From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Sep 14 08:47:16 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7674 Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!spool.mu.edu!agate!soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU!erikred From: erikred@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Erik Nielsen) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [MG] History Date: 12 Sep 1994 10:10:51 GMT Organization: Computer Science Undergraduate Association, UC Berkeley Lines: 297 Message-ID: <3519fb$d6v@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <3517l4$cut@agate.berkeley.edu> <3519a6$d6a@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.csua.berkeley.edu History.... To the Demons, Aleut must have seemed a mother- lode: Centuries of peace had made the citizens soft, and Aleut's distance from dimensional stability had caused the folk of the world to forget their dimension-pioneering ancestors. When the storm wall broke, Aleut was deluged in the sea of invading Demons, its governments broken, its pitiful armies dispersed, and its citizens became sheep with fat souls, terrified and paralyzed. The Demons took their time with Aleut, using it as a resevoir from which they could take their fill between excursions into neighboring dimensions. No one left in Aleut rose against them, for the art of rebellion stems mainly from a will to be free, a freedom which the natives of Aleut had taken for granted for too many years. When all seemed darkest, life suddenly took a turn for the worse; the Demons suffered a stinging defeat at the hands of their Angelic foes. In petty bitter retaliation, the Demons prepared to destroy the remaining citizens of Aleut rather than let them fall into the merciful hands of their foes. Far better, they thought, to use what they had in a final orgy than to lose it all to those Divine meddlers. But the Demons' hold on Aleut had already become tenuous without their knowledge. Seizing the opportune defeat of the Demons on Grazzon, some Angels had penetrated into Aleut and decided to stir up the local citizens. Much to their shock, however, they discovered the citizens fairly content in their hopeless setting. No one wished to rock the boat, and more than a few thought that things were actually looking brighter. "But don't you see?" the Angels cried plaintively, "You could be free again!" "Freedom? Don't be silly," laughed the citizens. "We'll only end up being invaded by another force later on. Now shove off and stop meddling." The Angels were dumbfounded; here they had a found a race of people so cowish that they preferred being cows. The leader of the Angels' expeditionary force called a conference. "This is too much, even for the Ineffable plan," he said. "These people are worse than damned, they're dead completely. Wire home and see what Command has to say." Needless to say, Command was similarly baffled. In all of the battles previous, the indigenous folk had leapt at the chance to destroy the tyrannical Demons; now these people wanted to bury their heads in the sand. "This will not do," said the Angels in Command. They wired back to the expeditionary force. "Right," they said, "If they won't cooperate willingly, then they'll bloody well do it unwillingly. Sigil them, and make it a good Malediction. These pissants will make a grave example to other Demon-sympathizers." Despite objections that the Aleutites were no more Demon-sympathizers than they were Angel- sympathizers, the Angelic force got down to business. First they sent a plague of locusts, which the Demons accidentally munched as a snack. Then they sent frogs, but the indigene were used to harmful amphibians and simply sighed in further resignation. At that point, the Angels became upset. "We can't send them to Hell," they muttered, "Aleut is already Pandemonium, and they seem content." They were baffled, until one day, a very bright, if not very moral, Angel named Aphirasis had a very bright, if not very moral, idea. He whispered his idea to the head of the expeditionary force, whose Angelic and pure face paled even further. "Are you sure?" murmured the leader. To which Apharasis replied, "Well, nothing else has worked." The head Angel agreed, if not with the suggestion then with the latter statement. After a little prayer and silent meditation, the head Angel ordered Apharasis to carry out his plan. Late that night, an Aleutite was nabbed from the streets. He was carried to the Angels' HQ, blindfolded and gagged (which were especially unnecessary precautions, as no Aleutite would have bothered to struggle in the first place). There, the Angels stripped him and anaesthetized him, cut open his chest, and removed his soul (which, incidentally, looked precisely like a large, bored toad). Then they inscribed a Sigil on the soul that seemed supremely Diabolical by Angelic standards (although the Demon Jezreel of Dis commented later that it was only mildly nasty by Diabolical standards). Their