Sailing
I was sailing up an inlet in my nice sail boat and was just going past a sandbar covered in scrabby long grasses when I noticed a young woman wearing blue standing on it, looking rather uncertain. So I parked my boat and went to have a chat with her, and she was rather nice, and somewhat clingy. I wondered what was up. I didn't have to wonder very long as a man approached and I could tell by the body language between the two that she was prostituting herself for some reason, and he'd bought her and thought that that meant that he owned her. I wasn't very sympathetic, she'd gotten herself into this situation, but in the end I couldn't stand it any more and we ran back to my boat together, with the man chasing us.
After a short boat chase, unremarkable except for the fact that boats don't just zoom around like that (they tend to be a lot slower to start, what with needing sails to be set and all that) we came upon another piece of land where we both leapt off and ran. This felt like ancient ruins, except everything was still in good condition. The edges of the stone were still square. Everything was of a kind of grey stone, walls and flooring done very nicely, the corridors felt narrow somehow, despite being 6' wide. It was probably the ridiculously high ceilings. We turned a corner and came to an area where a whole bunch of swords, and plates had been dumped on the floor. I told the woman that she should grab one, and she grabbed a plate. The man came around the corner and rushed into the room, passing us, but stopped, and grabbed a short sword, and looked at the woman with an evil victory. I grabbed a nice broadsword and spun it around a couple of times, getting the feel for the weight, and the man was suddenly much less sure of himself. He backed up around a corner, and then suddenly we were in a room full of people.
It seemed to be a party. Lots of people, mostly 20's ish, about the age of the woman, were relaxing in couches and on the floor, with food on their plates, and most seemed to be watching a TV. We could see outside from here, there were windows finally, and it was dark and stormy outside, and we seemed to be rather high up. Creatures roamed around out there, dangerous bipedal ones, and I hoped that we were safe in here.
I'd been wandering around back, trying to explore this place, when I felt something was wrong, and ducked to look under the table. There were the secret tunnels I hadn't noticed before, and ogres were coming up them to attack us. They took up most of the tunnel but seemed to have no problems moving whilst hunched over like that. I killed them with my forearm mounted ballista. Javelins wrapped with lightning kill ogres fine it seems. I ventured down the tunnel to see what else I could find, and came upon a strange video game setup. It was a long room, split into 3 lanes. Some old wizard guy was cowering at one end of the room, and lots of strangely dressed zombies were waiting at the other. There were nazi zombies and all sorts of crazy stuff. A woman was standing in the left row about 2 paces ahead of the wizard, and she was selecting her class. Her body shape kept flickering as she decided, and a voice over accompanied her performing animations giving a quick description of each class. I wondered how that felt, to be moved around like that. The woman eventually selected the rogue class and was dressed like a Lara Croft clone. And then the game began. Zombies progressed down the lanes towards the wizard and the rogue bounced around slashing them and stuff. One of the rogue's major tricks was traps and thievery. Traps were pretty simple, they just delayed the zombies for a while, like that huge blob zombie there. Thievery was trickier, some of the zombies, mostly the nazi ones carried bombs, and you could steal them and use them. The woman wasn't doing so well though, and strangely the zombies stopped at her starting position and waited to get killed, they didn't threaten the old man at all. I suspected the game was on easy mode.
There was a disconnect, and I was back in the present. I hadn't known I'd been in the past. The party was still going on just down the hall but I was in a smaller room now, and an elderly guy was in there, looking very wizardish. It was storming outside and he had a window open, and in the illumination from a flash of lightning a giant head loomed at me, filling almost the entire floor to ceiling window! I leapt backwards in shock. As my eyes adjusted I could make out the shape of a giant, just lurking by the window. The wizard told me it was fine, the giant was friendly and even had a name. The wizard knew I'd been in the past and wondered which chapter I'd just seen. I started describing what I'd seen and he hurriedly wrote it all down.
After a short boat chase, unremarkable except for the fact that boats don't just zoom around like that (they tend to be a lot slower to start, what with needing sails to be set and all that) we came upon another piece of land where we both leapt off and ran. This felt like ancient ruins, except everything was still in good condition. The edges of the stone were still square. Everything was of a kind of grey stone, walls and flooring done very nicely, the corridors felt narrow somehow, despite being 6' wide. It was probably the ridiculously high ceilings. We turned a corner and came to an area where a whole bunch of swords, and plates had been dumped on the floor. I told the woman that she should grab one, and she grabbed a plate. The man came around the corner and rushed into the room, passing us, but stopped, and grabbed a short sword, and looked at the woman with an evil victory. I grabbed a nice broadsword and spun it around a couple of times, getting the feel for the weight, and the man was suddenly much less sure of himself. He backed up around a corner, and then suddenly we were in a room full of people.
It seemed to be a party. Lots of people, mostly 20's ish, about the age of the woman, were relaxing in couches and on the floor, with food on their plates, and most seemed to be watching a TV. We could see outside from here, there were windows finally, and it was dark and stormy outside, and we seemed to be rather high up. Creatures roamed around out there, dangerous bipedal ones, and I hoped that we were safe in here.
I'd been wandering around back, trying to explore this place, when I felt something was wrong, and ducked to look under the table. There were the secret tunnels I hadn't noticed before, and ogres were coming up them to attack us. They took up most of the tunnel but seemed to have no problems moving whilst hunched over like that. I killed them with my forearm mounted ballista. Javelins wrapped with lightning kill ogres fine it seems. I ventured down the tunnel to see what else I could find, and came upon a strange video game setup. It was a long room, split into 3 lanes. Some old wizard guy was cowering at one end of the room, and lots of strangely dressed zombies were waiting at the other. There were nazi zombies and all sorts of crazy stuff. A woman was standing in the left row about 2 paces ahead of the wizard, and she was selecting her class. Her body shape kept flickering as she decided, and a voice over accompanied her performing animations giving a quick description of each class. I wondered how that felt, to be moved around like that. The woman eventually selected the rogue class and was dressed like a Lara Croft clone. And then the game began. Zombies progressed down the lanes towards the wizard and the rogue bounced around slashing them and stuff. One of the rogue's major tricks was traps and thievery. Traps were pretty simple, they just delayed the zombies for a while, like that huge blob zombie there. Thievery was trickier, some of the zombies, mostly the nazi ones carried bombs, and you could steal them and use them. The woman wasn't doing so well though, and strangely the zombies stopped at her starting position and waited to get killed, they didn't threaten the old man at all. I suspected the game was on easy mode.
There was a disconnect, and I was back in the present. I hadn't known I'd been in the past. The party was still going on just down the hall but I was in a smaller room now, and an elderly guy was in there, looking very wizardish. It was storming outside and he had a window open, and in the illumination from a flash of lightning a giant head loomed at me, filling almost the entire floor to ceiling window! I leapt backwards in shock. As my eyes adjusted I could make out the shape of a giant, just lurking by the window. The wizard told me it was fine, the giant was friendly and even had a name. The wizard knew I'd been in the past and wondered which chapter I'd just seen. I started describing what I'd seen and he hurriedly wrote it all down.