Thread: A Thread of Lies / Best of Letters to the Editor.

It Could be Worse The Quest was in dire peril. Enemy scouts from the large war party they had been desperately trying to avoid had seen them and sent word to the Head Honcho Himself. A bugle sounded and within minutes twenty or thirty line-of-battle mastodons wheeled as one and charged directly at the adventuring party. The adventurers turned, eyes pleading to the one who alone might save the day ... No, I don't do war magick, exactly, said the Mage, who was trying in vain to remember a teleportation spell. Three hundred yards away and ambling fast, the Mage could make out little figures mounted on the brutes massive hairy shoulders. Then exactly what is your forte? your expertise, as it were. This from a diminutive twerp armed with a -- hacksaw? The Mage assumed him to be a Dwarf but noticed the Ranger tabs on his Members Only jacket, which did not make sense. The Mage bought a few precious moments to think by lighting a cigarette off his index fingertip. I am good with maps. What do you mean, 'good with maps'? You mean you can read them? Most of the bozos in this party can read maps. This alarmed comment erupted from an astonishingly attractive in a trashy elven sort of way blonde warrior-princess in burnished white-and-gold cocktail dress armor. She notched a scaled down clothyard arrow to a scaled down longbow, glancing nervously over her shoulder at the charging full-sized mastodons. The Mage wasn't entirely sure who the arrow was for. He did notice that the figures atop the mastodons, now only 200 yards away, were saber tooth cats. Always smilodons but never thylacosmilines , he deplored the state of modern education and the lack of originality in modern high fantasy. No, ... I mean, yes, of course I can read maps, and charts too. My skill is more subtle, more sublime, more ... Stop the bullshit, said the Warrior-Princess, we've got no time. I can refold maps. Omlet the Dwark visibly slumped over his tomahawk. The Barbarian managed a face palm, not the gesture expected from a bronze-age primitive. A RenFair Reject squeaked, you might have mentioned this at the Adventuring Hall before we hired you. We all assumed .... Never assume. The mastodons were less than a hundred yards away, their maddened trumpeting not discordant with the saber tooths' roaring. They were close enough for all of the party to see human-sized demons riding the big tigers. Stand aside, said the Mage, who had done a stint with the Rhine Army as a junior officer back in the day. He unfolded a map from his pack and began tearing it into strips, explaining, it is of stone-cold certainty that battles will always take place at the intersection of maps, on ground that is therefore inevitably unmapped. Thus, by, uh, rearranging this map so that we are in this dead ground so to speak, the battle can't take place. And so we are safe, he added for emphasis. Are you out of your bloody stupid mind? That doesn't even begin to make sense. You can't possibly be serious, sputtered the Warrior-Princess, her voice rising in shrill panic. The Mage had to shout to be heard over the thundering herd. Not unless you have a better idea.