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The Eyes Have It
The Eyes Have It is a book of adventure. While reading it, I got the
sense that before it was written into a book, it was a Role Playing Game,
and the Games Master had played the adventure, liked how his players had
conducted the adventure, and wrote it into a book. In this way it relates
to my topic heavily, as it IS a Role Playing Game. In another way it
doesn't relate to RPG's at all because it's a book, and not a game. But it
relates to my topic in one pure sense - it's an adventure. All RPG's are
adventures.
The story begins as one Askar-Ben-Oba, son of the chief of the Wolf
Nomads, must travel through a continent to marry his betrothed, one Maria
Griswalda. Askar does not want to marry Maria, but he must. His tribe,
the Wolf Nomads, was once a proud and happy race. They fought numerous
battles and won the battles and also the fear and respect of their allies.
But over time, they had softened. The Spider Queen, an undead creature,
had the plan to take over all of the Yeomanry. The Yeomanry is where the
story takes place, and is a huge continent where many different races and
cultures live (like Asia and Africa put together with some aliens and snow
thrown in.) the Spider Queen had the notion of destroying all this good for
her own, and turning it into her black domain. She did. She casted a
spell which made a huge black bubble. It spread like a plague and grew for
leagues in every direction. Anything that entered this bubble never came
out. The Spider Queen threw her min orcs, demons, kobolds, etc. into this
bubble to plunder and destroy. This she did successfully.
But one person would not take this sitting down. While the Wold Nomads,
who were far away and too far to really receive the effects of this bubble,
rested their haunches and became couch potatoes, one Kathryn Fern-Cliffe,
daughter of King Buncombe the Green. Kathryn had the will and the need to
destroy the Spider Queen. This she did, with the help of a magical gem, the
Eye of Tiros. Kathryn used the magic power within the eye to destroy the
Spider Queen. Once she was destroyed, life became normal in the Yeomanry.
Kathryn also had the job of rebuilding the destruction of the Spider Queen.
But while the Wolf Nomads were deteriorating, and Kathryn rebuilding,
Kranoch, a king of a region in the Yeomanry, was plotting revenge on
Kathryn. Her father had blinded Kranoch by an arrow while on an assault
raid, and Kranoch wanted revenge. Kranoch gathered his armies and the left
over minions of the Spider Queen, and made an army powerful enough to
destroy Kathryn and her region of Sterich. Kranoch also wanted the Eye of
Tiros, the magical gem, which he thought would cure his blindness. With
this as his main driving force, he went on a rampage.
Back to the Wolf Nomads for a moment. The Wolf Nomads were quickly
deteriorating. Askar-Ben-Oba, the son of the chief, was to marry Maria
Griswalda, the daughter of a wealthy Nomad who had gone to Sterich and made
a fortune. Maria's sizeable dowry was badly needed to fund the Wolf Nomads
in their daily lives and to rebuild themselves into the powerful tribe they
once were.
The story all comes together as Askar sets out on his journey to
Sterich to marry Maria. On his journey, the Eye of Tiros is stolen, and he
is framed as the thief when he sits in a seedy bar. The bar "patrons" found
Askar as the dupe and framed him with the crime. Askar is punished,
searched, and found innocent. But he does not get away with the theft
cleanly, as he is still the prime suspect. Askar gets an iron collar fit
around his neck, with a magic spell on it. The spell makes the collar
around his neck shrink a little every day, so eventually it will strangle
him. His only escape is to find the Eye of Tiros so the collar can be
removed.
Askar knows his only way to survive is by finding the Eye. This he
sets out to do. But during his quest, he gets captured by Sea Pirates,
meets up with a dwarf with a flying ship, and eventually reaches Kathryn in
her quest to find the Eye of Tiros.
The Eye is wanted not only by Kathryn, Askar, and Kranoch, but by the
gold dragons also. The Eye is the only thing that keeps them alive. The
Eye was created especially for them, as forged by dragons. Its magic is
the fuel by which the dragons live by. And they want it back.
As in a normal RPG, the story comes to a climax when all four of the
major characters in the story, Askar, Kathryn, Kranoch, and the leader of
the gold dragons, Buelath, all clash in combat. The huge battle is fought
in the heart of the Yeomanry. Askar has helped Kathryn and also fallen in
love with her. By now the iron collar has been removed, as Askar helped
Kathryn defeat a huge Medusa and rid the sewers of a vile beast. But
Kranoch is still hell bent on getting the Eye to cure his blindness and
kill Kathryn. And the dragons of regaining their life blood. The dragons
are slowly dying off, much like the Wolf Nomads.
The climax reaches its height when all three of the major characters
battle. Kranoch has waged incredible war by destroying most of the
Yeomanry's forces, and is ready for the kill. The dragons want their gem
and their power is unmatched. Kathryn and Askar have the gem (it was
retrieved by Askar) and they have used it to thwart some of Kranoch's plans.
In the battle, Kranoch is defeated when his prime minister betrays his
king by wanting the gem for his own. The Prime Minister, Alamkamala, kills
Kranoch in an attempt to retrieve the gem. This he does, and he gets the
gem, but he himself is destroyed when the dragons attack. The gem is lost
in the battle but the forces of the Yeomanry, led by Askar, get the gem.
Kathryn leads a final bargaining session with the dragons. The dragons
want only the gem. Kathryn gives it to them, but the dragons also think
that the Yeomanry is not bog enough for the both of them. Askar negotiates
that since the humans helped the dragons retrieve their life blood, that
they should live together in harmony. The dragons agree. So, after the
climax, the only people left are the dragons, who are content that they
have gotten their gem, and the Yeomanry, led by Kathryn and Askar.
The plot winds down when Askar, who still has to go marry Maria
Griswalda, fulfills his promise. But it is ironic to see that when he
reaches Sterich and the home of Maria, that she had already married and is
pregnant. Askar had been deemed dead, because he took so long. Askar,
still not happy that he had to marry Maria, follows his heart and marries
Kathryn. The story ends in the usual adventure manner, with no epilogue
and leaving the reader in the dark about the Wolf Nomads and Askar's past.
But this would be the perfect story for another adventure....
The story relates to my topic because the two are almost exactly alike.
They share the same base, adventure. In a RPG, the people role play in an
adventure. In the story, the same is accomplished, when the reader reads
the adventure. So, the next time you pick up a book and think "how boring,
just a lousy adventure..." think of how you might actually live it in a
role playing game.
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