From alt.pub.dragons-inn Tue Oct 3 15:47:52 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8743 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!psgrain!nntp.teleport.com!nntp.teleport.com!not-for-mail From: muse@teleport.com (Andrew T Millard) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: Re: [Inn] Chapter 1/1: The Dark Stranger Date: 27 Sep 1995 00:10:48 -0700 Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016 Lines: 59 Message-ID: <44atdo$r9b@linda.teleport.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: linda.teleport.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] The tall, lithe stranger, clad in worn leather pants and a wool lined cloak, lays pinned under one of the two pieces of the newly broken tavern door, dazed and confused by the experience of having a midget flinging a door at him. A midget with mauve hair... The stranger remembers a scene from his childhood, back in a small village in the Generica chapter of Austria... He is eight, and loves his mother vary much. She is four-hundred and seventy-five pounds, and loves food very much. He sees her face scruch up, and then sees the blood seeping through her Extra Hefty sized shirt from the Generica branch of Georgio Armani. He turns around, realizes that he is now staring at a wall, turns back around, and sees a short, mauve-haired midget pulling an axe from Momma's back, and grinning wildly. He faints, and wakes up to a deathly quiet house... The stranger realizes that the weight of the door is preventing him from breathing (never even considering that the consequential lack of air to his brain might be responsible for his strange recollection, seeing as how he had grown up in the land of Id, and his mother was still alive, and he didn't know who Georgio Armani was...), and quickly shoved the oaken mass off of his body, inadvertantly landing it on top of the other half of the door, which had landed on his mule (actually, a large dog, but an ugly, loud, annoying dog with big ears and at least a little donkey in him) and crushed the poor thing. The stranger stood in the rain, realized that he didn't own a mule (or a dog), and resolved to get plastered as a celebratory gesture. The tall, slim, wet, and arguably neurotic Idian walked into the tavern, instinctively swiping his hand behind him in order to slam the door about which he had already forgotten (such is often the way with Idians), and promptly asked the nearest customer, a bulky but unimportant supporting character, to marry him (such is *also* often the way with Idians). The hulk of a leftover AD&D character reflexively punched the stranger in the nose (Idians aquire a great deal of punched noses in their lifetimes, which has caused them to evolve a very elastic probiscus). The mysterious but less than awe inspiring Idian thanked the hulk, sadly marking in the process the end of the hulk's career, and shouted to the barkeeper, "A round of drinks for every Idian in the house." He suddenly found himself surrounded by Idian natives, a funny occurance that proved to him for the ump-teenth time that Idians live in bars. He sat down at the only empty barstool, giving a stray and disconcerting glance the mysterious and shady fellow on the other side of the bar. He'd never had contact with mirrors before, and wouldn't know one if he saw his own face in it; this, if anything, explained the ensuing fit of face-making and name-calling with the bar-mirror that all others in the bar, especially (in alphabetical order) the midget and the giant, watched in startled, or perhaps just drunken, amusement. The Idian eventually gave up, feeling quite down at having been thouroughly slandered by a mute fellow (Idians have quite a talent for lip-reading, having had no other surface on which to write...). He asked the barkeep for the strongest thing that came in plastic, matched the puzzled look (and felt quite puzzled himself; the confusion involved is accountable to the fact that in Id, plastic is a term that means "any sort of substance that is hard and shaped like a mug". Idians have a talent for making inadvertant anachronistic remarks while trying to communicate with non-Idians ), and then pointed expressively at first the beer-tap, then the mugs. The bartender nodded, the puzzled look still clinging to his face like wet toilet paper on the hood of a car, and poured the Idian a beer. -- muse@teleport.COM Public Access User -- Not affiliated with Teleport Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-28800, N81)