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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8112836" data-attributes="member: 508">Buntleby appeared at the edge of a gathering of multicolored tents.  Looking around the fairgrounds for the lecture tent, he was both surprised and pleased to find it was one of the larger tents – good for Willowquisp!  He'd attracted quite a crowd!  Buntleby was less pleased to learn there was an entry fee to attend the lecture, but pulled open his coin purse and paid over the required silvers.  Ducking inside the tent flaps, noting a sign marked “Umpleby Lecture” on the side of the tent opening, he completely missed the sign posted on the other side of the flaps which advertised “The Battle of the Bards.”  Stepping fully inside, he found an open spot upon a bench in the back row and took his seat, glad to see the elderly sage's lecture had not yet started.Up on the wooden stage, seated nervously in a pool of illumination from a glowing globe hovering just overhead, Willowquisp looked out at the crowd, quite amazed at the number of folks who had shown up to hear his dissertation on the umpleby.  He often received some good-natured ribbing for his interest in the more obscure and unusual creatures to be found; it was nice – if somewhat surprising – to see so many who apparently shared his interests.The announcer, a gaudily-dressed man named Pantalfrume, stepped forward into the pool of light, beside the wooden podium where Willowquisp would give his lecture.  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced, throwing his voice to the far ends of the tent so all within could hear him and pausing momentarily as the audience quieted their low-level conversations, seeing the event was about to begin, “we are pleased to have with us tonight the esteemed Willowquisp the Zoophile of the famed Monster Hunters Association, who will be presenting us a lecture on the...umblety.”  Pantalfrume turned to the elderly sage, who rose from his seat and approached the lectern to a smattering of polite applause.  He wished the lighting extended farther out into the audience instead of just to the first few rows so he could try to spot his good friend Buntleby – whose shaved head should be easy to pick out, the sage mused.  But no matter; Buntleby said he'd be here, so Willowquisp was sure he was out there somewhere.“Umpleby, actually,” corrected Willowquisp upon reaching the lectern and pulling out his notes for the speech.  He cleared his throat, looked out into the audience again, and began his presentation in a loud voice.  “First of all, thank you all for your attendance this evening.  It's quite gratifying to see so many of you who share my interest in the more obscure biological specimens to be found in nature.  Tonight's discourse is on the umpleby: a truly unusual creature, believed by many to be nothing more than an eight-foot-tall, animate pile of brown hair[2], looking rather like a gravity-defying stack of hay or straw when standing still.  However, in this case appearances are quite deceiving, for beneath its layers of shaggy fur is a rather gangly creature of general humanoid build, in truth something rather like an emaciated ogre, but with arms perhaps somewhat longer than would be generally expected, slightly bowed legs, and overly-large feet.  In any case, even a cursory examination of an umpleby shows its eyes and mouth are readily visible, even if most of the rest of it is obscured by its wild hair.”There was a sudden blast of music off to Willowquisp's right and another figure stepped forth onto the stage and into the radius of light around the podium.  He was dressed entirely in various shades of red, including the lengthy feather dropping off behind his pointed cap.  Strumming a lute, the man accompanied himself as he sang the following:    “The umpleby, as you will see      Is something of a mystery.      It bounds through life with nary a care      And seems composed of only hair.      But this is not true, say the wise      For it has bones, and teeth, and eyes.”The crowd roared its approval and the red-garbed bard grinned his widest grin at them as the announcer cried, “Ladies and Gentlemen: let's hear it for our first contender, Scarnivale the Scarlet!”  Scarnivale bowed deeply to the audience, doffing his cap to them and then placing it back on his head at a rakish angle.“I say!” gasped Willowquisp, his own somewhat shaggy brows furrowed in consternation.  “What's going on here?”“What's going on?” replied Pantalfrume, making an exaggerated look of incomprehension at the elderly sage's question.  “Why only...the Battle of the Bards, two songmasters vying for the title of quickest of the quick!”  Scarnivale gave a little riff of notes on his lute to the approval of the crowd while Willowquisp looked about him in puzzlement.