Ambrosia Software Web Board: The Alraeican Tavern - Part X - Ambrosia Software Web Board

The stranger turned toward her, & kindly queried, "What's wrong Miss?" then added with a rascally twinkle of concern, "Did you escape from an evil sorcerer too?"

Radik, with the aide of one of the party members, limped through the front door admiring the surroundings, "So this is the future... Not too bad..." The bar caught Radik's attention and he limped over, waving off the party member and order up a mug. He took a careful sip, savoring the taste. Satisfied, Radik grabbed a few more mugs and limped over to a table, and cheered as more party members entered the tavern.

"Let us drink!" Radik exclaimed to a few bewildered friends. "To the future!" he yelled, raising his mug and downing it.'


-Dark

"To the future!" Silver echoed, raising his own cup of mineral-water, "I like it here."

Shanadar ignored the excited chanting that overtook the tavern. Frankly, he was too tired to care.

Besides being wounded, exhausted, and having to put up an indomitable front for his erstwhile companions, he also had to explai, at length, his own version of their time-traveling escapades to the authorities. Even counting the supernatural attributes of some of the other adventurers, there was no denying that the Enforcer probably had the greatest amount of endurance of the lot. But no matter how tough he was, he was still just a man, and he was beginning to feel the ill effects of the system shock from the hours-long adrenaline rush he'd quite literally been running on.

After downing a few very hard ales as to numb the pain from his innumerable injuries, he allowed himself to loose his tenuously fragile grip on consciousness, and collapsed in a heap, snoring with enough amplitude to wake the dead.

Shanadar needed to count his goats in dreams, and really couldn't bring himself to care where--or even how--he got his long-overdue siesta.

A couple minutes later a guard burst through the Tavern door gasping for breath.
"Undead... in... town... Undead walk the streets!" & he passed out.

However, Radik had drawn a noisy crowd and the cheering drowned out what the guard said. The crowd started chanting and followed it with a cheer as Radik slammed down another mug, and for the first time in his life, passed out after his fifth mug of ale. The crowd watched as he swayed forward, then back, then forward, and then fell back into his chair, and rolled onto the ground. They cheered at this and then slowly dispersed back to their tables..

The tavern quieted back down for a while, until someone noticed the passed out guard and yelled for help.

Silver quickly came to see if he could help, but was too weary from the journey to think clearly so he started singing randomly in a loud voice, which disturbed the rest of several more dead who had managed to maintain inanimation despite Shanadar's snoring.

A breeze ran through Yomu that made his bones shiver, or maybe it was a sign that his body was about to give way under the imense presure of the stone boy atop his back.

----

Moments after returning home through the time portal there was a brief discussion of what to do with the boy that had joined them unexpectedly. "From what I can tell he seems to be in some sort of magical binding trance; however, I haven't the slightest notion of when he'll awake." Wizard stepped back and rubbed his chin after stating his analysis. Yomu looked up to Wizard, "So then it's really only a matter of time then?" Wizard turned and mumbled, "I suppose, but it would be nearly impossible for him to maintain a healthy state in his condition." Yomu pulled from his bag a good-sized, rectangular vile filled with a strange black and sandy substance. "This ought to do it." and Yomu pulled off the cork lid with a loud *Pop* sound and began to pour the strange liquidy powder down from Cyrus's forhead to his belly. Suddenly Cyrus's robes began to grow black as shadows all the while growing over his whole body. Rapeirian laughed, "You know, there are more exciting potions." A loud crack resinated from Cyrus and the black substance that had engulfed his body quickly became as hard as granite, with the only sign of life was a faint red around where his amulet should be. Yomu proceeded to raise the stoic figure onto his back, "He'll be alright in this. Normally you only use it to heal wounds, but it can be used in situations such as this. Once his will grows strong enough, his shell will brake and he will be set free." Yomu shifted his cargo into a stable position, "I think I'm about ready for a drink."

----

After a strenuous trek back to the tavern, it was decided that the most appropriate place to "store" Cyrus was the tavern's pantry. With a final grunt and heave Cyrus slept on top a shelf in his stone blanket.

