# (10/28) University Blues: Cabin Fever, Final Chapter



## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 9, 2003)

A D20 Modern / Dark*Matter Story Hour 


Five friends, trapped on a mountain in North Carolina with something old ... something angry. The world is changing, and perhaps old ways aren't the best ways after all.

And coming soon ...

*A Dark And Restless Tide
Static in the Key of E*


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 11, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 1*

"Man I've got to go."

"We can stop."

"No.  I'll hold it.  The chick at the place said she goes home at six and if we don't have everything signed we're up the creek."

"Dude.  It's two-till, we're not going to make it anyway."

"I know.  But it's not the major season yet, so to get a cabin booked for a week I'm sure she'll stay an extra ten minutes.  Twenty?  Thirty?  If we stop, I'm sure there'll be a line at the bathroom.  Just go."

Matt pressed -att- and everything else drowned as the tide of Metallica came in over the roar of the highway.  A few minutes later the first sign for the exit appeared: "102/B Junaluska Assembly/ Maggie Valley".

"Finally."  Frank muttered.

"Take a left.  It's not far up this road."  Scott said over the roar.

Matt drove silently, left hand on the wheel, cigarette in the right.  Frank, sitting in the passenger seat, had been forced to endure.  He had quit a year before, but the craving never really went away.

"Just ahead, on the left."  Scott pointed and they wheeled in.

The rental office looked like an over-sized log cabin, modernized with floor-to-ceiling windows in the front and wrought-iron railings on the stairs.  While not _quite_ as nice as the demo office, the rental cabins were still new, spacious, well-appointed homes and a bargin at off-season rates.  Scott got out of the Explorer and Matt tried to fiddle the gear-shift into "park" with the free fingers of his cigarette hand.  Frank was on Scott's heels and they jogged up the steps and into the side door marked "Cabin Rentals".

Wiley and Penick climbed out to stretch their legs in the parking lot.  Penick groaned and rubbed his knees.  He'd been stuck in the middle the whole six hours from Auburn.

"I think I feel something below my arm-pits again."  he said.

Wiley walked over to the driver's-side window.  "Climbing the mountain in this thing will be easy.  Coming down is always a problem, though.  Off-season they do alot of road work.  Frank nearly burned out his brake pads going up and down last time we were here.  Before we head up, let's go into town and make sure we have everything we need."

Scott and Frank came out of the rental office a few minutes later.   "Y'know, we got the same place we did last time we were here." Scott said. 

Everyone piled back into the Explorer and they wheeled toward town.  Maggie Valley proper was a smallish city nestled in a valley at the south-western end of the Smokey Mountains.  During the summer tourist season, the town's population might reach a few thousand, but early March only the locals were around and many businesses were still closed.  They pulled into a Winn-Dixie supermarket, THE supermarket, and got out.

"Alright, we'll need charcoal for the grill, and lighter fluid."  Wiley said, walking in.

"And hamburger, uh, buns, hot-dog buns ..."  Scott and Penick named off all the food items they would need.

"Two handles of Jack, one of vodka."  Frank said, ticking off the liquor they had brought with.  "Were we going to get anything else?  And we'll need more Coke and OJ than this or we're going to be back down here by tomorrow."

"Flashlights."  Matt rumbled.

Everybody turned and looked at him.

"You never know."


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 11, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 2*

The mountain was big, and the only road up it a steep series of switchbacks and hairpin turns.  It was a fifteen minute drive up the narrow blacktop to the cabins.  The base and gentle beginning slopes were rather heavily populated, like an urban subdivision, but five minutes up and the driveways all but disappeared.  If it weren’t for the occasional truck or SUV they had to squeeze past, it would be easy to think they were alone on the mountain.  The rental agency owned the summit of the mountain, and eventually they came to an electronic gate.  It stood in front of them on the forty-degree slope, vertical and slightly comical.  On one side of the gate was a near-vertical drop of fifty feet or more, on the other the wall of the mountainside.  Behind the gate the road twisted out of view, and behind the Explorer the mountain hid behind itself.

“Abandon all hope, yada yada, etcetera etcetera.”  Frank said.

Brickell leaned out the window and punched the passcode written on one of the cabin key-rings into an arm-mounted pad.  The gate shook slightly and opened outward, ABOVE them.

“That always looks so weird.”

Their cabin lay a little further up the road, off a gravel side lane.  The lane split in three, one path leading up, another down, and the last disappearing around a bend in the slope.  The boys’ cabin lay on the downward path, easily visible from the lane.  It was a jumbled affair with a single main story and a 3/4 loft and partial basement with garage underneath.  The path led into the garage while the rest of the house continued out into nothingness, supported on a series of sturdy timbers and cross-beams.  The exterior of the cabin was mostly logs, with the garage portion sided in dark wood planks.  Brickell pulled up to the garage door and turned off the car.  Everyone piled out and Scott went to unlock the garage while Brickell opened the back hatch.  They took the bags in first, carrying them up the wooden stairs at the side of the house ten, fifteen feet to the wide front porch and the front (and only) door.

Scott let them in and Frank immediately moved forward and right, remembering the master suite and its king-sized bed and private bath.  “Dibs!”

The interior was furnished in what could be called Quaint Yuppie Rustic, with sawn-log tables so thickly lacquered and varnished the wood seemed to be trapped in a museum case.  “Antique” tea-kettles and frying pans lined the top of the kitchen cabinets.  Everything that might look “rustic” made out of logs WAS made out of logs:  bed frames, end tables, footstools, and balustrades.  Near the front door an old, and original-looking, desk stood in front of the windows.  On it was a serviceable office phone with speed dials labeled for the office, fire department, police, and two office personnel’s home phone numbers; in case of emergency.  Next to the phone was a leather-bound journal marked “Guest Log”.  Wiley flipped it open and paged through.  There, a few pages back, was the log entry from their previous visit.  Surprisingly, few entries after their first, most of those dated during the two tourist seasons that had followed.  It was a homey feel, to see the passing of guests before and after them.  He would have to get Frank to help compose a group entry for this visit.  But first the rest of the car needed to be unpacked.

