Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" Part One Conjure to mind a typical night in the land of Vermouth, that is, cold, dark and dangerous. Add to this picture the noises of the night, not the least being the distant, undying howls of werewolves mingled with crashing of bulettes through the underbrush. As a finishing touch, include a small, dim, spluttering campfire with four figures, two of them encased in heavy armour, shivering about it. "Fire's almost out." observed one who closely resembled a wizard (though a pretty seedy one). "Mph." grunted a paladin affirmatively. "An' it's getting cold." The paladin was named Playdough, and was clad in heavy bandy armour. "Well talking's not going to help anything." chattered a ranger named Rodent, idly picking at his rusty splintered mail armour. "Somebody's got to go and get firewood." (By 'somebody' he meant the monk, Dingbat, who hadn't spoken as of yet). "I'm not going again." whined the monk, knowing full well to whom the ranger was referring. "Duh, well I'm not going." declared Playdough firmly. "Nor I." agreed the wizard, who was named Sauramud, and so began a round of 'not me's and 'nor I's, until finally Dingbat was slapped about the head, pointedly reminded about how useless he was and how much more use his successor would be if he didn't go for firewood. As usual, Dingbat went. Dingbat, being a monk, was used to excessive abuse and took it all in stride. He rose, de-iced, and trotted off into the dark woods whistling an old monkish revival tune, visions of pounding his comrades into the turf dancing through his head. He almost enjoyed splitting logs, pretending all the while they were the heads of his compatriots, and was just on the verge of becoming overly excited when a gleam in the moonlight caught his eye. "Metal?" he mused. "Coinage, perhaps." Upon closer inspection, however, he saw it to be an item of jewelry. To be more precise, a brooch with a diamond so big he wanted to puke. He was about to step forward and claim the prize when his innate monkish paranoia gave him reason to take pause. "All right Sauramud, joke's over." he said aloud. "Very funny. You can make it disappear now." The explosion of chaotic laughter he had been expecting never materialized, however, so taking stock of the situation Dingbat leaped eagerly on the brooch, trying valiantly not to slaver on it too much. Upon returning to the camp he was not entirely surprised to find it in a state of relative disarray. The two warriors were back-to-back, magical swords drawn, and the wizard was cowering behind a large rock with a glass rod (the material component for a lightning bolt spell) clutched in a death-like grip. About two-dozen other, similar rods were scattered haphazardly about the camp, suggesting a recent state of panic. "What the hell were you screaming about?!" demanded the ranger when he spotted Dingbat. "We thought you were being eaten alive!" Dingbat thought quickly. This situation obviously called for tact and discretion. He slid his hand easily into the folds of his robes. "Gee guys, look what I found!" he cried, jumping up and down gleefully and waving the brooch. "It's a brooch and it's got a diamond and everything!" (A monk, you may recall, is entirely lacking in tact and discretion). The wizard strolled over, resisting the urge to puke at the size of the diamond. "Here, lemme see." he requested, snatching the piece from Dingbat's hand. He whipped out a pocket jeweler's scope (standard equipment for the adventuring wizard) and proceeded to scrutinize the brooch. He grunted once, spat on the brooch, rubbed it vigorously on his tackily decorated robes and examined it again, more closely this time. "Zirconium." he sighed presently, tossing it carelessly back to the monk. "Probably worthless." Dingbat thanked Sauramud for his invaluable (or rather, unvaluable) appraisal and pocketed the brooch, secure in the knowledge that the wizard didn't know what he was talking about. "Regardless of its worth, or lack thereof as the case may be, it is not a stone holistically unpleasing to the eye." said Rodent in spite of Sauramud. "And it's mine!" piped a shrill voice. All eyes turned contemptuously on Dingbat, but he merely shrugged and put on his best 'I-didn't-do-it' expression. "Down here, stupid!" the voice reiterated, and a sharp pain in the ankle caused Playdough to look down and find himself gazing at the wicked blade of a dagger. "I'll take that brooch, if you don't mind." snapped the hobbit at the other end of the dagger. "Duh, put away the knife, sonny." scolded Playdough, snapping the end of the dagger off with his thumb and forefinger. "Zoicks!" screeched the hobbit. "That was my best knife!" He then launched into such a fit of cussing and biting that they had to slap him around the head several times to still him. "Excitable little tyke, isn't he?" observed Sauramud snidely. He stressed the word little, but the hobbit ignored him. So did everybody else. "Now," said Rodent judiciously, "What claim do you have on this piece of jewelry?" "I claim it because it's mine." cried the hobbit. "I dropped it while I were being chased by orcs..." "Was." corrected Rodent. "Why were these orcs chasing you?" "'Cause me & my friends killed their chieftain and took that brooch from them." said the hobbit with a tinge of pride in his voice. "Too bad all of we guys died 'cept me though." "Us!" snorted the ranger, lifting the hobbit by the lapels on his leather jerkin and slamming him repeatedly into a tree. "Not 'we guys', 'US guys'!" "B-but you wasn't even there!" sputtered the poor hobbit, who seemed to be on the verge of apoplexy. "It was us I tells ya." (If you haven't already guessed by this point, it might be noted that Rodent hated misuse, and misusers of the common tongue). "Hush Rodent and let him finish." scolded Sauramud, who was beginning to lose interest in the matter. "I'm finished." snapped the hobbit. "Now gimme the brooch!" Dingbat looked very pensive for a few minutes, obviously weighing the hobbit's story against all the nice sundries which he could purchase with the money from the sale of the brooch. "No." he said, and "Sorry." he added, because he was Lawful Good. "No?!?" coughed the hobbit, whose facial veins began to swell until they resembled a contour map of the Andes. "A fie on you all! May the curse of him with 75, no! 100 names of terror descend on you!" Rodent was unimpressed. "Oh can it." he yawned, dropping the hobbit in a heap. "May 1000 orcs defecate on your faces!" cried the hobbit, who had no intentions of 'canning it'. "Watch it." warned Dingbat. "Rodent doesn't like orcs." "May the fleas of a million kobolds infest your armpits!" Playdough, who already had as many fleas, growled, but Rodent merely said in a rather testy tone, "I don't like kobolds either." "Ach!" frothed the hobbit. "I spit on thine feet! Ptooee." He spat on Rodent's feet. "THY!" bellowed the ranger, losing his cool. "I spit on THY feet!" He dashed the hobbit in the fire for emphasis, where he burned merrily after a few initial screams. "Really Rodent, you must watch your temper." said the monk with mock annoyance. "Ah well." sighed Sauramud, "At least we don't have to go for firewood for a while." Not uncoincidentally, hardly half a league to the east, a troop of orcs had thrown a hobbit into a fire at precisely the same moment as Rodent, albeit this one was dead first. "Ach!" growled Ach'ptooe, acting chieftain due to the untimely demise of the last chieftain (the latter was killed by a bunch of hobbits in leather who then made off with the main tribal treasure, a jeweled brooch. The passing of a chieftain was a matter usually heralded with as much grief as the passing of a boulder-sized gallstone, but the loss of the brooch was another matter.) "Findt der fershlugener hobbit." he commanded the tribal shaman who was sitting crosslegged before him. The fact that it was the seventh time that evening he'd given the order mattered not. "Ya, ya." flatulated the shaman absently as he concentrated acutely on a bottle that he was spinning on the ground. "Nein! Forget der hobbit, first findt der brooch!" reconsidered Ach'ptooe, who then paced and cursed volubly (in fact, cursing made up most of his vocabulary) while the shaman hemmed and hawed. Finally the shaman gave a shout of triumph. "Ach!" he cried. "I findt dem! Dey ist dere!" Ach'ptooe followed the direction which the shaman's arm pointed. It was due west... It has been theorized that the magnitude of the chances for a wilderness encounter is a direct function of the time of night and the lack of armour on the person at watch. It came as no surprise then, that during Dingbat's watch the camp was invaded by a multitude of furry quadrupeds, each about the size of a small Volkswagon. "Rats!" screamed Dingbat as one leapt for his throat. Rodent awoke in the foul mood he usually had when he had tried to force himself to sleep in his armour. "What're you cursing about at this time of night?" he demanded. "Rattus Humongous!" translated the rudely awakened Sauramud (translated to a form more likely to be understood by Rodent, you understand). "Duh, Rodents!" yelled Playdough, catching on at last. "What?" demanded Rodent, thinking he had been addressed. "Er, guys..." prompted Dingbat, slightly distraught with the fact that he was presently being mauled by the pack. "Ah well, chopping time I suppose." sighed Rodent grabbing his magic bastard sword and leaping into combat. "Yeah." agreed Playdough, abandoning attempts to don his armour and leaping in after the ranger (returning only long enough to grab his magic two-hander - and to get Rodent's sword, which had flown from his grasp on the ranger's first swing). Sauramud, meanwhile, evaluated his own situation as four rabid rats boxed him in. "Let's see," he muttered. "I can either aid my friends in combat, possibly forfeiting my own life, or I can do the cowardly thing and vanish in a puff of smoke." He vanished. "Duh, where's the wiz?" asked Playdough, wondering at the lack of magic missiles. "Who cares." choked Rodent, trying to pry a rat off his throat. From the fringes of the clearing meanwhile there erupted a stream of maledictive garrulity, followed by a bolt of lightning and a charring of rats. "You see?" said the ranger. "He's being chewed up somewhere over there." Playdough didn't respond, however, for his paladinical blood-lust had begun to take over and he was hacking at everything that strayed into reach (and even Rodent on one occasion). Dingbat meanwhile had taken up a more defensible position in the topmost branches of a nearby tree where he called down words of support to his friends such as: "Rodent, behind you! Playdough, watch your flank! Shit!" The last because a stray magic missile had caught him in the side of the head, knocking him from his perch and sending him tumbling into a mass of rats, where he disappeared from the story for a while. The tide of battle was turning from bad to worse as the fighters tired, when suddenly the rats withdrew and fled off into the night. When the sound of their departure had faded to nil the wizard reappeared, looking much the worse for wear (not unlike he had been mauled by a cave bear for a few hours). "Phew." breathed Sauramud. "They were no ordinary rats, they were lycanthropes!" "No wonder my dagger wouldn't hit." said Rodent, who had fumbled his bastard sword a second time at the end of the battle. "By the way, where's Dingbat?" "I wonder if those were his blood-curdling cries for help which I heard near the battle's end?" pondered Sauramud. "If so, then methinks he's been dragged off as a hostage, or perhaps ratfood." "Damn!" cursed Rodent. "And he's got the brooch!" "Yeah." mourned Playdough. "The brooch." They spent a few moments to reflect on their loss, when a voice broke into their thoughts. "Ach!" it barked, and they spun to face Ach'ptooe! When relative order had been restored to the mental processes of our heros, the group found themselves surrounded by irate orcs (not that there's any other kind) and being submitted to questions and demands concerning a certain brooch. At first they denied any knowledge of such a brooch, but under threats of torture Rodent finally unleashed a flow of half-truths and double-talk to pacify the orcs. "...so you see," he concluded. "The monk's got it and we don't know where he is." "Ach. Der monk's got it? Ya?" snorted Ach'ptooe with open scorn. "A likely tale, ya! Vot's everyvons say! Der monk's gots it! Hokay vise-guy. Kaff it up!" "Look you ignorant barbiturate..." began Rodent with ill-disguised loathing, but Sauramud wisely jammed the end of his quarterstaff into the ranger's mouth before he got any further. "Vot's he say?" demanded the orc chieftain suspiciously. "Duh, he said 'look you ig..." began Playdough dutifully before he got the other end of the staff. "He said that maybe we could combine forces to locate the monk." said Sauramud hastily. "Ach nein!" laughed the orc. "Ve orcs ist der chaotic! Der nasties you know! Undt chaotics can't form der alliance!" "You are not chaotic!" snapped Rodent, plucking the wizard's staff from his mouth. "Orcs are lawful! I'm a ranger! I know." "Ach, got me dere." nodded the orc. "Hokay, ve go." The trail of the monk was not difficult to follow. Where there weren't markings of monkish fingers clawing at the ground, there were spatterings of Dingbat's blood and scraps of monkish apparel. Following the trail would pose no problem as long as the weather held. The only problem stemmed from the company. Orcs, they decided, were the lowest, filthiest, foulest creatures ever to tread the face of the land. It seems that the feeling was mutual, however, for as they moved on they found the gap between themselves and the orcs widening mile by mile until, on the dawn of the third day, the orcs were nowhere in sight. Around midday Playdough noticed the loss of the orcs. "Duh, the orcs are gone!" he cried with dismay. "Hmm, yes they are." agreed Sauramud rather matter-of-factly. "Well, maybe we oughta wait fer 'em here." suggested the paladin. The other two said nothing and quickened the pace. The hint bounced off of the paladin's skull with an audible 'thunk'. Not one to be daunted, he reared his horse to a stop and insisted. "Well maybe we oughta leave a message or somethin'!" This time the others gave him a slightly blunter hint, that is, they knocked him down and bound him hand and foot, gagged him, tied him to his horse and resumed their progress. They continued travelling in silence for a few more hours while Playdough fumed and Sauramud could not resist the odd comment like "We ought to travel like this more often" and "'s funny how many of the woodland noises we normally miss." Finally he tired of this game and contented himself with noting the paladin's muffled curses for eventual reporting to the high priest of the temple. End of Part One ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...) Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" (Synopsis of Part One: The monk finds a large diamond jewelled brooch while out gallantly searching for firewood. Upon his return to the camp and while the party is drooling over the find a hobbit appears and demands the brooch, based on his having stolen it from a group of orcs. Dingbat refuses to hand it over and during the resulting altercation Rodent 'accidently' kills the hobbit a bit. Later that night the party is attacked by giant rats, who make off with the monk (who was carrying the brooch). Scarcely have the others digested this bit when they are confronted by the aformentioned orcs, who also demand the brooch. They confuse the orcs with a line of patter and ditch them, moving off to search for the monk.) Part Two By evening they had untied the paladin and were preparing to find a campsite for the night when Rodent spied lights to their immediate east. Upon closer inspection they found the lights to be those of a small wilderness tavern. "Strange place for an inn." mused Sauramud as they approached, but stranger still was the sign that hung loosely over the oaken door. The sign bore scenes of pike-impaled bodies, split heads and other assorted cleavage. Rather quaintly scrawled below this (in blood) was 'Half-Axed Alehouse'. "Interesting." mumbled Rodent as they dismounted and tied their horses to the cement blocks out front. "I vote that we spend the night elsewhere." gulped the wizard, thumbing back over his shoulder. "Nonsense." grunted Rodent. "It's too dark to find anyplace else. Besides, this place has a nice, er, rustic atmosphere." "You mean it smells like a dirty stable." muttered Sauramud. They climbed the steps to the front door, and with but a moment's pause to examine the many deep axe-marks in it they entered. The main room was sparsely lit and filled with a dense blue smoke which reeked of burnt venison. They stood and blinked for a few minutes until their eyes stopped stinging and finally caught their first glimpses of the room's occupants. The room was filled with round tables, each sporting three or more very large, muscular men dressed only in loincloths. Upon spying the party they began to flex their brazen biceps and grunt, "Butch, butch, butch..." "Hmm." pondered the ranger. "Barbarians. We may be in for some difficulties. They serve only the most manly of types in these places." He glanced dubiously at Playdough who had barely passed puberty. "Well I'm not going to let some barbarians spoil my appetite." snorted Sauramud, waving the others forward towards the bar. When they had taken a scant three steps, however, there arose such a clatter of sword clasps and switchblades being snapped open that they had cause to reconsider the wizard's brave words. A quick backward glance showed that a few barbarians had shifted over to block the doorway, so they continued over and sat down. Once seated (after the ranger had cleared away the cockroaches with his bastard sword) a huge barmaid strolled over to them, wrinkling her(?) half-orc nose at Playdough. Suddenly she spat, "Ve don serve his type here." "Vait!" grunted a husky voice behind them, and they turned to see an immense barbarian (wearing captain's bars pinned to his bare shoulders). "Gib dem vat dey vant." He smiled a warm smile that would have turned a basalisk to stone. "Den ve kills dem, Jah?" He flexed his massive arms for emphasis and stroked his lantern jaw. "Jah! Jah! Kill kill kill..." chorused all of the barbarians, banging their cast-iron cups on the table and "Butch!" called a few voices from the back. "Er, thanks anyway, but I just lost my appetite." coughed Sauramud, struggling with the stopper on his hip flask of 'Ol Lysol' (a beverage not unlike grain alcohol, but 90 proof stronger). "You eat!" bellowed the barbarian, slamming a fist the size of a ten kilo ham down on the bar. "Jah! Eat eat (Butch!) kill kill..." began all of the others again until the first raised his hand and waved for silence. The barbarian grabbed a menu and thrust it at the paladin. Playdough took it from him and flipped open the human-skin cover and began to read. "Duh, lemme see." mumbled the paladin (he had never learned to read silently). "Duh, beer, saurkraut, pretzels, beer sausages, (no quiche), spam..." "Vell, make up yer mindt!" snarled the barmaid contemptuously. "Milk and cookies!" declared the paladin, slamming shut the menu. The barmaid paled noticeably and retreated a pace. "B-but dey ist not on der menu!" she stammered, casting glances about like a trapped animal. "Yeah, but I made up my mind like ya said, an' I want milk and cookies!" grunted Playdough, who was always cranky when hungry (and annoyed twofold at having been bound and gagged all day long). "Rodent!" hissed Sauramud, elbowing the ranger sharply in the ribs after the barmaid had shuffled off to fill the paladin's order. "Everybody's stopped talking and they're all staring at us." Rodent said nothing but merely nodded that he had noticed as well. The barmaid returned presently with a huge frosty aluminum jug of milk and a platter of fresh chocolate-chip cookies. Playdough fell to greedily. Rodent leaned across to the wizard and mumbled in his alignment tongue, "I don't trust this barmaid." Sauramud, who was of a slightly differing alignment, heard this instead to mean "Let's go find a table." "Where?" asked Sauramud rather puzzledly upon noticing that all of the other tables in the establishment were full. "I don't see any." "What do you mean?" demanded Rodent, misinterpreting the wizard's meaning. "Look right in front of you!" The wizard did, and spotted a table across the bar with only two barbarians seated at it. "You mean that?" he asked, pointing. "It's occupied." The two barbarians, however, upon seeing him point at them took the notion to jump out of the nearby window. The ranger gave up the wizard for drunk and decided to terminate the conversation. He began to look around to study the room's contents in case of a fight when he spied an empty table where he could have sworn two barbarians were just moments ago. "Oh look, an empty table." he exclaimed. "Let's grab it." The group scraped together their milk and cookies and shuffled over to the vacant table. They had resumed the task of devouring the paladin's sundries when Sauramud made a surprising observation. "Why is it that there are only three of us, yet I count all four seats at this table filled." "You've probably counted yourself twice." said Rodent between mouthfuls. "Either that or you've counted the old man next to you." Sauramud spun and indeed there sat beside him an old man of such advanced years that he looked as if he would die of old age any second. "Kin ye spare an old man a few bites?" he asked feebly. "Duh, no." said Playdough ramming the last bites down his gullet. "But you can have some milk." The old man grinned and chuckled. "Not that milk, thanks anyway." Sauramud stared at his empty glass and gulped sickly as the old man continued, "Ay must say, that were one good show ye put o'er the barbarians. 'Takes a real man t'order milk and cookies affore barbarians, aye." Rodent chuckled with some relief. "Should have ordered quiche while we were at it." "An' sent yerself to an early grave, no doubt." said the old man as he scraped the cookie crumbs off the plate. "They respect real men. They kills wimps." He fixed Rodent with a gimlet eye. "Take me advice, ye'd better be off 'fore the shock wears thin." "Won't that look cowardly?" asked Rodent uneasily. "Ach, ye'll be okay if ye don't turn yer backs on 'em." spat the old man with apparent amusement. "Good." said Rodent quickly. "Okay you two, we leave. Back to back, weapons drawn. Playdough, swing at anybody who gets close." "Duh, hokey-dokey." acknowledged the paladin who then turned and took a chop at the elderly stranger. "Not yet... er, not him!" cried Rodent in alarm. At the sight of a weapon a rumble ran though the rest of the patrons and a few assorted bill-hooks popped into view. "Now look what you've done." The old man was clutching his chest and gasping in fear, but miraculously unhurt. "No fear." he gasped. "Wi' the gods on our side, we'll make it." "Gods." snorted Rodent piously. "Who needs them?" Then, upon feeling a twinge in his alignment he added as an afterthought, "I mean, why disturb them over something like this that's well in hand." "Let's cut the chatter and blow this taco stand." growled Sauramud. Several nervous sparks were jumping from a glass rod he had clenched in his fist. With weapons drawn and back-to-back, they scuttled to the front door with as much nonchalance as they could muster. Once outside they sprinted for the woods, with the exception of the wizard. "Go!" he cried. "I shall cast a spell to detain the barbarians should they choose to pursue us!" The others watched intently as he pulled out his hip flask of 'Ol Lysol' again and stuffed a rag in the top, then produced a Zippo lighter from a pocket in his robes. With a graceless flourish he lit the rag and heaved the burning flask through the window broken in the shape of two barbarians then high-tailed it after the others. A muffled "Foomph!" rewarded his efforts, then when the highly volatile barbarian liquor ignited the entire area was rocketed by a fiery explosion and the tavern ceased to exist. "A 'spell', huh?" enquired Rodent nastily upon his return. "Blow it out your ear, nature-boy." said Sauramud testily. "Wasn't that just a little bit chaotic?" said Rodent. "Certainly not!" snapped Sauramud defensively. "I planned to do that all along." The others could not argue with such logic, so they gathered their belongings together and mounted up again. A campsite would be easy to find, they knew, given the light of the inferno behind them. They came at last to a sheltered clearing sporting the obvious remnants of a recent orcish encampment, which Rodent pronounced as safe for the night (seeing as how the orcs would have eaten anything in the area likely to have given them trouble). After tossing down their gear and cobbling together a makeshift camp they turned and regarded the old man who had tagged along with them tenaciously. "Now, who are you?" asked Sauramud suspiciously. "Ah." said the geezer. "Ay'm an information man ay is." "An information man?" asked Rodent in surprise. "You mean you sell information for a price?" "Duh, a stoolie!" chortled Playdough. The old man glared at him. "My profession is an old and noble one." he snapped. "And my price rises when ay feel upset!" "Hmm." said Rodent. "Do you know anything about a monk who stands about 5'6" in height, hops about punching at shadows while bragging about his exploits in a loud voice and does strange things when he gets close to horses..." began Rodent. "Ye mean Dingbat?" interrupted the old man. "No!" "Maybe!" "Duh, yeah!" blurted three voices simultaneously. "You've seen him then?" demanded Rodent, giving Playdough a dirty look. The old man smiled. "Mebbe." he yawned. (Note: In the lands around the city of Vermouth, when one says 'maybe', they really mean 'Yes, if the price is right'). The ranger scowled and reached into his pouch for some currency, but came up with little more than a handful of copper pieces. "Dang!" he cursed. "Look, I'm a little short at the moment. Sauramud...?" The wizard was already reaching for his pouch however. He dumped it on the ground, intending to count it. "That'll do." said the old man, scraping the pile close. "All ay knows is that he passed though the 'Alf-Axed Alehouse aboot a day ago, wi' a bunch o' ratty dudes." He paused and grinned. "That were a bang-up fight, it were! You know, I never seen someone try tae start a fight in a barbarian bar afore." "Why should a barbarian bar be any different for him?" said Sauramud crossly. "He tries to start one in every bar." "Duh, how'd he do?" asked Playdough curiously. The old man cackled with glee in remembrance. "Sounds like his typical