Edited by Brett Heller

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license.

Stephen exhausts his resources, his mind and his body traveling from Milwaukee, to Atlanta in less than 36 hours. The obstacles to his travel and sacrifices of comfort are meaningless to him. Nine years of B&B play, studying every rule book and source book as though they were sacred text have made Christopher Korbach a revered mentor in Stephen's mind. Korbach created the world, the world that mattered most to Stephen - Thrycion. Stephen read Korbach's story in RPG magazines. He cross-referenced what he learned there with interviews Korbach had given business magazines concerning his game company (Tactical Exchange Gaming). In 1969 Korbach dropped out of Yale to design a game. Korbach lived in an abandoned warehouse, eating primarily chicken noodle soup while he wrote five journals on the world of his creation, Thrycion. The first journal covered the lands and rulers of Korbach's world. The second and third journals covered creatures and weapons of Thrycion. The fourth journal covered the magic systems of the world. The fifth Journal was an exception. While the first four journals were hand written, the fifth journal was a meticulously typed - a rules system, completing the first role playing game ever created. Stephen had read all of the Journals in their original form (having downloaded pirated scans from peer-to-peer file sharing networks). Stephen had not been born when Blade & Bolt was released in 1971 by Tactical Exchange Gaming. He was just entering his teen years in the mid nineties when Blade & Bolt was king of the quarter billion dollar role playing game industry that Korbach had fathered. In the early nineties dozens of RPGs were vying for market share. Stephen bought the core rule books for most released RPGs, just to see how the rules system varied from Korbach's initial B&B rules system. None of the released RPGs supplanted his passion for the original RPG, however. He studied Korbach's work the way a Rabbi studies the Torah.

The trip from Milwaukee to Atlanta does not go well for Stephen. He knows exactly how to travel across light forest without tiring a horse while making sure to watch for elf trail markings or orc hunting tracks. He has studied this. Spur of the moment purchases of electronic tickets for red eye flights and taxi trips with fast speaking Hindus are proving challenging. His stay at an Atlanta four-star hotel (that Stephen chose because of proximity to the mental institution) goes awry quickly. Stephen does not known that a skilled thief can cleanout two suitcases, a laptop, PDA, digital camera and a wallet in the time it take to get a bucket of ice from down the hall.

"I just need another couple of hours to reach my friends in Milwaukee and then they will wire me some money. Please, the clothes on my back are all I have," Stephen leans on the marble countertop.

The front desk c...

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