****************************************************

They couldn’t see the cabin around the bend where an old Dodge Ram sat with its drivers-side door open.  Leaves littered the vinyl bench seat, piling in the corner by the passenger door.  The overhead light was dim, the battery almost out, and in the back a few old soft-side suitcases were still wet from a rainstorm three days earlier.  Behind their cabin, up the slope, half-screened by trees was another cabin.  As Penick lifted both bags of charcoal from the back he heard children playing and when he turned he could see a minivan parked on the upper path.  Idly he hoped the kids wouldn’t ruin the quiet relaxation of his vacation.

Farther up the mountain road the front door of a cabin home hung sickly from one hinge.  Charles and Paige Vint had visited Maggie Valley the year before, rented a cabin, and fell in love.  They had bought a property a few months later in the sparse “gated community”.  They had only moved in three months ago, and so nobody in the area really knew them ... and so nobody noticed when they stopped coming down the mountain.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 13, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 3*

“Did you hear that?”  Frank asked.

Wiley looked up from his cards.

”I did.”

The five sat around the dining room table in the L-crook of the greatroom.

”Hear what?”  

Scott turned and looked out one of the back windows.

”Probably a cat or a badger or a ‘mountain critter’ of some sort.”  He said.

“No, something bumped against the house.  It would have to be bigger than that.”  Frank said and looked out another window.  Nothing but the reflection of the interior lights.  

“There.  I heard it again.”

The lights went out.  Everyone froze in that moment of terror that comes when you can’t see what was just there a moment before.

”Sh**”

Click.  Light bloomed across the table.

”Told you.”  Brickel said.

”The wiring in places like this is always bad.”  Penick said, groping toward the kitchen counter and the four-pack of Eveready flashlights.

“Right.  This place is maybe ten years old.  It’s a clear night.  I heard a noise, the lights went out.  Franky-no-likey.”

”Maybe that was a fuse blowing?”  Penick said and passed the pack down.  Scott and Wiley took the last two of the plastic flashlights.  Frank moved to the fireplace and pulled the poker with a soft-ringing hiss.

”Yea, uh huh.”

Wiley made his way across the great-room to the table with the phone.  Frank moved from the fireplace toward the couch and his backpack. 

“Don’t tell me it’s dead, damnit.”  He said.

Wiley looked up from the phone, receiver in hand.  “No phone.”  He said, quietly.

“Okay, so somebody is out there.”  Scott whispered.

”And if they cut the juice and the phone …”  Penick said.

Scott moved toward the kitchen and the butcher’s block.  Wiley leaned down by the door and picked up the unused bottle of lighter fluid that stood by the bags of charcoal.  Frank came up from his bag holding a large rectangular flashlight.

Outside, the porch steps squeaked.  Everyone clutched their make-shift weapons tightly, their fear suddenly confirmed.

”We need to …”  Brickel began, pointed meaningfully at the floor, then pantomimed pulling the slide back on his Glock.

”Move.”  Frank hissed.

-Something- moved across the front porch, visible mostly as a darkening against the windows.  They all moved toward the basement door, quickly but stealthily.  Brickel opened the door and started down the stairs with Penick hard behind.  The steps were wooden, lumber-yard plank, and rattled as they stormed down for the car.  Inside, Wiley winced:  Whatever was out there HAD to hear that.

It did.

The front door gave way with a crash and a scream of metal.  Frank turned, drawn to look by the sound.  The deadbolt and door-pin were sheared through like broken icicles, one hinge knocked half- from the wall, and a split like a fault ran down the center of the heavy oak.  He bellowed in fear, surprise, and defiance, raising his poker and stumbling backward toward the steps.  The powerful beam of his flashlight played drunkenly across the doorway, but he was the only one to see.  The intruder shouldered its way through the broken doorway and roared.  Of a sudden Frank’s bellow turned into a scream.

Already downstairs, Brickel ran toward the Explorer.  He fumbled in his pocket for his keys and the unlock button on the keyfob.  Wiley ran to place the water-heater between himself and the steps.  Upstairs, Frank screamed again, a wrenching, sickening cry.  Everyone’s stomachs tightened.  What could make the largest and strongest of them make that sound?  At six-foot-eight and 350lbs, Frank was as large as many pro football players.  Mercifully the lights came on in the SUV and the locks clicked open.  Brickel wrenched open the driver’s-side door and groped his handgun blindly out from under the seat.  Penick ran to the back hatch of the Explorer.  He was still unarmed, but he had the swords he’d bought somewhere in the back.  They weren’t great, but they were sharp and steel and had to be better than nothing.

On the stairs they heard pounding, a short yell, and a clatter.  Frank tumbled down and spilled out onto the concrete floor.  His black t-shirt was dark with wetness and he fell wrongly, like something broken.  Brickel chambered a round in the Glock and crouched with the gun braced on the hood.  Frank turned his head weakly on the floor, searching.  One lens of his glasses was gone, the black frame twisted, his face running with blood.  Frantically he clawed at the floor, pushing with one leg and pulling with his fingers toward the lights.  In the silence of the moment, everyone could hear him whispering “Oh God please, Oh God please” and the wet scrape of his passing.  Behind him a wide streak of crimson glistened in the glare of his fallen flashlight.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 14, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 4*

"Don't let it come down the stairs."  Brickel thought, his hands sweating around gun and flashlight.  "You don't want to come down here, man.  I mean it!"  He yelled.

Scott edged forward and started to help Frank back to the car.  The larger man didn't look good;  one leg looked broken, and up close Scott could see rents down his chest and stomach.  There was a long gash on his scalp that ran down his forehead and opened one cheek.  Frank looked like he'd lost a knife fight, or had been mauled by a bear.  Above came the creaking of someone on the stairs;  slow, purposeful, and heavy.  Wiley pressed himself farther against the wall and pulled his Zippo from his pocket, turning off his flashlight.  The thing on the stairs continued down, unafraid ... like something hunting.  Brickel shifted his weight and got ready to fire. Whatever it was  stopped on the last step, just out of sight, but he could see it was huge.  It had taken the steps so slowly because it could barely fit in the stairwell.

