Lately my catch phrase has been “Speak truth to power,” which isn’t so much my own, as it is so common that there isn’t anyone specific to quote.   A lot of folks continue to toss it back to me in emails and letters, so I must have been using it more than I thought lately.
I’ve had other personal catch phrases in the past: “How much for a thousand of them?” comes to mind.   (I like to shop, especially in the developing world where that question is not only valid, but often very frugal).

In our medieval household, we used to joke about how spiff we’d look by imagining a conversation with someone who didn’t know us.  Them: “Who’s that?”  Squire: “That’s Viscount Richard.”  Them:  “Can he fight?” Squire: “No, but he looks good!!”

I  remember in the “way back” when I’d be working on armor in my garage at the multi-armed monster made of railroad iron (no Keith, I still don’t want to know where it came from) and I’d be looking for a tool.  Two particular catch phrases come to mind.  Me: “Where is my drill?”   David: “You don’t know do you?”  Me: “Michael, do you know where my drill is?”  Michael:  “If it was up your A$$ you’d know!”  Me: “Very helpful…both of you.” (I’m not making this up…really.  Cleaning it up a bit, since there are children who read this site, but not changing one word).  You can see why we didn’t get a lot of armor made.  Once I started chasing them around the garage with the located power drill… other catch phrases would fly.

Of course, the newest one…from Dave during our sessions of gaming, and based upon two obvious occurrences: “An arrow in the butt is better than a spear in the winky!”   Now who says we are stuffy and old-fashioned?  I can’t wait to see the T-shirt.

I’m certain that there were dozens of others…I’m just getting that CRS stuff.  So I’m hoping you all will fill in the blanks.  Didn’t we used to have a lot more catch phrases?

“What on earth are you doing here?” Grey asked incredulously, taking the axe from his short friend.

“Well you said three heads, so I just assumed that you wanted me along,” Stonefist replied. “Eh, what’s an earth anyway?”

“This is the earth,” Grey said, waving his hand around absently, “it’s what this world is called. You live in Thraveon, I live on earth. That is your reality and this is mine.”

“So Thraveon is all imaginary to ye?” Stonefist asked.

“Yes,” Grey replied, “we’ve been through this before.”

“Don’t snap at him Grey,” Kelly admonished.

“Sorry, I’m just a bit stressed at the moment,” he replied.

“That’s not like you,” she chided.

“Not like me? Not like me? There is a frigging dwarf in my office!” Kelly gasped. “No offense,” Grey said turning quickly to Stonefist.

“None taken,” Stonefist grinned.

“I have a wall locker full of bloody weapons that you claim may be worth millions, imaginary objects and mythical beings are appearing in my reality, and oh by the way I’m supposed to meet an Afghan Minister later in the day. How could I possibly be like me?”

“You’re Grey Connor,” she replied. “Mr. Calm-in-the-midst-of-chaos. Everyone looks up to you because no matter what happens you are always even-keeled and cool-headed.”

Grey opened his mouth but didn’t speak.

“I gotta tell ye, I really like her,” Stonefist said. “Shut him up in his own reality, wow!”

“But I suppose this is a little different,” Kelly admitted.

“A little different? Kelly, reality and imagination are intersecting in such a way that…well…who knows what could happen? What if things from over there start affecting our reality over here?” He turned back suddenly to Stonefist. “The OPSCO!”

“What?” both Kelly and Stonefist asked.

“Chief. My assistant. He could walk in any second and see our friend here and then what am I going to say? Oh hi Chief, don’t mind me, I’ve just brought along one of my imaginary friends, sorry about the bloodstain on the carpet, oh and stay out of the weapons locker, there are swords and axes in there.”

“You’re right,” Kelly said, “we better think of something quickly.”

“I dinna mean to cause trouble,” Stonefist said, “I just wanted to help you.”

“I know old friend, and help you will,” Grey said. “Just wait in my office for a minute while we sort through this.” Stonefist did as he was asked and shut the door behind him. Grey could hear the beginnings of a particularly bawdy dwarven drinking song emanating from behind the door. “Stonefist!” Grey chided.

“Sorry,” the dwarf responded sheepishly. “I sing when I’m nervous.” Kelly smiled.

Grey entered the server room and came back moments later with a screwdriver and an eighteen inch square of carpet. “You should go check on things in your office and see if you were missed. I’ll change out this piece of carpet, hopefully before Chief comes back, and try to get the blood off the bottom of the wall locker. I don’t know why I put them there in the first place, just panicked a little I guess.” Kelly nodded. “I just have to keep our friend quiet long enough to get him back to Thraveon without being seen and figure out how to put our two worlds back together.”

“You going to be okay?” Kelly asked as she moved towards the door.

“Oh sure,” Grey said, “you know me…Mr. Calm-in-the-face-of-absolute-insanity.” He tried to smile.

“For what it’s worth,” Kelly said, opening the door before stepping out into the hall, “I’m having a blast!” She let it shut behind her.

“I’m glad someone is,” Grey said, putting the new carpet square in place. He cleaned out the wall locker with some weapons cleaning rags, how ironic, he thought, and put the axe, sword, and rapier along with his breastplate into a burlap sack used for padding the back of his vehicle when carrying ammunition boxes. He set the burlap bag outside his office door and put the bloodied carpet square and rags inside a black plastic trash bag. Contemplating what would happen if the bag leaked in the embassy hallway, he quickly stuffed the first bag inside another for good measure. He would carry the whole mess to the dumpster as soon as he got Stonefist sorted out. He picked up the burlap and went into his office.

Stonefist was sitting behind his desk, spinning in circles on the black leather chair. “Are you having fun?” Grey asked.

“Aye,” Stonefist replied enthusiastically. “What do ye call this kind of chair? Did ye know it can roll like a wagon?” He demonstrated with a strong push from the desk towards the wall. “Why dinna ye ever give me some of these in the inn?” He grinned shile pushing himself back towards the desk.

