Sorry my skellies, but the quest for manliness may have to wait another week or two, as the [R]essurecting [R]ats have built a ramshackle boat and sailed to the tournament! With my relatively low TV of 1870, the 16 rats (among them the permanently wounded linerat Eldar Fildon) sailed their makeshift boat across the alarmingly dark seas to Ulthuan. The rats look nervous, particularly Renard, our AG5 gutter runner still getting used to his leg injury, as they line up and get ready to face some mean looking and more experienced orcs in the first round of their qualifying tournament. Still, every rat is willing to give his life up just to get past this one qualifying match, to avoid a humiliating round one elimination, and if this attitude can be preserved through the whole tournament, we may, just may reach the brass lantern and guide ourselves into the heart of Ulthuan itself. If not, well we're down a few rats and out of the tournament anyway, but it was worth a shot...

On the trip over, we were in a dark mood until finally one of our best gutter runners, Jean Pierre Castets brought up our spirits:

"Hey, which cat survived a swim to Ulthuan? One two three cat or Un deux trois cat?"

"One two three cat. Un deux trois quatre cinq!"

Rat-like laughter echoes across the empty seas, but only the french rats understand the joke, while the ones that weren't with the [R]ats from the beginning unfortunately are left clueless in the dark seas.

Good luck to all those (except my opponents) in the tournament qualifiers!