What is best in life?

Names for the Inn Where We Begin

1. The Lame Ass
2. The Gnashing Gnoll
3. The Dancing Goblin
4. Last Stand
5. Cheap Inn
6. The Three Fine Wenches (with fine crossed out on the sign, possibly)
7. Yellow Leadbedder Inn
8. Old Oak Tavern
9. Moldy Boot Saloon
10. Gizzlerd and Metatron
11. Booty Station
12. Capsized Mary (a tavern in the hull of a ship)
13. The Seven Dwarves Spa
14. The Moaning Nun 
15. The Polished Knob (logo on the sign is a winking wench)
16. The Tipsy Tankard
17. The Wily Wino (logo on the sign is an obviously drunk snidely whiplash-type rogue)
18. The Jubilant Heifer
19. The Dancing Duck
20. Jimmy's
21. Sojourner's Repose
22. Step on Inn
23. A Minimum of Rats
24. Pilgrim's Progress's Pause
25. The Lazy Eye (logo on the sign is a napping beholder)
26. Peasant Hollows (or, Hollow Peasants)
27. Picklehaus (sign: a barrel full of pickles )
28. The Cracked Cabbage
29. The King's Junk
30. Ole Cracked Tankard
31. Stewgaard
32. Muttonmansion
33. Queen Kestler's Three Nieces
34. Dragonbreath Griddle
35. Hacker Barrel (sign: a barrel full of axes)

Campaign intro: "In the Fiefs of Zengi"

It is 1136 AD.

The First Crusade has ended, and the Second Crusade has yet to begin.

Zengi the Mad, Zengi the Cruel, Zengi the Warlord is ascendant in Syria. His fiefs are Aleppo and Mosul (in Iraq) and all the fiefs between.

To his west lie the Crusader Kingdoms -- Antioch, Tripoli, Jerusalem, and Edessa.

To his east the Turko-Persian princes vie for ascendency over their father's empire.

And Zengi has his cruel, mad eyes set on Damascus, but not on his own lands; not on a lonely keep at the edge of the Waste; not on the road that leads from that keep to the ruins of an ancient city.

Zengi's troops march away and leaves his lands unwatched and unpoliced. The lonely keep is undermanned and turns away no sell swords, and the ruins in the desert hold a vast treasure, guarded by evil magic, Shayatin, and the Dragon of the Southern Desert.

The time is ripe, adventurers.

tunnels and entrances

desert edges

halls in the waste

Diary Entry October 15, 2012

Dear Diary,

I write to amuse you, my dear old book.

I left my Volcano ship to hover over the Pond of Liquified Eyes and strolled passed the Grove of Femurs to the home of my old comrade Mithras, a demon of the pit! He is well, Diary, and still tending to the eternal torture of his captives -- The Souls of Mortals Killed by Wizard Magik!

We sat for a smoke, and after, descended to the pits. On the Rack of Ages lay a pathetic bunch: a thief, a cleric of the Lords of Kobol, several men of arms, and a novitiate of the arcane. To the side I found a work of imaginative fiction, written by one of the captives. Between torments, Sir Loin, of Beef, had written an account of their deaths, form the view point of his trusty mule!

Here it is, Diary:

It’s not a bad life, thought the mule. Now that those idiots are gone. Always heeing and hawing about who knows what. I may be tied to a tree but at least I have my priorities straight. Won’t catch me running off into someone else’s barn.

He grabbed at some dried grass with his large teeth. Awful lot of dried grass around here, he though. A little burnt tasting though. He chewed, a resolutely neutral look on his face. I could really be here all day, he thought, if it weren’t so loud.

The door of the tower slammed open with a thud barely audible over the lighting cracks. The mule huffed irritably as the man practically threw himself down the stairs.

What’s he look so upset about, thought the mule, he’s not the one who’s going to miss out on all this fantastic grass. They way they run is so comical, with their forelegs flailing and their eyes bulging, squeaking and whimpering like blind foals.

The mule flicked his ears at a particularly resonant crash of electricity. Ten paces in front of him the man lit up like hay in a bonfire and with a frantic yelp crumpled into a chunky pile of dust. Another flash of light slammed into the ground and the pile settled into the dry earth, exposing a blackened skull.

With a snort, the mule trundled back towards the tree to which he was tethered.

Idiots, he thought. All of them.

I'm so happy this fool became an adventurer -- for he would have surely failed as a bard. Its no Battlefield Earth!

-L. Ron Hubbard, PlanesTraveller