"Hold on, I just need to comment," Leon uttered as an aside from the usual gaming, "Did you write that prayer yourself?" Maureen looked up from the note she'd scribbled hastily in the library, "Sort of, it was modified from a hymn to Ishtar from ancient Babylon." "That's really cool," said Lynne, "I don't think I've ever heard of anyone coming up with an actual prayer for their character's deity." "I wrote something like that once, I composed an enchantment for my wizard a few years back," said Mike. "How come you didn't read it to us?" asked Steve, "I would've liked to hear that." "It wasn't on any of our campaigns, it was with a different group," Mike explained. "Well, I'd still like to hear it, if you wouldn't mind bringing it in." "Ok, maybe next time."
"If you'd read it aloud while on a campaign that I was DMing, I would have awarded you experience points," said Leon, "Like I'm about to now for Maureen." Maureen smiled, she had wondered how the other players would react to the prayer. She had never liked going to church but there was something about the Raven Queen that made her wish there was an actual religion associated with her. "Have you thought about joining a coven?" asked Magda. "No, I don't know any witches," replied Maureen. "Well, you do now," said Magda.
"We can talk about joining Magda's coven later, for right now I'm going to award Maureen fifty experience points, Maureen, write them down right here on your character sheet, when you get enough points you'll level up." Maureen added fifty points to the three hundred she'd received for helping to defeat the vine people and the labyrinth the previous Saturday. "Ok, now I'm going to have you roll initiative." "Oh no, now what?" whined Lynne. They all rolled.
As the sun sank farther behind a bank of clouds and the sky grew dark, the company grew warier and began to march closer. "No one should be leaving to wander the woods alone," said Hrothgar, meetingGwennevere's gaze sternly, "We are entering the land of Araneae , of which the map and lore tell almost nothing." An owl hooted right over their heads, unnerving them, and took to the air with an almost silent rustle. "A rogue should always be sent ahead in unfamiliar country," said Artemis, "I can go unseen and unheard, seeing and hearing. As a company we make too muchnoice and can be ambushed too easily." Hrothgar considered this, "Very well, but take Rowena with you, you're both rogues. Don't get separated in the dark, and don't lose the company." "I'll make sure of that," said Rowena, as though she alone could.
Apprehension that had been growing in Gwennevere since the sun had gone down intensified as Artemis and Rowena dissappeared silently into these new woods which had become denser and more tangled as the hours creeped on. As the half-moon rose visions came, of clinging, confining space and she thought she imagined odd, staccato thumping sounds as though from far away. The remaining group walked as quietly as they could, mindful of what Artemis had said, and they strained their ears and eyes for signs of danger. Hrothgar fell back from his place in the line and walked next toGwennevere, "What do you reckon?" Gwennevere chanted words in an eerie singsong with a blank, staring expression, not fully realizing their meaning: "The scouts must be called back, these woods are filled with peril." Hrothgar's eyes widened and he ran ahead to find the rogues, "No, not that way," she whispered, before throwing off the trance. "Wait!" she shouted, running after him.
Gwennevere passed Grond and Ferdinand, who called to her, confused and began to run, too. She realized that they couldn't all go scurrying into the woods panicked, wondered why they were and halted, letting them catch up. Hrothgar had already run off in the direction their rogues had gone, but the last thingGwennevere wanted to do now was follow him recklessly. "An enchantment has been laid on these woods, and I fear Artemis and Rowena have been captured." "By who?" saidGrond . "I don't know," she answered, "But they might not know of us yet. If we would know who they are, we must make them reveal themselves. We must build a fire, quickly." "But that would reveal us!" exclaimedFerdinad , "Are you mad?!" "We must build a large fire, very quickly," she persisted, "And we must hide a safe distance away and see who investigates." "Oh, I catch your meaning,"Grond whispered, "Set a trap! Good notion, that."
Having found a reasonably large clearing in the moonlight, situated on top of a small rise in the land and hemmed about with dense trees and brush, they ran about in circles, gathering brush and dried leaves, snapping large branches with all the care they could to keep from making too much noise. Grond agreed to stay behind to build the fire with flint and steel while Ferdinand and Gwennevere scaled a twisted oak twenty yards away, leaving a rope dangling to the ground for him to climb when he was finished. Grond had no sooner pulled the rope up after him when several darkling creatures emerged from the undergrowth surrounding their clearing on the opposite side from where they sat observing the scene.
Revealed in the light of the moon and the fire, the enormous spiders were easily identified. Ranging in size from one to three feet long, they made their way around the clearing on chitinous claws, making small dints in the damp earth were their unnatural weight pressed down upon it. Less easily identified were their stooped, halfling-sized comrades, covered in white hair and possessed of long slender arms and short, squat legs each ending only in a single black claw. Each one had eight sparkling red eyes and shining brown pincers and fangs protruding from their furry mouths over their pale round abdomens. They avoided the fire.
