An Adventurer Is You & The GM Hates Your Guts (game)

The Game Room
41

Still, the platypus was unrelenting, “Euw bebber mi mi mag meh puh fff euw wun euw doey beg!”

“Maybe if you dropped the Tamagotchi you could speak more clearly.” Dirk suggested.

“I can enunciate perfectly well, thank you very much.” the mammal responded, obviously having taken some offense.

“I simply assumed, as would any advanced creature, that your reading of the sign back there without so much as the need for ‘How to Read Ancient Pindelornian,’ indicated that you indeed spoke Ancient Pindelornian.”

What I said was:…

42

“I am not real, I am a spirit guide through the yonder cave of the sleeping green ideas.”

“About time” said Dirk “start guiding me, I’m getting my ass kicked here”

“Hold on a minute” I said I am a spirit guide, not your spirit guide" interrupted the Platy,

"We were betting pretty hard that you would be eaten by the Drooldragon. I was sent to guide young Ffarwhufflarthag over there, that kid showed some real potential, but things seem to be a bit off script here. Now since I got the afternoon off, seemingly thanks to you, I popped over to say Hi and before I go I have decided to…

43

…tell you something very important."

Alas, the creature, despite its wisdom, had never been taught not to talk with its mouth full. As he inhaled to make his next proclamation, he sucked the Tamagotchi directly into his windpipe. And missing his front leg, all he could do was tap his throat repeatedly, rather than make the international sign for choking, which in this world inexplicably involved doing a handstand. Very shortly thereafter, the poor beast keeled over.

“I wonder what he was about to tell me?” Dirk thought. Just at that moment two things happened. The sky began to darken, and…

44

it became a very dark and stormy night.

Dirk started shivering in the cold, misty rain, wishing he had some way of starting a fire. But, only having one stick in his hand, he was wishing desperately that it was a match.

45

Trying to keep himself warm, he pulled his towel out and draped it over his shoulders. As he pulled out his towel, the Sears catalog that he was carrying dropped to the ground, opening up to the ladies swimsuit section along the way. Dirk sat mesmerized by the unusual looking ladies who were definitely in clothing that would provide very little protection.

Suddenly, Dirk heard a thump. It was one of those bump type thumps, almost a clump type thump that almost made him jump.

46

Miserably and without much vigor, Dirk sought to find the source of the thump that almost made him jump.

“Hello?” he called weakly into the darkness. “Is anyone there?”

Again came the thump, closer and to his left.

Adrenaline began pumping through his veins and Dirk stood up to face the sound, squinting into the gloom to try and make out what was causing it.

Again came the thump, closer yet and this time from right behind him.

Barely containing his fear Dirk spun quickly around to face the source, wielding his stick like a katana and screaming a primal, guttural cry that was supposed to be a confident sounding “Have at thee, foul beast!” but came out as more of a fearful and reactionary “Bleeeaarrgghh!”

And then he saw it. It was horrible. It was awful. It bent his mind in ways it was not meant to be bent. It was…

47

A woman dressed in a chain-mail bikini. An eighty-year-old woman, hobbling along with the aid of a staff. The raven was sitting on her shoulder and said to her “here’s the guy I was telling you about”.

The aged crone leered at Dirk and said “I am Nubilia the Barbarian Wench. I can show you the way out of the chasm… if you pass my test of- Manhood!” she cackled.

48

Dirk vomited in his mouth, just a little.

Then he happened to glance back at the Sears catalog on the ground, opened up to the ladies swimsuit section.

There, on page 88 was the very woman who stood before him now, only she was svelte and lean and wore a purple stone in her belly button.

Dirk incredulously looked back-and-forth between the catalog and Nubilia.

“Tha-tha-that… That’s you!” Dirk shouted, pointing to the catalog.

In a puff of smoke, the crone metamorphosed into a luscious young bikini model.

“Now you’ve done it,” spoke the Raven.

49

“And for your first test,” the now-young chain-mail bikini model purred, sultrily sliding up next to Dirk and whispering in his ear. “You must do something for me. You must prove to me, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you have never since reaching manhood, ever, have peed sitting down or squatting.”

“Wha—.” Dirk was finding it difficult to concentrate.

“So how is it? Do you pee like a man? Or a little girl?”

50

Well, in the middle of the night, I don’t like to turn the light on, but, you know, I don’t want to pee all over the floor… and, you know how it is—well, not you specifically, of course—it’s just sometimes I feel like I might have to, er, not, um, how do I say this, you know, I’m a little gassy, ok, and I can’t really tell if maybe I have to go number two or if it’s just a bottom burp, so I sit down just in case and, so, well, once I sit down, I don’t want to get back up, and, well…

51

“Oh geez,” the ersatz chain mail beauty roller her eyes with obvious contempt, “Look, just give me a carrot and some of your iron rations and I’ll let you go on your stupid, merry way.”

