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[Kagus]

Revenge would have to take a horse in the back however, as the Baron's monetary needs were still just as pressing as ever.

The Baron trekked North in search of other villages that had yet to receive his services.  The Baron felt confident that it would not take him long before he found another employer, as there was always something that needed to die. 

some days later, Ballista'em entered into the quaint town of Nurturesuitors.  Ballista'em picked his way through the streets until he came across a building that, although unmarked, bore a smell that could only mean a tavern.

Or a Town Hall.  It's often difficult to tell the difference between the two.


The Baron made his normal loud and impossible-to-ignore entrance into the building, and stood impressively in the doorway for a moment, backlit by the afternoon sun rays streaming in behind him.  He then puffed out his chest and barked into the spacious room.

"Any of you piss stains need something dead?"

After a few moments had passed, a man wearing an absolutely ridiculous wig stood up near the back and called in response.

"Why, yes of course!  Please,  come closer and...  Ask me again..."

The Baron clomped over to the man, who sat back down at his table as the Baron approached.

Ballista'em stood a few feet away from the table, observing the man who had requested he come over.  He was wearing a pyramid-shaped wig full of curly white hair.  It looked slightly worn in places, and there was covered-over evidence of what looked like a small nest.  He also appeared to have a leftover speck of his last meal on his upper lip.

The Baron started to open his mouth to ask what the peculiar man wanted, when the man looked around the room cautiously and then motioned the Baron towards him with his hand.

"Please, come closer and ask me again."

The Baron pulled one of the chairs out and sat down across from the man.  The man leaned forward conspiratorially, and Ballista'em followed suit.  The man appeared to be wearing rouge.  And what the Baron had previously thought was some fleck of meat or wine-soaked bread was a beauty spot. 

Fruitcake... the Baron thought as he sat with his face close enough to the other man so that he could smell a slightly sweet aroma.  He was also wearing what appeared to be women's lip color.

The man glanced around again, and then stretched himself forward towards the Baron.  He parted his too-red lips slightly, and spoke in a lusty whisper.

"Please....  Come closer, and ask again..."

Ballista'em pulled back and slammed his fist squarely into the side of the man's jaw, providing a fleeting but humorous image as the man's jaw flew out to his right and his head belatedly followed after it.  The Baron stood up, crashing over not only his chair but the table as well. 

Expecting another event like the last town, Ballista'em tightened his grip on the hand crossbow that he had loaded before entering the tavern.  However, when he looked back towards the other patrons, none of them seemed to be paying him even the slightest attention.

Two men were sitting at the table closest to the Baron, one of them lying asleep next to his drink on the table and the other one not too far off from a similar position.

Someone in the back began to belch but was interrupted by a coughing fit, causing a discordant "brrRE-HRUUCKRergl" noise that caused the sleeping man to shoot upright in his seat, spilling what was left of his ale on his drinking partner.  Neither seemed to noticed this last development.

After the man spent a few minutes twirling around in his seat like a child's top, the drunkard finally reached a state that could be considered "awake".  He stared dazedly at the man Ballista'em had punched, who was still picking himself -and his wig- off the floor.

The drunkard's eyes widened in comprehension, and he swayed back a bit in his seat as he filled his lungs with the stale air.  The Baron's finger tightened on the crossbow's trigger.

"FIGHT!"  the drunkard bellowed, and then swung his fist into the face of his drinking partner.  The man fell back off his chair, the states of asleep and awake now swapped between the two men.

More drunks began to rise up from their seats and start attacking people at random.  Soon, chair legs and ale steins were whizzing through the air as the chaos reached new heights. 

The baron's trigger finger relaxed slightly, if only out of utter confusion.  Finally, he relaxed it all the way and crossed his hands over his chest as he watched the fray get even more out of hand than it had been before.

Blood and spittle began accompanying the ale steins and the chair legs were no longer being detached from chairs before getting thrown.  The Baron ducked under a soaring soup bowl and walked outside.  As the door was closing behind him, a large floppy thing struck Ballista'em in the back.

The Baron recoiled and turned around to see what projectile had hit him, and saw the first man's wig lying on the ground.  The source of the wig's state of disarray had been made clear, and the man's own state of disarray was apparently being proven inside as a girlish howl echoed out into the streets.


