By a Concerned Gunnery Student
DISCLAIMER: This article is comprised completely of made-up ideas and is meant for satirical enjoyment.
In 1850, an abolitionist and outdoorsman named Frederick Gunn founded a boarding school in rural Washington, Connecticut, intending to help children grow into competent adults by encouraging them to develop “intellectual strength, moral courage, physical rigor, and character.”
But even during this idealistic time, New England was a region full of darkness and mystery. Clearly, Frederick Gunn aimed to rid the area of this plague of witchcraft and establish a temple of purity: The Gunnery; amidst a region riddled with dark magic, Gunn wanted to bring order to the chaos of New England by creating a school that emphasized moral and pure education for young people. Gunn attempted to create a complete and characterful school, limiting the student body to just 300 kids in order to cultivate each of them into admirable adults. 170 years later, The Gunnery is a modern boarding school with multi-million dollar facilities and a student body that spans over 15 countries.
However, this idyllic dream school has a dark secret.
If you, dear reader, follow @thegunnery on Instagram, you may think that The Gunnery is a quaint, prestigious New England boarding school nestled in rural Connecticut, but you’d be shocked to discover that the school has a clandestine witchcraft-worshiping, faculty-only secret society.
At this point, you may be wondering, how did I get to know about this wicked and covert organization? Well, I have found a way in: I have been tipped off by a justice-seeking faculty spy who must stay anonymous—for if the witchcraft-lovers discover this informant’s identity, that person would be in deep trouble the next time the cult needed another person to become a pawn in their wicked game.
On the outside, it may seem like a group of faculty friends who enjoy hanging out with each other on the weekends, just like students, but one certain activity confirms their dark leanings: Dungeons and Dragons.
After having been invented in the mid-1970s, the tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, became a mainstay in American culture in the 80s. From eight-year-olds gathering in their basement to talk about wizards and monsters to thirty-something-year-old nerds hanging out again in a basement discussing witchcraft, many congregated in basements (dare I say dungeons?) to play Dungeons & Dragons at the time.
While this cool new trend of collaborative storytelling swept the nation’s nerdy population, there was a dark “Vale of Shadows” that came whenever they played D&D. I have heard rumors that even here, at The Gunnery, five or six teachers met one afternoon in 1984 to play the game, never expecting that it would transform them into devil-worshipping fiends; you see, it is not that these teachers are inherently evil people, but the maniacal game has taken control of their minds and corrupted them.
Since the 1980s, there has been a secret group at The Gunnery that plays the dastardly role-playing board game every weekend, and they are always on the lookout for new faculty members to corrupt. Each year, a new class of faculty members arrives to embark on a bright new phase of their lives at The Gunnery, and once in a while, these aforementioned denizens of darkness will ensnare these fresh faces in their creative, fun-loving—but definitely evil—cult.
When asked for comment, one faculty member (who will remain anonymous) said, “I can neither confirm nor deny that there is an ongoing faculty Dungeons and Dragons game ongoing on campus.”
There you have it: an assembly of the nerdiest (and thus, the most maniacal) members of The Gunnery’s community gathers on the weekend and plays the open-ended role-playing tabletop adventure game to dabble in the dark arts: creative storytelling. They attempt to get in touch with their despicable deity through an immersive fantasy realm filled with magic, heroes, and team-based problem-solving. The teachers have even assigned one leader to play as the “dungeon master,” a faculty member who is well-versed in the arts of witchcraft, who will draft up an engaging, fantastical storyline that the rest of the followers will inhabit.
I hope that this article raises awareness at The Gunnery, and we can look to put an end to the reigning terror of the witchcraft-worshippers. I pray that this will serve as a wake-up call to the people of our school so we can end this forty-year cloud of evil that has been covertly contaminating our school. The Highlander is leading an ongoing investigation to try to discover who is involved in the D&D ‘club’ so we can put an end to this mischief.
Trust no one. Make sure that if you see something, you say something. Above all, stay away from Dungeons & Dragons.
The Highlander 