barfight." observed Rodent. "Tell me, did you happen to see which way the ratty dudes dragged him when they left?" "Aye don't rightly remember." (Note: 'I don't rightly remember' means the same thing as 'Maybe' in Vermouth). "Highway robbery!" exploded Rodent. "All right, who has any money?" "Duh, I do." offered the paladin. "Okay Playdough." sighed the ranger. "Let him have it." Playdough (of course) misunderstood and thought the ranger was encouraging him to do something violent. Shrugging, he grabbed the old man by the throat and bellowing, "WHICH [///language not suitable for publication///] WAY DID THEY GO?!?" Playdough gripped with such enthusiasm, however, that the old man's face turned crimson, his tongue swelled up like a balloon, his eyes popped like pimples and his neck snapped in twelve places. "Oh nice going, stupid!" yelled Rodent angrily, slicing off Playdough's left ear with his bastard sword. "Now he can't tell us anything! Plus we'll all get quested by the temple for murder or something!" "But, but, but..." stammered the paladin, wondering what he had done to incur the ranger's wrath. "You may as well fling him into the pond! How we're going to find that brooch now is more than I can see!" raved Rodent. "They went northeast." declared Sauramud. "Tending to the north (hic)." The others goggled at him. "Duh, how do you know?" asked Playdough, trying to re-affix his ear. "We wizards have ways." smirked the magicer, quickly pocketing the now-empty bottle he'd been spinning on the ground. "Duh, well, let's go!" said Playdough with his usual amount of gung-ho. "In the morning." countered Rodent reasonably. They slept. The next morning they gathered together their gear and headed off in the direction which the wizard had indicated the night before. The going was slow, in part due to Sauramud's hangover and in part because their horses had frozen solid in the night. "Whaddya mean, 'it's winter'?!? It wasn't winter last night!" cried Sauramud. "Sure it was, didn't you notice the snow?" said Rodent. "Duh, nope." said Playdough. "Well I can't be responsible for pointing out everything." snorted the ranger. Sauramud muttered darkly about certain higher powers glossing over details, but put up with the weather resignedly. As the day progressed however, travelling became easier and Rodent began to recognize the terrain as being, somehow, familiar. When by mid-afternoon they had run up against a solid stone wall, he felt certain he knew the terrain. "You turkey, Sauramud!" he cursed. "You've led us right back to the city of Vermouth!" "Hmm, so I have." agreed the wizard. "Dingbat must lie within then." They moved around to the front gate and bribed their way back in as usual. As they moved down the main drag Rodent expressed doubts about Sauramud's hunch (and later his sanity) when suddenly the wizard stopped before a small shop and declared, "This is the place." "The Wine & Cheese shoppe?" demanded Rodent. "You're crazy!" Deciding to humor the daffy wizard Rodent strode into the shop followed by Playdough and Sauramud. Inside the store they glanced idly at the racks of wine and shelves of cheese. "Excuse me gents. May I be of service?" asked a rather ratty-looking man behind the counter. "Buzz off." snapped Rodent, but then reconsidered. "Well, yes. Do you have any 'Wartburg-au-merde' cheese?" The clerk grinned. "You're in luck. We got in a shipment just last year." 'Wartburg-au- merde', you recall, is a creamy, rather nasty cheese that improves with age, i.e. the greener it is the better it is. He reached under the counter and produced a block of something green that seemed to quiver as if alive. "Here it is." he choked. "Would you like a bag for that?" "No." sniffed Rodent. "I'll eat it here." "You most certainly will not!" gasped the clerk, who dropped the cheese into a bag and hermetically sealed it. "Will there be anything else?" "Yes." said Sauramud slowly. He held up a bottle which he'd pulled from one of the shelves. "What kind of wine is this?" The clerk paled and said in a hesitant voice, "Er, that's 'Blue Monk'. Truly a fine wine sir..." "Yes." said the wizard acidly. "But it's not the monk I'm looking for." The clerk was sweating and cleared his throat nervously. "Monk?" he squeaked, backing off a pace. "I don't know what yer talking about. Ain't nobody brought any monks here." On impulse, Rodent drew his bastard sword and used it to part the clerk's ribs. The clerk expired noisily. "Rodent," said Sauramud in his 'let's be reasonable' tone. "Why did you do that?" "I suspected that he might be a wererat." said the ranger apologetically. "One of the ones that dragged off Dingbat. He looked so ratty, you know. If he was, a normal weapon wouldn't have harmed him." (A wererat, you remember, is immune to anything but silver or magical weapons.) "Rodent, your sword's bloody magical." said the wizard flatly. "I forgot." Rodent admitted sheepishly. "Anyway, let's check out the shop while we're here." They kicked aside the corpse and stepped around behind the counter to a curtained doorway leading to the rear of the shop. There they paused. "Suppose a customer comes in and discovers our lycanthrope friend here?" asked Sauramud nervously, pointing at the corpse of the clerk. "They might get a little upset and call a constable or something." "Hmm, that's a point." agreed Rodent. He turned to Playdough (who was busily looting the corpse). "Playdough, how would you like to play store for a while?" "Duh, okay." said Playdough who had enjoyed playing store during his recent childhood. "Good." said Rodent. "Take care of any customers who come in." He and the wizard stepped through the curtain (not a moment too soon it seemed) when they heard the front door of the shop open and close. "Excuse me," came a voice from the front of the store. "Do you have any... Aaieee!" (Thwunk!!) The two leapt back through the curtain to see Playdough with his two- hander lodged between the shoulder-blades of a townee. "Duh, I took care of him real good like yuh said, hyuck hyuck!" chortled Playdough who, being a paladin, enjoyed nothing more than imbedding his blade into all potential godless heathens and blasphemers. Rodent and Sauramud exchanged hopeless glances and returned to the back room. Aside from a monk chained to the back wall and seven wererats, the room was empty. "Holy shi..." began Sauramud, just as the wererats attacked. End of Part Two ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...) Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" (Synopsis of Parts 1&2: Dingbat finds a disgustingly expensive jewel in the forest whilst off bravely scouting for firewood. The party rebuffs a persistent hobbit who claims ownership based on having stolen it from a warband of orcs. Rodent kills the hobbit. The party retires for the night but is soon swarmed by a large pack of giant rats. Dingbat is apparently kidnapped by the rats [which is a strange thing for rats to do - even giant ones]. Before the party can mourn his passing they are confronted by Ach'ptooe and his surly band of orcs in search of [surprise] a stolen brooch. They quickly confuse the orcs with a line of fast talk and convince them that combined efforts are needed to find Dingbat, who was carrying the brooch last. It takes them only a few days to lose the orcs, have a pleasant encounter at a barbarian bar and beat some information out of an elderly man. The trail leads to the city of Vermouth and a suspicious wine and cheese shop where they find the monk in the back room [sans brooch] and a large group of wererats.) Part Three "PLAYDOUGH!" screamed Rodent, leaping back to a defensive stance. Playdough, who had been taught at an early age to respond to his name, came charging into the room. Sauramud, on the other hand, was just on the way out of the room and they collided with a meaty 'thump'. Sauramud was knocked down backward and trodden over by Playdough in the paladin's haste to get into the fray. "Duh, the wiz just bought it." announced Playdough cheerfully as he laid into a wererat. "Nonsense." choked Sauramud. He struggled back to his feet. "A fractured vertebrae at worst. Fortunately I'm sixth level and can take such abuse." He scuttled quickly for the exit. "If you're okay then get in here and absorb a few hits for us if you're out of spells, will you?" said Rodent through clenched teeth. "Keep yer shirt on." said Sauramud haughtily. "My magic powers..." He would have continued, but Rodent fumbled again and tagged Sauramud on the noggin with his sword on the backswing. "Oops." said Rodent. "Yuck. He's bought it big time now." "It figures..." cursed the wiz as he expired. This seemed to inspire Playdough who went berserk and cleaved a wererat in half with the cry of: "Je ne sais pas qui se passe!" This cry is rumored to be the last words of the high elf (I say 'high elf' because he wasn't in the gutter with a bottle) Rene the Frightfully Nasty, greatest of the ancient elven warriors. He uttered it from the top of Drivel Hill only moments before he and his entire army were mowed down by kobolds. Although there is no exact translation, the nearest approximation is, "My friends, we are all going to die!" ...or something like that. Many scholars of ancient elven (and especially elven scholars of ancient elven) dispute this translation. Playdough was doing much better than Rene, however, and cleaved yet another wererat, and yet another, until at the sight of such carnage the morale of the remaining lycanthropes snapped entirely and they surrendered... whereupon Rodent finished off the lot of them. "Well." chortled the paladin. "That wasn't too hard." "Yeah, but we lost the wizard." complained Rodent with grave financial overtones. "But you gained a monk!" chirped Dingbat's voice from where he was chained up to the wall. "So you're way out ahead in the deal!" The wizard's corpse twitched. "Indeed." said Rodent sarcastically. He eyed the wererats dubiously, looking for pockets or pouches to root through. "Looking for something?" asked Dingbat idly. "Duh, where's the brooch?" asked Playdough as he sliced open a few wererats to see if they'd swallowed it. "Stop making such a mess and get me down!" said Dingbat. "I know where the brooch is!" Rodent and Playdough exchanged glances, sighed, and reefed Dingbat's chains off. "All right!" said Dingbat, bounding around the room. "That's more like it! When you're a monk, being chained up is such a trial!" He baffed a few dead wererats with monkish punches for a bit. "So?" prompted Rodent. "Where's the brooch? We'll have to sell it to get the wizard raised you know." Dingbat stopped dancing on a dead wererat and looked embarrassed. "Ah, actually, I don't have it." he said sheepishly. "The wererats found it when they were chaining me up here." "Oh great." muttered Rodent. "Duh, you mean we wasted all this time trackin' youse down and rescuin' you then?" asked the paladin, obviously annoyed with the wererats (for taking the brooch... or perhaps not killing Dingbat). "Which way did they go with it?" demanded Rodent. "I dunno. They kept saying something about sacrificing a monk to the great rat god in the secret temple and restoring the holy jewel to the idol, but that could mean anything." "Hang on." said Rodent. "The wererats have a secret underground temple in the heart of the greatest city in the land?" The other two looked at him. "Duh, howscum you know that?" asked Playdough suspiciously. "Well, it's just a guess." said the ranger. "Oh. Hokey-dokey." said the paladin, promptly forgetting what they were talking about. Dingbat meanwhile was rifling the wizard's pockets and removing sundry items such as healing potions that could be more effective if distributed properly (i.e. in Dingbat's backpack). The body seemed to twitch more violently at this, but as Sauramud was deader than an orc who wandered into a dwarven bar by mistake, the monk merely ignored it. Sometime later the three living adventurers departed for the marble opulance of the temple of Le Thick, god of the Western Mountains, with Sauramud slung over Playdough's back like a sack of russet potatoes. "Say Playdough," asked Dingbat, "what exactly does a god of the western mountains teach in Sunday school?" "Duh, I dunno." said the paladin. "We never talked about it in paladin training. Mostly we talked about choppin' orcs." "Don't you *listen* during temple services?" snorted Rodent, whacking Dingbat upside the head. "I don't go very much." confessed the monk. "And everytime I do the sermon seems to be about how even monks can be saved by the teachings of Le Thick and healthy donations. Heck, I give away 90% of everything I have now anyway." Rodent snorted. "What do you mean you give away 90%? No wonder you're always sponging from the rest of us! We'll have to cut down your share more." "Well I don't..." began Dingbat hotly, then he paused and seemed to think a moment. "Hey! What do you mean 'cut down more'?!?" "Well it was brought up that you seem to waste all your treasure, not needing to buy weapons, or armour, or magic stuff, so..." began the paladin. "Just *who's* idea was that?" cried the monk, bounding up and down in anger. "Not mine." chorused the two fighters. "Oooooh!" snarled Dingbat. "Let's get him raised so I can kill him myself!" He booted the wizard's corpse a few times (which, in spite of being dead, spasmed angrily). "Just how long has this been going on?" "Duh, what year is this?" asked Playdough. There was an