The Baron turned on his heel and started walking out of town.  There must be another town that had some work for the Baron.  Any town. 

Had to be.

[Kagus]

Flagleopard was the name of the next town in the long line of small hamlets and villages that marked the borderlands of human civilization.

The streets were relatively busy with townsfolk as they went about their daily business, but they quickly cleared as the peasants moved away from the big stranger walking into town.  "Skittish" would probably best describe these villagers, as they watched the stranger warily and darted into their houses when he glanced at them. 

Skittish.  Skittish was good.  Skittish meant nervous people, and nervous people meant more jobs for the Baron.

This town, unlike those before it, actually had an official Town Hall.  The building wasn't much to look at, but it gave off a sense of authority that the surrounding houses lacked.  Baron Ballista'em walked in through the door and immediately picked out the mayor.  He was standing over a scribe who appeared to be taking dictations.

The mayor had a large, almost ovoid body shape.  He wore a dark blue coat and on top of that a mayoral sash with some sort of badge or medallion pinned onto it.

Ballista'em walked towards the mayor, his steel boots clomping heavily on the wood floor and announcing his presence.  The mayor looked up from his pacing and the scribe trailed off in his writing as he too looked at the large man who had just entered.

The mayor looked evenly at Ballista'em, his eyes giving off not the slightest hint that he was intimidated by the Baron's excessively muscular frame.

"And you would be...?"

"Ballista'em.  Baron Ballista'em."

"Very well then, 'Baron'.  I suppose there's some reason you walked in here unannounced?"

"Yeah, there is.  I figured you would have use of my services, and I would have use of your gold."

"And what exactly are your services?"

"I'm a delivery boy."

"Delivery boy...?"

"Yeah.  People give me deaths, and I deliver them to whoever the recipient is."

"Ah, I see...  Perhaps we should speak in my private office, come with me."

The mayor led Ballista'em away towards the back of the building while the scribe packed up his scribing kit and returned to his own quarters to rest his hand.

Once inside the office, the mayor sat down behind an impressive wooden desk and motioned for the Baron to take one of the other chairs.  The mayor rested his arms on the desk and leaned forward slightly to speak with Ballista'em.

"As it turns out, mercenary, I do need your services.  the townspeople have been plagued with a certain matter that I believe would fall neatly into your area of expertise."

The mayor leaned back again and let out a deep breath before continuing.

"There's a place, not far from here.  How it came to be I do not know, all that I know is that ever since the day it formed our village has been under attack by hideous monsters drawn up from the darkest corners of the abyss.  I sent a party of twelve men from the town watch down into that hellhole once, and only two of them returned.  One had been driven mad by what he had seen and had to be dragged home by the second, who would not open his mouth for three days.

"When he did, he told us of the horrors that lie inside that place.  Twisted fiends from the oozing darkness at the bottom of the world, creatures that were called forth to serve a monster called 'Azstrog'.  This thing, Azstrog, is something that poor boy simply would not say more about.

"The next day, one of the watch sergeants found him dead by his own sword in the barracks.  The boy simply couldn't live with the memory of his fellow watchmen dying in that pit."

The mayor raised himself up and looked directly into the Baron's eyes.

"I have no particular love for mercenaries like you.  I consider them to be little more than brigands.  But, if you can successfully kill this Azstrog, I will gladly pay you with every damned coin in our coffers."


They sat silently for a few moments, the Baron contemplating the mayor's speech and offer of extravagant payment. 

Finally, the Baron repositioned himself more comfortably in the chair and said

"Yeah, alright.  Sounds good.  Where can I find the place?"

And so, the mayor pulled out a map of the local area and began making notations...

[Mulch Diggums]

I stoped reading this after the second page and now I regret it after reading the above post. I'll have to read this whole topic now. Good story craze

[Heavy Flak]

"Please....  Come closer, and ask again..."

I choked on my bourbon trying to keep from laughing, damn you.  Well played Kagus.  Well played. 

[Kagus]

Heh, that came about after I got rather annoyed with this one mayor...  A few drunks were piled up on the stairs and were refusing to budge, so I couldn't go up to talk with the mayor.