"Ettercaps!" breathed Ferdinand, "We learned about them in school." "Muamman Duathal protect us!" uttered Grond, gripping his mace a little tighter. They gazed, transfixed, as the spiders and their strange companions withdrew into the woods,Gwennevere marking the direction in which they departed. "What would you say there were, a dozen or so spiders and three ettercaps?" wondered Ferdinand aloud. "There are probably more," said Gwennevere , "What did you learn of them and how might they be killed?" Ferdinand scratched his head with both hands and rubbed his eyes as though to jog his memory, "Theettercaps aren't too smart, mostly, keep spiders as pets, can't see detail, just light and dark, and can sense you best when you touch a web they're on, through the vibrations."
"How are they killed?" repeated Gwennevere. "You've got to stab them in the face, I think," so that their scent packets aren't broken," said Ferdinand. "Why shouldn't you break their scent packets?" "Because that will bring a lot more of them. They'relivlier at night, so we should wait until morning before we do anything." Grond scratched his own head and then stroked his beard, his expression faraway, "Yes, I have heard of these ettercaps," he said, "My youngest brother was taken when we left our caves to forrage for food in our youth. No one could discover where he'd got to until his shrivelled body was found, wrapped in silk, a week later." They shuddered, wondering what to do next, when another figure appeared just inside the ring of dying firelight. It was Hrothgar. He moved cautiously, examining the tracks in the clearing. He fell to his knees and held his face in his hands.
Without a word, Ferdinand, Grond and Gwennevere climbed down from the tree and crept towards the fire, still fearing a trap. Hrothgar jumped up and looked out into the gloom, alert. He darted toward the cover of the trees when Gwennevere called, "Wait!" and he stopped just short of the ring of trees as they entered the clearing. "Thank Pelor! The tracks! I thought you'd been captured by the ettercaps!" His face was glad but worn with strain. "We built a fire to discover them, and hid in the trees," said Ferdinand proudly. "It was well done, but we must return to the darkness before we are found, whence came they?" Hrothgar asked. "They came and left through that opening there," said Gwennevere.
As they returned to the darkness (on the opposite side of the clearing) Hrothgar related how he had been unable to find Rowena and Artemis, at first suspecting some sort of prank, until he saw three small white bundles strung together at the top of a tree. "I would never have seen, were they not sillouetted against the rising half-moon." "Was it them?" asked Grond, "No, the casings were much too small, the work of their smaller beasts, catching forrest animals, and yet too large for comfort. I saw one of them, bigger than my head, spinning its night-web and I turned back to find you. When I saw that you had fled, I returned to where I had seen the bundles and kept going, thinking I might find all of you wrapped up in silk. I found two large bundles strung across the forrest path but when I tried to cut them down I was set upon by four of the ettercaps. I managed to kill them without getting bitten and was barely able to escape their spider brood." If you hadn't lit that fire I wouldn't have escaped. I suspect a goodly number of them went to investigate the clearing and so weren't guarding their prisoners."
"Well, there's nothing for it but to wait until morning," said Grond, "We've no chance of getting Artemis and Rowena back in the dark." "We can get them back now, we just need more light," said Ferdinad, "I can cast a light spell that would blind them momentarily." "It would be better if they were blinded longer than momentarily," said Gwennevere, "Do you think you can keep the light going?" "I can try," he replied.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Chapter Two, The Campaign
Leon called them to the table and said, "Okay, let's recap the campaign: you guys managed to make it past my labyrinth of mystery and fight off the vine people at the end." "Just barely!" interrupted Johan loudly. "Yes, I was quite proud of my vine people," said Leon, "You thought you had defeated the labyrinth and there they were on the way out, hee hee." "Jerk," mumbled Mike, "It just kept going and going forever." "Whatever, you loved it," said Leon. "I almost died!" said Mike.
"Could we get started please?" whined Lynne, at which Leon coughed and continued, "So at the end you split up your loot and are richer by about 600 gold pieces each, as well as some loot you managed to pick up in the East chamber. Today, you've awoken in the woods beyond the shaft that you used to get out. You've still got to retrieve the last Amulet of Telamar using the information you got from the Labyrinth. You've woken up and it's time to decide what to do next so I'm going to have you all roll a perception check." The clattering sound of six twenty-sided die filled the air for a moment.
"Do you smell meat cooking?" Grond asked no one in particular, his bulbous nose in the air as he relieved himself on a nearby tree. "No oaf, you just haven't cleaned it out since we ate that rabbit last night," scoffed Artemis, emerging from her bedroll and pulling leaves out of her black hair. The forest was warming as the sun rose, chasing the last of the night mists from the gold-leafed stand of birches in which they were sheltering. They had a map but in the darkness and confusion of the previous night no one was sure precisely where they had ended up, knowing only the name of the land itself: Ordresa Forrest in northern Erraith.
