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From: ir278@sdcc6.UUCP (Paul Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: "The Wraith", first 20 chapters
Message-ID: <1846@sdcc6.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Jan-85 02:04:05 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcc6.1846
Posted: Sat Jan  5 02:04:05 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Jan-85 01:47:12 EST
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 866

I've been receiving numerous requests for the original 20 chapters
of "The Wraith". I've also been receiving numerous notices from 
MAILER_DAEMON that the copies I sent didn't make it. 
So, I am taking the liberty of posting the original story. Enjoy,
all!

-----


I don't know how many of you remember the Wraith, but he wrote a story
that no one liked and disappeared. Well, he's still around, and has been
writing new stories that, as far as I care, stand up to Hitchiker's Guide
to the Net. So give the guy a chance, try this story...
Send all critiques/flames to me, I'll send them to the Wraith on @gryphon
(he doesn't want his account name revealed)


		-----------------------------
		***  T H E   W R A I T H  ***
		-----------------------------



Okay, so we were supposed to go rescue this dwarf's father from some
sort of creatures. We were in this town, and there were these wizards
who were brothers, and they worshipped the norse goddess of death,
called "Hel". Mouse steps up to the front door of one of these guys, and
(stupidly), he goes inside when he tells the guy that he knows the dwarf
called Thoron. The wizard messes up his mind so he tries to prevent his
friends from reaching the place they want to go. Nobody else knows about
this, of course. In a bar, Mouse pays a half-orc a platinum piece to go
up to a party member (Pierre), and hit him over his head with his own
banjo, which he was playing at the time. As the half-orc is walking back
to his table, Winn, another party member, (who is a gnome) walks up
unseen by the half-orc and hits him below the belt with his staff. The
half-orc doubles over and there's a brawl. The lights is turned out for
Pierre as somebody casts "darkness" on him. Then there is a big ball of
shadow in a 30' radius around him. Eventually, we split, and there are
no scape-goats. However, one of us turns into a bear, a very bad habit
he has. This leads to complications as the citizens of the city run for
shelter in a nearby fort, leaving some of us to peek into the
jewelry-shops and find nothing. Thoron is found two-timing his wife when
she showed up quite suddenly after a long while. She walks out on him.
Everyone gets settled and we left for the island.

		  
			     II
                 (The unwelcoming commitee)

The island we went to is called Talus, I think. We had to kill a bunch
of people and we made a bad impression. The Wraith (a party member)
stuck a broach on his clothing that he found on the body of the
commanding weird person. When we went to a city he could not speak the
language of the citizens and was put under arrest. The questioner asked,
"Ok, what are you doing here?" The Wraith answered that he and
friends were looking for a dwarf called Fred who had done him a big
wrong, although this was a big lie. He said that because theese people
hated dwarves. "Listen. If you do just one thing wrong, I'll have you in
jail." Wraith assumed it was weird for people to come to this island of
their own free will (like Russia) since this place was primitive. He was
on probation. He told Mhoram about what he told the questioner, but
unfortunately, people have a tendency to forget what the Wraith says,
and that he's even saying anything at all. This is too-bad, because
Mhoram is questioned by some guy, who says, "Why are you here?" And
Mhoram comes up with a different story. Then the questioner says, "Have
you ever heard of anyone called "Fred"? To which Mhoron (I mean Mhoram)
confesses forgetfully that he "might have", but couldn't remember
off-hand. "Well, this person claims that you are looking for a dwarf
called Fred." "Well, my companion here is sick, and we are here to cure
him by Odin's power." Thoron hid out in the forest until he was
discovered by some people. He was put in prison to be burned later, when
we tried to rescue him. Again unfortunately, The Wraith was not there
mentally at the time, so naturally the sceme failed, and we were all in
trouble with the king. He sent us thru a type of magical loop in mid-air
after confiscating all our possessions except he gave Winn a staff, as
he was a favorite.


                             III
		Suff'rn on the Steppes


On the other side, we ended up in an artic tundra,
and wow, was it cold. During summertime, too. As added companions, we
had some fellows whom we will call Tim and Matthias. Maybe there were
some other people as well, but if so, they were of no consequence. We
spent a little time looking for food and the means to light a fire but
were dissapointed. Tim vanished into thin air, as it were. The Wraith
discovers on his person a jewel which grows warm or hot when met with
the sun's rays. His friends tell him he smuggled it. Then there were
some neanderthalic people whom we befriended. They were going north, but
some of us wanted to go south. Our group split up here. Mhoram, Pierre,
The Wraith, and Winn went with the tribe, and Matthias, Thoron, and
anybody else I forgot to mention went south.
I will first tell what happened to the people who went south.
They encountered some dragon-like creatures and told them, "We come in
peace," and they got a lift to where Thoron's father and a bunch of
dwarves were being held for some purpose which I do not know. 
I will get back to them later. Mhoram turned into a bear again, and this
frightened the tribe people, but we stuck with them anyway. They led us
to a tall range of mountains. We see a flock of birds, but Mhoram
forgets that his familiar is hovering around him, bored, so we didn't
get any.