Grey sighed. “Can you imagine what Garn Mudlump would have done to the place if he had access to a chair like that?” Grey asked.

“Good point,” Stonefist said grinning, “though I still wish that…” The outer door squeaked as someone opened it and entered the office.

Grey put a finger to his lips, imploring Stonefist to be quiet.

“Sir?” Chief called, “You in the office?”

“Yeah, just a minute Andy,” Grey responded. He quickly checked himself head to toe for anachronsims, then, finding none, he cast an enquiring look at Stonefist. The dwarf gave him a silent thumbs up. Grey opened the door quickly and stepped out to talk with Andy.

“What’s up Chief?” Grey asked. He tried to look normal. What was normal at the moment. Grey had no idea.

“You mean apart from our world coming to an end?” Andy asked.

“What?” Grey said with a little too much emphasis. What has been happening while I’ve been gone. He inhaled deeply.
“Just kidding sir. Jeez. Never seen you so tense.” He patted Grey on the shoulder. Grey exhaled. Calm. Mr. Calm. Breathe, Grey thought.

“But something is going on if you ask me. The planets are in alignment or out of alignment or something,” Chief continued. Grey stiffened again.

“The ALO (Air Liaison Officer) called and said all of our flight requests were approved, Headquarters increased our annual budget by fifteen percent for no reason I can fathom, Abdul just brought the HUMVEE with the burned up engine back from the motor pool because the mechanic said there was nothing wrong with it, and the Ambassador canceled that dinner party you weren’t looking forward to attending. Is that weird or what? Days like this don’t happen very often.” Andy went to his desk to answer some of his email.

Grey relaxed and stood recounting Andy’s words in his head. “No Chief, days like this don’t happen very often. I wonder what it all means.”

“What’s that sir?” Andy asked, fiddling with the monitor controls. “Did you say something?”

“No,” Grey responded. “Not really. Just thinking out loud.”

“Great! Just what we need! Colonels thinking. Sir, you better go in your office and put your feet up. You start thinking and it’s gonna be nothing but work, work, work for the rest of us.” He laughed at his own joke. Even Grey couldn’t help but laugh at the old banter.

“Blah, blah, blah. Warrant officers do all the work,” Grey said, “I’ve heard it all before. You try standing in your dress uniform in the sweltering heat and make nice with a dozen other colonels over luke warm fruit juice.”

“Not me Colonel,” Andy replied, emphasis on the Colonel, “you have your job to do, and I have mine. Frankly, I wouldn’t trade you for a sack full of gold and jewels.”

I bet you would, Grey thought, imagining Andy’s face if he opened the burlap sack. Somehow, bantering with Chief made his troubles seem less…urgent.

“But speaking of my job, I better go down and talk to the guys in IT,” Andy said, standing up. “I guess our day of luck is over.”

“What’s wrong?” Grey asked.

“Look at this! Have you ever seen a monitor do this?” Andy asked, pointing at the Viewsonic flatscreen monitor on his desk. The screen was awash with digital snow, much like an old black and white television when the cathode ray tube was on the fritz.

“No,” Grey said, “I can’t say that I have. Yeah you better talk Bruce, if he can’t fix it then it can’t be fixed. I think there is a new monitor in the storage connex though if it comes to that.”

“I thought we had a deal sir. I stay out of your office and you stay out of my connex, remember?” Andy grinned as he picked up his hat and headed towards the door.

“I didn’t go anywhere near your connex Chief, though maybe I should since you want to keep me away so bad. But I did sign for the arrival of a new monitor last week which I don’t see anywhere in the office so I must assume you moved to the connex.”

“That’s what I like about you sir, always assuming the best about me. How do you know I didn’t sell it on the black market?” Andy teased.

“Because you aren’t the kind of guy to go half way. If you had connections to the black market, my office would be empty by now,” Grey responded, smiling for the first time in what seemed like hours.

“Right you are sir, right you are!” Andy saluted with mock respect as he backed out the door. “Be back in a few sir.”

“Drive safe!” Grey called after him, knowing he was only walking down to the ground floor. He started back to his own office when he heard the knock on the outer door and buzzed it open from Chief’s desk. Kelly.

“You won’t believe it Grey.”

“I’d believe just about anything at the moment Kelly,” Grey said, staring at the snowy monitor on Chief’s desk. Could digital monitors do that? Was that normal? Snow on a flatscreen? He turned to face her.

“When I went back to the Political Section,” Kelly said, “Sally asked me what I’d forgotten.”  She waited for him to understand.  “Look at the clock!  I came into your office and apparently went right back out again.”  Grey looked at the clock over Chief’s desk.  Only a few minutes had passed since Kelly first came in with her reports.   “How can time stand still?” she asked him.  She looked a little shaken.

Grey shook his head and looked back at the floor.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know how any of this is happening.”  He looked up at her.  “You sure you want to deal with this?”

“Of course I do!” she replied, more confidently.  “I told you, I’m having a blast.  It’s a little weird mind you.”  She offered a smile.

“It’s a lot weird,” Grey corrected her.  “If you’re still with me then, we should get Stonefist back to Thraveon and try to think of a way to sort this out.”  She nodded her agreement and opened his office door.  “And we better get out of here before Chief comes back to sort out this snow problem.”

“He saw this?” she asked staring into Grey’s office.

“Saw what?” Grey asked, stepping into his office.

The entire office was filled waist deep with white powdery snow.  Stonefist sat shivering  in the midst of it on the black swivel chair.  “It started pouring through the portal thingy when yer other friend was here.  I dinna want to say anything cause you told me to keep quiet, I hope I did the right thing.”

“You did great old friend.,” Grey responded. “Come on, let’s get this cleaned up quickly.”

“Funny thing,” Stonefist said, jumping out of the chair.

“What’s that?” asked Grey.

“I never seen snow in a building before.  Kinda strange.”

“What else is new?” Grey asked.

