Fear and Loathing for Logg's Angus

Warning: This post, depending upon how you interpret it, may be either a mature or a very immature rendition of an in-game RPG event. No bulls, minotaurs, sea hags, nagas, unicorns, mind flayers, horns of resounding, or rods of lordly might were accidentally or intentionally injured in the making of this post. You've been warned. Proceed forward at your own risk. By the way if this is considered too risqué for this forum or board then the moderators should just delete it if they wish. It’s their call of course and I only did it for a humor piece for my buddies. I certainly didn’t write it to condone a Burroughs-like lifestyle of wild, drunken Mind Flayer parties. It’s just satire and parody. I hope it makes you laugh.


In another thread Mall compared me to William S. Burroughs. Now I’ve never considered myself a big fan of Tarzan, but I thought, what the why-not, I can try that once myself. He also accused me of being addicted to nerdery or something like that but I can quit at any time ya know. I just happen to be an avid connoisseur who doesn’t need to quit cause I’m cool like dat. So this one goes out to all my homies in the yin-yang who still get their RP gaming on Old Skool.

FEAR AND LOATHING FOR LOGG’S ANGUS​

So I immediately got a gauntlet of giant strength iron bar bender off a magic quill of some old Kingswart and twelve fresh squeezed barrels of mint flavored dappler drop. It was against my normal habit of a scruple of purple Naga juice right before waking, but in for a dribble in for a dram. Then I saddled up my shoulder blades and rode myself over to the local strip tavern like a feywild unicorn straight outta New Buckshire. The hairless kind.

When I staggered in to the Inn the barkeep yelled out, “Hey, green lederhosen, we don’t serve Fairies here, take your business elsewhere before I start tossing bric-a-brac and thunderstones!”

“That’s okay buddy,” I shouted back at no one in particular, “I’m only gonna be paying half price anyways, so fetch me three barmaids and something to wash that down with.” Then the walls exploded with all kinds of psychedelic colors, I thought I heard my Deva playing White Rabbit, and I started to swat at the air like a vulcanized lurker had dropped from the ceiling with a draft notice.

I don’t remember much after that but ten imps later a Mind Flayer was draining out my ears in the corner of the room I made her pay for by skipping on the bill.

“Say,” she asked in a voice that sounded something like a Peryton scraping at gravel looking for a buried stash of Shreiker-shrooms. “You got a bull on ya that I can use to make us a Tarbfeis?”

“No, but I got a buddy named Logg with an a Red Angus we can cop if we get him confused enough.”

“That’ll do us til morning I reckon,” she said, seductively licking her outermost tentacles. “Can you call him?”

“Sure,” I said forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. So instead I pulled out my Horn of Resounding and blew on it myself. When that didn’t work like I wanted it to I gave it to the Mind Flayer and said, “Here good looking, see what you can do with this.” So she played a John Sousa quick march and suddenly I saw the ceiling mirror sprout gorgon ears (I think that’s what that was) and cummerbunds, and then one detached Beholder eyeball started talking to my bellybutton. But I think it was all in Thieves Cant cause the next thing I know my money pouch has been skyjacked and I wake up next to a Sea Hag.

Whoa! So I jumped out of the bed and quickly had some kinda seizure, but not necessarily in that order, then when all of the salamander monkeys quieted back down I asked her what she was doing there.

“I brought the Angus. Logg said you wanted to get a good look at his Angus.”

This was really getting weird so I went to the outhouse and smoked a possum for lunch. When I got back to my room there was some kind of Sea Hag in the room holding a bull by the horns. And a lot of bottle and blow flies. And something had either defecated on my bed sheets or the possum had gone bad before I could eat it.

I didn’t really know what I was talking about so I gave the Hag my Rod of Lordly Might and asked if she could do anything with it.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

How are you supposed to answer a question like that? I’m not Pluto.

“Look,” I said getting hot. “Do you work for the ‘Merman’ or something? I’m not looking to get hassled here. I just came for the classy buffet and the stinkweed.”

