You know the drill: Try to stay awake while reading the following story about what I did at Ring Game. Clicking on links will display photos (in a new window for your convenience) of the alleged "action" being described. Then sit back and bask in the wonder of it all. "Props" to Shannon, the original Ring Game chronicler (hey Shan, are those stories still online? If so, send me the link, I'm having trouble finding 'em).
Contents: Meeting Pregame Mt. Doom No Man's Land Lothlorien Ridge Mt. Doom Again Endgame Dénouement
On Thursday, October 10th, I received an e-mail from Stuart Rudolph (president of the Friends of Governor Dodge State Park), letting me know that the FGDSP Fall Road Cleanup had been postponed from an earlier date to Sunday, October 13th. Coincidentally, the thirteenth was the day of the Ring Game picks meeting, so I decided I would take the "scenic route" to Madison and stop at the park on my way to help out. I also forwarded Stuart's note to the ringgame@yahoogroups list, hoping that a few folks would be able to join me (even though it was VERY short notice). I arrived at the park a bit early, and while I was waiting for Stuart to arrive, I lingered outside the ranger station watching cars come in (most of them were there for the "Gator Walk," whatever that is). One car in particular caught my eye, because it looked like the person in the back seat was having a seizure or fit of some kind. It turns out it was just Chuck, who was there with Katie and Shanda to help out. Good thing, too, because there wound up being four of us Ring Game folks to three "other FGDSP" folks, so we more than doubled the number of people they would have had on the crew that day.
We split into two groups, each of which went to one end of the designated section of Highway 23. I was in the group with Chuck and one other fella, who went to the north end (near the riding stables). We worked our way south, picking up much trash (best piece of garbage I found: an "alien head antenna top") until we encountered the northward-moving group, then switched sides of the road and worked our way back to our starting point. In all, it was about an hour and fifteen minutes and we ended up with several very full bags, as well as the gratitude of the Friends of Governor Dodge State Park. If you haven't yet signed up for the FGDSP, by the way, I strongly encourage it.
I told Chuck Katie and Shanda that there was an informal gathering at the Great Dane in Madison before the meeting, and then headed there myself. As usual, the conversation was mostly about which characters people wanted, and speculation as to how the picks would go. Chuck Katie and Shanda never showed (I learned later that they'd been unable to find it, not really a surprise when Chuck is navigating <g>), but there was a pretty good sized crowd there. I won't name names because I'm sure I'd forget someone. I will mention that Scott was there, promoting his plan to take Sauron and make another bid for the "Ring Game Trifecta," as well as Todd and several others who announced their intention to make sure Scott had to work for it! After a cćsar salad, I headed off to the good old Humanities building.
There, I learned that Jeff & Bill had added a "check here if you would like us to share your information with the Second Age game" box to the Ring Game permission form, which was a darn nice thing of them to do. This will help me get info to a lot of people for next year's SA game. But I digress. There was a pretty big crowd, but not quite as big as we'd had last Spring. I hope the rainy outcome of that game didn't permanently deter a lot of people from playing!
My fellow Minnesota resident Hayes was unable to make the drive down for the meeting, so we concocted a scheme whereby I would pick a character for him, and Beth's sister Carrie would pick a character for me (thus obeying the one-pick-per-warm-body rule). I called Hayes on my cell phone when picks started, and more or less did a play-by-play commentary as things progressed (it was not unlike the NFL Draft on ESPN). Scott's number luckily came up fairly early (around tenth overall if memory serves) and he took Sauron. And the picks went on... and on... and on... without any of the other three wizards being taken! It was well after the thirtieth pick overall when Radagast was taken by Annie and Saruman was taken by Dave (the wizard formerly known as anonymous white hand orc #4). In the meantime, my/Carrie's number had been called and she chose the Mouth of Sauron on my behalf. But there was still no Gandalf, and Todd's number had still not been called, practically sending him into fits. Hayes had been giving me a running update of who to pick if his number came up (we'd hoped for Saruman for a while, until Dave got it), and when his number was finally called, he selected a Barrow-wight. Finally, Todd's number was called—he looked over at Shan and asked, "can you make me a costume in two weeks?" She replied in the affirmative, so he picked Gandalf. When he returned from the front of the room after officially signing in, he was still muttering, "holy [expletive deleted]ing [expletive deleted], I'm Gandalf!"
