What happens next is likely to be a matter of debate among the patrons of the Hanged Man for quite some time. To Mervin's recollection, he will later swear that the image of a beautiful woman, clad in tight fitting leather armor, reached up from inside the barrel and pulled him in. To those in the Hanged Man close by, they will later swear that they saw Mervin reach down into the barrel in an attempt to retrieve the necklace.
In either case, the balding wizard ends up head-over-heals inside the barrel, but to his surprise, he never reaches the bottom.
Mervin falls through the floor of the Hanged Man for what seems like about twenty minutes. When he stops falling, he finds that what used to be down is now up, and he is being propelled into the air (right side up, though without turning around) from within a barrel. Has he decelerates to a stop in mid-air, he finds that he is in some strange storage cellar with lights glistening smokelessly from brilliant sconces and the sound of mirth ringing through the floorboards above (or is it below?).
Merven barely has time to take it in, and then he falls back into the barrel feet first. Some twenty minutes later, he emerges, upside-down and feet-first, from the barrel's bottom (which is now the top) decelerating to a stop some five feet above the floor of the Hanged Man, and face to face with a very upset Varquat Wayne. In the brief moment that Mervin appears to hang there in mid air, he smiles and sheepishly tips a pantomimed hat to the brewer. It is then that the wizard notices that he has somehow managed to snag the brewer's necklace around his head.
Mervin's airborne condition, however, is temporary, and he begins once more to fall, this time head-first, back into the barrell. Just before this, the hefty brewer manages to reach out and grab the necklace from around Mervin's ear.
The arcane trick, however is already done. Mervin falls another twenty minutes, but this time the cellar is the scene of a scuffle involving some ten or eleven armed combatants. As Mervin hovers there, anticipating an inversion of direction, he takes some relief that he will soon be falling back into the Hanged Man. To his horror, though, he feels his feet strike strike solid ground as he falls back into the barrel. His knees buckle under the unexpected weight and he doubles over, tipping the barrel and falling prone.
Where the @%$#! am I!!!!?
[sblock=evilbob]Welcome to the cellar of the Crystal Mug. Please join us in "Land Ho..."[/sblock]