After 20 minutes of Silver's "singing", Radik stirred, and slowly sat up. He covered his ears as his senses begun to clear up. Radik turned his head to see Silver moving around a figure on the floor, doing his "singing". Radik grabbed the chair he had previously fell on while passing out and with one arm hurled it at Silver. Silver was knocked into a nearby table, and the patrons grunted, freed from the noise. Radik stumbled back to the bar and ordered some wine as he observed the guard stir.

He sipped the wine (and grabbed the bottle), and it seemed to help his motions become more fluid, and Radik didn't stumble on his way back to the table. He sat down, and continued to drink while watching the guard slowly regain consciousness.


-Dark
(Sorry Silver, had to )

Silver staggered to his feet, momentarily dazed, & was soon sitting on a nearby table as if (almost) nothing had happened.

With the assistance of a shot or two of something resembling Vodka, the guard was about to renew his speech when a rotting limb crashed through the window, followed in rapid succession by the body it belonged to & a few other Zombies. Several patrons leaped for the door, but their hopes were smashed by the entrance of more Zombies through that portal as well.

Silver got hurled through a nearby zombie as the battle for the Tavern engaged.

Rapierian yawned and looked around the Tavern.

He knew a bit about undead but didn't really feel motivated to help. It seemed to him that the others were doing just fine.

In any case, he had other matters of interest at the moment.

Carefully, he reached into his robes, pulled out a book, and began to read, although he did keep an eye on his surroundings. He had no desire to see his book damaged, after all.

The stranger cocked his head as if listening while daggers tore through his clothes, no undead had yet made it close enough to hit him with a direct blow.

Silver bounced back from the door frame & sending a tendril to a nearby rafter swung around several of the zombies, binding them together. Then a swift jolt of electricity & the methane saturated corpses burst into flame as he attempted to fling them back toward the others; unfortunately, he had not taken his own comparatively negligible mass into his calculations & instead sent himself spinning into a nearby wall.

Freed of their momentary shackles, the now flaming zombies resumed their quest for brains & whatever else such creatures want.

After they had arrived back home from their adventure in the past, Wizard went to his room and slept. Once he felt rested, he changed into a clean red robe with a black belt. The sound of a fight in the main room drew him to the front of the Tavern.

"Zombies!" Wizard shouted upon seeing the horde of undead invading the Tavern. Unfortunately, he had not had time to grab his staff from his bedside after he had changed. He grabbed the nearest thing he could find and began bashing it against zombies. For some reason, the nearest thing he could find was a tambourine.

*jingle* *jingle* *jingle*

As the old man in the red suit beat zombies to death, many of the Tavern's patrons began to sing Christmas carols.

OoC: Merry Christmas, everyone. BiC:

As the patrons caroled, the zombies weakened slightly, giving the defenders an increasing advantage. Yet as the flaming zombies marched forward, more & more of the alcohol marinated tables burst into flame.

Several Zombies began to converge upon the spot where Silver was trying to regain his bearings.

The Stranger crouched down & began to move toward Shanadar...

Wizard smashed several more zombies to the floor. He couldn't help but wonder if their resident necromancer had something to do with this uprising of undead. He made his way towards Rapierian, who was still reading his book undisturbed.

"Can't you un-summon these things or something?" he shouted.

Slightly irritated, Rapierian lowered his book. Then his lips curled at the ends to form yet another of his twisted smiles. "Well of course!"

With that, the necromancer reached into this robes and presented a vial. "Now, this ought to do the trick. I think." He tossed the vial on the floor in front of Wizard. Suddenly, when the glass shattered, the liquid inside exploded upwards in a short burst of flames.

"Gah!" The startled Wizard covered his face. When the fire around him cleared, Wizard was left standing with a flaming beard. His eyes lit up like flames of their own. He immediately doused the flames with water and stared at Rapierian. He pointed at this blackened beard, "Look what you did! I can't believe you did it again! I am going to kill you this time!"

* * *

Another pack of zombies was squished against the floor as Wizard's weighty form collided with them. Rapierian was knocked over a table. The two continued to fight, smashing things as they went.

