Saturday, June 14, 2014

June 14: 'Ere we go

“More!”  screamed Dragzig the Lawd as his crushed Snogwhistle under his massive fist.  This was the 319th time that Snogwhistle had experienced head trauma since breakfast.  He would have been ruminating over that fact as he robbed his throbbing cranium if he knew the word “ruminating” or if he could have counted to 319.  His counting ability had deteriorated significantly when he woke up last week to realize that rats had chewed of 1 toe and pieces of 2 of his fingers.

He shuffled over to the tallest rib protruding from the massive carcass, climbed to the top of it and pulled back, leaning, and swinging with all of his might.  By human standards this carcass had “turned” but from the prospective of the greens you just couldn't walk away from a dead Stone Troll.  They were chewy but so was Old Thump when he was still thumpin'.  Unfortunately Old Thump, and the gang's central source of muscle, had met with a spear to the eye.  Normally a spear to the eye would have simply reduced Old Thump's already limited 3 dimensional intelligence and hand eye coordination.  But this had been no normal adventure.  Old Thump had seen the world in this dungeon.  In search of a highly unspecific treasure of alluded great value Dragzig had lead his collection of boys into the “secrit bak dore” of this magnificent labyrinth and they had found evil wizards, giant rats, spiders of all sizes, and undead in various forms.  All of these cross cultural experiences had effected Old Thump.  In the midst of his mind blowing stupidity he had been able to, just last week, string 2 words together into the semblance of a sentence.  With the simple utterance of “more dat” Old Thump's brain had increased in size.  The first time any Toll's brain had increased in size since birth.  The unfortunate repercussion of this developmental miracle outside of the 2 gobos and a number of snottlings to high for Snogwhistle to now count due to Old Thump's magnificent temper as a result of his newly acquired migraines, was that sharp, prodding things could now enter his stoney skull and reach deep enough to penetrate his oversized brain.  This is what 1 strange toad creature's flint spear was able to do 2 days after Old Thump had experienced his intellectual reincarnation.

Dragzig the Lawd did not want to pass on the opportunities for nourishment provided by a troll corpse so he ordered the boys to Tucker In and they opened the casks of strange green and blue fuid which were kept by the strange toad creatures.  They then began to imbibe the strange liquors with gusto.  One of the primary reasons Old Thump had much of a corpse left was that a good portion of the gang had been unconscious or worse from the amphibian concoctions and were not in much condition to tucker in at all.  Dragzig had been worried about being attacked with most of his boys incapacitated but luckily for him and the gang the various odors produced by the physical side effects of the toad brews as well as the now rotting Troll carcass had provided an effective deterrent to investigation of this particular passage.  Now if you have ever encountered a troll of any variety but particularly a stone troll you will know that they do not smell pleasant even in the best of times.  That pungent aroma combined with the stink and rot of death is an unpleasant thing entirely.  Now orcs, goblins, snotlings, and the other varieties of greens all have various bio fluids which are all together different than those of humans.  We may refer to them as blood, snot, sputum, urine, etc simply because they seem to manifest themselves in similar ways and they are words we can wrap our brains around.  Any Verdologist will tell you, however, that though greens have many bodily fluids, they all stink.  And so moments after the greens began guzzling these strangely colored potions blood began to spray from eyeballs, snot erupted from various orifices, trousers were dirtied.  The well worn dungeon floor was thick with the stuff and the combined odor produced made the various denizens and adventurers of the dungeon assume that only a massive beast could produce such a smell.  This had kept them safe up until now.

What Dragzig could not quite articulate but what he felt internally was that if several bands of adventurers joined together they would be brave enough to take on such a reeking monstrosity.  In the great cliché of massive mysterious dungeons filled with strange creatures for no apparent reason two of the basic guiding principles are that 1) Big monsters smell worse than small monsters and 2) all monsters have treasure secreted about them and the bigger monsters had more of it.  The first principle had kept the boys safe until now but the second one was going to be their undoing.  What Dragzig also knew, and several of the other canny boys were wondering, was that with Old Thump gone their remarkable good fortune in these caves had turned.  He had done an immaculate job smashing and cracking and taking innumerable wounds while the other boys had been able to dispatch all enemies that they had faced. Now those darts, arrows, spears, and swords would be cutting into significantly softer orc and goblin flesh and their numbers would dwindle quickly in this toxic work environment.

Snogwhistle turned to see Dragzig heft his weight up from his throne, supported on the backs of other snottlings, gaze around and utter, “Ere we go.”  With that the band flew into motion, Snogwhistle jumped down off Old Thump's protruding rib still shaking and coughing from the exertion.  Picked up the little tin pot that acted as his helmet, put it on his head with a jaunty tilt, adjusted the rag that covered his giblets, and began actively looking busy as the boys loaded up and began moving through the passages into the unknown darkness.

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