"Wishful thinking, perhaps," mused Hrothgar. He turned over to face them, still under his blanket, propping his head on one hand and rubbing away the encrustations from his eyes with the other, "We finished the last of our rations with that rabbit, which was none too fat, and we've still to fill our water skins." "If you think I'm going out there alone to fetch water, you had better think on it again," Ferdinand called loudly from behind another tree. "As though we'd be foolish enough to expect you to be good for anything but making water," retorted Artemis, answered by appreciative chuckles. Grond sat down and began to examine the new dagger he'd gotten from the spoils of their last adventure, found in one of the lower passageways. The haft was wrought with snaking vines; Grond shuddered and stowed the dagger away in his pack. "Anyone care to trade loot?" he asked no one in particular.
When Gwennevere awoke, roused by the chatter of the company, a feeling of unease left behind by her interrupted dream of clinging vines mingled with the flavor of dread that still remained from the labyrinth night before. She took a drink from her water skin and swallowed hard, hoping to drive the taste and memory from her head; she had only just begun to sleep the night again, finally freed from nightmares inhabited by the huge half-human, half-spider drows they had escaped only a fortnight ago. She stood slowly and staggered away from the campsite to get the feeling back in her toes, hardly acknowledging the protestations that followed her through the trees.
"Could we get started please?" whined Lynne, at which Leon coughed and continued, "So at the end you split up your loot and are richer by about 600 gold pieces each, as well as some loot you managed to pick up in the East chamber. Today, you've awoken in the woods beyond the shaft that you used to get out. You've still got to retrieve the last Amulet of Telamar using the information you got from the Labyrinth. You've woken up and it's time to decide what to do next so I'm going to have you all roll a perception check." The clattering sound of six twenty-sided die filled the air for a moment.
"Do you smell meat cooking?" Grond asked no one in particular, his bulbous nose in the air as he relieved himself on a nearby tree. "No oaf, you just haven't cleaned it out since we ate that rabbit last night," scoffed Artemis, emerging from her bedroll and pulling leaves out of her black hair. The forest was warming as the sun rose, chasing the last of the night mists from the gold-leafed stand of birches in which they were sheltering. They had a map but in the darkness and confusion of the previous night no one was sure precisely where they had ended up, knowing only the name of the land itself: Ordresa Forrest in northern Erraith.
"Wishful thinking, perhaps," mused Hrothgar. He turned over to face them, still under his blanket, propping his head on one hand and rubbing away the encrustations from his eyes with the other, "We finished the last of our rations with that rabbit, which was none too fat, and we've still to fill our water skins." "If you think I'm going out there alone to fetch water, you had better think on it again," Ferdinand called loudly from behind another tree. "As though we'd be foolish enough to expect you to be good for anything but making water," retorted Artemis, answered by appreciative chuckles. Grond sat down and began to examine the new dagger he'd gotten from the spoils of their last adventure, found in one of the lower passageways. The haft was wrought with snaking vines; Grond shuddered and stowed the dagger away in his pack. "Anyone care to trade loot?" he asked no one in particular.
When Gwennevere awoke, roused by the chatter of the company, a feeling of unease left behind by her interrupted dream of clinging vines mingled with the flavor of dread that still remained from the labyrinth night before. She took a drink from her water skin and swallowed hard, hoping to drive the taste and memory from her head; she had only just begun to sleep the night again, finally freed from nightmares inhabited by the huge half-human, half-spider drows they had escaped only a fortnight ago. She stood slowly and staggered away from the campsite to get the feeling back in her toes, hardly acknowledging the protestations that followed her through the trees.
The memory of the more recent battle-fright began to fade as she turned her thoughts instead to the bird calls and morning smells of the woods around her. She marked where the claws of a bear had left gashes in the bark of a tree, listening and smelling carefully for further signs of its presence. The land began to descend under her feet and the undergrowth thinned, allowing the early sunlight through to the damp, gold-carpeted earth. Gwennevere heard the creek before she saw it, a cold trickle not yet stilled by the winter; she gave thanks to the Goddess for leading her to water.
"And where have you been?" queried Rowena from where she sat, arms and legs crossed, feeding a small fire she had started in Gwennevere's absence, made more for the comfort of routine than for warmth or light, the sun now being high over their heads. "In the the woods," she replied. "That much I gathered. Only you left before I awoke, so I had to have Ninny-pate here mend the cut on my wrist." Ferdinand grimaced ruefully and said, "You could've waited for her to come back, it wasn't that bad, for all your complaining." "And now I've a nasty scar for all to see," Rowena continued, brandishing a small, white wrist.
