dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-03-12 09:50 am
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-03-12 09:50 am
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There was also Civ V in here somewhere, but that's not as fun to recap, haha!
What a weekend! Let's see if I can remember it all.
Friday - So right after work, I headed on over to Derek's place Friday for the first session of Dustin's Pathfinder game. We were still getting some details worked out, including names for some of the characters.
Here's the play by play:
Calderax (Goldilocks), a blond snarky magic-using fellow with a magic talking sword named Entenyx. Talks to himself a lot. Self-conscious about being apart from his sword, who helped him kill his abusive master when he was younger.
Jocelyn, a blond, refined woman of Serraf, with a cautious nature and a complicated past. She is capable of summoning magics in the shape of dragon, and despite her prudence, willing to leap in and help when help is needed.
Erith, a young, half-elven woman of Zetsian origin; she rides a flying horse and wears the armor of a samurai. Serious, quiet, but also quick to leap to the assistance of those in need.
Merys (Merry), a bubbly blond privileged daughter of New Altia, Merry travels in style and doesn't appreciate it when she's outdone by anyone else-- no matter what unfair magics they might be using to upstage her. Under her glittery bubblegum pink exterior are the hard lines of a ninja. And also a scary face mask. For intimidation.
The mysterious Bramford Wayneright (Red), a lawman who travels the lands taking out the unrighteous and searching for the man that murdered his wife. It's hard to see under his red cloak and hat, but the stray wisp of red hair or patch of pale skin showing through suggest he's a natural redhead.
And of course, Aigua, the apparently rambunctious old adventurer who, before she became a monk and started traveling around with her now ex-traveling buddy, used to be a boring, serious bodyguard. Now she hangs out with folks like Red and Goldilocks, and makes the best of life as she wanders through it.
So, in this world, long ago a ravenous beast was awakened from an eternal slumber. It began to travel the world, and so great was its awful hunger that it burrowed through and ate the world as it traveled, tearing the rocks and stones asunder. To save themselves, mages of the lands came together to create spells to lift their land into the sky, where the Beast could not reach them. Some say it was the Goddess who aided their plans, while others say she only whispered the idea in their ear to save them. While some remained on the surface, most were lifted into the air, and so there they now live. Some islands in the sky are mysterious, visited by no one and known only to a select few; others are vast countries, capable of supporting themselves entirely without the aid of the land below. One, the center of most criminal and mercenary activity, is kept aloft using methods other than magecraft; its many fins and rudders help to keep it aloft, and it slowly spins, giving it its name: the Wheel.
There is where we were headed on board an airship cruise, when the dwarf known as Doc-- a man known to Red, Aigua, and Goldilocks-- burst into the dining hall and, still nervous, hurried towards where they say. In whispered conversation he explained that he feared the Captain might be under mind cnotrol effect, as he'd had a look (being somewhat paranoid about flying) using his magic loop (a loop of string he was pretending was a monocle to look fancy) and seen that the Captain was under some type of enchantment. He was seeking Red, whom he believed might be able to help him track down the cause, or at least kill the person responsible before it was too late.
As it happened, Aigua was sitting next to Red, and Goldilocks was not far; Jocelyn and Merry overhead the whispered conversation and stepped in, unwilling to just sit by and possibly get killed by someone interfering with the pilot. Erith stepped in, worrying that the ship might get robbed as well as crash. We decided to split into two groups-- Jocelyn, Goldilocks and Merry to free the Captain from being spellbound, and Red, Aigua and Erith to investigate the Drow ambassador from Rosfen and the other party guests, including a woman in a fancy ruffled cocktail dress that Doc suspected might be evil, based on what his magic loop was telling him.
[Insert detailed version here; see short version below]
As it turned out, the woman was a vampire! She briefly dominated Red, but with the help of the Drow ambassador, Aigua was able to forcefeed Red a potion and free him from the mind-affecting spell. With the help of security officers after retrieving his weapon, Red cleared the room of most civilians, and then we leapt into battle with the vampire-woman. Meanwhile, the others freed the captain, but found that the ship was still acting strange. They rushed back to help the others and report what they'd found. When she was nearly dead, the vampire woman tried to escape as a gaseous cloud, but Aigua shared that power and followed her, makeshift stake in hand, to kill her in her coffin and take all her stuff. After sending a message to let the others know she was all right and on her way back, Aigue rejoined the group in time for us all to start worrying about the gremlins that the vampire had apparently set loose on the ship.