I knew from previous visits to the forward defensive line that at least one of the divisions there suffered from a very high incidence of snake bites, not surprising considering there are 97 species of snakes in Sri Lanka, 24 of which are venomous. One surgeon told me that she saw an average of one soldier a day who had been bitten by a snake, and while the army had anti-toxin in sufficient quantity for all units, she still lost several soldiers a year. Snakes were a constant menace.

It was this division that I was visiting and I was quite surprised to find the soldiers in one brigade had been forced to move out of their bunkers by the rising waters and were sitting, in the open, on the tops of their bunkers while the water lapped at the edges of their sandbags. I supposed it might be some consolation to them that the enemy bunker line was also inundated, but it seemed surreal, seeing soldiers sitting in the open, within a few hundred meters of each other across a no-man’s-land of water and occasional floating mines. Several plastic mines had already floated to the surface and washed up against trees or other objects, detonating and sending a shower of mud and debris on those closest. No one had been killed by a floating mine, but leaders were certainly concerned that it could happen. Rain continued intermittently, causing the water to rise and more mines to break free from the mud.

Because the roads were underwater, the platoon leaders were rowing food out to the soldiers on the bunker line, and because of limited boats, the soldiers were only getting two, rather than their regular three meals a day. As we took a little tour of one part of the line I noticed several crocodiles skulking just under the water’s surface, which was just a few inches below the tops of most of the bunkers.

We approached one bunker and the soldier sitting on duty there continued to focus on his left and right limits, even though his mental health must have been precarious. Sitting in a soggy uniform on top of his bunker in open in sight of the enemy, eating fewer meals than he was accustomed to, and wondering how long it would be before a crocodile ventured onto the top of a bunker in the darkness, and now comes a boat with the Division, Brigade and Battalion commanders escorting some foreigner that can barely speak Sinhala. I really pitied the poor soldier at that moment and thought…”man this really sucks for him.”

Wondering how he was coping with it all, I sympathized with him, through the Brigade Commander (I could understand a lot more Sinhala than I had vocabulary for) and asked if he thought things were bad. His face lit up and he beamed with happiness. “Oh no sir! Everything is wonderful. Since the waters have come up, the crocodiles are swimming around and eating all of the snakes!”

What an amazing attitude and what an amazing thing perspective is! This little moment in life taught me not to judge another person’s situation too quickly. When the tsunami hit Sri Lanka six weeks later, perspective and attitude became two of my biggest allies.

Stonefist was down to one Uruk, the remainder piled dead or dying around him. “Yer gettin slow in yer old age aren’t ye?” he called, gesturing at the size of his Uruk pile and the size of Grey’s.

Grey ducked in time to let an Uruk blade just swing over the top of his head, squatting low to regain his balance. He thrust upwards at the Uruk’s midsection and drove the sword between two belly plates while sweeping the Uruk’s legs with his own. “If you’re so fast, you could hurry up and get over here,” Grey suggested, “you might notice I’m not wearing any armor.”

“And whose fault is that Mr. I-made-this-place-and-everything-in-it?” Stonefist emphasized the word everything as he levered his axe out of the Uruk’s body. “I don’t know why you ever made these things in the first place,” he added, moving with no great speed to assist Grey.

Of course! Grey couldn’t believe how foolish he was being. He had created this race. He had given them their strength, their cunning, their fearsome appearance. He had also given them a sense of self-preservation. If he couldn’t control these two through his magical will, perhaps he could exploit their natural inclinations. Grey stood quickly to face the two remaining Uruk and took several quick steps backwards as he called to them in their native tongue. Gresznak gur! Shuzbren gur stisgrak! (literally - Flee you! Otherwise you will die!)

The Uruk paused and looked at each other in surprise. Neither of them had ever heard a softskin speak Uruk. They looked back at Grey and at the Dwarf who was calmly walking towards them over the bodies of more than a dozen of their tribe. They didn’t advance, but they didn’t lower their swords either. Grey took a deep breath and lifted both arms in the air staring into the eyes of the Uruk as he did so. “Ge rustul ma!” (I am a shaman!), he called to them. Their eyes widened as a silvery breastplate materialized over his chest, buckling itself to straps that appeared over his shoulders.

Grey raised his empty hand and pointed at the Uruk closest to him, mumbling nonsense words under his breath. He couldn’t risk an offensive spell because he didn’t know if it would work, but he was still able to conjure objects. Grey took another deep breath and willed a crooked stick into his hand. It looked exactly like the wands used by powerful Uruk shamans. The two warriors didn’t wait to see if the wand was real. They both turned and fled as quickly as their legs would carry them. Grey exhaled his relief.

“Why’d ye let them go?” Stonefist asked. “They’ll just go and get others. They always do. Shoulda killed em both.”

“I want them to spread the word that we are dangerous,” Grey said, “otherwise we might be doing this several times a day.”

“Ye need the practice if ye ask me,” Stonefist said.

“I didn’t ask you,” Grey replied, turning to search for Kelly. She was kneeling over one of the Uruks she had killed running her hand over its skin. The rapier was still clutched in her other hand but she looked at the Uruk in wonderment.

“You okay Kelly?” Grey asked, realizing it was a pretty stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay. Her entire worldview must be shattered. Talk about paradigm shifts.
“I’m fantastic!” she said standing to face him. “You really made these things?” She was beaming as she pointed down at the Uruk. Grey was stunned at her reaction. He had been trained to recognize post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, it must be manifesting in her now, though it seemed too soon if he remembered his training correctly.

“I uh…” Grey began.

“And you made this little guy too?” she asked, running over to squeeze Stonefist on the cheek. The dwarf’s eyes widened in shock then his cheeks began to redden.

“I wouldn’t…” Grey cautioned, “he can be a bit…caustic.”

“Speak for yerself yer mightiness, if the girl wants to pinch my cheek, who am I to nay say her? And such a pretty thing too.” Stonefist beamed back at Kelly.

“Oh brother,” Grey replied. “I think I’m getting a headache. Doesn’t this unsettle you at all?”

“Of course it does. Beautiful women don’t just pop out of thin air and save your life every day you know,” Stonefist replied.

