After leaving Antioch, we found ourselves in a room like the previous birdbath and library rooms, but with hourglasses this time. As usual, the members who were not present in the last adventure were now there. Chappell gathered us around one hourglass in particular to do our usual seance number, the sand ran, and we went through the limbo state to our next destination.
We (we being me, Joe, and Jon, some kind of "bump" happened in the transition, so not everyone came through) arrived in a place quite different from our previous location. The terrain was hilly and rocky, and the day rather cool. Chappell told us that we needed to find a road somewhere in the area, so we spread out, heading to the high ground to see what we could see. Chappell found our road, so we headed off to our next problem, finding the correct direction to go. We wanted to go the same direction as the rest of the traffic, towards a nearby city. Our tracking skills completely failed us, but the elvish one figured out the way to go (he's almost useful sometimes.)
We headed up the road, and noticed a bunch of people milling around in the fields around the road. As we got closer, we saw that there were more people than we thought, eventually we saw that it was tens of thousands (within an order of magnitude), not the initial hundreds we thought. They were also acting much more organized than they first appeared, revealing themselves to be an army setting up camp, rather than just a large mob.
Upon speaking to a soldier, it turned out that this was the Macedonian army under the command of Alexander, setting up their winter camp before heading east to conquer Asia. Elf-boy got us in deep by telling people that we were the advance party from General Antigonus, which got everyone excited. Naturally we had no idea about any of this, and great things were expected of us, which we were mostly incompetent to deliver on.
We headed into the city, which turned out to be Gordium, which I knew was an interesting place for Alexander, and I kept telling everyone all the stuff I'd heard about Alex and his perverted behavior. However, Chappell told me to keep quiet on what was just about to happen. Keeping that in mind, I still shot off my mouth enough with enough people listening that we were probably lucky that we didn't get disemboweled.
Our first stop was the temple of Zeus, which Chappell told us was an important place to visit. When we got to the temple, we saw an older man sitting in front, looking at a rope tying a cart to a post. We recognized him as Simon, our host for dinner in Antioch, but it wasn't until later that I realized that the dinner would be nearly 1400 years later. I mentioned Delphi, as I remembered that we were to meet him there, and Chappell thought it would be a good idea for us to go there (it could be argued that we had no choice in the matter, as we'd already been told we'd be there, but I am a great believer in the flexibility of the space-time continuum, and freewill.)
It was decided that we would wait to enter the temple, as a group of soldiers had gone in, and Chappell thought we should wait for them to leave first. We took the opportunity to talk to Simon, now (then?) calling himself Cimon, who did not recognize us, so it was apparently the first time he'd met us, but the second time we'd met him. We talked about inconsequential things, and about our travels. I asked if he'd been to Delphi, but he said that he intended to go there in the future.
Our table in the temple was then ready, so we went inside to pay our respects and talk to the priests and whatever else you do in the temple of Zeus. We paid our respects, I told some dirty joke and got yelled at by a priest, and Jon and Joe made jokes about the size of the penis on Zeus' statue. This led to the stories about Alexander, which got us a nasty stare from one of the soldiers. We also found out that the rope outside was the rope with the Gordian knot, supposedly tied many years ago by King Gordius, before he built the temple to Zeus, and whoever untied the knot would be the rightful king of Asia (and there was also a watery tart distributing scimitars down the road). Within earshot of a solder I bragged about how I knew how to undo the knot, but I felt real good about myself because I didn't feel it was necessary to actually undo it.
We then went back outside and talked to Cimon about knot untying strategies, and some of the soldiers came over and chased everyone away from the knot so that no one would, in the next five minutes before Alex showed, untie a knot that was centuries old. Alex then showed up, gathering a large crowd who were eager to watch. Alex considered it for a while, then he drew his sword and cut the knot, causing the crowd to go wild, and the priests to have a shit fit, as they felt Alex had possibly bent the rules just a tad.