“Well” she answered getting kind of hot herself. “Do you want Logg’s Angus or not?” Now I was getting worried. I had lost her somewhere around the buzz I was getting off of the blowflies and somewhere else just past the why was I here again part?

That’s when I first noticed there was some kind of Sea Hag in the room I had rented. Or maybe I hadn’t. It was all academic by that point.

“What do you mean?” I asked and then I possibly urinated on myself, but I’m still not clear on that because when I woke up in bed there was a huge bull (or possibly a painted kangaroo, I get those mixed up on the weekends) standing over me chewing his cud.

“Who are you?” I asked, “and why does my armor smell like this?”

His horns sprouted little pointed potty mouths and began to sing about how good the dinner buffet would seem after some summer oats and a good stabling. That seemed pretty bizarre to me. Just what exactly had happened to Second Breakfast anyway?

Suddenly a Minotaur ran into the room, trashed it, sang the national anthem, vomited up a spirit troll, and slaughtered all the wall tapestries with a rusty battleaxe. “Check out time is twelve noon,” he boomed out in chaotic evil.

“What in the Seven Hells are you talking ‘bout Mister, I’m paying by the Displacer Beast!”

“Whatever… I’m union. I’m outta here by Six AM myself. Turn the lava lamps out when you leave.”

Now you know why I won’t travel anymore by merchant caravan or illusion based teleport. It’s just not worth the employee discount.

Finish the FRIKKIN STORY MAN!

Nothing is really ringing a bell right now Scrib but if I wake up next to a cross between a Sea Hag and a Succubus I'll let everybody know how it went down...

Falfla, part two: The wild and naked brunch bunch

This story should in no way be construed as being partially autobiographical.

FALFLA, PART TWO: THE WILD AND NAKED BRUNCH BUNCH​

After I eventually checked out I decided to head downtown and see if I could rustle up something to eat. I was in luck. It met me on the way.

After that was over I had to clean up a little. In three days I was supposed to meet Wanda and the rest of the guys so we could have an “adventure.” There was a public bath of course, but you had to pay, and there wasn’t much adventure in that. So I just decided I’d do what everybody else named me does, sneak in behind the fat guy. It was pretty painful, and I wondered what he kept scratching at, but it saved me three tokens and a quart of handcream.

When I had been splashing around awhile I resurfaced to find my old buddies already in the swim with me.

“Hey, how did you guys get in here?”

They all pointed to the guy who had floated me in.

“Did ya come in separately or all together?” I asked.

“Something like that,” replied Father Jyles of Hamm. “But nobody rolled a check to be sure.”

Jyles was an interesting chap. Clerical to the bone; he was also good at craps and most forms of women’s armored underwear. He did look funny though because most everybody suspected he was really some kinda blue spaceman from the 33rd and a half Edition. But these days who can be picky? It’s not like halfings don’t have hairfeet.

A sour trumpet sounded on both the high and low pitch, and that was followed by a boiling set of sulfur bubbles. Everybody turned towards Rolph Hammered who was still steaming in the middle of all the turmoil.

“Hey Man,” Rolph said, “let’s get some brunch up in here.
This smell reminds me of porridge and cantaloupe!”

Ricketts keeled over first though and Jyles had to lay index fingers up both his nostrils. A few minutes later and Ricketts had pretty much resurrected clean though he coughed out Wanda’s old flight ring and three furballs first.

Ricketts was a former merchant marine and mountain goat giant who had lost both his legs in an industrial slow-shearing accident, so we took him on after that as a sneak about and footpad. He wasn’t so great at either job but he had a really good looking familiar back from his days as a tribal shaman that everyone was partial too. Except our wizard, Wanda.

The funny thing about Sweets though, Rickett’s familiar, is that she could appear to any one of us at any time as either a massively over-sized spectral badger with flaming red eyes and bad breath, or a really cute little beaver who smelled nice and was fun to play with. It just depended on the hormonal levels, the time of the month, and the angle at which you looked at her.

“What are you smiling at!” Wanda blurted out in my direction.

I stopped smiling in the case she had a hankering to hex me.

“Nuthin, babe. I was just wondering why all of you guys decided to show up early?”

She eyeballed me funny and I so looked around to see if there was something I should be aware of.

