing but a visor, a pair of sunglasses, and a very loud Hawaiian shirt. The creature looked them up and down. "Class 'B' group, two souls, please." "Huh?" Ja'nis said. "Class 'B' group. Toll is two souls," the monster repeated. Seeing there would be no immediate response, it went back to reading its magazine and sipping iced tea. At this Turion smiled a bit, but said nothing. Bluestar's hands moved to his swords but Matte gently put her hand on his to stop him. "Not a good idea," she whispered. "This plane, crazy as it may seem to you, operates on its own set of rules. If you slay the attendant, who knows what enforcers could show up? Probably something powerful enough to deal with the like of us." "Why not just go around?" Tomonobu asked. "We travel a few minutes parallel to this structure, cross over, and double back." Matte shook her head. "Uh-uh. It doesn't work that way. The only real way we can make progress is to figure out how to deal with this directly." "Hey! Did one of you steal my iced tea? Answer up! I'll know if your lying," the troll demanded. All but Rathan answered no almost immediately, for Rathan was hastily wiping off the remnants of a brown liquid from his mandibles. "Uh, incoming!" the insectoid shouted as he hit the sand. A cloud of sand was seen on the horizon as a flying object rapidly approached the group. The party stared in horror as Moria was almost decapitated by a flying surfboard. The surfboard then slowed as it turned around to land softly in front of Rathan. "Ah, we are going to have a talk about tendrils." "Sorry, Boss." Turion regarded the scene with eyebrow cocked. The salamander sneezed and fell off his shoulder. "Um, guys?" Ja'nis said, drawing them all back a ways from the tollbooth. "What are we going to do?" "We pay the toll. I will be one soul, who will be the other?" Tomonobu said. The conclave devolved into a fight where everyone volunteered and tried to keep everyone else from volunteering. Finally they were broken up when Matte sent a small fireball into the air which detonated above their heads. "I will NOT watch any soul get consigned to hell forever." The small mage said. "So forget it. We have to think of something else." "I wonder." Bluestar said, "Do they have to be our souls?" "Huh??" Everybody said, managing to look like the annual dunces convention. "Well, suppose we found some souls that were already consigned to hell forever and gave them to the troll. When one comes up to a road toll one doesn't pay ones last copper, one goes back and gets more." "Wish I'd thought of that." Ja'nis said. "And the soul would already be consigned to hell forever, so we don't have to worry about ethical qualms." Bluestar looked pointedly at Matte. Matte frowned hard at the elf. "I _still_ don't like the idea." But she knew that there was nothing she could do to release a soul from Hell once it had placed itself here. Finally she let her little shoulders fall. "Well, it seems like it has a chance to work. There are lots of souls in this area. We must be fairly close to a major gate. I'll see what I can do." The little exorcist cautiously wandered away from the tollbooth, but surprisingly, it seemed that the attendant was not interested in the group's activities. Not far from the booth, Matte saw yet another group of the luminescent beings she could tell were souls. She had grown so used to seeing the spiritual dimension of creatures, that disembodied spirits hardly attracted her attention anymore. She tried to contact several individuals in the group before she found one that would respond. He obviously had been a warrior. His head was perpetually split in two, and he carried an extra head under his arm. His manner was gruff, and he seemed quite agitated. "You want me to get processed all over again? HA! Not bloody likely!" "Of course, I'd be willing to give you a bit of a reward...." The gory figure suddenly pressed very close to her. His tone was low and serious. "Can you get me out of here?" Sadly Matte shook her head and tried not to show her revulsion toward his image. "I'm afraid that's just beyond my ability." The creature started to sulk away from her. "But I can give you a little something to make your stay here a little easier." He instantly glanced back at her over his shoulder. "Really?" After Matte had arranged things and the fellow grabbed another volunteer, she cast a simple spell on them. The result was two egg-shaped objects that shimmered and reflected rainbow colors from their jet black surfaces. "Here we go," announced Matte as she rejoined the group carrying the eggs before her in one hand. "What did you offer those guys to make them go through all that again?" asked Billy as they approached the tollbooth. "Oh, not much. I just promised them a little power over their neighbors by way of these enchanted rings." She retrieved something from a pocket, though Billy still couldn't see anything. "These are really quite weak, but you'd be surprised how far something like this will go when you have to spend the rest of eternity in Hell." Turion looked at the rings, then at the souls, then at the cheerfully smiling Matte. He shrugged and picked up the salamander, dusting him before putting him in his pocket. -- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | "If androids could barf I'd be on my 5th bag by now" -- Kryten (Red Dwarf) | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------|