Ravings of a Textual Deviant

My first wish was to be rich, famous, and beautiful.

Spending a week as Paris Hilton is not all it’s cracked up to be, let me tell you.

My second wish was to be a queen.

By my fourteenth performance in “La Cage aux Folles,” I was well and truly over my fascination with royalty.

My final wish brought me back to my childhood dream of becoming an astronomer. I wanted to work with stars, but I was never all that good at math.

Now, I’m one of the best-paid financial advisors in Hollywood…my clients think I’m a wizard.

Actual job ad spotted on the internet:

Indianapolis ad agency needs a writer.

‘Cause trust me, these are the last words I’ll ever string together for those bastards. I’m just over it, man. Thirty years I give to this business and what do I get? They won’t let me use my Selectric anymore. They act like they’re listening to my war stories, but I know they’re just waiting for me to stop talking so they can get back to that information supernet or whatever the hell it is they do with their headphones on all day. Ingrates wouldn’t know a stat camera from a waxer. So give it a shot if you have 1-3 years of experience and a desire to have your soul sucked out of your body with an industrial-sized vacuum.

Enjoy my stapler. Punk.

Requirements

Must be able to write in complete sentences and have a full command of adjectives.

Samira and I were at the antique mall when I spotted a tarnished, dented, brass lamp right out of Scheherazade. I picked it up and looked it over. The bottom surface was covered with tightly-packed, miniscule Arabic calligraphy.

“What’s it say?” I asked her.

She pulled out her reading glasses and peered intently at the hair-thin lines.

“No cash value. Not valid in California, Michigan, and New Jersey. Void where prohibited. Use only as directed. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. No other warranty expressed or implied. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle. Subject to change without notice…”

“If you’re eavesdropping, you don’t get to ask questions.” —T.R.

Ironfang dropped six empty suits of armor at the foot of the throne. The Chancellor of the Exchequer duly handed over six pieces of gold.

The ambassador was astounded. After the dragon squeezed her way out of the Great Hall, the king explained.

“Maidens are a rare find in these parts, you see. Foolish young men, however, are as common as rocks…and they come from all over the continent. Most of them aren’t even my subjects. So, we came to an agreement. Dietary requirements aside, Ironfang is quite an asset…well-educated, well-read, breathes fire.”

He paused.

“Besides, plate mail is expensive!”

Originally, this was a red velvet cake, but I couldn’t bring myself to add the full bottle of red food coloring to it. In its untinted state, it’s a light brown, so I’m calling it a National Velvet cake. It was also suggested that with sufficient black food coloring, it could be a Velvet Underground cake.

Suit yourselves.

2 1/2 C All-purpose flour (I prefer unbleached)

1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 C (2 sticks) butter, softened

2 C granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 C sour cream

1/2 C milk

2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tsp vanilla powder

1 oz. food coloring of your choice (optional)

Heat your oven to 350 degrees (that’s Farenheit, because I’m American and can’t be bothered to convert to a system that actually makes sense). Grease and flour two nine-inch round cake pans. I actually used cocoa powder for this instead of flour, because it avoids the white bloom and raw-flour taste on the finished cake.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and vanilla powder (if relevant) together.

Beat the butter and sugar together until they’re fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. I find that it’s best to crack the eggs into a separate dish, in the event of shell fragments. Add the sour cream, milk, food coloring (if using), and vanilla extract (if you’re not using the powder). Gradually mix just until everything is incorporated; don’t over mix the cake or it’ll end up tough.

Pour the batter into the pans, and bake for 35-30 minutes. Cool in the pan for ten minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack if you have one. Let cool completely before frosting (see below).

1 8-oz package cream cheese (softened)

1/4 C (1/2 stick) butter, softened

2 Tbsp sour cream

2 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tsp vanilla powder

16 oz. confectioners sugar

Beat the butter, cream cheese, and sour cream together until they become fluffy. You’ll know you’re nearly there when you feel your arteries start to harden just from the proximity. Add remaining ingredients and beat until smooth. Use to fill and frost cake (see above).

After quite a lot of errand-running and illicit entertainment, our merry band headed off to cause yet more mayhem for the army that’s trying to take over the world. Our first order of business was to try and negotiate with the Ghost Lord for his neutrality in the upcoming conflict. Given that “we’ve got his soul in our luggage,” as Mal put it, we’re not totally suicidal in undertaking this mission.

