The Fortunately/Unfortunately Game

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
161

It is a beautiful, luxurious house. In addition to the huge fireplace and rug, there is a couch and a set of easy chairs all made from the finest leather. The tables are all made from hand-carved wood, plus there is a full HDTV setup in the corner. And that’s just the living room. Unfortunately, however, this house is the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition.

Nobody was expecting this.

Cardinels Ximinez, Biggles, and Fang walk into the room, intending to watch TV (Friends is on in five minutes). They, of course, discover our group lying on the rug and yell for the guards. Faster than you can say “Sorry about the food poisoning,” our group is being marched down to the dungeon. They are locked into a damp cell that stinks of mold and bodily waste, and then the guards and cardinals go off to prepare the torture chamber for our gang’s inquisition.

Fortunately, norinew has a lockpick in her backpack.

Unfortunately, the guards took the backpack away from her. It is sitting on a table that is just out of reach of the cell door.

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Fortunately, a rat happens to be passing by the table with the backpack. EddyTeddyFreddy yowls and hisses, and the rat lunges for safety, knocking over the table.

Unfortunately, the table falls away from the cell.

Fortunately, the backpack gets flung off the table into the wall and rebounds within reach of Diceman. He may not be able to tie a decent knot, but he sure can grab a rucksack! Before you can say “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” our group is free!

Unfortunately, they’re still in the dungeon, with no idea of which way to go.

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Fortunately, an unbelievably old and decrepit individual aproaches who, though somewhat forgetful, has been wandering endlessly through the maze of the dungeons since the age of 3. He introduces himself (when he remembers his name) as Peabody Marmalade and has an extremely accurate mental map of the dungeons. He promises to lead the group out if they, in return, will NOT try to ‘save him from himself’ by making him go back to the outside world with them. He hates that. The last lot tried that. No one’s heard from the last lot for a considerable period of time.

Unfortunately, someone asks ‘How considerable?’ and Peabody has to go sit down and consider.

Fortunately, he eventually comes up with the answer.

Unfortunately, everybody else has to sit and consider for a while before they can agree that it IS quite a considerable period of time.

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Fortunately, everybody eventually agrees that the time period is considerable, as evidenced by the fact that they spent so long considering it.

With that settled, everybody stands so that Peabody Marmalade can lead the group to the exit.

Peabody leads the group down the hallway to an intersecting corridor. He turns left, goes down this hallway and past the next two intersections and then turns right at the third one. This hallway goes only a short distance before ending at a T-shaped intersection. Here Peabody turns left again. All this time they are passing numerous other cells similar to the one that they escaped from. All of these cells are empty, however. In fact, there is no sign of any other people at all. Apparently, this section of the dungeons isn’t used very often.

At this point **Diceman,**who doesn’t remember seeing these hallways on their way in, asks Peabody if he’s sure that this is the way to the main exit. Peabody stops, scratches his chin and says “Main Exit? What main exit?” ( :eek: )

Then Peabody remembers. “Oh yeah, the main entrance. No, we’re not going there. They’ve got one of them new-fangled fingerprint scanner doohickies on the door. If anybody but them Inquisition guys tries to open the door, they’ll get dumped into a pit of Carnivorous Gerbils. Any of you folks ever see a pack of Carnivorous Gerbils attack somebody? They can strip the flesh off your bones inside of 60 seconds!”

(pause)

“Now what was I doing here? Oh yeah, leading you folks out. Naw, we’re going to the secret exit. It’s so secret, I don’t think that even the Inquisition knows about it.”

And with that, Peabody starts walking again. He leads the group to the next intersection and then stops. Unfortunately, he can’t remember where to go from here.

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Fortunately, norinew happens to have a bottle of Extra-Strenght Memory Enhancement Elixir™ in her backpack. After a couple of swigs of that, Peabody once again remembers the way.

Unfortunately, the stuff tastes so foul that he is no longer sure he wants to help our band of scruffy travellers.

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Fortunately, RCRacer (who’s tired of being upstaged all the time in his own thread by norinew) has a flask of Drambuie in his hip pocket, and one swig form it restores Peabody’s good spirits. He starts down the correct corridor to the secret exit.

Unfortunately, the rest of the group become outraged at RCRacer’s refusal to share the Drambuie, and in their squabblbing they fall behind Peabody. When they reach the next intersection, he’s nowhere to be seen, and they stop in a confused huddle.

Fortunately, Peabody pokes his head around a corner down the left-hand turn and beckons them to come along.

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Unfortunately, Peabody beckons only with his middle finger, which so angers the group that they want nothing else to do with them; a considerable period of time passes before their anger subsides enough for them to decide ths was a Mistake Of High Magnitude (or something else important sounding).

168

Fortunately, Peabody had drifted off into a nap while the group indulged in their hissy fit. When they come to their senses and walk around the corner, he’s sitting against the wall, snoozing away. They wake him, and he leads them down a dim, dusty, cobwebbed corridor. As they walk on, it becomes dimmer and dustier; the walls change from smooth and finished to roughly hewn out of rock.

At last they arrive at a low, wooden door, with rusty iron crossbeams and a large keyhole by the handle.

Unfortunately – ah, you could see this coming, eh? – Peabody doesn’t have the key. There’s no key to be found, in fact. BigDaiv and Gmork hurl themselves fruitlessly against it, again and again, until they must give up, bruised, exhausted, and unsuccessful in breaking it down.

Mot of the group retire a few feet to huddle over what to do next. ETF, whose suggestion of a nap is met with derision, wanders away back to the door, Idly she grasps the handle and gives it a playful tug.