"We were also concerned for your safety," admonished Hrothgar, rolling up his blanket and returning it to his pack, "Artemis kept offering to search but it seemed better to stay here and not go traipsing about." "I offered mostly to get away from those two," she motioned to Ferdinand and Rowena, who were still bickering,"Did you find anything?" Artemis pointed to the now-full skin, "Looks like you found water, anyway." "And mushrooms, snails, chicory, sparrow-grass, and onions," said Gwennevere. "Can you eat that stuff?" Grond sniffed at one of the brown, funnel-shaped mushrooms she had produced from her pack. "You don't have to, do you, and it'll leave more for the rest of us, if dwarves are too picky," Rowena bustled over with a large, shallow cast-iron pan and into it dumped the contents of the pack.
"There's a brook that cuts through the valley, yonder, if you want to try to catch fish," Gwennevere said to Grond, who still looked doubtful at the prospect of a meal made from chicory, onions and snails. "I have no line to fish with, nor bait." "Here, if you bring me some birch bark I can fashion a fish-basket for you, there's a place where the brook narrows and falls over a shelf into a small pool. If we set the basket there it will catch fish for us." Hrothgar interrupted, "We haven't time to wait for a basket to be made, or for fish to catch themselves, we've let too much daylight pass already and must leave after we have supped."
While Rowena sat cutting up the onions and mushrooms, Ferdinand, Gwennevere and Artemis went to fill the water skins and fetch more to make the stew in, along with as much food as they could gather from the woods quickly. Hrothgar went hunting and brought back three grouse which he set to plucking, littering their gear with feathers in his haste. Rowena helped him clean and prepare the grouse, skewering and roasting the little birds on sticks Grond had scraped clean with his knife.
Having eaten their fill, they gathered their gear and set off, deciding to follow the brook to where the map told it would join a river that could then be followed or boated to the nearest town, fifteen leagues all told. "We can't hope to make it much farther than the river," Hrothgar said as they began the next leg of their journey, "And if we are lucky, we may find a bark that will take us the rest of the way, but it will be long after dark by then." They marched quietly as the still-warm Autumn sun made it's way across the sky, each wondering what the night held in store. Gwennevere, at rearguard, chanted quietly to herself the paladin's daily devotional to her Goddess:
Crown us with majestic Fate, Raven Queen
Having eaten their fill, they gathered their gear and set off, deciding to follow the brook to where the map told it would join a river that could then be followed or boated to the nearest town, fifteen leagues all told. "We can't hope to make it much farther than the river," Hrothgar said as they began the next leg of their journey, "And if we are lucky, we may find a bark that will take us the rest of the way, but it will be long after dark by then." They marched quietly as the still-warm Autumn sun made it's way across the sky, each wondering what the night held in store. Gwennevere, at rearguard, chanted quietly to herself the paladin's daily devotional to her Goddess:
To thee your servant chants, O lady,
Destroyer of the undead, Goddess without peer,
Queen who shapes the lives of all mankind,
Thou stately sovreign of the Shadowfell,
Mother of the moon, oh hear!
Lead our weapons surely and award
Victory to those who would do your will.
Crown us with majestic Fate, Raven Queen
Fierce defender of those who have found peace,
Thou makest room for new life; thou dost lead
With bravery our commrades to fight for honor;
The gift of courage is thine for thou art valiant;
Thy will is resolute, irrevocable,
None may undo it save to their undoing;
None may undo it save to their undoing;
Thy hand is merciful, thou queen of the dead,
Clad in enchantment and enrobed with Radiance...
Thou sovereign wielder of the wand of Doom,
Look to your servant, defender of life and death.
"Yes, I suppose death does make room for life," came a soft voice next to her. Gwennevere started and turned to face Artemis, unaware that anyone had heeded her. Artemis, a master Rogue, had doubled back and sneaked up behind her to listen while Gwennevere had become entranced by her own incantation. She reproached herself for failing in the duties of rearguard. "Don't worry, no one can hear me when I want to be silent, but it would be unfortunate if you were attacked while praying for protection," she continued, "I had always thought the Raven Queen a frightening creature who walked the battlegrounds feasting on the dead, like ravens."
Gwennevere, indignant at this somewhat profane description, calmly explained "The Raven Queen assists the departed to the afterlife, so that others might arrive, much as ravens clear away the body after the spirit departs, there being no further use for it." "Oh, I suppose that's true enough, when you say it like that." They walked in silence as night fell, Artemis eventually making her way back up the line, amusing herself by startling members of the company who had also allowed their minds to wander.
"Yes, I suppose death does make room for life," came a soft voice next to her. Gwennevere started and turned to face Artemis, unaware that anyone had heeded her. Artemis, a master Rogue, had doubled back and sneaked up behind her to listen while Gwennevere had become entranced by her own incantation. She reproached herself for failing in the duties of rearguard. "Don't worry, no one can hear me when I want to be silent, but it would be unfortunate if you were attacked while praying for protection," she continued, "I had always thought the Raven Queen a frightening creature who walked the battlegrounds feasting on the dead, like ravens."