Finally it stooped and began to shoulder into the room, and Brickel fired.  In the muzzle flash, everyone could see the creature detailed in stark light and shadow.  Later, no one could decide what had been more frightening, how human the thing had looked, or how obviously inhuman it had to be.  Dark eyes gleamed from beneath a Neanderthalish brow-ridge, its face planes and sharp angles.  Two dark braids of hair hung on either side of its head, draped over hunched shoulders like a gorilla's, and it's arms stretched long and strong, with great hooked claws at the fingers.  It seemed to be wearing clothes, the shredded remains of blue jeans and a few tatters of a shirt along the collar and part of the chest and one arm.  It roared in the after-black, surprised and hurt.  It withdrew into the stairwell.

"Help me get him in the car."  Scott hissed and Penick moved from where he had crouched, frozen, by the rear of the Explorer.  As he edged forward, Scott could see the shadowy glint of a sword in his hand.  They put their weapons down and Penick opened the back door.  Together they heaved their friend into the vehicle.  On the stairs, the thing began to creep back toward the upper storey.

"We've got to get out of here."  Wiley said.

Brickel stood, indecisive.  He didn't want to lower the gun, but the keys were in his pocket.  The creature seemed intent on leaving, however, and in a few seconds would be outside.  "Get in."  He said, and clawed the keys out of his pocket.  Wiley lept into the passenger seat and Scott and Penick crawled in over Frank's bloodied body.  Matt handed the gun to Wiley and started the car.  With almost casual ease he rolled forward a few feet, then slammed it into reverse and floored the gas.  The Explorer surged backward in a squeal of tires into the garage door, and through it.  The back hatch glass burst with a report and the fiberglass door panels cracked and fell away as they shouldered the metal supports aside.  

As they scraped into the gravel drive, Wiley saw the thing on the front porch of the cabin.  It vaulted the railing like an athelete, dropping easily to the ground ten feet below.  Wiley scrambled to point the gun its way, but it bounded for the trees along the lane, loping with the wide-swinging gate of a Sasquatch.  Brickel turned the car, braked, and shifted into drive ... but didn't move forward.  He'd seen it too, and the trees put it between them and the road down the mountain.  As it ran past he'd seen it upright, and realized it had to be eight or nine feet tall and heavy with muscle.  He had a sudden vision of the thing barreling from the trees and rushing the side of the Explorer like a linebacker, flipping them effortlessly over the side of the road and down, down the mountain. 

In the darkness they heard a crack like a mortar round ... a tree breaking in the forest.

"How much you want to bet there's a convieniently-felled tree now blocking the only road out of here?"  Penick asked.

Brickel punched the steering whee hard once, twice.  Whatever it was, the thing was smart.


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## Indigo Veil (Jun 16, 2003)

Hey there. Because you haven't mentioned the existence of an OOC thread located elsewhere, I'm going to assume it's okay to post comments here, on this thread.

I'm really liking the look of this so far, and I hope you continue to post updates often. ^_^ I rather enjoy modern stuff, and I hope that SHs like yours, Jonrog's, and KitanaVorr's will encourage others to leave behind the more trite fantasy structure in favor of more modern settings.

Good job. ^_^


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 16, 2003)

Nah, feel free to post inside the thread.

The inspiration left for a while when I realized how bad and rusty I've gotten with the pen, but I'll get back to write-ups soon.

Thanks for the kind words.

--fje


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## Cinerarium (Jun 18, 2003)

Hey Heap!

Great idea for a d20 modern!  I've toyed in the past with running stuff set in my old home town or where I went to college -- so many good locations, easy to describe settings and set the mood.

I've got a couple of friends in the part of NC you're writing about right now, rafting.  

At any rate, post more!  It's good so far.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Jun 20, 2003)

*Cabin Fever, Pt. 5*

"The other cabin!" Scott pointed.  The cabin behind heirs still had power, that much was obvious from the glow in its windows.  Perhaps it had phones, as well.

Brickel punched the accellerator and the Explorer nosed forward, spraying gravel into the trees behind them.  The SUV bounced up the path and over the lane to the other drive in less than a second.  The front door of the cabin opened and a man stuck his head outside.  He sheilded his face as the Explorer's headlights blinded him, and then the truck pulled up along the wide porch steps.  The porch of this cabin was only a few feet off the ground, and would offer more room to maneuver.  Wiley opened his door, closest to the porch, and scrambled up the steps.

"Emergency, we need your phone."  He said and turned to cover the woods with the gun.  Brickel clambered out the open passenger door and helped Penick open the back one.  Together with Scott they wrestled the unconcious Frank out of the car and carried him up the steps with surprising strength.  Wiley, backstepping, followed.

"Where's the phone?"  Scott panted, looking around.

"Get your family, bring them to this room.  If you have a gun, bring it too."  Wiley said, backing away from the front door.

Penick bent over Frank, trying to gauge the extent of his wounds, stop the bleeding, anything.  

"Damn.  I've never said this before, but Frank needs to eat a few more salads.  He weighs a TON."

The original occupant of the cabin was still standing by the door, trying to handle the situation.  "What's going ON?"  He hissed.  "Are you robbing me or ... ?"

"There's a psycho out there.  He cut our phone, our power, and broke in.  He stabbed our friend pretty bad.  We chased him off but he's armed and still out there, and he blocked the road down.  We need to call the police before he cuts this line too.  We need to all be together, so get your family before HE gets them.  I don't doubt he'd break in through a window to try and get to us all."  Penick said, looking up from Frank.  "If you have a rifle, get that, but just MOVE.  This guy is nuts."

******************

Dr. Jerri Thaves punched the code on the note into the keypad.  The gate in front of her car swung open silently, ABOVE her.  "Mildly disturbing gate." she thought, and began to pull forward.

