ATM II RPG

[Anguirel]

Cut, yes, cut that Malfoy character, the Map scribbled in a demented, increasingly Hispanised script, he's only marginal anyway, si, si...

Dracomir scrunched the parchment into a ball and stuck it in the inside pocket of his robe, yet still felt it writhing and pulsating against its heart as it continued to maniacally scribble plot alterations. He slumped against a wall, as characters written by this author tend to do at some stage or another. He felt a great urge to burst into tears, but did not dare in case he was interrupted by some guard. No one could witness a Malfoidacil crying!

Yet his plight was dire, and all, he realised, caused by his own pettiness. He had been in the company of two Mordorian ambassadors...well, that is, one ambassador and one Diva...headed, solidly, for an audience with King Roggie, and had managed to fool at least one of them into falling in with his plans. Some guilt now returned to Tom as he recalled Maika's quivering mouth, undoubtedly screaming as hard as she could at him, but completely Inaudible...now he was lost in the midst of the Castle, the former Mount Doom Palace and Casino, with no idea of his further direction.

He picked himself up and stumbled a little further on. And then he saw something which raised his spirits somewhat. It was a window.

It was glassless, like any decent castle window, and beyond it lay the smog and ashen sky of the Black Land. Yet any air was better than none. With a barely-suppressed whoop Tom leapt astride his Nimbus once again and took off, leaving the Mountain behind him in only a few miutes. However briefly, he was free.

He soon found that the thick smoke was actually hiding an almost oppressively blue sky at the beach paradise of Lost Angles. The intense positive glare of the cloudless weather made his head ache, but he soared off. He saw the decadent city lying obnoxiously below him, and the vast array of azure swimming-pools in its plentiful de luxe hotels. He saw whole deserts of imported sand, occasionally punctuated with mounds of cigarette-ends, broken beer bottles, and used needles. He saw three enormous female Stone-Trolls sunning themselves.

Stone-Trolls sunning themselves? Apparently so. For the rays of Arien, it was revealed, did not slay Stone-Trolls, but merely sent them into an inane but rather pleasant torpor, as their skin changed from pink to a greyish-brown tan. It seemed, Tom realised, that this tan was a sought after asset for Troll-women.

"Ooo, yer've caught it luvverly, Doris," one commented. Somewhat surfeited with Trollological insight, and feeling the heat of the sun himself, Tom wheeled his racing broom about and started elegantly swooping towards Mount Doom's summit...to the very Cracks of Doom themselves.

[littlemanpoet]

Anakron made his way back to the mountain, oblivious to anything or anyone else around him. He was disgusted with himself. He had not harmed Panakeia, but he had hurt her yet again. He was no good for her. She should go to Ithilien and escape from the evils or Mordor, past, present and future.

When she had reached her hand toward his, he had wanted with a grievous desire to take her hand, then hold her close and say that all the evil was no more. A fool's pitiful dream. He had tried to take her hand in his, but he knew he mustn't. Or had he known that? Had it been his own choice to draw back his hand? Or had the dweomer overwhelmed his desire and his will, and forced his hand back? He did not know. He had not felt an exterior force, but that did not matter: the dweomer was deep in his bones. Admit it, Anakron, you enjoy the power..

He strode down the mountain corridors, his cloak billowing, caring not a mite for anything that was going on around him, including the insufferably delayed negotiations. Let them deal with it themselves. If they need me, they know where to find me. He both hoped and feared that he would not be needed for the negotiations.

Anakron opened the door to his chambers. The orc corpse had been removed. In its place stood Lûgnût, dressed in pink and lime green, wearing eye shadow and three sets of earrings in each ear. He looked sullen.

"I see you have been freed," murmured Anakron, "from a particularly nasty strain of the dweomer, Lûgnût."

"So it would appear, oh Grand one," the orc sneered. "I would have been most gratified if that particular strain had not been removed, if you must know."

"You liked it?" Anakron moved past the orc to a rich divan covered in sumptuous pillows, and sat down.

Lûgnût rolled his pig's head eyes and raised a his hand in a feminine gesture of dismissal. "Oh, if you must know, I have never, and I mean ne-ever, felt so, so-" he positively wriggled with delight "-manly!" Lûgnût grinned.

"You mean orcish, do you not?"

"Same difference," Lûgnût sighed.

"Make me some tea, will you?"