uncomfortable silence. "Well, let's get on with it." said Dingbat frostily. He grabbed a toe of one of Sauramud's sneakers and started dragging the corpse to the door. The wizard's head bumped along the way to the temple until Playdough grabbed the shoulders when he noticed the corpse was leaving a bloody trail. The party wound their way through the city past the vendors, beggars, hookers and thieves (the latter three increasing in number as they approached the temple). The temple itself was an impressive stone edifice lavished with majestic carvings and bas-reliefs of hard working, smiling people forking over their life savings to the priesthood for the good of all. Several grimy, flea-bitten adventurer types also appeared in the bas-reliefs, generally dragging a corpse (or two) with contrite expressions on their faces. All in all the effect was quite profound on the pious masses below. As usual, the party had to beat back the beggars and cut off a few probing hands as they made their way up the front stairs. They entered the darkened vestibule and were ushered forward by a temple acolyte. The group looked around expectantly, propping Sauramud up against the altar and began rifling through a stack of old sermon notes on a nearby table. Finally they were approached by a figure garbed in expensive (but no less tacky for all that) robes. He cleared his throat politely to get the party's attention and said, "Good day gentlemen, as always it is a pleasure to see you. What brings you into the temple on this fine day?" "We have to see the high priest." said Rodent. "It's urgent." "Oh no." said the priest sourly. He looked pointedly at Dingbat. "You don't need anouther Cure Disease do you? Didn't we talk about that the last couple of times?" Dingbat, who had been attempting to 'shush' the priest up to that point just hunkered back a bit looking rather embarassed. Rodent was indignant. "So THAT'S where the money in the resurrection fund has been disappearing to! And here I've been telling everybody that the temple was overcharging us for the service!" "It's not like you think..." began the monk sheepishly but the ranger cut him off with a savage smack to the side of the head. He turned again to the priest. "We really do have to see the big guy. It's about our friend over here who's a little under the weather." "Huh? You mean that dead wizard who's leaving a nasty stain on our incredibly expensive ivory altar?" asked the priest sardonically. "Any priest in residence can perform the proper burial rituals. Why do you need to bother the head priest for such a trifling matter?" The wizard's body gave another one of those funny twitches and, were it not dead, looked about to speak angrily. Rodent sighed. "How do they always KNOW when we don't have enough money?" The cleric looked smug. "First level spell." The ranger was not impressed. "That was a rhetorical question. Now, can we puh-lease get in to see the high priest or do we have to make a scene like we did the last time?" "He's busy." said the priest shortly. "Can't see anybody today. All booked up for the next week. Come back next Thursday." "NEXT THURSDAY?!" bellowed Playdough. "This is STUPID! What kind of Mickey Mouse temple is this?" There was a distant rumble of thunder and a ceiling tile fell on the paladin's head. The monk and the ranger edged subtly away from him. A moment later the high priest came barging into the nave wearing his smoking jacket and clutching a Virgin Bloody Mary in his hand (the one that wasn't wrapped around the virgin in any case). A lit cigar protruded from his mouth, wafting fumes vaguly reminicent of temple incense towards the party. "What's going on here?" he demanded. "Who's blasphemed in the sanctuary again?" He stopped short when he saw the party milling about. "Oh, it's you. I thought we excommunicated the lot of you." "That was last month your holiness." said Rodent. "Before we paid up our back tithes. Which is why we are somewhat financially embarassed this time..." The high priest cut him off with a backward wave of his hand. "Nix! No credit. New policy." "Bullsh.. I mean hogwash!" said Rodent, hauling out his ratty copy of the temple teachings. He flipped it open to a marked page. "Let me refer you to chapter eighteen." He assumed his preaching stance and began to read, "4> And Le Thick spake unto the masses saying 5> Behold I am a neat guy 6> and the people did applaud and were content." he paused a moment. "Maybe I'll skip a bit here...." he flipped a couple of pages further ahead until he found the passage he wanted. "Here we go. 256> and the holy warrior didst appear before the high priest to petition Le Thick to succor his companion who was dead 257> and the high priest didst look upon the face of the dead and was moved. 258> But it came to pass that the holy warrior was short on gold and could not afford the ministrations of the temple. 259> Le Thick didst speak and said unto the priest 260> Behold this loyal warrior who dost seek succor but cannot afford the reasonable fee 261> and the priest didst reply Oh Omnipotent one shall we then throw him out on his ear? 262> And Le Thick didst reply saying 263> Nay, for being a holy warrior of the fold we shall offer him credit at a reasonable rate of interest with easy payback terms to be negotiated later..." "Wait a minute." interrupted the high priest. "What revision of the _Most Excellent Teachings of Le Thick_ are you reading from? I think you will find that the wording has changed a bit since you bought that copy. It seems that the ancients translated a word wrong in the original text." "Eh? What word?" asked Rodent skeptically. "Well, it seems that wherever you see the word 'credit' you should substitute it with the word 'discount'." "How much of a discount?" asked Playdough, clasping his dangerously light money pouch. The high priest looked over at the wizard and eyed the damage. "Not a lot in this case" he admited. "There's an awful lot of damage to the head." "That's normal." said Dingbat from where he was standing by the automatic holy water dispenser plugging in gold coins and filling a few flasks (from which he had poured out the oil into the baptismal font to make room). "Be that as it may," said the priest. "The question of a discount is right out." "Well geez! How are we gonna go out and kill the evil temple and get the brooch back without the wiz?" asked Playdough. "Evil temple?" asked the priest, pricking up his ears. "Yes!" said Rodent quickly, linking an arm with the priest and steering him away from Dingbat (who was attempting to jimmy the coin box on the holy water dispenser), "An evil temple of wererats right in the city of Vermouth! Just imagine the spiritual torment they must infict on the citizens..." "Spiritual torment? Who cares about that? They are going to cut into our tithes among the populace!" Rodent stumbled a second, then continued smoothly, "Of course they will... UNLESS..." "Unless you boys go out and snuff the lot of them!" said the priest beamingly. "Wonderful! Off you go now." Rodent coughed. "There's still the matter of us being understrength due to the loss of the wizard. I don't see how we can see our way clear to performing the temple this little service without a raise dead spell, and substantial numerical compensation." "You would blackmail the temple?" gasped the priest. "Duh, yes." said Playdough, who had tagged along with them. The priest eyed them for a few moments, then smiled. "You boys have learned well from the teachings of Le Thick. You shall have your spell, yea and even a thousand gold into the bargain, providing you return to us the heads of these false wererat priests." "Done." said Rodent and Playdough in unison, nearly drowning out the sound of one of the temple bouncers tackling the monk as Dingbat was thwacking the holy water dispenser with his joy-stick. "What IS that grotty little man doing?" said the priest testily. "It ate my gold piece and didn't give me any holy water!" cried Dingbat as he was dragged up in front of the priest. "Now look!" shouted the priest, taking his cigar from his mouth and flinging it to one side. Unfortunately he flung it right into the the baptismal font that Dingbat had emptied his oil into - which promptly lit up with an impressive "WHUMP" sound. Pandemonium ensued, with acolytes desperately attempting to beat the flames out of the gold embroidered silk hangings festooning the walls of the temple. "Look, a sign!" screamed a parishoner in the front row, swooning with religious fervor. "Like hell." muttered the priest, casting a quick raise dead spell on Sauramud. The wizard blearly stumbled to his feet as the ranger and the paladin snaffled his arms and half-carried him out. Dingbat tagged along, the bouncer having been dragooned into beating out the rising flames. "...and even a thousand gold into the bargain!" Rodent was explaining to the confused wizard. "Let me get this straight," asked Sauramud. "We have to kill an entire temple full of wererats? You're mad. You're all mad." "Damn rights I'm mad." cried Dingbat. "That cheap excuse for a vending machine ate my lucky gold-plated lead piece." End of Part Three ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...) Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" (Synopsis of Parts 1,2&3: Dingbat finds a jeweled brooch and is promptly kidnapped by wererats. The remainder of the party is confronted by Ach'ptooe, the orc chieftain and his band of merry orcs. They argue philosophy and split up, the party eventually tracking Dingbats kidnappers to the city of Vermouth. The ensuing battle at a wine and cheese shop leaves the wizard metabolically challenged [dead] but does herald the return of Dingbat to the party. There is little rejoicing, especially since Dingbat returns sans brooch. Dingbat explains that the brooch was taken by the wererats to their secret temple beneath the city. The party [broke as usual] takes Sauramud to the temple and weasels a raise dead in return for the heads of the wererat priests. Dingbat sets the temple on fire accidentally and the party skulks off to delve the sewers for the wererat temple.) Part Four With a grunt and a scatalogical curse Rodent heaved up the heavy grating covering the dank, smelly hole in the alley. "Are you sure the wererat temple will be down in the sewers?" asked Dingbat uncertainly. "Of course. If not, there'll be entrances to their lair." said Rodent confidently. "Duh, you sure?" asked the paladin, eyeing the dark hole. "Oh don't be such a wimp!" said Dingbat, perking up suddenly. "Watch me decend this hole using my incredible monkish powers!" Before anyone could say anything, Dingbat hopped down the pit. (A monk, you may recall, can fall some thirty feet without taking damage. Usually Dingbat could too.) A few moments later came a "plonk" sound and a cackle of monkish glee. "Only twenty feet down! C'mon guys!" "He's probably gonna be all smug about this for the next bunch of rounds." groused Playdough hefting his mass over the edge of the manhole and beginning to lower himself. "Whoa!" said Rodent hooking a finger in the chaste one's helm and reefing him back. "Hadn't you better wait until we lower a rope in there?" "Oh, okey dokey." chortled Playdough good naturedly. "Lower away." "Uh, I thought you had the rope." said Rodent. They both turned and looked at Sauramud who merely shrugged. "Hey, I got stuck carrying the rations." he said. The threesome leaned over the hole and called down, "Yo Dingbat! You wouldn't happen to have the rope would you?" There was the sound of somebody twenty feet down digging through a backpack. "I've got it right here, why?" There was a pause. "Oh..." There was another pause as the threesome exchanged looks. A rather plaintive voice echoed up from the depths. "Say, are you guys going to be coming down here pretty soon with a couple of lights? I think I hear things moving around." "Not without rope we're not!" said Rodent snidely. "Why don't you come back up? Don't you have a 92% chance to climb that wall?" There was the frantic scrabble of monkish toes and fingers clawing for purchase. "No good! It's all slick and wet." whined the monk. "Couldn't you just lower me a torch or something while I wait?" "Well we could drop you one, hold on." The wizard hauled out his Zippo and sparked up a torch which he tossed down the open drain. There was a 'THWUCK' from below. "Agh!" screeched Dingbat. "Here, catch." said Sauramud as an afterthought. "Ooooh! If I DO get out of here..." "Stuff it both of you!" said Rodent, asserting his imagined authority. "I have dispatched the good paladin to the General Store with a note to get fifty feet of rope." "Why can't we buy that in a thirty foot length? Isn't that all we need?" "Some guild arrangement I think." said Rodent absently. "Remember the time we needed two hundred feet for that tower and we had to tie all the knots? I still think we should ban Playdough from tying knots - we lost ten feet when we had to cut him free." As he spoke the aforementioned paladin returned still tearing the 'Acme Rope Co.' label off his newly procured fifty foot coil of rope. "Duh, hows about if I just tie it to this drain pipe here?" offered Playdough helpfully. Rodent snatched the rope out of his hands as calmly as he could muster. "That's okay. I'm a ranger, it's my job." He looped the rope around some convenient objects with a rangerical double-hitch, then turned to one of the gathering townees. "Watch you