Thoric the Mighty: Malak: *drawing his mighty blade* By all that is holy, I’ve come to rid this land of thy cursed existence!

Malak’lia Nosferatu: Thoric: *heavy Transylvannian accent* Excellent… You are type O-negative… very rare, very good. *begins to chant*

BLOODFIST THE ORC-KING: I AM BLOODFIST THE ORC KING! I COME HEAR TOO KIL ALL NASTY ELFS! RAAAAH!

Born2Bone (M/21/UNDERWEARMODEL): ANY FINE FEMS WANNA CYBER?

Fiber Optik: *enters, decked out in Power Armor, one hand on her GX Laser Pistol, the other fondly caressing the data disk she just stole from the Area 51 Black Market. Her ocular implants sweep the patron occupants*

BLOODFIST THE ORC-KING: RAAAAH! *kills Fiber—

That was when the world entered the new millennium. Suddenly, the keyboard was gone, and the relentless glare of the monitor with it. For a long moment, everyone just sat in the tavern, staring around at one another.

Finally, Robert spoke. “Um. Where am I?”

And suddenly he had no idea where the hell he was. A room, yes, four walls and a roof. A door. A table of some sort. Something glowing on top of the desk.

Thoric lowered his heavy, two-handed sword and looked around, perplexed. This was something he hadn’t expected. The cozy tavern with its rather apathetic clientele—those people who could carry on sane conversations in the background while he was saving the world in that very room, vanquishing undead, slaying evil wizards, etc—were nowhere. He was alone.

A horrid thought dawned on the knight. Perhaps this was the vampire’s spell. The undead abomination had been in the midst of spellcasting when everything had changed… so where was he? Had Malak’lia transported him away to some infernal plane of the nine hells? It didn’t feel like it, but he saw no other explanation. “Helm preserve me,” he muttered, and turned his attention toward the desk.

The strange creature hunched on the desktop stared back at him dispassionately. It had a broad, flat face and did not speak. Writing occasionally drifted across its body… uh, it’s face. He thought he glimpsed his name once, but as soon as he saw it, there was a flash and it disappeared, replaced by a dread omen: FORBIDDEN: YOU DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO THIS SERVER.

Thoric frowned and leaned closer. He was a Knight of Some Holy Order, and wasn’t about to be intimidated by this hunchbacked, speechless whelp. “What manner of beast be ye, creature?” he demanded, pounding his fist on the desk. “And what do ye mean by the warning?”

A little flower-shaped tattoo on the side of the thing’s face lit up then, and it squeaked at Thoric in an inhumanly high pitch. “Uh-oh.”

“I say name thyself!” Thoric growled.

Silence.

“You mock me?” He was getting angry. His grip on the sword tightened, and he raised it a little. “Be warned, beastling, I am a Knight of Some Holy Order and expect to be treated with the respect I have earned.”

Nothing.

Thoric’s face went red. “Well, have at you then!” He fell upon it, and the hapless Compaq’s face exploded in a flurry of steel and circuitry.

*

*

“It’s the tavern,” Sara remarked.

“Huh?” Five pairs of eyes turned on her.

“It’s the tavern. The tavern from IMC. Look; there’s the hole in the roof where the tarrasque crashed through the wall an hour ago. Over here’s the fireplace with the missing bricks. If I’m right…” She looked around briefly, then pointed at one of several low-slung tables positioned around the room. “…My character’s initials should be carved there. F.O.”

Sven was an eight-year-old boy, who, several minutes previous, had been role-playing BLOODFIST THE ORC-KING. He shared his character’s subtle wit. “Heheh. That stands for Fuck Off.”

Robert, whose holy paladin, Thoric the Mighty, had just sealed his fate by dueling with his PC—which, although being a Compaq, had never been particularly malevolent towards anyone—studied the table. “Yep, it’s here. F.O.” He considered. “You’re Fiber Optik.”

“Yeah, I remember you,” Joel sneered. “What the hell was a weird Rifts-based cyberknight-type doing in the Fantasy Tavern, eh?” He looked around. The tavern’s rather imposing interior frightened him, and he cleansed himself of that fear by boiling it in anger. “That damn game’s been nothing but problems to role-playing. This mess’ gotta be your fault!” And besides, a CyberKnight character had once viciously backstabbed his noble Gunslinger. He was the vindictive type, that Joel.

“What the hell are you kids talking about, and where am I?” Max demanded. Max was your stereotypical child-molester type. He was middle-aged, balding, and quite overweight. Despite the brief description of his ‘character,’ Born2Bone, he was far from being any sort of underwear model, and he didn’t even know what IMC was, let alone any of the bizarre terms these punk kids were tossing around. He had just happened to come across the site while looking for some free pornography. And damn, so far he’d go with ‘NaughtyBoys.com’ over this weird-ass live-action chat shit any day. As soon as he spoke, he realized that his left hand was still in his pants, and ripped it free before anyone could notice.

*

Fiber Optik definitely had an advantage over the other displaced Cs. She knew what a computer was, although the only ones she had ever used were always nameless Ultra-Deluxe-Turbo-Graphical-Super-Conducting-Macro-Processors, and usually conveniently full of various passwords and security system information. Still, the basics had to be the same. “Wow, pre-war tech,” she gaped, without so much as a thought as to why she was suddenly in front of said prewar tech. That kind of thing happened a lot in her sad little two-dimensional existence, teleporting around from one tavern to another.