While I was waiting for the drunks to sort themselves out, I noticed that the mayor had moved over to the edge of that little elevated platform.  I walked over until I was standing just underneath him (well, as close as I could get without actually walking underneath the floor he was standing on) and then I tried talking to him.  He gave me the age-old line of closing distance and repeating inquiry, which got me a bit ticked off with the blighter who couldn't bother himself enough to lean over the railing and talk with me while his buddies played an impromptu game of twister on the stairs.

And so I decided to submit him to poetic torture by giving a new meaning to "Please, come closer and ask again".  And then I zombified him using DC.

[Kagus]

Ballista'em stood at the entrance to the abyss, a towering basalt entryway supporting an equally massive door that seemed rather plain in comparison to the structure that held it up, its unfinished wood exterior was adorned only with two hanging bronze rings that were beginning to turn green with corrosion.

The Baron felt a slight twinge in the back of his neck as he stepped forward to open the doors.  Was it fear?  No, not fear...   Apprehension?  Seemed strange, but that was closer.  Whatever it was, it troubled the Baron.  He'd seen some rather nasty things in his life, hell, had caused most of them, but there was something about this place that troubled him.

The Baron grunted and reached for the bronze rings.  The doors, large as they were, took relatively little force to open.  Inside, the ground sloped down to a tight passage that was covered in an off-white sand that piled up on the sides of the passage.  The Baron could see no distinct footprints in the sand, but there were numerous indentations that indicated some sort of disturbance.

Ballista'em jumped down into the passage, his boots sending up plumes of sand as they landed on the floor.  As his boots touched the sand, he heard the door swinging shut behind him.  Although the light from the door had been cut off, the passage was still light enough to see in.  It seemed to have some sort of light streaming down from the ceiling, although no source could be found.

The Baron trudged back up the slope and gave the door a testing push.  It swung open easily, revealing the rather dull countryside he had just come from.  Satisfied, the Baron turned around and immediately stopped again.  A squat, shadowy figure had emerged at the end of the passage.  The two stood motionless, observing each other silently.

Then the squat figure gibbered something incomprehensible and dashed out of sight.  The Baron pulled out his hand crossbow and ran down the passage after the thing, but he was stopped by two shining humanoids stepping out of the gloom and towards him.  They stood roughly seven feet tall, their forms utterly symmetrical and exquisitely detailed, bronze muscles bulging out from their bare chests and arms.

The two living statues marched in unison towards the Baron, and Ballista'em got the feeling that they probably weren't friendly.  The baron raised his hand crossbow and fired into one of the bronze men, but the shot deflected off the bronze skin and did little more than chip away at the statue.

In response, the bronze man batted at the Baron's hand with considerable force, causing his hand crossbow to fly off into the darkness.  This was accompanied by a tinkling, scraping sound as the delicate darkelven mechanisms met the wall.  It was a fleeting acquaintance, but destructive by its nature.

"Alright, I guess we do this the old-fashioned way..."  The Baron said, raising his fists towards the statues.  One of the bronze men swung his hand at the Baron's own, and as he did the Baron leaned back and thrust his left foot into the statue's midsection, lunging forward with his right foot.

Sparks flew as steel met bronze, and the bronze man was knocked back and onto the sandy floor, his shiny bronze skin soon covered in the fine sand that was kicked up from his fall.

The second statue swung at the Baron''s head, and the Baron felt the power behind that swing as he ducked under it.  Ballista'em was just standing up again from that swing when the bronze man hit him square in the chest with the backhand from his previous miss.  The Baron went sailing through the air before slamming into the slope he had just walked down. 

Well, better than hitting the wall... The Baron thought as he recovered his breath.  As he sucked in air, he could feel a nagging pain in his chest.  He'd probably snapped a couple ribs, but that was okay.  That's what they were there for, after all.

The living statue trudged slowly towards the prone Baron, moving at a plodding pace that a one-legged mule could probably outrun.  As the statue neared, the Baron shifted his weight a bit and moved over so that he could reach something in his pack.  He began winding it furiously.

The bronze man neared the Baron, and just as it was stooping over to reach the reclining royalty, Ballista'em jumped up and planted the steel bolt's tip right in the statue's eye before firing his crossbow.