“I was under the belief I was to be presenting a lecture on the umpleby,” groused Willowquisp, only now coming to realize he'd been brought here under false pretenses.“Oh, but you are,” agreed Pantalfrume.  “Please, by all means, continue with your fine lecture upon this little-known creature, and we'll allow our musical foes to duke it out, spontaneously taking your information and spinning it into a cohesive song!”  He turned back to the audience.  “And would you like to meet the second of our competitors?” he asked, his wide grin betraying the fact he already knew the answer to that question – as was evidenced even further by another roar of cheering and applause from the crowd on the benches around the lectern.  “Then here he is – Jaspernyck the Reveler!”At this announcement, another bard stepped on stage into the light, this time approaching from Willowquisp's left.  He also strummed an instrument but his was a hand lyre, flashing jewels embedded along its length and others gleaming from gaudy rings placed upon his nimble fingers.  Jaspernyck's outfit was primarily in blues and greens, one leg of his hose in each color and the opposing sleeve matching, giving him a non-symmetrical air he no doubt used to showcase his attitude of nonconformity and wild abandon.  He picked up the tune his bardic opponent had started, adding the following lines:    “If you could shave this bumbling giant      (I don't advise it, they're quite defiant)      You'd find that under all that hair,      There's really very little there.”Not to be outdone by the sudden appearance of his lyrical foe, Scarnivale grabbed the tune back with his lute and added his own contribution to the ongoing musical discussion of umplebies:    “They're skinny as a rail-post fence      Or a scarecrow, if that makes sense.      Their legs are long, their arms are dangly,      All in all, they're rather gangly.”To which Jaspernyck replied without a moment of hesitation:    “But once they're covered in their pelts,      Well, then they look like something else.      They seem quite stout; don't be believing;      It's mostly hair - it's quite deceiving.”[3]Both bards played a little flourish on their respective instruments, each apparently having come to the shared conclusion they'd taken what little information the white-haired sage had provided them as far as they could go.  After all, they'd managed to wring out quite a few verses out of the fact umplebies were rather skinny beneath their layers of fur; what more, really, could be said?  Now each looked expectantly at Willowquisp for him to throw more fuel onto the fire of their bardic duel, both bards wanting to be the first to craft a line or two about whatever new information Willowquisp could feed them.But Willowquisp was looking back at Pantalfrume with a look of irritation on his face.  “Is this really necessary?” he asked, exasperated.  “I thought I was simply going to give my briefing on the umpleby.  Surely we don't need all of this folderol?”The announcer stepped forward again, facing the audience.  “What say you, Ladies and Gentlemen?  Shall we excuse these bards from our midst and simply listen to a no doubt fascinating lecture about a tall, hairy creature – or shall we let the bards have their duel?”“Duel!  Duel!  Duel!” chanted the crowd, much to Willowquisp's consternation.  The sage's shoulders slumped and a look of despondency crossed his weathered features.  But then, from somewhere in the darkness of the audience, Buntleby cast a message spell, delivering his whispered words across the throng to arrive at Willowquisp's ear.  “Never mind, Willowquisp.  No doubt some of us, like me, are here for the actual discussion.  Press on and ignore their ridiculous theatrics!”NOTES2.  No one is quite sure why all umplebies have brown hair, but that's the way it is – there are no blonde umplebies, or any with red or black hair.  However, while an umpleby's hair often turns white or silver as the creature enters old age, they undergo no loss or thinning of hair as they age, nor do the older males ever suffer from male pattern baldness.  Their hair remains thick and lustrous – if often matted and unkempt – throughout their lives.  Baby umplebies are even born already fully covered in hair.3.  The apparent bulkiness derived from mounds of lengthy hair growing all over an umpleby's otherwise quite lanky body grants the creature some definite benefits.  It not only grants the umpleby the ability to resist 5 points of cold damage, but it also all but makes the creature immune to blood-draining attacks by creatures like stirges and weasels who are unlikely to be able to actually reach all the way to the umpleby's flesh with so much hair in the way.</blockquote>

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