Other notable picks were Chuck as Frodo, Katie as Aragorn (there were in fact a number of cross-dressing characters this game), Stacey and Angela as barrow-wights, Beth and Chris L. as trolls, "Cat Dr." Chris as Snaga, James as the Dunlender Chief, Shanda as Samwise, Nick as Gollum, Bob as an Evil Man-at-Arms (again), George as Legolas, and lots of others but there's that feeble brain of mine again forgetting specifics. Shannon had initially taken Wormtongue (in anticipation of Hayes getting Saruman), but switched to Gothmog, only to find out later that Gothmog had already been taken, just not signed into the book, so Jeff allowed her to be an extra goblin, the "Great Goblin" as it were.
I crashed at Beth and Angela's place that evening, so Beth and I (well, Beth mostly) could wrassle with the online evaluation form for the Second Age, which we finally got up and running. Thanks Beth! The next morning, after a quick stop at Woodman's to stock up on Orange Crush, I headed back to Minnesota.
Oddly enough, the majority of the pre-game online smack-talk seemed to be between Bill Ferny and the White Hand Orcs. Good made occasional wisecracks, but not a whole ton. Of course, there was also some discussion between myself and Scott regarding the role I would play as the Mouth of Sauron. Based on these e-conversations, I altered my costume plan—I had originally planned to simply recycle the costume I'd worn as a Nazgul back in Spring 2001, with some slight makeup variations to make it more "Mouthy." But at Scott's suggestion, I decided to forego wearing my chain mail and rely on character and costume points in order to gain mobility. I retrieved my old reliable black cloak to complete the ensemble, since I knew from my Second Age experience that it would be deucedly cold on top of Mt. Doom. For a weapon, I carried my "Sting" movie replica, reasoning that I could get some mileage out of joking about how I'd taken it from a spy we'd found lurking around the borders of Mordor.
The night before departure, I logged on to the computer for one last e-mail check, and to offer my now-traditional pre-game smack-talk "primer:"
S is for sunshine! Oh crap, now I've jinxed it.
M is for mayhem, a red eye specialty.
A is for ass-whuppin'! (Oops, forgot this is a family list.)
C is for charisma, we Evil dudes are loaded with it.
K is for kick-ass! (Nuts, did it again, my bad! sorry!)
T is for terror, see the Good Army run from Daddy Sauron.
A is for... ah! Caught myself that time and didn't say ass.
L is for lame, which these primers are becoming more and more each time.
K is for kissing... ladies, the Mouth of Sauron is at your disposal!
The repeated "ass" jokes go back to the Second Age picks meeting, where I was chastized for using the phrase, "kiss the park rangers' asses" too frequently in describing how we should behave around the park rangers. I was asked to keep the language more PG rather than PG-13. Anyhoo, I thought it would make an interesting "inside joke" for the subsequent Ring Game smack-talk e-mail. By the way, if there's any parents reading this... um, sorry again, perhaps you should have the kids just skip forward to the game part, there's far less bad language there. Although it's too late now... dang.
Thanks to the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease among Wisconsin's deer population, there was to be a special four-day deer hunt in Governor Dodge State Park the week of the game. It didn't really interfere with the game because the hunters had to cease by noon, but it did impact the usual pre-game campout the night before. All of the group camp sites were closed for safety reasons. On the plus side, this meant that there were no campers in Site H to give us any trouble, but of course, it also meant no late night pyromania either. Bob generously let me crash on his couch the night before the game (Todd and his brother and nephew also stayed over at Bob's house). A number of folks dropped by to hang out and watch the Two Towers trailer in the Basement of Doom, including Scott, who gave me my final instructions. The majority of the Evil army was to book on down to the Shire as quickly as possible when the game started to surround the hobbits and not let them escape. My job was to take charge of those Nazguls and Barad-dur characters who didn't want to make the long sprint to the Shire. We were to see if we could intercept Radagast and get the Windlord token, then take up positions on the west ridge behind Lothlorien and prevent any hobbits who might be going that way from getting to Lothlorien. We agreed that it was highly unlikely that Todd would send the hobbits that way, but also knew that we had to guard that route nevertheless. I made sure to memorize my instructions because I knew that with Todd as Gandalf, he would try to seize any written instructions from players who got bounced.