This wasn't the massive arbalest, his treasured "B.B. Bow", he didn't have any ammo for that beast.  This was a slightly smaller version, but it was dwarven-made and packed arguably as much power as its big brother.  It was decorated with images that were standardly dwarven...  Dwarves having grand parties, dwarves lifting up great treasures, dwarves drinking huge tankards of ale, dwarves with mushrooms on their heads, and an image of a potato, for some reason.

The Baron fired, and there was a dull grinding noise as the steel bolt was shoved into the statue's head by the full force of the dwarven crossbow.  The statue seemed to emit a low groan from its entire body, and an ochre goo began seeping out around the bolt's shaft.  The Baron stepped away and the bronze man collapsed to the ground, still stooped over like an old maid.

The Baron administered a similar treatment to the second statue as it laboriously attempted to raise itself off the ground and come after him.

Ballista'em looked around at his handiwork...  Ho could easily have just stepped around the things and outrun them, but this was much more satisfying.  The Baron winced slightly as his ribs reminded him of their disagreement.

A dull sucking sound was coming from down the passage, and the Baron turned around to see something else coming towards him, and this one only marginally faster than the statues.  What appeared to be the melted form of a human was crawling towards him, its body below the chest reduced to a large bag of flesh that was simply being dragged along by the front.  The features of the thing's face had drooped considerably, and the head now appeared to be the top of a flesh pyramid, dotted with small patches of stringy hair and adorned with drifting eye sockets and a large flap that  seemed to be a rudimentary mouth.  No nose could be determined, although it did have a hole that seemed to serve a breathing function, although it was closer to the hairline than most noses should be.

The thing plodded towards him, its flesh forming into air pockets over the floor that caused the sucking sounds as it made its way towards the Baron.  It opened its mouth and gabbled something unintelligible, flapping its lips, lip, for punctuation.  While it was open, the Baron could see that it was filled with tiny needle-like teeth that quivered slightly as the thing attempted to communicate.

"Doing you a favor, ugly"  Ballista'em said to the thing, and then planted a bolt into the fleshy form.  It collapsed with the bolt sticking out of its head, making a sighing "Uuuuggh..." as it died.

The Baron picked his way around the creature's extensive lower body and made his way farther into the tunnel complex.  As he ventured deeper, sounds began to drift to his ears from the recesses of the place.  Sometimes they were animal-like howls, other times they were singing voices of unearthly beauty, sometimes the echoed gibberish of the complex's other inhabitants.

After an indeterminate time spent trudging through the sandy corridors, the Baron came to a staircase made from midnight-black stone descending deeper into the ground.  More noises drifted up from below, the sound ringing oddly off the perfectly smooth stone.  The sand stopped at this point, with only small drifts of it extending towards the stairs.  The Baron walked off the sand and onto the first step, his steel boot letting out a loud clang as his foot came down.  Instantly, the grunting gibberish from below ceased.  Not a good sign.

The Baron stood still for a moment, waiting for more sounds to give him a hint as to what the creatures that made them were doing.  Pure silence met his ears.

Ballista'em began clanging his way down the rest of the staircase, generating his own sounds to fill the silence.  At the bottom, he found more passages made from the black stone, but these lacked the comforting light that the above passages held.   Several torches burned conveniently on the wall however, and the Baron appropriated one for his own use.

Keeping his light source in front of him, Ballista'em ventured down the first passage until he came to a large chamber that extended in every direction, although how far was unknown due to the fact that everything was concealed by pure darkness.  The Baron started making his way through what now appeared to be a lightless night aboveground, with the only difference being the black stone floor beneath him.

The Baron stopped suddenly, listening into the darkness...  A scraping noise in the distance.  Then, something closer...  Sounded almost like pebbles falling on the stone, but no, it was....

Chittering.

"Shit." The Baron uttered as he shoved the butt of the torch into his mouth and swung around to fire a bolt into the stomach of the stunted fiend that had just leapt out of the darkness at him.  It fell back screeching, its dark claws scratching at the bolt that was now firmly embedded in the creature's inner workings.  Another came sprinting out of the shadows and met the end of one of the Baron's boots head-on, the body skidding back into the impenetrable cloak of darkness.