Between the damage by the gremlins and poor visibility, we crashed into a smoke-coevered floating island. Here, the party disembarked after spending some time hunting and killing gremlins with Doc and the other engineers. We hoped to find some alternative power source on the island and searched in a dark cave. Here we found some wraiths. The group killed them, whilst Aigua located and stoppered a mysterious bottle that had been the source of the smoke. When the smoke dissipated, we were able to discovered that the island was floating because it was inlaid with orihalcum, which floats when wet, apparently. There were also notes from an ancient wizard and decanturs of endless water to be had. Using the orihalcum, we fixed up a life-boat of sorts for other passengers on the airship, sent them on their way with Red for an escort, and began constructing our own, better airship out of the majority of the remains, using orihalcum to power it.
As for the island-- we're planning to make that our base!
Saturday - We were determined to go see John Carter of Mars, and we did! It was great fun and I totally recommend it to anybody who has the cash on hand to go see a movie, and the desire to have a good time.
Here's my background coming in: When I was in high school, I did a research project about the changing voices in marketing, fiction, and general public attitude towards technology in the 1920's and 1930's of the USA. For that project, I went through about ten years of newspapers and took some examples of the changing tone of advertisement (from 'This is a product. Would you like it?' to 'Buy this! You can't live without it.') as well as a couple of stories in fiction-- especially science fiction-- and how that led to a change in the tone of fiction at the time. This meant I read The Warlord of Mars, which happens to be the third novel in the series to do with John Carter of Mars (though notably the last in which he and Dejah star). So I read the book, did my research project, and so it went. In that way that school projects have, the title of the book sort of slipped through my memory, though, and even though I'd liked it I had trouble remembering who'd written it or what it'd been called when, years later, I wanted to tell Danny about the book because I knew he hadn't read it and I thought 'man! That was totally awesome! He totally should!'
Well, I wanted to see the movie because once I heard the name, I was pretty sure that yes, this was related to the book I'd read, and if it really was, then maybe it would be as interesting as I remembered the book being. And wouldn't you know it? It was!
How faithful was the movie to the first book in the series? I don't actually know. I've read that some Tragic Backstory was added in for reasons beyond my ken with regard to why John Carter is the way he is. As a viewer who didn't even know he was a confederate soldier, I didn't feel like it detracted from the movie at all. The gal they cast as Dejah was awesome-- honestly, I liked the casting all around-- and the whole film had a great sense of humor. I did feel like it was a well-done adaptation, in the sense that we knew enough about the characters to grow to like or hate them, which is often a problem I have with fantasy and sci-fi alike.
I definitely want to recommend this movie as highly as possible to as many people as possible. I'll give you a spoilery list of reasons why if you want; but here I'm just trying to get people who might not have been thinking about it to give the film a go. Take it from me, I really don't like going to the movie theater lately. Being forced to sit with other people just doesn't appeal! But I was happy to go to the theater for this film, and didn't even mind paying 10$ to see it. It's fun, actiony, and it's got heart. If you like adventure, give it a shot!
Additionally, if you'd like to read these books and don't want to head down to your local library, Edgar Rice Burroughs's books are available on Project Gutenberg (even in ebook format, it looks like, for those who don't like reading the .html on their computer screen):
A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
Warlord of Mars
Sunday - A lazy day; we had acquired the night before a copy of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, as much because Danny was curious as for any other reason. We watched it after we'd been to the grocery store, and dissected it as thoroughly as we could.
Wizards I would not recommend, unless you are an enthusiast of animation and want to see something a little weird and unusual. Unlike Thief and the Cobbler, it's not much to look at. Bakshi's budget was low and to some degree, I think he liked the look of certain things that to me just look weird. What I had supposed was half-finished rotoscoping in his Lord of the Rings movies was apparently part of the completed project that is Wizards; the movement of the characters has a certain weirdness that sometimes you can point at and say 'I see what he's going for here' and sometimes you can watch and go 'what the hell is the internal structure of this thing, and how is it even moving?'