As usual, I woke up before my alarm went off, and started preparing to go. Bob's wife Ann (the Queen of the Universe) had left instructions for breakfast, and we had some toaster waffles. I was the first to leave for the park, since I wanted to stop by the park office to say "how do" to the rangers and put on my makeup there. It was a bit overcast, but not raining (it had been rather sprinkly-rainy the day before while I was driving down to Madison). Upon my arrival at the park, I greeted Superintendent Kathy and talked briefly with her about the hunters and other stuff. I also got her permission to use the men's room sink and mirror to put on my makeup. With that done, I drove to the staging area, passing quite a few SUVs and pickups, and seeing a number of blaze-orange-clad outdoorsmen along the way.
In addition to my usual web site table setup, I also had a giant oversize novelty "congratulations" card for people to sign. This game represented the fifteenth anniversary of when Jeff and Bill restarted Ring Game (Fall of 1987), so Todd, the other wizards and myself thought we should mark the occasion. Todd brought a cake that he'd had specially made, and while people were going through the web site line, I had them sign the card. Comedic highlights of picture-taking included the "New York Rangers," Butterbur the flasher, the trolls' puppet show, and of course, the Singing Corsairs. During introductions, the three wizards (Todd, Scott, and Dave) presented the card to Jeff and Bill on behalf of all the players. And there were great huzzahs. The introductions went relatively smoothly (I did some "Mouth of Sauron Stand-up Comedy" when I was introduced—"try the hobbit! hey, don't forget to tip your Nazgul! I'm here all week!") and soon it was time to head to starting locations. Just in case there were hunters whose watches were slow, the start of the game was delayed until 12:30. Shelob (a newbie) had been told to follow me to get to her starting location, so she followed me down to the Mt. Doom parking lot. From there, I directed her on how to get to the base of Mt. Doom, and warned her that as soon as the game started, the dark elves were likely to kill her. "Why would they do that?" she asked. I just laughed and said, "they're the dark elves, that's what they do." Cat Dr. Snaga was also there and gallantly offered to provide an escort. I talked briefly with the Nazgul and other assorted base-of-Mt.-Doom-starters and instructed them not to wait for me when the game started. Much to my chagrin, I learned that the rumor I'd heard from Jeff earlier on was true—the bridge over the stream leading to group site H had been torn out and in its place was a big gravelly mud puddle! Sometimes, you just can't win.
I slogged my way through the mud and scurried on up to the top of Mt. Doom. Because of the whole hunting situation, the perimeter was not yet in place, so I suspected that the "bottom of Mt. Doom" crew would probably take a pretty liberal interpretation of where they started. To their credit, however, I can confirm that at least some of them didn't stay in the parking lot. I took a picture of myself to prove that I was at the top <g>, then had a rice krispie bar to bolster my energy. I kept a close eye on my watch and shouted down to the people below when I thought there was two minutes to go, but they shouted up that my watch was off, the game was starting. I was not positive that I had successfully synchronized my watch with Bill (the second hand makes that difficult), so I took their word for it, but still gave myself an extra thirty seconds or so to be sure I wasn't starting early. On the way down the mountain, my sword managed to get unclipped from my belt, and the clip disappeared into the leaves. I carried the sword and sheath with me as I continued downwards until I reached the parking lot. There, I opened up the trunk of my car and got out some twine that was leftover from Operation Valar and just lashed the sheath to my belt the old fashioned way. While this was going on, I met up with John the Nazgul and the two "Evil Butterflies of Doom" (I didn't get the costume concept, but they got warg points supposedly). We got to the crossroads just in time to see Sauron running down the road towards the Long Lake Bridge. I knew he was en route to the Shire, so I didn't delay him.
