Forgotten Realms 164

Sad nerd that I am I do a write up for our on-going D+D game. It's a vast document now. I'll post the latest installment here and a link to the whole thing :

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8641303/1/Forgotten-Realms


(G164 12/04/2013 Fri via Roll20 - JF(GM) , AP)

DAY 198 (26 Eleint)(September)

To start with Veddic then. He spend the first part of the night peaceably enough stood
on the east facing wall of North Ward along with Corum, a Civilar and two Watchmen as well
as two volunteers, Cavu and a ranger who did not introduce himself.

Veddic found that Corum was willing to expound on the latest business of the Dungsweeper's
Guild at great length and in great detail.

Apparently a dwarf called John Snow of the Church of Sharindlar had proved beyond doubt the link
between dirt and disease and that the Blue Death is spread via dirty water.

This was wonderful news for the people of Waterdeep who had been blaming it on miasma up until now
and also for the DSG as this would require more hygiene in the city and this more business for the
DSG.

Corum had about his person a handbill that would soon be posted all around the city.
It read :


'By Order of the Open Lord of Waterdeep and the Council of Hidden Lords;

No person shall urinate or defecate in or upon any public street, sidewalk, alley, plaza, beach, park,
public building or other publicly maintained facility or place, or in any place open to the public or
exposed to public view, except when using a urinal, cesspit, closet or midden, or when  using a portable or
temporary closet or other facility designed for the sanitary disposal of human waste and which is enclosed
from public view.'


Corum went on to explain that the 'Pale Closets' as the portable toilets were known as were making the
DSG more money now than everything else put together. He was now in the process of negotiating the siting
and building of permanent 'public conveniences' that would be funded by the city. It was a long term
goal though as there were many more pressing matters, but it would ultimately lead to less disease and
allow the refugee's in Hova Farm to eventually come back.

Veddic was almost relieved when the attack on the wall came. Not long after the clocks had rung out two
in the morning several volleys of flaming arrows were fired at the wall. Next came a force of orcs carrying
five ladders.

Veddic cast a 'Briar' spell that entangled them and killed a couple. This really held them back, but more
came and managed to get a ladder up onto the wall. Cavu started singing a battle song and the others started
sniping at the forces below them with arrows.
Javelins hurled from further back kept their heads down and they were all hit glancing blows from incoming
missiles.

Corum fired and killed an orc but ducked down as a hail of arrows was fired at him. Then something in the
darkness started to hurl rocks and one bounced off his head.

Under the covering fire two orcs managed to make it up a ladder, followed by more eager to take the wall.
The Civilar managed to throw one back over the battlements, but more came up the ladder to take its place.

Next a squad of four tough barbarians made for the ladder and a hill giant loomed into view. Corum killed
an orc with one mighty blow and the Civilar another.

Corum then traded blows with a barbarian and killed him, but poor Veddic was pushed off the wall! The watchman
in charge of the warning horn blew three blasts which meant 'We need help!'.

A pushing fight broke out on the wall now and both Corum and the Civilar were pushed off. The Hill Giant managed
to climb the wall and just as his club was coming down on Cavu's head the bard went 'Poof!' and disappeared in
a flash.

A barbarian on the battlements blew a long low blast on his horn. He then jumped down into the city and the
others and the hill giant followed him.

By now though Veddic, Corum and the Civilar were back on the wall and the Gryphon Cavalry swooped in to drive
the orcs back. Inside the city the watch had to take care of the giant, but back on the wall Corum and Veddic
took no further part in the battle as the breach was closed.

At nine in the morning they trudged back to the OJB.

At ten they were summoned to Aerie Peak where Corum was given charge of Fenrir. Veddic was their too and he
eyed the warlock with initial suspicion.

Back at the OJB the three men talked for a while, then Corum went to bed and left Fenrir and Veddic to talk
privately in Nestoone's room.

After a while they'd worked out that they had similar missions, both of them were currently against the
demons and the devils and Fenrir was happy to help Veddic with whatever plans he had.
So, they agreed to work together, for the time being at least.

Veddic slept in the OJB. Meanwhile Fenrir went to talk to Nestoone who told him that Giselle had turned
up there the day before but she had been pretty angry. She'd borrowed some money from him and then left
not saying where she had gone.

