Welcome to another world, known as York. The following text is from a play-by-e-mail fantasy role playing game that I ran. It was the second of four such that I have on disk, and if motivation is sufficient, I'll put the whole cannon on this CD. It was written by many people that you will meet shortly. While technically I was the "Game Master" for this campaign, I tried to be more of a moderator. The text should be thought of as the script for a drama, not a book. If it reads a bit over-the-top or larger-than-life at times, recall that it is a fantasy role-playing game. All of us have interesting and full normal lives outside York, but you won't see much of that here. Occasionally bits of numbers will intrude. If you are familiar with Steve Jackson's GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) you may be able to decode some of the short hand buried in the numbers. You don't have to know GURPS to enjoy reading this, and most of it is completely system neutral. Another occasional intrusion to the script will be comments from the players, as opposed to the characters. Think of it as things hecklers might mutter to each other, or that the producer and director backstage are saying to each other. Some of that text is to die for, so it too was left unchanged. Occasionally the characters will "talk" to the players or the narrator for humorous effect.

All of the text starts with a tag of who is saying it. If the HTML gods are with us, those tags are bold, underlined, and end in a colon: These will tend to always use the same tag for the same person with only rare exceptions to that rule. A character might be addressed as Dick, Richie, or things less printable, but when he speaks the tag will almost always say Sir Richard: The narrator is tagged this way as well.

After the tag might come a short bit in square brackets helping the reader understand things that the text can not easily convey. The [unspoken] tag is the most common of these, it allows us to hear what is going on inside the head of the characters.

In the text will sometimes be longer comments to show action and expression. These will be in [square brackets] and again hopefully will be indented and set off by white space. At least it was when all this was plain text under UNIX when this all was written J.

The particular adventure, which I called "pbm2," is best read by starting with the threads of a major character, such as Richard or Blackbird. Her and Richard's threads do most of the story telling. Unfortunately, Jhereg and Gallilei (or Maia and Brennen for that matter) tend to provide most of the "why we are here, what we are doing" text early on. Having read them, the other threads will make more sense as they jump around and seem to teleport in and out of existence. This was a story of many authors. Not all of them were available, or motivated enough, or something to write a full thread for their character. "Minor" characters suffer this the worst.

• Neil Kirby: That's me. I am the GM. I usually am the one writing for the Narrator, my own player characters [being used here as NPCs] such as Tiberious, T'Ta, and Manjack. I also write for most of the non-player characters, that horde of extras that if I do well don't always seem like cardboard cutouts. Some of the nobles I get to write for are not mine, but borrowed for the occasion. York is a shared world, and my campaign went the length of the realm, requiring me to borrow the nobles that were there. Usually I cleared this in advance like I was supposed to. Other nobles I write for exclusively even though they are not my own. Every word of Brandon's here is mine, for example. I did not have a duchy in the realm when we wrote this, though I de-facto controlled McMannon (with permission) and everything to do with the Morkons I created out of whole cloth.
• Stu Castergine: Writes Blackbird, which is a curse I would not wish on anyone. Stu controls the duchy of Waltham.
• Dave Lindeman: Writes Sir Richard. Dave controls the duchy of Chesterton.
• Lisa Stoll: Writes Sister Anne. Lisa controls the duchy of Hudson
• Ed King: Writes Gallelei and Luther and Sgacity. Ed controls the duchies of Devonshire and Lethbridge.
• Richard Newbold: Writes Shol. He also wrote Raymond but we see very little of him. Rich controls the duchy of McKitrick
• Mitch Kirby: Writes for Jhereg and Kel. Mitch controls the duchy of Pendleton
• Bill Valentine-Cooper: Writes Brennan and Freidrich. Bill controls the duchy of Tudor.
• Heather Oppenheimer: Heather writes Maia.
• Jack Donnenworth: Owns Fred (the bounty hunter). Jack was too busy to contribute and opted out early.

We got together monthly for face-to-face GURPS gaming sessions as well as the ongoing email campaign. One of the facts we noted is that role-playing is richer in email and combat is more exciting in face-to-face.