“Do you know a mind flayer named Subhumina?”

“I don’t rightly recall my dear,” and truth was, I didn’t.

“What about a Sea Hag named Prospera?”

That rang a bell and suddenly I had a fuzzy memory of something creepy and wet skittering across my mind’s eye. I shuddered, and smiled again.

“You better not be visiting that Warlock again, you idiot! I’ve told you before he makes unholy pacts with owlbears to mix his potions.”

That sounded plausible to me, so I nodded my head and pretended that I had just had a sudden realization. And I had. If he really was using owlbears then I could probably trade a barrel of honey-dipped giant rats straight up front to the OBGs and cut out the warlock as the middleman. The only trouble would be getting Jyles to straighten out the rabies afterwards without telling Wanda. But I could probably work that out in magic beans.

Apparently though Wanda saw the gears turning in my head and decided she wasn’t finished.

“What about Logg’s Angus!!??” she demanded. “Have you been anywhere near Logg’s Angus?”

“No way baby,” I pleaded. “You know that bull is bad news. Plus, he still owes me a golden flugelhorn, some used pitons, and three big bales of barley oats.”

“Uh-huh. Just stay away from Logg’s Angus, and all those other ne’er-do-wells, if you really love me,” she said.

“Baby, you know I love you. Straight-up.”

“You basilisk!”

And with that our brunch arrived...

William S. Burroughs didn't write Tarzan.

William S. Burroughs didn't write Tarzan.

Click to expand...

Was it Sherlock Holmes then?

Because I heard he was secretly related to Lord Byron's Child Maude who was the great grandmother of Hunter S. Thompson who used to play in the same nursery as Baron Frankenstein's stepdaughter who gave birth to a bug eyed spaceman who invented the interspatial mechanical calculator at Los Alamos which then added up the sums of all the unwritten works of Jack Kerouac who then gives birth to Jack Black in a freak thunderstorm while Aleister Crowley chanted an open doorway to the 19th dimension which accidentally allowed Churchill to beat Hitler at Tarot Cards and that assured Nikola Tesla could use giant alien hyper-magnetic "poles" to beam free energy to Mortimer P. Lee (Of the Roberta V. Lee family of West Virginee), Joe-anna Vollmer, Laura and Clydesdale Hammertoe-Lee (of the Roberta V. Lee family of East Virginee), and Kid Creole so that they could all become simultaneously impregnated with a little left finger that would one day grow up into a fully developed Croatian Leprechaun named Bill Burroughs the Third who had a Jewish wetnurse and part time live in Aleph Golem named Elsa Klapper who just happened one night to meet Gary Gygax in an empty taxi where they discussed for hours and hours the amalgamated and collected works of John Carter of Mars (who is often confused with Williams S. Burroughs by the tea and bass trumpet crowd) and thereafter followed the infamous, Blackmoor on Little Avon and the Eldritch Wizardry of the Philistine Harvey the Giant Eater (which all gamers now use as a sort of unofficial bible) which so dramatically influenced Sherlock Holmes that he went with much fear and loathing to Las Vegas (or possibly Liverpool) and channeled by séance the restless ghosts of Harry Houdini and Arthur Koestler who both told him to write different versions of Tarzan and the Children of the Sun, one with the loincloth, and one without.

Oh, and I left out the part about Doc Savage and the Six Million Dollar Man but everybody already knows that by now.

Anyways you may be right.
Shakespeare may have actually been Ben Johnson on steroids, silicon chips, and blood pudding. The sad part is I guess we'll never know the whole truth.

FALFLA, PART THREE: A BARD WITH NO NAME​

“On the first part of the journey
I was picking at all the lice
There were plants that talked and rocks that sang
There were desks on which I’d bang
The first thing I met was a Roc with a buzz
And ligers up in the clouds
The cold was hot and the rest because
But my skin was full of clowns

Well I swam through the desert
On a Bard with no name
It felt good to be off of my chain
In the desert…
You can’t remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no wine
For to drink with your rain…

I say, La la lah la la Logg
La la la lah Logg…

La la lah la la Logg
La la la lah Logg…

After two days in the desert done
My eyes began to turn dead
After three days of mixing my own
My best pleas had all been pled
And the story is told of an Angus so bold
Made me sad to think it was bled

You see I flew through the desert on a Bard
with no name
It felt good to be back in the game
In the desert I can’t remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no crime to attach to your blame…

La la lah la la Logg
La la la lah Logg…

La la lah la la Logg
La la la lah Logg…”


The first time I met Logg’s Angus we had been traveling up around Goblintown. Back then it was only a hole in the wall through which vermin liked to crawl in order to scrape off all of the barnacles.

Wanda and I had just met and we were still kinda unsure of the exact nature of our relationship. That was fine though because she would use magic to put spells on me so I wouldn’t remember anything afterwards. I miss those days.

Well me and Rolph had scouted up ahead to see if there was anything worth eating. When that didn’t work out I had Wanda call our order in with a magic mouth, a portable hole, and some invisible ink. When Wanda caught up we all sat down, made camp, and decided to eat our horses while we waited for our food to arrive.

About nightfall I saw a strange light in the air and decided I’d go about three hundred yards or so into the woods to check out what was up. I left Rolph with strict instructions not to listen to Wanda if she started talking about how much fun it is to “get mesmerized” and made off to see what I could see.

I got into some dense underbush first though, right before I left. That keeps the natives happy.

When I couldn’t see the light from our fire anymore I began to have this weird and creepy feeling like I was being watched by a small humanoid with big bug eyes and who seemed to float everywhere they went. A spooky chill ran down my spine. Then time seemed to stop and I felt completely paralyzed. I was pretty sure it was Wanda again and so I started to sweat profusely, smile nervously, and I think I may have accidentally loosed my bowels. Then I heard a vicious snort that sounded like a herd of lemmings were just about ready to bolt. Fearing assault I tried to reach for the sword on my hip, or at least the multi-tool in my pants (sometimes just having the right tool for the job is very comforting), but found I still couldn’t move anything below my hairline except for my vocal cords. So I shouted for help, or screamed like a little gurl, it just depends on which side of the county line you were standing on. I hear tale though that they also probably heard it just north of Angmar, and that they had trouble getting the polar bears to settle back down again for a few weeks. Apparently they’re real sensitive to hypersonics.

Anyways the shout seemed to have dispelled whatever had me on the clutch because suddenly I could move again. I quickly looked around expecting the worst when instead there was a terrifically bright light and this big, shiny, blinking egg shaped object rose noiselessly and eerily into the air, did several trick flips, caught a flying halibut, and then scooted off at amazing speed into the night sky. I was pretty sure it must have been a Shedu, or maybe a flock of trained, trick Cockatrice, but just to be sure I made my way over to the spot where I thought the thing had taken flight from. To my amazement I found a blue skinned fella sporting the Mace of Saint Cuthbert, and a huge Red Angus. I moseyed on up to them real cautiously and said, “What up home fries? This my leafy wood-hood. Yu best represent!"

The blue guy turned towards me and I jumped about three feet high and six feet sidesaddle in surprise. He had a big head that looked something like a cross between a disemboweled goat bladder and a Skirlian bagpipe. With fish eyes and bubblewrap.

“Hold on a minute,” gurgled the blue guy. “I haven’t put on my game face yet.” Then he sort of danced a reel-jig, squatted over backwards, said some kinda mumbo-jumbo, stuck a toe in one ear, lit his tongue on fire, and slowly transformed into a nice grandfatherly looking sort of gent. I think it was some sort of ritual. He was still blue though. Whatever he had done couldn’t fix that.

“Who are you?” I asked, big pimpin my moonwalk. “And where you be from?” I demanded, making the universal two and three finger hand gestures for ‘stay cool brother’ and ‘don’t front me.’

“Oh, we’re not associated with any gangs in this area,” said the blue one. The funny thing though was his lips never moved. I wanted to get him to teach me that one. It would come in handy at conventions. “My name is Fahtor Jilecks-eizhamm Klactu-varada. And this is my associate, Logg’s Angus.”