Fenrir discussed the Hallistar Blatt situation with Nes who offered this advice,
'Killing him would seem like a good plan but... he killed you and then what happened? Now you are back.
He surely would be resurrected if you killed him. You need to neutralise him, take him out of the game.
That's more than just killing someone.'

At six in the evening Veddic and Corum woke up. Corum had a night off so he told Fenrir he could do what
he liked.

At seven they went all together to Horizon's Sails. While walking their Fenrir asked Veddic,
'Does Skrye work on someone after they are dead? Would a lock of hair still work?'
Veddic didn't know though.
'If I was in Gaseous Form and went inside someone's lungs and then dispelled it and appeared
inside them. Would they explode?'
Veddic thought that it might work, but wasn't sure. The fact that it wasn't used as a common assassination
method was not in its favour though.

At the shop Fenrir picked up his magic map and the three of them went on to where they knew Vinet The Bloody's
hideout was. An initial poke about in the ruined inn (by an invisible Fenrir) revealed that there was only
one intact room in its centre with a closed door.

They all went in and listened at it, but heard nothing. It was locked so Corum popped it open with his
crowbar. When the door opened it pulled on a string that disappeared into a crack in the hole.

After a long time spent bungling about in the room Corum said,
'We need a rogue.'

Fenrir eventually nodded agreement and they wall went back to the OJB.


DAY 199 (27 Eleint)(September)

In the morning Raya turned up and handed Veddic a letter that had been waiting for him back
at Warm Beds. It read :

V,
We were broken into on DAY 196 (24 Eleint) at three in the morning. It must have been a
master thief to get through our defences. He got into my private quarters and I assume
read several documents that were in a locked chest.
It can be assumed this villain now knows of our intentions.
Take extra care on your mission, there is an expert rogue on your trail now I expect,
D.

She also told Veddic,
'The girl that came out of the hide out. Her name is Etrude Vumplump. She's eighteen
and a member of the Blood Drinkers. From a good family. Can I get 10 gold for expenses
please?'

Fenrir and Veddic, who seemed to now share a common purpose and generally agreed with each other
in all regards persuaded Corum and Raya to go with them once more to the Blood Drinker's hide out.

Raya, her eyes ever open, noticed that they were being followed and she told the others,
'This guy is good'.
The played cat and mouse with him in the streets around the hide out but could not quite
get their hands on him.

Eventually the gave up and headed to the ruined inn. When they were there Raya also noticed
a woman watching them from a doorway down the street, but when the others turned to look the
woman ducked out of view.

It was then decided, watchers or not, to enter the hideout. Raya saw that the door and the
room was an decoy and alarm. The actual way in was a trapdoor hidden under a pile of burnt
floorboards.

As they decended into the gloom a nearby clock chimed ten in the morning.

Mission Banana : Destination Schiehallion : Captains Log 04/08/07

Just found out that I'm probably off to Schiehallion for a wee while. Should be interesting since the old girl is about to be towed away.
I wrote a blog entry on Bebo back around the time of my first trip, here it is :

