When I went to bed at 10 last night, I set the alarm for 7, but I wake at 4AM and I can't get back to sleep. This is not so bad... All week I've been cycling on 28-hour days, to get back to waking in the day and sleeping at night. I broke down and set up a
Napster account Friday evening, here's a good time to hunt down a few songs (
Patches,
Wildfire, Frankie Valli's
Rag Doll, and
Hang On, Sloopy). In spite of a couple strong cups of coffee at 8, I'm feeling enervated and spacey by 10; I lay down for a nap but wake within an hour. Cut my hair, gas up the car, and head to Dave's in
Somerset for the first session of Charles'
AD&D 3E game at 2. Dave has acquired two adorable, friendly young she-cats,
Ganymede and
Eris.
L.A.I.R.E. gossip and footy-smelling
honey mead flow freely while players put the finishing touches on their respective characters.
The premise: the main characters are recent graduates of the
medieval fantasy equivalent of
Police Academy.
The scenario: Three investigator/enforcer characters are joined by three
local goons... er,
deputies, to quell a
Hatfield/
McCoy-style
feud. (Our illustrious
DM doesn't bother to rename the families; we refer to them as Hatfields and McCoys throughout the session.) When the party arrives on the scene,
some dozen McCoys are gathered outside the Hatfield farmstead, throwing rocks, waving pointy
farm implements, preparing to torch the place.
The action: My character puts down the McCoy ringleaders with a
Sleep spell, while the deputies impulsively charge the Hatfield home. These
PC's slaughter several Hatfields in the course of "subdual", including a 10-year-old child. Hardly heroic; I'm
less than impressed with the "deputy" players' performance.
The aftermath: The elder Hatfield has a
property deed and map, showing a 50-yard
buffer between the two families' property. There is also a threatening letter, apparently from a McCoy elder to the Hatfields, which seems to be a
forgery. It's no great stretch of the imagination to figure some third party, presumably the unidentified owner of the buffer property, has manipulated the feud. During a smoke break with the DM, he notes that the Hatfields would have been open to
parley once the McCoys were calmed... if three heavily-armed and armored
yahoos hadn't gone
postal and stormed their home.