My squad followed Sauron, slowing down as we approached the curved hill above the Long Lake Bridge. We had an unimpeded view of much of the terrain, and waaaaay over on the Iron Hills road, I could clearly make out the two "hockey Rangers" and several others. As I watched, three of the non-NHL players separated from the group and started working their way down towards the crossroads. The two hockey Rangers, meanwhile headed southeast across country with another player who could only be Radagast! Those guys were trying to loop around us to the south! Not on my watch, they're not, I thought! I immediately had my squad start spreading themselves out along the road between the curve and the Minas Morgul crossroads to keep an eye out for where the Rangers planned to emerge from the woods. I also sent a runner down to the crossroads area to tell the evil group there what was happening and to recruit some reinforcements. Around about this time, the dark elves came down the road from the south. I told them what was going on and how it would be very bad for the Evil cause if they were to bounce my group right at that moment. So they left us alone and continued on their way, leaving me feeling very smug about how I'd talked my way past them. To paraphrase old Sun Tzu, "the great warrior knows when to fight and when not to fight."
Shortly after the dark elves departed, the "bottom of Barad-dur" group arrived, confirming that the dark elves had, in fact, killed them at the stroke of noon as I had predicted. I also caught a brief glimpse of one of the hockey rangers off in the distance, clearly moving in a southerly direction. So I took the Barad-dur gang back in that direction in an attempt to try to smoke 'em out. I laid a trap for them with myself as bait, but Alex Kevin and Annie were too smart to fall for it. They told me later that they did spot me, and so moved even further southwards, eventually going up behind Barad-dur and Mt. Doom.
By this time, it was about 1:30, the deadline I had given myself for either finding Radagast or giving up and moving on to my next assignment. My squad had split up a bit to try to roust out our quarry, so I sent the guy who was with me to collect the others while I headed down towards the crossroads. As I approached the curve above the bridge, I spotted a group of 3 good team members trying to hide in the weeds to the right. I pretended that I hadn't seen them, and turned to see how close the rest of my evil guys were. They were moseying towards me, so I attempted to signal to them to hurry to my position, while at the same time not giving away to the good guys that I had seen them. Finally, they got the hint and scurried on up to me. I quickly whispered to them what was going on and said that on the count of three, we were going to sprint off the road to get 'em. Then I did something that I haven't done in probably six years—chased someone into the weeds in a run-down. As we were running down the embankment, the emotion of the moment got to one of the newbies, who let out a battle cry, which unfortunately alerted our prey. We quickly discovered that there were a lot of gullies and small streamlets in the area we were running across, which hampered our progress, but I buoyed my team my ensuring them that the ones we were chasing were dealing with the same thing. As I was clambering out of one stream/gulley, I head one of my guys shout "tag!" (as I had instructed), and I immediately shouted, "I choose to be in the battle!" and started pacing in. I got there in about twelve steps to find one of my squad there with one good guy sitting on the ground. The guy said, "I guess I'm dead," to which I replied, "not yet, you're not, it's still the tagging phase, and I know there's at least two more of you out here somewhere." The rest of the squad got there and we quickly searched the immediate area, but were not able to turn up anyone else in the high weeds. So I went back over to the tagged fellow and asked who he was. He was Bard, so I asked if he still had the token, which he did. It was bugging me that the other two had seemingly gotten away, but since we didn't hear any movement, I knew they must be hiding nearby. So I talked with Bard a bit: "We have several options here. We can take you prisoner and take the token, or we can kill you and take the token. But, if you tell me which way the other two guys who were with you went, I'll just kill you and leave you the token." He selected the third option, but to his credit, he indicated two directions in very vague terms.