Gwennevere, indignant at this somewhat profane description, calmly explained "The Raven Queen assists the departed to the afterlife, so that others might arrive, much as ravens clear away the body after the spirit departs, there being no further use for it." "Oh, I suppose that's true enough, when you say it like that." They walked in silence as night fell, Artemis eventually making her way back up the line, amusing herself by startling members of the company who had also allowed their minds to wander.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Chapter One, First Confessions
Maureen always wished she had been named Morwenna instead, or at least since renting Masterpiece Theatre's Poldark from 1975 with her mother, who said to her, "Oh, I envy your seeing this the first time." A Welsh name (she had looked it up), it meant either "white, blessed seas" or "maiden" depending on how you translated it. She liked to think it had something to do with Aphrodite, born from the white sea foam and reflected that Aphrodite probably hadn't stayed a maiden for long, being who she was but at the moment she left the waves and stepped onto the shore she was pure and clean.
Maureen, who was still a virgin at fifteen and very proud of it, loved thinking about Greek mythology and the origins of words and ideas. She rather regretfully concluded that the connection between Morwenna meaning "white, blessed seas" or "maiden" and the story of Aphrodite's birth was dubious at best but she wasn't quite ready to give it up; A girl could dream. She said the name aloud, "Morwenna" softening the W to make it sound like, "More-hwen-ah." People would comment on the fact that she sometimes had a vaguely English accent, probably due to watching so many TV shows and movies from the British Isles but she didn't care. Things sounded nicer that way.
The bell rang signaling the end of the lunch period and bringing her back from her Greek mythology-inspired reverie. The lunchroom, a large warehouse-like structure with painted white walls and square white pillars holding up the ceiling, housed roughly twenty round white tables at which roughly two hundred students sat every day to eat. Unless it was nice out, and then most people sat outside unless the hornets were bad. Maureen had been stung the previous year when she had waved her hand good-bye to one of her friends and smacked a hornet on what must have been its stinger. Her hand got all swollen and itchy for an entire week but she had a good story to tell, anyway: "I just waved my hand right into it, look now it's all swollen and red!" she breathed to anyone who would listen.
Today, however, Maureen was not in the lunchroom with everyone else (there was a blizzard, it being an unusually snowy February) or outside but in the library. She had been spending every lunch break reading through the titles that she thought sounded familiar or impressive that she could find in the fiction section. So far she had made it through I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Flowers for Algernon, Mill on the Floss, Mrs. Dalloway, Huckleberry Finn, and Watership Down. She had been meaning to read them and here was her opportunity.
Whenever Maureen heard people talking about books or when she found out that movies were from books or whenever she got to the end of an old paperback from the fifties or sixties with the lists of "Classics of Literature" that you could purchase by sending money to the address (she wondered if you could still buy books that way) she would try to make a mental note of the authors and titles so that when she was walking along the library isles the names would jog her memory and she could say to herself, "Oh yes, I've been meaning to read that."
Sometimes the books were boring at parts. Mill on the Floss had taken her forever and she hadn't been able to figure out why the two main characters had to die at the end, especially after she had put in all that work to get through the old-fashioned language. Watership Down had been better but she'd still felt compelled to skip over some of the boring parts to get through it the first time. Since coming to high school she had met a few more people like her, people who enjoyed reading as much as she did but they didn't spend their lunch hours in the library and they certainly didn't read literature, preferring manga, science fiction and romances. Maureen couldn't say that she blamed them; she couldn't explain why she soldiered through George Elliot and Mark Twain despite their relative difficulty when she liked the books her friends suggested too, especially Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
She left the library furtively, as she did every day, wondering what people would think if they knew. She suspected that someone must know by now, as she'd been following this routine for weeks and sure enough, as she turned a corner she saw Lynne, who brightened and said, "Morrie! Missed you at lunch today, everything alright? We've been kind of worried." Good, thought Maureen, maybe they would be nicer to her now, if she ever decided to start going to lunch again. Before she had started her forays into the library, Maureen had felt increasingly alienated from her "friends" who would sometimes tease her for making what they called, "Non sequiturs" in their conversations together. If they would only be patient they would see how what she was saying related to the conversation topic. It had become a joke, though and they frequently wouldn't let her finish by changing the topic or pretending that she hadn't said anything once they had amused themselves by making fun of her by saying something like "You are the non-sequitur queen!"
"Are you still coming to Leon's house for D & D tomorrow?" asked Lynne. "If you still want me too," Maureen retorted. "Of course we still want you, although the group has gotten pretty big since Magda started showing up, I can't believe we have so many girls, this is awesome." Lynne had often complained that her boyfriend Leon's Dungeons and Dragons group was too much of a sausage fest but since Magda and Maureen had been showing up the boys had been complaining that the campaign had become too "girly." Maureen had only been invited to fill a vacant spot left by Rod, who'd graduated and left to join the army and so could no longer fill the role of the group's Cleric. Having read enough Tolkien to get the general idea, she had agreed, although somewhat reluctantly. She caught enough flak at school for still being in the Girl Scouts.