task complete, they sealed the modified soul back inside the Aleutite's chest, carried him back to the street he'd been walking, woke him up, and sat back to watch the drama unfold. To be honest, the next few days were the most boring the Angels had spent on Aleut, which is really saying something. Their Aleutian guinea pig worked diligently at his fields, the entire episode with the Angels apparently forgotten. After the third day, however, their subject, a farmer, began walking in the opposite direction of the Demons' Citadel. "I'm buggered," thought the anxious Apharasis, "the bloody twit has gone the wrong way." The Angels followed, however, determined to see the experiment through to its failure, if necessary. Their farmer walked for five days, snacking lightly from his knapsack. On the sixth day, he sat down and started whittling with his knife. On the seventh day, he cut a fairly decent spear from his walking staff, and the Angels grew concerned; a spear had not marred the face of Aleut in many centuries. On the eighth day, a Demon alighted next to the armed farmer to ask directions and get a light snack for the road. The farmer was polite at first and told the Demon that it had traveled many miles off-track. The Demon asked the farmer to point out the way before becoming lunch, at which point the farmer pointed to the East. "See that?" he smiled. "That's your direction." The Demon leaned closer to sight along the farmer's right arm. With a jerky motion, the farmer's left arm plunged the spear deep into the Demon's heart. "Sorry," said the farmer, smiling sadly, "I'm not exactly in control right now." Needless to say, the Demon wrenched the toothpick from its side and then proceeded to divest the farmer of any resemblance to a living creature. The Angels, however, were overjoyed, for their experiment had worked in spades: not only had the farmer actually attacked the demon, he had anticipated where the demon was going to alight. They patted each other on the back and got down to business. Within a week, three-quarters of the native population of Aleut had Sigils on their souls. Within another week, the natives were no longer showing up at their jobs, and the Demons were becoming suspicious. They sent lesser demons to look for their lost sheep. One of them found a good deal of the Aleutites waiting for him in a pleasant field, pounding their farm-tools with rocks. "What are you doing, sheep?" asked the lesser demon. "We are beating our plowshares into swords," replied the nearest farmer, "but it is not our idea to do so." "Then whose idea is it?" queried the puzzled lesser demon, who had failed a class on Recognizing Cases Best Left Alone. "Our bodies," replied the farmer, "which reminds me; excuse me." The farmer then plunged the newly honed sword into the lesser demon's head, with the spectacular result of actually destroying the noxious creature. The rest of the Aleutites smiled apologetically at the corpse, then went on honing their blades. The first assault on true Demon Manor went splendidly. . . for the Demons. Half the population of Aleut died bringing down Zurt Entrails-Taster, and the other half was visibly shaken by the loss. Well, not visibly shaken; on the outside, the indigene of Aleut remained fairly stoic, going about their usual routines, while on the inside, their souls screamed in agony. The Angels watched the first assault with horror, as one Demon savagely rent the citizenry of Aleut. They turned, sickened by the gore, by the absolute waste that they had engendered. They resolved to end the punishment right there. While the Angels arrived at that conclusion, the Demons were equally disgusted. One of their kind had been irrevocably destroyed by a race of merchants and burghers who had shown no more inclination towards violence than guppies show toward industrialization. Besides, they were hungry. They determined to end this menace once and for all. At the same time, the bodies of the Aleutites were not idle. Each Aleutite began to exercise, work out, and practice with sword and spear. "Good morning," they'd call to each other, smiling, as they swung viciously to decapitate their sparring partners. They grimaced as their bodies began eating certain vegetables and herbs exclusively, although some of them commented that, if nothing else, they were growing more fit. This went on for a week, in which time the Angels deliberated, the Demons deliberated, and the cows began to overpopulate. The week passed, and the Angels made their move. . . only to be repulsed by cheerful Aleutites wielding swords and spears who wished them a good day and apologized for the inhospitable natures of their bodies. The Angels suffered no casualties, but were baffled. Where had these skilled behemoths been hiding, and what had they done with the apathetic Aleutites? The Demons similarly made a move, although to be fair, they only sent one quarter of their strength on Aleut against the natives. Their force