Bugs in one’s teeth aside, travel by giant owl is definitely the way to go. We covered days’ worth of road in mere hours. We also had a superb view of the landscape, which allowed us to spot both the fires of the approaching army and a smaller skirmish n the road below. As we can’t seem to resist an opportunity for destruction and looting, we circled down for a closer look.

We saw a couple of carts with a deceased military escort from Brindl, surrounded by what appeared to be a group of enemy skirmishers comprised of three ettins (and if ever there was proof that two heads are not better than one…) and a half-dozen goblins. Anja is never one to waste an opportunity, and took her owl into a headlong dive at the individuals who were careless enough to stand in a line on the road, sword at the ready. She’s made for this sort of thing.

GM: This is going to be a scream.
Mal’s Constance’s Player: This is going to be a stain.

One of our mages handily dropped a web on most of the goblins, keeping them nicely contained and nearly unable to aim their arrows at us while we dealt with the ettins. Constance jumped off of his owl from about thrity feet up, landing squarely on another ettin, and proceeding to create the aforementioned stain. (And the smell…ugh!!) The mages kept ettin #3 busy, while Darya and the gnomish scout peppered the other two from air and ground respectively, between Anja’s fly-by swordwork.

The goblins, finding themselves unable to either shoot or escape the web, torched themselves out of it just in time to acquire our full attention, the ettins having given up their repsective ghosts. (Is that three ghosts, or six?) Mal toasted half of the me with a well-placed fireball; Anja took care of most of the rest, and the last one died trying to escape from Constance’s grip.

Medrin the Mage, to Anja the Warrior: You’ve had a big day, little Valkyrie.

It turned out that the carts were carrying orders and payment to a mercenary company of dwarves a way to the south. It wasn’t too far out of our way, and as we were the only game in town at that point, we made a detour in order to deliver the necessaries. Needless to say, our group was hardly what the dwarves were expecting, but we explained that the original escort is now rejoicing with the Happy Butterfly God. It got us some strange looks, but it also got us in the door undamaged, which is good enough for me.
Anja took the opportunity to pick out a couple of lances for our next skirmish. After all, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. The rest of us took advantage of the opportunity for a meal and a bath. Pity the dwarves don’t normally have manicurists around; Darya’s cuticles are a complete disaster.

Onward and upward, as they say, to the Ghost Lord’s lair.

When the Wizard wants a dragon, you find him a dragon. Even if it means going into the middle of a civil war.

In this case, that was exactly what it meant. We were minding our own business, on the way to Fordham (which Delphine has started referring to as Boredom) in order to resupply before consulting the local wizard, Blake. We’re told he might know where a dragon is. Delphine is hoping to find a viable egg, as that seems to be the easiest solution, and her current traveling companions are already sufficiently diverse and annoying, thank you.

We’d seen a few signs of conflict in the area, but when we arrived at Fordham, we didn’t manage to figure out that the fighting was a lot closer than anticipated. So, we did what any traveling circus does; we set up outside the city walls and started performing.

Unfortunately, the attack came that evening, and there was no way that the Greatest Show on Yrth was going to be able to pack up its wagons and get out of the way in time.

The besiegers surrounded the town and drove as many people as possible into it, including our not-terribly-bright drivers and roustabouts (also known as the All-Kobold Jug Band).

Delphine knows a bad situation when she sees one, and had no desire whatsoever to get caught up in it. She grabbed her portable valuables, weapons, and armor, and managed to make her way through the beseigers’ line. In fact, the entire group got split up in the confusion, with Delphine, Mama Quilla, and Kolo-kolo (the Ring Island tiger) hiding out a bit off the road north of the city, toward Blake’s tower; Boggs, Affed, and Gregor inside the city walls, and Cha-rool and the minotaur fighting for their lives outside the city walls. They managed to do a fair bit of damage before the sphinx was shot in the wing and the minotaur was hit (fatally, we discovered later) with a ballista bolt.

Fortunately for us, though not necessarily himself, Blake the wizard was present to assist in the defense of Fordham, and enlisted Boggs’s and Cha-rool’s assistance in retrieving his “ward,” Niall. Mama Quilla and Delphine were able to reunite with their fellow performers, and Niall (actually a forty-something accountant from modern Chicago) was duly retrieved and transported back to the keep. Delphine has developed somthing of an interest in the money-magic that Niall calls “accounting,” and has intent to explore those mysteries further at her earliest opportunity.

(Click on Their Supreme Cutenesses to see full sized image.)