12 to Midnight

“Class Note Wednesday” has once again blown past “A Little Late Thursday” and right into “Oh-Oh Friday”. The good news is that I can finally report that the edits to Plot Point 6 are complete. Here’s the breakdown:

Plot Points Completed: 6 of 12
Pages:  29 of 41
PP word count:  1,750 of 21,585

I exceeded my word count goal for this plot point by 250 words and I still need to move the character stats from its place in a separate chapter to this one. This is not an action-packed adventure like the one I wrote for plot point 4. This is much more about investigation. It’s made more difficult because the heroes don’t know what they’re looking for, only where to find it. As with plot point 5, this adventure has the potential to be memorable and fun, but as with all plot points I’m relying on the GM to fill in the grace notes.

Anyway, on with the campus tour!

The Roost

The Ravens Multi-Use Indoor Arena, aka the Roost, has served the campus community for more than 60 years. Unfortunately the ugly grey, windowless, round building suffers deeply from its cold-war era design aesthetics.

Despite the basketball arena’s occasional renovation and creative decorating every couple of decades, the building still shows its age. From peeling paint to vacant fire extinguisher racks to struggling air conditioning, it’s no wonder most campus tour guides skip this building. Even so, the building has not completely lost its luster. Every college campus has certain “dare” make-out spots, and ETU is no exception. Making out atop the ETU Ravens logo on the floor of the basketball court is the “Mount Everest” of challenges for adventurous lovers.

Inside, a high-ceiling breezeway circles the ground floor. From the breezeway, patrons enter at the top row of arena seats. Visitors who walk down the aisles to the basketball court can find entrances to a basement level circling the arena situated under the bleachers and breezeway. This basement area circles the entire building includes locker and sports equipment rooms, a loading dock, offices, multi-use classrooms, cramped conference rooms, and so on.

Second only to the football stadium, the Roost is the largest capacity building on campus. Consequently, its use frequently extends beyond basketball. For events like freshman orientation, staff appreciation, talent shows, science fairs, concerts, and so forth, the university covers the wooden floor with padded mats and erects a stage at one end of the court.

It should also be noted that, like many buildings on campus, the Roost has its own urban legends with regard to hauntings. Two ghosts are rumored to make the building their home. One is a serious but otherwise harmless young woman, said to smell of smoke. This ghost has been known to actually speak to people–usually just to say hello–then disappears a moment later. The other ghost only appears in the basement, and is often mistaken for a rival mascot at first. In a typical encounter, a lone student or staff member is walking down the basement hallway when he sees a brown-skinned figure dressed only in a loincloth and carrying a spear. The figure lets out a bloodcurdling scream and charges with spear held forward before disappearing a few steps in front of the hapless victim.

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Beginning next week I’ll make separate posts for my Class Notes updates versus Campus Tours. I have plenty of material I can queue up for Campus Tours, ensuring that those posts come out every week on time regardless of how things are going with the edits. Hopefully I’ll get back on track with my Class Notes posts as well, but the truth is that all the plot points to come either require significant revisions or are complete rewrites.