Comments from the archivist:

                This is "Chessmen of the Apocolypse" and is a sequel
                to "A Blast From the Past"

    I have set all messages to a common paragraph indentation, and converted
any all-caps messages to upper and lower case, as well as converting things in
present tense to past tense.  I have also corrected spelling mistakes and bad
punctuation.
    While the messages originally all had titles, most of the titles were
random-titles.  For clarity, I have left only the titles that were NOT random.
The message headings, as they appear in this archive, are not actually as they
originally appeared.  I have simply placed the username in brackets, followed
by the title of the message when appropriate.  This was to leave things less
cluttered.
    Very occasionally, I have had to add something inside another person's
message.  These additions are marked off in brackets.
    Any modifications to an individual message -- except ones involving
punctuation or grammar -- were very minor and are purely for continuity.  For
instance, maybe someone put the wrong word in place, or got names switched
around. (Example: "Xavier dragged THX off and gathered together others to help
rescue the three captives."  Only, Xavier was the reluctant one, not THX.)
    Other times, a poster may have misread the intent of an earlier message,
and later posters failed to notice the aberation and, having read that earlier
message RIGHT, continued the plot thread as that earlier message's writer
intended it be taken.
    I have modified any messages only as far as was necessary to correct such
mistakes.
    It became necessary to change the order at which certain segments appeared.
Certain scenes, as written, had to take place after other events in the story.
For instance, a brief scene, in two short posts, was written during the
chessgame section, but had the characters making moves that they weren't in
position yet to make, the game having only just started.  When it happened, I
wrote a scene which brought the characters TO the described position, and then
said "Ok, NOW this scene can take place!" and auto-quoted the messages so the
text of them reappeared in the right part of the story.  I have now deleted
them from their original position and put them in place of the autoquoted
versions.
    Plus, there was one scene posted online after we had otherwise finished
the tale, written to correct mistakes in the ending.  The entry has been put
into the appropriate location in the story.

                                       Nomad of Norad, December 1993


Contents of this archive:

    Comments         This file
    Before           Opening discussion about "What kinda story do we write?"
    Chess1            \
        through        | The story
    Chess4            /
    Afterward        Closing comments by me about the end of the tale
    Storylst.txt     List of the other Intrepid Group stories, in sequence