Bakshi's idea of what he considers a family movie is also pretty bizarre. This film included numerous scenes of elves (whom we are arbitrarily told are the good guys) being devastated by a mental weapon that attacks them with visions of the horrors of war; they then get brutally slaughtered, complete with scenes of some of them sweating and struggling to pull arrows out of their chests as they die; there's lots of naked women, many with nipples peeking out, and at one point a chained up fairy woman is singing a song for a bunch of "Nazi" goblins who have taken up Hitler's emblem as their own. When she finishes her song, they threaten her with a sword, and she begins stripping for them with a resigned expression before the scene cuts away. Family friendly this ain't. But that's good! That's fine! I think non-family friendly cartoons are sorely needed in this world, especially when so many modern movies are hung up on a pathetic teenaged sense of trying really really hard to look 'cool' (where cool means 'bored, kind of pretty, and like I just don't give a shit'; and then also, 'black, white and gray; because color is for children').
But setting that aside, the film was interesting in what it failed to address. I don't know the specifics but I get the impression that the film was Bakshi's baby; he wrote it, he animated it, mostly by himself--right? So here are the things that came up that interested me that got completely dropped by the film abruptly ending:
-Blackwolf, the 'evil' magician, wants to take the land of the light so his people-- the mutants-- can live in the light and happiness, instead of being scorned as they have been for so long. The elves, fairies, and other non-mutant creatures are apparently forcing the mutants to live in the shadowed lands still poisoned by radiation.
-Blackwolf's wife has apparently borne him more than one child, but because they're both mutants, (even though she's just a dark elf, basically), the children are mutants. Blackwolf has been killing them, because until his child is human, he will not keep it.
-Avatar, the 'good' magician, has to give up at what he cares about to succeed. At the beginning of the film he points out that to fight back is to destroy the whole point of being the peace-loving nice guys in this case. He's badgered into going on the quest by his sidekicks anyway, and when he does have a showdown with his brother, he shoots him with a pistol instead of using magic at all.
-Blackwolf's wife is seen fleeing the castle during the battle, with her newborn son. Does she live? The castle's besieged with angry elves, set to kill all mutants. Probably not, but nobody even mentions her after things are said and done.
-'Peace', the reprogrammed robot once known as Necron 99, is murdered more or less as an afterthought, and nobody mourns him; worse, we learn shortly before that death that he was in constant mental battle with Blackwolf from the moment the wizard reprogrammed him-- thus, constant pain-- for his entire short life, during which he did nothing but try to help and protect the others.
Aside from Bakshi's fascination with enormous battle scenes he can't (or doesn't?) animate completely, the film is also very meandering, and unfortunately, the still-shots in certain 'trasitioning' scenes of the characters look way more interesting than the animated versions of them, which lose something by having to be so simple.
That aside, it is a little bit like Nausicaa in idea, so there were some interesting parallels.
Anyway, after that, we fetched us a Dustin and settled down to do the most awesome thing ever: a two-person module in basic D&D! Basic's fun because it's easy to roll up a character. The module's about a jousting tournament, so I made a thief who's squire to Dustin's awesome fighter. They are:
Dame Francesca Varnell, the elderly errant knight and proponent of good and just conduct. She much enjoys adventure, and helping others. She has a streak of gray but is otherwise quite vigorous and looks to be in great shape for her age.
And her squire is Farin "Whistler" Attar (whom the lady Varnell calls 'Adder', naturally, mispronouncing his last name). A young would-be thief, he has somehow ended up serving as the Lady's squire and follows her around. He is missing one of his front teeth and has a knife scar along his left cheek. Aside from being scruffy and somewhat scrawny, he is otherwise unremarkable in appearance.
We had a raucous good time together! Having received a mysterious invitation to the castle of the Black Knight, Dame Varnell seized on the opportunity to investigate the place. She had good reason to want to look, as a local maiden named Gertie had been recently kidnapped in a raid presumably by the Black Knight, and taken to his castle.
As soon as we entered the castle, the drawbridge began to rise, effectively trapping us within the keep. Whistler, leading Dame Varnell's horse, grew nervous.
Whistler: Are you sure this is a good idea, Lady Varnell? Because I don't think we're gonna be able to get out of here!
Dame Varnell: Oh, well, it would do us no good to leave before we've located Gertrude, Attar, you know that.
Whistler: But the gate--!
Dame Varnell: It's almost certainly a trap, after all.
Whistler: Why couldn't you have said that before we got here?
Dame Varnell: Don't be ridiculous! We must take care of Gertrude, in any case.
Whistler: You know, there's a reason nobody else wants to find her. She's mean.
Dame Varnell: Attar! That's no way to speak about a lady.
I will write up a bunch more, but for now there's work to do. Suffice it to say, we had a blast!