Dirk obliged and the woman pointed at the rock wall standing before him. The talking rock clucked with impudent glee as Dirk looked up the cliff face. The cliff was so high (much higher than an elephant’s eye) it looked that it was climbing up to the sky.

Dirk looked up and down the rock edifice. Right in front of him there was a smooth concave bit of concaveness in the face of the rock wall about waist high. Actually a bit lower, Dirk surmised, as he is 5’4, a height which would have been considered positively towering in the days of dysentery and scurvy, though now in this modern era is only considered pretty tall.

He looked down at that smug, yapping rock. He looked back at the indent in the wall. His mind quickly spun into calculations, his brain quickly determined sizes, masses, weights, heights, the noises of three footed marsupials, three footed monotremes, the water displacement of a typical tramp steamer, the water displacement of a talking rock, whirring gears, and turning water wheels. He quickly forgot anything that passed through his mind and then quickly rolled for dextrosity, and not getting the numbers he wanted, then rolled for dexterity and grabbed the rock.

“No, wait,” bloviated the bellowing bit of boulder, but it couldn’t do anything else as Dirk shoved him into the incropping of the rock face. It fitted perfectly.

All was silent for but a moment.

Suddenly, with rumbling and groaning and dust spewing across the ground, the rock wall slid open like some magical grocery store door made entirely out of rock.

Dirk peered through the freshly opened portal and saw darkness. But further out he saw… more darkness. Straining his eyes for all they were worth, he peered further and saw… shapes… a town in the distance, in the darkness. Sturdy wooden buildings, lit lanterns dotting the town, swinging to and fro upon ropes, a tavern it seems, a bonfire, three donkeys, a cart, a bushel basket full of cabbages, a bonfire, villagers moving to and fro, and a pond of sleeping ducks were the sights he could just barely make out in the dark distance. And singing, he thought he heard singing.

52

It was a tired, hungry, cold and soaked to the skin Dirk who finally stumbled into the outskirts of the village. At least the rain had finally let up, though even before it hadn’t seemed to dampen the mood of the villagers, who were singing around the bonfires and having a merry time. Dirk happened to spot a familar face- the old man he’d seen on the road earlier that day. Walking up to him, Dirk was greeted with enthusiasm:

“Hail Adventurer! What befell you at the castle?”

Not wanting to admit he’d never gotten there, Dirk changed the subject: “What are you celebrating on such a cold and wet night?”

“Why, this is Uther’s Night, where we celebrate in remembrance of King Bedwetter’s escape from the Crags of Doom through the Fool’s Chasm”.

“The what Chasm?”

“The great Chasm that lies yonder to the south, that guards the way to the Crags of Doom. It is a perilous place, full of sharp rocks, foul creatures and treacherous deceivers. Nought but wayward fools go there, hence the name.”

“A- a-ha, of course” stammered Dirk. “So, anywhere I can stay for the night?”

“Tonight the Inn will accept all guests free of charge. Have a tankard or two in Uther’s name, and then we’ll hear about your adventures!”

Dirk mumbled something non-committal and then made his way to the Inn.

53

As Dirk slouches his tried and sopping wet way into the inn, leaving driblets of filthy water pooling behind him, his entrance is noted by a dark, cloaked form in the corner who speedily make its way to the side door. Opening the door a crack, a thin strip of parchment is passed outside.

54

Just wanting to get out of his wet clothes and to draw a nice, hot bath, perhaps with some chamomile, Dirk sidled up to the bar and inquired into a room for the night.

“Erm, uh, Happy Uther Day, friend.” he offered over the din of the minstrels to the hirsute, toothless brute behind the bar.

“I’s supposin’ you be wantin’ a room what fer all the celebratin’ an’ shenang… shennanana… shennganin… partyin’ and wot fer?” the brutish man responded in his surprisingly high-pitched voice. “Well,” he said, holding out his hand and grinning his toothless grin, “there ain’t none left.”

Disappointed, but thinking he understood where this was going, Dirk wearily smiled and reached for his coin purse to see if some shiny might help the inn keep find a vacancy.

As it turns out, where Dirk thought it was going wasn’t actually where it was going. There really were no more rooms available at the inn to rent, for Uther’s Night was a huge tourist draw for the town, which is convenient as increasing tourism is exactly why they made it up, but there was one room remaining where he could sleep.