                              IV
                     Tropical stuff, and Mua-Muas
                      

We went thru a pass into a volcanically heated valley with
weird, unusual plants and, of course, a volcano. There is a large
villiage of these people here. Winn starts dancing and gets rocks thrown
at him, so he stops. The volcano is called Yog Sogoth (?) by these guys.
A cave-girl strikes up a relationship with Mhoram although he turns her
down. We suspect that the volcano is the key out here. If we can get
back to the king within a year, he'll give us back our possessions. The
locals seem to think the volcano is some god with monsters and such, and
they advise against us going there. We do anyway, after we imbibed of
some herbal soup during the middle of the night. Taking a trail up the
side of the volcano, we find an altar and some strange garbage, like a
mace. The floor crumbles around somebody as someone touches it. A trap.
Later we also get a bow. It was reached by sending Mhoram's familiar to
get it, since it was tied to the ceiling over a pit. The Wraith wades
thru a pond of warm water with a rope tied around his waist. As he
reaches the middle of it, it opens up and he plummets about 200 feet
into a small lake. So does Mhoram and Pierre and Winn eventually.
Mhoram gets bitten by some sharks in the lake, but everybody else is
fine. Pierre thinks that as he falls, maybe he'll fall head-first with
his fists in constant fighting motion, so as to land on a shark and kill
it, but thinks better of it and falls normally. We are now in an
underground place. There is a waterfall coming from a cave and a tunnel.
Mhoram's familiar flaps off down the tunnel to check it out and comes
back in hurry. He is being followed by some chanting red humanoid
figures saying "Mua Mua Mua Mua Mua Mua Moi (etc.)". We run up a path by
the waterfall's edge which the Wraith cleverly discovers ("There's a
path here!", he shouts through his sopping wet black velvet mask
[actually, it is not known is he was wearing this getup at any time, as
it is very impractical.])

Everyone scaled the path, but Mhoram gets in trouble with the creatures
called Mua-Muas, which shall be easiest to remember since that is all
they say. One grabs hit ankle and he beats it off with the new mace.
Everyone beats feet uphill and into a tunnel which the stream flows
thru. "Mua", says a big Mua-Mua who thrust its head up to tunnel-level.
The stream ran from a crack
in the wall, the tunnel itself curved until it opened into an
appearantly large room.
"You fool! You'll be eaten by the mua mua muas!", Winn cried after
someone.

 Up ahead, a side passage
 revealed itself, and they all rushed into it. They could still hear the
 sounds of their pursuers not far behind them. However, they all halted
 abruptly at a frustrating sight: before them was a two feet broad
 span of marble crossing to the far side of this new room, whose real
 floor was concealed in the darkness beyond the marble slopes on both
 side of the bridge. There were very gusty winds.

  Pierre started to run across to the door on the opposite side, but was
  almost instantly buffeted off the marble. The sound of him sliding 
   continued for a few seconds, but very soon
  the noise of the wind overpowered all other indistinct sounds. A group
  of mua-muas appeared in the arch behind everyone, and so Winn and
  Mhoram took the plunge and slid off down the side which Pierre had
fallen down. The Wraith thought he might be able to run across the chamber,
but the powerful winds knocked him off opposite the side which everyone
else had fallen.

   Although he was un-injured, the top of the ridge was thirty feet up,
and there was no way for him to climb up the steep enbankment. However,
there was (luckily) an archway in front of him, so he sped off into the
darkness and fell into a pit which was about twenty feet in diameter. He
fell for a while, but by spreading himself out on a horizontal plane, he
enabled himself to fall slower. Actually, though, the only thing which
kept him from falling extremely fast was that there was a fantasically
strong gale blowing up out of the depths. 

The exact same thing had happened to the other people, save that they
were on the opposite side.

   When Warth finally reached the bottom, he landed with a soft thud,
but in no way was he hurt besides a few bruises. The wind had,
impossibly, stopped at the bottom of the giant shaft, and no amount of
arguing can change the fact that the gale sprung out of the thin-air
(which was pretty thin, or had been, considering the altitude at which
Warth had been before he had fallen down a collasping lake and two other
pits, the shaft not included). This new room was lit by torches which had
little unrecognizable stanzas written into them. The air was filled
with a lot of black smoke which made his eyes water. There were some
steps leading up at the nether end of this chamber, so he trudged up
them, so much the action-packed character he was.

