Raven on 11/12/2004 at 10:42

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Brilliant!

Yos on 13/12/2004 at 02:34

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I can see the resumé now: Gardener, exterminator, thief and world saviour(sp?).

This chapter is getting back to the good stuff. :thumb:

fett on 14/12/2004 at 05:24

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Chapter 7 pt.2
Forbidden Area – Keeper Library

Garrett followed the well-lit tunnel into a multi-storied cylindrical chamber. A perfect place for private conversations, so long as you didn’t mind people from above or below listening to you.

“…I think Orlando is right to restrict Garrett’s movements. These books are far too super-secret to risk someone actually reading them. Besides, what would a Thief want with them? It’s not like they open up secret passageways or reveal hidden areas of the Library.”

“They certainly don’t. We stopped making books like that…oh say, four years ago or so. Just a plain old library with plain old books now.”

Garrett couldn’t believe he kept stumbling upon these conversations. And at the beginning too. Every time.

“The only reason he would want them is if he was the Mole in our Midst,” continued the woman.

“How could that be?” asked the older Keeper, “he’s not really been in our midst for quite some time.”

“Yes, but I don’t like him,” she replied.

“And you don’t believe the prophecies either?” he asked.

“I believe the prophecies,” she replied, “I just do not believe they refer to Garrett.”

“Then why did you just say he could be the Mole in our Midst?”

“Because we need to use that term as much as possible, whether it makes sense in the context of the conversation or not,” she explained. “Perhaps it’s Orlando, or even one of us. If we would only take the time to read some of these books, we could figure it out.”

“Bah! Reading! I say we head for the racquetball court.”

“Agreed.”

Off they went leaving Garrett to peruse the unread materials – and there were plenty. Strangely, many seemed to have been left out in the open, as if someone was trying to bring him up to speed on his own life history and the recent events in the City. Probably just coincidence. His noted his name at the top of the book lying nearby on a pedestal.

[indent]The Matter of Garrett by Keeper Draco.[/indent]

The Keepers are wasting their time writing about me. If someone doesn’t know this stuff already, they’re not gonna read twelve pages to catch up.

[indent]Familiarizing yourself with Garrett’s history and capabilities could prove essential, especially if you know nothing about him except that he came free with your graphics card purchase.[/indent]

Huh?

[indent]He stayed with us for about 5 years until which time we decided to work with another promising young man by the name of Romero. We basically cut Garrett’s funding and dumped him on the street. He was picked up soon after by another group of people who lacked balance and tried to use him to generate larger sales by dumbing him down and marketing him to a wider audience. They failed however, to account for Garrett’s ability to turn all of his enemies into easy targets. No matter how many times he went back to the same places, with the same guards, over and over and over, they were never more difficult to overcome. The plan failed and Garrett remained a virtual unknown, except around the City and a few fan based web-sites…[/indent]

Not recognizing any of this….

[indent]The shareholders voted to get rid of him using the Enforcers, or at least make him more commercially viable by setting him in modern times and equipping him with a rocket launcher. Then Keeper Cattlecall informed us that Garrett was essential to overcoming difficult times ahead. Particularly since DX:Invisible War sucked and the Tomb Raider games have gone in the toilet. And so our most promising acolyte left us. He soon became a master thief…[/indent]

Now this is starting to sound familiar….

[indent]We allowed him to be sucked into plots by both the Pagans and Mechanists, which you can discover elsewhere – mainly through e-Bay or amazon.com. During one of those events, we allowed Garrett’s eye to be plucked out and used to power The Eye – an artifact that was of great importance. Garrett turned the Eye over to us for study, but we needed a tax deduction and so contributed to the Weldstrom Museum only after we learned it could help destroy the world. A real bugger, that.[/indent]

Deadbeats…

[indent]Cattlecall believes that Garrett will play a critical role in the prevention of a coming Dark Age, especially if we manipulate him properly as we’ve done in the past. We don’t know if he’ll hurt or help, but we’d rather take the chance than do any actual work ourselves.[/indent]

Sounds about right…

Up a few flights was another journal. Garrett wondered how so many people had gotten into the practice of leaving their private thoughts laying out in public places.

