Home
Site News
Personal
About me
Pictures
Professional
School
Work
Resume (PDF)
Hobbies
Cooking
OFP
Programming
Writing
Old GDT Articles
Published
Links
Contact
A century and two score passed since the Luskanites were turned back from the gates of Neverwinter. Peace fell upon the North, but only for awhile. Once again, the denizens of Neverwinter fell upon a mysterious plague. Berringerum, the fallen drow elf spider queen, was summoned from her ravaged homeland to assist.
"We do not understand, this is not the false plague the cult created." The priest of Tyr explained to her, "The cure does not work on it." The current patronage of the temple of Tyr wasn't too impressing to her. She preferred the old days with Aribeth, the paladin, and Aarin Gend, the spy master. The current generation relies too much on heroes. Retired heroes, at that.
"But how can I help, when I have nowhere to start looking?" Berringerum asked the priest.
"Well, that is the interesting part. The Guild of the Many-Starred recently opened a portal into another world. We feel the plague may have originated there. Berringerum left the temple as soon as she could to talk to Eltoora, the guild master at the Neverwinter wizard guild.
"The world is very strange." Eltoora told her, "My assistants report wheeled beasts walking on smooth roads. They live in a town of brick in the middle of a wasteland."
"I wish to speak to them myself." Berringerum told her, and Eltoora grew more sullen.
"That cannot be done. They returned depressed, and ill. They were the first to die from the plague." Eltoora showed her the portal in the wizard lab. It glowed yellow, with no hint of the world on the other side.
"They did mention a market in a huge cave. Perhaps it would have the ingredients to solve the plague."
So Berringerum gathered together her composite longbow, a bunch of potions, some piercing arrows, her wand of power, and a big motherfucking scythe. She stepped into the portal and off she went.
It was about 1AM at the Henrietta Wegman's when some people saw a yellow flash in the parking lot. Nobody paid much notice to it, and went inside. The store was pretty quiet for a Friday night. Two 3rd-year marketing majors were shopping for Labett Blue when they ran into the grim reaper. Or that was the first impression. It was cloaked in back and was walking around with a scythe. It turned it's face and looked at them. It turned out to be a woman with dark brown skin and white hair. The hair glowed like the moon, but her yellow eyes were more penetrating. She would have looked kind of pretty if she didn't seem so sullen. More odd was her long ears that ended abruptly. The two students got their beer and ran off with it in fright. They screamed gibberish, from which Berringerum figured out she didn't understand the native tongue. More odd was the abundance of humans in this cave. No other races elsewhere.
She saw somebody sneeze before picking up some Ben and Jerry's ice cream, so that could have been one of the aids. She quickly realized she could not make purchases from the merchants in this cave using her gold, though they were eager to take it anyhow. Frustrated, she left from the magic doors at the mouth of the cave, and was run over by a speeding Buick.
Back at the temple of Tyr, Berringerum realized she was out of her league. She decided she might need some help. It had been quite a long time, but she remembered a (too) outgoing half ling called Tomi Undergallows who could pick locks better than he could pick his nose. She tried to find him, only to discover old age had finally taken the poor guy away. What an army of skeletons, traps, and a pissed off dark elf couldn't do, passing years in the country finally did to the poor guy. However, he did have an illegitimate son with the same ambitions. He was called Homi Undergallows, and joined her for 200 GP. Berringerum also summered her familiar pet -- a panther by most standards. She also decided on a small, woodland creature to fit between the small passages she saw in the parking lot (sewer grates). She summoned a dire boar for her second trip.
So it was that a dark elf, a cat, a pig, and a midget walked into McGregor's at 2AM on a Friday night, just in time for last call. The language of people here was even stranger than in the cave, but all these people were human as well. Homi feels quite at home here, but finds himself being laughed at by a currently-unknown fraternity. These frat boys were highly motivated to put beers into Homi, who didn't think it was as funny as they thought, but would always accept a free drink. Ten minutes and ten rounds of Beast Ice later, they were buddy-buddy. They finally got around to introducing themselves. The half ling pointed to himself and said, "Homi." He got a warm reaction -- everybody else pointing to each other and said, "Homey!" So they were set. This changed another ten minutes later, when Homi tried to order an ale in his native tongue. The bartender, thinking he's been serving booze to a 14-year-old, tried to get him kicked out. The fraternity, sensing a falling comrade, came to his aid.