We decided to take the "towards the road" vague direction, and moments later, one of my squad spotted the missing pair, so we took off after them! More clambering through streams and gullies followed, and very shortly thereafter, there was another shout of "tag!" and I once again paced in (this time it was about sixteen paces). Our victims turned out to be the two non-hockey rangers, who were both newbies. I was sure that they had no valuable information, but as I explained to them, part of being Evil is separating newbies from their groups. So we took one of them prisoner and left the other. The one we left mentioned that she didn't have a watch, but being the sporting sort of fellow I am, I told her that Bard was dead about ten yards away, and that it would be OK with me if she just came back to life at the same time he did. So we took our prisoner with us as we resumed our trek to the crossroads, and I had the opportunity to give advice to my newbie squad about making sure they didn't let the prisoner fall five paces behind.
At the crossroads, we met up with some more evil who had been keeping an eye on Lothlorien. I explained the plan to those present, emphasizing the fact that we would be lying in wait for hobbits, and that it could be a long boring quiet job. To their credit, only a few didn't want to do that, so I sent them southwards with the prisoner to look for Sauron. Heading up to Lothlorien, we came across a few more evil players. I explained the plan again, this time letting those who didn't want to walk through the brambles stay and keep an evil presence on the road. I led my group (now about six strong) around Lothlorien, being careful not to pass within 25 paces of the rock, of course. As we started to work our way up the ridge, we came across two more evil guys, who reported seeing Radagast on the ridge. Since my costume didn't lend itself very well to hiding, I decided to be the bait. I had the rest of the team stay hidden while I cautiously made my way up the ridge. I learned after the game that Radagast, in fact, was nowhere near the area, and I never did find out who it really was that the evil team had spotted.
We slowly continued up the ridge, keeping a sharp eye out for any sign of good. I left the team in hiding and proceeded to the very top of the ridge to try and scout out the area at the top. After about ten to fifteen minutes of searching, it became pretty clear that there was no good in the area. Plus, it was getting to be just past 2:30, and Scott had informed me that everyone was to get going to Mt. Doom no later than 2:45. So I headed back down the ridge and collected my team.
At this time, let me just reiterate again what a great team I had! Unlike most newbies I've encountered over the years, who tend to question orders, ask questions, make too much noise, and bog things down, these guys and gals followed my lead, stayed quiet when asked, ran flat out across rough terrain when needed, and were generally one of the best groups it's ever been my pleasure to lead. I wish I could remember all their names (there's that feeble brain of mine again) so I could praise them individually, but if you're reading this, you know who you are and you have my thanks!
Anyhow, we trudged through the brambles back towards the bottom of the ridge, but our progress to the road was interrupted when we saw the Menace up on the road! So we started south, staying under cover and going parallel to the road. I was keeping an eye on the Menace and noticed him bolting into the ridge on the east side of the road. That's when we spotted a huge army on the road. "Is that a good army or an evil army?" I asked the guy ahead of me, who had a clearer view. "They're evil!" he said, so I immediately shouted, "THE MENACE IS ON THE RIDGE!" and started scrambling towards the road. I was just in the middle of crossing the creek when I heard somebody shout that there was a freeze on the road. A few confusing minutes went by as I tried to get someone's attention to ask that whoever called the freeze either pace out to me or allow me to pace in. It was about 2:50 at this time, so I was late in getting going to Mt. Doom. Finally, since no one was paying attention and there was quite a bit of milling around on the road, I said, "screw it" and just started pacing in. I wasn't even close when I got to twenty-five, so I figured, great I'm good to go to Mt. Doom. I got up to the road and discovered that there had not been a freeze after all (people really need to stop treating every tag as a freeze, it's starting to get on my nerves). In fact, the evil army had bounced the Menace on points! I was somewhat dismayed by the size of the evil army that was there, since Scott had told me that we weren't going to bother taking citadels (it would be the Ring or nothing!). Among the army were the barrow-wights, and Stacey told me that there had been a change of plans and that Mike (the Lord of the Nazgul) knew about it. I said, "great, but I can't stick around until 3:00, I need to get to Mt. Doom NOW and I need an escort." So we quickly shouted, "whoever wants to go to Mt. Doom with the Mouth, let's go!" and about twenty or so of us started heading in that direction.
