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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morrow" data-source="post: 4102762" data-attributes="member: 301">There is No Honor Part 3 (Dexter)Bern whistled a happy tune to himself as he walked east along Crown Street. Life has been good of late for the proprietor of The Hungry Gorilla. The tavern has been packed to the rafters practically every night. It had been ever since Dexter, the young half orc he used to view as little more than a cheap bouncer, had started regaling the regulars with stories of his exploits. Of course the stories were pure lies. Bern no more believed Dexter,a half-orc standing nearly seven-feet-tall, was descended from the pirate Nate Black than he did the elaborate tales of Dexter's "crusade against the forces of evil in the service of a beautiful helpless young noble woman". As he mounted the stairs to his tavern a resounding cheer echoed inside. Whatever tale Dexter was spinning tonight would certainly be good for business. When he opened the door and looked inside he immediately reconsidered that assumption.Dexter stood at the center of a growing crowd, eyes hidden by a thick mop of black dreadlocks, grinning like a maniac. Two men lay at Dexter's feet. A third charged in at Dexter from behind. The big half-orc spun faster than his size seemed to allow and took the man out at the knees with his axe."NO!" Bern shouted, nearly drowned out by the cries for more."OH, HI BERN!" Dex shouted over the din, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?""This is MY tavern, what are you doing?" Bern's stomach flip-flopped as Dexter felled another drunken patron and the crowd still called for more. He caught his breath and calmed down a bit when he saw the men on the floor slowly crawling to their feet, and noted the lack of blood and limbs on his floor."PRACTICING!" was Dexter's incomprehensible reply, throwing a halfling across the room with his axe.Bern took his life into his own hands, ran in, and stood in front of Dexter, eyes clenched shut, teeth gritted, arms spread wide, and waited for his death.  "Bern, you could get hurt doing that." Dexter's voice was friendly but still disquieting."Dexter, please, what are you doing?""Well, see, here's what happened." The crowd cheered as Dexter went into his story for the second time that night."Yesterday me and my brother Garnham and Maggie, that girl I was telling you about, and Elyosha Ubgrovna Tupovna... uh... and that elf with the wolf, we found Vanthus, the evil brother of that beautiful good-hearted noble girl who we serve. Well, we almost found him. See, Garnham is a great tracker and knows the whole city like the back of his hand and he has powerful magic so we found the hide-out of the evil band of thieves he took up with. Garnham used his magic to be invisible and went inside to snoop. And we're pretty smart so we went in and there were all these animals. And we pretended to buy them. Then we were worried the bad guy might see Garnham even though he was invisible, so then uh... so, uh, MAGGIE broke one of them and we got locked outside. There was a dragon and a giant bug and a bat. There was this evil guy guarding the place. He was pretending it was a real business. But we knew he was a liar because he had this long mustache and hekept twisting it. So that northern elf told him she wanted him to do it to her wolf and he looked at her like that was kind of weird." Dexter leaned in, "To be honest I thought it was a little weird too, I don't think she was really clear on what he does in there." He raised his voice again. "So anyway we beat that guy up and broke into the hideout which was downstairs. It was a pretty good time. There was a giant spider and there was a dragon and we killed them. OH THE DRAGON! It's name was Gut-Tugger! It was monstrous, fangs dripping venom and evil eyes! Garnham used his magic to summon a dirt monster! It was even bigger than the dragon. We fought ferociously. I almost killed the dragon's evil mistress but she got away by turning into a cloud and the dirt monster chased her into the wall. So all in all, it was pretty good. But in the time in between tying up the villain and killing the evil lady OH! there was a dead thing. We smashed it. It smelled like it had just been dug up out of the ground. It had bloody eyes and sharp teeth and claws! But we smashed it." Dexter's voice became somber. "But in between the dead thing and the dragon there were these other guys. I don't know about them. I think maybe they were just doing their job. Seems their job was to kill us so we had to kill them first. I felt pretty bad about that." Dexter looked down at the floor for a moment. Never one for long bouts of introspection, he looked back up grinning. "So I decided I better figure out how to stop guys like that without killing them. Now see, I could just pound em," Dex held up a ham-sized fist, "but nobody takes a body guard seriously if he don't have a big weapon," he hefted his axe in his other hand. "But sometimes in the heat of things I have a hard time not killing somebody when I chop them in half. Most of the time when you chop someone in half with an axe they die. So I'm practicing smashing guys with my axe and not killing em. THAT'S what I been up to.""Okay, Dex, wai...""OKAY!" Dex shouted, the crowd started shouting again and Dexter knocked another one of Bern's patrons unconscious.Bern squinted and walked into the back room, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Dexter was a good draw and told a good story, but Bern was getting a headache.</blockquote>

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