• Blackbird: Started life as Evaine. Stunningly good looking. Apprenticed to the Traveling Anchor, the minstrels' guild. Her father is an appointed noble (she won't inherit his title). At 14 was in love with Belerian, a fellow apprentice. One night in an alley in they met up with Brandon and his bully boys. Bel struck Brandon, son the local marquis. They 'punished' Bel with a beating that included the ugly sounds of boot heels stomping fingers. She tried to become a member of The Watch, the Waltham secret police run by her father, but that failed. She renounced her heritage and took up the life of a minstrel again. Along the way she fell in love with Tiberious, the 4-armed dwarf. After meeting up with Bel years later, she burns again with the desire to take revenge on Brandon. Future versions of this web will have a ton of her background material. Her adventure starts here…
• Sir Richard: Son of the Duke of Chesterton, Dick is everything that the caricature of a good knight is. Except that he is more complex a character than that. He has morals, scruples, strength and courage and all that. Along with torn moments and excellent diplomatic skills. He is a dream to have in campaign since he comes equipped with so very many strings to pull and chains to yank. Married to Arianna Devonshire (the girl next door, except that we are talking kids of the current Dukes). I had to apologize to Dave for using a bit of Sir Richard text out of context in this adventure. It was rude of me not to ask him first, but he was a perfect sport about it - and his character reacted perfectly. Richard's adventure starts here…
• Sister Anne: Has a dark deep past, with a lighter existence. Like many of the characters who have Went and Done Great Things, she has a history too long to tell here. When you don't see a specific Anne thread, follow Richard's. Anne's adventure starts here…
• Gallellei: The elf. Non-humans are barely tolerated in York, some regarded as shoot on sight. His text is sufficiently self-descriptive since he was introduced here. Early on, he interacts mostly with Jhereg and Schol. Gallellei's adventure starts here…
• Luther: In the modern world, think of your basic bad-ass biker. Huge Harley behind him. He's wearing what used to be a jacket, but his incredible hulk-like muscles have blasted the sleeves right off from so much flexing. Looks like he will eat you for lunch. Then you realize that he's three feet, six inches tall, a dwarf human. When Ed actually saw such a guy on the street in front of The Ohio State University, he was inspired and created Luther for us (and I am eternally grateful). From McKitrick, a former mercenary made knight in a twisted bit of McKitrick justice. Luther is trying hard to work his bad mouth, bad attitude existence into something more tolerable. We toned down the bad mouth a great deal to minimize the amount of words-not-appropriate-for-email. He's great friends with Tiberious, the giant (for a dwarf) four-armed dwarf (like what most fantasy world people think kind of dwarf, instead of the human dwarf that Luther is) who happens to be his squire. Their shared joke is, "I'm the dwarf, he's the freak." Luther's adventure starts here…
• Schol: The drow. Drow are the standard bad guys in York, having tried repeatedly to take over the world as part of their subjugation of the universe (this one now, the others when we get there) plan. Schol decided that their dog-eat-dog ways were not for him. There is a price on his head everywhere (the drow want him dead, the humans want him dead, his friends the players value him highly), and recently he was attributed with terrible crimes he didn't do. Magic capable, day blind, and of a truly alien mind set. It's spooky sometimes how well Rich writes Schol's alien viewpoint. As an old, well developed character, Schol is extremely dangerous as a foe. Schol joins us here
• Raymond: Things go wrong for Sir Raymond of Devonshire. We don't see a lot of him. He is the prototype for the better developed character of Sir Steven that does not appear here (but I have text for that some day might go on this web). Raymond ducks in here…
• Jhereg: The name is borrowed, of course, from some one else's fiction. But the character is Mitch's spin on what might have resulted from events in the longer history of York as a gaming world. He's a half-elf albino. He claims the throne of McMannon since his father, Rabban McKitrick, while the son of the late duchess of McKitrick was also the son of the late-but-never-lamented, loathesome Duke Ian McMannon and not Duke James McKitrick. McMannon was the scene of numerous political upheavals and he thought it a better place to lay his claim than McKitrick. Duke McKitrick is sorely offended by Jhereg's publicly basing claims based on his beloved late wife's affair with the most loathsome vile creature known in decades. The Duchess of McMannon has given Jhereg an offer he can't refuse: He can be a landed noble if he can take the curse off a chunk of McMannon lands. Otherwise he can gad about elsewhere - she won the recent civil war and he had been kept on the sidelines and lacks the power to force her. Jhereg's adventure starts here…
• Kel: We don't see lots of Kel. He's dangerous, secretly magic capable (most of York is very magic-phobic, as in shoot on sight anyone using magic who is not a priest). Mitch didn't have enough email bandwidth to write two characters. Kel's only solo file is here
• Brennan: Has a very, very long history. But the text introduces him well enough. A nature centered kind of guy. Currently hanging with Maia. The adventures of Brennan and Maia start here:
• Freidrich: Of Tudor, son of the Duke, has as good a shot at the throne as any. A ladies man, except that he is married to one of the infamous McKitrick sisters. (The McKitrick family is foremost in terms of effective. Words like kind don't come up in their discussion.) We only see a bit of him and that early on: Friedrich starts here
• Maia: A druid. As such she was raised outside of York culture. York and the druids have had run-ins, the politics will unfold here on the next such encounter. At current she is teaching Brennen on the sly. The adventures of Brennan and Maia start here:
• Fred: A bounty hunter, not to be confused with Friedrich of Tudor. This is his one file appearance.
• Sgacity: Also known as The Witch of Lethbridge. Tried for witchcraft a few PBEMs ago and found innocent by reason of divine intervention! One of the oldest player characters in York, she is a pacifist and speaks in strange tales when she is trying to get wisdom across. Blackbird trusts her implicitly, they share a great deal of history. Not to mention both of them being rather good looking. We pick her up very late in the game on Blackbird's thread. Recently widowed in this time frame.