She had found the note in her faculty mail box that evening.  It had been sitting there for almost two weeks, but she had been in the field performing research and her first day back had been spent grading papers.  It wasn't until she was walking out the door that she had thought to check her mail and found Joshua's note:




Jer,

I think I've finally gotten these things figured out.  

I wasn't WRONG, all these years, my timing was just off.  The things ARE alive ... they're just ... asleep.  Hibernating.  I don't mean that they're Alive-alive, but that they're still functional.  With all the heightened activity we've been documenting the last few months, I think they're starting to 'wake up' a little.  

I haven't been asking the wrong questions, they've just been too far gone to answer.  I got a few strange readings the last battery I ran, but I don't think EKGs and spectranalysis is the answer, here.  I need to go back to the begining.  Maybe old ways ARE the best ways.  

I can't really expect the ancestors to speak to me in brainwave pattern recognition software, can I?  I'm going somewhere that I can dance and burn the herbs without getting flack from the rest of the faculty.  

I should be back Sunday evening.  If you decide not to go to your dig site, come up.  I think they'll talk to you.  I'll be staying in Maggie Valley ... 

The rest was address ... a rental cabin in the mountains.  Privacy enough for vision questing.  But it was Friday, almost a week after Joshua had said he would be back.  No one had seen him for almost two weeks.  No one on campus was worried;  Dr. Joshua Tehnoah was often off doing research for weeks at a time, and he had no teaching load this semester.  He wouldn't, however, leave Jerri a note and not call or write if he were going to be delayed almost a week.

Artifacts are dangerous and unpredictable things.  Old relics, cast aside, forgotten and unused.  Heritage, history.  Dr. Jerri Thaves knows this.  She is half Seminole, with her own heritage and traditions.  She is a professor and researcher at Weygandt-Ellis University's North Carolina campus.  She knows the danger of forgotten knowledge through experience.  Years ago, perhaps, there would not have been much danger in these relics for a trained parahistoricist like Joshua.  But things have been awakening all over, and perhaps these days old ways aren't best ways after all.

_And when she reaches the fallen tree in the road, she knows something is not right.  The lines in the bark look like claw marks, in her headlights.  Dr. Thaves knows they probably are._

***************************

Peter Kincaid looked out the window at the city below.   Old Susan wasn't usually wrong.  She was never, perhaps, as clear as Young Susan or Marty, but her accuracy was top notch.  "Something" would be awakening in the Smokey Mountains.  Something dangerous, something old.  Marty and Young Susan saw it too.  Unfortunately too clearly, too closely.  Young men, one wounded, children, perhaps a family, a church group?  An old Dodge Ram, luggage, a broken door, a fire-poker.  A few minutes ago, Old Susan had attempted freewriting, but the only things that made any sense were the words "John Whitemankiller".  A name?  African or Native American.  Perhaps a name for a spirit conjured up during the slave days, but the Library hadn't turned up anything on it.  

On the roof a helicopter sat, fueled and ready.  In a mess room a floor below it a small strike team was assembled, men in black BDUs and tac vests, small arms at hand, and a few black metal-cased government laptop computers.  And there they sat.  Waiting.

Old Susan was never wrong.  Department Seven was ready, but there was nowhere to go.  And so they waited.  For something.  

_Floors below, three people sit in a room.   A man, a woman, and a crone.  The man sits with his fingers at his temples.  His head pounds, he mumbles without knowing he does so ... and nothing comes.  The younger woman paces.  She is worn out, her visions will not come, she has done all she can, but it is not enough.  And the crone ... she sits quietly, her eyes closed, her head tilted back.  She could be sleeping, she MAY be sleeping, but not truly.

"He shall lie." She says, clearly, loudly for the others to hear.  "The truth will bring no help.  He will say they face a man, and that this man has a ..."_

*********

"... machine gun.  Yes, a machine gun."   Scott said.  The phone worked, 911 had answered.  "I saw it.  And he has a knife.  This guy is a real psycho.  He's got some kind of body armor, too.  My friend has a gun, and we shot him, but he just ran off into the woods.  I know he's still out there, we heard him chopping down a tree in the woods.  The road is probably blocked coming up.  You really have to hurry, my friend's hurt bad, he might be dying."

The voice on the phone told him to stay calm.  The voice on the phone was, herself, calm.  Help was on the way, he should stay on the line. 

"I will, but he's OUT there.  We're calling from another cabin, he cut the phone and power to our cabin before he attacked us.  We scared him off, but he's blocking us in ..."

The lights went off, and the children screamed.

"... oh God, he's h..."  The phone went dead.

**********************

"We've got a 911 out of Maggie Valley, North Carolina.  Some people stuck on a mountain.  They say they've got a psycho with a machine gun and an axe.  He's stabbed one person."  The dispatcher said.  Peter Kincaid turned from the window.  Susan Crane, "Young Susan", stood in the doorway to his left.  She had just delivered Old Susan's latest vision.

"That's the one.  Get me GPS, send it to the chopper."  Peter Kincaid said.  Agent Kincaid.  

He grabbed his coat and ran for the elevator.


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## fenzer (Sep 22, 2003)

Heap, this is great stuff.  You had me rivited.  I love how you described the attack, the monster, and the movement of your wounded friend.  I like the whole Department 7 and the "Seers".  All very cool.

I don't know how I missed this one but I'm hooked.  Post and soon!


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## iwatt (Sep 22, 2003)

Yup, this is great stuff... You wounded yourself, didn't you? how did that workout for you


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Sep 22, 2003)

Worked out pretty well, actually.  I'm a large large dead weight for them to haul around.

Pretty much know you're up the creek when the biggest person you know gets mauled and thrown down the steps like a rag doll.  I noticed very little "I charge the monster with my knife." and alot of "Run!  Call the cops!  The army!  Ahhhhhhh!!!!!"

Mission accomplished.