Edit: Hey! A more uplifting article about handling internet arguments in a way that turns them back into discussions. Very nice piece!
Friday - So right after work, I headed on over to Derek's place Friday for the first session of Dustin's Pathfinder game. We were still getting some details worked out, including names for some of the characters.
Here's the play by play:
Calderax (Goldilocks), a blond snarky magic-using fellow with a magic talking sword named Entenyx. Talks to himself a lot. Self-conscious about being apart from his sword, who helped him kill his abusive master when he was younger.
Jocelyn, a blond, refined woman of Serraf, with a cautious nature and a complicated past. She is capable of summoning magics in the shape of dragon, and despite her prudence, willing to leap in and help when help is needed.
Erith, a young, half-elven woman of Zetsian origin; she rides a flying horse and wears the armor of a samurai. Serious, quiet, but also quick to leap to the assistance of those in need.
Merys (Merry), a bubbly blond privileged daughter of New Altia, Merry travels in style and doesn't appreciate it when she's outdone by anyone else-- no matter what unfair magics they might be using to upstage her. Under her glittery bubblegum pink exterior are the hard lines of a ninja. And also a scary face mask. For intimidation.
The mysterious Bramford Wayneright (Red), a lawman who travels the lands taking out the unrighteous and searching for the man that murdered his wife. It's hard to see under his red cloak and hat, but the stray wisp of red hair or patch of pale skin showing through suggest he's a natural redhead.
And of course, Aigua, the apparently rambunctious old adventurer who, before she became a monk and started traveling around with her now ex-traveling buddy, used to be a boring, serious bodyguard. Now she hangs out with folks like Red and Goldilocks, and makes the best of life as she wanders through it.
So, in this world, long ago a ravenous beast was awakened from an eternal slumber. It began to travel the world, and so great was its awful hunger that it burrowed through and ate the world as it traveled, tearing the rocks and stones asunder. To save themselves, mages of the lands came together to create spells to lift their land into the sky, where the Beast could not reach them. Some say it was the Goddess who aided their plans, while others say she only whispered the idea in their ear to save them. While some remained on the surface, most were lifted into the air, and so there they now live. Some islands in the sky are mysterious, visited by no one and known only to a select few; others are vast countries, capable of supporting themselves entirely without the aid of the land below. One, the center of most criminal and mercenary activity, is kept aloft using methods other than magecraft; its many fins and rudders help to keep it aloft, and it slowly spins, giving it its name: the Wheel.
There is where we were headed on board an airship cruise, when the dwarf known as Doc-- a man known to Red, Aigua, and Goldilocks-- burst into the dining hall and, still nervous, hurried towards where they say. In whispered conversation he explained that he feared the Captain might be under mind cnotrol effect, as he'd had a look (being somewhat paranoid about flying) using his magic loop (a loop of string he was pretending was a monocle to look fancy) and seen that the Captain was under some type of enchantment. He was seeking Red, whom he believed might be able to help him track down the cause, or at least kill the person responsible before it was too late.
As it happened, Aigua was sitting next to Red, and Goldilocks was not far; Jocelyn and Merry overhead the whispered conversation and stepped in, unwilling to just sit by and possibly get killed by someone interfering with the pilot. Erith stepped in, worrying that the ship might get robbed as well as crash. We decided to split into two groups-- Jocelyn, Goldilocks and Merry to free the Captain from being spellbound, and Red, Aigua and Erith to investigate the Drow ambassador from Rosfen and the other party guests, including a woman in a fancy ruffled cocktail dress that Doc suspected might be evil, based on what his magic loop was telling him.
[Insert detailed version here; see short version below]
As it turned out, the woman was a vampire! She briefly dominated Red, but with the help of the Drow ambassador, Aigua was able to forcefeed Red a potion and free him from the mind-affecting spell. With the help of security officers after retrieving his weapon, Red cleared the room of most civilians, and then we leapt into battle with the vampire-woman. Meanwhile, the others freed the captain, but found that the ship was still acting strange. They rushed back to help the others and report what they'd found. When she was nearly dead, the vampire woman tried to escape as a gaseous cloud, but Aigua shared that power and followed her, makeshift stake in hand, to kill her in her coffin and take all her stuff. After sending a message to let the others know she was all right and on her way back, Aigue rejoined the group in time for us all to start worrying about the gremlins that the vampire had apparently set loose on the ship.
