The Incredible True Story of Tavin's Escape from the Abyss
Greetings everyone!
This is the 100% completely true story of how I got out of the Abyss! As a respected figure in Krynn's news media, it is my job to report interesting news both accurately and dispassionately, even when it clashes with personal feelings. SO in the good nature of all unbiased news medias out there, I have not embellished or changed ANY part of this story in any way from the truth. Except for where I thought it would make the story better...
Enjoy!
Finally, it was the night. After nearly a MONTH of dodging demons (and boredom) and surviving the recent failed rescue attempt by the mage from DragonLance Underground, R4i5tlin, the time was at hand. I motioned to the mage and we both ran for our lives, for this was probably the only chance we'd get to make it out of the Abyss without waiting for some clever writer to spring us through a story written on the spur of the moment, and with no regard to consistancy of what previous writers had done. And I WAS fairly certain that Rabe wasn't writing my Nuggets of Joy in my absence.
Now many people don't like the fact that I have 'Investigative Reporter' as a prestige class. They say that it doesn't merit a prestige class and that I could have easily been any other class and simply adopt Investigative Reporter as a kind of role. I happen to disagree, as I am not just a handler that wants to be a reporter, but I am a specialist who is an Investigative Reporter with Handler skills on the side. See, only an Investigative reporter could find a loophole to get out of the Abyss. Only a reporter as bold as me would DARE to interview Lord Soth in Ravenloft. But most importantly, only a specialized Investigative Reporter would have been thorough enough to find out that Lord Soth was on good terms with a certain TSR janitor and that the janitor cleaned all the TSR worlds out each morning by using a service elevator that directly accessed each realm, world, campaign, or whatnot in the TSR reality! My prestige class skills had paid off this time in spades. I reminded myself to laugh at all those naysayers when finally I returned home.
R4i5tlin and I boarded the service elevator in question and the doors closed. Suddenly the two of us realized a grave error in our escape plan. Seeing as how the both of us were DragonLance created personas, we could not read or write english! There were twenty-seven buttons on the elevator and we didn't know what a single one did... R4i5tlin said, "I'll cast a Read Language spell on it and we'll know for sure.", but I didn't feel like waiting and so I simply pressed one at random. R4i5tlin yelled and screamed and said some things that I should not repeat.
A minute later the elevator came to a halt. We stepped out side and immediately knew we had not chosen the right button. A fat little guy with pointy ears like an elves and wearing no shoes ran up and greeted us.
"Hello!" he said with a jovial smile. "I am called Garrek. I'm a halfling. Welcome to Toril!"
The little guy told us all about the history of this strange and exotic land that we were visiting, and I must say that I was impressed and ready to have a few adventures myself there before going home, but at the mention of some guy named 'Eelmunster' (or something of that nature) R4i5tlin sneered. "Greenwood.", he said. He grabbed me by the collar and more or less tossed me back into the elevator. Before I could react he had already pressed yet another button and we were once more on our way. And that was the end of my journey to the place that the mage later told me was called 'Forgotten Realms'. Personally I don't know why he called it 'Forgotten' because it certainly seemed to be in pretty good repair for a forgotten place.
After a while the elevator doors again opened. We stepped out again into an odd place. This time it was a hallway. A white hallway with only one door at the very end of it. Above the door was a strange symbol. It was a circle divided in half horizontaly. The bottom half was white and the top half red. Directly in the center was a big round circle that seemed to keep the two halves together, like a button of some sort. R4i5tlin looked at me and turned, obviously ready to leave, but I wasn't going to turn down this opportunity at adventure as easily as the last was dismissed. Quickly, I flung open the door. Inside were thousands and thousands of odd creatures. Electric rats. Odd rinocerus things. Cats with gold coins on their heads. Little blue turtles. A big lizard with its tail on fire. And when I opened the door, they all stopped what they were doing. They stopped and looked at us. We looked at them. They looked at us. R4i5tlin finally broke the silence with a single word.
"Shit."
For several minutes we ran around the room, attempting to get away from the minute beasties that hounded us. At one point an electric rat managed to claw down into my tunic. It was a very interesting feeling, and one that now that I have felt, do not believe I will ever need to feel again. They also managed to dogpile on top of R4i5tlin and started tugging at his pouches. I think whatever it is he kept in there, they thought was food. More on that later. Anyhow, they managed to back us up against the opposite side of the room, and it looked like it was gonna be a pretty big problem, when the silly old mage started laughing. Then he started casting a spell! Well, I was about to run away to the other side, for I felt that I stood a better chance against little miniature monster than a full sized black robed mage gone loony, when he abruptly finished the spell. Out of nowhere appeared hundreds of lemmings! The entire place was thrown into chaos once more, but we managed to escape as the thingamajigs chased after the lemmings and vice versa.
Safely back in the elevator, we caught our breath. R4i5tlin shook his head.
"Somebody goofed on THAT one.", the mage said. "The pokemon license is a collectable card game by Wizards and not by the subsidiary of TSR."
I shook my head. "That may be.", I informed him. "However it would seem to me that creating a role playing game off of such a popular series would be a logical step and apparently, we now know which company will be producing it."
We both shook our heads. It was another explotative scheme by corporate in order to hit a target audience that was not even mature enough to understand the rules and social behavioral patterns of your typical gamer. We both sighed simultaneously and voiced our fears in unison. "Teeny-Bopper Gamers..."
Again the elevator stopped and again we ventured out. This time we found ourselves on a damp and dark street in a bustling city. The city was filled with humans and elves and dwarves and even minotaurs and demons. Every race that we had ever seen was there and many that we hadn't. A quick query revealed that we had landed upon Sigil from the campaign world of Planescape. This, obviously, was a mess. I was just starting to ponder on what to do when R4i5tlin tugged on my collar and pointed at something. I looked. At first I saw only what could be described as a giant teddy bear wearing what looked like ratty leather armor and a spear chortling to itself and yelling what sounded like "Yub nub. Yub nub!"
While definately worth note I was much more interested at the time in finding a way to decode the buttons in the elevator so that we could get home. But just as soon as I made to turn back around to think, something caught my eye. Sneaking up behind the teddy bear was a figure around my height wearing all black. His body was shrouded by a volumnous cape and his face hidden by a drawn cowl, but somehow he seemed vaguely familiar. I watched, rivited as the person snuck up behind the bear and, before I could react, struck it firmly in the square of the back with its hand. I stared on in shock as the mysterious figure then proceded to jump up and down on the bear yelling "Stupid Ewok! Stupid Ewok!".
Nobody else seemed to pay the spectacle any attention whatsoever. I simply stood there in awe at the brutal beating and it took me a minute before I realized that the mystrious figure was now staring at me. The shrouded person quickly ran over towards us. Both R4i5tlin and I were riveted to the spot as the figure approached, unable to move, hardly able to even breathe. The person stopped right in front of me and gave me a once over. I noticed that he wore all black, including gloves and boots, but even this close, I somehow couldn't make out the face from beneath the cowl.
"Tavin" he said, matter-of-factly.
"Do I know you?", I responded.
He laughed and pulled down his cowl. He had no hair and a scar across his left eye, but there was no doubt whatsoever as to who he was.
"I am a weilder of the Force! A follower of the Dark Side." he quipped. "Oh yeah. And I am you. evil you!"
Of that there was no doubt. I was staring face to face with Tavin Springfingers.
To Be Continued...
Dragonlance Underground is owned and operated by Mages of the Plains.
Dragonlance is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. All contents are copyright of their respective owners. Please refer to our Legal Page.