“I was talking to Kelly,” Grey said.

“Oh is that the lady’s name?” Stonefist chided. “Makes the whole world but has no manners,” he said to her while holding out his hand. “Name’s Stonefist. Very pleased to make yer acquaintance miss.”

“Likewise,” Kelly replied with a half curtsy and a nod of her head.

“Don’t mind him miss Kelly, he’s in a bit of a lather what with all his powers goin on the blink and all,” Stonefist said. “Have you considered retirement?” he asked turning to Grey.

“No, I haven’t considered retirement,” he replied, “at least not in my world. But if I don’t get things sorted out soon I may have to.” He stepped towards Kelly and looked in her eyes for signs of shock.

“Really,” Grey asked, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine! I’ve never felt so alive,” she said. Grey stared at her. “Really! This is just amazing!” Grey wasn’t convinced. “Look, either you slipped me some incredible hallucinogenic when I first came into your office, or this is real. Either way there is nothing I can do about it now, so I might as well enjoy the ride.”

Grey closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He really was getting a headache. “There is no ride,” he said. “I said I’d prove it, and I did, so now we go back.”

Kelly’s smile vanished and Grey felt a moment of inexplicable disappointment. He didn’t mean to ruin her moment. “I’m not trying to be difficult Kelly, but I have to sort this out before things really start to unravel, and I can’t do it if you are here in Thraveon with me.”

“Why not?” she asked. Grey looked at her but had no ready answer.

“Why not?” Stonefist asked expectantly. Grey turned to him and sighed.

“Why not,” he said resignedly. “I suppose two heads are better than one.”

Stonefist cleared his throat. “Fine, three heads,” Grey said, “but we’ve got to go back and make sure you weren’t missed. I seem to come and go without anyone noticing my absences, but I don’t know how it will work for you. I don’t seem to know much of anything anymore.”

He conjured a cloth to wipe their blades clean then handed her a new scabbard for her rapier. “May as well take it back since we know it works for you. Let’s just try to keep it hidden, we know what happened the last time someone noticed a sword in my office.” She laughed.

Grey moved back to the area where he had first come through the nexus and waved his arm around in the air in front of him. After just a few moments, he felt the strands at the edge of the portal and pulled the fabric open.

“It isn’t supposed to be like this,” he told Kelly. “I just close my eyes and enter Thraveon in the same way that you would revisit a favorite place in your mind. When I make changes to the reality here, I remember them, so the world on this side evolves under my direction and stays the same until I return.”

“And that’s not happening now?” Kelly asked stepping through the nexus into Grey’s office.

“Not in the same way,” he replied. “I never actually walked through a portal before. And I certainly never came here when I wasn’t meaning to. Of course there was the odd bored moment when my mind would wander here, but it wasn’t like I just appeared here with no control over anything.”

“You normally have complete control?” she asked, stepping into Grey’s outer office.

“Yes. Everything in that world is my creation and bends to my will, or it did. Now I find that the beings there have free will and my powers are limited, though I’ve yet to determine how limited. I keep returning here without intending to.”

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Well, first we figure out how long we’ve been gone and if you were missed, then I guess we try to come up with a plan for sorting this out. I have to admit I’m more than just a little concerned.”

He held up his sword. “This isn’t real. It shouldn’t be here.” He opened a metal wall locker against one wall and placed the sword inside. “But objects from Thraveon have been showing up at odd times and odd places. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around an imaginary world being real, let alone objects moving from one world to the other. In any case, I don’t think that it can be good for our reality if imaginary things start appearing here at random. It might upset some cosmic balance or something.”

Grey took the rapier from Kelly and put it in the wall locker beside his sword.

“I see what you mean,” she said, looking past Grey with a slight smile on her face. He turned to see what had caught her attention.

“Did ye want to put mine in there too, or should I hold on to it?” the dwarf asked, clutching his bloody axe to his chest. “Only I don’t want to drip on yer nice soft floor here,” he said plainly to Grey’s disbelieving stare.

I’ve been running role-playing games for several decades now, and am still most fond, though it may shock some people, of AD&D first edition.  There are so many wonderful aspects in follow-on editions of AD&D (I’m playing in a 3.5 campaign right now) and in other games systems, but I still run first edition.  Why?  Because in my world, the rules don’t really matter…it’s more about the game than it is about the rules.  The rules are just a framework to support the story.   I’ve toyed with the idea of converting from one system to another several times, but the three decades of work I’ve put into building an open-ended world that isn’t that highly dependent on the rules anyway just doesn’t seem to justify the additional effort.

I tell you all this so you have an idea what kind of world I’m running.  There is no major plot line that the party has to follow.  There is a world.  Things happen.  Go.

Anything they want to do, within the physical and ability constraints of the party, they can do.  There are plot hooks everywhere, just as there are in life.  There are major plot hooks and minor plot hooks and never discovered plot hooks.  It takes new players in my world to figure out that the DM isn’t “sending them clues,” or “trying to get them to go this way,” or “pointing out something relevant to the game.”  It’s ALL relevant to the game.   Everything is interconnected in some way.  Regardless of what the party chooses to do there will be consequences.  Regardless of what they choose NOT to do, there will be consequences.  Just like life.

Supporting a world like this can be a strain on the DM I’ll admit.  I have to continue every story line they ever start, move forward every political or economic process they come in contact with, evolve every creature or being they leave alive because at some point, in the near or distant future, they might (and oh too often do) return.   How many times have I heard, “that’s not the way it was the last time we were here!”  Well, of course not…the world isn’t just sitting idle waiting for you chosen few to have your way with it.

You would think after three decades of this kind of gaming, that apart from the occasional amazing die rolls and way-out momentary ideas of a party member in combat or a party with too much down time, that I would never be surprised for a party decision.   Last week however, I must admit, that I was surprised.  Not unprepared mind you, like I said, it is a wide-open world.  Just surprised.

