Leon gratefully accepts the ale, and starts telling another story, this one from a little over ten years ago.
Back then, he worked for one of the local landowners, learning a little of swordplay and shooting but spending most of his time looking after the horses and the game hens. A few times out in the woods he'd encountered a large, half-wild, wolflike dog, which he regarded with respect and which didn't seem to mind his presence. Every now and then a bird would die outside of a hunt, or wouldn't be retrieved, and Leon snuck these away for the dog.
Anyway, a bit later on, and a pack of beak dogs* had settled in the area.
"Anyone ever come across a beak dog before?" Leon pulls up a large claw on a chain from around his neck, and passes it around. "Vicious things; they can tear a cow open like nothin' more than a pig's bladder, and that's just their claws!"
The beak dogs had killed plenty of the game hens and had been spotted scouting out the pastures where the horses were kept. Fancying himself as a bit of a hotshot with a crossbow and eager to prove himself, Leon set out into the woods to solve the problem. He set himself up behind a mound and waited.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before the beak dogs came by. Leon quietly and carefully lined up his shot - and a beak dog was still, on the ground, a bolt through its head. The rest scattered, but Leon stayed in place. Moments later, a couple of anxious looking beak dogs came back to investigate the corpse, but they kept moving about and Leon couldn't get a good aim.
Then, the sound of a twig snapping, from behind. Leon turned around with a sudden dread, and there was a beak dog, its body low to the ground and its back rippling with muscles. He tried to scuttle back, but the creature leapt upon him, catching his leg in its beak and digging a claw deep into his arm.
Lost to the moment and sure he was history, Leon couldn't say where the dog had come from, but it swept the beak dog off him in a flurry of fur and teeth. The two ripped and tore at each other, fighting savagely. Somehow the beak dog couldn't land any major strikes on the dog, and though the dog was covered in scratches, the beak dog was dripping blood from several severe bite wounds on its body. An instant later and the dog was towering over the upturned predator, jaws locked around the beak dog's throat. And in another instant, the beak dog was dead.
"I tell you, you ain't never goin' to seen a beast so fearsome as that dog was then. The beak dogs didn't come back to the area, and that dog ended up siring good ol' Goliath."
Goliath, hearing his name at the end of the story, eagerly moves into the crowd to enjoy some attention.
* or other suitable native creatures
Author
Topic: GURPS (Read 11942 times)