listen at the doors very carefully,” the templar said.
“You hear nothing,” said the gamemaster.
“We check for hidden traps again, as we saw the thief do,” said the cleric.
“You find none,” said the gamemaster.
They tried to think of various things that they could do to determine if there was anything dangerous on the other side of the doors, but the gamemaster replied the same way each time. Finally, the doors were opened, and they went through. The gamemaster told them that they encountered winding stairs leading up to the tower rooms. They exercised all possible caution going up them, checking for traps, stairs that might collapse underneath them, every possible trick they thought the gamemaster might throw at them, but meanwhile, Sorak realized that they were using up whatever daylight still remained to them. And he knew that when they reached the rooms at the tops of the towers, the sun would have gone down.
There were, of course, undead in the towers. The players fled from them, but the entire house was full of undead who had been lying in the other rooms, waiting for the night. The cleric protested that no magic had been detected, and the undead were animated by magic. True, the gamemaster replied, unperturbed, but the cleric had only cast a detect magic spell on the front door. Besides, the magic that animated the undead did not come into play until after sundown, and the cleric had not bothered to detect magic again after the first time.
With each encounter, dice were rolled, scores were checked, and one by one, the players died. Finally, only the templar remained, and she made it all the way to the front door, only to discover that the bolt they had managed to force through with so much difficulty would not open for her. And the undead were closing in by the dozens. She rolled to see if she would be able to open the bolt before they reached her. She rolled low, and her character died.
Exasperated, the player who had assumed the character of a templar glanced at Sorak and Valsavis, pointed at them, then turned to the gamemaster. “What about them?” she demanded. “You haven’t said what happens to them!”
The gamemaster merely shrugged. “Very well. They entered the tavern, locked the heavy wooden door from the inside, and spent an uneventful night listening to the undead howling in the streets. Eventually, they fell asleep and when they woke up, it was morning.”
“That’s it?” the templar said with disbelief.
“They chose wisely,” was all the gamemaster said in reply.
“Gith’s blood!” the templar swore in frustration. “This is a stupid game!”
She threw down her dice and left the table.
“We seem to have an empty chair,” the gamemaster announced, calmly, glancing at the onlookers.
“I will join the game,” Ryana said as she sat down.
The other two players elected to remain. They paid ten ceramics apiece for the privilege of creating new characters and remaining in the game, though they lost not only their previous wagers, but all of their experience points as well, since their characters had died. As new characters, they were now starting out afresh, as was Ryana.
The dwarf fighter unimaginatively chose to remain a dwarf fighter. He was now simply a different dwarf fighter, and he had to roll to determine the strengths and abilities of his new character. He came off rather worse than he had the first time, which did not please him at all, and he continued to play in a surly mood.
The cleric decided to become a thief this time. She rolled, and her new character turned out to have better strengths and abilities than her last one. She seemed happier about this, even though she had lost heavily with her wagers as a cleric.
“And what character class will you choose?” the gamemaster asked Ryana.
“I will be a priestess,” said Ryana.
“You mean a templar,” said the gamemaster.
“No, I mean a priestess,” she replied firmly. “I could never be a defiler, not even in a harmless game.”
“Ah,” said the gamemaster, nodding. “I see. Well, I suppose that is permissible. But you shall not have any strengths and abilities beyond those listed in the cleric class.”
“That is acceptable to me,” Ryana said. She rolled. She came out with the highest scores of all. The game continued.
This time, the dwarf fighter and the new thief paid closer attention to what Sorak and Valsavis chose to do. The gamemaster continued to spin out the adventure for them. As they moved through