We traveled back to the homestead on the other side of the state. Les Freres Corses were expecting me. They had dice. They had plans. After the writing (I finished the motorcycle travel story and got it to my team), mowing, weeding, watering, eating, and watching The Lego Movie, we got down to business.
Behold the business. It took a little while to decide on a time period. One chose western, another chose medieval. The western figures were not on site, so we went medieval, sort of. With some orcs, men of Gondor, a white wizard, and some Star Trek figures and sets, we began. Oh, and there was the symbiote. With a body of red wax and legs of black plastic, it had a short move but was powerful in combat; if it struck a blow in combat the recipient had to make a roll against a new symbiote sprouting from his blood.
McCoy, Scotty, Chekov, and a redshirt had been chased through a portal by klingons or other would-be assailants. They arrived in this land of orcs, warriors, and a wizard. How the symbiote got there, only the K-man knows. It began with Scotty trying to communicate with an orc figure, which represented a simple but armed medieval human, about the predicament and whether he could direct them to a device that might help them in their quest to return. The armed citizen was nonplussed, refraining from all mathematical actions. So Scotty got nowhere.
Meanwhile, the symbiote made its way to another armed citizen and attacked, seriously wounding its target. The citizen passed his hors de combat check as well as his morale check, not being infected by the attacker.
While the boys from the Federation continued to solicit help from the natives, the symbiote struck again. It would be its last strike. The citizen dealt the strange creature, who was no man born of woman, a fell and fatal blow. K-man joined me by taking over Scotty and Chekov.
The great moment of truth came when the redshirt encountered the white wizard and sought his help. Of course, Star Fleet men couldn't know that the white wizard was the most powerful figure in the mix, having three dire powers contained within his staff: levitate, lightning, and enchant with super strength or super speed. When questioned, the wizard played coy, delaying his response. Would he help the space men and convince the natives to cooperate in the quest? After sufficient delay to build dramatic tension, RC decided the white wizard would lend his abilities to helping the federation's finest rather than thwarting their efforts.
McCoy's tricorder located the device that would program the portal to allow them to return to the proper place and time about the same time that the wizard declared the location to the redshirt. The problem came when they tried to approach the device. Even though the wizard had endowed McCoy and the redshirt with super speed, all was not well. Plot complication. The device was located on holy ground. The native citizens, all of whom were armed, could not allow the strangers to intrude on the sacred turf. The natives remained calm but protective, and the Star Fleet men resisted the urge to stun them all into submission and do as they pleased.
The white wizard had neither personal qualms nor prime directive to restrict him. He had powers and RC wanted to use them. He thought levitating one of the locals and tossing him into the teleportation platform would convince the rest of them to cooperate. I don't know what a pair of teleportation platforms were doing in a medieval setting; I asked but didn't get a comprehensible answer. Anyway, with one citizen teleported to the far corner of the board, the natives still remained determinedly undecided--if that's possible. Every challenge roll they did came up to maintain their protective position, neither advancing nor retreating.
Scotty and McCoy had an epiphany. One of the natives had been terribly wounded, a pool of blood forming at his feet. They approached to offer him aid. He accepted the offer, and McCoy's dice came up roses, or an eight and two sevens, or something like that, resulting in a complete and miraculous recovery by the native.
Strangely enough, the healing softened the citizens' attitude a little, which was fortunate, because McCoy's tricorder indicated that time was running out. They had only 8 minutes to get to the machine, reprogram it, and get back through the portal before it was everlastingly too late. The natives had not yet parted a path for the Federation when the white wizard flexed his magical muscle by levitating McCoy over their heads to the device.
The good doctor must have been packing Spock's Katra, or perhaps he had a timely logic attack, because he successfully reprogrammed the device on the first try. In true TOS fashion, they raced for the portal and got through with only seven seconds to spare before the credits rolled. Even the redshirt survived! The Star Fleet weapons remained unused the entire time. Had the white wizard chosen differently, who can tell how it might have ended?
As the space men escaped through the portal, the wizard levitated and shocked a few citizens just to remind them of how lucky they were to have him among them.
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