A third came at him and met the Baron's second bolt, just as a fourth clambered up his back and began tearing into him with its claws, uttering its high-pitched ramblings.  The Baron jumped up and landed flat on the stone floor, crushing the beast on his back.  He was able to get to his feet just as two more cretins charged into the torchlight, one tasting steel as the Baron's third bolt ripped through its throat and the the other tasting teeth as the Baron punched it full in the face.

More of them were coming, and the Baron resorted to flailing around with his legs and fists, sometimes picking up one of the beasts and throwing it deep into the mob.  He felt pain as claws raked across his chest and dug into his arms, lost part of his vision as a particularly nasty slash scratched his eye and caused the lid to fold protectively over it.  In his blind rage, he grabbed the torch out of his mouth and rammed it into the chest of the closest beast he could find.  There was a sizzling, shrieking moment as the creature had most of its chest burned away, and then everything went black.  The chittering increased in volume, and the Baron felt more claws biting into his skin.  He expected them to just get it over with and slash his throat open, but they didn't.  In fact, they seemed to be pulling him...  Dragging him.  And then his functioning eye closed and his mind knew a blackness similar to that which he was being dragged through.

His eye fluttered open from time to time, seeing either nothing or the flash of a large yellow eye looking back at him when one of the creatures got curious.  Eventually, his sleep was interrupted by what felt like needles pricking into his already-sore back.  He opened his working eye and looked around.

The room he was in was not quite as expansive as the one where he had first encountered the runtlings that now pranced about the room excitedly, but this one was at least lit.  Nightmarish runes along the walls gave off a bright red glow strong enough to illuminate the room, at least somewhat. 

The ground shook slightly, and a gargantuan being strode into view.  The Baron looked up at Azstrog, god of the depths, and felt that twinge again.

His body was that of a human male, or at least it might have been once.  One foot was simply a fleshy club that pounded the ground with each step, and the leg had far too many knees to be entirely human.  Azstrog's entire left side, starting at mid-stomach and continuing up to his shoulder, was a mass of flesh-colored tentacles, writhing around each other ceaselessly.  Azstrog's mouth was a hideous sight, the jaw seeming to hang by the cheeks at a point just below his navel.  A long, snakelike tongue protruded from the center of the mouth and coiled into strange shapes in the air.  Azstrog's eyes, set beneath a hairless and symmetrical cranium that seemed out of place with the rest of his horror, were empty sockets that poured out darkness as thick as smoke into serpentine patterns. 

Azstrog stood, allowing the Baron to take in his gruesome magnificence, and then he spoke.  As he did so, he swung his head from side to side so that his mouth waggled on its long connection, creating an image of a panicked scream of almost comic proportions, rather than calm discourse.  His voice emanated not from his mouth, but seemed to come straight out from his eyes.

"So, dayling...  The overground does pamper you weakfools too much, methinks...  You forgets your survival inkekt, and becomes weakfool for sakes of overgods...

"Overground was once MY kingdom, weakfool...  Overgods struck me down for sit in MY throne, and for rule over MY kingdom...   Sssth...  Puny thing, you think you can fights a KING?!"

Ballista'em bent forward, grabbing hold of his boots to help pull himself up to a standing position.  Grabbing something else, too.

Ballista'em looked up at the horrific creature before him, and allowed himself a small smile.  He felt the thing from his boot throbbing against his hand.  It felt warm against the fear-cold skin of his palm.

"Well, if anyone's going to do it..."  He shouted back at the grotesque fiend.

"... then it might as well be a baron!"

And with that, Baron Ballista'em threw the dwarven bolt at the monster.  Not steel, not bronze, not even that adamantine those damn beardies favored so much.  This was just a wood shaft, and a little bit of dwarven magic packed tightly into the egg-shaped head.

As the small projectile twirled through the air, Ballista'em thought back over his life.  He had slain darkelves, giant spiders, kentaur bandits, giants, and even a dragon with his faithful crossbow.  But now, without his darkelven hand crossbow, without his dwarven-made compact bow, without his giant arbalest, he was going to take down his biggest quarry yet.