Panakeia had slapped his cat silly, Anakron considered with a smirk, and thrown it on the ground. If only it were that easy to be rid of. Come to think of it, he had never tried. Maybe he should just leave it somewhere inconspicuous and just stop being the Grand Anakronist. As if it could be that easy. Then again, he had never tried such a thing. Maybe tomorrow.

Lûgnût brought him tea.

"Thank you. Would you like to be orcish again, Lûgnût?"

"We-elllll-" he responded with a swing of his hips, "I did rather like it."

"I'll see what I can do. No promises! Now leave me in peace."

The orc sauntered out of his rooms and closed the door behind him.

Anakron had never considered the possibility of setting himself up in place of the Blue Istari. There was reason. It was impossible. All his power came from them, and it was all he had with which to replace them. They had merely to strip him of his power with a word, and any such attempt would be rendered null. So Panakeia was wrong about that. No, the real danger was to become a mere tool in their hands, doing all the evil they wished, not limiting it one iota. Anakron didn't think that Panakeia understood that part of it. Nor that the dweomer had more and more of his very will in its control. His will was not free; or at least, not as free as it had been, and the longer he remained Grand Anakronist, the less he would have, until he was no better than a ringwraith for them to do with as they would.

Nevertheless, for now his rage had been been deflated. Thanks to Panakeia. That questioning and sorrow in her eyes as she turned from him had doused his ire, and pushed him into remorse. He had half a mind to stay away from her so as not to cause her more harm; and he wondered about just handing in his staff, hat, and cloak and saying he was done. He sipped his tea, refilled his cup, and sipped some more, mulling his choices, aware of the irony that maybe he had no will to choose, regardless of what he desired.

[Roggie of Morgoth]

Roggie wasn't quite sure what was going on any more so he did what any self respecting pirate balrog actor king would do in the situation: decided to leave it and pretend it wasn't happening.

In a way much surprising for a creature of his bulk, he slipped unnoticed away from the others, disappearing through a door that was pretending to be a wall, and making his way down to Alli's office for a private talk.

"Alli," he'd say, sprawled on her floor, "I can't do it any more. I don't want to. I can't even keep track of my advisors, much less my people. I've received no advice in the past few weeks except from my lovely War Advisor MacFarleywen, and I'm not even sure if I can spell her name right. Much though I want to teach Mardil a lesson or two, how can I do it with an army that exists only to march around singing lame songs about not knowing anything but having above average listening skills. They have no battle experience, except to argue with me.

"Mardil's highly trained forces would overcome my pitiful multi-whatever-they-are troops in a matter of a few very sad seconds. Why am I even bothering with this job, Alli?"

And she would answer "Because, Roggie, you are a good king. No king can choose his people and you got stuck with a bum deal, but you're doing so well with it. Here, I found you a copy of Il Principe, translated into the ancient balrogic script that nobody else knows but you and apparently the translator. It ought to help you dictate properly."

And he would jump for joy and things wouldn't fall from the walls. But that was merely a dream.

He found his way to Alli's office and tried turning the doorknob on the overly large doors. No luck. He spotted a note pinned so far down that he had to double over to read it:

"Gone to lunch. Be back in a few days at the latest."

He roared his frustration and a few eyeliner-smearing tears of stress leaked out. Without hesitation, he found a private corner and had himself a good cry before making his ever-serious reappearance to the world.

He sat in his audience chamber, awaiting what would come next.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

The door swung heavily on it's hinges as it opened slowly, almost in the same way that the mouth of a blue whale opens, and almost with the same stench of fish. The Barrow Wight lent on the wall for a moment, smoking his pipe triumphantly. Smilog looked at him in utter puzzlement, "How are you doing that?" he asked as more smoke poured out of the Wight's ribcage.

"You don't want to know," replied the Wight, the glow from one eye fading a little, indicating that he was winking. They all entered the Crack of DOOM and looked around, holding their noses, for the stench was unbearable. "Where has that Roggie fellow got himself off to?" asked The Barrow Wight.

"Ah, who cares?" snorted Smilog, "Good riddance to him. He's probably lying dead on a pile of cheese."

"Why cheese?" asked Tollin, examining something on the wall.

"Silence!" shouted Smilog, and everyone punched him in the face. "Well, no matter. He's a stupid little fuuuuuuuuuu...." All of a sudden, a trap door had opened up in the ground below them and they all fell down. Down and Down into deep dark. Such a dark as had never been seen before by any of them, and Tollin had lived in Mordor for a long while. It just seemed to keep going and going until they all stopped screaming and just continued falling normally.

