The Prisoner, The Ranger, The Hermit and The Monkey

[chuxton]

PART ONE:
by Penn Hedley III (acting Commanding General of the Rangers by unspoken appointment by the Queen)

Hrmph. Normally, this is the kind of narrative that I would delegate to someone like Homely Oldhat, particular since there is a lot of dying in the first person involved. However, the fact is that the old gent was not present for the Queen’s meeting and the first part of the ranger rescue meeting, while I was. That was according to my brilliant plan for winning the great final battle with the forces of the void. It was a fine plan –hrmph- and it might have worked if there actually HAD been a great final battle with the forces of the void. As it happened, it was a great plan for the wrong war. Not the first time THAT has happened in the annals of warfare, to be sure.
Oh yes. The meeting with the Queen. She was a minute and a half late. Can you imagine? I can assure you that the Emperor of the East Pole will NOT be a minute and a half tardy when they invade Britannia. But the Queen did not want to talk about that. She wanted to talk about personnel issues of some kind. Oh yes. In order to better combat the void, she is bringing in outside help to supervise the rest of us. She’s going to form an elite unit of Rangers (I’m quite sure she got the idea from the Fusiliers). As she led up to announcing the name of the new leader for the Rangers, she described him in such glowing terms that everyone present thought it was to be me. Heh heh. Of course, I knew better. This new chap will have to report to someone, after all. She said he was an old hero of the realm, but I never heard of any “Aldwyn.” Anyway, it seems that he is not quite available to take over because this great ranger hero has gotten himself lost somewhere. The Queen, without a hint of a wink, told us we have to go rescue this guy so that he can show us how to be proper heroes. Still, one could see how even a great hero can get lost from time to time, so we decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The Queen turned us over to Ranger Gofer –hrmph- Jackson. He gave us a lot of blather (I had Pvt Henry take some notes and they are around here someplace) and a map to a place to start our search. Then the Ranger told us he would not be able to go along with us on account of needing to go to Hockey Practice, or something. The map was of the Island Homer calls Temple Island, so that is where we headed.
“We”? Who were the stalwart heroes on this mission? Well, the initial group was Xanola, Chelsea, Vincent, Wulfgar, Charity, Kalie and OGeer, as I recall. With myself as the concensus leader and champion, of course. Some were lost along the way, but we were also joined by folks like Homer, Vand, Kiehi (sp?) and at the very end by Azzo. A fine showing, I would say.
I left the Fusiliers on the Island Coastline to form a perimeter. It was part of the war plan that didn’t –hrymph-. We proceeded directly to the temple. We saw no sign of anything . . . Yikes! When we passed through the one-way gate atop the temple and were transported to the other-worldly temple beyond, we were in for a rude surprise. The entire building was surrounded by a mob of screaming apes! Since our only way out of that place was through that mob, we became unpleasantly familiar with them over the next few hours. They were rather well organized for apes, with specialties such as fighter, warrior, mage, master mage and sniper (who threw exploding poo, I believe).
They were extremely rugged. My melee weapons were virtually useless against all but the lowliest fighters. The only effective weapon I had was my trusty heavy crossbow Fenwick. Some of the other heroes had better luck. Chelsea and Vincent in particular did well, but the best weapon by far was Xanola’s pink poodle named Barigest the Great. I developed a strategy in which I distracted the apes by letting them kill me while the others beat them. We finally fought our way out of the building, only to confront a fort full of the peeved primates. They also had pets- shadow leopards that were little more (or less) than a nuisance. We had no recourse but to attack the fort. Altogether, I was killed four or five times, but I think just about everyone present (even the poodle) was killed a time or two. Somehow, my avian steed Intrepid survived all of my killings. The apes apparently did not consider him a threat and just ignored her.
Once we finally cleared the Fort, we found a living human prisoner surviving inside. He told us a long story that I’m sure was very exciting, but a missed a lot of it, as I had to comb my mustache. The gist of it was that we might learn about the missing Ranger from a Hermit who live up Ape-el Tree Lane. He hinted that the hermit might be a bit friendlier with the apes than a proper gentlemen would be. Hrmph. There was also something about a key. I don’t know what the key unlocked, but to find it we had to hunt down and kill every stray ape within smelling range, which was a large area and a lot of apes.
When we got ready to move on, I found that Intrepid had an ape tooth impeded in a paw. Fearing infection, I stayed to care for her and let Homer Oldham take over my role as killing bait. He’s rather fond of that and does it quite well. I’ll let him take up the story from there. I invite any of the others who were present to add details (or –hrmph- corrections) to this account.

