From alt.pub.dragons-inn Tue Aug 8 08:51:42 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8609 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!news.uoregon.edu!psgrain!nntp.teleport.com!nntp.teleport.com!not-for-mail From: stiltman@teleport.com (Stilt Man) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: Re: [SATIRE] NHD Makes a Call Date: 7 Aug 1995 23:13:12 -0700 Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016 Lines: 197 Message-ID: <406v9o$5q3@kelly.teleport.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: kelly.teleport.com [ADMIN: This is another satire, though it might seem serious until the end . . .] In article , Steve Hutchison wrote: >Not to squash such a lovely parody, but... > >Generica is a city. Nexus is a world. > >Generica has buried sewers, toilets, literacy, and other things useful >for a prosperous renaissance-equivalent fantasy city. As a center for >trade in a dimensional nexus, there have been all sorts of things >imported that one might find anachronistic. Menus. Eyeglasses. Hot >and cold running and walking water. Baths of all types. Sanitation, >especially in kitchens, for the same reason that the medieval folks >HERE had it: food tastes better if it doesn't get fecal bacteria in it. > >And, as established, the Stumble Inn is supposed to be a gathering >place for adventurer types, guards, and other sword-carriers. It's >considered part of the genre for crying out loud. At the sound of the debate, a pair of individuals sitting in one of the dark corners looked up and took notice of the din. A health inspector attempting to lay down some self-appointed law. An anarchist showing the different witty ways to shriek "fight the power, man!" Kryalla Simuel shrugged and looked back at her mistwine. Sn'urf the Sn'orcerer rubbed a hand over his white tiger-like fur and slurped at his milk. "Did you hear what he said about magic, Shrouded One?" said Sn'urf. "I calculate a 72.9% probability with my Sixth-Heaven-powered conjuration to the Turambilus Cherubs for their advice on unstable matrices of mortal psyches that he has a connective skeletal specimen to excavate with the way our liberties are being pursued." Kryalla smirked at the excessive verbiage, which surprised no one, except perhaps Sn'urf, who happened to be running his long pink tongue down the side of his glass, ere it dried up. "That reminds me, Shrouded One, "just how does that magnificent specimen which you bear about your shoulders work? I surmise that is provides a protective shield registering 8.1 on the Aegis scale, and note that it radiates a non- detection field of the fourth order of magnitude on the Formuli measurement standard. This is a most potent combination? How did you manage to overcome the Durnoulli quotient of the Wells factor?" Kryalla looked at him as though he had grown a second head. "My ways are my own to keep. The ways of magic are not so easily explained as that." "But you must know. You must at least know what the theory behind it is! That is a most impressive device! Even as I attempt to use the second-tier thermocerebral examination upon you, I note that your cloak also gives you a vibro-psionic shield of the eleventh degree by the Tobin Rectification Classification! How can so many defenses put themselves into one functional object?" Kryalla was almost wincing by this point. "How does one combine so many images into one piece of artwork? How does one appreciate the beauty of a waterfall and that of an empty plain of flowers, though the two look nothing alike? How does one explain the movement of the sun in the sky?" "The sun is a gigantic ball of fire thirty-two and a half leagues from our present . . . " "Forget I asked," said Kryalla, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. "Be silent, ere my brief respite from the quest is ruined by all this analyzing of my arts." "Magic is not an art! It is a science! You only consider it an art because you have not fully examined it and broken at the principles of the world that are manipulated by its oscillations!" protested Sn'urf. Angrily, he began to raise a shield to defend himself from a counterattack. However, he found that his attempt to strike at her fizzled, falling prey to the peace spells upon the Inn. "Explain the principle of that," said Kryalla. Sn'urf looked at his hands, dumbfounded. "It appears that there is a non-aggression dweomer of the twelfth Ulrarnian interval in effect in this vicinity. Perhaps if we were to remove our energies from the area in which this pre-emptive defense has been placed, we could continue our conversation in a more destructive fashion." Kryalla did not move. "My magic is not to be wasted in petty differences of opinion." "Petty?! PETTY?!?!" squawked Sn'urf. "You treat magic as though it were a completely illogical force that acts according to the whims of the super- natural, while