After a confusing bit of haggling, the exchange of some coins and a quite uncomfortable evening that did not involve a bath at all, never mind one with some chamomile, Dirk found himself lying next to the sleeping inn keep in his personal bedroom.

55

His sleep that night was troubled by disturbing dreams. He dreamt that a woman(?) with the body of the innkeeper and the head of his mother kept trying to pull down his pants while a chorus of three-legged platypi sang “Dirk pees like a gir-irl! Dirk pees like a gir-irl!”.

The dawn broke to reveal…

56

A slobbering creature towering over Dirk (what’s with the slobbering creatures anyway?). It had the body of the innkeeper – if the innkeeper was some sort of octopus, it had the head of his mother, if his mother was some sort of drooling spider, and it was reaching towards him.

“Hungle grlll gal schlaa!” said the creature.

“Ahhhhh!” yelled Dirk back at the creature in surprise.

“Hungle grlll gal schlaa!” repeated the creature.

“Ahhhhh!” replied Dirk in fright.

“Hungle grlll gal schlaa!” insisted the creature as our adventurer hopped to his feet and began to gather up his belongings.

“Ahhhhh!” repeated Dirk, though now he was starting to feel silly hopping up and down and screaming like that.

He made the fastest exit that he could, which was out the window where he tumbled down, down, down….

About three feet to the ground.

He quickly raced across the street with all his possessions in hand and burst through the door of the nearest building. Bored looking women stood around in various stages of undress. Dirk stared at each of the women dumbly until one immensely bosomed woman strode towards him.

“Hello adventurer,” she said sultrily. “My you are a tall man, are you, what? 5’3? 5’4? Why don’t you come upstairs and spend some… quality time with me?”

“Duh duh duh,” Dirk pointed back across the street. “Muh muh muh…!”

“What? Oh don’t worry about Weird Ethyl, she’s mostly harmless.”

“Muh muh muh,” Dirk stammered. Then he looked up the staircase. One woman halfway up shifted wearily and scratched behind herself.

“Come on, adventurer,” the woman in front of Dirk pleaded provocatively. “I just want to take you upstairs and lay there barely interested as you try to make love to me in exchange for money. Maybe even knock you out so my manager can take everything you’ve got.”

She purred a bit and Dirk recoiled a bit. He suddenly remembered that his hand was in his pocket fumbling with his compass. But this was no ordinary compass, this was a +4 Compass of True Truthiness, magically endowed with the ability to either point towards magnetic North, point you towards where you really need to go, or occasionally make people tell the truth.

57

This time, the compass chose the third option.

“I don’t really find you at all attractive,” the slattern prattled. “I’m really just interested in the contents of your satchel. I mean, seriously, you look like the kind of guy who sits down to pee.”

58

“Look, I don’t see what the big issue is! If I get up in the middle of the night and I don’t want to turn the light on, what am I supposed to do? Huh? Piss on the friggin’ floor? Is that what you want? Piss on the friggin’ floor? Huh? Like a friggin’ un-housebroken friggin’ dog? Huh? …on the floor? Is that what you want? Piss on the floor? Or what if I feel like I might have to poo? What then? Should I take friggin’ shit and THEN STAND BACK UP TO PISS? HUH? Ya friggin’ slattern!”

Dirk felt a little silly at his outburst, but then he looked at the table. The dodecahedronal die seemed to be smiling up at him. A natural 20! Critical success. His charisma was -1, but he rolled a critical!

59

The madam smiled at him as if he had passed some sort of unknown test. “Here, take this,” she smiled at him as she pressed a small drawstring bag into his hand.

Dirk clumsily cradled it in his hands. “Guh… wha…?” he stammered.

The woman winked at him. “Now get out of here, you.”

The adventurer shifted the bag into his hand. It felt like within it was about a pound of cottage cheese.

“Get, I said!” she growled in mock anger.

Dirk stumbled to the door and threw his shoulder into it. Pausing momentarily to take a glance back, his eye caught another scantily dressed lady towards the back. A woman wearing a half heart necklace that looked almost familiar.

Dirk crashed out into the street, barely caught his balance, then looked around.

60

As he looked around, he finally noticed a dark cloaked, hooded figure (actually the same who had been stalking him since he arrived at the inn.) The figure gestures to the other scantily dressed lady, who had followed Dirk outside, and the pair begin converging on Dirk, steadily but not hurriedly. The trollop reaches into a pouch, and draws forth something that glints with a metallic sheen. It’s a dagger! The hooded figure readies a crossbow, but doesn’t yet aim it at Our “Hero”.

Dirk stands gaping. Flies which had been previously attracted to excrement in the street swirl towards around mouth.

The tension mounts…