http://www.bebo.com/BlogView.jsp?MemberId=1786766001&BlogId=4514766503

Mission Banana : Destination Schiehallion : Captains Log 04/08/07

 So, got up at 8 am, skipped breakfast and took a taxi to 'Bond' heliport. I needed to get a 'Vantage' card before I went anywhere. I sort of forgot I was going to get my picture taken for it so hadn't shaved or combed my hair. 'Look into the webcam Mr Foss'. Great I looked like a car thief.
Anyway, as I'd arrived way too early I had a long wait in the small departures lounge. I had decided to not eat or drink until I arrived as I had no real clue as to how long the journey was going to be and I knew I was going to be in a survival suit the entire time! But arround 10am I gave in and had a coffee and a Twix and prayed to God that I wouldn't get caught short. My bladder and stomach are pretty unpredictable at the best of times.
Anyway, through we went to get our survival suits. 'What size Mr Foss?' I have no idea but opted for large. Ah! The survival suit - how I hate thee! At least (hopefully) I wouldn't be getting it wet as the last time I wore one was last year on the RGIT course. I was then provided with a chunky wrist watch thing which is a locater beacon (don't get it wet!) and a green arm band to show that I am a newbie. The terror started to set in.
There are bottles of water available for the trip but I avoid them as I know I will drink a whole bottle out of boredom in the first hour and then be bursting for the toilet for the rest of the trip. See? Forward planning, that's why I get paid the *ahem* big bucks.
Safety video, then the pilot comes and chats to us. Seems like a nice guy, not the sort of chap that crashes alot. I feel a bit less terrified. He then tells us that Schiehallion is 'off station' and we probably won't get on it today. Oops.
We go out, we climb into the helicopter. I get a seat at the rear facing backwards.
We take off. Hey this is fun! Unlike a commerical jet we never get very high or go very fast. It is very leasurely infact and the fields of Aberdeenshire rolled gently past until we get to Banff. I recognised the bridge so I knew where we were at that point. We then got out to sea for a short while until we reached more land. At this point I thought it was an island but checking the map back on shore now I can see it must have been Wick, John O' Groats etc. Then it was wee islands and impressive cliffs.
The cliffs were worth the entrance fee alone, the pilots must follow the coast line all along Orkney I think and I have never seen such a rugged landscape. The theme tune to Father Ted kept playing in my head.
At some places it felt as of we were virtually at the same height as the cliffs, following them along at our steady pace.
Anyway open sea again, then we landed at 'Paul B Lloyd' which appear to be a rusting hunk of scap metal plonked into the Atlantic. We had to get off while the helicopter refueled. There are no signs on the steps leading down off the helideck telling you to 'Hold the Hand Rail' (unlike Craigievar main reception!). There doesn't need to be as instinct makes you clutch on in a white-knuckle kung-fu grip until you are indoors as the rig sways and the wind blows and the roiling sea beneath lash at the rigs sides. I don't know whether the Paul B Lloyd was a rig or a platform but it fairly moved around.
We were herded into the Rec Room. It was decorated in origional '70's style and smelled of ash-trays. A film about Genghis Khan was on the TV. We hung about for about 10 minutes then we were off again!
As we took off I got a glimpse of a hulking brute of a vessel lurking in the mist, a flare glimmering off the top of it. Could this be the ellusive Schiehallion?
We then landed on the Fionhaven (or something like that). It looked as rusty as the place we had just left, but it was a ship.
I asked the man sat opposite, 'This isn't Schiehallion is it?'. He shrugged, he didn't care.
Most people got off and a bunch of new people got on. It take the opertunity to shift to a foward facing seat.
We had a new pilot now and he informed us that we would fly over Shiehallion and see what it was like, if it wasn't suitable we would fly on back to Aberdeen.
We did indeed fly over Schiehallion. I gave it a wave as we flew past it. I recognised it from the splash screen on the SMACS5 software I was supposed to be going to sort out.
Ah well, that was that, another 2 hour journey to get home, and we passed all the impressive cliffs, coast lines and other land marks I had spotted on the outward leg.
It was prudent of me not to eat or drink anything as I was four hours plus stuck in that dam survival suit. As I took it off, back at the heliport, a 'Bond' lady informed me and the other two guys who had been bound for Schiehallion that we would try again - 6am Monday!
It was 4:30pm when I got home and I was starving!

Sweet

That appeared to work.

Flexi Time is also here :

http://www.fictionpress.com/s/3068597/1/Flexi-Time

It is around in other places in the internet I think. Bebo and possibly elsewhere.

Flexi Time

This is going to be a test of how much can be posted at any one time. The first short story I ever wrote was 'Flexi Time'. I'd already churned out a 'novel' if you could call it that. The idea came to me while driving (waiting to turn left on Bedford Road mainly) and I felt like fleshing it out into a short story.

Flexi Time (26/09/2004)

It was a cool and bright May morning, and the cemetery was empty of anyone living except for one young man who was kneeling down at a brand new looking headstone. He was changing the flowers on the grave of his mother. It was just barely a year since she had died and like his grief the headstone was still freshly carved. She had died in a car accident, her small hatchback slamming into the back of a jack-knifed lorry only to be hit by another truck as it came up from behind. Amazingly she had not died immediately but had survived for three days, clinging onto life tenaciously. But on the third day she had died, in the intensive care ward at Dumfries General Hospital and Martin Myle’s life had changed forever.