disappeared, never to be seen again. The Demons, too, were baffled. They sent scouts, all of whom reported absolutely nothing, seeing as how they never returned. Finally, Gizur Wormfeeder went himself. He arrived on the edge of an Aleutite town, hoping to disguise himself and travel invisible among the natives. When he landed, however, he discovered a force of twenty Aleutites waiting for him, their swords and spears raised, their sad, apologetic smiles looking quite out of place on their hostile-looking bodies. "Dreadfully sorry," said the lead Aleutite, swinging his sword in a perfect Bontempkin Offensive Arc, "but I'm afraid I'm dreadfully set on killing you. No hard feelings, eh?" Gizur Wormfeeder agreed, then drew his sword to defend with Liebnitz' Floating Block. The Aleutite switched to the Ginsu Slash without breaking a sweat, and Gizur began to worry. He'd seen the Ginsu Slash before, just before he'd lost his third leg, and he knew what his chances were against someone who could execute it properly. Putting vanity behind him, he leapt backwards in a Teclaw roll, then propelled himself upwards with extreme alacrity. Three spears bounced off his back as he flew away. Gizur returned to the Demonic Center of Aleut and collapsed in a heap before the Demonic Regency Throne. "Gentledemons," he said quietly, "we have a problem." He described the encounter with apologetic Aleutites. "They may have seemed like burghers before, but they're getting bigger and better. I couldn't beat the one fellow I fought, and I doubt he was their most experienced." Shouts of disbelief met his announcement. "No, really," he protested, "that guy seemed pretty green; he was smiling the whole time we fought. Real warriors don't smile, they're too busy grunting and dodging." The Demons could agree to that, since they'd had the opportunity to see many great experienced warriors in Hell. "There's something funny going on here," they crooned. Their most magical members went to work and soon located the Angels. "Right," the Demons nodded, "time to take care of that lot." The extermination of Angels on Aleut took approximately half an hour. When it was over, the Demons decided to crush the Aleutites. The extermination of Demons on Aleut took approximately three hours, and was not complete. The three Demonic survivors of the Aleutite incident met in the mountains, in hiding. "That," said one, "was the scariest thing I've ever seen." "Damn straight," said the second. "We've got to do something." "Right," piped up the third, "and I know exactly what to do." The three Demons stayed up well into the next day making preparations. They scoured the world for secret ingredients. They ransacked the oceans for valuable sacrifices. They razed the sky, searching for the right- colored feathers. When a day had passed, they returned to their mountain hideout,and began to cast. At first, the disappearances went fairly unnoticed. After the Angels first started changing the population, many people had disappeared for days at a time, eventually returning with blood on their weapons and sheepish, apologetic smiles on their faces. After a while, though, it became apparent that people were actually vanishing. Search parties began to scour the country- side, way past most people's bed-times. One patrol stumbled upon the spell-casting demons. (Well, it's rather hard to stumble upon a cave hidden near the top of a mountain under a glacial waterfall, but you get the picture.) Within minutes, the first two demons were hamburger and the third was a prisoner. "Sorry to disturb you," said the Aleutite in charge of the mission, "but we're wondering if you might tell us where some of our comrades have disappeared to." "We--" gasped the demon through his rapidly constricting throat held by the Aleutite, "sent them away!" The Aleutite Captain smiled to his companions and they smiled back. "Yes, of course, and to where did you send them? Sorry, I can't seem to loosen my grip." "Chhrk!" wheezed the demon intelligently, "among the dimensions!" Snap. The Aleutites burned the bodies and headed back home. In time, they discovered mystical tomes buried in their libraries describing how to travel the dimensions. And after that their souls wouldn't let them rest until they were travelling. The travellers now roam the dimensions, always managing to arrive just before a Demonic invasion or visitation. Wherever they go, they introduce themselves as such-and-such, "Demon Hunter, but I'm not really, you know." For the most part, they behave mildly, sipping on dark beers and chatting about inconsequential things like the weather or their favorite Rogball team. But they fight like men and women possessed, which, in a way, they are, whenever they are threatened, or when Demons appear. >From "The Chronicles of Madness, an Apology" ---- Erik Nielsen -- "To sleep perchance to dream, Ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off our mortal coil must give us pause...." The Bard, waxing poetic...