And so the adventures partied in to the night. Their cheers and cries of victory rang out through the entire forest and all the surrounding areas. It is always a glorious thing to complete a dungeon crawl, and those few who come back alive, seven in this case, always celebrate immediately after, no matter how dangerous the forest itself may be. Much partying is done, much kegs are cracked open, and much nudity is had.
“Cheers!” cried out Krieg, the elven ranger, tall and lithe, perfectly fitted for his role as an archer. He raised his tankard and downed the contents, a messy business even for an elf. Those tankards were just so wide that such actions always spilled some out around the mouth, but that was perhaps part of the nature of partying.
“Oh man, did you guys see the look on that sorcerer’s face when I smashed through his forces single-handedly?” bellowed the lone orc of the party. He was perhaps the only one present who could drink from a tankard and actually get every drop in his mouth, for it was itself larger than the tankard, or so the party figured.
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And there we were, trying to find the next path down when I SMASHED open this large wooden door with my hammer. Never thought I’d see so many skeletons in one room. Then Grimlor there ran in with his sword a swinging. Can’t hurt a skeleton with a sword, but he did a fine job of it anyways.
Then Grimlor stepped up with his arrows, but all he did was stick them in the bone and make the skeletons angry. Shouldn’t have done it, I told him, but he still tried. Bless his soul and may he rest in peace. I will miss him.
And so Grimlor finally steps up to try her luck. Her fire spells are nice, makes the skeletons toasty. But then now we got a bunch of toasty skeletons coming at us. Fifty of them, and that sorcerer laughing at us from the other side as he sends them all our way.
I tell all of you to back up, and I raise my hammer high, like this!
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The peace of the evening is momentarily shattered by the orc raising his hammer and slamming it back down on the ground. Even though the ground is a nice assortment of rocks, dirt, and tree roots, it all becomes dust beneath the swing and the sound echoes through the forest as loud as the rest of their revelry.
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Wham! One skeleton is down and dust. Then I start swinging it around and the bones start flying and I think even those faceless skulls looked terrified. Nothing gets between my hammer and its target without falling. That sorcerer looked about ready to empty his stomach right into his pants.
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At this point the rest of the party looked to the orc with some amount of grim fascination. He was not even the brightest of creatures, loosing to a cow when it came to finding his way out of a barn, but every so often his vocabulary seemed to grab them in the words of ways.
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Then I finally got to him and he raised his hands to fire some magic at me. It tingled, like walking barefoot in a forest. I could almost feel the tickling pinecones underneath my big green feet. Except I was wearing boots. But no matter. I spun my hammer around and hit him squarely. Bt wouldn’t you know those stupid sorcerers are always so tricky? It was just his cloak.
So I turn around to find him stark naked as I am now, and laughing as he started chanting one of his evil spells. So I did the first thing I could think of. I turned and grabbed Grimlor and threw him at the sorcerer, then I threw my hammer! The sorcerer was so surprised to see a gnome flying at him that he forgot to duck and my hammer painted the wall with his brains. A heroic tale if ever there was one!
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The whole party lowered their heads with more than a little groaning as the memory replayed in their heads. It was, perhaps, a bit different than described, but he still managed to get a few of the details right.
“You may have gotten a few things right, Grimlor, but you can’t seem to remember our names. Honestly! It’s not that hard to get right!” exclaimed the paladin in his shining white suit of armor, or at least the lower half of it. “I am the mighty Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobilla Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andri Charton-Haymoss Ivanovici Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser the Third! If you ever stain my illustrious family name with the likes of Grimlor again, I’ll kill you where you…sleep!”
Even Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax etc, or George, as the rest of the party called him, was not stupid enough to fight a hammer-wielding orc one-on-one while it was awake. Not that he had much intelligence either, for he was the one attacking the skeletons with his sword even as the rest of the party cried out to him to use his white magic. He was a pretty-boy Spaniard of a paladin, and so was racially disposed to protecting his devilish good looks. In this case of fighting with his sword against an enemy of bone, it was his own attempt to look more heroic.
“And why did I have to die?” Krieg asked, the dunce who had been trying his luck with the arrows. For as anyone could see, even Grimlor, he was very much alive and well, minus a few scrapes and cuts and broken bones and a disjointed shoulder. And a few bruises, a black eye, a split lip and a sprained ankle and one pinky missing. Yet for all of it he was alive and partying quite hardy with the rest of them. When you are a ranger who fights on the front line you tend to need to keep a sunny disposition of things.