OoC: Yes, the flaming beard thing is over-used and so are the Wizard vs. Rapierian fights. I really had no idea what to say. BiC:

Rapierian was getting grumpy.

Here, he had gone and done a nice thing for Wizard (shortening future haircuts) and now the old man was trying to bang his head into the floor.

His cloak was probably getting dirty from the mess on the floor too.

The two collided with a pack of zombies which promptly fell over on them.

Seeing his chance, Rapierian carefully crawled out of the tangled mess, stood up, and dusted himself off.

Observing that Wizard had gotten caught in the middle of the pile and had not yet fought his way out, the necromancer laughed and sat down to watch.

Agitated by the rising din around him, the comatose Shanadar was roused from his slumbering. In his drowsy stupor, he failed to notice the increasingly-obvious undead menace around him, and immediately turned to the usual suspect, or, rather, where he expected the usual suspect to be. Ironically enough, he was not disappointed.

Rapierian was hassling Wizard, as he was prone to do. Not wanting to see his friend to be further antagonized, Shanadar made his way over, still tired and oblivious to "minor details" like rogue zombies in the establishment, to give the necromancer a piece of his mind.

"Rapierian," he said groggily, "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't smash your brains out? Hmm?"

Rapierian looked away from watching Wizard's plight long enough to glance at Shanadar before returning his attention to the scene before him.

"Oh, I can think of several good reasons. First, you really shouldn't exert yourself too much. I mean, at your age, you know. Second, that would be poor manners—oh, and the zombie behind you is about to do the same thing to you that you just threatened to do to me, by the way."

Shanadar blinked at that last bit, waking up a little bit more.

"What are you—" he started to say just as a zombie went flying through the air in front of him.

"You really should lie down again, you know," Rapierian said solemnly. "You're really seeing things, if you think that this tavern is full of zombies. Plus, it'd get you out of the way of that rather irate undead creature behind you."

By this time, the battle had been going on for some time. The Cytherans were gaining an advantage over the zombies, however, and were getting quite close to defeating them.

Indeed, after Shanadar awoke, the tide took a definite turn in the Cytherian's favor, as many of the zombies who had animated due to his loud snoring returned to their eternal rest.

By the time the last zombies were defeated, another blizzard had started outside.

Wizard stood in the doorway for a second before returning to the bar. "It seems Cythera is reluctant to let go of winter this year. I for one welcome spring," he said to the ghost-frog bartender.

"Anyone up for a game of darts?" Silverfish shouted out to the patrons staring out the window at the falling snow, "I have ten Oboloi here that say I'll beat you!"

Radik jumped up with a start, as if he just remembered something important. "A round of drinks for everyone, On me!"

(Meant to do this on the 11th, but I forgot >.>)

Yomu, being a secret master dartsman, jumped up at the chance for a game. "10 oboloi?" Yomu taunted to Silverfish, "Your on!" Yomu pickd up the red and slightly worn darts. The smooth metal tip, the unquie feathers, he missed this. He took a deep breather and lined himself up with the dart board. "You're gonna lose!" Silverfish snorted, "And then I'll be 10 oboloi richer!" Yomu hoped this wasn't to be, since the mark hunting racket had hit a dry spot and he was currently washing dishes in exchange for lodgeing. "Steady, steady." he told him self, glaring at the bullseye. After one final deep breath he focused with all his might, pulled back his hand and-"A round of drinks for everyone, On me!" took him by surprise! He stumbled and when he went to check where his dart had landed, he found it stuck in the thick hide of a patrons boot.

*Blunk* "Bullseye!" Silver exclaimed, "I win, I win!". A bout of depression washed over Yomu as he turned to Silverfish, "I don't suppose you have any dishes than need washing?"

Silver toasted Radik enthusiastically, tossed his empty cup to Yomu, & quickly began to re-absorb the filament he had used to guide his dart.

~*~*~*~
The stranger watched from his renewed vantage point at the bar, a trifle upset that he didn't get to play a part in Silver's joke, especially after he surreptitiously slipped 5 Oboloi into Yomu's pocket.