"How long do you think this blighter is?" asked The Barrow Wight, "Can't say I look foward to the end of it, what, what?"

"No idea," replied Tollin, "Butss I can hazard a guesss. We're getttting near thhe Labyrinth. My lisp is coming back."

"Oh, great," grumbled the Dwarf, folding his arms. Eventually, the tunnel they were falling through became almost a slide, zipping downwards and spitting them out into the labyrinth. Tollin and Smilog arose and gathered the scattered parts of the Barrow Wight and assembled him again, although they did put his legs on wrong the first few times.

"Howsss do wess getss outss of heresss?" asked the now dumber Tollin, the Labyrinth seemed to have this adverse affect on him. Smilog laughed a little to himself and then took a deep intake of breath through his nose.

"Follow the stench of Balrog," he said. So they marched on, following the scent of burned fish that Roggie sometimes left when he got angry or annoyed. The labyrinth wound on and on, seemingly endlessly. It was somewhat damaged due to the movement of the Mountain, some walls had fallen down and they managed to make an almost straight road towards the centre of the mountain. They knew that as it began to get warmer. Eventually, they came to a brick wall and stopped.

"Looks like the end of the line, chaps," remarked the Barrow Wight, "We'd better get our thinking caps on for this."

"Not necessarily," said Smilog, Tollin smacked him across the face. "Ow! Well, as I was saying; this must be the secret entrance to Roggie's audience chamber. See, my wine bottle is there on the floor."

"Your wine bottle?" said Tollin.

"Alright, Roggie's. But All the same. All we need do is push open the door. We can then try and get back to the Crack of DOOM from there." So they all pushed and the door slowly opened.

[the guy who be short]

Angawen looked around the room carefully - if talking to inhabitants of Mordor was to be permitted, she had to take this chance of talking to the most normal, most Gondorian of them. Hyarmenwë had been dangerously blunt in his question, but Lady Alli did not seem to notice - or perhaps she, like Angawen, had trained herself not to show her thoughts.

They were sat at a corner of the room. However, the room was of an odd, non-uniform shape - something vaguely like an L. If Angawen could get around the corner, she would be free to speak to citizens of Mordor completely unseen by Alli. A golden opportunity. She would be foolish to waste it.

And she would be equally foolish to be rash. If she were to leave now she would undoubtedly raise suspicions. "It is wonderful," she said to Alli, "that one can obtain food so traditionally Gondorian in nature in Mordor. This loaf is tough, yet homely."

"Not all of our Mordorian food is Mordorian in nature," she replied. "They do some mean smoothies here."

The trio carefully ignored her.

The meal continued uneventfully, as meals are accustomed to do, until about ten minutes later, Angawen stood up suddenly. "Do excuse me, Lady Alli, but I fear I must relieve myself. I hear you have public toilets in Mordor - King Mardil II tells me they are a wonderful, if poorly implemented. I desire to see these myself."

Alli gave her consent, Hyarmenwë carefully avoided looking at Angawen, and Bearugard stuffed some more bread in his mouth.

Angawen wandered off, alone, in what seemed to her quite possibly the safest place in Mordor.

[Celuien]

Time washed over Panakeia like the sands of Mâl-in-Bû washing over a beach bum's feet. Filled with angst over her troubled romance, she drifted along the beaches of the Pathetic Ocean, not knowing or caring where she headed. That is, until she tripped over a beach-bum's beach towel and careened head long into a fence. She was then forced to care (well, not really care – she didn't care about anything other than her troubles with Anakron just then) about her location by the angry sunbather whose towel she had disturbed and an Orc guarding the carefully fenced private beach she nearly stumbled onto without proper authorization.

She answered the complaints of neither. Ignoring them, Panakeia turned coolly to a small vacant patch of beach near the tide line and sat on the sand, too absorbed in her unhappiness over Anakron to care that sand was working its way into her gown and making a mess of her shoes. She traced letters into the wet beach with her finger. A-N-A-K-R-O-N. She stopped and looked at her handiwork, even as a wave came up from the ocean and washed it away.

Panakeia broke down. Anakron had been washed away from her, just like his name was washed off the beach. Several passers by stared at the formally dressed, crying woman on the beach, wondering what she was doing there (other than sitting around and sniffling), but she didn't care if they stared or not. If they did, it was a reflection of their ill-breeding, not any error on her part. Let them stare. I hope they enjoy the watching me fall apart. Panakeia felt bitter.