She sat down before the computer. “Computer, define primary functions.”

As might be expected, nothing happened.

Fiber Optik frowned, and then noticed the keyboard. Such things were not entirely foreign to her, and she hesitantly depressed a couple of buttons. The screen changed then, a file labeled “Bookmarks” came up. Then it flashed again, and she was looking at pictures of muscular, naked men.

Intrigued, Fiber Optik began to explore her mun’s collection of pornography urls. An hour later, she had forgotten her own name.

*

*

In the office cubicle of a computer programmer named Max, a formless cloud of sexual energy and borderline sadistic fantasies appeared, hovering over his workstation. Max’s much-ogled secretary had a second to gasp before it swallowed her whole.

*

*

Malak’lia Nosferatu, a vampire, was damned hungry, and his fangs shot out of his gums like twin pistons when Ralph barged into Joel’s room. He was full of hot, youthful blood. Malak’lia watched him hungrily.

Ralph was Joel’s older, muscle-bound bonehead of a brother. He didn’t understand his geeky sibling’s fascination with those stupid mind games he played on the net, and was pretty pissed off that he couldn’t find his ‘Awesome Eighties’ CD.

“Hey, it’s one of my brother’s stupid goth friends,” Ralph remarked, noting Malak’lia’s fangs and Dracula-esque cape. “Where’s my brother?”

The vampire paused. “Excuse me?”

“I said where the hell’s my brother? I want my CD back.”

Reflecting his mood, Ralph’s blood pressure skyrocketed, and Malak’lia could resist no longer. The whelp screamed to be bled. With his usual feline hiss, the vampire barred his fangs and leapt upon his prey.

Ralph laughed and punched him in the face, sending Malak’lia to the floor.

Malak’lia was stunned. The mortal had struck him, and he had actually been fazed! He had felt pain! He hastily assumed his gaseous form, and hovered there, preparing a new strategy.

Then Ralph, face contorted in a mixture of rage and disbelief, kicked the vampire sharply in the ribs. Vampires didn’t exist in his world. Therefore, Malak’lia was quite corporeal, essentially a human with oversized canines.

“You little son of a bitch,” Ralph mused, and kicked him again.

*

*

“Alright, alright, we’ll blame Palladium then,” Joel surrendered, sick of arguing with the girl, and just as nerdy as his boorish brother would have described him. “Now then; we’re in the tavern. How do we get out of it?”

Sven, who would otherwise be known as the King of Orcs, was sniffing. He was scared, not only because he was a little kid in a strange world among strange folk, but because the big fat guy, Max, kept studying him with a most disconcerting expression on his sweaty, pallid face.

Robert was muttering incessantly to himself. “Must be a bug, has to be a bug, a bug in the system. SysOps’ll be around soon, get us out, fix us up, good as new, yeah, yeah.”

“Damn,” Sara said. “I bet no one predicted Y2K causing this crap.”

At that moment the main door to the tavern opened, and a hulking figure stood within its shadows. Robert caught a glimpse of the landscape behind him and saw that it was as unclear as the guidebooks presented it—little more than a black void with some indistinct outlines of buildings here and there.

Then the thing—whatever it was—lumbered inside.

*

*

“I WANT KILL NASTY ELFS!” BloodFist shrieked in his garbled mastery of the common tongue. The changeover from tavern to child’s bedroom had not registered with him, and without so much as a second thought he kicked the nearest door open and charged out, hefting his club.

Unfortunately for BloodFist, would-be dictator of the Unified Horde of Elf-Smashers, Sven’s bedroom opened out into the living room, where his parents had been reveling in Chuck Norris’ dramatic flair on Walker: Texas Ranger. Sven’s parents wore matching T-shirts that read “Charlton Heston is MY President,” and with little hesitation they lifted their matching AK-47s from the coffee table and blew the howling monster to whatever afterlife there is for fictitious orcish tyrants.

*

*

Kul-Tiras, Daemon-Spawn: ((That was one helluva crash. Anyone here?))

Robert (MUN): Chrissy? That you? You gotta help us!

Kul-Tiras, Daemon-Spawn: ((Rob: Of course it’s me! *thwaps you*))

Robert (MUN): *bleeding from the nose* Cut it out! I’m serious! We’re all stuck in the tavern, all us muns!

Sara (MUN): HE’S SERIOUS, CHRISSY, IT’S REALLY US! DON’T DO ANYTHING, IT’S NOT LIKE YOU THINK!

Kul-Tiras, Daemon-Spawn: ((*LOL* Yeah, sure you are. *draws ancient broadsword, hacks Robert to pieces* MWAHAHAHAHAHA!))

Robert (MUN): *dies*

Joel (MUN): *screams*

Sara (MUN): *screams*

Sven (MUN): *screams*

Max (MUN): Oh crap. *nervously fondling self*

Kul-Tiras, Daemon-Spawn: ((*LMAO* Wow, good timing, guys. NOW SUFFER MY WRATH!  *waving his bloodied sword in the air, Kul steps over Robert’s carcass and descends upon the other hapless muns*))

THE END

Note—The moral of this story is: Don’t role-play on-line or you’ll die.

*Stunned Silence* Um. Lord Bloodstone is just kidding. Really. Roleplay is harmless. Join us. Join us NOW.