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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 1778" data-attributes="member: 150">Chapter 2.  We set out. Pandy gets some.We were gathered in the training room, waiting for Cinda to come in and tell us what our final exam mission would be.  All we had to do was successfully complete one last task – albeit a tough one – and we would be welcomed into the adventurer’s guild as full-fledged members.  Gunter was edgy.  He kept talking extra loud about how he wanted to go kill beasties up in the mountains, but I saw through his bravado right away.  I didn’t say anything, because I thought he might straighten out when we knew more about what we were going to have to do.  Anyway Cinda came in and gave us some stern warnings about death and dismemberment, and then gave us an hour to make a final decision about attempting our final task.  Most of us didn’t need an hour – we were ready to go, the sooner the better, but she left us to think it over anyway.  While the rest of us lounged around on the practice equipment, and Trandle kept talking about how Fharlanghn gave him pearly white teeth and strong bones, (or something like that), Gunter skulked out and ran for the hills.  We figure we won’t be seeing him again.  Anyway, Cinda came back in and told us that we had to travel to the fortified town of Oakburrow – some 60 miles away – go to the Trembling Maid tavern up there and find a guy named Benthick Plank.  He would tell us what we had to do.  We had two weeks to do what he asked and get back to report. We figured time was of the essence, and as we were going to be going on foot, we had better hit the road right away. Our walk to Oakburrow took four days.  It wasn’t a bad trip – lots of cows and farms and little taverns along the way.  Every once in a while Junior would remember a song he learned once and start singing.  He’s not bad, but his lute is never in tune.  And Hawk and I are used to traveling already – we’ve done a lot of walking in our day.  Jeager is pretty quiet for a big guy – he just walked along, sort of smiling as if he were thinking of something far away.  He’d drop a little behind every time we passed women tending gardens or milking cows.  He would come to a complete stop if they were bending over.  I figured we needed to clear Pandy’s mind for him, help him concentrate on the mission a little better.  So, I assigned myself a secondary mission.  Get Pandy laid.  Hawk would probably point out that I was just kissing up to the biggest fighter in the party to protect my “scrawny spell-chuckin’ ass.”  But really, that had nothing to do with it.  I was thinking about the mission, and trying to help a friend in need.  Really.Anyway, between Randy Pandy, Junior’s singing, and of course, Trandle’s preaching about the wonders of the open road – after all, did you know that Fharlanghn is the god of travel and traveling and he grants his faithful good journeys and special magic and so on and so forth – Hawk and I were itching for a goblin raid or a pack of wild wolves long before we finally made it to Oakburrow.  In Oakburrow we made our way to the Trembling Maid without wasting any time.  And we looked up Benthick.  He was a bartender there, and not the friendliest guy in the room, either.  He gave us a hard time for not remembering to introduce ourselves to him first off, but really he wasn’t so bad.  And he told us what we had to do for him.  The next day, we would be led up into the barrier mountains – the mountains that separate the civilized world from the huge evil wastes beyond – where we were to find an old monastery and sort out what happened to it – map the grounds, figure out what’s there, kill anything we can handle and bring details back about anything we couldn’t.  Seemed simple enough, and there was even going to be a guide to take us up into the mountains in the morning.  So it seemed like things on that front were well in hand, so I set about sorting out the second mission.  You see, Randy Pandy was up to his usual tricks, but instead of farm girls a few hundred feet away, it was barmaids passing within inches of him, and he was beside himself.  He couldn’t focus on our mission.  There was one – a plump, dowdy thing if I ever saw one but she was paying attention to Pandy, and that’s all it takes – named Belle, who seemed to be the best bet.  So I set the wheels in motion.  It wasn’t easy to get his attention.  He was staring at her everywhere she went in the bar – he’d sort of snort if some other bar patron gave her a wink, and sort of melt every time she looked his way.  I elbowed him hard.  “She’s a cutie, huh?”“I’m not looking for a relationship,” he said.“Yeah, okay, but she’s a cutie, right?”“Yes.”I figure he needed to start out with a little something to set the mood, so I wrote him a little poem to give to her.  Love poetry is my specialty.  One of my specialties.  It went like this:There was a young maiden named BelleWho had the most wonderful smell    She had breasts like great melons    Liked to party with felonsAnd knew how to treat men quite well.So, anyway, he gave it to Belle the next time she came over, and she turned bright red, smiled, and then turned even redder.  I’m a master.Of course, the next thing I heard out of Pandy’s mouth was “I’m not looking for a relationship.”  Smooth move.  No wonder he’s so horny all the time. He’s going to need a lot of work, I can see that.  But teaching him the right and wrong thing to say was going to have to wait for another day.  I needed to make some grander moves, and for that I needed to talk to the innkeeper.  I talked to him, arranging to get the stage for a little while at about 8 p.m.  He insisted that he wouldn’t pay me for the performance – I wasn’t worried about being paid, so I let that go.  I had bigger fish to fry.  Anyway, we ate dinner and Belle and Pandy kept making eyes at each other, but I knew the performance had to be a good one to seal the deal.  So I was planning in my head the whole time.  What I hadn’t figured on was the Innkeeper sending out word that there was going to be some big performance in his tavern.  People started showing up a little after 7, and by the time the watch rang 8 bells the place was standing room only.  I was a little spooked, but I kept my primary mission in mind and hoped for the best.The plan was to tell a story – a special story I’d been making up for the past two hours – and then to illustrate the story with an illusion show.  The story went like this.  Once there was a dwarven warrior Hans and his love, the dwarven lass Graece.  Graece loved Hans dearly, and Hans’ feelings for Graece were the strongest sort of love a person can feel.  Hans would give anything for her, and promised her the sun and the moon, and all the treasures under the mountain.  They were to be married in a few months time, and were eagerly waiting for the day when the marriage would take place, when goblins started to raid, and Hans had to go off to war.  The night before he left for war he came to Graece and asked to make love to her.  She was tempted – sorely tempted – but in the end she resisted, figuring there would be more than enough time for that sort of thing in their long lives together.  She sent him off to war with a kiss on the cheek and an embroidered scarf.  A week passed and the dwarven warband returned, but Hans was not with them.  The leader of the warband, the Dwarven Baron, came to Graece and returned to her the scarf, stained with the blood of her love, and told her the story of how brave Hans, in a moment when the warband was trapped in a ravine and sure to be massacred by the goblin horde, stepped up and held off the goblin horde single handed, killing hundreds of the green-skinned beasts, before he was finally overpowered. His sacrifice had saved the lives of everyone in the warband, but it had cost Graece her fiancé and the love of her life.  She lived a long life, never wedding, never knowing the passion of love again, and died an old, lonely woman.When I did the illusion show I did my best to make sure that Hans looked a little like Jaeger, and Graece looked a little like Belle.  The crowd went wild – barmaids cried, even a few of the soldiers shed a tear when Hans was finally dragged down by the grasping hands of hundreds of goblins.  The bloody scarf was the last image I left them with, sitting in Graece’s hands as her hands aged from those of a young dwarf to that of an old crone.  The crowd went wild.  They threw money, which was pretty cool.  Junior decided to get on stage after me, and not only was he out of tune, but this time he broke a couple of strings.  I’m not so sure he’s a real bard, after all.  But that didn’t matter.  In the end, what mattered most was the Belle got the other barmaids to cover for her, and she took Pandy down to her bedroom.  We didn’t see him again until the morning.</blockquote>

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