Nobody paid attention to Berringerum. All you could see were her glowing eyes in the corner. Knowing that bars and taverns are cesspools of disease and hardship, she thought she would see some of this plague there. She was content in the corner until she was hit by a stray bottle. Not fond of the situation, she leapt up onto the table with her scythe and screamed, "I will see you cut asunder!" The panther leapt over the table onto the nearest patron, and the boar swerved under the tables and chairs. She lopped off a head in one swipe. This caught a lot of attention, and she got even more notice when her hands caught on fire. Even more attention was given to her when the fire spread through the air. Finally, all attention was on her when everybody got caught up in this and was burning. The bar emptied out faster than a Metamucil-eating puppy. Berringerum was last to walk out, and right into a police barricade. She found herself in the temple of Tyr after being shot 12 times. Homi never seemed to have come back, so the priests thought he was still alive on the other side.
Berringerum was having a hard time adjusting to this world. Her record for staying alive was about half an hour. Come to think of it, she never needed to be resurrected at the temple before, and that was on more dangerous quests. She finally decided communication would be essential. She had an Old One translation amulet from her prior Neverwinter adventure, which she reasoned could be used for communications.
Starting at the Wegman's again, she headed to the brick city amongst the wastelands. Once there, she found herself in a large room with a fireplace. One wall was made of glass, which exposed a pool below. A piano was in the corner. Many young human males were sitting at tables in this room, rolling dice and making marks on papers. Berringerum watched intently for awhile, waiting for one to speak.
"I'm not in the room, right?" One of them hollered over to one of the other tables. "What room?" Somebody at the table responded. Meanwhile, another at the table announced, "I wanna cast ... magic missile"
"...The room where he's casting all these spells from..."
Berringerum was intrigued by this sorcery. They talked about attacking the darkness and elves. One of them said he was an elf with gray eyes, even though he was a human with brown eyes. Even stranger was another person said his "sheet" claimed he had blue eyes. People at other tables were rolling 20-sided dice when they claimed to do things like attack. Eventually, she caught their attention.
Wow, are you a cos player?" One of them asked. Berringerum wasn't sure what to so, but decided she needed to know what a cos player was.
"Guys, check this out, she even acts like a drow." By now, a small crowd was forming around her, trying to get her to trip up in her "act." They were impressed by the realism in her scythe and her clothes. Eventually, she managed to ask them about the disease, its symptoms, and a potential cure.
"That sounds like the flew." One of them said.
"The flew? Like a bird overhead?" Berringerum persisted.
"Oh no, F-L-U, but I never heard it killing anybody. Everybody gets it here right about now. With all these strangers moving in together, it's bound to happen."
"But what about a cure?"
"Cure? I guess you could get some from the Corner Store in the tunnels..."
Berringerum left soon after. She was most interested in these "tunnels," and was given an extraordinarily warm farewell (by her standards), along with some 20-sided dice.
The tunnels seemed quite sophisticated for a dungeon. The only problem was getting lost. Eventually, she rescued a prisoner trying to enter the hallway from his cell in the Gleason Hall. Apparently, he didn't have a key out, and all Berringerum had to do was open the door. He explained to her where the Corner Store was.
The attendant at the Corner Store was surprised by the scythe-wielding hooded figure. It interrupted her newspaper-reading campaign to ask where the flu medicine was. The figure found a box of Tylenol, and then asked the attendant how it was used. "If you're really that bent up on the flu, you should go get the vaccine next week." The attendant told Berringerum. She thought Berringerum was terribly sick from the flu because of the black cloak. "People can act real funny when they have a high fever." The attendant told her. Berringerum found out the flu vaccine drive would be held in the SAU next week. After this exchange, Berringerum walked right out of the store without paying. She became fed up with trying to pay with gold. The attendant tried to pursue, but the drow recalled herself to Neverwinter after going around the bend.
A week later, at the flu drive, all in attendance where suddenly greeted by an army of paladins, bent on stealing off the vaccine. They came with swords and dice. Since Berringerum had such bad luck with her spells, she must have thought she needed dice to fight in this world. The only success was when Berringerum managed to kill a campus safety officer by throwing her dice at them. After a good embarrassing 10 minutes of rolling dice, all involved realized the swords worked much better by themselves. They literally cut their way to the front of the line, and then were stifled. There was the vaccine,
but they had no damn clue what to do with it.
Homi came to the rescue. It seems after the bar fight, he became the mascot of one of the fraternities and enjoyed a steady income of beer and sex. A midget gets these things quite easily, or so everybody told him. Luckily, he had gotten the vaccine earlier and had a good idea about how it worked. They rest of the routine was shaken out of the nurses before casting them aside.
Back
in Neverwinter, the Tylenol helped some of the victims, but the vaccine
prevented the disease from spreading further. The portal to Rochester was
closed, and it became a criminal offense to reopen it. Berringerum became
the savior of the city again, and had a hero's farewell. She also learned
to be more humble about her powers, after learning how insignificant they
were in other worlds. But perhaps she was just being cruel on herself,
since Rochester isn't the most hospitable of realms. Let them play their
dice games.
Return to GDT Index