The dwarven bomb-ball struck Azstrog high on the chest, ricocheting off into a tight spin.  Although the ball spun around quickly, time had slowed down enough to count each and every rotation.

One spin...  Two spins...  Three spins...   Four...


Light.  Brilliant, blinding light.  Followed by deafening sound, followed by pain...

Followed by blackness.

------------}}}===>------------

And so ends the tale of Baron Ballista'em, may his legacy live on to take place in a time and place far away from the crumbled tomb where his broken body now rests, buried underneath countless tons of rubble and strange stonework.


Alright folks, that's the end of the show for tonight.  That thing took me three and a half hours to write, for some reason, and it's now quite late/early.  I'll get to work on your next contender tomorrow evening, when I get some time.

Good night everybody.  Hope I managed to end him alright.

[Kagus]

Edward stood in the field, the wind rushing through his shaggy and somewhat dirty hair.  "Eddie", as he was affectionately know by his late friends, looked out over the peaceful village from his hilltop vantage point and sucked in some of the warm spring air.

After swelling his chest with the pristine air, he let it back out again in a long, rasping sigh that spewed out a few flecks of his lungs as well.  Eddie smacked his lips appreciatively and smiled happily as he surveyed the countryside again.

Yes, today was a gorgeous day, and Eddie felt absolutely wonderful.


...for a dead man. 



The late Edward Licopibo, 941-989, stood atop the graveyard hill and looked out over his previous home of Irneguki 'Dipbite'.  He was stark naked but for the dirt and grime that covered his body, his clothes having rotted away years previously.  Evidence of the stiffening effects of rigor mortis stood proudly in the breeze as the reanimated corpse, remarkably well preserved considering how long he had been interred, took in all of the changes that had occurred in the sixty-some years since his death.

Eager to sooth the aching throb in his gut, Eddie trotted down the hill and towards the village.

[Sean Mirrsen]

You know Kagus, the latest story about Baron Ballista'em (you sure you didn't make the name from a Big Bertha backronym?) was all well and good, but I think you kinda forgot you were going to make a community adventurer, and let the readers decide what goes on. Personally, I don't think I ever saw any manner of "choice of action" in the Baron's story. Normal stories belong in their own threads, not in Death and Glory.

[Kagus]

Yeah, I know...  But the Baron never really clicked anyways, and it's damn hard to kill something that's superhumanly tough, even if he isn't wearing armor.  I actually tried to get him killed before ending the story, I lay down in front of a giant and just waited for him to pummel me to death.

Nothing happened.  I eventually got bored and shoved a bolt into his heart, and then I just got the Baron to starve himself.


Eddie, on the other hand, is going to be an attempt to get back on track.  He's pretty damn hard to kill though, so his death is probably going to come as a surprise. 

Hell, I fiddled around with the body files until the only important part of his body is the head.  Everything else can go.

But he's not invulnerable, so although he can resist a Giant Cave Spider's venom, he probably won't survive too many bites.  And the eternally popular zombie headshots are still a risk.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Alright, neat. Btw, an elven fairblade is supposed to be thin and delicate. Think a rapier/katana crossbreed.

[Frelock]

Even if the Baron strayed somewhat from the original Death and Glory ideal, your writing is still as glorious as ever, Kagus.

My vote: try to get someone to cut off Eddie's arm or leg, and then use that to beat people to death with.  Or some other random person's arm or leg would do.

[Kagus]

I was personally hoping for his left arm to be lopped off.  But it would be rather interesting in the event he has his upper body "lopped off" (I did a little body tweaking) so that he ends up as just a bouncing, rolling zombie head that attacks people... 

But, come what will.  I may even get an update in tonight, playing as a zombie should prove to be exciting.  But don't get your hopes up, updates take a long time and I've got a slightly busy schedule.

[Kagus]

Eddie trundled into the village, his putrid blue-green skin sporting the heads of numerous worms that had popped out to see what the fuss was.  The first order of business would be to get some new clothes for Eddie, as his current snazz was, well...  Nonexistent.

After walking through the mostly deserted streets for a while, Eddie noticed a man walking past in an absolutely exquisite silk vest.  It had that soft touch-me sheen that only silk can have, and the lines were perfectly designed to emphasize the frame of the wearer. 