Fortunately, the door opens inward, and since it was unlocked all the time, it swings open. The group bolt through it, out of the dim, dusty corridor, and into the bright sunshine of the mansion’s exterior! Behind them, they hear the slam of Peabody shutting the door.

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Unfortunately, their Inqistory captors also hear the rather loud slamming of the door by Peabody. Realising (surprisingly quickly) what must have happened, they rush outside to surround the mansion’s grounds (since they don’t know where secret exit came out). They also capture Peabody and hope to torture him into the submission of details.

Fortunately, an argument breaks out amongst the less-than-wily Inquisition about how secret the secret exit was. The argument was started by an Entry-Level Torturer and had, of course, two sides to it. The one side stated that since none of the Inquisition knew about the exit it was indeed a very secret exit. The other side stated that since the entire population of the dungeons (Peabody) knew about it it was not really very secret at all.

Amid all this chaos, our troupe manages to sneak out onder the noses of two guards who are busily shouting ‘T’is!’ ‘T’isn’t’ at each other.

170

Unfortunately, on the way, the group run into the last remaining Immortal Clone™ who wants nothing more than to see our freshly cut internal organs roasting on an open fire (i.e. he wants us dead). And so he has equipped himself with a flamethrower, a chainsaw, 10 grenades, a Disintegrator 4000, a machine gun, 2 pistols, a machete, and has strapped to his belt a tonne of dynamite, plus he brought along his man-eating Immortal Mutt™…gulp.

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Fortunately, the Immortal Clone™ can’t decide which WMD to unleash upon the group first. While he’s mulling over the possibilities, norinew pulls a doggy biscuit out of her backpack and tosses it to the man-eating Immortal Mutt™ and whispers that “It’s just us girls here – no men to eat!” While the Immortals are distracted, the troupe make their escape on a band of fleet horses, who just happen to be standing, saddled and bridled, near the secret exit.

Unfortunately, other than ETF, the group doesn’t know how to ride and have no control over their galloping steeds. ETF pursues them, shrieking equitational basics to the terrified adventurers, but they’re too busy clinging to the saddles, the reins, the manes, anything! to hear and understand her.

Fortunately, the herd instinct keeps the horses together. When, an hour of bruising riding later, they reach a shallow stream, the horses stop and indulge in another instinct – rolling in sand and water. The group’s dismounts aren’t pretty, but nobody gets badly trampled.

I leave it to the other members of this thread to decide whether the horses’ subsequent bolting away from the troupe is fortunate or unfortunate.

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Unfortunate, because the horses have left the group way out in the middle of nowhere, and by now the group it totally lost.

After some discussion, the group decides to follow the stream, in the hope that they will come across a house or something.

Fortunately, after hiking downstream for about a mile, they do find a structure.

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unfortunately this structure is where they just escaped from (it never ends does it)

fortunately the Immortal Clone ™ has destroyed the inquisition

unfortunately its turning on our merry band as i type

174

Fortunately, norinew has had enough of clones, and horses, and Inquisitions, and being lost, for one day, thank you very much, so she reaches into her backpack and pulls out her Ultra Heavy-Duty OneShot Emergency Translocator™, throws its Inclusomatic™ loop around the group, and presses the activator button. The troupe is instantly whisked far away from their predicament.

Unfortunately, they poof back into existence on the lip of an active volcano.

Fortunately, they all have the sense to turn and run screaming down its slope.

Unfortunately, the volcano chooses that moment to erupt violently and send streams of lava down its side.

Fortunately, the lava streams down the side away from our group, who find themselves, gasping and retching, safe (for now) just within the canopy of a tropical forest.

175

Unfortunately, they all catch malaria within 2.5 milliseconds.

176

Fortunately, norinew has a bottle of extra-stength quinine, which restores our group to health within minutes.

Unfortunately, they’re still in the friggin’ jungle.

Fortunately, there is a Land Rover nearby. It belonged to some vulcanologists who were studying the volcano.

Unfortunately, the vulcanologists got fried by the lava.

Fortunately, they left the keys in the ignition.

177

Unfortunately, the group, in a moment of madness, lets ETF drive. After ten terrifying minutes careening through the trees and smashing through underbrush, Diceman manages to persuade ETF (perhaps it’s the broken end of the quinine bottle that does the trick) to stop and let someone else do the driving.

Fortunately, with BigDaiv at the wheel, things go much more smoothly, especially when the Land Rover slides over a swampy bit and lurches out onto a road. It’s not much more than a track through the otherwise trackless jungle. But it’s a start.

178

Unfortunately, it’s a trail to the temple of Dread Cthulhu (You there, big C?).

Fortunately, he’s gone out to lunch.

Unfortunately, he intends to lunch on our intrepid heroes!

Fortunately, he can’t find them, since he can’t get around all that well on dry land. He’s really just a huge squid, after all.

179

Unfortunately, BigDaiv catches a glimpse of Cthulu and goes insane. He stomps on the gas and the Land Rover peels away in a cloud of smoke. The rest of the group hangs on for dear life as he rounds a corner at 80 MPH and heads off down a different road.

Fortunately, the insanity is only temporary, and BigDaiv soon returns to normal.

180

Unfortunately, the frenzied fleeing has sent our merry band into the not-so-merry Dismal Swamp of Gluggy Sounds™ and all around them they see the tentacles, waving with vague menace, of the Shaggy-Barked Land Rover Eating Willows™.

Fortunately, the road they find themselves on is just beyond the reach of the trees. BigDaiv floors it again, this time without the hysteria, and soon the group is out of the swamp and onto a vast, rolling plain. As far as any eye aboard the Land Rover can see, it’s an unbroken expanse of grasslands.