From alt.pub.dragons-inn Sun Feb 19 19:41:43 1995
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From: arsmith@holly.ACNS.ColoState.EDU (Alan Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [NTY] Family, Part I
Date: 17 Feb 1995 20:57:53 -0700
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523
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Message-ID: <3i3r81$2gmt@holly.ACNS.ColoState.EDU>
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The following people write for/help with the [NTY] Thread.

Kelly J. Cooper (kjc@cs.rutgers.edu)
Steven Hutchison (hutch@ibeam.intel.com)
Alan Smith (arsmith@lamar.colostate.edu)

Special thanks to:

Claudia Mastroianni (cmarie@max.tiac.net) for spellchecking

The Great Mother was created by Andy Solberg and is on loan to [NTY].
The Bismanians were created by Alan Smith, all except Jorma who is on
permanant loan to Alan, barring his creator coming back.

This story may be kept in both private and free public electronic and
hard-copy archives, all other rights reserved.

=================================================================

  Jorma had a lot on his mind.  Ja'nis was finishing her preparations to
leave on a trip, and Palandun had said that if it was okay with him, he could
stay at Palandun's aunt's house.
  Jorma mistrusted aunts, as a rule.  Aunts were family and family had this
depressing tendency to lock one in the basement for hours at a stretch, or force
one to practice picking locks, or beat one bloody for no apparent reason. That
Palandun, a man who had shown every evidence of being independent from his 
family at last, still spoke to his aunt was a source of worry for Jorma. But
Pal has said only if it was okay with him, which was a minor source of comfort.
Maybe Jorma could talk the aunt into letting him keep the rats he talked to.
  If only Palandun would show up, he was late...

  Silvenfrin Lintesul had a lot on her mind.  For one thing, her nephew,
the colony ambassador, had this disconcerting habit of going off to places
she didn't know and he wouldn't tell her about, and coming home with this 
aura of having risked death.  Not something that usually happened on
"training drills" as he called them, but happened with fair frequency here.
For another thing, Palandun had fixed her up with a waif he had found.  She
liked children, indeed, she and her husband had raised several, but she hadn't
had one in so long.  She wondered if the child would object to her keeping her
pet rats.
  Chiefly on her mind, though, was the new prayer she had worked out.  The
worship of the exile's god was popular among the halfbreeds of Bismania.   
Officially because the halfbreeds were part exile too, but in reality because
the exiles would not tell anyone anything about either their god or their
religion, it had to be pieced together from dropped hints and made up
as you went along.
  Silvenfrin had aquired a copy of the transcription of a tale of what a 
man had heard from a drunken Exile one night several centuries ago, and
there were some very definite, if somewhat hard to spot, hints in it.
Sil pored over the text the whole trip out, and now felt she was ready
with her prayer.  She sat as serenely as she could in the "center yourself"
position, breathed regularly, opened her mind, and intoned the prayer mentally:
'Oh Emu Illuminator, Creator of All, God of the Ex-'
  She fell over and convulsed with shock as power surged through her body
and lifted her spirit up.  It felt through her mind and she "overheard" 
approval, much as one might give a slightly idiotic dog who had managed 
to put your slippers at your feet and the _Examiner_ on your coffee table
instead of vice versa, but with a contempt, as though the dog had still
gotten too much slobber in the sandals.  Silvenfrin felt the disapproval 
wash through her and cringed in shame, trying to bury herself under the bed,
do anything to escape the onus that was on her for getting it wrong all this
time.
  The power decided to take pity on her, and her mind was awash with the
first of the correct rituals (the power never actually used words, but was
very clear on this point: these were only the first, and more would come as
she and her converts got used to these), then Silvenfrin abruptly felt small
and lonely as the power left her being.  She curled up in a ball and cried
for an hour at the sheer intensity of it all, and suddenly found herself
reflecting that it was a good thing Palandun was late.

  Palandun Lintesul had a lot on his mind.  He was anxious for Ja'nis, his
friend, to get out of town, and for Jorma to go under the wing of his aunt
the mage, who could protect him, but chiefly he was concerned about the monster
that was staring at him.
  He was armed with an Integrated Sword, three wands, four smoke grenades, 
two gas cloud grenades, a composite bow with the requisite quiver of arrows,
Two members of the "ShunRangers", which the local infantry detachment had
taken to calling themselves, and a buffer woman who was saying something
in her native dialect about killing it.  The monster was armed with its
nails, its jaws, which it slavered at the assembled forces of Good and
Decency, a cute pink dress, and curly red hair.  The monster appeared to
be about six years old.
  Palandun decided to ignore the buffer and capture the monster alive.  "Lambda
three, pick that girl up." He ordered, "Four, take point, we're headed back."
The massive communications tech of lambda squad efficiently grasped both
of the four year old's wrists together, bound them with some turns of string, 
and slung her over his shoulder.  The four of them moved off back to where the
cart was waiting for them.  The girl glowered around and beat her fists
ineffectively against three's thoracic armor.
  Palandun was looking directly at the girl and the bulky man when he shrieked
and collapsed to the street.  Lambda four, the squad medic, spun around from
his position at point and knelt beside his comrade, swiftly working at the
wound.  "What happened?" Pal asked as he dashed up and secured the girl before
she could run away.
  "She bit me!"  Three replied, trying not to squirm in pain while he was
being doctored.  "She bit me on the neck!"
  "That can't be." Pal replied, "Her ARMPIT was on your neck, I was looking
right at...it."  He trailed off suddenly and looked at the girl, realization
dawning...

  The integrated sword flashed in the dim light as it sliced the girl in
half, spewing black ichor on the ground.  Two fire bolts from the wand sufficed
to set the corpse afire and Palandun brought his little group out of the Shun
with a hurry that wasn't entirely because he was late for an appointment.