“I am meant for Logg,” said the Angus.

“Well, first of all,” I replied, “That’s who you are, but where are you from?”

The blue one pointed at the sky and said, “My actual point of origin lies just beyond the eighth outer arm of the southern galactic disk in a region bounded within a set of seemingly fixed yet ever drifting coordinates probably best known to you through the appellation you would normally apply to the constellation currently known in this region of your world as…”

“Hold up right there Sky-top. Are you saying you’re from heaven?”

“In a manner of speaking, you might say that it is possible you would most logically construe…”

“Okay, so cut that out already. You’re a cleric, I’m down with that, but I don’t speak theology, so you don’t have to go any farther in that direction til I’m either drunk or dead, or both. Then you can work your word and tap-dance magic when I’m not looking. For now, I’m just gonna call you Father Jyles of Hamm.”

“This indeed is a very pleasant designation from my point of view. How then may I best identify you?”

“I am meant for Logg,” interrupted the Angus. “And only for Logg. I am Logg’s Angus. He is incomplete without me.”

“Well then you’re in luck Red,” I said turning towards the one trick bull-head. “Cause Logg is one a’ my best friends.”

Then I took up again with Jyles. “As for me, my name is Noeman.”

“No-man,” said Jyles.

“Noeman.”

“No-man?” repeated Jyles.

“No, Noeman.”

“No-no-man?” asked Jyles.

“No, no. Noeman!” I shouted.

“No-no-no-man?”

“I am meant for Logg,” said the Angus. “I must join with Logg this very moment.”

“No, man, that ain’t possible.” I replied. “Logg lives in the desert.”

“I thought you were no-man,” said Jyles puzzled, pointing at me.

“Well, I’m not,” I said flatly.

“This is unacceptably confusing. You will not have a personal nomenclature then,” said Jyles. “For purposes of absolute clarity you will instead be identified according to your professional function.”

“Fine by me. What does that mean?” I asked.

“What is your occupation?”

“Well, most of the time I’m busy with either ale, or females, or both. Sometimes though I try harder stuff if I can afford it,” I replied.

“No, no-man. What do you do?”

“Oh that… I’m a Bard.”

“What does that mean?” asked Jyles, seeming genuinely curious.

“I sing and dance and people pay me for it.”

“Why?” asked Jyles incredulously.

“It’s sort of like being an actor.” I said.

“So, in other words,” asked Jyles, “you don’t really do anything at all?”

“That’s right,” I answered.

“And people pay you for that?”

“A lot,” I replied.

“Why?” he begged.

“Because most people aren’t very smart with their money.”

“I see. Very well then,” said Jyles confusedly, “you shall be the Bard with no name.”

“Noeman.”

“Correction,” continued Jyles, “the Bard who is no-man.”

“Alright”, I said. “I’ll stick with the no name part.”

“I am meant for Logg,” said the Angus.

“Yeah,” I replied. “We got that part too.”

I rounded them both up after that and I steered them back towards my camp. Since they didn’t seem to have anything better to do.

“Say Jyles,” I asked as we made out way through the trees in the dark. “That’s a pretty fancy head-banger you’re holding there. Did you get that offa some Saint, or out of some treasure hoard?”

Jyles looked at his rod and then looked back at me. “Do you mean to imply the chronospectacalculoggatometer?”

“I told ya not to speak church-talk so much,” I said dubiously. “Just give me the low-down on your magic mace, will ya? How’d ya come by it, was it a gift or a did ya cop it from a fresh corpse?”

“Neither,” he replied. “I made it myself.”

“You made it yourself?” I asked surprised.

“Yes, Bard with no name, every able bodied Kwilock of Abstrusion Age manufactures his own personal chronospectacalculoggatometer that only he is capable of fully and properly employing.”

“Why does it glow like that then, did ya trap the spirit of some eldritch being inside it to make him do your slave-bidding?”

“I am meant for Logg,” said the Angus.

“Do you mind Red?” I said loudly, kinda annoyed. “We’re trying to conversate a role-play over here!”

“No, it glows because it is made of Nth metal?” Jyles continued, not missing a beat.

