Stockades and Skeletons – Page 74

The nigh-unimaginable, if inevitable, has happened – the party made it into the very heart of the Ever, Evergreenest Forest, and are standing before the Hideyoshi of trees.

Their journey, since we last met them, was fraught with danger, violence and narrow escapes no end. Great deeds were done, and unpublishable swears were uttered. The number of their fallen foes was legion, and the rivers were running with their blood.*

But I decided not to tell that part of the story in great detail, since the ultimate outcome was so obvious from the get-go – after already escaping near-certain death, the party’s chances of getting stopped anywhere between there and their ultimate goal was practically nil, for that would have been very unconventional script-writing. And Nolan doesn’t pay for that kind of thing. So a short flashback had to suffice to tell that part of the story.

Of course, I’d have preferred it if the editor hadn’t just blindly jammed the file named “standard war flashback” in there, because it too clearly alludes to a quite different war. War might never change, but its tools do – and Gnomish ornithopters would have been a much better choice than UH-1 Hueys, in this situation. Buy you can’t expect an editor to have stock footage for such esoteric eventualities on hand…nor can you expect him to waste more than a few minutes with a task like this, especially not at the rate Nolan is paying.

As so often, it’ll have to do. The party has made it to the tree, but from now on the worst dreams that ever they’ll have will be when they hear the surf booming about the coasts of landing zone X-ray, or start upright in bed, with the sharp voice of Captain Tran still ringing in their ears “Me love you long time! Me love you long time!”