I walked right past the group that was with Chuck and headed up the road towards the crossroads. I was about halfway there when the Vampire Queen, the Dunlenders, and a few assorted White Hand captured me for the fourth time. This group, however, seemed determined to take me to Isengard, apparently thinking that Saruman was still there. Since this meant going in the direction I wanted to go, I didn't mention that he was actually in the exact opposite direction.
The "going the wrong direction" plan was helped by the arrival of Mike Parsons, who consulted with my captors and assured them that Saruman was "over that way" (pointing about 180° from where I knew Saruman to actually be). Again, because this was the direction that I wanted to go, I didn't correct their error. As we walked along, Mike described an earlier encounter with Joe, in which Bard seemed as though he was going to pace into the combat, but then declined to participate. More on this later.
At the crossroads, we espied a large army up towards Rivendell, which started running towards us. It turned out to be Sauron with a very large contingent of Red Eye. As he approached, he called out "do not attack" to the White Hand who were holding me prisoner.
I was angling around to get questioned when Mike tagged the guy standing next to Sauron. A heated discussion ensued about the semantics of whether Sauron had meant "do not attack me (Sauron)" or "do not attack anyone." Sauron sighed and said to Mike and the others, "Well, I'm very disappointed in you. You're all dead." At which point I realized, "Hey, if the army that's holding me prisoner is killed, I'm freed with a thirty-second head start!" I'm not sure if this is literally true, but they bought it, so I was able to leave without being questioned.
After a quick stop at the Rivendell parking lot to grab a spare kerchief, I headed cross-country back to the main east-west road, and managed to walk all the way to Gondor without being spotted by a single member of either team.
Thus it was that I was the lone defender of Gondor when the Evil army came over the hill to attack it. I did my usual, "none shall pass!" routine, to which swishy Corsair Alex replied, "I'm not going to pass, I'm making one!"
This was now my fifth capture, and this time Sauron did question me, asking if I had the Ring. I'm not sure what the whole deal was with the "hand on the head" thing, tho.
After a futile effort to take a short cut, I once again headed cross-country, intending to head in the general direction of the drinking fountain by the backpack campsite parking lot, as my bottle of water was getting rather low. But before I even made it to the horse path, you guessed it, I was captured. The trick, I was learning, was to make sure that I didn't run into someone I'd run into before. That gave me a much better chance of not being killed instead of captured.
As we hiked toward the bridge, this guy told a very amusing story of how a dark elf was foiled and bounced at the beginning of the game.
Cat Doc was at the bridge distributing water, and I chatted with Scott and Otto as I refilled my bottle. I should confess, however, that I had no idea this even was Otto until after the game. Those covering-the-whole-face costumes can be confusing!
The Evil army was at the Lothlorien/Iron Hills crossroads, and dang was it huge!
Ryan was clearly getting sick and tired of questioning me by this time. Which of course, was part of the plan. My plan, that is. I really didn't know what the Good Army plan was.
Go back to Page 3
Go on to Page 5 
|
©2003 Jack A. Barker. All Rights Reserved.
