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The Kandron Affair - Part the Seventeenth.


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#1 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 12 December 2003 - 11:30 PM

Hullo people and party members!

This is Part the Seventeenth. I know I’ll probably get papercut to death by Blue now because I’ve not yet posted the next chunk of the Goldoran Epic, but I think ‘twould be best if I was to alternate them. Especially as the Muse is only upon me rather occasionally (transl. I’m a lazy feck), and I was called for interview at Oxford. Anyhow, hope you enjoy this offering!

Incidentally, I intend to use the Christmas holidays to full advantage, writing much of this and the Goldoran Epic. Oh, and before I forget - WARNING! Philosophy Ahead!

Chapter 17 – The Insupportable One

Taking a few seconds to recover my jaw whence it had dropped at the sight of Shayla engaged in a familial embrace with a barghest named Yquog, my immediate reaction was to exclaim rather loudly my surprise at this.

“By Lolth’s colossal, erm, abdomen!” I profaned. “He’s your uncle?!”

Shayla affirmed this.

“I bet your great grandmother was a Gelugon as well!” I snapped.

Shayla smiled at me. “As a matter of fact, have you ever met Cdhut’ghedsiof’fdsj?”

The goddess Irony smote me again.

“Erm…” began Shayla. “Yquog and I have to catch up on old times, so if you wouldn’t mind going elsewhere for a bit…”

I giggled inwardly at the implied nastiness in this statement. Incest with fiends, whatever next… even though Shayla would most likely never do such a filthy act, and later denied it, it still at the time made me shudder and exit at a fast clip.


I wandered through the catacombs some more, until I came to an oddly smooth and gently cambered section of tunnel. The floor underfoot was slippery and wet and occasionally a drip of water landed on my head. It was also remarkably absent of any smells or dirt whatsoever, as if it had been scrubbed out daily. Yet although it was so clean, there was no real structure to the tunnel.

Advancing, swords drawn, I rounded a corner and continued along the level. In the distance I could very faintly hear a squelching noise up ahead. Oh for Lolth’s sake, I thought, Put him/her/it down Darik, you don’t know where it’s been This was not, however, the case. I rounded another corner and was confronted by a less that appealing sight.

A pair of otyughs came sashaying down the tunnel, accompanied by countless jellies, slimes, and an unmistakeably matt-black lump. The otyughs and jellies were easy meat, but that black gunk… that was feared in Rilauven, and often those condemned to death were thrown into a great glass box, naked, with a number of these creatures. At least it explained why the tunnels were so clean.

At this point I noticed Talyn over the other side of this little parade of filth. He noticed the black stuff, yelled out, “FECKING ARSEFECK! LIVING MUCK!” and then ran off at a clip. This was understandable. Living Muck is feared for its habit of swallowing whole the weapons used to hit it and digesting them, then slowly stripping the flesh from its victim’s bones, and spitting said bones out – and even then, one can bend them like rubber. Normally the only way to combat the Living Muck is with use of magic, preferably cold spells. However, Shayla was busy living it up with Uncle Yquog, and where the others were I had no idea.

I girded my loins and awaited the first few slimes to head towards me. The otyughs came first, great slathering lumps of mush with enormous mouths which resembled the genitalia of a pissing female umber hulk on a hot day, except these were lined with teeth a foot long and clouds of germs on their breath and enormous spiked tentacles with grater-like pads on the ends. Slathering, their minds occupied only by the thoughts, “Waddle Waddle Bite, Waddle Waddle Bite”, they approached, and I plunged one of my weapons each into their respective orifices, tearing them out sideways, and sending them into a berserk fury. They slashed at me with their tentacles, one of which caught me and tried to wrap me up and deliver it to its mouth and swallow me whole, but I slashed off the offending protuberance and it wriggled about on the ground. The otyughs made further flailings but none of them connected and they were soon vanquished in a heap of mush and digestive fluids.

That meant the jellies could approach – and the Living Muck. How one kills these with swords I am at a complete loss, so I threw my caution and the soles of my boots to the winds and took a running leap over the top, springing forwards. Most of them seemed to lose track of me, but the Living Muck that was extant extended itself upwards and clipped my armour close to the belt, causing the chain links in it to rust, turn black, and fizz away into ochre-coloured mush. I growled mentally with anger, as I now had an area just above my left hip that was completely unprotected.

I then ran straight down the passage to find it was a dead end, and Talyn was there as well, looking very worried and confused.