They'd spent a somewhat tedious few hours one cold Saturday night during Christmas break drawing up a character sheet and rolling skill points for her character, Gwennevere, a half-elf Cleric who wielded a staff and dagger, as well as magic. Maureen had felt guilty taking up so much of their time but they explained that each of them had needed help for their first campaign, too. It was easy to lose track of time in Mike's basement, as there were no windows to let in any natural light. She'd rolled rather well on her first five tries, rolling over fifteen for all of the skill levels, so she decided at Lynne's urging to keep those scores. She'd had to decide what feats to take, where she was from, her name, physical attributes and which deity to worship, of which there were several to choose from.
Gwennevere the half-elf Cleric worshiped the Raven Queen, the deity devoted to the destruction of the undead. Maureen hated zombie and horror movies, so the idea appealed to her, although Leon had explained to her that it wasn't necessary for her character to reflect her personality or even her gender unless she wanted it to. Leon related gleefully how he had spent one campaign as a female dwarf rogue, "And what a terror he was, too," Mike had interjected, with his eyes wide, "Once he rolled three natural twenties in a row, killing practically all of the drows himself, oh, that round was a bitch and a half!"
Maureen finished her character sheet, giving Gwennevere long flaxen hair, a black cloak, a height of six foot one inches and as an afterthought, an eye patch. "Ooh, I wouldn't want to meet her down a dark alley!" Mike declared, glancing at the drawing she had been encouraged to make of her character. "Well, you're going to be meeting her down a dark dungeon, so you'd better get used to the way she looks." she replied. To her gratification, everyone laughed.
They had been gaming at Mike's house even though Leon was the Dungeon Master, because Leon's house was being fumigated. Mike's house didn't have the variety of snacks and drinks that Leon's house did but they usually ended up ordering pizza so it didn't matter as much. As usual, despite getting to Mike's at four, the actual gaming didn't begin until around six, after they had made themselves comfortable in the finished basement, arranged around several card tables Mike's dad had retrieved from the garage. Leon sat at the head, sequestered from the others by way of a three-paneled piece of illustrated cardboard meant to keep the players from seeing what was in store for them.
To Maureen's left sat Lynne and Magda, effectively segregating the girls "So you can giggle or talk about clothes or whatever the fuck girls talk about," as Johan had put it. Johan was sitting to Maureen's right and to his right was Leon. Directly across from her hunched over his collection of miniatures sat Mike, wearing the new woolen cape he had purchased at the Renaissance Festival, or "Fest" as they called it, which was only just voluminous enough to obscure his rather plentiful stature. Steve hadn't yet shown up, having not yet gotten off work at Dominoes, where he worked with his girlfriend Magda and so was able to get a discount for the group.
"Did you see Firefly last night?" said Johan, somewhat loudly, as Maureen put the finishing touches on Gwennevere's buskins using a set of colored pencils she had brought from home. "Man, I would not mind living on a spaceship if I got a Companion!" "Especially if they all looked like Inara," said Mike, "Wouldn't that suck, only having an ugly Companion available? "What, like Dr. Who?" asked Maureen, wondering why boys would get so excited about having a platonic female friend to travel space with. Her mother had introduced her to the series starring Tom Baker as a child while the reruns were playing on public television. Actually, once she thought about it, her mother had made her watch Star Wars, Star Trek and most of the Terri Gilliam movies, as well as several Masterpiece Theatres. "You haven't seen Firefly?!" Johan sneered, "Shun! Shun!" he exclaimed, turning away his head, crossing his arms at her and making fists. "She hasn't got cable, it isn't that big a deal!" retorted Mike, "I can burn you the first season, if you want," he leaned over and whispered across the table.
There was a knock on the door and Steve triumphantly descended the stairs shortly thereafter carrying four pizzas and three two-liter bottles, still in his Dominoes hat and uniform. "Didn't have time to change," he said apologetically. "I think you look hot, I love a man in uniform," cooed Mike. "Hands off, he's mine!" Magda said as she skipped over to where Steve was setting down the pizzas, embracing her boyfriend and kissing him on the mouth. "Let's have some music! I just bought Love. Angel. Music. Baby.!" said Lynne, walking over to the very expensive entertainment system recently purchased by Mike's parents. "Oh God! Not Gwen Stephanie!" Johan wretched and made an unhappy face. "Whatever, but I am not spending another five hours listening to the complete works of Metallica," Lynne said flatly, to which Johan returned, "Excuse me, but it would take way longer than five hours, do you even know how many albums they have?" Leon looked back and forth and considered the two of them. "I wouldn't mind a little Gwen Stephanie, put her on, we can listen to something else later."