“It’s made a what-what?”

“Nth metal is a substance that possess a peculiar sub-atomic property that allows it to disrupt arcane energies upon contact. I thought it might be useful while visiting your world.”

I eyed him suspiciously.

“It is an extremely rare and valuable artifact,” he offered up as an after-thought.

Now that, I said to myself, that I understand.


To be continuated…

Falfla, Part Four: A Lament for Lamia

Our story so far: Our intrepid hero hears the siren song of the White Rabbit while being flayed in his mind. In the middle of that he discovers a Sea Hag. Then something else happens but no body seems to be able to remember that part. More Sea Hag, possibly followed by more of that. Not absolutely sure, but it’s a good guess.

Continuing on our hero bathes with his buddies and decides to have brunch. His woman Wanda warns him against all of the steak-fries and Wizardly claptrap. Our hero wonders what that might mean if nobody is looking.

In part three we have a song and a happy go lucky Bard about town. Good times. At this point our story takes a strange and wonderful turn, as there is suddenly a surprising and totally unanticipated close encounter with a new friend and his home made hot rod. Then while our cluster of comrades make their way cautiously back to their camp sinister forces watch from the black of the night and gather to surround them… Hold on to your helmets good people, it’s about to get hairy again.

________________________________________________________


We were almost back to camp, just about within spit-shine distance, when I suddenly heard a weird noise. Using my amazing powers of hearing and a tin-horn I keep as a back-up ammo case and spit wad gun I rolled a lucky number seven and promptly crapped out. Butt that’s not the end of the story true believers. I took an extra action point and decided if this wasn’t going anywhere then it must mean either I was about to be over-Hydrated again, or more than likely, I was about to be the victim of a random encounter. And boy was I right about that.

Busting through the trees and the scrub grass like a herd of hungry jack-rabbits was a whole gang a’dopples. They were led by a Lamia whose prominent and enflamed boobies seemed really outta place for this neck of the woods, because sure, yeah, her boobies were shape-shifters alright, but they also appeared as drunk leprechauns in chorus girl outfits. (Thus their nickname among adventurers, the German-Irish Chaun Artists.) The really nasty and awful sad part was they couldn’t even color coordinate properly. And since magenta is very last year I felt kinda ashamed to be attacked by the lot of em, especially given the laws in the area concerning interstate commerce.

Still I thought I probably knew the Lamia from somewhere and this was verified when she gave me a wink and a nod and shouted out, “Kill that guy with the sitar who smells like su-monsters, dipping snuff, and elven grown tingleberries.” I found it hard to believe that anybody knew about the su-monsters. That was supposed to have been wiped from my record when I turned eighteen.

At that point her boobies all took a run straight at Jyles, I guess because they thought tingleberries were blue.

“Not him you idiots, the one who looks like he could trick you into paying for your own engagement ring!” It was right then I recognized her.

“Oh, hey Lilith. How ya been?”

“We’ll talk afterwards lover,” she screamed. “But right now I’m gonna kill ya first.”

“I understand,” I said good-naturedly, but I had to admit, it was a bit awkward. The last time I had seen her she was flat on her back in our ranch house stable getting her undercoat brushed, smoking an imported Chubanian, and talking about how our children would have really shiny coats, big, strong teeth, and beautiful skin. Right after that she starting platting her mane, used her tail to flick a bottle fly off of my face and told me that she’d love me forever. So I told her I was going to buy some Longbottom chewing tobacco, and accidentally called her Rachel on my way out the door for the next county. I guess I got busy after that as I never went back. Why females take that kinda thing personally I’ve never understood, but then again I don’t make the rules.

As it turned out I was right, it was indeed a purely random and yet vengeful encounter. Sure it didn’t make much sense out here in the woods, running into her of all… well, whatever she was, but who is gonna argue with a random encounter chart? It’s like arguing with Fate or the Dice or detention class statistical progressions or something else I never learned the term for. In cases like that it’s always better to just take what you get, no matter how ridiculous, and hope you can close the deal by the time for your next love-ballad and round of lard-cakes to queue up.