So, let me explain.  No, it’s too much.  Let me sum up.  (thank you Indigo).  At the beginning of the game and as part of his backstory, one of the party members was left a mine as part of an inheritance.   The existence of the mine has been a considerable source of discussion in game as it is allegedly one of the only sources of an extremely rare metal that is wanted by one of the principal antagonists.  It’s location was a mystery, the uses of the ore were a mystery, the idea that several antagonists have now gotten involved over it’s existence has been a constant source of trouble for the party, and yet, it is merely one of (DM’s rough estimate) twenty-five concurrent plot lines that the party has decided to pick up on.

The last few months of gaming has seen the party very focused.  Pick a plot line, work it to completion, then go on to the next.  During the first year of gaming they were off on tangents several times a session, wandering in circles at times, and continuously trying to “find themselves.”   “What should we do next?”  “What do we do now?”

Now they are focused.  On to the mine.  Get to the mine.  Find the mine.  Kill the armies of antagonists that interfere.  Do not be distracted.  No tangents.  No side-quests.  Mine. Mine. Mine.

I tested their resolve by giving each of them a dream that would have caused a normal party to think twice about where they were heading…they sat down in an orderly fashion, shared their dreams and decided to go forward.  MINE!!

Within a few days of the mine there is an escarpment that the party has to cross.  It has nothing to do with any of the quests they are on, it just happens to sit at the top of the road leading down to the lowlands and the lord of the keep levies a fair tax on all who use his road.  They paid the tax, headed down the road, and met a small force of one of their antagonists within a day’s of the keep.   In the middle of what seemed like a very desperate battle, some of the men from the keep showed up and got involved in the fighting, unfortunately, it was unclear to the party on whose side the men were fighting.  By the end of the fight, even amidst arguments in the party, all of the enemy and all of the keep men had been slain and the party was all set to move forward to the mine.  That’s when it happened.

“They shouldn’t have attacked us,” one party member said.

“But now that they did, I guess their keep belongs to us,” said another.

“Yeah, let’s go take it from them,” said a third.

“You wanna do what?” I asked.

“If this was the lord of the keep who we just killed, then the keep is probably ours.  If he is there at the keep and knows his men attacked us, then we’ll have to take the keep from him.”

So they TURNED AROUND!  To make what is becoming a long (and under-detailed) story short, they lawfully fought to take the keep (the actual resident was NOT who they thought it was) and are now headed to the capital city of the kingdom to speak with the legal clerks about transferring the deed.  Sigh.  Good thing I have the real estate platt, the floor plan of the keep, the history of the area, and the deed on file in the capital city.  I just wonder which of the fifteen side quests connected to the keep will delay them from what was their principal goal.  This will be fun to watch…

I LOVE my new place of work.  Granted, it’s only been two days (Friday and Tuesday) and it’s still the honeymoon period, but everything works, the people are nice, the work suits me, and the commute is ten minutes less than my old job.  I am thrilled.  I even get to walk through a beautiful park in downtown DC from my car to my building.  What could be better?  (I suppose that walk won’t be pretty this winter, but this is the honeymoon, we’ll get to the winter when we get to it).

My retirement ceremony was beyond description.  LTG Maples was a remarkable speaker, though I’m still not sure who he was talking about, my colleagues made a slideshow of pictures of my life (set to music) that set me to tears, and the retirement picnic on the weekend was a blast.  Perhaps when I am more distant from the emotions of the day…I can describe it better.  Meanwhile, I have to sort through all the little notes that I have about things I should be writing about.  Oh yeah…I still have to get the good COL out of the nexus…

My last meal was Sunday evening. I took my family to our favorite local Italian restaurant specifically so that I could gorge myself on solid food. Since I wouldn’t be allowed to drink alcohol for a while after “the procedure” I had a nice glass of Pinot Grigio with our appetizer. Friends who know me understand that while I can drink several glasses of scotch with little affect to my sobriety, but a mere two glasses of wine change my perceptions of reality. I don’t get drunk (probably because I never have more than two glasses of wine), but I do get happy. The first glass of wine made me smile more than I normally do and also infused me with enough bravery to switch to a glass of red wine that boasted flavors of “strawberry, black cherry and new saddle leather.”

I am not an expert wine taster, but I had not ever recalled leather being used as a descriptor for good wine and was curious. When our waiter came and set the glass in front of me he said, “here’s your new leather,” then stepped back to watch me take a sip. This must be some kind of joke, I thought. Oddly enough, it tasted amazingly like it was advertised, only in a good way. Strawberry, followed by hints of black cherry and then a subtle but clear taste of “is that a piece of leather in my mouth?” Now, I have cinched enough armor straps with my teeth before to have a good idea what leather tastes like, though I wondered, as I sipped my “saddle” wine, what most normal people who tried the wine thought about it. When the meal was over I swallowed my last sip of wine and regretfully put the glass down thinking, that is the last normal thing I’ll have for the next day and a half. How right I was.

When I awoke Monday morning the ordeal was to begin, and I was only allowed to have clear liquids for breakfast lunch and dinner. Water, white grape juice, white cranberry juice, tea or coffee with no milk, clear broth with no solids, clear jello that wasn’t red or orange, or popsicles. I drank a cup of warm chicken broth for breakfast and chased it with a cup of lemon flavored tea. By ten o’clock I was starving. I brought a bottle of white cranberry juice with me to work and sipped cups of it all day to curb my hunger. Several times I reached into my desk to pull something our of it and finally had to ask Bob to take all the food out of my office. “All of the food” consisted of half a bag of uneaten and long stale fritos, but they were solid and tempting beyond belief.

Bob and Fred, two of my wonderful friends and both men about my age who have probably already endured “the procedure” took great joy in my situation. They were kind enough throughout the morning to describe their lunches to me in great detail. Bob, sinister fiend and blind scuba diver that he is, went so far as to wave his lunch near my face so that I could smell the awesome solidity of his food. Okay, I admit that I found myself standing in his cubicle so that I could smell his food but, who needs enemies with helpful friends like these? At one point in the afternoon, after I had swallowed more than half the bottle of white cranberry juice I came to the awful realization that this might be the only day in my life that my lunch would look exactly the same going out as it did going in. Great. What a high point in life to achieve.