“I didn’t appreciate being thrown, either,” said Svirfneblin, the gnomish bard who was still nursing a headache between sessions of playing his accordion for the rest of the party’s enjoyment. “You’re lucky the Gnomish God of Heavy Artillery did not hear my prayers.”
Grimlor just laughed and slapped one hand down on his knee, then took his tankard in hand and downed again, wiped his lips, and then resumed laughing, “Ha! Ha! Everyone knows ol’ Howitz Zer is deaf!”
George face-palmed and groaned, seeming unable to comprehend how an orc might know anything of gnomish theology but couldn’t remember a mortal name to save his life, “Anyway…let’s not forget who actually found the treasure room in there…let’s see, I think it went something like this…”
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We’d just had Grimlor open this really huge door, and inside it was completely dark. The torches on the wall just did not seem to shine in to the room. So I ask if we can get someone to cast a light spell while I am healing Severnibbling,”
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“Svirfneblin, you dunce!” cried out the bard.
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Yes, anyways, I was healing him so I asked for a light spell. But no one had one, and so they all looked to me as if I should know one just because I champion the cause of light. And so I ask for ideas. I think it was Madam Tiffany who suggested lighting a bush on fire and using it as a torch.
So I convince Grimlor to hold down Sunny while Sir Krieg and I sat Madam Tiffany on his shoulders. Really, I can’t imagine why she’d complain so much about being stripped down by one of my charming good looks. But she still screamed, and screamed, and screamed. It was almost impossible for us to get those knots tied.
I even thought Grimlor might lose his grip on Sunny for a moment. Thankfully we still had a jar of Magic Light left from Sunny and Grimlor’s silly little drinking contest. Really, I don’t know why you two did that, you were belching fire for weeks! Anyways, we poured it on and then Flamebait lit it up. A good, swift kick and our giant fireball, burning bush and all, lit up the room for us.
And so I was able to step in and see the glorious piles of gold that awaited liberating at our hands. If it weren’t for those two screaming like they were going to die I could have almost heard them twinkling and crying to jump in my pockets! Thank you both for ruining what could have been a truly magical moment.
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As the paladin looked over at the two, Sunny the Dwarf and Tiffany the Mage, all he was met with was two cold hard glares. Ever since that point in the adventure neither could put on one shred of clothing, and so were reduced to being carried around by Grimlor while wearing nothing but bandages from head to toe.
Tiffany, as a human, was perhaps scared for life. Never again to enjoy the beauty that had won her so many wet tabard contests. Sunny was angry, but in his own way grateful. He had been worried about this lump he felt growing in his beard, but had been too embarrassed to see a specialist about it. His father had died of beard cancer, and now with no beard he was immune. If he was really angry about anything, it was the length of time it would take to regrow his beard.
“Ha! It was a damned good show!” bellowed Grimlor again, on his third keg of the night, “Didn’t think we’d get ol’ Grimlor to light ‘em up for us, but he was a surprisingly good sport about it.”
Flamebait, the hooded pyromancer with a penchant for burning anything, even being the first in the land to actually set water on fire and burn a flame to a crisp, took a bow a the appreciative nod. He was not one for words, or injuries. He was probably the only one to leave the dungeon unharmed.
“And then we got to the end of the dungeon. The boss was very crafty to have hidden his door in the middle of an eternal flame like that,” Krieg said, slowly sinking in to the realm of memory, “Of course that probably didn’t excuse Grimlor for tossing Sunny into the middle of it to look for clues just on the assumption that being burned once meant he wouldn’t mind it happening again.”
The mage and the dwarf warrior just stared in pained agony and aggravation. Sunny was the one tossed, but they never untied Tiffany from him either.
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I never say a dwarf run so fast that he whipped such a large flame about. I said it was eternal, but it was almost as if his feet stamped it out at once, clearing the floor in such a mad rush. The only thing left on fire were the bandages that are not probably burned forever into their very skin. But in putting out the flame he must have stepped on a hidden switch because the door started opening right out of the floor.
Bravely we all walked down, knowing w could find our doom at any moment, but willing to risk it all for the glory of being heroes! And at the bottom of this giant staircase we found the dreaded Dark Lich, famed for slaying dragons because the beasts were too revolted by his sight to even look at him. Of course, the same could be said of our Grimlor.