He saw the other people before they saw him, so he said in a loud voice,
"Boo! I am the wraith of the Wraith!" Everybody was together again, for
now.

   "Maybe we should go look around on the top of the hill," Winn
   suggested. They had gone down a deep shaft with a very strong gale
   blowing an had stepped out of a smoke filled room. Afterwords, they
   had seen an ominous sign reading, "WELCOME TO HADES", and had beat
   feet, trying to escape from a multitude of mua-muas.
   Everybody agreed to go up, but they were instantly spotted by a group
   of twenty or so mua-muas in the sulferous valley below. A battle
   ensued since nobody could get away fast enough, in which Mhohoram had
   been badly injured by some acidic substance the blobs secreted.
   Meanwhile, Winn Dexter, the sickly gnome, had beaten the mua-muas
   with an ordinary tree branch. Eventually the group found a bronze
   plaque which they determined was a map, since it had lines (trails),
   with weird symbols (points of interest) dotted here-and-there. They
   jogged up one of the rocky trails and saw, against some grey
   mountains, a tall, thin castle with black turrents and walls.

     "Do you want to go over there?" asked Winn.

     "Are you kidding!?", Pierre admonished. "That place must be a
    mua-mua warehouse, a mua-mua factory! It'll be swarming with
    mua-muas!"

     They took another trail and saw a canyon strewn with geysers and
     vapours. Nobody wanted to go down there, so they tried another
     trail and saw a lot of hills that were pointy in the extremist
     degree. Although these hills were only about fifty feet in diameter
     (they were round) in the largest size at the base, they all
     narrowed down to a seeming pin-point at their tops. They were all
     in clusters, and except that it would be impossible for such a
     formation of giant-sized rocks to exist, you might say they were
     monolithic stalagmites. These were in a huge cluster, with the
     smallest ones around the perimeter and the giant-sized ones near
     the center. They saw some more mua-muas and ducked inside the
     cluster, but one of the blob-like figures came close to where they
     were hiding. 

       "Mua? Mua? Mua!", it said excitedly at seeing them. They all had
     run again, this time pursued by about fifty mua-muas of four feet
     in hight. As they neared a group of greek-type pillars, the
     mua-muas halted reluctantly. Some of them stretched forth a
     drooping arm and growled "muaaa!", which gave Mhohoram an urge to
     turn around and run back, but he kept on running towards the
     pillars where everyone observed an old man wearing purple robes.
       "And what can I do for you?" he asked politely
     "We want to get out of here!" Pierre blurted.
     "Yeah, take us out! Can you do that?" asked Winn.
     "I can take you anywhere in the multiverse," the man said.
     "But what can you do for me in return?"
     "We don't have anything to offer...", Mhoram said under his
     breath.
      "You can give me knowledge," the man suggested.
      "Tell me something I don't already know."
      "Did you know that there are a lot of mua-muas out there?" Pierre
      asked.
      "Yes, I already knew that," the man stated.
      "Well, did you know that there's a black castle in the distance?"
  asked Winn.
      "Yes, I already knew that."
      "Who lives there?" Asked Mhoram.
      "Why, the lord of the province." the man answered.
      "Well, did you know that there is a city in which there is an
  unjust ruler?"
      "That's nothing," the man said.
      "Hey," Pierre whispered to his companions.
      "This guy is going to say, "I already knew that," to everything we
      say."
      "Well, let's keep on trying."
      "Did you know that there are some neanderthals who live in a
      valley and drink a weird herbal soup?" ask Winn. 
      "No, I did not," the man said, and tapped him with a staff he was
      carrying. He began to glow and fade. The man explained that he was
      being sent on his way.

      { Pierre mentioned that it would be too bad to have to do all this
      over again, in which case he would tell the old man, "There are
      some flies on that hill over there." }

      Actually, I forget what he really said, although he made it. 

      "I battled the clone of a monstrous demon in a mountain," Mhoram
      stated.
      "Did you kill it?" the man asked.
      "Yes." 
      "Was it as tough as that fifteen feet tall red, glowing mua-mua
      over there?"
      "I...Don't know."
      "Why don't you run over there and find out?"
      "I can't! I'm too weak! I don't have anything to fight it with!"
      "Very well," the wizened old man sighed. "I don't want you to
      strain your brain any longer," he said, and tapped him with his
      staff, causing him to glow bluely.