"Wait, let me put it on," Mike hurried over and took L.A.M.B. from Lynne. "The rents just bought this new stereo and it's kind of tricky and they'd kill me if anything happened to it." As Steve got out his dice and character sheet Magda and Lynne began to dance and sing along to Rich Girl. "Hey, isn't that from Fiddler on the Roof?" Maureen was astonished that she recognized the second track of the album, being anything but up on music trends. "Dunno, could be, haven't seen it," said Lynne, "come and dance with us!" Maureen got up and they danced together until it was time to start gaming, the boys not bothering to pretend not to watch.
Maureen, who was still a virgin at fifteen and very proud of it, loved thinking about Greek mythology and the origins of words and ideas. She rather regretfully concluded that the connection between Morwenna meaning "white, blessed seas" or "maiden" and the story of Aphrodite's birth was dubious at best but she wasn't quite ready to give it up; A girl could dream. She said the name aloud, "Morwenna" softening the W to make it sound like, "More-hwen-ah." People would comment on the fact that she sometimes had a vaguely English accent, probably due to watching so many TV shows and movies from the British Isles but she didn't care. Things sounded nicer that way.
The bell rang signaling the end of the lunch period and bringing her back from her Greek mythology-inspired reverie. The lunchroom, a large warehouse-like structure with painted white walls and square white pillars holding up the ceiling, housed roughly twenty round white tables at which roughly two hundred students sat every day to eat. Unless it was nice out, and then most people sat outside unless the hornets were bad. Maureen had been stung the previous year when she had waved her hand good-bye to one of her friends and smacked a hornet on what must have been its stinger. Her hand got all swollen and itchy for an entire week but she had a good story to tell, anyway: "I just waved my hand right into it, look now it's all swollen and red!" she breathed to anyone who would listen.
Today, however, Maureen was not in the lunchroom with everyone else (there was a blizzard, it being an unusually snowy February) or outside but in the library. She had been spending every lunch break reading through the titles that she thought sounded familiar or impressive that she could find in the fiction section. So far she had made it through I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Flowers for Algernon, Mill on the Floss, Mrs. Dalloway, Huckleberry Finn, and Watership Down. She had been meaning to read them and here was her opportunity.
Whenever Maureen heard people talking about books or when she found out that movies were from books or whenever she got to the end of an old paperback from the fifties or sixties with the lists of "Classics of Literature" that you could purchase by sending money to the address (she wondered if you could still buy books that way) she would try to make a mental note of the authors and titles so that when she was walking along the library isles the names would jog her memory and she could say to herself, "Oh yes, I've been meaning to read that."
Sometimes the books were boring at parts. Mill on the Floss had taken her forever and she hadn't been able to figure out why the two main characters had to die at the end, especially after she had put in all that work to get through the old-fashioned language. Watership Down had been better but she'd still felt compelled to skip over some of the boring parts to get through it the first time. Since coming to high school she had met a few more people like her, people who enjoyed reading as much as she did but they didn't spend their lunch hours in the library and they certainly didn't read literature, preferring manga, science fiction and romances. Maureen couldn't say that she blamed them; she couldn't explain why she soldiered through George Elliot and Mark Twain despite their relative difficulty when she liked the books her friends suggested too, especially Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
She left the library furtively, as she did every day, wondering what people would think if they knew. She suspected that someone must know by now, as she'd been following this routine for weeks and sure enough, as she turned a corner she saw Lynne, who brightened and said, "Morrie! Missed you at lunch today, everything alright? We've been kind of worried." Good, thought Maureen, maybe they would be nicer to her now, if she ever decided to start going to lunch again. Before she had started her forays into the library, Maureen had felt increasingly alienated from her "friends" who would sometimes tease her for making what they called, "Non sequiturs" in their conversations together. If they would only be patient they would see how what she was saying related to the conversation topic. It had become a joke, though and they frequently wouldn't let her finish by changing the topic or pretending that she hadn't said anything once they had amused themselves by making fun of her by saying something like "You are the non-sequitur queen!"
"Are you still coming to Leon's house for D & D tomorrow?" asked Lynne. "If you still want me too," Maureen retorted. "Of course we still want you, although the group has gotten pretty big since Magda started showing up, I can't believe we have so many girls, this is awesome." Lynne had often complained that her boyfriend Leon's Dungeons and Dragons group was too much of a sausage fest but since Magda and Maureen had been showing up the boys had been complaining that the campaign had become too "girly." Maureen had only been invited to fill a vacant spot left by Rod, who'd graduated and left to join the army and so could no longer fill the role of the group's Cleric. Having read enough Tolkien to get the general idea, she had agreed, although somewhat reluctantly. She caught enough flak at school for still being in the Girl Scouts.
They'd spent a somewhat tedious few hours one cold Saturday night during Christmas break drawing up a character sheet and rolling skill points for her character, Gwennevere, a half-elf Cleric who wielded a staff and dagger, as well as magic. Maureen had felt guilty taking up so much of their time but they explained that each of them had needed help for their first campaign, too. It was easy to lose track of time in Mike's basement, as there were no windows to let in any natural light. She'd rolled rather well on her first five tries, rolling over fifteen for all of the skill levels, so she decided at Lynne's urging to keep those scores. She'd had to decide what feats to take, where she was from, her name, physical attributes and which deity to worship, of which there were several to choose from.