I asked Angela how things were going, and she reported that things were going very well. All of the citadels had been taken, even Gondor. I wondered at that, since I knew that there was a "siege engine" sitting on Gondor that was worth boatloads of points. Well, it seems that Sauron had ordered the white hand orcs at Isengard to carry their siege engine (a trebuchet, to be specific) to Gondor to attack it. I was very happy to hear this (since I don't think sitting siege engines on citadels all day should be allowed in the first place) and gave high-fives all around.
While en route to Mt. Doom, we encountered the dark elves, who reported that they had filled their quota of evil but weren't even close on good. Some of the people with me wanted to know why we didn't bounce them, but I explained that this late in the game, we want the dark elves to become the Chosen so we can use their extra points on Mt. Doom. There was some grumbling at this (particularly by those who'd been bounced by the dark elves earlier), but we let them go their own way. When we got to the Site H area, I explained the plan to the group. Experienced players were to start arranging themselves around the perimeter, while the newbies came with me to the Saddle. "What's the Saddle?" one of them asked, to which I replied, "that's why you're coming with me, to learn things like where the Saddle is." So we headed on up to Mt. Doom. It was just about 3:00 when we got to the Saddle, and to my dismay, there was no sign of Sauron! I learned later, I'd just missed him, and he had been equally dismayed that I wasn't there!
Lacking any other instructions, I took it upon myself to start setting up a perimeter defense. First, I sent a couple of runners up to the top of the ridge, instructing them to go up far enough to be able to see anyone coming from that direction, but not so far that they couldn't get back down to the Saddle in a hurry. Then I explained to the newbies how to go about arranging themselves around the Saddle, and divided them up into two groups to start doing so, clockwise and counterclockwise. I also instructed them to watch me when I went up to the top, that the path I would be taking was the shortest route to the Crack of Doom. About this time, Sauron arrived with Saruman in tow, much to my relief. He took charge, and also informed me that the perimeter defense was beginning to take shape nicely. I knew that I had to race up to the top of Mt. Doom right at the stroke of 3:30, because Scott and I didn't put it past Todd to plan his assault for that very same time.
3:30 came, and I raced up the path. As usual, I forgot that the new fallen tree (not so new anymore) was blocking the old path, so I had to stop and go around it. So much for demonstrating the best path to the newbies—d'oh! I passed Jeff and got up to the Crack area, where there was another judge (the young one, whom I believe is Lynn's nephew). I set my sword and staff down by the Crack to give myself better mobility and proceeded to start "patrolling the top." Considering how late in the year the game was, the foliage on Mt. Doom was still remarkably thick (more like a Spring game than a Fall game, really), which made it very hard for me to see or hear. I forget how long I waited, but it was not very long after 3:30 that the first cry of "Good is on the Mountain!" went up, which I noisily amplified for those out of earshot of the original call. The newbies and other Saddle folk made it up to the top fairly quickly, although there was no sign of any good (apparently, the tag had happened below, out of my line-of-sight. The usual hurly-burly went on, and in just a few minutes, the judges started shooing people off the mountain. I had to explain "searching the mountain" to a few newbies, who thought that once good had crossed the perimeter, evil could stay on Mt. Doom for good. I also did my best to buck up their spirits by explaining that Todd wanted us to get tired and demoralized, and that we had to keep our spirits and energy up. I understand that Scott made a similar rah-rah speech when the army got back to the Saddle.
It was rather breezy and chilly at the top of the mountain, so I wrapped my wool cloak around me and continued to patrol. A few civilians appeared, asking if this was "the place," and "where's this crack of doom we've heard of?" I politely gave them "the tour," but also explained that it was very important for me to listen carefully. They were very nice about it, and after looking around for a minute or two, went back down the mountain. I also had to explain to the young judge that I really needed him to keep his distance, as getting too close to my personal space while I was on the precipice looking down the mountain could set off my vertigo. Then, the cry went up again, "Good is on the Mountain!" and once again evil headed my way. This time, I remembered to get out my camera and take a few pictures. This assault lasted even less time than the last one, and once again, the evil army had to go back to the perimeter.
