Late afternoon, Wednesday 10th April, 1906.
Make tea for our Nordic friends.
Seeing the kindly Vikings agree to a nice civilised cup of tea,
Mr McGeenyton lays out a table and dings his butler bell to summon some boiling water and the various requisite materials that come together in the noble pursuit of tea making.
Whilst
Mr Wellington and the Viking threesome engage in some friendly chit chat about hunting and the lamentable quality of axes nowadays, McGeenyton is hard at work brewing the tea. His brows are knit with concentration as he watches Smythe, his butler, lay out the cups and pour out the luxurious and refined liquid after carefully measuring the length of time the tea is allowed to brew. Smythe is about to add the milk when suddenly a commotion breaks out!
Mr Wellington and the Vikings clearly disagree about the use of langets on the hafts of traditionally styled battle axes!
Apologize dearly, placing the blame on myself, and then acquire tea.
As his friend and countryman
Mr McGeenyton prepares tea for their unexpected guests,
Mr Wellington takes it upon himself to see to the important task of keeping said guests occupied and, indeed, entertained, by displaying his considerable range of topics of polite conversation.
He asks them politely about their preferred methods of hunting, before regaling them with some of the more interesting tales from his own personal experience, including the time he stalked a notorious giraffe for forty days in Rhodesia, and then moves on to the touchy subject of modern axes, and whether it is, or not, a desirable thing to reinforce the hafts with langets. It would appear to be a somewhat raging controversy, and tempers rise.
“Pøor Arnbjørn, he was terribly pro-länget, wasn’t he, eh?” remembers one.
“Um.”
“Oh, gøsh, yes,” concurs another.
“Such a terrible shame äbout the poor fellow.”
“I say?”
“Whatever åre we going to tell his mother?”
“I said, I say! Look, I’m terribly bloody sorry, what, but I thought you blighters were going to bloody well axe me and my fellow Englishman in the face! You keep bringing up the subject of your poor bloody Arnbjørn when I’ve been trying to blasted apologise but you keep bloody well going on about your bloody langets, and I just don’t bloody well care! I don’t care about axes! I’m a bloody gentleman and I use a bloody sword if I want to be so crude as to use a blasted weapon! A sword or a bloody top hat! Now, look, here comes Mr McGeenyton. Drink your bloody tea and be gone with you!”The three Vikings’ faces turn grey with horror. Mr Wellington has forgotten the cardinal rule of polite conversation with a Viking!
“You don’t care about axes?!” exclaims the left-most Viking as he draws his and throws his cup to the snowy ground.
“You don’t bloody well care about bloody axes? What the devil is the meaning of this?! I’ll have your guts for garters and your hat for a… blast. For a hat! This is a bloody disgrace! Come on chaps,” he concludes, turning to his comrades,
“Let’s cut these blasted Englishmen down to size, eh what?! Let’s show them just how interesting axes can be! In their faces!”The other two Vikings also throw their fine china cups to the floor in disgust and draw their weapons. They intend to show these Englishmen just how interesting axes can be!
All stampedes surely act alike, and as a true cowboy knows, the only way out is to make a fiendishly enormous quantity of sound to drive them off. So... blow on the bagpipes, and pray. Encourage von Ferson to fire some shots in the air and come up with a better plan.
“Blast! A blasted stampede! Von Fersen! You’re an expert in the Elk! Do you have a plan?”Do whatever the guide does! Surely a experienced and knowledgeable aboriginal individual like him knows how to handle this. Otherwise, wait until the stampede reaches you and mount the biggest male, asserting my dominance over him, and riding him away from the snowslide.
“Erm. I say. I uh… I think it would be wisest to follow the example of our guide! Look, yonder he flees, into the tallest tree! Blast, I don’t think we’ll be able to make it. I don’t see how we could run that fast and keep any shred of dignity, my dear fellow. We need a better plan. Hmm. Let’s think for a minute.”“Right-o,” says
Smith.
“Well, where I come from, the soundest technique for countering a stampede…”
“… so you see, the Elk, well, despite appearances, it’s a very pack-oriented animal…”
“…is to produce an enormous and ungodly din, thereby scaring the leading animals of the herd…”
“…and the way to control a herd of the noble beast is, then, like a pack of hunting dogs…”
“… and thus diverting the flow of animals away from one and, if one is on the plains, away from one’s wagon and loved ones.”
“… to vigorously mount the beast, thus asserting one’s dominance over the fiendish yet noble creature, and taking its place as the alpha male, so to speak, of the pack. Then it should be a simple question of leading the entire herd in a less dangerous direction, you see, Smith.”
“So, what I propose, von Fersen, is to make as much noise as possible, you with your rifle and I with my splendid set of bagpipes. I knew they’d come in handy.”
“Oh, blimey, Smith. How the devil do you expect to be able to mount a feisty Elk whilst playing your bagpipes?” asks, incredulously,
von Fersen, running towards the largest Elk he can see.