      { Before that, though, Mhoram's familiar was able to answer a
      question, as was the Wraith, o' course. }


To conserve energy, since there was already an existing account of what
transpired in the mua-mua caves, (most of it, anyway), it was not
written over again. You have just read the existing account. A lot of it
was updated and most of it is new.


			      V
            Meanwhile, back to Matthias and Thoron

They fought a big battle with some robed and hooded creatures with no
visages. A lot of dwarves died, but about four were liberated from
slavery, or whatever was going to happen to them. This was on a ship.
They then went back to the castle, where everyone else was.


			     VI
	     	       Lost and Found 

The king was surprised (I'd suppose) to see us. He then lamely said that
all the treasures in his armory were stolen, and this seems to include
our stuff. Like our weapons. A note was left to us, which we were to
follow the advise of, to find our things again.
Pierre asked a guard what happened, and the guard said he saw a "devil
(demon?) - dog" stop him from doing anything about the theft. The pile
of junk dissapeared, perhaps.
We set sail for where-ever the guy is, that made the note.


			   VII
	           hailing part

A new character is here with us at this time, and we shall call him
Charley, or Charles. He is loud-mouthed and tells people to shut up.
A good thing about him is that he can change into different forms of
creatures which can do a lot of damage. We encounter a haunted vessal,
and it's going to ram us. Winn waves his wound of wounder
(wand of wonder?) at the ship, and the sails turn to stone, collapsing.
We fight a skeletal crew, and the Wraith has a sword which likes to kill
things which are already dead, so great. We loot it and burn it. The
incident is really a profitable one except that more than half our
sailors died. Later, there's a sea-monster which is greedy and wants
some treasure or food, but we give it some stuff and also say, later on
we'll come back and give you some more stuff. "ok," he says.
There is a small island spotted. We assume this is the right place.
In the future, there are so-many plots and sub-plots that everyone will
wish he'd just let the looney have their items and go down to the
nearest bar to start a fight or something.
We row out to the island in a row-boat, telling the people to wait for
us in the galley.



			       VIII
                           Monster Isle

We go into a small bay and we find a black cylinder that is about 12
feet high and 10 feet in diameter. It is smooth and unclimbable. Thoron
jumps into the water and recieves a shocking experience from a type of
poisonous electric eel. He recovers eventually. The eel's lair is in the
cylinder. Pierre and others give Winn a boost up to the top of the
cylinder, whereupon we witness sparks and he falls, having had a
frightening experience, in which he says what happens is that he saw a
lot of demonaic faces and then he discovers that he is wearing an
amulet. When opened, the hexagonally-shaped thing attached to the
necklace reveals a pearl. When peered into, everyone sees visions of
Winn's early childhood, like him and his pals stealing food from a
warehouse. He keeps it. As we go on the beach, we hide the boat and are
attacked by an apish monster with teeth. After we kill this one, a bunch
more appear, but we manage to kill all of them. In the forest we
encounter another one, but it does not see us. Pierre comments that
these creatures must be the population of the island, and that if he
climbed a tree he would see one, and also if he went into the mountains.
He then stated that he may go to the far beach of the island to see
thousands of these creatures basking on towels and drinking beverages.
He is probably being funny, since we encounter lots of these. Once we
obtain a higher altitude with which we hope to observe anything
observable, there is a well which one of us falls into. It is Matthias
that falls in. He is evidently unhurt, as he cries, "Get me out of
here!" from the bottom (?) of the pit. We rescue him and find that in
the chambers at the nether-end of the pit there are many illusions of
sights and colors that cloud the mind. There are also some things which
may have been trolls. We were going to cut down some trees and somehow
suffocate the denizens by smoke but decide it would take to long and was
unrealistic. We trudge along in the tropical jungle and were attacked by
a tentacled thing which we slaughtered. As night falls, we camp in a
cave and hear a clicking sound. It is the noise of a giant bug which
approaches us in our cul-de-sac. Winn causes the bug's eyes to turn into
flashlights, causing it some pain, as it is nocturnal. It falls part way
down a cliff and we see the twin beams of light coming from its eyes a
long way away in the foggy vapours. Winn and Mhoram had some nightmares
in which we were set upon by monkey-like beings whilst in the cave. This
proved to be the case. Everyone except Mouse and Winn were bled to
unconsciousness, and there were yet two beasts left alive. Winn watches
the mouse fight them while he is in a burlap sack. Somehow the mouse
prevails and binds the wounds of the injured party. In unnaminous
decision, we decide to hurry up and find what we are supposed to before
we meet Godzilla.
    In the morning we go to some ruins where we see a hexagonal building
(Winn's amulet-trinket was hexagonal as well, if you remember) and
enter. Wraith's sword begins to get hyper-diaper, which is to say it was
putting on a show that something was amiss, and we meet a lot of
skeletons and a robed lich-thing which we also hite (hit). In an
inner-chamber there was tied to the ground a woman who asked to be
freed. Naturally we were cautious although not chauvinistic (most of us,
anyway), so left her there since somebody sensed she was evil. Happily,
she did turn into a skeleton-form which we took care of. We fight with
some more skeletons, and a weird-looking skeleton slashes Mhoram, who
begins to melt, beginning at his extremities. He is very panicky now.
Finally he is only a lump of dough which shrinks out of sight. 
There is nothing to be done about this. We examine some wooden double
doors with engravings on them that cannot be opened.