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## iwatt (Sep 22, 2003)

HeapThaumaturgist said:
			
		

> Worked out pretty well, actually.  I'm a large large dead weight for them to haul around.
> 
> Pretty much know you're up the creek when the biggest person you know gets mauled and thrown down the steps like a rag doll.  I noticed very little "I charge the monster with my knife." and alot of "Run!  Call the cops!  The army!  Ahhhhhhh!!!!!"
> 
> Mission accomplished.




Yup, no metagamy thinking there. Just the always hoped for, seldomly heard phrase: "Let's get the hell outta of here." Dms live for this stuff.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Sep 23, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 6*

_The police would not come in time.  No one would come in time.  Something existed, something was OUT there, that should not be.  And it wanted them.  And it would get them. _ 

Wiley stood, still, stony.  Watching the door.  Listening.  For a creak, a crash.  He had the gun, a nine-mil.  Solid, heavy.  Heavier, really, than he would have expected.  Brickel hadn't asked for it back.  Honestly, he didn't blame him.  The gun felt reassuring, powerful, and amazingly useless.  A depressing feeling.  He had the gun, and he wasn't in charge.

Scott had moved away from the phone, realizing how close he was to a window.  He kept his knife, crouched next to Frank.  His friend groaned and was shushed hurriedly.  The quiet grew, grew oppressive.  It moved, weighed, had presence.  The hum of the air conditioner gone, each breath seemed loud.  

And then it happened.  A sound.  The sound.  A creak from the porch.  A step.  The quiet became fear, heavier.  Wiley grabbed the gun tighter.  Everyone held their breath, waiting for the door to explode, shouldered away by the thing outside.

There was a knock.

The four friends looked confused.  Shouting, roars, tearing flesh, muzzle flashes?  A polite knock?  Maybe it was ... playing with them?  Waiting for somebody to open the door, look outside, get his head ripped off.  Nobody moved.

Nobody but the cabin owner.  He opened the door, on a woman standing in the dark.

“Do any of you know Joshua Tehnoah?”

“My name is Craig.”

Brickel shouldered Craig aside and pulled the woman into the cabin.  

“Introductions later, hiding from monster first.”

“Monster?”  Jerri asked as she stumbled into the room.  She already had an idea, however.

“Yea.  About nine feet tall, looks like She-Hulk got it on with that old crying Indian dude from Wayne's World.”  Pennick said.

“Moves like the wind, claws and long teeth, eats human flesh?”  She asked.

“Not sure if it eats flesh, but it does a pretty good number on it.  It tore our friend Frank up pretty bad.  We thought he was going to die, but he's been showing signs of coming around.”

The woman ran her hands through her hair.  “My name is Jerri Thaves.  I'm a professor at a college near here.  I think that thing out there was accidentally summoned by one of my colleagues, Dr. Tehnoah ... That or it IS Joshua.”

********************************************

_The crone slumps into a comfortable chair, bone-tired.  She remembers this kind of tired, working in the field with her mother and sister so many years before.  She'd always had her gift.  Others noticed it first when an uncle died, ten miles from their home, when she was five.  She saw him, sitting beneath a great-spreading pecan tree.  He had been eating an apple.  They may not have found him for a week, otherwise.  

A gift from God, Jesus be praised, the visions.  She was a local phenomenon, an intricate part of her church.  It was the community and the church that protected her, her entire life.  Others wouldn't have understood, wouldn't have believed, or would have turned her into a tourist attraction like some West-Georgia crying-Virgin statue.  Only recently, in her declining years, had Susan come to the attention of official figures.  She had shown herself, had seen herself in a vision doing God's work in this way.  The visions had started coming more often ... things in the world were changing._


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## ledded (Sep 24, 2003)

*great stuff*

Wow, great stuff man.  Definitely held me to the end.  Please finish sometime soon, the suspense is killing me. ;^)

Oh, BTW, is that Auburn, AL, these guys started off in?


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## fenzer (Sep 25, 2003)

Heap, that's what I'm talking about.  A great update, made me laugh.  I love the quotes.  Funny, but my friends and I talk that way, hmmmm.

The copy from your story you put in your signiture is what I was refering to in my previous post.  It is very descriptive and moving, well done.

More please.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Sep 25, 2003)

ledded said:
			
		

> Oh, BTW, is that Auburn, AL, these guys started off in?





Yep.  Undergrads at Auburn.  I graduated from there in the summer and am currently getting my Masters at Miami University in Ohio.

Hopefully I can get a new game going somewhere up here.  A little action in Cincinnati, head east and get into Mothman country maybe.

--fje


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## ledded (Sep 25, 2003)

HeapThaumaturgist said:
			
		

> Yep.  Undergrads at Auburn.  I graduated from there in the summer and am currently getting my Masters at Miami University in Ohio.
> 
> Hopefully I can get a new game going somewhere up here.  A little action in Cincinnati, head east and get into Mothman country maybe.
> 
> --fje




Cool, our group from the Medallions SH is in Birmingham (and the d20 modern campaign is based there also), and at least one of our guys in an Auburn grad.  Oddly enough, 4 of us are computer geeks except for the last guy, who is a bond trader.

Loved the SH.  Great stuff, I honestly look forward to seeing some more of it.   If you havent read the Medallions SH, give it a try sometime:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?threadid=53798

It's pretty much 5 normal people in Birmingham who suddenly find out that certain things they thought only existed in the movies are real, and somehow they are stuck in the middle of it.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Sep 26, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 7*

“Hey, wait a minute, I thought you said some guy was ...”  Craig, the cabin-owner began.

“Shhh.  So you're telling me you know that thing?”  Wiley asked.

“Yes.  No.  I'm not sure.  Just a suspicion I have.  I wouldn't have said anything, but it's obvious SOMETHING is going on.  I found a tree knocked across the road up, your friend is hurt, and I assume that the power is off?”  Jerri said.  She looked around.  The children and their mother sat on the ground, no longer quite huddled.  Confused.

“I thought there was a guy ou ...”

“Shhh.  So how can you be sure?”  Wiley asked.

“I don't know.  I thought this was Joshua's cabin.  Lot Three, Oak Lane?”