I understand that magic is but another scientific series of laws that the common man of nature simply has yet to fully understand. So it is written in the works of the great Tolkien!" "Who?" asked Kryalla. Sn'urf gasped indignantly. "All right, that does it! Die, heretic!!!" He leaped across the table, attempting in vain to close his bare hands around the slender throat of his antagonist. Kryalla vanished, her illusory shape no longer needed to protect her location. Sn'urf saw the door swinging, and ran outside in anger. "Come back, foul harlot! You cannot hide forever from a eldritch-fusion- powered magnotron probe!" His eyes glittered in the light, probing all the different magnotron flows of reality with a binary search designed to sort his field of view into halves at a time, eliminating a half from the field of possibilities in which his enemy might be hiding. He searched for several turns of a small glass. He ran out of possibilities. "How can this be?!" cried Sn'urf. A slender, ebon-gloved hand reached forth and touched him on the shoulder. Sn'urf whirled, an electro-necromantic death bunny conjured from the air at his whim to leap out at her and munch her head from her shoulders. The creature impacted upon the Shroud and its magic was smothered. "You used a predictable pattern to search," Kryalla smirked. "Such patterns are easily evaded by one with the sight." Sn'urf stopped to think and examine. "How does this sight work? Which of the hosts of the Epicureanjan Light does it call upon?" Kryalla stopped, confused. The photon haglomar sphere impacted upon her at that time. "The ol' Epicureanjan Light charm gets them every time," Sn'urf said happily. "Now you have only one method of escape, my dear, and that will lead you into my Tyllori Omega Vorpal Sword, which has an edge as fine as 1.3 standard subatomic particle measures, a neutron and three quarks, to be exact. It is micro-serrated to provide the optimal cutting edge and is forged of the finest Gagmewithanaxe mithril. You have no escape! Surrender!" Kryalla did not move. This did not occur to Sn'urf. Usually the torment of the photon haglomar sphere was enough to kill a victim in seconds. He certainly did not wish to enter the sphere after her. He shifted up his estimate of the Shroud's protective capabilities to 9.3 on the Aegis scale. "We seem to be at an impasse," said Kryalla. "I cannot leave this sphere without you striking at me with your sword, and you cannot enter this sphere that I have turned to my use without its power destroying you." Sn'urf lowered his sword, realizing that she was right. "Neither of us can act without assured destruction." "I agree, Shrouded One," said Sn'urf. He placed his sword in its scabbard. He estimated a 84.1% chance with the Eldari Lie Detector spell that she spoke the truth. The scarlet lance struck him upon the chest, the sphere's energy shunted into it by her spell. Sn'urf fell back, landing hard upon the ground, dazed. The katana blade hummed at his throat in an instant. "A scientific approach to magic works well when all the possibilities are known," said Kryalla. "With the art, the world is so vast that no mortal being can know all of the possibilities." "I was right," mumbled Sn'urf. "My spell correctly stated that you spoke the truth." "Yes," she conceded. "You were right. Neither of us could act without assured destruction. However, you acted anyway: you lowered your defenses ere I had lowered mine." "Only by a margin too small to measure," said Sn'urf. "Such margins of error are negligible to a scientist. They are deadly to a magician," she said, taking the katana away from his throat. "Thus, you must approach it as an art, since the science can only estimate at something it cannot explain." "Just not yet," countered Sn'urf, dusting himself off as he rose. "Several centuries from now, perhaps, our measurements will get more precise." "It will only reduce the error so that you can avoid destroying yourself with the lesser magicks, and spare you to be destroyed by the greater ones that you have not yet estimated so well," said Kryalla. Suddenly, her face contorted in horror. "No! I have spoken analytically of the art! You were right about me! I am a heretic! I must return to Vortex-smashing immediately!" At that, she disappeared, leaving Sn'urf to think on another day. >Hutch (arbitrary self-appointed crank and one of the few surviving >apdi-geezers.) Stilt (arbitrary self-appointed bored person and another of the few surviving apdi-geezers, as well as long-time disagreer with Hutch about the nature of magic . . . why not parody it? :) +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ + Kryalla Simuel the Shrouded One + +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ + . . . scribed by the Stilt Man, + + stiltman@teleport.com + +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+