                                  IX
             The interior of the building and of a new world


We examined the big wooden door which had a dragon and a man etched
into it. Winn touched the door, but nothing happened, so he started to
rub it. Still nothing happened so he rubbed it violently (it was
very smooth), accomplishing nothing. mouse touched an ingraved sword and
it came out of the door, turning into a three-dimensional weapon. Winn
touched the man, who was very confused. He claimed to have been at a
wild party and lost consciousness. Warth doesn't believe this, but says
nothing. Thoron asked who the dragon-creature was, and the man said he
didn't know. A few minutes later, however, he said that it was his
companion who had been changed from human into reptilian shape by an
evil warlock or somthing. The human-type person wants his sword back so
mouse had to oblige. We told this person that we would like to find
Mhoram and he agrees to help us look for him. Inside the building we
find some floating hoops that reveal unearthly things on the other
sides. beyond one of them lay a great white expanse of nothing, and the
one who went into it found he could not get anywhere because he was not
touching anything. The hoop behind him was getting smaller and smaller,
so he ended up spitting. This propelled him backwards thru the door just
as it closed. There were many boring things behind a lot of these doors
(doubtless this is boring you, of course), so I will not go into detail
about those doors, as nothing eventful happened. Beyond one door,
however, was an alien landscape that had three moons and glass cities.
This lay one hundred feet below the hoop. There was also a river. We
thought Mhoram, if still alive, might be in this place, so we tried to
think of a way to get down. Winn asked the stranger if his lizard friend
objected to his riding on his back. The man said, "Yes, but if you want,
he'll carry you in his mouth." It grinned hugely then, showing a bunch
of stainless steel ivories. 
   I forget how we got down, but as it turned out finally, the stranger
was a devil or demon, as was his friend. We learned this when he
attacked Mhoram (who we found). 
   
  We decided to investigate the city, which was inhabited by geometrical
  objects. These things had no tentacles, arms, or anything, even eyes.
  There were a great many of spheres floating around and talking to one
  another. Pierre called them slobs and made a sketch of them.

Pierre, priding himself on being socialistic but most of all
anti-society, wanted to vandalize or something just as bad. He went
across the river on a bridge, tip-toed carefully to a door, and put his
ear to it for about a minute or so. Then, he cried,
  
  "What do I do now?"

to everyone else. 

Naturally we get in trouble with the citizens.


                               X

          The description speeds up a lot here, and is
          not as boring (in my opinion) as other parts.



                           NARRITIVE


The following is a
narrative given mostly by Pierre from talking:

"Um, mnn. So what happens, you see, is that we slaughter -well, it ends
 up that we get, get hite pretty bad, and we, we end up slaughtering
 this guy, okay? And then, we kinda work our way out, um, but what
 happens is the whole place was under seige from another race of these
 people, these kind of things. An' anyway, these guys, are-- these guys
 that were running the show before, that we totally nailed, were totally
 totaltarialistic, and the new guys that replaced them were for anarchy.
 So anyway, we, uh, we befriended one of the anarchist cubicles. It's
 something like this "(shows picture)", but it's cubist. So what we did
 was, we befriended him, and he says," (changing his voice to nasal)
 " 'Oh, well, I wanna go home'. So we said, 'Tha's allright, cool. Take
 us home. Ok. So he takes us to this, this wizard, I suppose, that's
 way, away. We had to hike for, uh, a day, which is equivilant ah, is
 equivilant to their time, is equivilant to seven days. "

 Eric: "Six days. "

 (everybody: "Six days.")

 Pierre again: "In the meantime we encountered an earthworm"
 (giant crustacean and not actually a worm at all)
 "...And two were swallowed, I think-"

 Thoron: (smiling) "I jumped in."

 (laughter)

 Pierre: "He jumped in--"

 Thoron: "I did."

 Xstarrael: "Why?"

