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

Be Careful of What You Ask For Where are my dragons?, shrieked the long legged blonde in polished milf-il cocktail dress armor, for the third time in the last minute. Where are .... Do shut up, I interrupted the ... Secret Princess? I didn't know for sure. My ears weren't bleeding, yet. Half an hour before I had been in in the Adventurers' Tavern quaffing a root beer before a warm fire when the Dungeon Master, a harried man with the traditional fake long white beard and pointed hat recognized me as the On-Call stand-in. He waved me over, pointed to a departing Party of a half dozen mixed lunatics in immediate need of a 57th Level Devilishly Handsome Yet Morally Compromised Cad Warrior. The DM told me I was standing in for a 56th Level who couldn't hold his lemonade. He gestured impatiently, said, Right ... off with you then, make sure yon 1040EZs don't trip over their spells. The DM gestured with his ashen wand 1 and ... ... The next moment we were somewhere else, but a somewhere that was definitely wrong. The air reeked of sulfur and unwashed humanity and people dressed like a high school band that had been performing in the mud were yammering in a foreign language I recognized as French. Windblown snow swirled and blanketed the ground two feet deep. My teeth were already chattering. Cold as a witch's refrigerator. Then I knew where and when we were but the rational part of my brain refused to accept it. I snatched the sheaf of faux-parchment that the DM had given one of the other Adventurers, a typical Renfaire reject, a dork in a forest green coverall with U.S. Army Ranger tabs on his sleeves. You're a ... Ranger? Fifth Level, the Dork squeaked proudly, showing me a light saber handle, it's green!. I thumbed through the paperwork, skipping over the Player Sheets because I didn't really want to know more about Billiam the Barbarian or Klangon the Blave sp?. When I got to Adventure Description I knew immediately how it had gone sideways. Someone, almost certainly the noisy Blonde, had written, Secret Princess Heir To The Throne Of Wisteria Seeks Her Lost Drago ... . Do you know, I asked the blonde between screeches, the difference between a 'Dragon' and a 'Dragoon'? Where are my dragons?, she mindlessly shrieked again, about to fall out of her cocktail dress armor, blonde hair flying free in the icy Russian wind. All around you, I was tempted to say. Because I was fluent in high school French, I knew we were in the camp of the 13e Rgiment de Dragoons, or what was left of them, on the Russian steppe, on Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. In winter. It was late in the retreat, since there were only a few scrawny horses left uneaten. No one looked like he'd had a full ration in months. They all watched the Blonde, many stood up. Gauging by their awkward gait, it also appeared they hadn't seen, much less been with, a woman in just as long. A good twenty, maybe fifty huge, garlic reeking, bearded, desperately horny men were already unbuttoning their trousers one actually carrying a sawhorse closed in on the Blonde when, as if on cue, she squealed, Where are my dragons? 1. You perverts... really? It's just a damn stick.