A Dark And Quiet Room

Opening the Door

When you are visiting for the first time, you’re supposed to tell the gatekeeper one thing about where you would like to go. Samuel wanted to go to a castle filled with people. Arianna wanted to visit fairies. Isaac wanted to go to a castle filled with warriors. He was still finding his way in all this, so I’m not particularly surprised that he didn’t come up with anything particularly original. But it worked out pretty well.

I couldn’t find this in the rules, but when we played at GenCon, Ben commented that not all the players should be together, nor should they all be separate. The division line seemed obvious to me; I would send Arianna to the fairies, and I would send the boys to a castle filled with warriors.

But what would they do once they were there? Uh. Um. Er. I cast about frantically. At GenCon, Ben had Vincent and Julia judge a contest. I’ll do that! Contests! Those are always good!

So, Arianna met the Fairy Queen and helped judge a beauty contest, while the boys impressed the Castle King enough to be allowed to enter a tournament to be declared the Greatest Warrior in the Land.

Arianna’s storyline was almost completely lifted from the GenCon session. I had my own little twist to see what Arianna would do. Three fairies were in the contest: Rose, who was pretty but vain; Tiger Lily, who was somewhat pretty but not arrogant about it; and Ragweed, who wasn’t really pretty at all. I wanted to develop Ragweed as a kind and tender character, but it didn’t really work out that way. Oh well.

Anyways, Arianna judged that Tiger Lily was the prettiest one and crowned her with the victor’s crown. Later that night, she came upon Rose beating up Tiger Lily as revenge for winning. Arianna grabbed Rose and punched her in the face, but not before Rose raked her fingernails across Arianna’s face. Now she has three glowing scratches across her face as a Wound.

Samuel and Isaac found themselves in a castle preparing for a large tournament. They wanted to enter the tournament, but they needed to demonstrate that they were capable. So the Castle King declared that they needed to fight a couple of knights to prove that they could. Both Samuel and Isaac handily defeated their enemies. Indeed, this was the point that things clicked for Isaac. He described how he grabbed the knight by one of the horns on his helmet and flipped him through the air against the wall. Condition: crying. Reception: everyone is laughing at him. Samuel defeated his opponent as well, but he picked up a small wound: Hated by Sir Brute 2.

I decided that I would let them romp through the tournament until the final. So they were fighting side-by-side against Sir Brute and his friend. But, as they entered the arena, they saw that the knights were using real swords! Nonetheless, they managed to defeat the cheating knights and expose them.

At this point, Samuel chose his Artifact: the Sword of the Castle King. Isaac wanted to get a helmet that shoots laser beams. (He was recently exposed to Cyclops from the X-Men.) I didn’t want to hand over an item like that, so I said that he could quest after something like that.

But then, it was time to return to our world. The children said good-bye to their new friends and returned home, just in time for supper.