‘In living memory of Agnes Myle, born 1964, taken tragically from us’ read the new headstone in sharp gold-leafed gothic lettering. She had been only twenty when Martin was born, he had never known his father and Agnes hadn’t talked about him much. He had been much older than his mother and had died of cancer when he was two. Martin didn’t remember him. So when he went to University in Aberdeen, he had left his mother, living alone but still young, in Dumfries. She had died on the bypass, coming up the A74 to see her son.

The guilt had never left him and each day on waking, the world that he lived in would come crashing in and he would have to face up to his infinite loneliness again. Whenever he came down to visit his mothers grave, (he took the train) he would bring fresh flowers and remove the old ones. There was a compost heap across the graveyard where the old flowers could be thrown, beside the grave-diggers corrugated iron hut.

As always he talked to her. ‘Well, mum, third year is going fine. I have part time job on the student newspaper as well. I am going to interview a woman who was also in a car crash a couple of years ago.’

Martin was dark haired and wore it slicked back with hair gel. His fashion sense was way beyond help, as many of his friends were fond of pointing out. He wore a green anorak and national health spectacles. He wasn’t quiet at the tank top wearing stage, he wore a blue jumper underneath his anorak, but he still managed to look like someone from the 1950’s.

‘My councillor thought it would be a good idea. Cathartic maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes I think the pain is lessening, then I feel guilty all over again because I think that might be me forgetting you. Elaine says I need a girl friend, but how can I go with a girl when I am this .. this .. broken.’

Martin didn’t often smile, but he did now, sometime he liked to pretend that she could still hear him.

The next day he was back in Aberdeen and as he had already said at his mothers grave he was in the office of Dr Stephanie Imell, PHD, Lecturer in Advanced Physics. She was a dark skinned Caribbean lady, in her late forties. She was very beautiful, to Martins eyes, and she had an easy elegance about her that made even the brewing of a pot of tea look like ballet. She had a scar on her forehead that disappeared into her scalp. Where the scar was had turned the hair white in a long lightning bolt.

She handed him a cup of tea and sat down beside him at her desk. Her office was in a port-o-cabin behind one of the older buildings of the University Campus in Old Aberdeen. Locked in on old sides by ancient sandstone buildings that looked down on it in stern disapproval, the small grey huts of the extension huddled together on a muddy patch of grass like sheep sheltering beside a wall. It was raining outside, quiet heavily, and Martin had removed his anorak and hung it up as soon as he had arrived in the small cluttered office. Loose papers and folders threatened to topple off the filing cabinets all around him and crush them both, but there was enough space, just, on the desk to brew and serve tea.

Martin noticed that much of the paperwork was in brail. That was odd he thought, he had never been told she was blind, and she could quiet clearly see well enough to get round her office.

Taking a sip of tea, Stephanie broke the silence and said, ‘So, your from the Voice, is this about my course? I don’t think anyone will be very excited about it – it’s pretty dry!’, and she laughed musically.

‘No in actual fact,’, he said and cleared his throat, ‘Actually it’s about your accident. My.. ah.. my mother died in a car crash last year and I thought I could write something about your crash. You know, human interest .. um..’

Dr Imell gave him a queer look and touched her hair just where the scar was and then pulled her hand up to smooth back the streak of white in her otherwise raven black curls.

‘Oh no, I could never have anything about that published.’

In utter embarrassment Martin made to stand up and leave, but she took his wrist and said,

‘But I can tell you about it if you like? Off the record as it were.’

‘Yes, I would, very much’, and he sat back down again and smiled gratefully.

‘So’, she began, and they both settled back into their seats as the rain came down by the window, ‘I was driving back from a party. I had had nothing to drink, was just on my way home on a Saturday night. Just at the Bridge of Don, were the beach road joins on, a car came flying up to the lights. He shot straight through them, the crash investigators said he must have been doing eighty. He hit me side on and we both went over onto the river bank. We took the Donmouth nature reserve sign with us!’, she exclaimed and laughed her musical laugh again.

‘Well, I don’t really remember any of that. And I don’t want to either.’, she said this very finally.