 Eric: "Because it was about to swallow him anyway!"

 Thoron: "Because it was about to bite me so I just--Geronimo!"

 Pierre: "And that way he..."
 (time passes)
 Pierre: "I, of course, did it at long range and fired bows"
 [note: as you can see, the proper word should be 'arrows', but this was
 not changed from what he originally said.]
 Pierre: "I shot four."

 Mhoram: "And I jumped in."

 mouse: "What about me? I didn't jump in! I was all by myself!"

 (laughter)

 Winn: "I can't even remember what happened to me."

 Pierre: "You were, like, conjuring one spell and you missed. "

 (laughter)

 Pierre: "You didn't do very much. Then what happened was the cubicle
 had gone on, and, see, the cubicle had to take a rest, so we went on
 ahead, and we met these birds, see, and we started flying."
 (The birds were really some sort of plated creatures. It is illogical
 to assume that they were giant insects, as there exoskeleton wouldn't
 support their bulk in mid-air.)
 "Yeah, now what was this new guy like? I wasn't sure. He look like a
 wizard or something? "

 Mhoram: "Sartar, you mean? "

 Pierre: "Yeah, Sartar. "

 Mhoram: "He was just...."

 Pierre: "Another one of those big blobs. "

 Winn: "Was it a person? "

 Mhoram: "No, it was just some weird creature, it was like a..a head
 sticking off and its ears down here and all kinds of tentacles around..."
 
 Pierre again: "Well anyway..."

 Xstarrael: "Are you communistic?"(To Mhoram)

 Mhoram: "Socialistic."

 Warth: "You used to be Capitalistic, or for monarchy. Odin is not
 Socilistic. I'm in trouble. I'm the only one who belives in monarchy!"

 Winn: "You're not in trouble because"(cupping his hands over his mouth
        and breathing heavily) "THE FORCE IS STRONG IN THIS ONE!"
 (there is no explanation to this)

 Pierre: "So, so after we meet this guy, he cast a kind of hex....hex,
 on all of us. Like, us, a couple of us were immune...I wasn't, of
 course. And so anyway, I got hexed, where I had to complete some, we
 had to complete some sort of quest..So we were geased, and we had to
 go on this quest. And the quest is what? I mean, what was the quest?"

 Winn: "We had to kill some leapord thing or something."

 Mhoram: "Yeah, and it's hiding in the forest. "

 Pierre: "Yeah, wll, after we kill that, then we have to go back and, "
 (unable to transcribe)

 Winn: "So right then we were in the midst of trying to kill this thing,
 and we were wandering aimlessly thru the woods. "

 Pierre: "Oh, Randal and some of his friends got abducted by some
 snake-things. So we had to get rid of some scum that were bothering
 us...Matthias always brings his stupid friends along when he pops up
 suddenly. I don't know how he got around. So, when they abducted them,
 they left you behind. "

 Winn: "Yeah, they said, 'We don't want you.'"

 (laughter)

                               XI
			     FOREST

We are now in a forest. Unless an important part of plot, will leave
matter-of-fact boring sundry stuff out, like what they had for
breakfast, etc.

A mist arose from the ground, and people began to fear the trees, which
seemed more and more menacing.

Then a tree steps into front of the path and says, "Who are you?"
Mhoram: "I am Mhoram, great worshipper of Odin."

The tree laughs, hahahahahaaa.

Thoron: "I'm Thoron, goblin-slayer, woman-layer. "

(Entire forest laughs)

Wraith and Winn express their heartfelt (?) admiration for trees. Winn
kisses one as Pierre humorously thinks it may be the tree's wife.

"What brings you here?" It said, changing into a lizard type creature.

"We are admiring your trees."

"---what *really* bring you here?--" it asked telepathically to Wraith.

"Two feet."

"Ah! Puny!"

Mhoram covers his eyes with his hand. Maybe he has mind-reading
capabilities. 

We tell the tree about what we want to do, and he would like to help us.
He is leading us now to a villiage.


                            XII
           In which there are a bunch of lizards.

  "Batha Yaka, do you want Krith dead?" asked the black robed, hooded,
and masked figure.
  "Yes, very much. She is a great destroyer of trees." replied
the black-eyed lizard-thing with membranes & tentacles.
  "Then why don't you kill her?"
  "Huh? Well, she's..She's much too powerful for me! I mean, I don't
think you could kill her, either. But if you do, good for you.
I don't want to go further than the outskirts of my forest, but I will
take you up to there. I will also tell you that before you can destroy
Krith, you must kill Sith Kith Kith, and you must get from him the
diadem of Bethtoki. Then, you must do away with Krith's guardian.
Then she will only be impossible to defeat."
  The Wraith was having his doubts about the whole affair. He was made
to hate Krith, and had been filled with the desire to slay her, for
he, among others, had been put upon a geas. Upon fulfillment of that
geas were they to return, whereupon the creature that cast the geas
would return the party to their former place of residence. The Wraith
strongly suspected that that being, called Sartar, did it just to get
them out of his hair, and that he did not have any such power.