Now when everybody saw that the dopplechauns had peeled off of Jyles and were headed for me the party all formed a circle with me at the right end. Or maybe it was the wrong end cause Lilith could still see me and I wasn’t sure but I thought she was muttering something about “draining his blood out his spine and making him pay the court costs.” Now a good old fashioned Spinal Tap is one thing, and depending on how it’s done I got no real argument with that, but there was no way I was paying court costs.

After that it was all kind of a blur. There were several seconds of swords, daggers, fangs, claws, broomsticks and feather dusters whoosh-whooshing and chopping through the air, followed by several minutes of panting, heavy breathing and what sounded like horse snorts. Somebody screamed out, “Darkon loves Baalzebulb!” - I never knew who, or why even - but that confused all of the dopplechauns who thought it meant the Sith and Hutts had finally arrived. But it was really just an overweight Clay Golem on a personal mobility scooter. He had come to deliver the take-out. How come those guys always get there at just the right time?

Anyways I had the Angus charge over and knock him off his chair and into the fight. His heart didn’t seem in it though cause all he did was gripe and moan and groan about “if he only had a brain then he’d have left that dame a long time ago.” I had to agree with him on that one. Brains apparently weren’t his strong suit.

Still after Wanda threw an anti-depressant spell he perked up pretty good and soon enough we had all the dopplechauns beaten down to Sprites, or at least to Pixies with a bad case of the counting coup.

“How do ya like that ya boobies?” I screamed. “Who’s ya momma now!”

Jyles looked at me sorta sideways and said, “These creatures are henchmen. Why do you keep calling them boobies?”

I was gonna answer but right at that moment Lilith trotted over at a prancing high step and gored me hard in the testaculars. I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that other than with the vomiting and the unconsciousness and all. But when I came to again I saw Lilith and Wanda talking among themselves in a little gal-fab. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not but I was pretty sure I was looking at another hernia, and maybe some more court costs.

Rolph sat me up and Jyles took his rod and hit me in the groin. I vomited again and I thought I saw Broadway all lit up, or maybe it was Toledo after a cheap bull fight, but then the pain went away like… well… like magic.

“Hey, that’s pretty neat guy. Does that thing cure spite wounds too?” I asked.

“No, not usually, but it does deliver morphine in concentrated doses,” he replied. “But just to be safe I also placed a hypnotic suggestion in your mind that you are now a Eunuch named Lord Hamperstamm, and that you are probably also the late Earl of Knuttingwall. You may also have a dry mouth and suffer allergies around blue or tingle berries for the next several days but after that the swelling should recede, and you should return to semi-normal. However that is normally defined.”

“Care to hazard a guess on that score?” I asked him.

“If it’s all the same to you fella, no, not really,” he replied.

So I thanked him for his ministrations and then walked kinda slow and funny over to the ladies. “Hey gals,” I said cheerfully. “Who wants first crack at me this time? I think I’ve been hammered by Jyles already so we’re good as far as that goes. But I also think I’ve got a lot of money too now. Something about living in the Hampertons. Is that some kinda selling point?”

“You’re supposed to be a Eunuch now you idiot!” shouted Lilith.

“Yeah, about that,” I said. “I think I accidentally may have made my saving throw or something cause I’m not really sure what that word means. But if it has something to do with flapjacks and water weirds then I’m totally there dudes. Plus if you two wanna try and nurse me back to health then I promise ya the best twelve hours or so of your life that none of us will never remember again.”

I’m not certain but I think that Lilith must have gotten cooties in the wilderness on the way over cause she suddenly started stompin and buckin around real good and before I knew it I took three hooves to the head in quick succession. Pretty hard.

On the way down to the ground I noticed somebody riding sideways into the clearing on the back of a big Brahma Bull singing something about funky town and Able Seaman Jones. Oh great, I thought, just what we all need. A visit from Happy Jack. About that time I took a fourth hoof to the head and everything went black again. And I’m still not sure that fourth hoof was purely an accident.


By the way folks, if you’re enjoying this thrilling and fun serial adventure then be sure and send me a postcard telling me what’s wrong with ya. Then we’ll both know.