don't trip on that or it could get ugly." The townee eyed the ranger up and down a bit and shrugged. "Sure Mac. Nice rope you got there, would be a shame if somethin' wuz to happen to it." Rodent blinked, then turned to the paladin. "Playdough, is this man evil?" The paladin squinted at the offending townee and nodded. "Yup, he's evil alright." He jabbed a beefy finger at the townee and growled, "I warn you, I gots a special dispensational from the temple what says I gets ta kill you and guys like you." The townee blanched a bit and moved along. The others gathered cheered as Playdough preened. "When you're quite finished..." said Sauramud, hanging on the rope and beginning to lower himself. "Just one more autograph." muttered the paladin, then he followed the others down into the hole. When they arrived at the bottom they found Dingbat slightly muddy and singed, but none the worse for wear. "I think I found which way we have to go!" he said excitedly, prancing from foot to foot and pointing down the corridor. "What makes you say that?" asked Rodent suspiciously. "That sign on the wall!" said Dingbat, indicating an arrow carved into the wall with the childish script "WerERat Templ DIs way. Servis TimEs inna MidDle of dA NiTe (bUt onLy onna FULL moOn). PasTR J. RATTY" "I say, a clue!" declared Sauramud. "Best not take it too literally." warned Rodent sagely. "Could be a trap." The party nodded agreement and prompty marched off in the direction of the arrow. The sewers were dank passages, low and dripping with noxious substances. The flickering light of the torches illuminated the many side corridors they passed which led to twisty little passages, little twisty passages, twisty little grottos and a grotty little twisto - him they detoured around as he seemed to be doing something unpleasant to himself with a fork. Eventually Rodent spotted a door at the end of one of the side passages. They took that as a good sign and turned down that way. With nary a pause to think when they reached the door Playdough lowered his shoulder and smashed it from its hinges. Beyond lay a square room. "Hey! A ten by ten room." beamed Rodent. "I think we've found the dungeon proper here!" "Thank god!" said Sauramud who had been frantically charcoaling out the squiggly corridors on a piece of parchment (and found to his consternation that many of the corridors seemed to overlap each other in places). "Now where did I put my graph paper?" "Duh, I gots a question for you Rodent." said Playdough thoughtfully as they cautiously entered the room. "Who builds these dungeons and why? Howscome they's always all abandoned and only full of monsters?" "Well some appear to be temples." said Rodent philosophically. "Who knows why people do the things they do for gods... other gods I mean." he added hastily as he felt a tug on his alignment. "False gods." "Others are built by wizards for defense, experimentation and storage of monsters they aren't quite ready to unleash.... the usual." said Sauramud. "And there are some that are built with no good reason and no visible means of support." said Dingbat majestically. "They're the fun ones. Lots of monsters! Baff! Pow! I wonder which one this is?" Just then a chute opened in the wall and out poured fifteen giant rats. "Methinks it's the latter." said Sauramud, quickly dropping to his accustomed position at the back of the party. "This should slow them." He waved a hand and the lot of them fell asleep, much to the wizard's amazement. "Hm, nice work." mused Rodent. He stepped over and began braining the comatose rodents with the business end of his sword. He was joined enthusiastically by Playdough and Dingbat, who were much accustomed to dispatching slept opponents. Sauramud pulled out his pocket dungeon guide, perusing it amidst the sound of splintering ratty craniums. "Now, statistically speaking, behind this next door we should find..." "Goblins!" bellowed Rodent with delight as he reefed open the next door. "Damn!" cursed the wizard. "It was supposed to be kobolds. Hey guys, we could be in for a tough one here!" "Die, you environmentally unfriendly nasties" cried Rodent as he buzzsawed through their ranks on rangerical frenzy mode. "This will teach you to douse your campfires before retiring for the night! Don't litter! Recycle! Give a hoot, don't pollute!" "Duh, Rodent's gone 'ranger' again." said Playdough ducking some of Rodent's wilder swings. "Ranger madness." said Sauramud darkly. He dodged a flying goblin arm. "Those six attacks really push his adrenalin level to the toxic point. Thank Le Thick that he lacks testosterone or the results might be unpleasant." "They're not unpleasant now?" asked Dingbat angrily as Rodent finished off the last goblin. "I didn't even get to unleash my monkish wrath on them before nature-boy had them filleted." Rodent was standing in the center of the 30'x30' room panting and puffing, holding his dripping sword in one hand and a goblin head in the other. " Only you can prevent forest fires... Ban leg-hold traps..." Slowly he came back to a semblance of normality (normal for Rodent, anyway), snapping fully aware again when he noticed Playdough beginning to rifle the corpses for treasure. "Fifteen silver?" spat the paladin, tossing it down with disgust. "What a rip-off!" "But not atypical of goblins we have encountered in the past." interjected Rodent, now fully recovered. "I suggest a quick wash and rinse of our armour and then continuing onwards." "We don't have the time." said Sauramud, gingerly stepping through the mounds of goblin bits on his way to the far door. "C'mon." "What do you mean?" snapped the ranger, assuming a haughty pose. "We're under no time limit." "Duh, I ain't waiting around fer you neither." said Playdough. "Youse killed all the monsters in here, and I'm bored." "And there's probably just gobs of treasure waiting for us in the next room!" piped in Dingbat. He bounded on ahead with typical monkish enthusiasm. "Why I'll bet there's just a pair of the ledgendary 'Monkish Boots of Kicking' just waiting me in there! I can almost hear them calling me." "Stuff and nonsense." said Rodent sourly. "There's no such magic item! Nobody would make such a silly item, ask the wizard." "Well actually..." said Sauramud thoughtfully, "I was reading just the other day about a scarab that some sicko wizard invented that eats one's heart out if worn. And then there's always the 'Necklace of Strangulation', 'Cloak of Acid', 'Codpiece of Incurable Jockitch'..." "Okay, we get the point." snarled Rodent as he and the paladin both unconciously reached to scratch with the mention of the last item. Dingbat, meanwhile, was at the door on the far end of the room attempting to jimmy the lock with his minimal thief skills. The growing pile of bent and broken lock picks on the ground at his feet attested to his mounting frustration. "This must be a magical lock!" he cursed, tossing down his last bobby pin (having long run out of slim-jims and credit cards). "This MUST lead into the goblin treasure room!" "Actually the sign above it says 'Temple Entrance'." said Rodent. "And the little lable over the doorknob says 'PULL' not 'PUSH'." said Sauramud, pulling it open. Dingbat jumped up and down in annoyance. "Nice going wiz! You probably just set off every trap in the world!" "You mean like that bell what's ringing way down deep there in the corridor?" asked Playdough, pointing into the dark corridor revealed behind the door. "Exactly!" said Dingbat, turning around and smacking the wizard's pointy hat off. As the latter turned to retrieve it with a curse the monk applied his size 9 monkish Gucci boots to Sauramud's ample posterior. "Ooof! Why you...!" The wizard bounced back to his feet and began to chant and gesticulate. Dingbat watched for a few seconds and counted slowly to himself. As the spell reached a crescendo the monk excecuted one of his patented manouvers and performed a lightning quick monkish gaunch pull on a startled Sauramud. went the spell, leaving the stunned wizard blinking out of a blackened face. He wiped his face with one hand and shouted, "You IDIOT! Don't you realize what you've done? I had to sleep EIGHT HOURS to get that spell! And now it's GONE! Forever!" "Forever?" said Playdough, scratching his noggin. "Well, for today anyway." amended the wizard hastily, "Which just MIGHT be forever if we all get KILLED because I don't have that spell when I need it!" "But you were going to cast it on me anyway so it couldn't have been too important." said Dingbat smugly. "How do you know it wasn't a protective spell? Like _Shield_, or _Find Familiar_ or _Burn The Monk's Groin Hairs Off_?" Dingbat, meanwhile, was pondering his last statement with growing consternation. "Well when I said 'not important enough' what I really meant was..." Rodent looked at Playdough. Playdough looked at Rodent. "Just because it isn't important to you doesn't negate the fact that by interrupting my spell you could have spelled DOOM for the entire party! Don't you realize we could have been BLOWN to BITS?" "Ah, you can't even blow your nose without looking in that stupid book of yours for reference anyway." said Dingbat with a withering sneer. Sauramud muttered something darkly about the monk trying to block _this_ one as he fished a nasty looking wand out of his pockets and flipped up the crosshairs on the end of it. About this time the sound of a door taking leave of its hinges echoed back to them from the other end of the hall and they both turned to notice that the fighters had wandered off without them. "Oh no! They're going to get all the treasure and experience! Follow them!" cried Dingbat, leaping down the hall after the others. Sauramud followed after he had repocketed his wand and retreived his backpack. Meanwhile, in the room at the other end of the darkened hall, Rodent and Playdough were just wiping the ichor off their swords from the pair of dead hobgoblins when Dingbat leapt through into the room and assumed monkish combat pose #14-b with a deafening, "Hyah!" End of Part Four --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...) Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" (Synopsis of Parts 1,2,3&4: The party finds a jeweled brooch that has been stolen from Ach'ptooe and his band of orcs. Dingbat and the brooch are stolen by a passing band of wererats. The party ducks the orcs and tracks Dingbat back to the city of Vermouth where Sauramud buys it in the ensuing battle to free the monk. The brooch is lost however as the wererats flee to their underground temple with it. The party undertakes a quest to kill the wererat priests in return for a raise dead for the wizard. Dingbat, accidentally torches the temple. The party skulks through the inevitable dungeons-beneath-the-city where Dingbat mortally insults Sauramud.) Part Five "You're too late. They're all dead." said Rodent, causing the monk to groan in despair. "They put up a good fight though, for Hobgoblins." "Dang!" said the monk, prodding a corpse. "I suppose you've already searched them for treasure?" Rodent merely nodded towards Playdough who was counting out a stack of gold coins into piles on the floor. "Oh. Well, have you searched for secret doors?" The ranger pointed to the tap marks on all the walls with one thumb as he wrapped a bandage around his left leg. "Shoot. Isn't there anything left in this room?" "Well you could check those three levers on the wall there for traps." said Sauramud from the doorway where he was surveying the room. "Where? Oh yes." said Dingbat with pleasure. "All right! I love these things! Lessee, the left one here..." Dingbat strode over and grabbed one of the levers and cranked it down. To everyone's mild surprise a section of wall slid open revealing a wide stairway down. "Hey, first time!" cried the monk, bounding up and down with glee. "Now I wonder what the other ones do..." he said as he heaved on another lever. There was a flash and a smell of ozone as Dingbat spasmed into a little hop, still gripping the lever. His hair puffed out dramatically and began to sizzle, as little wispy curls of smoke drifted out of his trousers. "Hey Dingbat!" called the wizard. "Did you make your saving throw?" "Y-Y-Y-e-e-e-s-s-s!" chattered the monk, still gripping the lever but now skittering back and forth on the floor. "Phew!" said Sauramud. "At least we don't have to waste a healing potion on you. Don't worry guys, these traps usually discharge after a few minutes. "Y-Y-Y-o-o-u-u-u-b-b-b-a-a-s-s-t-t..." said Dingbat, flopping around on the lever like a gutted fish. Eventually sparks stopped shooting off his eyelashes and he collapsed into a heap of static sparking laundry on the floor. "Ohhhhh..." "Lucky bugger." said Rodent. "How you monks can take so much abuse and suffer no damage is beyond me." "Trade secret..." moaned Dingbat, pulling himself up. "It's a monk thing. You wouldn't understand." A moment later he was dancing about frantically when he noticed that his expensive monkish boots were afire. The others watched until the monk had extinguished all the burning bits of his raiment before they turned their attentions to the stairway. "Looks pretty dark down there." mused Sauramud looking down the stairs. He pulled out a new torch and touched it to the side of Dingbat's head. There was a burst of sparks and the torch flared into life. "Ooooh! Do that again and I'll... I'll..." sputtered the monk when a sudden thought struck him. "Hey! There's