  "I leave you here." The thing colasced into mist.

For several days the group wandered about the land, avoiding lizard-
people. I didn't know how we were going to get inside, nor how we
were to kill this Sith Kith Kith person, since he was the ruler of
the land.

A few days later, the group was ambushed by a bunch of lizard-things
that were about to beat up on them. Some type of contact must be made,
the Wraith thought. "Sith Kith Kith." Mhoram & everyone else except
Julie & Thoron agreed that they should surrender. Well, they were
tied up and dumped into some cells. 
    "Where are our weapons?" Asked Winn Dexter, who spoke their
language.
    "In dagode room."
    "Dagode! I *LOVE* dagode!" Winn said, although he didn't know who
or what it was.
    "You love dagode???" The thing grinned. They brought him outside, and
after a while Winn was lead back to his cell.
    "'Dagode' means 'torture'," he said.

Winn got bored, & started poking around his cell. He discovered a loose
stone in his back wall. Removed, it showed a small passage. The guard
noticed this, and started yelling and opening up the door, so Winn said,
    "Are all your cells so poorly made?" Mhoram, with a special power
he had, turned invisible. The guard was shocked. He rushed over to some
pals of his, and before they returned Mhoram turned visible again.
The guard was hit on the top of his head. "Idiot."
    Winn Dexter used some of his magic to produce some light on top of 
the guard's head.
    "There's a light on my head! There's a light on my head! Get it
    off!"
But by the time he had gotten over to his pals again, the light had
faded. This time he was pummeled a little. The guard was changed.
Mhoram's wisdom enabled him to put light on this creatures head, as well
as others, but they got used to it. "Don't worry about it," said a
captain. "It'll go away in a few minutes." Mhoram made a light that
would not go away. When he put it on the guard's head, nothing happened.
After about 45 minutes, the guard began getting nervous, and eventually
ran screaming from the jail. 50 or so guards later (they all had lights
on their heads), they group was recognized as something which ought to
be dealt with. They were lead before the reptilian Sith Kith Kith.
    "I've heard that you were doing weird things in my cells, so I
    thought I'd see what you wanted."
    "Why did your men lock us up at all?" Asked Mhoram.
    "You were tresspassing, and an example has to be set."
    "We want a certain magical item--"
    "Do you like Krith?" Asked mouse.
    "Krith? Why do you mention that name? Of course not! She has been
    a thorn in my side, but that's about all."
    "Well," continued mouse. "We were told that you had a diadem
    which would enable us to kill her."
    "You would not be able to kill her. However, I'll sell you the
    diadem, which does not look very valuable to me, for...200 rubles."
    "Wouldn't Krith's death mean more to you than 200 rubles?" asked
    Mhoram.
    "Yes, it would, however, you might just take off
    with my diadem."
    "I don't think we have 200 rubles. I don't even know what a ruble
    is," Mhoram said to his companions.
    "Let me see that stone you have," Sith Kith Kith said to the Wraith.
He was talking about a gem which he had earlier, and which got warm
when held in the sun. The Wraith had used this in an artic tundra in
chapter III.
    "I'll give you 100 rubles for it." 
    "That's a lot of rubles," Mhoram said to him. "We need it. Why don't
    you sell it?" He continued.
    "Okay, I guess, but we still don't have enough rubles."
    "Perhaps we can convince him that we're powerful, so he'll know
    that we mean to kill Krith. I will cause his crown to grow hot,"
    said Mhoram, concentrating. Eventually, Sith Kith Kith,
    without looking at his 
    crown, and keeping his eyes steadily on the party, calmly took
    it off.
    "Sissy Kiss Kiss? Or whatever your name is," said Winn, "How about
    if we give you knowledge? I can teach you how to do some spells."
    "If I can use it to my advantage, fine." Said Sith Kith Kith.
    Sith Kith Kith used them to his advantage. He was firing little
    burts of energy joyfully all around the room, hitting his own
    servants.
    "That's fun!" he said. 
We got the diadem, and left.
    "Stay off the road, becaues there's dangerous stuff on the road!"


			        XIII
                     dangerous stuff off the road.

