You have no idea how you come to be lounging in the back room of a hairdressing salon called the Lunatic Fringe.  But that's where you find yourself this Saturday night, watching the sunny day fade into memory as a sinuous teenager called Penny Pasteur pours your piña colada into a frosted martini glass.

Through the shop window a pair of neon curling tongs rotates and flashes.  In the street there's a bustle of pedestrians heading home.  Even from the back room, you can hear their scabbards clank against their leg armour as they stagger off to the stables to saddle up their steeds and gallop away.  Penny kisses you, her tongue flicking briefly over your lips and teeth, before she withdraws to the kitchenette to rinse out the empty cocktail shaker.  To get there, she has to step over the corpse of an awkward customer, the Norse demigod called Kvasir whose neck you earlier snapped like a brittle branch after that altercation.  He should never have insulted your dwarf assistants.  And spitting in your eye was the final straw.

You are not the kind of guy who stares at danger with fear in your eyes.  The strongest and brightest of your lineage, at six feet ten and fifteen stone you tower over your family physically and intellectually.  Your stocky frame belies your litheness, and your twelve years of battle knowledge as a Brandywine dragoon places you in the marksman's upper quartile for accuracy, speed, and dexterity.  Your strongest asset remains your hand-to-hand combat experience, and there are few who can match you in an unarmed close-quarters brawl.  Especially tall Scandinavians with long hair who can't tell the difference between a fiver and a tenner.

The sky outside darkens, presaging a storm.  Beware the coming night, for agents of Chaos ride and you may be consumed by their powers.

You consider your clothes.  The black leather jerkin covers a thin vest of meshed steel over a pure cotton chemise.  The ends of your dark cotton trousers are stuffed into your sturdy black boots.  A dragon motif emblazons your left breast.

You have stamina, you have drive.  Your overriding ambition is an assault on the Wrestling League, to top it within three months, and to turn professional before year-end.

Beyond the shop window, off into the distance, the shimmering buildings of the Millennium Capitol beckon you.  Though first you will need to make your way through the shadowed alleyways that surround Apzugard Bay.  Beware the aerial beasts that swoop through the bruising purple sky, the predatory creatures from within the Bay, and the crazed, half-forgotten denizens of the Capitol slums who stand between you and your dream.

The door is ajar.  Go forward now!  Your destiny awaits!

You are Glendower Broadsword!

Continue? Y/N


'Glendower Broadsword?' laughed Toshiko.  'Put your weapon back in its scabbard, Owen.  No one's impressed.'

Engrossed in the display on his terminal, Owen hadn't realised she was standing behind him.  He clicked an icon at the top of the screen, and the text window minimised to reveal an image of the Lunatic Fringe.  A row of barbershop chairs angled off into the distance, distinct shapes in primary colours.  Through an inner door, a cartoon image of Penny Pasteur stood paused in a kitchen area, her back to a sink full of washing-up.  Penny's character wore a fluffy pink bikini that barely covered what even Owen would admit were implausibly large breasts.  She'd be rubbish at doing the dishes, he decided.  How could she see the crockery as she washed it?

Toshiko interrupted these idle thoughts when she took the mouse off him and maximised the text window.  'No point hiding it, Owen.  I read most of it already'  She scrolled down the words.  'What's this, you miserable sexist?  A serving wench attending to your every need.  In a hairdressing salon?'  She made a half-hearted attempt to stifle her amusement and retreated back to her own work station.