The wait was a bit longer this time, when suddenly I heard quite a commotion going on down on the Saddle. A shout of "Gondor! Gondor! Gondor!" went up, and I knew a) this was the major good assault, and b) that was a signal! I quickly went to the opposite side of the mountain to be on the lookout for trickery. Sure enough, about a minute later, the call went up that "Good is on the Mountain!" There was some momentary confusion because one of the judges thought there was a freeze on the mountain because of the battle going on, but it was quickly unfrozen. Mere moments later, Otto and Katie and two hobbits appeared from the west, loaded down with tokens. The first thing I did was look at my watch, and it was still well before 4:30, so I knew, at least, that they didn't have the Army of the Eagles. I shouted, "I NEED EVIL HERE, NOW!" and positioned myself between them and the Crack. I didn't make the tag, though, because I could see a bunch of Evil heading up from the direction of the Saddle out of the corner of my eye. After a few moments, Otto noticed them coming, too, and made a pouncing tag on me. I shouted "there's a tag, who wants to be in the battle?" to which most of the Evil guys coming shouted, "I do! I do!" As they started pacing in, I carefully scrutinized the two hobbits (Bilbo and Pippin) to figure out which of them had the Ring. I looked for signs of the chain around their neck (there wasn't any), observed their body language, etc., and finally decided that Bilbo was the most likely to have it.
Among the last of the evil players to successfully pace in was Shelob. Seeing her there, Otto gave Bilbo a very significant look and said, "you may want to use your token." That's when I noticed that the token Bilbo was wearing was the Sting token. Oh crap. So Shelob was out of the battle, and Bilbo was "stunned." They both went down to the perimeter to begin serving their time. Katie had both the Narsil and Army of the Dead tokens, so between the three of them, they had about 376 points (if memory serves). Starting with my own 150, I began adding up the evil points, and once we'd gone "over the top," I announced, "that's it, we've got more than enough." I sent Pippin down to the Saddle as a prisoner, took the tokens from Otto and Katie (Otto had the Red Arrow of Rohan token, which was meaningless, but I took it anyway), and sent them down to be dead. The rest of the Evil went with the prisoner, running down the hill very quickly to inform Sauron about where the hobbit with the Ring went.
Several more minutes went past, during which I heard snatches of people shouting and assorted carrying on. Then a great victory cry went up from the direction of the Saddle, and I knew that Evil had been victorious! I shouted, "PARTY ON MT. DOOM!" in a vain attempt to get the revelers to come to me, but quickly realized that it wasn't happening, so I grabbed up my staff and sword and quickly lumbered down to the Saddle. There was a great mass of people there, clustered around Sauron and Gollum, and I quickly learned that Gollum had seized the Ring by free-tagging Bilbo as soon as he recovered from being "stunned." I recommend reading Nick's own account of it. I found out later that Saruman had also been close by when Bilbo became un-stunned, and very nearly got the Ring himself. Saruman's "deposition" is also recommended reading. Many congratulations were exchanged to both teams for a hard-fought game, but especially to Scott, who has now won the game as all three wizards. I can't remember a game where all three teams had such a very close chance of winning at the end.
After a short time, the group started heading back to the parking lot en masse. Most people took the clockwise route, but I find the counterclockwise route to be much easier. However, I stopped to help take down perimeter streamers on my way, so it took about the same amount of time. There was no official party scheduled for that evening, but Bob was able to make an emergency call to Ann (the Queen of the Universe) and get permission to invite folks to their place. Luckily, Bob still had the leftover Second Age party invites in his truck, so we were able to distribute maps at Culvers. Unfortunately, because of the last-minute nature of it, we weren't able to get maps to everyone. Still, there was a pretty good turnout, and we had quite a lot of fun watching a slideshow of the digital pictures that Shan and I had taken on Bob's big-screen TV in the Basement of Doom. And of course, there was much telling and retelling of everyone's stories. And speaking of stories, that's the end of this one!
©2002 Jack A. Barker. All rights reserved.
P.S. OK, not quite the end... the party went until pretty late in the evening (thankfully, it was daylight savings time "turn back the clock" night, so we all got an extra hour of sleep), and the following noon, a few last die-hards had lunch at the Great Dane. Then I drove back to Minnesota. And that's the end.