‘But I do remember waking up in the hospital, all bandaged up like the invisible man. The other driver had died. I think he had drowned in the river, his car was upside down. But I survived. With brain damage.’

And she touched her head again, pointing to the white streak in her hair.

‘I could hardly speak. My vision was all wrong and I hallucinated for a long time. It took months with the speech and language therapist at the hospital before I learned to speak again.’

She looked down into her tea at this point in reflection.

‘Well, sometimes very strange thing happen to people with brain damage. Sometimes their short term memory goes and they can’t remember things that happened even five minutes ago. Or maybe they can’t walk, or ride a bike anymore, all the stuff they learned as a child is lost to them. With some people, they loose the ability to see three dimensional objects. They might look at a chair,’ and she nodded at chair in the corner of the room with a stack of papers on it, ‘and not be able to tell you which of its four legs was nearest to us and which was furthest away. They have no idea of how to process three dimensional imagery.’

Martin was nodding and listening to her musical, beautiful voice, enraptured, his tea growing cold in his hands.

She sighed and continued, ‘Well, that’s sort of what happened to me. I will never get it back, I don’t think so, but after all these years, I still cannot read. I just cannot process two dimensional images in my head. The eyes see it, but the more I look at a page of text, the more I just get sucked into a tiny infinite point. As for the television, the same, it’s like looking down into a black hole. I can’t read at all, but I can write, if I keep my eyes closed. My lecture notes are in brail.’

Martin was having trouble visualising this but nodded for her to continue.

‘And three dimensional images are like 2D to me. The whole world is like a slide show. I can’t drive any more, I would be a danger to everyone. I have no idea at all about distances. I even had trouble moving around a room for a long time. But if I get familiar with a place, then I remember for instance that it is three steps to the kettle and four to the door. I can see it, but it’s like a picture in a magazine.’

There was silence and Martin felt he had to say something, ‘That’s incredible’, was all he could manage. He was enjoying listening to her melodic voice and was happy just as long as she was talking.

A wicked grin came of Stephanie’s face and she said,

‘Well now, here is a puzzle for you then Martin. If 2D becomes 1D and 3D becomes 2D, then what?’

Martin had no idea what she was talking about and shrugged his shoulders.

‘You’re an intelligent young man, you should come to some of my lectures. But think. Two becomes one, three becomes two, what becomes three?’

‘Four?’

‘Exactly!’, she clapped her hands and laughed her musical laugh.

‘But the fourth dimension, that’s time isn’t it? That’s …’, he mumbled.

‘Ridiculous? I quiet agree and that’s what I thought at first! But think of it. Think of time as a three dimensional landscape. You can get in your car and drive to Edinburgh, from one point in three dimensional space to another one. Now when you feel like it, you could get back in your car and drive back. Both places still exist as points in space. Now imagine the same in a four dimensional landscape. What if someone was able to travel back and forth in four dimensions as easily as we all can do in three?’

Martin was smiling now, he new she was joking with him, but it was a very interesting joke.

‘Well they would be a time traveller for sure!’ he laughed.

‘That’s right! If you ever get the chance Martin, read Slaughterhouse 5, because for the first relative year after my accident, and I stress the word relative here, I was like Billy Pilgrim in that book. I was a spastic in time. Just as someone in just three dimensions might loose control of themselves, unable to control their limbs, I had lost control of myself in time, and I flitted back and forth from my very first moment when I was born to my last dying breath. I die in bed by the way, at the ripe old age of ninety-three. At first I thought it was all part of the hallucinating but it was all so real, I decided to take everything I experienced on face value and to hell with the consequences. Anyway, I am here and not in a looney bin. Whether that says more about me or Aberdeen University I don’t know.’

‘You are still like this? That would be incredible! How long have you been ‘here’? I mean you could have just zapped in five minutes ago!’

‘That’s how I was like’, she explained, ‘But gradually I learned how to control myself again. I managed to get my life flowing in a more or less constantly linear direction, from start to finish.’

Martin nodded and she began again,

‘So, to continue, imagine you wanted to sit on that chair over there, what would you do? You would pick up the papers and move them. You would manipulate your three dimensional space. Or say you wanted to get a good view, you would go to the top of a tower or something. Time is just the same, it can be manipulated. One person could never move a mountain, but maybe at the right spot they could set one stone moving that would then hit another, then another, until they had caused an avalanche. And time his high ground as well. Sometimes I have no more idea of what will happen next than most people, like driving through a tunnel. And in some places you can stand on a tall mountain and see everything laid out around you for a hundred miles.’

