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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sialia" data-source="post: 231726" data-attributes="member: 1025">Ok, it's definitely getting way too late for this. I'm beat. I don't think my brain can hold any more, guys.Damned if I know whether I'll pass that exam, but you did the best you could with what you had to work with. Let's call it a day.I owe ya' one. What's your pleasure? You want something simple tonight, or something extravagant after I've passed the exam and had a chance to sleep it all off? Look, Htarlyd's snoring in his frame, maybe we oughta wait until after. You know I'm good for it.A what? A story? You're kidding, right? Stories aren't payment, they're practically free. I gotta million of 'em. Most of the time I gotta buy somebody a couple of rounds before anyone wants to sit through one of my yarns.  Sure. How about the one about Claris and the Tree full of Ravens? No? The Auction in Sigil? No?Oh.That one.Look, truth, I've never had any contract with the Bard's Hall. I get caught selling stories, I could be in a lot of trouble. Whaddya say we just wake Htarlyd up and go check in on the ladies dressing rooms at the Legerdemain and call it square, hey?Right.All right all right, deal's a deal."Buried up to the Neck in Sand." Sheesh. How does word of this stuff get around? Fine. But if I don't pass this test, everybody's gonna know who prepped me for it.Right. We were walking. We walked a lot in those days, don't ask me why. We got ambushed a lot, too, in those days.  Part of the fun of walking. And there was this girl--I don't remember her name. Clit, or something like that. Honest, we hardly paid any attention to her. A bunch of thugs attacked us, we fought 'em off, Master Deltarion got nailed with some kind of rod that sucked some of the life outta him, and we dealt with the lot of 'em. I dunno who killed her--Nolin, maybe? I remember she went down headfirst in the stream . . .right, right--Nolin nailed her with one of his insatiable thirsts, only, when she hit the water she was too wounded to swim, and we let her drown and figured good riddance. And we squashed the rest of the crew, too, but I don't remember how they died.  Apart from the soul sucking rod, it was pretty routine. Skiltor--that's right--a mage named Skiltor Rhun we'd pissed off sent them after us. A buncha flunkies. She was one of them. The frog headed mook was more interesting really, and Nolin got this great wand offa him that had the coolest activation word ever, but nobody thought twice about her. She just picked the wrong day to be an assasin for hire, that's all.Arcade really had his nose out of joint about that combat for the longest time. Said the damned rod took ten years off his life. Said there wasn't anything anybody could do about it, even Velendo. Yadda yadda whine whine.Anyway, a while later, we chased a Super-Dopple-Mimic to Oursk--you sure you don't want to hear the story of the Great Showdown with Ambassador SuperDopp instead? Greatest death of any of Tao's dogs ever, really, really gory . . . right, another time then.  Right right, I'm getting to the buried in sand part. All this background stuff is important, really. There was this list of stolen books and instructions we got out of the saddlebags of Ambassador SuperDopp, after we pulped him and he drizzled away into the ground. And that list was really important.We didn't know what the Brotherhood of Night were up to, in those days. We knew they wanted to eradicate the sun, but we figured they were a bunch of psychos and we weren't taking them real seriously.We had this list, "Top Ten Ways to Get Rid of the Sun: 1. Put a bag over your head. The sun will go away. 2. Stare at the sun without blinking for ten minutes. The Sun will go away."3. Place a sharp object into the center of each of your eyes. The Sun will go away . . ." and so on. So sue me. It seemed funny at the time.Anyway, the stolen books were all kinds of prophecies and astrological crap. "My duck, his beak is as wide as a riverway!" and a whole lot of other nonsensical ravings. But the list also had an itinerary, and some notes about a rendezvous point, passwords, contacts, and stuff like that. And a really disturbing little list of some of our friends and relations.So we decided to look into it. Keep the Ambassador's appointment's for him, as it were.And then there was all that business with losing Htarlyd in the Wild Magic Zone--yeah, and the room, too and everything in it--which included all our backup supplies and stuff . . . Sigh. Busted holy bricks, it's late. Tell you what. How 'bout I finish this tomorrow? It got kind of complicated from here and I'll want to check my notes when I can see straight again . . . you know I'm good for it, right? Cut me a few hours slack so I can get some sleep in before the exam, and I'll throw in some audio visuals, free. Some of them visuals, they're worth seeing.</blockquote>

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