The halfling Mouse led Jonny, James, Ken, and Richard from the pawnshop, past the caravan encamped in the keep's square, to the inn, where the newcomers Frank and Simon were waiting to meet them.

ooc: Feel free to describe and introduce yourselves for the sake of players that you're meeting now, for the first time.

Frank waved at the newcomers before greeting them in casual English. "Sup." He was in his mid-thirties, overweight and unshaven, with a hundred miles worth of road dust on his otherwise middle-class traveling clothes. While his face was ruddy and soft in the manner of someone who was used to a sedentary lifestyle, there was a certain distance in his eyes that pointed to untreated trauma unreflected in his easy-going smile. An axe was fitted through a loop in the belt keeping his tunic snug. "I'm Frank. We came a long way to meet you guys."

Simon was shorter and leaner, and probably a few years younger than Frank.  He was handsome with a friendly, irrepressible smile.  He looked just as travelled as his companion, although he was more carefully washed and shaved, and he'd clearly had a hair cut lately that was more than hacking with a sharp knife.  He was wearing clothes similar to Frank's, although tailored to show off his athletic physique, and he wore a sword belted at his hip that looked as though it belonged there.

"Earth Gang represent!  I'm Simon, and it is so good to meet you guys.  We thought we were alone here."  He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a ratty converse sneaker.  "You guys lose something?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:48, Wed 17 Apr.

Nodding his thanks to Mouse as he pointed to the newcomers inside the inn, Jonny walked over to meet them. He was tall, well-built and was so good-looking it almost made you sick. Even in average (at best) clothing and wearing the rough stubble which he tried to keep short (not easy with a knife), he looked a million dollars (or a million gold coins): everything was in perfect proportion, and his smile lit up the room. He did have a sword hanging from his belt, and it least it was the right way up. He greeted the newcomers with all of that and a really firm handshake then spoke in English.

"Frank, Simon, great to meet you guys - welcome to Hell!"

That smile flashed even brighter, before Jonny spotted what Simon pulled out of his bag and shook his head.

"Honestly, I don't remember...not one of mine though, I had leather biker boots back then. How long have you guys been here? How the heck did it happen?"

Almost as soon as he asked the questions Jonny realised he was forgetting himself.

"Wait, before you answer that, let me introduce the crew - this is Ken, don't pick a fistfight with him; then Richard, who specializes in acting as live bait; and finally Killer James the Spearman, whose titles speak for themselves. I'm Jonny - the Face, the Mouth, and I once hit a goblin with my sword. Just once, mind."

James nods a hello and just shrugs vaguely when named in Jonny's introduction. He looks nothing special in his leather armour but his eyes show a spark of intelligence.

When there's a pause in folks speaking James looks at Frank and says, "Pleased to meet you. But why? I mean you've travelled a long way to meet us, sure, but is that for any specific reason other than where we all came from?"

"What do you mean, why?" Frank seems confused by the question. "Look, we just suddenly appeared on a beach out of a DnD module - N4, Treasure Hunt, by the way - and other people from Earth is our only big clue as to how or why or how we might find a way home." He paused. "Us and Roger. Roger... Roger didn't make it."

"We lost one too," replies James. "Leastways, Vik disappeared."

"I kinda figured you were playing D&D, just as we were before we suddenly woke up in some woods here - were you guys knocked flat, too? We had some strange guy collect us and take us to his shack in the woods, guy called Bee Man...I kid you not. He basically looked after us until we were physically able to move and look after ourselves. That was some months back. Guess it wasn't the DM playing tricks or whatever...can we really have been summoned here? That's a head-fuck."

Recent months had been spent getting accustomed to the keep and life and the people inside it, so Jonny hadn't given much thought to how they came to be here, or at least not as much as they all gave to it back at the...beginning.

"Shit Frank, you're a terrible story teller."