What was she going to do? Anakron was lost to her. The Dweomer - the Wizards, had claimed him at last, despite her best efforts to stop them. There was nothing she could do about it. Poor Anakron was dooming himself and she couldn't stop him. All of her words only served to accelerate his decline. And now he was on his way back to Mount Doom. Back to the evil of the Dweomer. She had asked him to come to her. But though she still hoped he would, she felt certain that he never would. Never.

The only thing she could do, Panakeia decided, was to forget him. Her heart revolted at the idea. Forget Anakron? She could never do that. His image – the hair, the flowing robes, the lines around his eyes and mouth – were burned indelibly into her memory. She would never forget him. But if he truly was lost to her, she had to move on. She couldn't live in self-pity forever. At the same time, she wanted to wait for him to come around – against her better judgment, which still pessimistically insisted that he wouldn't.

So she decided to strike for the middle ground and ignore her problem for the moment in the hope that everything would work itself out eventually. It wasn't in her hands anymore. Only Anakron could decide whether or not to heed her advice and abandon the Istari. Though she would always regret being without him, she couldn't let Anakron's resolve to destroy himself, if indeed, he chose to continue down that path, destroy her too. Panakeia slowly realized that she couldn't force him to save himself, however much she wanted to help.

But where to go? Where to go… Panakeia had friends in Lost Angles. Associates from her cosmetics business who found Lost Angles, as the center of Mordor's entertainment industry, the perfect place to sell their goods. They lived, she seemed to recall, in Beaverly Hills. She would stay with them for a bit. And drown her sorrow with a shopping spree or two along Rode-o Drive.

She walked off the beach, leaving a trail of footprints in the sand. Coming to a road that roared with traffic, Panakeia waved down a passing taxi, and, shaking as much sand from her dress as she could, seated herself behind the driver.

"Where to, lady?"

Ignoring the Orc's faulty grammar, Panakeia replied, "Beaverly Hills, 90210." The taxi whizzed off, passing Mount Doom, at which Panakeia gazed mournfully, and heading into the depths of the City of the Lost Angles.

[JennyHallu]

Lola followed Maika for a few steps before collapsing against a wall, breathless with giggles. "You're *gasp* waving that *gasp* little stick around..." another giggle... "just like *gasp* that silly *gasp* boy!" More giggling. Maika turned around and glared at her in exasperation.

Eventually Lola regained her self control and pointed at the wall at the end of this corridor. A sign posted there read clearly:

<--- Audience Chamber

Restrooms --->

Secret Labyrinth --->

<--- Somewhere Else --->

"Come on!" and she took Maika by the sleeve and started running down the lefthand corridor.

[Anguirel]

Poised in the very midst of the smog of Doom, high, high above the resort of Lost Angles, Tom suddenly felt slightly queasy. Were he to slacken on his broom seat for an instant he would be very dead indeed. It was time to get stone beneath his feet again. Even with the negotiations looming. Especially with the negotiations looming, he corrected himself tersely.

Looking towards the impressive line of the Castle's fortifications, Tom scanned them for a window of suitable size for an elegant Quidditch dive to gain entry to it. There seemed, on reflection, only one suitable option. It had a vast, wide ledge and was of great height. The room within seemed to be ill-lit, and he could only see the dim radiance of flames amid its shadows. Shadow and flame. In retrospect, he really should have been a tad more cautious.

Dracomir leant forward in intense preparation and swooped with leisurely elan into the tower room.

It was then that he became aware of two things. One, some vast, vulgarly golden letters proclaiming the words AUDIENCE CHAMBER. The other, a large throne on which a Balrog, looking simultaneously very weary and very angry, was positioned.

The Lord Malfoidacil's most prudent first action was obvious enough. He fell on his knees and bowed his head before the King of Mordor.

"Melifluous greetings to Your Most Admirable, Balrogic, Courageous, Dashing, Energetic, Famous, Gracious, Honourable, Intelligent, Jocular, Kingly, Liberal, Magnificent, Notable, Omniscient, Powerful, Questioning, Righteous, Serene, Terrific, Universal, Valiant, Wise, Xenial, Ying-Yang-balanced and Zygological Majesty," he said, all in one breath. He dearly hoped the Balrog would hesitate before atomising him, trying to figure out what all the epithets meant...