“This is Lot One, Oak Lane.”  Craig said, moving close to the conversation, getting quieter.  “Somebody had better tell me what's going on...”

“Shhh ... did anybody hear that?”

**************

Marty.  Not Martin.  Martin, Martin McCullough, was his father.  Thirty years old and still Marty.  If people knew he lived in an “Institution”, and people called him Marty, they'd assume he was mentally retarded.  Only eighteen people lived at the Swann-Price Center, an unknown part of the little-known Monroe Institute.  The Monroe Institute espoused introspective meditations, soundwave therapies, and other new-age healing techniques, and also trained civilians to perform their own “Remote Viewing”.  

Eccentric, commercial, safe.  If you can sell it like modern snake oil, it can't be of military use.  The perfect place for MAJIC to hide a reborn STAR GATE program, the perfect way to do it.    It's hard to keep a twenty year program a secret, but easy to hide it in plain sight.  Eighteen functional remote viewers.  Marty, not Martin, designation  RV-3 attached to the Majority Agency for Joint Intelligence Control, Department Seven.

***************

The roof, it was on the roof.  For something that large, it moved quietly, but it just couldn't hide the mass.  Had the air conditioner been running, had they been talking any louder, they wouldn't have heard it at all.  And they would be dead.

“Where can we go?”  Pennick looked around.  “We leave, it jumps down on us.  We stay here, it jumps down on us.”

“Does this place have a basement?”


Craig shook his head.

“We don't want to get cornered, anyway.  We're going to have to move.”  Wiley said.  

Jerri looked up, and started yelling.

In a language no-one had ever heard.

Brickel got ready to tackle her.  She was obviously communicating with the thing.  A strange woman appears at the door, says she knows something about what's going on, mysteriously doesn't get killed or eaten by the monster rampaging outside, and then starts talking to it in some obscure vowel-heavy language, probably telling the thing exactly where they were.

And now, it was answering.

The thing had a voice like a thousand cougars growling into the north wind ... overlaid on Tom Waits with a sore throat and a head cold.  It spoke the same vowel-heavy language, screaming into the night defiantly.

Jerri shook her head.  “It's Ojibway, like Joshua.  Joshua had several ancient totem-statues of the clans.  Only whatever that is out there claims to be of the wa-wa-shesh'-she of the Anishinabe ... Deer Clan of the Ojibway.  But there IS no Deer Clan.  Never was.  It's just a story.”

The roof creaked over their heads.

“Well, you can stay and argue lineage with it, but we need to get out of here.  Somebody try to get Frank upright.”  Wiley said.

“What's just a story?  It shouldn't exist at all, so what the hell if it claims to be from a storybook clan?  I imagine it knows better than you do.”

“Maybe.”  Jerri sighed.  “Deer clan was supposedly cast out for breaking ancient taboos.  Scattered to the winds in a Northern-Canadian winter ...  There must have been something wrong with one of those totems, we must have mistaken one.”

“How long is he going to sit up there?”  Craig asked quietly.

“Not sure.  Maybe it's intrigued.  Maybe it's scared.  You do have a gun, and I have no idea how effective that will be.  Did it seem ... solid?”  Jerri asked.

“Yea, pretty.  I shot it, it left.  Dunno how bad I hurt it, though.”  Brickel replied.

“Maybe it can be killed, if it comes to that.  I'd rather ... find some other way.  Things like this have a way of not staying dead.”  Jerri said.  “We need to get to Joshua's cabin.”

“Yea, but if we move, it's on us.  We need a diversion.”  Wiley said.

There was a cough from Frank.  A wet cough.

“Well if you're planning on a jog, count me out.”  He said.

******************

_Hours of waiting at HQ for confirmation.  A moment of excitement as the chopper is loaded.  The ride is interminable.  The strike team shifts, weapons safetied and slung across chests.  The uncertainty is the nature of the beast.  Deployments are often short and violently unpredictable.  Agent Kincaid looks down.  Fifteen minutes to the hot-spot.  A lot can happen in fifteen minutes.

A lot will happen in fifteen minutes._


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## fenzer (Sep 26, 2003)

Thanks for the update Heap.  Nicely done.


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## Pierce (Sep 26, 2003)

Whew.  Finally got a chance to read this one.  Great stuff so far, Heap.  Keep up the good work.


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## Kai Lord (Oct 2, 2003)

Sweet story.  Let's get an update!


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Oct 6, 2003)

Well, just wanted to give an update on updates. 

I'm currently doing a write up, should be done in the next few days.  Been pretty swamped here.  Got sucked into the local game club when the Open Game Day GM decided not to show.  I ran an off-the-cuff from a Wizard's Cliffhanger adventure and then joined a game run by one of my players (his first time GMing).  Now I've promised to complete the game I started Saturday and start a campaign from there.

... I HAD a D20Modern/Call of Cthulhu campaign written up, but everybody around here is still hungry for D&D.  So I'm sort of stuck trying to write a campaign from a winger one-shot.

Anyway, back to writing.


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## ledded (Oct 15, 2003)

*Bumpy McBumperson*

*Bump*

Anytime you're ready to post, Heap... anytime... ;^)


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Oct 15, 2003)

Sorry, sorry.  

I'm teaching, taking classes, and writing a web comic.

Getting sucked into the game club around here went nutz.  I ended up running 3 games one week, and playing in another.  Talk about burn out. 

A few days turned into ten on this update.  Bleh.

--fje


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Oct 16, 2003)

*Cabin Fever Pt. 8*

“Yes, I'm sure.”

“But what if we need the gun?”  Brickel asked.

“Shut up, Brickel.”  Wiley said.

“Well if me shooting it doesn't work, what would you shooting it do?”  Frank asked quietly as they gathered close to the door.  Wiley handed him the gun.

“Alright.  On three.  One...”  Pennick grabbed the doorknob.

“Two...”

“Three!”  Everyone pushed and moved as one, rushing out the door into the night.  It felt like walking out of the shade into daylight, moving from the darkness of the house to the light of the clear night sky.

