Roybob
04-20-2008, 04:16 PM
<p>Greetings,Below is a message posted on our guild's forum, explaining why my characters were not seen for a week. I elected to have a bit of fun with the presentation. There is far more to the tale than is conveyed here, but writing the rest in flowing narrative style is beyond my meager talents.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hamfat has not be around to spit on for some time. No one is more to blame than I. It dawns on me that some might be interested in the sordid details behind his mysterious absence. Well OK, I just feel like writing about it. Without further ado, I present the misadventures of Hamfat's master, or "Majora Leviathora's Revenge"....Saturday evening, mid April 2008. A decrepit, elderly gentleman slouches at his computer desk, a pile of well saturated handkerchiefs at desk-right, a 19" LCD monitor dead ahead. On-screen is one Hamfat, dwarf, guardian and in this case septic tank for a party of adventurers braving the bowels of Chelsith for fun and profit. The crawl has been long and arduous with much damage taken along the way. It is nearly over. The group has reached its final destination, Majora Leviathora's isle. Once outer mobs are disposed of, Majora should go down with little fuss. No unpleasant surprises are expected.For all his decrepitude, the master feels well enough at this point. He rubs a hand across the top of his balding pate, flicks debris from a wiry white-gray miss-happened stump of a beard, and contemplates the decadence of a small glass of skim-milk and wheat-toast smeared with tasteless dairy-free butter substitute before retiring. Then the hacking starts.The master has had gimpy lungs since the turn of the millennium. Subject to pneumonia, pleurisy and other unsavory ailments, they periodically produce phlegm which must be ejected. This is usually heralded by coughing fits as phlegm works its way from lung to throat to mouth, from there to be spit in commode, sink or other nearby convenience.While these episodes can occur multiple times a day, the master can go for weeks and rarely months between buildups. It has been quite some time since his last such episode. He now thinks, "I'll just finish these final mobs, see if Majora drops any worthwhile loot, gate, spit phlegm, and call it an evening. 'Veni, vidi, vamoosi'."All goes as planned. Majora falls, a nice breastplate amongst the spoils. By now the master is hacking something fierce. Rather than call to Qeynos as intended, he has Hamfat accept a port to Kylong and rushes to the bathroom to relieve himself of his bothersome and unwanted burden.Up comes the commode ring. The master assumes spitting position. A few more hacking fits and <em>thar she blows!</em> No, not the expected phlegm. What streams from his mouth is a rather large wad of bright-red blood. More coughing follows. More blood lands in and around the commode. He can not stop coughing blood. Even in his perpetually comatose state the master realizes something is amiss.More shockingly, he decides to do something about it. Taking time only to don clothes he won't mind bloodying and offing the computer, he grabs a large, round, flat-bottom salad bowl, locks the house and drives himself to ER. While starting the car he discovers that a combination of long saturated ground and high winds have uprooted his three cypress trees. Two lie flat on the ground. The third leans again the neighbors' home. He can not afford to investigate such frivolity, but merely shakes his head over life's injustice and continues on his way.The hospital is a 15-20 minute drive. By arrival his bowl contains something like a full-size drinking glass of blood. He enters the building, is asked by the receptionist what is wrong, sits the bowl on her desk, nods toward it and proceeds to increase its contents. As might be supposed the master spends no time in the waiting room.Thus begins his first lengthy hospital stay, during which he is suspected of having both tuberculosis and lung cancer. Indeed these suspicions are a prime reason he remains as long as he does. In the end they prove groundless, a bright spot in an otherwise fairly dismal existence.</p><div>----Part 2 to follow----</div>