Chappell was over at the rope, picking up something from under where the knot was, and Callisthenes, the roving historian, was getting the impressions of the onlookers, including us. I went on at length being longwinded and annoying, and giving the historian about 3 false names. We met several of the important military guys, who told us to come to the symposium at the palace that night that Alex was occupying, to have a party and talk about Alex undoing the knot, as we were impartial witnesses. We were also told to come early and report on the status of General Antigonus' Infantry reinforcements.
We bummed around the city for the afternoon, and then showed up to the palace with the bullshit report we'd made up about Antigonus, hoping that we'd be long gone before he ever showed up and got us in trouble. Alex was not too keen on our report, mostly because I think my luck was off that day, and he was upset that the soldiers would not be properly prepared, as "The Cyclops" had promised. We assured him that they would be, and that there would be at least 15,000 troops, which made everyone very happy.
Then the dinner and party/symposium began, and we drank heavily of the watered down wine, and had fun with the flute girls who liked us very much, especially me, as I was so much taller than everyone else at the time. As a point of interest, the elf pointed out General Seleucus, who would be the founder of Antioch, and we held back our urges to kill him. I was asked to give my impression of what I saw with the knot that day (and then I gave my Ed Sullivan impression), and I went on about how Alex was able to approach it from a different angle than anyone else and take decisive action to solve a problem that had stymied so many for so long, blah, blah, blah. Everyone was quite happy when I finally shut up. Also, poetry recitation was the order of the day, so all were asked to recite something, with the biggest cheers going to someone who had one about hookers, Jon recited a poem by Frost, Joe attempted a limerick about the girl from Nantucket. I recited one I knew in German, about getting dumped by my true love, and I got a lot of sympathy from the girls.
The party started to wind down, with couples heading off to the back rooms. Jon and I declined any favors, as we were told not to leave anything behind, and penicillin had not been discovered yet. Joe, however, headed off with with his bimbo, which got him in a bit of trouble the next morning, when she wanted to be paid. After some bargaining, and my threatening her with severe bodily harm, she settled for 9 "Magic" stones, which I told her were black jewels, and the promise that we would never see each other again. We then severely instructed Joe to keep it in his pants in the future.
Before Chappell disappeared the night before, he'd told us that the second thing that needed to be done here (after whatever it was he did with the knot) was to "make friends" with Alexander, as that would be useful in the future. We hung around the palace that morning, waiting for Alex to get up, but apparently he'd snuck out past us. We headed down to the encampment, and eventually caught up with Alex and his retinue. In a truly pathetic attempt to "make nice-nice" with Alex, we got in his way and tried to make ourselves useful, by suggesting that we knew something of tactics and I said that I knew something of medicine.
This got us assigned to prepare a report on what we knew, and present it to Alexander and his generals, and Alex continued on his inspection tour. This was suitably disappointing, so we wandered around the camp for the afternoon, eventually taking archery practice to finish off the day. This left us suitably tired, and made clear to us the real reason that every man (and his brother) in the Macedonian army had a tired right arm. At the end of the day, Chappell returned to a reception not unlike that of a person returning to a group of people he'd really pissed off. When told of our complete failure to make Alex our buddy, as he already had enough friends, and we had nothing new to offer, he offered a suggestion (rather than get lynched.) He commented on the fact that history records that when not actually involved in overrunning Europe and Asia, Alex enjoyed little side adventures, rather than just hanging around camp.
We resolved to head out the next morning, in search of adventure, and whatever came our way, and come back with something exciting for Alexander to do (and in time to give our tactics report.) We headed into the hills, and after some wandering around, found the tracks of what looked like size 25 combat boots. This certainly seemed interesting enough, and after losing and finding the tracks a few times, found yet another cave on the side of a hill. From our past experience (and as anyone who's ever read any kind of fantasy story could tell you) we knew that caves of this sort often had interesting things associated with them. This was not enough to tell Alex though, so Jon and I began to sneak up to the cave, with Joe staying at the base of the hill.