still one more lever to try." "Nooooo!" yelled the other three but before any of them could throttle him the monk pulled the last lever and the floor dropped out from under them. Twenty feet later the two fighters and wizard were tying on splints and bandages while the monk, as usual, took no damage. The others directed comments in his direction which a lesser person might have taken as personal threats but Dingbat merely shrugged them off. "It's just a pit guys! Things could be worse!" he piped, and suddenly they were. With many a grate and groan two of the walls of the pit gave a tremendous shudder and began to close in on the foursome. "Oh wonderful." groused Rodent. "This isn't turning out to be one of our better days. I don't suppose we have time to search for a secret door out of here." He glanced up at the levers twenty-something feet overhead and rubbed his chin. "Say Dingbat, I don't suppose you could climb one of these walls and trip that lever the other way again. I'm willing to bet that it would disarm this trap." "Um." said the monk skeptically eying the smooth vertical faces of the pit. Rodent snorted. "I didn't think so." "Duh," said Playdough who had jammed his ubiquitous ten foot pole in between the closing walls. It was bending alarmingly and didn't seem to be slowing things much. "Howscum Sauramud doesn't just levitate up and flip it?" "Because he probably doesn't have a levitate spell mem..." Rodent spun and faced the wizard. "You don't happen to have a levitate spell memorized do you?" "I might." said the wizard sullenly. "Why? Who wants to know?" "Well if you do, would you _please_ levitate up to the lever and throw it the other direction?" said Rodent impatiently. "Why bother?" snapped Sauramud. "If I try to cast it a certain monk will just jostle me and make me muff the spell like he always does." "For crying out loud just levitate up there and throw the damned lever!" shouted Rodent. His words were punctuated by the snap of the paladin's ten foot pole. "Well perhaps if a certain monk was to admit that he was an idiot and apologize for his earlier actions I might consider it." said the wizard with a yawn. He reached into one of his inner pockets and pulled out a small silver flask which he unscrewed and proceded to take a long draught from. "I will do no such thing." retorted Dingbat. "You deserved what you got and it was all your fault anyway." He crossed his arms stubbornly and squatted down in the corner - albeit he had to move every few seconds as the walls continued to close. "Well I suppose we're all just going to die then because the monk is too pig headed to admit the error of his ways." declared Sauramud. He pocketed the mickey and began to examine his fingernails. "Uh, guys..." said Playdough desperately as he braced his hands and feet against the walls in a vain attempt to stop them. His futile attemts resulted only in getting the top of his great helm pushed in. "For crying out loud!" bellowed the ranger when an inspiration struck him. "Say wiz, pretend for a second that I'm the monk." "You don't look like him." said Sauramud critically. "Nor do you bound around like him." "JUST HUMOUR ME!" "Okay." shrugged the wizard, slightly cowed. "We'll assume for the moment that you're the monk." "Fine!" said Rodent. "Then I apologize! I was an idiot and I acted in rash monkish fashion! I am very sorry for being such a dolt and I will never pull your gaunch again when you are trying to cast a spell!" Sauramud thought for a second or two and then responded, "Okay. Apology accepted." "What?!" yelled Dingbat, leaping to his feet in outrage. "Why I never!" "Yes you did, so there!" said Sauramud blowing a sloppy raspberry in the monk's direction. "Now let me see... _Levitate_ did you say?" "Yes! Yes!" said Rodent and Playdough (who had his arms outstretched, palms planted on the closing walls) in unison. "Cast it will ya?" "Don't rush me." said the magicer cooly. "You don't just snap your fingers and have a spell just happen. A spell of this complexity takes some time to do. I have to psych myself up for it." He took a couple of deep breaths and noticed that conditions about him were getting rather claustrophobic for his liking. With a shrug he snapped his fingers and rose up the side of the narrow pit. When he reached the top he lost no time in tossing the lever and, to the relief of all, the sides of the pit reversed their direction. Playdough collapsed to the floor and clasped his hands over his face. In a low voice that probably only the ranger might have heard he said, "When I get out of here I's gonna kill everyone in the party what's not wearing armour." "Amen." said the ranger. Dingbat, now that the excitement of the closing walls had abated began to examine some of the other contents of the pit when his keen monkish eyes noticed something amid the rubble. "Hey look here!" he called. He pulled a skeletal corpse out of a (now scrunched to a couple of feet wide) pile of rubble. "All this guy's clothes have rotted away except for the boots! Why, they look brand new! I'll bet they're magical." "Didn't help him very much to get out of the pit." called Sauramud who had landed at the top of the aforementioned pit and was tying a rope to the handrail of the stairs. "I wonder..." mused Dingbat. He dropped onto his duff and pulled off his beloved Guccis. In a minute we had pulled on the new boots (after shaking the bones and cobwebs out of them) and stood up. He took a few tentative steps. "They fit perfectly." he said in awe. "They MUST be magical." Dingbat picked up a bit of trash from the bottom of the pit and tossed it straight up then, without any apparent effort, leapt four feet into the air, executed a triple spin and punted the bit of offal over the lip of the pit. The others were impressed in spite of themselves. "They ARE!" he exclaimed in an orgasm of monkish ecstacy. "They're the ledgendery _Boots of Monkish Kicking_!" He began to dance a jig and did a few cartwheels of joy singing, "I've got boots of kicking! I've got boots of ki-i-i-cking! WHEE! Send in them beasties and I'll take their kneecaps off before you can say 'WHAM BAM KAPOWEE'!" _Much_ later the party managed to get themselves and their gear out of the pit and descended the stairs (which proved to be the only other exit from the room excepting the way they came in). The stairs descended a long way but presently the party arrived at a dank antechamber. Playdough wrinkled his perfect nose in paladinical disgust. "Dis place smells evil." he said. "Smells more like the ranger's feet to me." said Dingbat in disgust. "My feet do not stink!" said Rodent icily. "They have a rustic, woodsy aroma which the likes of you wouldn't appreciate." "C'mon Rodent." said Sauramud. "We all know that you like to walk barefoot through animal droppings when you think we're not looking. I think it's an apt description. It DOES smell like your feet." He snuffled a couple of times. "And I do believe it's getting stronger." "Hst!" whispered Dingbat suddenly. "I hear the sound of approaching feet from the west." He cupped a monkish hand over his ear and strained to listen down the corridor to the west. "Sounds like a lot of feet too. At least fifty." "What, fifty creatures or fifty feet?" said Rodent. "You're not talking sense. Are you talking about twenty-five bipeds, twelve and a half quadripeds or a giant centipede on pogo-sticks?" "Sounds kinda like orcs to me." said the monk. "Wait!" said Rodent. "What?" asked the Paladin who was also beginning to hear the approaching feet. "There is something..." "What? What?" chorused the others. "What's something?" "A pattern." said Rodent theatrically. "Yesssss... I should have seen it before, it was so obvious!" "Duh, what pattern?" said Playdough chipperly. "All of the monsters that we have faced so far..." intoned Rodent. "Yes?" said Sauramud. "Besides being all dead I mean?" "Giant Rats, Goblins, Hobgoblins and now Orcs." He turned to face Sauramud. "Well don't you see?" "No! What?" cried the wizard. "They're all in alphabetical order." There was a stunned silence as the others digested this information. Playdough was the first to react. went a mailed fist accross an open helm. "That's STUPID!" said Playdough. "Yer worse than the wizard. Dere's wererats in here and I's gonna hunt them down and kill 'em." And with that he turned and stalked off down the corridor. "Putz!" snorted Sauramud who turned and stomped after the paladin. Dingbat remained behind with the ranger for a few moments. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "I always thought that giant rats were listed under 'R' for 'Rats, Giant'." "Whadda YOU know?" said Rodent frostily, miffed that his theory was so easily dismissed. "What do ANY of you know?" He shoved the monk aside and marched off after the other two. "Well you'd be surprised what I know." said Dingbat defensively. "I can talk to plants you know and let me tell you they have some interesting things to say - well, some of them do. Most plants are real boring to talk to. All they want to talk about is water and sunlight and soil nutrients. You know I met a spanish fern one time which said..." "... and then the tree replied..." "WILL YOU SHUT UP!" screamed Rodent. "Shhh." said Sauramud. "The temple's just right up ahead." The party had arrived at the end the corridor and were huddled outside a set of double doors - one of which was partially ajar. They peered through this opening into a large, dimly lit temple teeming with figures dressed in black robes. Though the deep cowls of the robes hid any features, each of the figures was dragging a long ratty tail behind. The room itself was large with columns rising to a vaulted ceiling. Through many archways the cowled figures moved in and out and strange incense filled the air. (Dingbat would later describe it as 'essence of sewage'.) A huge alcove at the far end was brightly lit with burning torches and oil lanterns and contained a massive stone idol depicting a (in Playdough's words) big, ugly, bug-eyed ratty thing with big sharp teeth (gnash gnash) and real nasty claws. In the centre of its forehead a strange glint caught the everyone's eye. "The evil temple." growled Playdough. "My Brooch!" drooled Dingbat. "At last! Our quest is at an end." hissed Sauramud. Rodent leaned close to the wizard and tapped him on the shoulder. "Notice?" he said with a smug grin. "Notice what?" sighed Sauramud. "Wererats comes after Orcs, doesn't it?" said the ranger nudging the wizard in the ribs. "Coincidence? I think not." "Wererats," said Sauramud slowly, yet building in volume, "comes under 'L', for 'Lycanthrope', or maybe 'M' for 'Monster' or perhaps 'N' for 'THE RANGER IS A NINCOMPOO...MPH!" Both Playdough and Dingbat had clasped hands over the wizard's mouth and said, "Shhhhh." A number of cowled heads turned the party's way exposing long twitching noses and bright beady eyes. The party froze. Presently the heads turned away again. End of Part Five -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...) Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" (Synopsis of Parts 1,2,3,4&5: The party finds a jeweled brooch, loses it and the monk to wererats while dodging a band of irate orcs, and then recovers the monk at the wizard's expense. The party gets Sauramud raised by promising to track down and kill the wererat priests who have apparently spirited the brooch away. Dingbat starts a fire in the temple. The party braves the horrors of the dungeon depths where Dingbat mortally offends the wizard and gains a pair of magic Boots of Monkish Kicking in a desperate trap that nearly ends the story. The party encounters many fell creatures enroute to the hidden temple and Rodent makes a masterful deduction. The party is less than impressed with Rodent's deduction, but in so informing him they almost alert the wererats to their presence outside the temple.) Part Six "Close one." said Dingbat. "Lucky for you there was a monk with you." "Huh?" said Playdough. "Well it's a well known fact that monks are harder to surprise." said Dingbat. "And concequently can surprise much easier." "So?" said Rodent. "Well don't you see? It's obvious. It's harder for us to be surprised by them so it's harder for them to be surprised by us, thus they must be surprisingly hard to be surprised by surprising us, thus they didn't hear us and..." "Eh?" said Sauramud, his eyes spinning. "Look, I'll explain it in point form." said Dingbat with the pained look of a misunderstood scholar. "Duh, no you won't either." said Playdough, who had had quite enough of the talking and was eager to get to the chopping stage. He flung Dingbat out of the way. "We's gonna attack 'em." Before any of the others could think to stop him he drew his mighty glowing sword and stepped into the room swinging at the first animate thing he encountered. Luckily it was a wererat and it had time for only one startled squeak before it's upper and lower halves flew in different directions. "Well hey! These things are EASY." chortled the paladin in holy glee. He laid into another. "By Le Thick he speaks truly!" said Dingbat in awe. "Quickly men, we must aid him before he kills them all and gets all the experience and treasure!" "Don't be too hasty. There's still six of them." warned the wizard. "Fortunately I still have a fireball spell left - if no monks jostle me before I can get the spell off that is." Dingbat just rolled his eyes as the wizard began chanting. Fortunately