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The Kandron Affair (an IWDII serial) - Part the Fifth.


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#1 Guest_TheBeastlordJohnny_*

Posted 11 September 2003 - 08:19 PM

Hullo yet again people!

Here’s Part the Fifth. I must warn you, however, that it does contain some politics, especially re. the events of this day two years ago. Sorry for the rather blatant announcement now.

Chapter 5 – A Day That Will Live In Infamy

The wind whipped outside, wafting up contrails of snow and ice, which all but the most determined traveller would think thrice before braving. Outside, some poor local stumbled in the ice under a sack of something. Inwardly I cackled at his predicament – here I was curled up nice and snug in one of the inn’s best rooms. Okay, there was a rat scuttling about in the corner, and the footboard was broken across, but the room still had that lovely, lived-in, feel, which only inns in backwater towns can have and still survive.

A bird had been buffeted into the window over my head, stunning the poor avian, and waking me out of my half-sleep with a jolt. Pity as well, for I was having the most interesting dream about that sorceress who I used to know back in the Underdark… what was her name, Dallashandra Agrach-Dyrr, but the contents of that could well form another story of an entirely different nature. Unperturbed, I slumped between the sheets, and my solitude in the room… the other members of the team had so graciously got themselves a different room, and Oberron had even more graciously occupied a third room so as not to “have to sleep with such evil-doews.”

I stretched out under the sheets, and sat up in bed. I’d not had a decent lie in like this for months, and I really was relishing it now. Especially with the schadenfreude of seeing the poor sods whose job it was to go about their tedious little lives in this backwater and die within sight of their birthplace, while I was a young, upwardly-mobile individual with the centuries stretching out ahead of me. My face cracked a razor smile as I pondered this.

Knock, knock at the door.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Breakfast, sir,” came the heavily-accented voice of the serving wench. “And that journal you requested. The Luskan Lancet or whatever it was.”

“Enter,” I replied. She obliged, setting the tray and the journal down on my lap, and leaving.

The room was moderately quiet, and I flapped open the journal and read the lead article. “11th Eleint – Two Years On” it was entitled. Something about the attack by a Halruaan splinter group on the Lords building in Waterdeep. This was, granted, an indefensible event, regardless of the opinions one had on Waterdhavian exploitations and puppetry of its neighbours and minor Maztican nations. What was also indefensible was all the flag-waving and flapping about and hysteria about it. “REACT WITH BLIND RAGE!” ranted a certain chronicler of the time. “HALRUAA MUST PAY!” ranted another. By jumping on this bandwagon, Pieirgeiron and Khelben rocketed in the polls. Waterdeep may have led the world in trade and commerce, but it was – and still is – far from being a world leader in being the so-called “Beacon of Liberty” it made itself out to be.

Of course, all the ins and outs of the international situation didn’t interest me one bit, but still the whole affair filled me with rage, much like the next turn of events.

Barely had I dug into my greasy breakfast in bed than Darik slammed into the room.

“ALRIGHT!” he shouted. “Hands off cocks on socks, there’s work to do!”

“Darik, can’t you please leave it off, just for once?” I asked him. “I mean, I’m allowed to indulge myself, it is my birthday.”

This was why what was popularly known as “11/9” filled me with rage. A compulsory two minutes silence every day enforced rigorously all over the Waterdhavian Alliance on the surface. Okay, only in Waterdeep itself was it really strongly enforced, but it was the done thing in other areas. Thankfully not up here in the Dales, where, thankfully, the view was broadly one of “Okay, it was terrible while it happened but let’s not make too big a deal out of it.”

“Maybe so,” went on Darik, “But there is work to do. Shawford Crale wants to push some logs, and – “

“Tell him the toilet’s outside,” I retorted and went back to the journal, and to breakfast. Darik sighed in resignation, uttered something most likely obscene, and slunk out.

“Ahh, bliss…” I sighed and munched on some fried bread. It was a little overdone, and a glob of grease slid off it and landed on my stomach, which I mopped up with a finger. Seizing a bit of toast, I slapped a bit of bacon between it and ate it all together. I revelled in each bite; it had been so long since I’d indulged myself so…

“RIGHT THEN BADGERFEATURES!” came a shout from the door. “Get yer cowshite badgerfecking weaseltupping self out of bed. And do it now!”