Eddie hobbled up to the man and respectfully inquired as to whether or not the man would lend him his clothing articles.

"eyeeerAAAGH!?!"

"By the gods, a zombie!"

"Mrh?"

"AAAIEE!"

"Blargh!"

Having failed negotiations, Eddie went to plan B.  Namely, thrusting his hand into the man's throat, ripping out his Adam's apple, and eating it.

The man gurgled feebly as his blood gushed out of the gaping hole in his throat in massive torrents while Eddie stood above crunching thoughtfully.  After a few seconds, the zombie tossed what remained of the Adam's apple over his shoulder and dug into the main course.


The man's brains were not particularly fresh, but they tasted good and satisfied Eddie's death-induced hunger. 

Brains.  Part of this nutritious breakfast!


Eddie then took the man's vest, now crimson in the front, and draped it over one arm for safe keeping (it simply wouldn't do to wear a vest without a shirt underneath).   As he was doing so, Eddie looked down and noticed that one of the man's boots had come off.  On the man's foot was a beautiful silk sock with little dancing dwarves sewn into it.  Eddie was standing on one leg and putting on the sock when a massive harpoon blasted its way through Eddie's leg before thudding into a nearby wall.  Eddie fell over.

As he was picking himself up, he looked back and saw a shiny guard pulling another shooting-spear out of his pack, a wide grin spreading from underneath a bushy black moustache.  Eddie quickly got to his feet and shambled like his unlife depended on it, which it quite likely did.

More harpoons shot past Eddie as he made his way out of town, spearing fence posts, young saplings, the neighbor's cat, a small but very artistic rendition of a mountain (made using only sand), and one pie that was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Eddie skilfully ignored the harpoons as they whizzed past his head and various other important extremities, when he heard a rhythmic thudding noise behind him.  Looking around, Eddie saw the resident fat brothers of the town chasing after him at an only slightly slower speed than Eddie himself.

Theodore and Dietrik, known to themselves as Teddo and Ricky, were known to others as Dodo and Ditto due to the fact that the elder, Theodore, came up with more hair-brained schemes than would normally be possible for a sane man, and the fact that the younger, Ricky, always agreed with what his big brother said by giving an emphatic 'Yeah!'.

Theodore, having been tired with the ridicule that the duo suffered on a daily basis, had been plotting ways of attaining the kind of heroism that transcended mortal waistlines when the zombie, wearing one silk sock, hobbled past them on stiff legs. 

It had taken the brothers a small amount of time to extricate themselves from their chairs, but they eventually made it out and began chasing after the highly dangerous undead person.  The two blubbery forms had managed to position themselves between Eddie and the guard, and the guard found that he now not only didn't have a clean shot, he couldn't even see the zombie anymore.  Better just to head down to the pub and grab an ale.  Maybe grab a bit of that cute barmaid while he was at it...

Teddo and Ricky, meanwhile, were still chugging along after the zombie.  As the sun set and cast its rosy hue across the sky, three silhouettes dashed their way awkwardly across the dry prairie surrounding Dipbite. 

After a full half minute of jogging, the brothers were too exhausted to continue after the tireless form of the undead sock-wearer hobbling off into the distance.  They fell to the ground with great thuds, catching their breath as they rested on the soft padding their extensive guts provided. 

As night fell, the two would-be zombie hunters were fast asleep and drooling onto the prairie, and Eddie was far away, tending to his wounded leg which was already beginning to patch itself up with his newly-acquired brain juice.




Okay lads, need something for Eddie to do.  Does he:

A) Go north, to the goblins
B) Go southeast, to the elves
C) Go east, to some humans
D) Go west, to some other humans
E) Find a cave
F) Find a river
G)*_______

[SHAD0Wdump]

A zombie?Brilliant!

Either C or D,cuz thats what zombies do!

[Jools]

Great new character!

My normal instincts would lead me to suggest bothering the elves, but their bows and accuracy might be a bit dangerous initially... how about starting with C, and then once the humans are no fun, going for the pointy-eared hippies?

Ideally I'd suggest going back and eating the two fat bastards who chased Eddie out of the town, but that's not on the list...