“How the feck did ye get past that feckin’ muck?!” he asked in disbelief.

“Jumping,” I replied, “But it still clipped me,” I continued, showing him the new hole in my chainmail. “So how do we get rid of it?” I asked him.

“I’ve no feckin’ oidea,” Talyn replied. “But I’m not going near dat feckin’ Living Muck. They eat any weapon yer stick into it!”

This most likely explained why most of the half-goblins had such squeaky voices.

“So what de feckin’ feck do we do?” he asked me.

I looked him in the eye. “I’ve not a clue, Talyn.”

“Well,” he began. “Let’s just wait for the little feck to f’karrff whoile we debate various aspects of moral philosophy.”

A lead weight slammed into my spirits. Whenever anyone says “philosophy” I reach for my crossbow, and if they say “Relativism”, “Universal Truth”, or “Logical Fallacy”, I am accustomed to give them an “Eternal Dichotomy” – specifically, from base to apex. For I think of philosophy as the domain of so-called intellectuals and people with too much time on their hands. After all, why anyone would find use in proving whether or not the Gods really exist or are simply fallacious extensions by blind mortals in a vain attempt to grasp an understanding of the workings of the universe I have no idea. Thankfully for Talyn, my crossbow had been lost somewhere outside Waterdeep, so there was to be no bloody murder today.

“Yer problem,” Talyn continued, “is that ye have no philosophy. Ye’re just goin’ through da motions o’ bein’ a rational sentient being. Ye never question yer existence or oyt like that.”

“Talyn, I don’t question my existence because I know I exist and I don’t need to prove it. End of discussion. Now quit your nebulous blathering and think of a way to get that Living Muck before it gets us!!” I snarled towards the end of this. Then I felt an urge to twist the knife even further, so to speak. “Why don’t you use your philosophy on it to prove it doesn’t exist and cause it to vanish in a puff of logic?” I added.

Our darthiir companion sighed. “Kandron, it don’t work loike dat. Ye see, proof of non-existence only works when the subject it some form of anthropomorphic personification of some description…” He lapsed into a long and utterly meaningless and nebulous diatribe about various schools of thought and how they would deal with such logical problems, absolute truths, and moral challenges. The only useful thing mentioned was that Gods only exist as long as they have believers, which explains why mainstream deities can summon up such incredible miracles while lesser, fringe entities have to content themselves with an apparition every now and then. I, however, was not that interested, and found myself sinking into a corner of the cave and falling asleep…


When Talyn had quite finished, we approached the corner of the tunnel and noticed that the Living Muck was still there. This was not good.

“Talyn,” I began. “We’re going to have to jump it. You first.”

“Whoy me?”

“Because you’re the oldest. I’m two hundred and sixty six, I’ve at least half a millennium stretching ahead of me, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Well fer dat matter, I’m only t’ree hundred an’ four!”

“Look, darthiir,” I snarled at him. “Jump that muck, then run and find Shayla. Hopefully she should be able to burn it out or freeze it or something.”

There was a pause.

“No.” said Talyn.

“Okay then.” I snapped at him, and then extracted my twin blades. “Go and find Shayla to burn that muck out or I’ll skin you like a rothe and let the slimes pick your bones.”

Talyn stared at me, his dark eyes boring into mine. I glared back, trying to make my pupils as neonish and menacing as possible.

“Awaity’feck’ya’bam!” Talyn swore at me. I bit my lip and kept glaring, and slowly advanced on him, weapons held points downwards but tensed, ready to speed upwards and scythe across whoever should be in their path.

“I suggest you go and do it,” I snapped at the surface-elf. “Unless you want to be sent home in a – hhhh!”

I landed roughly on my backside as Talyn punched me clean in the chest. “Who in de feckin’ feckin’ name of all feckin’ wankweaselry died an’ made you a feckin’ arse-bummin’ god?!” he yelled at me. “Ye think ye can just shovel everyone aroynd and feckin’ feck wit’ them as feckin’ much as ye loike, ye great stoat-sodomiser! Dat’s your oidea o’ how to run t’ings!”