[indent]Keeper Doval – resolution 42
I shouldn’t have brought it up in front of the whole council, but how could I continue to hide our findings? Now that we know the secret of long life, can I say that I myself am not tempted? Stealing the pants of other individuals will become too easy for someone with the skill of a Keeper. It will start with jeans and corduroy, but how long before it escalates to slacks and suit pants? How long could a Keeper extend their life this way? Decades? Many longer, but it will take more than casual clothing to do the trick. Tuxedo trousers? I shudder to think of the implications. I can be silent no longer. This knowledge, plus the existence of a glyph of transmorgrification that we now know to exist would make a potent elixir of magic. Or at the very least, a sub-par plot for a PC game.[/indent]

A glyph of transmorgrification huh? That sounds dangerous.

Garrett went on to find books describing the current condition of the Pagan population in the City:

[indent]There are a lot of Pagans around. They are masking their presence by hanging out in large groups in public places. You can find these secret areas marked on most maps. It’s possible they could overrun the City by planting trees and flowers. The horrors would be unimaginable. Their last leader Viktoria died, and should have been succeeded by Larkspur, but to keep a balance of female to male characters, they have appointed Dyan as leader. We have placed a spy cam in Dyan’s quarters so we can keep an eye on her activities. Really – that’s all it’s for.[/indent]

The pagan’s sure aren’t what they used to be ever since they started renting out the Maw to those Far Cry guys…

There was also a text on the thus far unmentioned Enforcers – assassins who the Keepers were training to use something called ‘the force’ to shape events in the City.

[indent]The call of the Enforcer is an important one. The Jedi are stealing far too many of our young acolytes so allowing some of the younger Keepers to dress in black robes with cool looking masks make them feel more like Sith Lords. Teaching them to use the ‘force’ the Jedi are famous for is proving more difficult, as is teaching them to use stealth. Most forsake the shadows and run around in the streets killing everything that moves. We’ve taught them to communicate telepathically (let’s see the Jedi do that) but they seem to use the skill only to cheat on tests.[/indent]

Hmmm…sounds like people I’d want to avoid. I doubt I ever run into them – anyway it would be awful ironic after having just read all about them.

He found several other texts mentioning the Lost Recordings, the Translation Key, the Glyph of Transmorgrification, and the Mole in our Midst. Over and over again.

At the top of the tower, he found Keeper Cattlecall pacing about and mumbling to herself, but he slipped past her and found himself in a chamber filled with books and a few desks. One of the bookcases looked particularly suspect. He looked for the switch for a secret passage, but doubted he would find one. There hadn’t been one in this whole stinking City since that night at the Blue Oyster Inn.

His inspection uncovered a perfectly normal looking red button that practically said ‘push here’ on one of the bookshelves. He punched it and the odd looking bookcase slid away from the wall revealing another passage.

Wonder why they didn’t just use one of their fancy blue buttons…but at least it leads to a secret room. Don’t expect I’ll be seeing many more of these…

The passage ended in a round room with some swag and another book that rambled on about prophecies and pretty much reiterated everything he learned on the way up.

These Keepers are big on repetition. They must be expecting whoever reads this stuff to be really, really slow. Then again, they do say that you have to read something five times before you retain it.

The room looked important but he couldn’t figure out what it was for or why it was so secret. But that had sure been a nifty red button.

So much for the super secret Keeper books. Seems all they write about is stuff that I could have told them from the last few years of my life, and a quick stroll around the City. Time to go after these missing articles that will tell us about the Dark Age. The path before me is wide open. So long as go to the Docks.

Raven on 14/12/2004 at 21:14

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:laff: soo many good phrases summing up what was wrong with TDS

Larcener on 15/12/2004 at 03:14

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Bravo ma fett! Bravo!! :laff: