Sunday, April 28, 2013

Page 33

Transporting a heavy chest full of coins up a tall flight of stairs was no picnic, even after Ehlissa offered to stuff her purse with coins to lighten the load.  Yrag kept urging them on, wishing for the relative safety of the surface world before he could take his time to search for false bottoms on the chest. 

Once they reached the top of the stairs and the ruined keep, Tenser watched intently as Yrag tipped over the chest and began tapping on the bottom.  He reached inside and shoveled out the coins with his hand so he could get to the bottom from the inside.  He tapped on the inside bottom and then all around the sides of the chest.  He slid his fist down to the bottom of the top-facing side, pulled down, and punched upward to see if he could make the wood perceptively buckle and judge how close to the bottom of the chest it was.

Frustrated by his lack of findings, Yrag glanced up at Tenser.  "Do they teach you anything about searching chests in wizard school?" Yrag asked with irritation in his voice.

"I must have missed that day," Tenser answered flatly.

Yrag grumbled and continued searching.
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11 comments:

  1. OMG! Ehlissa is the sensible one! Figures. LOL

    Searching for false bottoms? Always, ALWAYS . . . bring a thief along. ;)

    Great stuff! Keep it coming!

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  2. Somebody needs to suggest to Yrag that when you don't have a good rogue around, a heavy mace is an acceptable backup tool. ;)

    SirXaris

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  3. What? Ehlissa is going all emo on dungeondelving now? Bringing women into the dungeon...figures. :)

    Who is she by the way? I was searching but could not find references to that character for Greyhawk.

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  4. In e-mail correspondence with Gary Gygax, he once told me that Ernie and Elise were the only players he remembered being present on the first night of the first game. No one seems to remember the name of the character Elise played, so I gave the character representing her's a name that was based on a D&D name itself based on Elise's name.

    No thieves yet! And yrag forgot to bring a mace.

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  5. I like Ehlissa. I think having a female in the group affects young Tenser. I wonder now, who brought Jallarzi into the Circle of Eight? I think it was Tenser. We also know Tenser has a female second in command (name eludes me) at his castle and in Return of the Eight he entrusts Jallarzi with his secrets over anyone else.

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    1. Cymria of Celadon. Eight years late, but I just discovered this!

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  6. Something tells me she won't accept murdering people in their homes either. Think about it: you walk through a dungeon, killing whatever you encounter and taking their loot. Why not just do it on the surface in every village you encounter?

    Hmmm... This is giving me character ideas.

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  7. But then it wouldn't be dungeon crawling, it'd be... city crawling?

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  8. "Something tells me she won't accept murdering people in their homes either. Think about it: you walk through a dungeon, killing whatever you encounter and taking their loot. Why not just do it on the surface in every village you encounter?"

    Because you don't apply the same moral en ethical standards to humans/demihumans who rightfully own their property in civilization under the Rule of Law and aggressive, evil monsters who loiter on ruins beyong the outskirts of that same civilization and who regularly attack, assault, rape, plunder and burn it?

    Killing humanoids and taking their stuff is violating no principles by witch they themselves abide, so they have no moral authority to complain about it.


    Every goblin and ogre slayer is engaged in a morally sound action, and striving to build a world where no one else will ever be required to take on that mantle.Someone that constantly raises ethical issues about dungeon crawling is obviously insane.

    Ehlissa is just suffering from post-traumatic stress from having witnessed deadly violence for a first time after a sheltered upbringing. She will recover, what does not kill you makes you stronger, and become a better person and one more apt to survive in the world she lives in for it.

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    1. Vargr wins round 1 of the debate. Rebuttals?

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  9. LoL!

    I was just being snarky. I'm tired of seeing the "is it evil to kill orc babies?" type of issue crop up.

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