   Several damaging encounters later, Winn Dexter was pretty upset.
   "I don't see why we have to stay off the road! That guy didn't
   know what he was talking about!" We stay off the road anyway.
   We encountered a bunch of goblins. We thought we were going to
   hack, but they had never seen dwarves or elves before, and didn't
   want to fight. Some of us wanted to let them come along, because
   Krith would also have to fight them as well as us. Others were
   against it. They originally wanted to come along because they had
   no idea of where they were:
       "The last thing we were doing was fighting a sorceror, and we
       ended up here."
And they thought they could hitch a ride back with us. Most of the
people didn't want them along, however, so they left.
Winn: "Because, I mean, if Krith is as powerful as everybody says
she is, I'll bet she'd have no trouble with those goblins. It's like,
'(raspberry)--you're dead.'," he said, waving his arms forward as if
dismissing someone, to show with what little difficulty Krith would wipe
them out.

              

			  XIV
                        Sphinx

A little further on, a lone figure is seen in the night, riding a horse.
Thoron asks Mhoram how well he can see it, and he replied that light
was reflected off several heavenly bodies. Due to a misunderstanding,
Thoron thought Mhoram was speaking of glowing females. (isn't that
silly?) The thing turns out to be an elf. He asks if we want to buy
anything. Thoron asks what he has, and the being replies that he has
about anything he could ask for. Some different things are bought,
all of which are taken out from the folds of his cloak (!). The Wraith
thinks he is a walking dept. store. Thoron, when buying something,
thought of a way to trick the elf.  
     "Copper is our highest coin in worth, and platinum our lowest."
We took off eventually, meet a desert and a big wall. Also a sphinx,
but this one is alive.
     "Tell me where I can find a (magical item forgotten), and I will
      let you past."
     Thoron: "I think there's one about--"
     Mhoram: "No! Don't tell her 'I think', say you know!"
     Wraith: "Don't tell her anything at all like that, for when she
     finds that she has been cheated, she's going to be really mad."
     Mhoram: "Yeah, I know.."
     Wraith: "How about riddles? Do you like riddles? If I tell you
              one you can't guess, will you let us past?"
     Sphinx: "Yes. One person per unsolvable riddle."
     Wraith: (dredging his memory) "What is..No, just a second...
             OK, what is the beginning of eternity, the end of time & space,
             the beginning of every end, and the end of every race?"
     Thoron: (although he is not being asked) "Twilight zone."
     Sphinx: "Twilight zone."
     Wraith: "Wrong! The letter 'e'."
     Sphinx: (smiling) "Could you run that by me one more time?"
     Wraith: "What is the beginning of Eternity, the end of timE &
     spacE, the beginning of every End, and the end of every racE."
     Sphinx: "Okay, you get past!"

Then, the sphinx asks some riddles to different people, who try to solve
them. I forget what a bunch of them were. One of them was:
"People greatly need this thing, yet would not cry out greatly if it
were taken away from them. What is it?"
  Thoron guessed it; the answer was 'air'.

Some more people had to answer correctly, though. The Wraith asked 
another one:
"What's big, red, and eats rocks?"

"A big red rock eater."

"Well, you got that one right.
How about this one: What has two million teeth, four thousand claws,
and sixty eyes?"

"I don't know."

"I don't know, either, but if you see one, run!"

"That doesn't count."

"How about this, then? What has two legs, is green, and has a trunk?"

"I give up."

"A sea-sick tourist!"

"No. If I were from California, I'd let another one past, but I'm not."

"You have yet to solve a riddle I gave you," the sphinx continued.
"If you solve it, I will take you to where you want to go. If you 
do not solve it by sundown, I'll eat you." I guess she was talking
to Pierre.

(time passes, and no answers)

"I'll give you a hint," the sphinx said, eating a sandwich.
"Every one of you can see it."

No one was able to correctly guess it.
"Cheese is the answer."

"That wasn't a good riddle!" Mhoram protested.

"Listen, I'll give you one more chance. You have to solve this one
quickly. (riddle which I forget)"

"You." the Wraith said.

"You got it." The sphinx said. "I'll carry you half-way to your
destination.
 
"You're supposed to solve the easy ones!" Thoron said to the Wraith.

"Actually, I didn't clearly understand the riddle she asked, so I
guessed."

"Good guess!" Thoron said.

                         
                               XV
                             pyramid

I suppose Krith lives in this pyramid which we look at, about
10 miles away from us. There is no cover. We go up to the
Pyramid to try to find a way in, and Thoron notices an uneven
block. Pushing it, and remarking about the poor quality, the
block slides inwards until a passage is revealed, and the block
lifts itself up like a garage door. As I transcribe this we have gone
inside, and are in a dark passage.