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“And I’m damned proud of it!” shouted Grimlor, laughing quite heartily. Only an orc would find an outfit made of fig leaves, chicken bones, and cow dung to be an impressive fashion statement, for such was the outfit he wore in the now-infamous Battle of Crying Rock, where he slew three nesting dragons and smashed their eggs in one heavily-drunken night. Supposedly he smelled so horrible that night that even the stones became to cry, hence the name.
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Yes. Now, as I was saying, the Dark Lich turned on us and threw a fireball right away, for Liches are among the only creatures with no casting times. One after another they flew at us. It was only by the grace of my incredible aim and ability to fire off a hundred and twenty arrows a minute that saved us as my arrows took the hits and burned to nothingness.
When I was almost out of ammunition, nearly fifteen seconds into the fight, George finally did something right and cast a curative spell on the Lich. The creature howled in agony and I swear I could feel the whole dungeon shaking. George looked almost ready to apologize to the Lich when Flamebait launched his own fireball at the creature.
Then I saw my chance. As the creature ran around the room, ducking and covering, stopping, dropping, and rolling, I knocked another arrow and took aim. It was so hard to do, the creature was unbearable to look at even with the haze of flame getting in the way. But finally I was able to sight properly, and with a might yell of EXCELSIOR I let the arrow fly. It hit through the Lich’s neck and sent his horrible head rolling over the ground like Sunny did at the Ten Pins For Beer contest last week.
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“What a night that was! If I hadn’t broken so many tables trying, I know I would’ve beaten him! But he was too good for me,” injected Grimlor, his only known admission of defeat to date drawing an appreciative nod from the well-bandaged Sunny.
The small jovial exchange was interrupted by Svirfneblin starting up a new tune. The rest of the party could only wonder how he had taken the profession of a bard when it was clear the only training he had was in playing it by ear.
“And how are we now supposed to collect our treasure, anyways?” asked Krieg, raising a hand to wipe away a swath of his long, unruly blonde hair from his eyes. He shot George a look of hatred, only causing the paladin to chuckle and look embarrassed.
“Come on, now, I completely forgot our Bag of Holding was on Sunny when we lit him on fire,” responded George in something of a let-bygones-be-bygones tone. It was beyond him to point out that everyone else clearly forgot as well, given their roles in aiding him.
“Doesn’t matter. Good ol’ Grimlor and I had already filled the bag before hand! With starving tazmanian devils! Figured that would put a nasty bite into any thief’s day if he tried to take out bag.” said Grimlor, very much cheerful, very much drunk, very much oblivious to the evil glares now being drawn from George and placed on him.
“Yeah, and good ol’ Grimlor thought it would be a good idea to set them all on fire just in case. Only thing meaner than an orc is a starving tazmanian devil. And the only thing meaner than that is a starving tazmanian devil set on fire!”
Tiffany looked over at Sunny with a glare of undying hatred, a promise of haunting once she passed on, which she feared somehow could happen at any time with this bunch. He was the only one she could imagine being stupid enough to help Grimlor round up that many starving crazed beasts. The others seemed to not worry so much. Grimlor was a good enough target for their ire.
The rambunctious ruckus of the after-victory festival was shattered by a creaking branch, then a loud snap as it fell, along with three large forms, and smashed the helpless Flamebait. Everyone leapt to their feet, a painful chore for Tiffany and Sunny, ready to face the intruding monstrosities.
Three ogre ninjas had crashed in on their party, looking very much ready for battle and wielding ninja weapon of all sorts, from stars to sais to tonfas to the more expect knives and swords. Lacking any actual language that the wider world might understand, they simple grabbed their biggest weapons and charged the party.
“Gnomish Deathgrip!” cried out Svirfneblin as he dropped his accordion, pulling a pair of tongs from his pocket and charging the nearest ogre. The large creature never saw what hit him, finding itself paralyzed with pain as the bard wrenched the tongs into the ogre’s groin, holding tight and twisting.
George, ever one to leap to a challenge, immediately grabbed the not-so-fair damsel Tiffany. With a swing through the bonfire he launched her flaming-bandaged form at yet another ogre. With a surprising display of grace and speed the ogre flipped over her in the air and brought its sword down to meet George’s blade.
