I managed to get all the way from the crossroads to the water fountain. There, I found another group of Evil who were nice enough to wait until after I had refilled my water bottle before they took me prisoner. This was the record-setting seventh capture!
We met up with Big Daddy about at the Long Lake Bridge. Again with the hand on the head. I don't get it.
From the bridge, I cut over to the horse trail to make my way to Mt. Doom to begin looking for signs of the Good army. As I was trudging up the path to Campsite H, I was caught from behind by Shelob and a young White Hand Orc. I expected to be captured yet again, but Shelob said, "no, we're killing you!" To which I replied, "Thank God!" It was the first chance I'd had to rest since early in the morning.
I had hardly sat down when an Evil dude came running down the path from Mt. Doom shouting, "The Menace is right behind me! I mean, right behind me!" Sure enough, Joe came running after him. I was struck by the irony of it all—if Shelob hadn't killed me instead of capturing me, I would likely have been bounced by the Menace. This keeps intact my streak—in all the times Joe has played the Menace, he's never bounced me once. He ran down towards the parking lot, where I heard a lot of hollering going on.
About a minute later, the Evil team came trudging up the path en route to Mt. Doom. From their conversation, I gathered that Sauron had sacrificed.
Ten minutes later, Bondo arrived, just in time to be caught by the now-revived Joe. He ran past several other Evil players in the campsite, asking them if they were still in the game and tagging them when they said "yes." There were about three minutes left before Joe's tenure as the Menace was up. He disappeared up the path in the general direction of Mt. Doom, returning several minutes later with the announcement that his final total was 108. I got the news just as I was coming back to life.
I headed up to Mt. Doom and was approaching the perimeter when a trio of White Hand Orcs attacked me.
As they were debating what to do with me, Sauron walked by and shouted something to the effect of, "you're dead, Bilbo!" But I pointed out to my captors that he had not taken part in the combat, so it was not his decision. It was up to them whether they wanted to try and take me to Saruman.
Well, they didn't find Saruman, so I ended up being interrogated by Sauron again.
I continued around the outside of Mt. Doom to the horse path, where Liz and Dean captured me for the ninth and final time.
They took me to where they thought Saruman was (up a ways along the path to Barad-Dûr), but it turned out he was long gone. The people we ran into thought he was down by the Saddle.
So, they took me to the Saddle. As we were trudging through the woods, Gollum tried to free-tag me, but I reminded him that you can't free-tag a prisoner.
There were only about a dozen Evil dudes on the Saddle! They tried calling up to the Mouth of Sauron, but got no response. Dean wanted to take me around the perimeter counter-clockwise to where he thought Saruman was, but the Corsairs insisted that Sauron (down at the bottom of the hill in a clockwise direction) was closer.
So Dean handed me off to a young Orc with a red eye on the back of his head, who escorted me to Sauron. En route, I noticed that the perimeter defense was full of holes! Sauron wanted to kill me, because he was busy with a Mexican standoff with the Good army. I pointed out that you can't take someone prisoner and then kill them later. He had to either question me and let me go, or just let me go. So he asked me once again if I had the Ring, I said No, and that was that.
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©2003 Jack A. Barker. All Rights Reserved.