• Tiberious: A four-armed dwarf - OK! I've heard the "fore warned is four-armed" jokes for decades now. He stands five feet tall (he has gigantism, most dwarves barely ever hit four feet) and four feet wide (goes through doors sideways) and masses 375 pounds in his shorts (which reduces certain kinds of furniture to kindling on contact). No, he can't float. He's not from York, he's from a place where he is merely tall and heavy. Before being blasted here, his grandfather was turned into a lizard, which is why he's here now (it's a long story). As I found out on the first file of my first PbeM, we always use the long story. He was a private, first class in the fifth legion back home. A bit moody, fell in love with Evaine (now Blackbird) and strangely enough she fell in love with him. If disk space permits, that will be some where on this disk too. Actually, he is one of my own player characters, which makes him an NPC here.
• Brandon: Began life as a bad boy. Then I got to update him to an adult for this adventure. Writing the scenery with him and Blackbird was very enjoyable, and some of the best PBM scenery we've ever writ. Like other such scenery, it was an honor writing against Stu's characters.
• T'Ta: A shadow morkon. Morkons are from north of Hudson and regarded by many as animals. They range from nine foot tall green regenerating trolls to five foot tall orcs to three foot pasty-complected shadow morkons. Shadow morkons can step into a shadow and by force of will teleport to another shadow if it's not too far away for their personal range. T'Ta can jump a mile, making him "strategic" instead of "tactical" in how far he can go. Actually, he is one of my own player characters, which makes him an NPC here.
• Ruth: A McMannon noble I created out of whole cloth. One of the most loved people in all of that duchy.
• And a cast of hundreds. Most of them will be clear by context. Say hello to Gladys when you meet her.

I may put the BBY (Big Book of York) here. York is a confederation of independent duchies. Dukes are the most powerful level of nobility. Levels below that are titles in duchy specific fashions. Ducal families have psi powers, thus Sir Richard has them. There is a charter that holds the duchies together, it nearly blew up when people first encountered the morkons to the north.

The text was generated as files that were emailed among those with a character there. Like real life, and unlike a good book, many interesting characters did things at the same time in different places and came together and apart at whim. The text made for difficult reading in a linear fashion through the files. But with links, you can just follow a single character and see what happened to them. Another trip through you can see what happened to somebody else. You can even peek when someone sneaks off and come back to the character you were following without missing a word. The response from Dave when he read what Blackbird had been doing (under Sir Richard's nose very nearly) was, "wow!"