“You need two hands free to mount such a splendid and noble beast as this!”Smith keeps blowing as hard as he can, cheeks puffed out and red with exertion.
“Oh, rather!” exclaims von Fersen, as the large Elk lowers its antlers and charges him to the floor.
“I say!” he continues as he is buffeted from one large Elk to another.
“I’m not terribly convinced,” he shouts,
“That this particular Elk has accepted my assertion of dominance! Oh blast!” he finishes, as he scrambles to his feet only to be impaled severely in his left arm.
“This chap doesn’t seem to have been persuaded either!”Wound Acquired! von Fersen:
Broken Left Arm!,
Heavy Arm Bleeding!Smith blows with all his might, powerless to rescue von Fersen, but still hoping against hope to turn the tide of ferocious Elk,
“Oh, hang about, Smith. I rather fancy that the Elk are changing course! I do declare! My brave attempts at asserting dominance have so impressed the Elk that they are running away! Aha! Have at thee, yon cowardly Elk!”Smith for a second lowers his bagpipes, as, indeed, it seems that the thousand-strong herd of Elk are changing direction! He appears to have saved the day! Suddenly he points in a particularly calm manner before shouting out to von Fersen.
“I say, von Fersen! I’m no expert in snow, but should it be moving quite so rapidly downhill towards us like that?”Von Fersen turns and looks. The stampede appears to have caused a damn avalanche! A considerable quantity of snow seems to be coming their way!
… … … … … …
Item Acquired! Mr McGeenyton: A Promise to Acquire Two New Suits! (fifteen turns remaining)
State Acquired! Mr Smith: Tea-powered Super Manliness! (six turns remaining)
Current Gentlemen
Player: areyoua
Name: Winston Smith, American
Bio Status: Close to the northern fjord. And an avalanche.
Inventory: A Walking
Bat Stick Capable of Serious Bodily Harm, an Umbrella, a Fine German Sword,
Masterwork Top Hat,
Mysterious Ancient Bagpipes, French-English Dictionary, Smashing Coat (extra warm).
Wounds: [HP:100/100]Skills: We Carry Large Sticks,
Knowledge of the English Gentleman,
Walking Bat Stick Deflection,
A little more expertise in the art of walking bat stick deflection,
Baseball Cricket Fatality!,
We Never Lost a War! (yet),
Fallible Pedant!,
Fatally Bad Doctor!,
Not a Zoologist!,
Prone to Embarassing Sartorial Malfunction! Gentlemanliness: 9.Caddishness: 4.
Player: _DivideByZero_
Name: William Wellington, Gentleman
Bio Status: East north east of Hammerfest. With outraged Vikings.
Inventory: Two Fine Dueling Pistols, Stone Throwing Discs.
Wounds: [HP:100/100]Skills: A Quite Talented Salesman,
Natural Born Top Hat Wearer,
Top Hat Black Belt,
Airship Pilotage,
Top Hat Acquisition,
Extraordinarily Convincing.
Gentlemanliness: 11.
Caddishness: 0.
Player: Geen
Name: Henry McGeenyton, Gentleman
Bio Status: East north east of Hammerfest. With angry Vikings.
Inventory: Monocle, Double Barreled Walking Stick With Tartan Trim, Grappling Hook Wristwatch, Tin of Loose Tea Leaves, The Devoted Service of a Pair of English Butlers! (five turns remaining), A Promise to Acquire Two New Suits! (twenty turns remaining).
Wounds: [HP:85/100] |
Heavy Bleeding! |
Fractured Pelvis! Skills: Graceful combat,
Monocles,
Refined Accent,
Particularly Calm,
Tedious Oratory! Gentlemanliness: 13.Caddishness: 3.
Player: scriver
Name: Sir August von Fersen, Noble Young Swede
Bio Status: Newly impaled but close to the glorious northern fjord.And an avalanche.
Inventory: Umbrella-Sword, Copy of Gentleman Hunter’s Weekly, Fine Hunting Rifle,
Masterwork Gold Eye Patch, Finely Crafted Pipe, a Magnum Revolver, Exquisitely Crafted Letter of Apology, Forster's Norwegian-Swedish Dictionary (20/24).
Wounds: [HP:95/100] |
Broken Left Arm! |
Heavy Arm Bleeding!Skills: Enthusiastic Hunter,
Well-Versed with Pipes,
Tremendous Orator,
Masterful Pipe Holding,
Fleetfooted Tenacity of the Swedish Elk,
It Runs in the Family,
Knowledge of the Elk,
a Modicum of Knowledge in the Area of Medicine, Published Poet,
Dangerous Misfires.
Gentlemanliness: 16.
Caddishness: 2.
Author
Topic: Roll to Be a Gentleman Spy - Chapter Three Part Twenty One. (Read 74788 times)