The drive home was difficult because I normally chew one or two pieces of candy to keep myself awake. I listened to the radio and tried to ignore all the restaurant commercials, food commercials, and references to food. For dinner I had two cups of broth and a glass of juice, and had a lemon ice, sort of a popsicle in a cup, for dessert. I napped until it was time to begin the “cleansing.”

There are millions of people in the world who have never tasted the luxury of white cranberry juice and will never have the privelege of eating a lemon ice. Many of them would kill for three cups of chicken broth in one day. Heck, there are children in Africa who would be lucky for one cup of broth a day and I thought to myself, as I sat in my “misery,” that regardless of how weak and listless and deprived I felt, it could be a whole lot worse. I wasn’t starving, even if I felt like I was, and no one in my family would be dead tomorrow for lack of food. Funny how one day of food deprivation puts things into perspective. I was lucky, I thought, to be living the life I lead.

I drank the first evil bottle of potion in the privacy of my own room. Thankfully I was alone because I would never have wanted anyone to see my face twist into demonic shapes or hear the sounds of taste buds in anguish. The label on the bottle read “pleasant lemon-ginger taste,” when it should have read “rancid taste of Bog Lord infested swamp-ooze and salted honey with an overpowering aftertaste of you-have-got-to-kidding-me-how-will-I-ever-get-the-other-five-ounces-down?” I imagined offering my medicine to some African children and watching them flee in terror. “No way man, I’d rather die of starvation.” Right. I agree. This isn’t worth it. Okay, down the hatch.

Let me jump ahead and spare you the details by saying that I had to do that twice throughout the evening, the second time at 02:30 in the morning. The second time was harder as my body already knew what was coming and I really had to fight myself to force it down. “No really, you have GOT to be kidding!” All the hours from the first bottle of bio-drano until the moment we left for the hospital this morning, were spent either “purifying” in the bathroom, or lying in bed wondering when the next round of “purification” would clamp down on me with great vengeance. By the time we arrived at the hospital at 0700 o’clock, I was tired and drained. No, really.

Some time before 0800 (you get the idea, I’m going to stop saying “o’clock” now, as though I might mean something else…), they came for me. I glanced one last time at my wife, who had driven me in my weakened state and who would have to wait patiently while “the procedure” was performed. “I love you,” I remember thinking, though I don’t recall if I had the strength to actually say it. Eva, a lovely African American nurse, met me at the door of the clinic and led me to a curtained room where I was allowed to change into “real pajamas like you wear at home” and told to lie down on the hospital bed. It was there that I first realized that the all the preparation had little to do with making the actual “procedure” more efficient for the endoscopic camera and everything to do with gaining my total and complete submission to “the procedure.” Real pajamas? I didn’t have to wear one of those silly hospital gowns? This wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

I lay there on the bed in my subdued and now somewhat pacified state while Eva hammered me with questions for the computer. Did I smoke, did I drink, did I have any allergies? “I already filled out the three page form that answered all of the questions,” I said. “Oh you do have a form don’t you?” she asked. She continued to ask me questions anyway. Perhaps they want to compare your wirtten answers with your verbal answers to ensure that you aren’t an impostor. I dutifully answered her questions.

The doctor came in and introduced himself and asked if I had any questions. “Where is Doctor Young?” I asked. This doctor had a friendly face and looked competent in his green hospital scrubs and white lab coat, but he had the build of a football player and the hands to match, so I was somewhat concerned. “He will be in the room supervising, but I’ll be performing the procedure. Is this your first?” I nodded. “Can’t you tell?” I asked. “Don’t worry he said, I’ve already done this several hundred times and Doctor Young has done it several thousand. ” Doctor Young had been the doctor that wanted me to have “the procedure,” but Doctor Younger would apparently be doing the dirty work. What? Me worry? Hah! No way.

“I just need you to sign these forms before we can begin,” Doctor Younger. I read the forms. Blah, blah, blah, possibility of death… blah blah…stopped heart, blah, blah, blah…stopped breathing, blah, blah,blah…chance of perforated internal organs. Perforated? But not totally destroyed I guessed, so blah, blah…won’t hold responsible. Yeah sure, I’ll sign. Why not? I mean, I have real pajamas. What could go wrong?

Eva got the IV ready and asked if there was anything she needed to know before she started. “Yeah I said, I have rubbery, roly-poly veins that are hard to stick.” “Really?” she asked. She looked at me as though I was a challenge. “Yeah, I’ve been stuck as many as seven times before someone got a vein. She smiled as she put a rubber strap around my arm and asked me to make a fist. She began to stare at my arm while she opened the needle package, ripped pieces of tape to hold it on with and prepped the surface of my skin. She knelt next to the bed then and, I’m not making this up, she began to sing to my veins. I tell you this because I had not had any sedative at this point. I was wide awake and though weak and subdued, was not delirious. She slapped each vein several times and hummed and sang and coaxed until she found the one she wanted. She began to tell the vein in a sweet little made up song that she was coming for it and that it shouldn’t give her any trouble. She slapped it around several more times while I sat there in awe, and then she slid the needle in. There was barely even a prick of pain until she pressed down on the needle with one thumb to hold it while she put the tape on. “There,” was all she said. Wow. I mean, wow. It was like magic.

“Uhm, there is an air bubble in the line,” I said. “Oh, it’s okay sweetie,” she said. “It would take a whole syringe of air to kill you. Don’t worry.” So I didn’t.

“Good morning sir,” Ray said as he drew back the curtains to move my bed into the actual procedure room. “I’m Ray. I’ll be taking you to the docs now. Is this your first time?” Did they all have to ask that? “Yes,” I said. “It’s a pretty simple procedure,” Ray said. “Okay,” I said. Yeah right, I thought.