As a group they ran for the small tree line dividing Lot One and Lot Three.  Frank loped along painfully for several seconds, panting from the strain of standing up, gasping from the pain and light-headedness as he tried to run.  Somewhere, behind them, a thump announced the creature's dismount from the house.  Stumbling obviously, and not faking too much, Frank fell back from the group and went to one knee, coughing and rhasping.  The others didn't, couldn't, spare a look back and thundered ahead, plunging into the tree line.

Perhaps the creature was smarter than they had thought, but it didn't close with Frank immediately.  The others pushed through the trees, panicked, wondering.  It moved so fast, and perhaps Frank had passed out without firing at it.  Perhaps it saw through the ruse and was coming after them and ignoring the poisoned bait.  They had already broken through the tree line and into Lot Three when they heard the gun.  ThurACK-ack, ThurACK-ack.  Twice, echoing in the mountain air.  ThurACK-ack ... and no more.

Frank had done it.  Either the thing was dead or it had stopped to finish off their friend.  Either way, they'd been given the time to reach the other cabin.  The friends skirted the pickup truck in the drive and pounded up the steps, herding the family in front of them.  The door was slightly ajar already and they exploded inside.

Quiet.

Jerri moved around the main room of the cabin, looking.  

“Spread out, look around.  We're looking for wooden totem statues.”

“There's two on the kitchen table.”  Pennick said. 

Jerri moved over to the kitchen table.  Leaves, sticks, and dirt had collected on the table, around the statues.  Too much detritus, really.  A few leaves had blown in the slightly open front door, but the rest of the cabin seemed more or less clean.  

“There's only two.”  She said.

“Something on the floor.”  Wiley said, bending and looking under the table.

Jerri crouched down, brushing at the leaves on the floor with her fingertips.  Small chunks of wood littered a small area under the collection of leaves.

“Here.”  She said, and brushed away a small clump of leaves that seemed to have purposefully gathered on top of another statue, a much smaller statue not made of wood.  Wiley crouched down next to her.

“It's not wood.”  He said.

“No, it isn't.  I think it's bone.”  She said, brushing some wood chips away from it.  

“Do you recognize it?”  Wiley asked.

Jerri sat back on her haunches.  “Wendigo ...” she whispered.

“Anybody hear that?”  Pennick asked.  He looked around.  “It's like the biggest hummingbird on the planet is flapping in slow motion in my brain.”

Brickel moved into the kitchen and began going through drawers.  “Well screw that, it's not getting in my head.”  He stopped at one drawer and lifted out a heavy meat tenderizer.  “Let's smash the thing.”

“How do we know that'll do anything?”  Pennick asked.

“Because it always works in the movies.  There's always a gem or something.  Like Conan The Destroyer, the monster and the mirrors.  Conan had to smash the mirrors to kill it.”  Brickel said.

“Does this look like a Conan movie?”  Wiley asked.

The hummingbird sound began to intensify, and the others began to hear it.

“Quick.”  He tossed the hammer to Wiley...


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## ledded (Oct 17, 2003)

*_eyes wide, gripping the edge of his seat, muscles tense; mouthfull of popcorn, forgotten, falls belligerently to land unattended on shirt and lap_*


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## fenzer (Oct 17, 2003)

I like the details Heap.  Your descriptions paint a great picture.  More please.


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## Eyas (Oct 20, 2003)

Yes, very nice post, Heap. Now I can not wait for the next.


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## iwatt (Oct 20, 2003)

Heap, did you kill yourself....? Or are you coming back as an undead devil wendigo whatchamacallit. 

Now seriously, this is a great story, keep it up.


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## Thomas Hobbes (Oct 21, 2003)

What everyone else said.  I love the way you managed to, as someone put it, overcome the "I charge the thing with my knife" tendency right quick.  In playing a modern game with fantastic elements, I've noticed my players tend to act like they're still in the D&D world- "This sort of thing happens all the time, and the DM will never send us against anything too tough!"


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## fenzer (Oct 28, 2003)

Bump.


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## ledded (Oct 28, 2003)

Thomas Hobbes said:
			
		

> What everyone else said.  I love the way you managed to, as someone put it, overcome the "I charge the thing with my knife" tendency right quick.  In playing a modern game with fantastic elements, I've noticed my players tend to act like they're still in the D&D world- "This sort of thing happens all the time, and the DM will never send us against anything too tough!"




Yeah, a little while back I had our group in a tough fight with a couple suburban loads of heavily armed swat-types, a force strong enough to make them at least consider running away from the start.  Of course they didnt, and as usual got extremely lucky.  Just as they were starting to get confident, the other 2 suburbans full of mooks came pulling up.  Then I felt like Will Smith in MiB 2...

"Oh, NOW you're running.  Naw naw, ya'll go on, take your time..."  ;^)

We have definitely changed the way we play because of modern, as a result of seeing a few PC's get cut down in a quick blaze of glory, and a few monsters we have fought have been particularly frightening.

Great job bumping up the 'Fear Factor' Heap.  I look forward to more.


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Oct 29, 2003)

*Cabin Fever:  Final Chapter*

Twin 30-million candlepower suns illuminated a yard and a small cabin on the mountainside.  The shattered remains of a door lay near an old, abandoned blue pickup.  FLIR had picked up a rapidly-cooling body on the other side of a tree line, which Alpha had moved to investigate.  The other two-man teams, Beta and Gamma, moved toward the cabin.  As they split to flank the front, two young men came out of the front door, hunched cautiously and guarding their eyes with upraised arms.  Through the comlink Agent Kincaid could hear two of his force screaming at the suspects to get down on the ground and place their hands behind their heads.  Slowly, squinting in the light, the two lowered themselves down and clasped their hands behind their necks.

Beta pushed in through the front door in formation, disappearing from view of the chopper.  Gamma followed close behind.  “Down down down, get down, get down!”  “On the floor, get on the floor, down down down!”  No shots, but several seconds of yelling and heavy breathing and scuffling over the mics.  