I clambered to my feet, blood pounding with rage. What made that upstart surfacer think he could lead better than me? I was determined not to stand for any of that. Face twisting into a snarl, I grated at him, “Fine then, vith-rothen, don’t say you weren’t warned!” And with that I advanced on him. Not taking kindly to being accused of having sexual relations with slaves, Talyn sent an extraordinarily powerful high kick right towards my face, and as it zipped inches from my nose, I had a sadistic thought. I grabbed his ankle with both hands, and jerked it backwards so as to send him sprawling floorwards. With a single fluid motion, I leapt straight onto him so I was astride his prostate form, and then clamped both hands onto his throat.

“Right then, abbil,” I spat out at him. “Looks like some individuals not far from where I am seem to have a problem with my leadership, don’t they now?” I leant further forward until my nose almost knocked his. “The thing is, Talyn, people who think they can just happy-gallagher around like that don’t last long in my presence. Especially not,“ – I stopped to run my fingertips around his pointy ears to emphasise the fact that they were there – “if they are darthiir.” I grabbed the top of said ear and gave it a sharp pull, causing him to yelp in pain.

“Whoa there, boys, what’s going on here?”

I looked to my side. It was Shayla, accompanied by Darik and Oberron. “From where I’m standing,” she remarked, “it looks like Kandron’s trying to soul-kiss him!” A comment which caused Darik to grin salaciously and Oberron to blush bright red, and declare that such acts would be Evil Doing. I then leapt to my feet and put my weapons back whence they came.

“Nothing…” I said rather in haste.

“Hmm,” replied Shayla, her eyes narrowing and brow furrowing. “Well, looks like there’s a Living Muck in this hole here. Best I burn it before it starts causing a nuisance.”

“It already has caused a nuisance,” I remarked. “It bit a hole in my armour.”

Shayla rolled her eyes. “I meant a proper nuisance, like – Talyn, that was uncalled for!”

At this point Talyn had just kicked me in the groin in such a way that it impacted behind where my protective armour plating ended, and caused not inconsiderable pain. “How do ye loike it, wankwalrus arsefeck?!” he cussed at me. “Roight. I’m feckin’ off. Don’t follow me, badgerfeatures!” With that he pointed into my face, which I ignored without biting his finger off, and stalked off.

Darik piped up next. “Now look here, Kandron,” he said, advancing on me. “I hope your proud of yourself. You only caused one of the team to quit in disgust!”

I didn’t even dignify the irritating dwarf with my eye contact.

“That was pretty low and ignoble of you. Now, as a fellow noble to another – “

“You? A noble?” I spat at him, bending down so my face was level with his. “You’ve got all the nobility of a paraplegic drider!”

Darik squared up to me, not all that fazed. “Know you, dark elf,” he growled at me, “that I am of royal blood, descended from King Gobannior Hammerheim of Olendorn’s Mine, before it was destroyed anyhow – “

“Even if it was only from a chance liaison with a serving girl,” I spat back at him.

“Yes, but still... if anyone’s common around here, it’s most certainly not me. Do you know what responsibilities I was entrusted with, dark elf?!” he went on. “I am the last and only, it is my duty to – “

“Darik?” I said in an inquisitive tone of voice, and waited for him to face me. “Would His Majesty Darik Ironbeard LXVI or whatever He calls Himself kindly shut His piehole? While it may be true that His family is illustrious, it is of no particular bloody use at this time!”

Darik just sighed, rolled his eyes and mumbled to himself, and the four of us explored deeper into the tunnels.


Sooner or later, we arrived at a trapdoor which obviously led up to the surface, mainly because cracks of light were seeping through it. I extracted my weapons, then inched it open just a little bit… revealing the courtyard of the Horde Fortress. There were a few goblinoids wearing odd black cloaks and trousers, and nothing that seemed too threatening. So I blithely flipped it up and clambered out the hole…

“Mr Devore, we are so glad you could drop in and join us,” drawled a rather well-spoken goblin, turning around… “Of course, when I say us…”

At this juncture another goblin, dressed exactly the same, turned around, and picked up the sentence in exactly the same voice. “…there’s so many of us!”

All the goblins in the courtyard were identical to these, right down to the jet-black spectacles they wore…


That’s all for now. Coming next – The Fortress Reloaded, and the next 130 or so lines of the Goldoran Epic.

#2 Guest_argan_*

Posted 13 December 2003 - 12:14 PM

This most likely explained why most of the half-goblins had such squeaky voices.


:D

Great chapter :)


Talyn left, though? :)

#3 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 13 December 2003 - 06:36 PM

Great chapter


Talyn left, though?


Oh, he'll be back sooner or later. Promise.

But thanks for commentary anyhow.




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