[Zoram]

On a related note, if you have a wall of text to post. Work it up in your favorite word processor (I prefer openoffice.org writer) and then copy and paste to here. Sometimes the forum will eat your soul.

[Atei]

The Ateis were absent and we must beg the forgiveness of our fellow Citizens and especially our Queen.

[chuxton]

Part Two
By Homer Oldham
It was an evening of déjà vu from beginning to end. First, there was the failure of Penn Hedley’s war plan. He was supposed to return to either the Queen’s castle or to the roof of Fellowship Hall to reinforce a perimeter that eventually would also include Ajax Mayflower, Smudge and myself, as well as a large contingency of Fusiliers and Golems. When he failed to show up, I went to Fellowship Hall and the Fusiliers on duty told me he had gone to Temple Island. I followed him and Pvt. Henry told me the entire party had entered the Temple and had not returned. I followed, of course. Déjà vu again. I had made exactly the same journey just two days earlier. I spent some time scouting locations where the forces of the Void might be lurking and/or preparing mischief. I think Smudge and Penn-Hedley did the same. My first pick was Temple Island. I went through the temple portal to the world beyond, but I found no sign of either the void or the ape-men. I suppose that the gateway must have a time-link, which was why the Queen was so specific about the date for our mission.
Anyway, when I returned on Sunday night I knew immediately that this was not exactly the same place. The signs of combat and death were everywhere. Then there was Penn-Hedley who was hiding under his obsidian ostard. He pointed me in the general direction of the rest of the search party.
I located them on the road to the South. Vand was just returning from a scouting mission with a report of what was ahead, and it wasn’t an ice cream social. There might not have been as many of the apes on the road as in the fort, but there were more high level apes, including some new varieties. We decided on a strategy of luring the enemy to us in small groups. I believe that is similar to what they did at the fort, where it was costly, but eventually successful.
The same thing happened on the road as at the Fort, The heroes were brave but smart, not reckless. Nevertheless, they died. I think everyone died. I added four or five to my count- call it 2159-2163. But the strategy worked in that the whole group was never wiped out at any one time. Heroes died and were revived, but the army lived on. Eventually, we killed some uber-poo-bah apes, including a General with some cool loot.
We finally arrived at a house in a clearing that looked like Snow White’s cottage except with really hairy dwarfs. Maybe that is where the key came in. Inside the house was a talking ape who first claimed to know nothing and then admitted he knew something and he would share his information if we gave him a little something-something. His demand was for some kind of weed used by druids (you know how druids are). Fortunately, there was a druid in the party willing to share his stash.
Then, either as a result of the drugs or just in response to having his demands made, the ape turned into a human. He then spoke of his dismay at a world turned upside down, where d--- dirty apes ruled over men. Déjà vu. For some reason, the name “Charlton Heston” popped into my head. Did I mention the man looked just like Moses?
(Well, and me too). He introduced himself as Aldwyn, the subject of our hunt. That was a relief. I was afraid he might just give us a map and tell us we had to go get a scroll from and evil dragon on a mountain and I don’t think we were really up for that.
He opened a gate back to Britain and hurried off to see the Queen to collect his promotion. So now we must wait and see how this whole “Ranger” thing will play out. Smudge says that if they hire Sgt Prigg he is going over to The Void. Speaking of which, we have gone for quite a time without an infestation. What’s up with that? I fear we will learn all too soon. Be vigilant. Please report anything unusual that you see or hear.
I also invite anyone who was in the adventure Sunday night to make corrections or additions to this account on this bulletin board.
Homer #2163

[Joram Lionheart]

Excellent report, Homer. I too was preoccupied with, uhm . . . the Queen's business elsewhere (that Jackson can really hit puck!).