Tiffany continued her airborne pyrotechnics until she hit a tree. Though the impact luckily knocked the flames off of her, given there was little left for the fire to eat, it still spread to the tree behind her. The tree went straight up into ash, and the fire started spreading to the other trees.
Not one to miss out on the fun, Grimlor tried George’s trick with Sunny and launched the screaming dwarf at the last ogre. He caught the ogre square in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and setting his ninja attire on fire. His victory was short-lived as a Spanish-accented Tarzan-like yell ripped through the night and George flew into the jolly green orc.
Krieg fell to the ground rather than fighting. He was too close for his few remaining arrows to be of use, and his immediate concern was crawling away to safety underneath the nearest bush.of poison ivy.
He would have stayed hidden had Grimlor not decide to tear up the whole flaming bush and launch it at the one ogre that remained a threat. Orcs are, after all, the only known sentient race to be completely immune to poison ivy in all cases. So in any lighter situation the party could almost forgive him for launching the flaming poisonous bush right into the middle of the battle.
The flaming flora did little but set the ogre on fire. It lacked the punch of a flying dwarf, leaving the party to face down a flaming ogre ninja with a really bad temper. All of the party except Svirfneblin, who was busy being dragged around by a screeching ogre as he held tight to his Gnomish Deathgrip technique.
Despite already feeling the onset of itching all up ad down his back, even though he was still fully clothed in the same generic brown tunic and green tights that rangers always wear, Krieg still managed to climb to his feet and, now that he was distanced from the fight, drew his bow and aimed.
With a speed that would make certain blue hedgehogs blush with envy he emptied his quiver into the ogre, fifteen arrows in all. In mere seconds the ogre had went from a ninja, to a flaming ninja, to a flaming ninja with pointy metal sticks stuck in it’s sickly-green flesh.
Readying for it’s final strike, the ogre grabbed it’s nunchaku, lowers into a fighting stance, roared loud, and started doing on of those cliché war dances that ninja always do with their nunchaku before fighting. This was all it managed as George lept into the air behind it and brought his sword down with his mighty battlecry, “Now, young Skywalker, you will DIE!”
Though the cultural significance of the phrase was lost on the ogre, and perhaps everyone else, George included, the important thing was that the ogre fell. George waited for the fires to end before lopping off the head of the ogre and keeping it as a sort of sock puppet.
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The party split shortly thereafter. The walk back to the town was easy, since the forest no longer blocked their view of it, as ash rarely does once it settles down.
Flamebait was remembered in a roaring fiery funeral, or so he would have been. With Tiffany afraid to cast fire spells for fear of lighting herself on fire and with Flamebait the pyromancer dead, it was decided the forest burning would have to do. As far as any of them knew, he never complained.
Sunny and Tiffany went on to become the first actors in adult plays to break out of stereotypical vanilla roles. Apparently they were approached with the idea of a husky midget and a bandaged lady and deals were worked out. It went well for two years before Sunny succumbed to cancer of the beard. Heartbroken, Tiffany drank herself to death a month later on a dare that she couldn’t drink as much as a norse pirate.
George was discharged from the Holy Order her served due to his part in burning down a whole forest. He returned to the dungeon on his own to gather treasure, and used the funds to start his own Clothing Optional Church. It lasted well through one summer. After George froze to death during a winter ceremony, the idea was disregarded as preposterous and sworn never to be attempted again.
Krieg shouldn’t have done it, he was told, but he still tried. Bless his soul and may he rest in peace. They will miss him.
Grimlor was eventually found guilty of murder and sentenced to life for the crime of tying naked women to dwarves, lighting them on fire, and using them as running torches during his own adventures. He served three years before getting bored of seeing how hard he could hit the warden with thrown rats. After that he escaped into the countryside, screaming about needing a drink and a cowdung tunic. He was never seen again.
Svirfneblin was seeing for years to come, on and off, by travelers who reported the strange sight of a loud-shrieking ogre in black garb running around at almost breakneck speeds while dragging behind a bard-dressed gnome holding to his genitals with a pair of tongs. He became the first tabloid article, gaining great public interest though never officially proven to exist.
The End.
_______________________
Generic Cliché Fantasy Story
A gripping tale of one party's exploits, or maybe their good deeds...
...or maybe just drunken rambling and nudity.
Read it.
Furry Forever, yo.
I HAS A DREAM!
