Four of us went down, but only one hundred and four of us came
back. How did that happen, you ask? A good question, and I feel like
telling a story . . .

We were an optimistic party. The four of us were young, maybe a
little lacking in experience, but well armed, intelligent, and overflowing
with enthusiasm. There were two Magi, the sorcerer Soregit and
the wizard Emanon, and two warriors, Tork and myself, Nissleyn the
One-handed.

We had been charged with penetrating the Pyromancer?s Guild to
bring back artifacts for our benefactor, the great magician and charlatan,
Edgh. Intent upon our mission, we found a member of the Guild
at a local tavern, in a rather pitiful state. There was a little overeagerness
on my part and I hit him on the head and, well, I, uh . . . knocked
him out.

Gosh, I was really sorry that it had happened, but since it had,
everyone figured that we should take advantage of it. So we grabbed
his copper ring, had copies made of it, and, armed with the rings and a
Polymorph Others spell, we entered the Guildhall.

It was easy enough, smooth sailing for quite a while, as we twisted,
turned, and slew a few fairly harmless monsters, the usual stuff. The
first really tough thing we ran into was a Clay Golem. Thinking quickly,
I told Soregit to throw a Darkness, 15ft. radius spell, and with a natural
ability of infravision, I waded in with a giant?s club I had picked up
somewhere, and belted him in the back of the head, wiping him out.
We felt that this was an augur of things to come, and we were very
optimistic. Ha!

The next door we opened presented us with a pair of eleven-foottall,
fairhaired giants in mithril mail. A fast Legend Lore spell told us
that they were Sidhe, lawful gargantuans, extremely strong, intelligent,
and dextrous. We quickly convinced them we wanted, very
badly, to be their friends. Luckily, they trusted our then-honest
intentions.

They joined us, and we went through a few more rooms and
corridors, and were going down a flight of stairs, when I suddenly
realized that they had usurped my position as leader of the expedition,
had been very deprecatory about all of our abilities, and had not yet
done a bit of fighting! I contacted Tork with an artifact-related telepathic
message, and we jumped them from behind.

My first shot with the club split my Sidhe?s head open like a ripe
melon, and there was one left. Tork went for him as I hurried to aid
him, while Emanon threw Magic Missiles. Tork was doing a pretty
good job on the remaining Sidhe, and I had just joined the fray, when
the giant speared Tork through the left eye with an immense enchanted
sword. I was a bit taken aback, and Tork, well, he was dead.
He had, though, damaged the Sidhe to a point where he was almost
tottering, and I quickly sent him to discuss life with his ancestors face to
face.

I mourned the death of Tork, while the Magi looked on rather
coolly, not understanding the sorrow of a Warrior. I resolved to have 
him restored to my side as soon as possible, because he was a brother
Warrior, and also because I didn?t relish facing the remaining depths
with just myself to battle with the terrors that lay there.

Packing his dead body on my back with a quick-release knot on
him, we pushed on. The door at the bottom of the stairs opened onto a
corridor, and at the end was an unfamiliar shape. A noise from the
wizard roused the thing, and suddenly it was flying at us. A winged ape
with huge claws, hurtling down the narrow corridor.

?A Clakar!? screamed the wizard, and cowered beneath his cloak.
I nailed the beast with a lightning javelin in midair, but it didn?t quite do
the job, only searing a hole in his abdomen. Then he was upon me,
doing horrendous damage with one swipe of his claws. Luckily for all
of us, I dispatched him with a blow to his already damaged abdomen.
The wizard healed my wounds and we moved on.

The next room held only an orc and a bowl of liquid. The orc
turned and ran out a door in the back of the room. Soregit walked up
to the table and inspected the bowl. He saw a ring in the bowl, and
grabbed it. He put it on, and began dancing around without realizing
that he was shrinking at a tremendous rate. He fell into the bowl, and
would have drowned and I not knocked over the bowl and moved him
away from the liquid with the point of my dagger.

Our spirits were at a new low. Tork was dead, and getting to be a
pain in the back. Soregit was two inches tall, and practically useless.
We would probably have given up, but the next room presented a
puzzle. It was some kind of a device, and I could not discern its
operation. The door was open, and maybe we should have closed it to
keep out wandering monsters, but we were in a sad state. Anyway,
what should wander in but a 12th-circle Cleric of neutrality. With a
little monetary temptation, we convinced him to resurrect Tork, but
nothing could be done for poor Soregit.

Tork and I began to celebrate and, in the illuminated state of mind
that the wine brought about, we divined the function of the machine. It
moved the entire room to small, independent planes of existence! We
finally realized this by observing that after we pressed different buttons,
different things were behind those doors! In our condition, we
found this highly amusing, much to Emanon?s consternation. We
finally decided that we would tackle the Clakar that we had seen, and,
pushing the right button, we rushed in and romped on the poor
animal.

There was a shrouded object in the back of the room and we were
suspicious. So with the genius of Dionysius, Tork and I forced Soregit
to take a look under the shroud. A good thing we did so, for under
there was a Mirror of Opposition! We heard a small shriek, and lifted a
small section of the shroud to see two Soregits throwing daggers at
each other. Luckily, the duplicate was as lousy a shot as the original,
and neither was hurt.

Inspired again, we emptied another wine sack, and began creating
more and more miniature Magi, or gits, as we soon began calling them.
Eventually we had fifty of the opposing gits, and fifty of the old-type
gits, and of course, the original Soregit. We separated the plus and
minus gits into two wine sacks of squirming sorcerers.

*    *    *

Now, of course, Tork and I are rich men, the owners of Miniature
Mage, Inc. We decided to market the gits, and made our fortunes.
We found an alchemist, went into large-scale production of growth
potion and the super shrink stuff. Then we got a cleric, threw us a lot
of Geas spells, and marketed the result as ?Gits! pint-size power for
the fighting man!! The next time you have a problem that you just
can?t handle, you won?t worry, because you have a miniature Mage
at your belt!!?

Soregit is happy as a little clam lolling around in his miniature
apartment with his miniature wine cellar, miniature elf-maidens, etc.
The mirror is in full, assembly line-type use down in the factory.

And Emanon? He?s still adventuring, poor soul, thinks he?s going
to make his fortune that way, I guess. Ha! And yet, sometimes I look
across the board room at my old weapons hanging on the wall, and
the Sidhe's dried blood still on the club, and I feel a twinge of the old
wanderlust. . .