The master baker was a real mean bastard, who enjoyed beating on his apprentices (whom he kept several of just for this purpose) whenever he was drunk, sad, bored, needed to relieve some stress or simply felt like it. For the most part he simply thumped them around the head or kicked them across the room - he was a big man, this baker - but occasionally he would vary his methods, using sticks, straps, strangulation or even the hot stoves they worked with.
One day one of his pitiful underlings, an especially weepy young girl who, unlike the others, hadn't really learned the tricks of staying out of sight and keeping their heads down, had the terrible misfortune of dropping a large blueberry pie she was carrying from the oven.
The baker was on her in a second, his usual bellowing replaced by a terrible hiss of rage. That pie, you see, was intended for the local baron's birthday celebrations. It was going to take pride of place, a true masterpiece of pastry-craft. The baker (whose name was Shorlum, of the famed Shorlum's Bakehouse) had poured over a week of blood, sweat and tears into its creation (not literally, his hygiene practices may not have been great, but they weren't
that bad), sourcing only the finest ingredients and demonstrating a flair for design unexpected in such a brutish man.
He was understandably proud of it, and understandably upset to see it go
*splultch* on the floor when it was so close to completion.
Less understandable, however, was the way he immediately grabbed the clumsy girl's neck in one huge hand and began squeezing the life out of her, smacking the unfortunate waif against the walls, furniture and rafters as her face turned blue.
At that moment the hero of our story, a pitiful young lad named Thrips (his tragic, poverty-stricken early life is a fairly standard story I shan't bore you with here), put aside the painfully-learned self-preservation skills he had acquired over the couple of years he'd somehow survived in the baker's employ, grabbed a fire poker and ran up to desperately whack the baker over the back of the head with it.
The poker bounced harmlessly off the brute's shoulder, but it did achieve something: the baker dropped the girl (whether she still lived by this point is unknown)- and turned his attention, along with a vicious backhand, to Thrips.
The lad's story would have ended there, screaming with his face pressed to a hot stove, were it not for the intervention of the city guard.
Apparently Shorlum had neglected a certain order placed by the captain of the guard to devote his time to the baron's blueberry cake. They barged into the back of the bakery intending to simply rough him up a bit before taking him into custody, only to be shocked and appalled by the state of affairs back there.
One particularly sensitive rookie trooper even threw up a little in his mouth at the sight of the baker's tormented apprentices.
You could almost say it was a...
...
dough ex machina. 
Anyway, Shorlum never made it to trial, and his various apprentices were either sent back to their families, to the local orphanage, or shipped to the Omega Legion in a few, especially unfortunate cases. Thrips was one of the unlucky ones- who would want to adopt an ugly little runt with a bung eye and a faceful of burn scar, after all?
By the time he had recovered enough to be aware of his surroundings, said surroundings were the interior of a cart headed to his new life.
His only "combat experience" is swinging at his master with his poker and the frequent fights and scuffles amongst his fellow apprentices.
Author
Topic: Omega Legion: Omega Base (Read 289866 times)