"Frank, Roger and I woke up on an island, right next to a shipwreck.  The implication was that we were on the ship, but even before we learned Common and could talk to her, the survivor from the ship made it clear that we'd just appeared on the beach.  Then we killed a guy, apparently a slaver from the slave ship that had wrecked, killed a bunch of orcs and goblins, met a goddess, and escaped the island just before it was destroyed in a smiting."  Simon rolled his eyes at the sheer insanity of his own story.  "I know how it sounds, but it happened.  The funny thing is that Frank told me all about how it was going to go down before it happened, because he said it was a published adventure for 0 level characters who were being introduced to the campaign setting.  We've been arguing about free will and narrative universes ever since."  He paused, "Roger..." He struggled for a moment to figure out what to say, before lamely echoing his friend. "Roger didn't make it."

Simon was quiet for a moment, eyes flicking back and forth at the memories playing out in front of his eyes.  "We got lucky and found a patron who let us freeload for a couple months, because the place where we ended up... Well, it wasn't nice.  I wore out my patron's welcome right about the time that Frank killed the local equivalent to Sonny Corleone, and Vito was about to come looking.  So we ran, and right before we had to go we heard about a merchant from this area buying this," he waved the Converse, "and we knew what we had to do."  He smiled, his previous grim demeanor gone like it had never been, "So James, Jonny, Ken and Richard, it is wonderful to meet you.  We'd have come to meet you anyway, because you're from Earth, and maybe you have some clues about what happened.  Frank and I have a long term plan to find out how to get home, and hopefully why we're here.  Did I mention that the goddess told us that someone, a male someone, brought us here?"

"Yeah we were playing a homebrew Greyhawk game, but we appeared inside the setting of the N4 module the way you guys are here in B2, Keep on the Borderlands." Frank gestured around at the tavern.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:10, Wed 17 Apr.

James asks another offbeat question, "Were either of you teachers?"

Simon snorted in surprise and amusement, "No.  Well Frank tried to help teach me to play Dungeons and Dragons at his game store, but it didn't take very well.  I'm not... well I'm not a teacher."

James nods a combined undersatnding and thank you and then goes quiet. He looks at Jonny.

"Why?" Frank asked. "The teacher thing. Why?"

"It's an astounding thing to be able to do, here," answers James.

Frank frowned. "How do you mean? I'm interested in ways that this world breaks from reality as we understand it. What's different about teaching here?"

James grimaces. "Look, Frank, you know what a teacher does, right? So what do we need to do here? Learn."

"Well, like Simon said, I could teach you how to play Traveller or Paranoia or a hundred other old-school RPGs if that helps. Or how to sell Funcopops to nerds with zero sales resistance."

James turns away to sit and let Jonny do what Jonny does best.

Simon looked confused, "Where we were before, we learned quite a bit by hiring tutors.  Is that not a thing here?  I speak Common like a native now, because we hired a language tutor.  With quite a lot of hard work and dedication I got there.  Frank wasn't as focused because he was working on something else, but he can at least make himself understood for the most part."

In many ways Ken was quite different that the new comers.

Ken was a large, sturdy young man, and although the “Greyhawk diet” had been helping him to shed pounds since his arrival, it was still clear he was no athlete. He was still on the paler side and he wore rather shabby clothing.

In fact he looked a little mean at first glance, he had some facial scarring about his forehead, nose and lip and his hair had been cropped short and crude. There was a hint of violence about him, although he smiled at the introductions and offered firm handshakes.

“No fucking way, you really are from Earth” he seemed very happy to meet them. “Feels weird speaking English with anybody besides these guys…no girls though huh? I mean it makes sense…but still going to be a big sausage fest”

He seemed to notice their clothing “You guys seem to have been doing alright though, that’s good…you mentioned something about modules? You think all this is…like in a campaign?” He raised an eyebrow uncertainly

"That's one of the things we were talking about on the trip over here," Frank said. "Is this real? Is it a simulation? Have we actually gone to a world that mimics Earth fiction? All I can say is that I am very familiar with a lot of 1st and 2nd ed Dnd products. The island we appeared on... I recognized a lot of elements from the Treasure Hunt adventure. NPCs. The setup. The island itself. Maybe if I'd remembered more... Roger would still be alive.

"It wasn't absolute, it wasn't perfect, and it's not like I have a photographic memory... but I knew enough to get us around the difficulty of none of us spoke Common."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:02, Thu 18 Apr.