Appendix 2: Chapter Reword

Hungry for more Scenario 66? Can’t wait to dive straight back in at the start?

Also ever so slightly worried that it might bore you to tears before even making it to Part 2? Never fear: just plug in this reword of Chapter 1.7: The Great Gorge Suicide (conveniently one of the shortest chapters for minimal plugging effort) and you’re good to go. It changes everything!

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Silven appeared with an unsatisfying pop and an equally unsatisfying answer to his question. The solid glare of the dazzling sun didn’t really give any bloody clue as to what a desert marsh actually was.

The desert marsh didn’t care if Silven could see it and carried on existing. When he finally made out his surroundings, he decided it shouldn’t. Bubbling pools smoked amid the parched sand of the sweeping dunes. Towers of gleaming quartz shadowed valleys of less gleaming quartz. Frogs warbled merrily in the mud as cobras merrily consumed their kin. It was all a tad confusing.

To the left, there were signs of civilization. At least, there was a load of weird buildings, so there was always a chance. A big dune had been heartily trampled on over the years and had taken on a second life as a road. The road led to the capitalised Desert Marsh, and we know what that looks like because we’ve already read about it in the vanilla chapter.

Silven put a hand to his mouth to consider just how miserable he was and felt new strength flourish. That silly mouse had promised such improvements, and everyone likes a bone-white smile. Maybe this could all work out. He plodded onwards towards the gate, slipping in the sand because there was sand to slip in because we need to somehow differentiate between the locations he visits.

There were a dozen sky-blue warriors staring at him from the gate, at that very moment attacking the city through the power of loitering. The city was doing its best to defend itself by having a wall. Somehow, Silven missed these signs of epic struggle and approached teeth first. “Hallo, loving citizens of the realm!”

The weirdoes didn’t particularly like the bone-white smile.

“Having fun in the sun?”

They were not.

“This has to be Desert Mash?”

The citizens rapped a ferocious and toe-tapping rhythm into the sand with their spears, reminiscent of the ritual dances of deadly religious fanatics who worshipped strange gods at the edges of festering bogs and hung around heathen cities in hope of chancing upon confused travellers to hassle.

“Tune!”

The hint was rather too subtle for the likes of Silven, so their leader helpfully flung a spear at his head. Silven staggered back with a howl of agony and got the message. The others charged before he had chance to forget. “Izrin lives!” they cried. Silven also cried, but that was because of the barrage of blades cutting into his flesh. It was just the sort of situation that called for some sort of deserty or marshy fruit, but a wandering scavenger had passed by this area just before Silven’s arrival and they would take twelve more minutes to reappear. His only option was to turn and flee up the path. So he did.

After pausing to kick sand up into his pursuer’s screeching faces, which felt very satisfying indeed, he lunged down into a shallow depression by the dune, shrugged off a couple of toads, and prepared to scramble up the other side. He decided against that option when he looked up into the row of scowling soldiers who were waiting for him on the edge of the pool. They weren’t entirely happy. “Blangdammit! Where’s he gone?” puffed the leader, so defined by his bluer cloak. “Izrin ikru!”

Silven and the toads weren’t exactly alone in the bog. The foul depths of those stinking desert puddles are home to all manner of wriggling and jiggling things too terrible to describe here, and shall remain unseen because I’m too tired to imagine them. Anyway, one of those things surfaced, caressed Silven’s leg with an anterior recentulator, and vanished. Our brave warrior whimpered and scrabbled away with a furious splash. Instantly, a cultist was there, eagerly studying the rings expanding away from his target’s ankles. “I know these traces,” he growled up the ridge to the onlookers. “They suggest the presence of someone right here who was also observed being right here.” The others grumbled and scanned the reeds to their right.

Silven only started to breathe again when he really had no other choice. Perhaps the lack of oxygen helped in forming his crazy plan. It would certainly help to explain why he jumped back up onto the path and tumbled straight over one of his cloaked pursuers as they crouched over a flurry of scubble prints. “Get him! Burn the logical thinker!” Silven stopped in his flight, stunned by the compliment, and jumped again at the curses which rent the air all around. “Argh, slipped away again! Stick one of those useless feet of yours out next time, oaf!” Silven tucked his arms in as two warriors stalked past, extended them once more, and threw the rock. His hand clapped one of the men on the shoulder at the end of its trajectory, which was quite a miscalculation on Silven’s part. The warrior spun round and raised a slightly more calculated spear towards his neck. Then, the rock clattered off the steep wall of the gorge and rattled down to the jagged riverbed far below.

Even to the snarling zealot about to stab him, that was obviously where Silven now was. “Quick! Before he gets away from the impossibly long drop!” yelled the man closest to the gorge. He dropped his spear - he wouldn’t need that where he was going - and followed the rock into the abyss. Silven gawped as his brothers did the same. Their bodies were slightly less musical than the rock, but somehow, that crazy brass band down there was even worse. “I refuse to take credit for assisted suicide!” he protested.

“Strooooooong!” answered the frogs. It was not up for debate.

And so it shouldn’t be, for Silven would need many, many more points if he were to survive the countless mediocre adventures that still lay in wait for him. He stood staring down the gorge, but in the end, he supposed it would be best to just get on with it all after all, and headed for the town.