Thread: ATM II RPG
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Old 08-04-2006, 03:26 PM   #182
littlemanpoet
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
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littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Mount Zoom was heading south down some highway called Eye Nighty Five. Anakron didn't get it. But that didn't matter. The orc behind the wheel of Mount Zoom (for all drivers in Mordor are orcs) seemed to know what he was doing, and had only had road rage three times in the last hour. Anakron felt sorry for the other orc drivers whose vehicles lay to each side of the highway, victims of the Mount Zoom orc's need to go fast. It didn't help that Mount Zoom took up all three lanes of the highway, as well as much of the land either side. Anakron felt sorrier for the road construction crews who would now have to repair all the bridges Mount Zoom had crashed through in its southern hurtlement.

"Oh no," Anakron murmured, looking down the road. "We're about to enter Nurnia. I hope he knows what's coming."

The orc didn't. North of Nurnia, which they were leaving, road laws apparently followed American patterns, while in the south, they followed British rules. The highway's two sides undulated like a pair of snakes, the southbound lanes bridging over the northbound; which was fortunate because there was no way Mount Zoom was going to fit under the resulting bridge. But that wasn't the worst of it.

Sure enough, Anakron heard a gurgling "Gyaaaahh!" from the Mount Zoom cockpit as the steering wheel anakronistically and most magically disappeared from the driver's grasp and switched to the right side of the cockpit; pedals and gear shifts following suit. Problem was, nobody was sitting there. In fact, there hadn't even been a passenger seat there, but that hadn't mattered. The Dweomer was the dweomer, and there suddenly was a passenger seat that had just as suddenly turned into a driver's seat on the right side.

Mount Zoom began to veer off the highway. Which meant big trouble for northbound traffic, already distracted by the oncoming need to switch from American to British road rules and that confounded steering wheel switch that most drivers had become aware of in the last year.

In their efforts to avoid the mountain, northbound Clios (all green) and Minivans (all yellow) careened out of the way of the approaching mountain, risking the questionable comforts of the rough grass and rubble off the road, and also risking the jarring of the extra tires that all cars carried to deal with the inevitable flat tires of Mordor.

Luckily, Mount Zoom righted itself before it competely dominated the northbound lanes, going in the wrong direction, and listed back across the median to the southbound lanes, resuming its normal road-hog status.

A few hours later Mount Zoom arrived on the outskirts of Lūndūn, casting a brand new shadow over Heave-ho Airport. Anakron disembarked from the mountain, caught a fare on the Bliddy Unnergrind ('minding the gap' of course), and was in short order back at Caer Pairadocks, where he ordered up a limo to be readied, and immediately started back up north to Lost Angles, to go find Panakeia. On the way he dreamed up a proper way to celebrate his new found freedom from the Anakronism staff. It occurrred to him once that the anakronisms were still hanging on even though the staff had been destroyed, and a momentary disquiet settled over him: shouldn't the destruction of the staff have resulted in the end of the anakronisms? But then the Blue Istari were the real power behind the dweomer, and they were still somewhere in Middle Earth; so he gave it no more thought, happy to be free of the staff himself.

Half way to Lost Angles, he saw a television crew-mobilecareening at a ridiculous speed southbound, and wondered what in Middle Earth could be the rush, and who was so important to warrant such speeding? He sneered derisively and thought no more of it.

Last edited by littlemanpoet; 08-06-2006 at 02:14 PM.
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