As the door to the room opened I heard a woman’s voice come over the hospital loudspeaker with some urgency. “Attention on-call Stat team, code blue in room C7, I say again, code blue in room C7, I mean C14. Yeah C-14, code blue is what I meant.” I tried to look up at Ray to see his reaction. “That can’t be good whatever it is,” I said. “They’ll take care of it.” he said. I still don’t know what it was.

Jiffy Lube. That’s all I can say. My bed was wheeled into the center of the room. On the left side of the room were three monitors, a wide-screen that I can only assume was hooked to the camera, and lots of wires and tubes. Too many tubes, I thought. On the right, Doctors Young and Younger were setting controls on a large machine that had even more wires and tubes, several hinged arms like one sees in a dentist’s office, and more tubes. They didn’t look up or speak as I entered the room and I assumed they were deciding which tubes would be suitable for “the procedure.” The lighting in the room was subdued, but the radio station blaring in the background added to the crew-drill efficient $29.95 feel that guarantees your car in and out in thirty minutes or your money back. I was amused at my own sense of humor. Isn’t that usually a danger sign of something?

“Good morning sir,” a pleasant female voice said. I looked up into the pretty asian face of my nurse and chuckled to myself (those that have read Airport Skiing will understand my laugh). “I am Agnes and I will be in the room with you today,” she said. Okay, I thought, if you say so. She busied herself with settings on the monitors. This really can’t be that bad, I thought. Won’t take but a few minutes, and it will all be over with.

“Please lower your pajamas down below your knees,” Ray said. The room stood still. I couldn’t hear the radio, and I didn’t notice Agnes or the two docs any longer. It was just Ray and me. He wants me to lower my pants? He gave me that impatient look, you know, the quick glance that says “you are lying in a bed with an IV in your arm and haven’t eaten in over a day while I had a hearty breakfast and am standing above you and want your pants down now so you can do it nicely or I can do it for you and you won’t like it if I do it for you.” You know that look? So I did as the nice man asked. I also complied when he told me to turn on my side and face Agnes. See what I mean about compliance? Weakened by lack of food and sleep and lulled into submission by real pajamas I was completely at the mercy of “the procedure.”

“Do you have any allergies?” Agnes asked. I thought, I put this on the form and it’s in my records and Eva already asked me the question so it’s in the computer, but I said, “yes. To pain.” She looked at me somewhat sternly, but smiled slightly. One of the doctors Young asked “you’re allergic to pain?” as if he had never heard that one before. Over my shoulder I thought I saw him waving some black tube around in the air and they all chuckled. Was he making a joke too? I couldn’t tell. When you are lying in the fetal position under a thin hospital sheet at the medical equivalent of Jiffy Lube and three men and a woman make inside jokes (no pun intended) about your predicament, I guess some of the humor is lost.
I lay there trying to calm myself and if must have worked because Agnes asked “Is your heart rate usually low?” “Yes,” I replied, “it hovers between 45 and 50 usually. If it gets up to 70 while I’m lying still, something is wrong.” “Good to know,” she said as she put a syringe on the inlet valve of my IV. The syringe looked empty and for a moment I was thinking about what Eva had said about an empty syringe killing me. What silly things one thinks about in such moments. My arm began to burn. “Is it supposed to sting?” I asked as rubbed my arm with my other hand. “Yes, it does sting a little,” Agnes said. You could have told me that before you did it, I thought, but couldn’t seem to get the words out. Another syringe? I braced myself for more pain as Agnes pushed the plunger on the second syringe. I don’t recall her finishing the plunge.

“Let me just get this IV out of your arm and get your clothes for you sir, and then I’ll go get your wife,” Eva said, smiling. My head was swimming. How did Eva get here in the…oh…how did I get here in the recovery room? It’s over? That was it? What time is it? My glasses were sitting on the table next to me and I was able to read computer chart on the monitor at my side. I was under sedation for nearly forty minutes, and had been in the hospital for less than three hours altogether. “The procedure” was complete, I had no pain or discomfort, and would be out of the hospital in just a few more minutes.

I thanked Ray and Agnes when I saw them scurry by to begin their next “procedure” and they smiled you’re welcome as they passed. Doctor Younger came to see me, I thanked him, and he showed me some intimate family photographs and told me that depending on the results of a few tests I wouldn’t have to revisit them for five to ten more years. Hallelujah! A procedcure-less decade!!! I hope that in the next five to ten years they invent some potion that really does have a pleasant lemon-ginger taste, or any taste commonly known to man for that matter. That foul liquid was the absolute worst part of this whole ordeal. My family was supportive, the hospital was efficient, the docs and medical team first rate and the pajamas were real. What more could I have asked for?

When I graduated from OCS after fourteen weeks I pinned a silver bar inside my Battle Dress Uniform cap and continued to soldier. I figured no one outside of OCS would be checking so no one would be the wiser. After many months of schooling I found myself in Germany as the Platoon Leader of the last US Nike Hercules nuclear air defense unit, and custodian of a still classified number of nuclear warheads. It was a low stress job. Yeah, right. Okay, it was a high stress job, and I found myself looking inside my hat on more than one occasion, wondering if I really wanted to stay in and deal with constant stress. When the army finally promoted me to First Lieutenant, I was quite shocked to find that my personal secret was no secret. The Battery Commander, Captain Lloyd, removed the silver bar from inside my hat and moved it to the outside, then, much to my shock and awe, took his own captain’s rank and pinned it on the inside of my hat. My little personal ritual was apparently public knowledge, and now I would have to continue it at least until I made Captain.

Years later, when I was promoted to Captain, I was working at Brigade headquarters and assumed the senior officers on Brigade staff were unaware of my “next rank” ritual. The Brigade S-3 surprised me by handing me a gold Major’s oak leaf to pin inside my cap. I was once again stunned. As the years rolled by I always kept the oak leaf inside my cap, and only occasionally did someone notice and ask about it. If asked, I would explain casually and would receive, almost universally, a positive response, a smile or some witty remark like, “maybe you should put a different rank in there and see if you get promoted below the zone.”

