If any of you bothered to follow this for a while and somehow haven't forgotten while I've been away, I did take something of an unplanned hiatus these past few months. During that time I haven't been not creating, I've just started a new job, dealt with lots of housekeeping stuff, and generally been very tired and struggling to find a balance and focus for creating. As of now, I intend to return to the whole blog thing and use it as a driving tool to keep my creativity flowing and give it an outlet as I am not running any RPGs at the moment (though playing in several, which are awesome).
Anyway, with that out of the way, here's an old war story which I've told many a time at my FLGS to any who'd willingly listen.
This is an old war story a friend of my grandfather used to tell when he got real drunk some nights. It concerns the US air base at Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands during WWII. Some of you may recall that as the base that the Enola Gay took off from on its well-known fateful bombing mission, but this was before that…
You see, Tinian was an air base like most others, and like most others, the bombers from there flew countless sorties over enemy territory during the course of the war. What sets it apart, however, is a startling trend regarding its planes.
The Commandant of the base for most of the war was Lieutenant General Walter B. Gutierrez. “The War Bird,” as he was called by most of his troops, was fierce, brave, and almost fanatically loyal to his country, his mama, and the Holy Catholic Church. Because of this, he noticed something peculiar when looking at flight and mission reports.
You see, three particular bombers, those with tail numbers Alpha-one-niner-oh-India-Sierra, Alpha-two-niner-three-Charlie-Hotel, and Whiskey-one-six-niner-Mike-Bravo, always came back from their flights largely unscathed by enemy fighters and anti-air guns, with their crews always in good health and strong fighting spirit. The War Bird always referred to these three planes affectionately as the “blessed bunch.”
Well, several other planes weren’t so lucky, and among those that the mission reports included among the losses, those that came back too damaged to every fly again, with their crews in shambles, if they returned at all, were those with tail numbers Delta-one-oh-two-Charlie-Charlie, Delta-three-four-niner-Alpha-Hotel-Delta-one-six-seven-November-Alpha, and Delta-oh-oh-niner-Foxtrot-Bravo.
Looking at these casualty lists, the War Bird Gutierrez wracked his brain to try to figure out what connected all these tragic losses, what could possibly be happening that so many planes of the same series all went down. Eventually, being the good catholic that he is, he came to the only inevitable conclusion one can make in such a situation. This was the work...of El Diablo.
Yes, that’s right, Satan himself must be possessing these planes, or else their crews, and with Beelzebub at the stick, a fiery wreck was only an inevitable outcome. All the planes of the Delta series were cursed… It seems that truly...the Devil was in the D-Tails...
So there you have it, a dumb joke to hopefully inject some fun into what should hopefully be a phenomenally lazy day, the Sunday of a long weekend. If any of you have any fun RPG-related "War Stories" à la that wonderful video series from Seth Skorkowsky, feel free to drop a comment below.
Coming next week will be a rather ambitious project of mine, or at least as much of it as I can manage, in which I will first detail a fantasy tavern where adventurers might meet, then introduce a party of adventurers (with general descriptions generated randomly by the Archives of Nethys Pathfinder Character Background Generator, then elaborated on by yours truly), and finally, a series of system-agnostic (or possibly D&D 5e-statted) dungeons, which will feature in-character write-ups of my sample party daring to delve into their dangers. Stay tuned if you're interested.
And with that, as always, may your road lead you ever onward to adventure,
-Armstrong
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