Between the damage by the gremlins and poor visibility, we crashed into a smoke-coevered floating island. Here, the party disembarked after spending some time hunting and killing gremlins with Doc and the other engineers. We hoped to find some alternative power source on the island and searched in a dark cave. Here we found some wraiths. The group killed them, whilst Aigua located and stoppered a mysterious bottle that had been the source of the smoke. When the smoke dissipated, we were able to discovered that the island was floating because it was inlaid with orihalcum, which floats when wet, apparently. There were also notes from an ancient wizard and decanturs of endless water to be had. Using the orihalcum, we fixed up a life-boat of sorts for other passengers on the airship, sent them on their way with Red for an escort, and began constructing our own, better airship out of the majority of the remains, using orihalcum to power it.
As for the island-- we're planning to make that our base!
Saturday - We were determined to go see John Carter of Mars, and we did! It was great fun and I totally recommend it to anybody who has the cash on hand to go see a movie, and the desire to have a good time.
Here's my background coming in: When I was in high school, I did a research project about the changing voices in marketing, fiction, and general public attitude towards technology in the 1920's and 1930's of the USA. For that project, I went through about ten years of newspapers and took some examples of the changing tone of advertisement (from 'This is a product. Would you like it?' to 'Buy this! You can't live without it.') as well as a couple of stories in fiction-- especially science fiction-- and how that led to a change in the tone of fiction at the time. This meant I read The Warlord of Mars, which happens to be the third novel in the series to do with John Carter of Mars (though notably the last in which he and Dejah star). So I read the book, did my research project, and so it went. In that way that school projects have, the title of the book sort of slipped through my memory, though, and even though I'd liked it I had trouble remembering who'd written it or what it'd been called when, years later, I wanted to tell Danny about the book because I knew he hadn't read it and I thought 'man! That was totally awesome! He totally should!'
Well, I wanted to see the movie because once I heard the name, I was pretty sure that yes, this was related to the book I'd read, and if it really was, then maybe it would be as interesting as I remembered the book being. And wouldn't you know it? It was!
How faithful was the movie to the first book in the series? I don't actually know. I've read that some Tragic Backstory was added in for reasons beyond my ken with regard to why John Carter is the way he is. As a viewer who didn't even know he was a confederate soldier, I didn't feel like it detracted from the movie at all. The gal they cast as Dejah was awesome-- honestly, I liked the casting all around-- and the whole film had a great sense of humor. I did feel like it was a well-done adaptation, in the sense that we knew enough about the characters to grow to like or hate them, which is often a problem I have with fantasy and sci-fi alike.
I definitely want to recommend this movie as highly as possible to as many people as possible. I'll give you a spoilery list of reasons why if you want; but here I'm just trying to get people who might not have been thinking about it to give the film a go. Take it from me, I really don't like going to the movie theater lately. Being forced to sit with other people just doesn't appeal! But I was happy to go to the theater for this film, and didn't even mind paying 10$ to see it. It's fun, actiony, and it's got heart. If you like adventure, give it a shot!
Additionally, if you'd like to read these books and don't want to head down to your local library, Edgar Rice Burroughs's books are available on Project Gutenberg (even in ebook format, it looks like, for those who don't like reading the .html on their computer screen):
A Princess of Mars
The Gods of Mars
Warlord of Mars
Sunday - A lazy day; we had acquired the night before a copy of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, as much because Danny was curious as for any other reason. We watched it after we'd been to the grocery store, and dissected it as thoroughly as we could.
Wizards I would not recommend, unless you are an enthusiast of animation and want to see something a little weird and unusual. Unlike Thief and the Cobbler, it's not much to look at. Bakshi's budget was low and to some degree, I think he liked the look of certain things that to me just look weird. What I had supposed was half-finished rotoscoping in his Lord of the Rings movies was apparently part of the completed project that is Wizards; the movement of the characters has a certain weirdness that sometimes you can point at and say 'I see what he's going for here' and sometimes you can watch and go 'what the hell is the internal structure of this thing, and how is it even moving?'