I was frocked to Major in India, and actually never had a real promotion ceremony. By the time my actual promotion date came around, I was working my first tour at DIA and everyone already thought I was a Major, even though in fact I had been a promotable Captain allowed by the Army to wear Major’s rank. Since I had no promotion ceremony, I used the day of my promotion to change the rank inside my hat to a silver oak leaf, the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Oddly enough, when it was time for me to be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, I had no military officers in my chain of command available for a ceremony. It was something of a joke around my office on Army Staff, that I was technically already a Lieutenant Colonel, but had no one to officiate a ceremony, so continued to wear my Major’s oak leaves. When a new Colonel arrived several weeks later he was incensed to find that no one had been able to help me find a senior officer available to pin my new rank on me. We immediately had a promotion ceremony, promotion party, and changing of the “next rank.”

I had a Colonel’s eagle pinned inside my hat the entire time I was a Lieutenant Colonel, and often thought back to the days in OCS when having rank there could have ended my career before it really started. The rank was a source of inspiration, a sign of how far I’d come, and a reminder that nothing is gained without risk. By the time I was halfway through my years as a Lieutenant Colonel I found myself in Colombo, Sri Lanka in the position of Defense and Army Attache. I had a car and driver and tended to go from one covered portico into the car to another portico and into a building. Only when I visited the Sri Lankan army in the field, or when I travelled around the Maldives in uniform, did I wear a hat. Since I seldom wore a hat, I seldom had cause to look inside it which means I seldom saw the eagle and didn’t think much about it. That is one of the reasons I was shocked to find one day that the Army, cursed with malfunctioning computers or desperately seeking crazy guys like me, chose to announce that I would be promoted to Colonel. I couldn’t fathom it. I was being promoted to Colonel when so many officers who I believed (and still believe) were better than me, were not. It was difficult to deal with.

My promotion date fell during the period I would be on leave after leaving Sri Lanka, so I asked the Commander of the Sri Lankan Army if he would do me the honor the day before I left country. While technically my promotion should have been given by a Senior Officer of the United States Army, I decided to make due with what I had. It was a wonderful ceremony in the Army Commander’s office, with an official (Sri Lankan) Army photographer, followed by a Sri Lankan reception. I got on the plane the next day and got busy with moving back to the United States, settling in and getting on with life.

Soon my leave was over and I was at Senior Service College (the Industrial College of the Armed Forces) wearing civilian coat and tie on most days, and Class B greens the rest. I didn’t wear a field cap at all and didn’t get around to putting the “next rank” inside. In truth, I thought about pinning a silver star inside, but it just seemed pretentious and disrespectful in a way that none of the earlier ranks had. I pinned Colonel inside because I never in a million years thought I’d be one, I certainly wasn’t going to pretend there was any chance I’d stay in the army long enough to be a general.

Many of you have probably already figured out what just hit me today. I have remained true to my “next rank” tradition my entire career. My retirement ceremony is three weeks from tomorrow and I have been displaying my “next rank,” that of a civilian (none, for those of you who are slow) inside my hat since the day I made Colonel. Hooah!

I mean, super!.

My retirement ceremony is set for 28 April, preparations are underway.  It is an interesting verbal dance I have each week with my deputy.  “I don’t need a ceremony,” I say.  “It’s not for you anyway,” he says.  “Can’t we just…?” I try.  “No,” he asserts firmly.

I’d be happy with a handshake and an escort to the door.  Everyone around me insists that my wife and kids deserve closure, that friends will want to see me formally retire, that seniors and colleagues will want to say goodbye.  Okay, whatever…I will soldier on.  My real concern is that I think I will cry when I try to say goodbye to the Army publicly.  No that’s wrong.  I know I will cry.   I’m happy to be moving on to a new phase in my life, but twenty-eight years of Army gets in your blood.   I’m not sure how to face the changeover without expressing emotion.    I may even have to plan in advance what I’m going to say, something I NEVER do.   Whatever it takes I guess.
I ‘ll tell you how it goes.

I don’t recall what was wrong with my car on that day in 1981, but three of my friends and I were in a quandry over how we would get to SCA fighter practice in Fall’s Church. Neither Ken nor Tim had a car, mine was out of commission for some reason, and Jeff, well Jeff had a little green Triumph Spitfire with two seats and a micro trunk. So the four of us stood by his car in the parking lot scratching our heads and trying to figure out how to stuff four armor bags into a space made for one. It didn’t work. I am a master packer, but I couldn’t get more than the shields and a few pieces of loose armor into that miniscule space.

I don’t recall if it was one person in particular or more of a group think moment, but before long we had our solution. We put the shields in the trunk along with what few swords would fit and donned the rest of our armor. Jeff was driving (in armor), Tim sat in the front seat (in armor) and Ken and I sat on the trunk of the car with our legs crammed in the tight space behind the passenger seats. We each held a pole weapon and a greatsword with points skyward as Jeff pulled out, stopping only to raise the visor on his Spangen helm so that he could at least pretend to be able to see where he was going.

There were no seat belt laws in Virginia that we knew of in 1981, but there were definitely seat laws. Only two of us actually had seats. There surely must have been a law about driving with little ability to turn one’s head. I recall that we all expected to be stopped by the MPs at the gate, but as we approached, the two on duty turned to look at us and gaped with mouths open as we passed. I have a vague recollection of having to dismount to leave post, but perhaps I am confusing that with what I thought we should have done at the time.

I clearly recall driving all the way to Syr Strykar’s house in Falls Church with the four of us chanting and singing and screaming and causing quite a commotion. We passed several police cars but they just gaped and watched us drive by. I guess it was a simpler time then. Today there would probably be SWAT teams and take downs and guys in white coats with padded ambulances.

As I drove through the gate this morning and had the rapid flashback, I actually toyed with the idea of recreating the event just to test the theory. I wonder what would happen…?