Gwennevere the half-elf Cleric worshiped the Raven Queen, the deity devoted to the destruction of the undead. Maureen hated zombie and horror movies, so the idea appealed to her, although Leon had explained to her that it wasn't necessary for her character to reflect her personality or even her gender unless she wanted it to. Leon related gleefully how he had spent one campaign as a female dwarf rogue, "And what a terror he was, too," Mike had interjected, with his eyes wide, "Once he rolled three natural twenties in a row, killing practically all of the drows himself, oh, that round was a bitch and a half!"
Maureen finished her character sheet, giving Gwennevere long flaxen hair, a black cloak, a height of six foot one inches and as an afterthought, an eye patch. "Ooh, I wouldn't want to meet her down a dark alley!" Mike declared, glancing at the drawing she had been encouraged to make of her character. "Well, you're going to be meeting her down a dark dungeon, so you'd better get used to the way she looks." she replied. To her gratification, everyone laughed.
They had been gaming at Mike's house even though Leon was the Dungeon Master, because Leon's house was being fumigated. Mike's house didn't have the variety of snacks and drinks that Leon's house did but they usually ended up ordering pizza so it didn't matter as much. As usual, despite getting to Mike's at four, the actual gaming didn't begin until around six, after they had made themselves comfortable in the finished basement, arranged around several card tables Mike's dad had retrieved from the garage. Leon sat at the head, sequestered from the others by way of a three-paneled piece of illustrated cardboard meant to keep the players from seeing what was in store for them.
To Maureen's left sat Lynne and Magda, effectively segregating the girls "So you can giggle or talk about clothes or whatever the fuck girls talk about," as Johan had put it. Johan was sitting to Maureen's right and to his right was Leon. Directly across from her hunched over his collection of miniatures sat Mike, wearing the new woolen cape he had purchased at the Renaissance Festival, or "Fest" as they called it, which was only just voluminous enough to obscure his rather plentiful stature. Steve hadn't yet shown up, having not yet gotten off work at Dominoes, where he worked with his girlfriend Magda and so was able to get a discount for the group.
"Did you see Firefly last night?" said Johan, somewhat loudly, as Maureen put the finishing touches on Gwennevere's buskins using a set of colored pencils she had brought from home. "Man, I would not mind living on a spaceship if I got a Companion!" "Especially if they all looked like Inara," said Mike, "Wouldn't that suck, only having an ugly Companion available? "What, like Dr. Who?" asked Maureen, wondering why boys would get so excited about having a platonic female friend to travel space with. Her mother had introduced her to the series starring Tom Baker as a child while the reruns were playing on public television. Actually, once she thought about it, her mother had made her watch Star Wars, Star Trek and most of the Terri Gilliam movies, as well as several Masterpiece Theatres. "You haven't seen Firefly?!" Johan sneered, "Shun! Shun!" he exclaimed, turning away his head, crossing his arms at her and making fists. "She hasn't got cable, it isn't that big a deal!" retorted Mike, "I can burn you the first season, if you want," he leaned over and whispered across the table.
There was a knock on the door and Steve triumphantly descended the stairs shortly thereafter carrying four pizzas and three two-liter bottles, still in his Dominoes hat and uniform. "Didn't have time to change," he said apologetically. "I think you look hot, I love a man in uniform," cooed Mike. "Hands off, he's mine!" Magda said as she skipped over to where Steve was setting down the pizzas, embracing her boyfriend and kissing him on the mouth. "Let's have some music! I just bought Love. Angel. Music. Baby.!" said Lynne, walking over to the very expensive entertainment system recently purchased by Mike's parents. "Oh God! Not Gwen Stephanie!" Johan wretched and made an unhappy face. "Whatever, but I am not spending another five hours listening to the complete works of Metallica," Lynne said flatly, to which Johan returned, "Excuse me, but it would take way longer than five hours, do you even know how many albums they have?" Leon looked back and forth and considered the two of them. "I wouldn't mind a little Gwen Stephanie, put her on, we can listen to something else later."
"Wait, let me put it on," Mike hurried over and took L.A.M.B. from Lynne. "The rents just bought this new stereo and it's kind of tricky and they'd kill me if anything happened to it." As Steve got out his dice and character sheet Magda and Lynne began to dance and sing along to Rich Girl. "Hey, isn't that from Fiddler on the Roof?" Maureen was astonished that she recognized the second track of the album, being anything but up on music trends. "Dunno, could be, haven't seen it," said Lynne, "come and dance with us!" Maureen got up and they danced together until it was time to start gaming, the boys not bothering to pretend not to watch.
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