Martin was enjoying her wild imagines and was leaning forward, his tea put down on the desk and long forgotten.

‘I can’t move mountains anyway,’ she said, ‘But just as we can move small things around in three dimensions I can move small amounts of time around. Just as you can build things in space I have learned how to build things in time.’

‘How? By reliving the same bits of time again and again?’

‘More or less. Although the span of my years is ninety-three I have lived, in relative terms over three hundred. So far I have not been able to go back further than my birth or beyond my death. But I am building a temporal machine that hopefully I will be able to use to travel beyond these boundaries’

‘Wow’, gasped Martin, ‘You have a time machine? Can I see it?’

‘You not keeping up young man!’, she laughed and shook her head, ‘The machine isn’t built out of three dimensional objects. What good would that be? It’s built out of four dimensional objects of course!’

Martin sat back and looked up at the ceiling for a second in bemusement. Looking back down at her, he said,

‘What does a four dimensional object look like?’

She laughed again, finding his confusion highly amusing

‘Well in a sense we are all four dimensional objects. Everything travels in time, although usually only in one direction. But it goes a little deeper than that. If you can encourage something to exist simultaneously in more than one point in time then you are halfway there. Yet you cannot see or even conceptualise such an object in just three dimensions. It is outside of human experience. And even the building blocks are hard enough to make though. Even the tools that make the building blocks are hard to make. It’s like starting again from the beginning trying to make something incredibly complex. Imagine if you, and you alone, wanted to get to the moon. By yourself you would have to build a rocket ship wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, that would be difficult.’

‘Yes, but building a temporal device out of four dimensional objects makes building a rocket ship look like making sandcastles. First you would have to try and understand the physics of space travel. Then you would have to figure out what materials you would need to make our rocket. Then you would have to build the tools that you would use to do it. And a million other complex issues would come into play. Impossible, utterly impossible for one person to do such a thing alone, no one lives long enough. Luckily I have plenty of time.’

‘And then what? When you have built your rocket?’

‘I don’t know. I can only guess what will be there when I get there. Maybe others like me. Maybe I will be the worlds best historian, in that I will be able to go and see events in history as they actually happened.’

‘Gosh! But what about cause and effect? You could alter the course of history?’

With that she sat back and smiled silently for a moment then finally said,

‘Who is to say I haven’t already?’

‘Right’, Martin felt obliged to remove his spectacles and clean them.

Dr Imell clapped her hands together and giggled girlishly.

Martin shook his head, ‘Amazing. I can’t even begin to think of all the things you could do. Stop wars, or start them? If you didn’t like someone, you could just … rub them out. You would never be late for anything, you would get as many practice attempts as you liked at anything you ever did. It would be very confusing.’

‘Yes, very confusing, but immense fun. Not being able to watch TV looks like a small sacrifice eh?’

Martin stood up and looked out the window at the rain.

‘There is so much you could change, so much you could do.’

‘Yes, but remember what I said. Nobody could move mountains. All I can do is tinker with cause and effect. I can’t cure the world of AIDS for instance, but perhaps if I could get back that far I could arrange that Mr and Mrs Hitler never met for instance? Thinks like that happen by such complete chance. Turn down one street instead of another and the world splits in two.’

‘But you would alter the course of history completely!’

‘Oh yes!’, she said gleefully, ‘Believe me, when I go hiking over the mountains of time, I am very very careful about not causing avalanches!’

Martin turned to looked at her blankly.

Suddenly she waved her hands in the air and started to laugh shaking her head in unbridled amusement. Finally she managed to gasp out,

‘Dear dear me! What a face. What a picture you are! I have talked you into a right old knot haven’t I? Please don’t worry about it! I just like to play jokes on people. I’m afraid all my accident did was leave me disabled and I like to make stories up to appear more interesting than I am.’

Martin replaced his glasses and looked at her. Her dark skin and white smile, her white streak of hair making her look like the west indian version of the Bride of Frankenstein, her young face, but with a mature knowing quality. Martin thought she was much more than merely interesting.