nobody bothered him and Sauramud managed to nuke the three wererats racing to them from the direction of the altar. "Ha! Four against three now! _Too easy_." said Sauramud, buffing his nails in a disgusting show of smugness. At that moment twenty more wererats came bursting into the room from the many archways which the party had forgotten about. "Oops." "Nice going." muttered Dingbat. "You and your big mouth." "Well don't just stand there!" snapped an irritated Sauramud. "Pull your thumb out of your arse and get in there with those magic booties of yours." Dingbat grinned. "Hey that's right, time to test these babies out! All right wererats, prepare to get your faces kicked in!" With this Dingbat launched himself towards a pair of advancing wererats (passing Rodent and Playdough who were retreating to a defensive position at one end of the temple with Sauramud). With a bound the monk was among them, and with a second, much higher bound was beyond them. "What the heck is he doing?" said Rodent, as Dingbat bounded down the temple floor with higher and higher leaps. "HALP!" cried the monk. "I can't stop! Every time I land I just bounce higher!" True to his words Dingbat was fair caroming off the vaulted ceiling at this point. "Oh no!" cried Sauramud. "Those aren't _Boots of Monkish Kicking_, they're the dreaded _Cursed Monkish Boots of Prancing_!" With a wail, Dingbat ricocheted off the far wall and rebounded hard off a column. Fortunately few of the bounds were over thirty feet thus Dingbat, being a monk, was taking no damage. Sensing that Dingbat was little threat to them now the twenty wererats formed into a mob and slowly advanced towards the threesome at the end of the temple. Suddenly the wererats stopped advancing. "Duh, what're they waiting for?" whispered Playdough. Rodent seemed about to reply when there rang out a familiar voice... "Ach!" rasped a voice behind them and the threesome whirled to face Ach'ptooe the orc chief! "You again!" gasped Sauramud. "I thought we lost you!" "Ach, nein!" said Ach'ptooe smugly. "Ve chust vait for you to meet vit rat-men allies and hand over der brooch. Findt der monk, you say. Ach, der monk ist bouncing over dere, monk vast vit rat allies! You lie! Ve come troo side door, avoid der nasties. Now you handt over der jewelled knick-knacker ting, undt ve kills you qvick, hokay?" Behind him were sixty orcs, most with silver painted swords and large bunches of wolvesbane stuffed in their belts. In the back two orcs were still spray-painting their swords silver. A rustling sound from the wererats caused the party to turn again and check out the mob of lycanthropes, from who's midst a huge wererat in cerimonial robes appeared. "So!" the wererat shaman squeaked. "You and the orcs are allies, are you? Stealing the most holy eye of the Rat God demanded a sacrifice, thus the monk (he ducked to avoid Dingbat whistling past at this point) was to pay the ultimate price. Now you have entered the temple and gazed on the Rat God, all must die!" "Bummer." groaned Playdough. "This is turning into one of those days. I'm startin' to get real tired of orcs an' wererats." The wererats shuffled forward, the orcs shuffled forward, and Rodent leaned over to Sauramud and Playdough. "On my signal, follow me." he whispered. He paused. With a roar the orcs charged. With a squeal the wererats charged. "NOW!" cried the ranger, and the group made a quick break for one side and took up a defensive posture in an alcove. Orc met wererat in the grand melee and even though the orcs outnumbered them three to one the wererats were making a pretty good dent in the orcish numbers. Anyone that strayed too close to the adventurers got whanged by magic swords or riddled with magic missiles, so understandably the conflict raged around them more than at them. "This is great!" enthused Sauramud. "Maybe they'll kill each other off and leave the brooch for us." "Duh, look!" said Playdough, ducking as Dingbat bounced past. "Dingbat's still bouncing around." As they watched Dingbat caromed off a column hard enough to crack the stone, but since he had lost conciousness some few rounds ago he made little protest. "I suppose we should get him down." said Rodent, pulling out his bow. "Not like that you ninny!" said Sauramud. "Here, Playdough, hold onto the end of this rope." So saying the magicer handed Playdough the end of a rope and flung the other end out into the air as Dingbat passed. With a 'TUNG' the rope straightend, nearly pulling the paladin over. There was a nearby 'thump' of a monkish form hitting the ground. "Now reel him in quick so we can bandage him." said Sauramud. "A grappling hook?" said Rodent angrily. "Why didn't you use that when we were in the pit? "It was the principle of the thing. Dingbat had to apologise." stated the thaumaturge smugly, ignoring the spluttering sounds from the ranger. "Duh, Dingbat's kinda dead." said Playdough morosely, dangling the monk from one hand. "Nonsense, just heal him with your holy touch and he'll be salvageable." said Sauramud, wiping off the grappling hook and coiling up the rope. "Hokey-dokey." said Playdough cheerfully, healing Dingbat with a faint "Ahhh..." of an angelic chorus echoing in the background. With this the monk was found to be alive, yet still thoroughly unconcious (and suffering two or three really nasty holes in his robes). With a snicker Sauramud pulled off the cursed boots. "I'll have to hold onto these. Maybe I'll switch them for his Gucci's some night while I'm on watch." said Sauramud. "How's the battle going Rodent?" "Not too bad..." observed the ranger, noting that they were down to five wererats and fifteen orcs. "The odds are still three to one in the orc's favor, but at least it's staying constant. They'll all be dead in a bit." "Uh oh, look!" said the wizard, pointing at the far end of the temple. Ach'ptooe had broken away from the battle and was climbing the front of the ratty statue, his orcish squinties firmly fixed on the glinting diamond brooch in the forehead of the idol. With a grunt the orc chief pulled himself up next to the brooch and grabbed it, pulling it from the forehead with a 'pop'. "Ach! I havt der brooch! Now ist der time to run away, yah!" he cried as he shinnied down the statue. There was the sound of grating stone and a pair of ratty eyes began to glow faintly red. "I knew it!" said Rodent. "Oh don't sound so pleased with yourself, we all knew that would happen." muttered the wiz. Sure enough the statue of the Rat God had animated, one large stone arm swooping down to grab the surprised Ach'ptooe. With a wrench the statue crushed the orc. "Huck! His head popped like a zit!" chortled Playdough. The remaining orcs, somewhat disheartened by the messy death of their chief, scuttled for the exits. The wererats had all dropped to their knees in prostration at the first sign of movement from their idol. The brooch, propelled by the final reflexive spasm of Ach'ptooe's arm, sailed through the air and landed near Rodent, who snatched it up. "C'mon, let's get out of here!" he cried, motioning the paladin to grab Dingbat. The party ran for the archway they had entered by, only noticing at the last minute that the statue of the Rat God was making a beeline for them (stepping on and squoshing two wererats in the process). "Uh-oh." said Playdough, noting the massive statue. "Bet that's got a lot of hit dice." "Can't you disable it with a spell or something?" shouted Rodent to Sauramud as they staggered along, weighted down by the limp form of the monk. "Hmm." said Sauramud, eyeing the cracks in the columns supporting the ceiling that Dingbat had caused when rebounding betwixt them. "How about this?" With a flourish he pulled out a flask of oil and lobbed it at the feet of the approaching statue. The flask shattered, leaving a large splotch of oil on the tiled floor. The statue, intent on reaching the party, stomped one ratty foot directly on the splotch. Slowly, almost majestically, it lost its balance. Arms windmilling all the way down it did a massive pratfall, one leg smacking into a column. There was a loud cracking sound as the column shattered. The wererat shaman lept to his feet screaming "Noooo!" as the vaulted ceiling began cracking. "Move it!" screamed Sauramud, who had never expected the trick to work and now had visions of being flattened into a wizardly pancake when the ceiling dropped. "You jerk!" cried Rodent. "If we all die here, I'm going to kill you!" "Say what?" asked the wizard, momentarily caught off guard. Fortunately, however, they had just managed to jump into the corridor beyond the archway when the ceiling of the temple collapsed with a rumble of massive stone blocks. "Duh, I bet that hurt." said Playdough cheerfully. "They'll feel that in the morning." agreed Sauramud. "Oh well, I suppose it worked." sulked Rodent, somewhat mollified by the fact that he still held the brooch in his hand. "Wouldja look at the size of the diamond on that thing?" slavered the wizard, visions of magic wands and cloaks dancing in his eyes. "Duh, I thought you said it was zirconimum or sumthin'" said Playdough. "That was just a ploy." said Sauramud a little too quickly. "I knew all along that this thing must be worth a cartload of gold. "Sure." said Rodent snidely. "Nevertheless, we have to get out of here and sell the thing. Without the head of the priest back there, we're gonna have to pay for your resurrection from the proceeds." Sauramud's visions of magic vanished with a near-audible pop. "Shoot." he muttered, trudging along after the two fighters, Dingbat slung over Playdough's back. "My trick was a bit too brilliant, I guess." "RARGH!" roared a dark form as it launched itself at Sauramud from back down the corridor. "Keep it down back there Sauramud!" warned Rodent, not turning around. "There may yet be monsters in these halls to impede our exit." "Ack!" said Sauramud, as the battered and bloody wererat shaman tackled him and sank his fangs in the wizard's neck. "Duh, shss!" said Playdough, shifting Dingbat's limp form on his back. "Yuh gotta stay quiet, remember?" "Rrrrrghhh!" said the wererat shaman, clawing at the wizard's torso as he gnawed at his neck. Sauramud staggered along half carrying the enraged wererat and making waving motions with one hand as he scrabbled for his magic dagger. Finally he managed to extricate it from its scabbard and sink it into the shaman's side. With a groan the wererat shaman collapsed and died. "One lousy hit point left..." griped Sauramud, kicking the corpse. "Why couldn't an extra rock have fallen on your big toe or something?" With a sigh Sauramud leaned over and began messily sawing its head off with his dagger. "Look wizard, how come you're lagging behind!" came the angry voice of the ranger stalking back. Rodent stopped and stared at the sight of Sauramud hefting the wererat shaman's head with one hand. "Oh." said Rodent. "He was still alive, was he?" "A fierce foe." said Sauramud loftily. "But no match for my combat skills." "Riiggghht." said Rodent. "What spell did you use on him?" "I killed him in hand-to-hand mortal combat!" said Sauramud angrily. "Duh, lyin's a sin." said Playdough, who had tagged along after the ranger. "I AM NOT LYING!" cried Sauramud. "It attacked me, I pulled out my trusty dagger and fought it! It was an epic battle, I must have stabbed it a hundred times and still it kept fighting!" "Strange how it's only got that one tiny dagger mark among all the crushing bruises." observed Rodent. There was a strained pause. "The other thrusts are to the neck. That's how come his head's off." said Sauramud. "A-huh." chorused the ranger and the paladin, exchanging glances. "That always happens in a knife fight." "Exactly." said Sauramud with a relieved smile. "Us wizards have _many_ dagger techniques not known to you armour clad thugs. Just so you know I can take care of myself. By the way, does anybody have a bandage? I seem to be down to my last two hit points again..." Within a few hours the party had found their way out of the sewers and were clambering up the rope to the streets. "Funny how we never encounter anything on the way back out of the dungeon, eh?" commented Sauramud as he lent a hand to the Ranger who was pulling the rope (with a comatose monk tied to the end of it) out of the pit behind them. "Not so strange." said Rodent philosophically. "There's always a delay of at least one gaming session between restocking of a dungeon. Even a type III dungeon like this one takes..." He stopped as a distant rumble in one of the other quarters of the city rattled windows down the street they were on. In the distance they could see a plume of dust slowly rising from the city. It was at about the same time that the party noticed the abnormal degree of animation in the peasants and merchants around them. Rodent flagged down a passer-by. "What's all the excitement about my good fellow?" he asked, blocking the man's passage with a beefy rangerical arm. "It's the bloody sewers!" cried the merchant. "They're collapsin' everywhere and takin' the town with 'em!" End of Part Six -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...) Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch by "Those Dudes" (Synopsis of Parts 1,2,3,4,5&6: Look dudes, this is the last part of the story. If you haven't been following it then this won't help much. Ready? The party finds a jeweled brooch, loses it and the monk, avoids some orcs, finds the monk, loses the wizard, gets him raised, starts a fire, finds an evil wererat temple, finds: wererats, brooch, orcs and a big scary statue [gnash gnash]. The party flees with brooch, an unconscious Dingbat and a severed wererat priest head, and finds part of the city collapsing. There, did that help?) Part Seven "Oh my." clucked Sauramud. "What could have caused that? Must have been some wierd natural phenomenon." "Nay." said the merchant. "The authorities are blamin' it on a bunch o' wacked out adventurers who climbed down there this morning..." For the first time the man noticed the open manhole cover and the length of rope the wizard was meticulously coiling up (not that the rope wouldn't be hopelessly tangled the next time they needed it). He backed away from the foursome, eyes darting about like a cornered animal. "It's them!" he yelled. "Help! Help! Constables! Murderers!" "I beg your pardon." said Rodent in a huff. "We are NOT murderers!" He glanced sidelong at Playdough and added, "Usually." The merchant turned and ran, all the time calling for the constables. "Duh, maybe we should go now." suggested Playdough nervously. "Nonsense." scoffed Rodent. He lifted the cover back over the opening in the street. "We have done nothing wrong - in fact we have done a great service for humanity." "Nonetheless, I think we should depart before said humanity comes to congratulate us... or whatever that mob is planning to do." said Sauramud, indicating a mass of pitchfork and torch wielding citizens who were clustering in the street. "Indeed." said Rodent, noting that Playdough and Dingbat were already making for the opposite end of the alleyway. The party moved off through the streets, scuttling through alleyways and side-streets in a roundabout route to the temple of Le Thick. Twice they had to detour to avoid "adoring" citizens and thrice they had to hop over sections of collapsed roadway where some subterranean passage had fallen in. "I still don't know why we couldn't have stopped for a beer." groused the wizard. "Dingbat isn't actually _losing_ hitpoints now. I swallowed a lot of dust down there, you know." The ranger and the paladin merely grunted and continued on. Within the space of a few minutes the party once again stood before the impressive marble columns of the temple. Ignoring its beauty they stomped in. Ignored except for Dingbat, who began to wax poetic about the glorious majesty of Le Thick before being reminded he was unconcious. As they approached the entrance two workmen came out carrying the charred corpse of a temple acolyte, which they tossed on a growing pile. "Oh dear." said Rodent, glancing at the pile of corpses and burned refuse. "I think that fire was a bit more serious than we thought." "...teach 'em to smoke..." muttered Sauramud, earning him a dark look from Playdough. "Not that they won't find some way to nail us for it anyway Sauramud." said Rodent, shifting his backpack and Dingbat's form as he moved to the doorway. The wizard nodded and followed, Playdough taking up the rear. The inside of the once-magnificent temple was still mostly intact (what you could see through the pall of smoke), but extensive areas of the main cathedral were charred and burnt. Nearly all of the ridiculously expensive tapestries lay in a smouldering pile on what was left of the plush, soot-stained carpeting. The party surveyed the damage in awe. "That's going to take a lot of tithes from the townees to fix up." said Rodent. "Duh, get real." snorted Playdough. "They's gonna get it from me... us. I hope none of us gets snuffed in the next while, the standard rates for healing are going to go waaaayyyyy up." "I suppose." said Sauramud, prodding a bit of charred debris with his toe. "Anyway, we don't need healing and we've got something for the high priest, so let's get this over with quick before he can try to stick us for damages. Look, he's over there." Sauramud indicated the far corner of the room with a flourish, there stood a small crowd of temple functionaries. "Dear oh dear." said the high priest, wringing his hands in frustration as the party approached. "That tapestry wasn't insured. And that one wasn't. That one was, but those two weren't. Oh dear." "Duh, what about all the dead acolytes?" said Playdough before the other two could hush him. "Playdough!" cried the high priest, whirling to face the party. There was a tense pause. "Playdough my boy, trust you to find a silver lining in all this mess. That's right, they won't be needing their back wages now, will they?" The paladin looked a tad confused as the high priest continued. "Yes, we don't have to take the payroll out of that high-yield bond future and thus we can gain a net 5% increase in the roll-over dividends this fiscal year! You're a marvel, Playdough! A genius! Is that a monk under the ranger's arm there?" "What?" said Rodent, blinking a little. "Oh. Yes. He's perfectly all right, though." he said quickly as the high priest's eyes began to light up. "He doesn't need any expensive healing, he's just unconcious. Really." He paused to shake off a pair of temple functionaries that were trying to pull the monk from his grip. "Call them off, will you?" The high priest sighed and waved the functionaries off with one hand then turned and regarded the group. "So, you're back. Come with me." He led the group through the mass of workers struggling to restore the temple to its original glory and into the relatively unburned inner offices. "Now, you boys were off on a mission for Le Thick, weren't you?" he said, seating himself behind a large desk covered in ancient scrolls. He pushed some of the cracked yellowed parchment aside and leaned on the desk. "You realise that if you have failed your mission I'll have to demand the return of the raise dead spell, or hefty cash remuneration. Or both." "Just hold yer holy water." said Sauramud snidely. "Not only did we snuff the evil wererats, we brought you your little souvenier." So saying, and ignoring the outraged spluttering of the high priest, the wizard deftly fished out the dripping head of the wererat shaman and plunked it down wetly on the desk. SPLOOCH. "You IDIOT!" yelled the high priest, diving for the ancient documents that had the misfortune to be lying underneath the sopping head. "Those are the holy scrolls of Un'ruak! The priceless scrolls dictated to Harlak the Most Bodacious by Le Thick himself! The foundation of our very beliefs!" He batted the head off the desk and gently picked up the blood-soaked documents. A goodly portion detached and fell to the desk with a splat. "Looks like they're a write off to me." observed Rodent. "I hope you kept copies." The group watched the high priest dance around trying to save portions of the scrolls with mounting nervousness. "You don't just keep copies of holy documents you imbecile! They were magic scrolls of mighty import! You can't just assign some lack-witted acolyte to scratch off a pale imitation! Oh Le Thick, they are ruined!" "Well if they were so important," said Sauramud ascerbically, "Why were they laid out there like a placemat?" "Duh, mebbe you can just fake the parts that are missing now." said Playdough thoughtfully. "Mebbe youse can leave off the bit about temple paladins having to give most of their treasure away." "I say your holiness..." croaked Dingbat weakly from the floor where he had regained some of his faculties. "You appear to be hyperventilating." "I... You..." said the high priest, his contorted features bright red. "Yes, perhaps you should sit down, your eminence." said Rodent soothingly. "We'll just be off, since the delivery of that head there squares us with the temple balance sheet." With a quick warning glance at the others he led them out to the cathedral, leaving the high priest spluttering incoherently and making small jerking motions with his head. "Well, I thought that went rather well, considering." said Sauramud airily. "We got in and out of the temple without having to part with flipping great wadges of cash." "Hey!" said Dingbat, more or less conscious now. "Weren't they supposed to give us a thousand gold into the bargain when we returned the heads of the wererat priests?" "Yes they were," said Rodent. "And even considering there was only one priest and we did return his head, I don't think that asking for a cash bonus is exactly the prudent thing to do right now. The high priest appeared somewhat... distressed." "Duh, I could go back and ask him." said Playdough. "No no, let's keep going." said Sauramud as they scuttled out the main entrance. "We've still got the brooch to sell. We'll be rolling in piles of dough by nightfall." "That's right, my... I mean our brooch! You got it back then?" squealed the monk. "No thanks to you." said Rodent. By the third jewelry store the party's buoyed spirits began to sink again. "I'm sorry gents, but there's no way I could possibly afford to buy this thing from you." said the shop keeper hefting the brooch. "C'mon, you've had no problems ripping us off in the past." said Sauramud. "Recall the monk's 'gold' ring that flaked a few weeks after he paid all that money for it. Make us an offer." "Nope. I've got my professional integrity to worry about." said the jeweller. He pushed the brooch back accross the counter. "Mind you, while you're here I just got in a spiffy set of silver ceremonial monkish ear tongs." "Really?" cried Dingbat. "They're not used are they? It took me a week to hose off the last pair. Saayyyy..." his monkish eyes narrowed craftily. "You wouldn't be interested in a straight trade would you?" "No!" said the other three before the shop keeper could speak. Rodent snatched up the brooch and jammed it into his money pouch. "We'll take it up to Wartburg and see if any of the merchants there are a little less tight with their money." he said. "Maybe we could trade it for a couple of horses." offered the Playdough. "Gonna be a long trip otherwise." "If we trade it for horses we won't need to MAKE the trip." said Sauramud. He reefed open the door and stomped out into the street. The others followed. "So let me get this straight," said Dingbat. "We've got no horses, no rations, no money, no Boots of Monkish Kicking and a ten thousand gold piece brooch that we can't sell." "So help me." said Rodent through clenched teeth. "If he doesn't die of natural causes in the next sixty seconds I will surely kill him." "Well it's a good thing you've got me along." said Dingbat blithely, "Because I just had a smashing whizbanger of a plan that will make us wealthy and famous." "Do tell." said Sauramud. "And just what is this plan of yours?" "Well it goes like this..." began Dingbat when the street in front of the party erupted and a huge stone claw smashed its way through. "Uh oh..." chorused the party. "Groar!" bellowed something underground as the claw fished about for purchase. The townees nearby screamed and tried to scatter. "Rodent, it ain't dead." said Dingbat in a tiny voice. "And I've only got one hit point." "It obviously wants something, but what?" said Rodent. "The brooch! It's after the brooch!" said Saurmud suddenly. "Omigod. Quick, give it to me." "What?" said Rodent. "Just DO it!" The ranger shrugged and tossed the brooch to the magicer. The wizard hastily palmed it, hoisted up his robes and ran like he had demons after him - which was really a lot closer to the truth than he would have been comfortable to know. The rest of the party followed, more because it was away from the thing than from any great desire to follow the wizard. Suddenly Rodent realized which way they were headed. "What in Gehenna do you think you are doing!" cried Rodent as they followed him up the steps into the temple. Sauramud ignored him. "Father!" he cried, waving frantically at the priest at the other end of the sanctuary. "YOU!" yelled the high priest dropping into an offensive spell stance. Sauramud spoke quickly (and Dingbat made ready for a priestly gaunch pull). "Ignoring the Ranger's selfish and impious suggestion to sell this bejewled diamond brooch for transitory pleasures of the gold and, in turn, cheating Le Thick from his rightful cut we implore you to take this offering from us in the spirit in which it is given." "For shame Rodent." remonstrated the high priest as best he could through the sudden gallon of drool that formed. He snatched the brooch (and almost a finger) from the wizard's hand and whipped out a pocket jeweller's scope. "How come _everybody_ carries one of those around?" said Dingbat. "Hush." said Sauramud. "Let's just exit stage left." He turned to leave and noticed a large shadow eclipsing the front door. "I say, is there a back exit we could take?" "Uh, sure." said the priest with an ambiguous wave towards the rear of the temple. He continued his loving croon over the jewel. As the foursome ran past the priest and around the altar Dingbat snatched a golden candlestick for his pack. "They won't be missing this in the rubble." he chuckled. The End ( insert cheers and fanfare here - angelic chorus from on high ) (Copyright (c) 1992 by Those Dudes, aka M. McAleese (mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca) and D. Braun (David_Braun@panam.wimsey.bc.ca). All characters portrayed within are fictional, no resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is intended... or possible, one assumes.) -- * mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me... * "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...)