As you opened the door, the 3 hulking hobgoblins see you and draw their weapons...
What do you do?
Back in the late 80's, I used to spend nearly every Saturday night in my buddy's basement. Yeah, okay, I know this sounds strange... unless you're one of us 'dorks' who can relate ;)
Saturday night meant only one thing - another round of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!
We just barely had driver's licenses, occasional a car to borrow, and rarely a girlfriend. But we had each other, we were brothers. It was during this time that I learned the valuable lesson that 'family is more than bloodline'.
The table was clustered with maps, dice, books, snacks, Dr. Pepper, and the elixir of death... Black Velvet Canadian whiskey. (a little underaged drinking done better in a friend's basement than behind the wheel :) ) This was the program...
One of those sessions still sticks in my mind to this day. We had just cleaned out a nest of kobolds and were on our third cup of BV mixed with DP (If you think it sounds gross now, wait until you try it :P )When we started in on a conversation about portals and other dimensions. Our Elven Ranger chimed in about how behind his house in the woods he had felt other-worldly presences when exploring. He was convinced that Silvan Elves guarded those woods.
We were feeling brave (the whiskey), so we decided we were going to set up a camp to track the Elves and find the portal. Our good Ranger got to building a fire while our Thief decided to relieve me of the last of my whiskey. I stumbled aimlessly through the brush, listening for those pesky Elves.
I consulted my books, but had no luck finding anything to help locate their portal, just a chant begging the spirits to open the portal in Elven...
So our three drunken heroes, danced and chanted and danced and chanted...
Suddenly a bright light appeared, scaring us frozen like deer in headlight!
And a huge voiced boomed out:
"Hey! What the hell are you boys doing out here?!?"
As if a terror spell had been cast, we bolted!
I saw the Ranger trip over a log. Laughing at his misfortune, I didn't notice the parked police car at the edge of the woods and flew over the hood landing less than gently on the pavement.
Luckily I had taken the potion of invulnerability (Oh yeah, BV with DP has several magical properties.) so I hardly felt the scrapes and bruises.
We met up later back in the basement. Apparently the other two didn't know who had found us, so I filled them in. "He was the biggest, ugliest Ogre that I'd ever seen!"
I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".
Be sure to recommend, if you did.
Thank you