“Eleven individuals.  Three children, two women.  Six men.  Two men unconscious.  Possible need of medical support.  Cabin clear.”

Agent Kincaid had been waiting for the all clear before sending the last two team members out of the helicopter, each with a laptop and evidence kit slung over their back.  The field scientists.  They would begin taking samples and interviewing the people involved.

Alpha checked in from Lot Two.  “Body.  Native American male, thirty, maybe thirty-five. Multiple GSW.” 

Agent Kincaid stepped down out of the helicopter, into thin air …

********************************************************

Wiley, Scott, Brickel and Dr. Thaves all kneeled in the cabin living-room.  They’d never thought to check the lights, but the power was still on here.  The men in black fatigues with machine guns had turned on the lights and zip-tied their arms behind their backs.  Frank was still unconscious, but his hands were zipped behind his back as well.  Pennick lay a little to the side, awake but too weak to sit or stand.  He was zip-tied like the others.  Whoever these guys were, they weren’t taking any chances.  Only Craig and family were untied, and them only to quiet the children.  Two of the six men with guns were watching them closely.  

The other ones were, somehow, even more sinister.  Two of them had come in with laptops and syringes, tape recorders and sample bags.  The third stood in the doorway in his suit and tie and long black coat, watching silently.  A laptop guy was taking samples of crushed bone off of the dining-room table with tweezers, putting them in baggies, taking pictures of everything with a small digital camera before he touched it.  His partner was interrogating the kneeling prisoners, the tape recorder on a side table close by.

“So your … _friend_ … attacked you?”

	“Yes.  No.  Not at first.”

“And he’s the larger one?”

“Yes, Frank.  He was … hurt … earlier.  We left him behind when we ran over here because he couldn’t keep up.  We left him the … the gun.”  Scott said.

“But he attacked you later.”

“Just a few minutes ago … “

******************************************************

_Wiley picked up the small bone idol and placed it on the table.  It felt warm to the touch, almost hot, and seemed to move and struggle in his hand until he put it down.  He gripped the hammer tighter and raised it up.  He had to fight back against a call just behind his eyes.  _Put it down._  He shook his head.  _ The woman.  Kill her._  He pulled back to strike again, didn’t look at Jerri.  _  Just walk away.  _  He looked up.

	The door was a million miles away.  It was at the end of a long dark tunnel.  It pulled away and flung itself somewhere into the great Yard Beyond.  Not-Frank was here.  Not-Frank was hungry, and Wiley could relate.  Something rumbled deep in his stomach.  The statue could tell him why that was.  The statue whispered _Wendigo_, and it was so.

	“Smash it!!”  Jerri screamed.

	“Now!”  Brickel was yelling from the kitchen.  Wiley found that oddly appropriate, for some reason.

	Not-Frank was bigger than the wendigo before.  It barely fit through the door at all, which saved Penick from being eaten outright.  Not-Frank backhanded him more or less accidentally as it tried to grab him and struggle through the small doorway at the same time.  Penick fell.  

	Wiley slammed the hammer down on the statue.  It was really rather unspectacular.  No explosions.  No tinkling sounds.  No ghostly screams.  The bone statue didn’t even crumble to dust.  It shifted under the teeth of the meat tenderizer but largely stayed together until Wiley lifted the hammer.  Half bent to fit into the room, Frank suddenly fell forward with a thump, himself again and wholly unconscious. _

**********************************************

	They heard the sirens long before they saw the blue and red lights.  The police had finally come.  Agent Kincaid walked out into the yard.  He held up a badge wallet, the letters FBI large and obvious on the white license inside.  The long black coat whipped around his legs in a cold mountain wind.

“Y’know the SOB in the trench coat?”  Brickel whispered to Scott.  

“When he came down out of that helicopter … I swear, I think I saw him fly …”


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## Thomas Hobbes (Oct 29, 2003)

Mmm. Update.

(First post!)

Edit: Having actually _read_ the thing...

End? That's it?! Where's the aftermath, the epilogue, the... eh... losing perspicacity.... anywho.

So what happens to our intrepid heroes?


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## HeapThaumaturgist (Oct 29, 2003)

Well, I WAS going to end it there.  The way I wrapped it up it was set to turn our intrepid heroes into, well ... heroes.  Never panned out, though.  I can bully up an epilogue, though.   

Not to worry, though, I'll keep running the story hour thread.  I might post the Halloween One-Shot I'm working up or "The Inn On Shoreview Lane" that I ran a while back.

--fje


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## fenzer (Oct 29, 2003)

Heap, thanks for the update and conclusion, a fun story well written.  

By the way, I love the flying FBI agent.  Nice touch.  When you said he stepped out into thin air, I thought the poor sucker fell to his death.  See, old brain slow synaps.

I loved the story, thanks for sharing.  I look forward to your Halloween special.


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## ledded (Oct 29, 2003)

Great stuff, Heap.  I am duly impressed.  Now I have met yet *another* person on these boards that makes me look at my *own* writing and go... 'bleh'.  ;^)

Too bad there wasnt more game, because I want more story.

Thanks for posting


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## Pierce (Feb 23, 2004)

HeapThaumaturgist said:
			
		

> Well, I WAS going to end it there.  The way I wrapped it up it was set to turn our intrepid heroes into, well ... heroes.  Never panned out, though.  I can bully up an epilogue, though.
> 
> Not to worry, though, I'll keep running the story hour thread.  I might post the Halloween One-Shot I'm working up or "The Inn On Shoreview Lane" that I ran a while back.
> 
> --fje




Bumping this good, quick read back up to the front page to get it in front of more eyes.  And hopefully prompt old Heap into fulfilling his promise of more stories!


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## ledded (Feb 23, 2004)

*player 2 checks, and raises*

I check that bump, and raise you a BUMP in the process!


Give us some more, Heap, we liked your stuff so far.


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## fenzer (Feb 23, 2004)

Okay.  I'll raise your bump with a check and check your bump with a raise.

Sorry.  

No kidding Heap, let's get this show on the road.  It's been far too long and I ain't getting any younger.


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