She broke the silence by saying,

‘Tell me about your.. mother was it, that died? What was she like?’

And Martin told Stephanie about his mother. How it had always been them together and how they had never needed anyone else. How young she had been and how guilty he had felt about leaving her when he came to University. About the day of the crash and how his every waking moment, and most of his sleeping ones had been a torment of guilt, rage and dread every since.

Dr Imell listened silently through it all and nodded gravely when he had finished. Then it was time for him to leave, she had a class to teach and Martin would have to go over to see his editor, Elaine, and tell her that he had no story for the newspaper after all.

Much to his amazement and delight Stephanie gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek just before he left and he was still blushing as red a beetroot when he crossed the cobbled road on his way to the small officer from which the Voice was run.

A car beeped its horn angrily at him and he leapt back onto the pavement. He had not even seen it and it quickly whipped past him and sped up dangerously to get round the junction ahead before the lights changed.

Shaking his head he again crossed the street and continued on his way. Just then his mobile phone started ringing and he plucked it from his pocket. It was his mother.

‘Hi mum’, he said to her. He had just left her yesterday but he was always happy to hear from her.

‘Martin, you know you left some of your notes down here?’

It took him a second or two to figure out what she was talking about. Notes? Why would he leave notes at the .. wait .. at their house in Dumfries. Why did he think for a second it had been sold? Were else could he have been when he was down there?

‘Ah yes! My notes!’, he said and laughed with such delight that it stunned his mother at the other end of the line.

‘Sorry mum! Don’t worry, I don’t need them urgently. I have plenty of time!’

‘OK, well just so you know. I can’t talk though. The dogs want out. I will call you tonight!’

‘OK mum, speak to you later!’

He hung up his phone and put it back in his pocket. Why did he feel as if a massive weight had lifted from his shoulders? He hadn’t even realised he was missing any notes. I should send Dr Imell some chocolates or something he thought, talking to her today has really cheered me up!

The Reason

I was reading that its good for people that are budding writers to have an 'online presence'. I hate that poop but it may not be a bad idea.

I have a website on my server but its a bit ropey since one of the kids now uses it to watch YouTube on so this might do the job as a central area for this sort of thing.

I've entered a bunch of short stories writing competitions, as they come back rejected ( :P ) I'll post them here. In the mean time I'll also post a short story a day until I get bored of that.

Some are available here :

http://www.fanfiction.net/~roztov

(or http://www.fanfiction.net/u/551651/ )

And here :

http://www.fictionpress.com/~roztov

(or http://www.fictionpress.com/u/878378/ )

Facebook games

When you only have one hand available for use between the hours of 6pm and about 9pm then mouse only games are your friend.

I play them on Facebook, but man, some of them are naff.

There is one in particular, Stormfall that is currently being unintentionally funny. It appears to be full of PVP bullies who are often very easy to wind up.

I used to do it a bit on some Bebo games back in the day, but it did get a bit out of hand when they start greifing you on your main news feed.

But what's going on at the moment is just too much fum, especially when dealing with the international element who threaten you in very shaky English.

Well anyway, the set up so far is that people attack you and if you have troops out then they fight. If you are lower level then your castle troops are slaughtered. No harm is done to your castle but they might steal some of your stuff which is no big deal. So the set up is just the same as a hundred other build-raid games out there.

My neighbour in this game farmed my castle for about a month until I started to use my old Farmville sock puppet accounts to feed me more troops. Then I broke all his seiges. Then he got all his sock puppets to attack me, but that was perfect as then I just took all my troops out of cover and killed them off. At some point he'll get tired of it, but not me since I'm holding a baby :D

So breaking peoples sieges is great fun so I decided to do it to another PVP bully that had annoyed me for a while before. They usually just leave one archer or whatever since these are just abandoned castles. I got threatened for doing that. Fantastic! Let the fun begin :)

At some point he may realise that I'm only doing this because annoying people like him is the only reason I'm playing this game. I'm sure at this moment he's rousing his entire clan to get me. But what can they do? I've got no troops or stuff because the other PVP bully right next to me has already raided it away anyway or I've hidden it.

So bring it on funny looking foreign dude!

Test

This is just a test.