We were near the cave when a giant emerged and threw his oversized spear at me, catching me in the side (and hurting a fair bit, let me tell you). Thus began the fight of our lives (and almost our deaths). The giant charged on me, and I set my halberd to spit him on it. I made my move too soon however, and the giant was able to turn and attack Jon. We fought desperately, as did he, me thrusting with my halberd, Jon swinging his sword, and Joe shooting arrows from the base of the hill. My luck was against me that day, and I was hitting the giant very poorly, Jon wasn't doing too much better, and Joe couldn't hit the ground with his arrows if he'd tried. The giant struck the two of us twice each, with crushing blows from his oversized Louisville Slugger, Jon passed out, and both of us were on the brink of death. Neither of us died however, and I managed to make several miraculous dodges from blows that to all rights should have hit me.
At this point, elf-boy realized that if we died, he'd lose the tools to carry out his bidding (cause God knows he didn't want to do anything himself) and he'd probably also have trouble explaining to the others why we didn't come back. This necessity forced him into action, so he cast a spell to not only set one of Joe's arrows on fire, but to also make it actually hit the giant, whereupon it exploded. This was still not enough to take down the giant, so he came up the hill, drew his flaming sword, and lo, he did smite the giant a mighty blow, and yea verily, did he slay the vicious beast.
I then collapsed, but soon Jon and I revived enough, so we cut off the giant's head for a souvineer, and when we heard another giant calling from inside, we did our usual routine, running like hell. After a fair bit of staggering, collapsing, and being dragged, Joe and Chappell got Jon and me back to camp, where we quickly became the center of attention. Jon and I were dragged off to the sick tent, where we were soon visited by Alexander, who we told the story of the horde of giants we fought off in this battle royale, but we were sure there were still plenty left for him.
Since Joe was left without a scratch (cowardly bastard) Alex asked him to guide a party to the cave, so Alex could whomp up on the giants. He was also kind enough to give us an extension on our tactics report so that we could get our brains (and my intestines) put back where they belonged. Joe led them to the cave (after getting a full set of armor for himself, cowardly bastard), where Alex and his little friends went into the cave, had a good fight, killing two giants and finding a treasure chest (no, not like Pamela Anderson's, a chest with gold and jewels and stuff, you filthy-minded perverts.) As something of a reward, Alex gave us whatever equipment we wanted, like Joe's armor, so Jon and I got shields and helmets (I hope they're magic helmets, as we already have the magic spear.)
While this was going on, Jon and I were healing at an extraordinary rate (like Mastercard interest), partly thanks to a healing potion Chappell gave us, and partly due to the fact that we are just extraordinary human specimens. The next day, we were sufficiently recovered to give our report, in which we told Alex of various combat tactics that we'd seen in movies, or read about in books. Alex recognized that for the most part, we didn't know a phalanx from a, well, something that starts off like phalanx (you know, Freud was into them), but he saw that our diagrams did make sense. Most of what we told him was the blatantly obvious, but it was new to him, and he believed that this was what Antigonus' infantry was being trained in, all 15,000 of them. God help them all.
There was also a bit of trouble, when we got back our equipment that was taken away for safe-keeping. The spear/holy lance was missing, but we found it quickly, when Alexander confessed to "borrowing" it, because he thought it was interesting, and he wanted to check it out. But it turned out to be a lousy weapon, so he gave it back. Chappell later warned Jon about the spear and how to use it. He said that the spear would serve him well, as long as he was not the agressor.
Our obligations there were then finished, Alexander was now our friend, and Chappell felt that we'd accomplished all we'd needed to. We therefore headed out into the hills, where nobody could see us disappear, made our circle, and went poof. However, Joe did not come with us, electing to remain behind and become a good Greek soldier, and hopefully, we would be back to get him at some point. We landed in our usual way station type place, with Bryan Young lying there unconscious (but he didn't know that yet.)
So ends another story of the lunacy we got sucked into.