Bakshi's idea of what he considers a family movie is also pretty bizarre. This film included numerous scenes of elves (whom we are arbitrarily told are the good guys) being devastated by a mental weapon that attacks them with visions of the horrors of war; they then get brutally slaughtered, complete with scenes of some of them sweating and struggling to pull arrows out of their chests as they die; there's lots of naked women, many with nipples peeking out, and at one point a chained up fairy woman is singing a song for a bunch of "Nazi" goblins who have taken up Hitler's emblem as their own. When she finishes her song, they threaten her with a sword, and she begins stripping for them with a resigned expression before the scene cuts away. Family friendly this ain't. But that's good! That's fine! I think non-family friendly cartoons are sorely needed in this world, especially when so many modern movies are hung up on a pathetic teenaged sense of trying really really hard to look 'cool' (where cool means 'bored, kind of pretty, and like I just don't give a shit'; and then also, 'black, white and gray; because color is for children').
But setting that aside, the film was interesting in what it failed to address. I don't know the specifics but I get the impression that the film was Bakshi's baby; he wrote it, he animated it, mostly by himself--right? So here are the things that came up that interested me that got completely dropped by the film abruptly ending:
-Blackwolf, the 'evil' magician, wants to take the land of the light so his people-- the mutants-- can live in the light and happiness, instead of being scorned as they have been for so long. The elves, fairies, and other non-mutant creatures are apparently forcing the mutants to live in the shadowed lands still poisoned by radiation.
-Blackwolf's wife has apparently borne him more than one child, but because they're both mutants, (even though she's just a dark elf, basically), the children are mutants. Blackwolf has been killing them, because until his child is human, he will not keep it.
-Avatar, the 'good' magician, has to give up at what he cares about to succeed. At the beginning of the film he points out that to fight back is to destroy the whole point of being the peace-loving nice guys in this case. He's badgered into going on the quest by his sidekicks anyway, and when he does have a showdown with his brother, he shoots him with a pistol instead of using magic at all.
-Blackwolf's wife is seen fleeing the castle during the battle, with her newborn son. Does she live? The castle's besieged with angry elves, set to kill all mutants. Probably not, but nobody even mentions her after things are said and done.
-'Peace', the reprogrammed robot once known as Necron 99, is murdered more or less as an afterthought, and nobody mourns him; worse, we learn shortly before that death that he was in constant mental battle with Blackwolf from the moment the wizard reprogrammed him-- thus, constant pain-- for his entire short life, during which he did nothing but try to help and protect the others.
Aside from Bakshi's fascination with enormous battle scenes he can't (or doesn't?) animate completely, the film is also very meandering, and unfortunately, the still-shots in certain 'trasitioning' scenes of the characters look way more interesting than the animated versions of them, which lose something by having to be so simple.
That aside, it is a little bit like Nausicaa in idea, so there were some interesting parallels.
Anyway, after that, we fetched us a Dustin and settled down to do the most awesome thing ever: a two-person module in basic D&D! Basic's fun because it's easy to roll up a character. The module's about a jousting tournament, so I made a thief who's squire to Dustin's awesome fighter. They are:
Dame Francesca Varnell, the elderly errant knight and proponent of good and just conduct. She much enjoys adventure, and helping others. She has a streak of gray but is otherwise quite vigorous and looks to be in great shape for her age.
And her squire is Farin "Whistler" Attar (whom the lady Varnell calls 'Adder', naturally, mispronouncing his last name). A young would-be thief, he has somehow ended up serving as the Lady's squire and follows her around. He is missing one of his front teeth and has a knife scar along his left cheek. Aside from being scruffy and somewhat scrawny, he is otherwise unremarkable in appearance.
We had a raucous good time together! Having received a mysterious invitation to the castle of the Black Knight, Dame Varnell seized on the opportunity to investigate the place. She had good reason to want to look, as a local maiden named Gertie had been recently kidnapped in a raid presumably by the Black Knight, and taken to his castle.
As soon as we entered the castle, the drawbridge began to rise, effectively trapping us within the keep. Whistler, leading Dame Varnell's horse, grew nervous.
Whistler: Are you sure this is a good idea, Lady Varnell? Because I don't think we're gonna be able to get out of here!
Dame Varnell: Oh, well, it would do us no good to leave before we've located Gertrude, Attar, you know that.
Whistler: But the gate--!
Dame Varnell: It's almost certainly a trap, after all.
Whistler: Why couldn't you have said that before we got here?
Dame Varnell: Don't be ridiculous! We must take care of Gertrude, in any case.
Whistler: You know, there's a reason nobody else wants to find her. She's mean.
Dame Varnell: Attar! That's no way to speak about a lady.
I will write up a bunch more, but for now there's work to do. Suffice it to say, we had a blast!
Edit: Hey! A more uplifting article about handling internet arguments in a way that turns them back into discussions. Very nice piece!