Talyn had burst in. “Fecking hell,” he went on. “It smells worse than the bedroom of me brother Hyart in here! And what the feck are ye doing eatin’ that grease-out, ye daft lump?!”

I assumed he was referring to my breakfast. “That stuff’s full o’ saturated fats and calories! It’ll ruin yer physique!”

“Talyn, those adventuring men with ‘Hot Bodies’ who all the ladies lust after have biceps the size of small villages, six packs you could put a bit of card around and sell them as beers, and all seem to favour chainmail posing pouches. Thing is though,” I grumbled to myself. “Ask them to move a few bookcases and all of a sudden they don’t want to put their ripples at risk.”

“Jealous are we?” gibed Talyn.

“No,” I replied. “Now, vith’ir! It’s my birthday!”

He obliged. Sweet bliss again.

And the next thing I knew, I was dazzled by what could only by the light of either the Gods, or Oberron’s armour. Having been temporarily blinded, I detected him sticking his smugly handsome face into mine.

“Kandwon!” he yelled. “Birwthday orw no birwthday, self-gwatification is still immowal! It is contwawy to the scwiptures!”

“That’s a bit wich coming fwom you, Obewwon,” I mocked him. “And what can Towm possibly do to me? I don’t wowship him!”

Oberron seemed shocked. “You are twuly black-hearwted, dwow!” he growled at me. “Now get out of bed!”

He grabbed onto my unkempt hair, which I was planning to deal with later, and pulled at it, attempting to remove me forcibly from the bed. This was not a nice experience, and I was forced to punch him in the throat to get him off me.

“Don’t even THINK about it, paladin!” I hissed at him. “The last paladin who tried that took four days to actually die after I’d finished with him. Just think on that.”

Oberron thought on that, then his paladine resolve crumbled again and he fled. And once again was there lovely calm and peace and quiet as I munched the remained of my breakfast…


It was eleven before I arrived downstairs, impeccably turned out as ever.

“Devore?” said the innkeeper.

“That’s me,” I replied.

“Packet for you. Come from a Ms. V. Devore, it has.”

I took the item from him. I pondered what it could be. Maybe, just maybe, my sister Vyraenia had decided to actually remember my birthday this year. One could always hope. Buoyed up by this, I tore into the packet.

Inside was a tool the likes of which I would never want to own. When I said I wanted something useful, I didn’t mean this device.

A specialised baloth toothbrush.

Now, baloths have absolutely colossal teeth, which, thanks to their habit of using them as all purpose tools, are frightfully dirty, and also very close together. Thus, little short of a brillo pad could scrub their teeth up properly at all. Until some bright spark named Jansen invented this – a hardwearing U-shaped block of cork which the baloth would bite into, and twelve cylindrical brillo pads connected to a handle so that they would whiz around and scrub all sides of the beast’s teeth thoroughly. Of course, the problem inherent in this is, of course, getting near enough to the baloth to use it without being chopped in two, scratched, impaled, swallowed whole, or otherwise damaged. After all, the beasts in the Pit of Many Painful Demises have to be kept clean and fed and wholesome, or they become less effective at inflicting painful demises.

“Gee, thanks, Vyr,” I muttered to myself, and threw the baloth toothbrush into my pack. What a let down.

“Right,” began Oberron. “Now we’re all pwesent and cowwect, we might as well do this job we’ve been given.”

“Shawfowd Cwale, the commandant at the palisade, wants us to wepaiw a bweach in his defences, where a squad of foul goblinoids have penetwated.”

“You mean,” I replied. “He wants us to spend all day hammering and nailing?!”

Darik made an obscene pelvic thrusting gesture, said “Sounds good to me!” and hurhured. Shayla summarily slapped him. The goddess Innuendo strikes again.


Turned out that not only did we need to repair the palisade, but we also needed to get the wood up from the docks – no mean feat, especially as there was a great cliff in the way.

Arriving atop the cliff, it only transpired that the crane was broken as well. The corpulent veck operating it was sitting on his backside scratching and doing not much else. Typical municipal workman.

“Right you, up on your feet, you’re going to fix your crane and get this wood up this damned cliff!” I snapped at him.

“Kandron!” half-yelled Shayla indignantly.

The workman grumbled to himself. “Look here, Lumbar Grundwall – that’s me – didn’t get here by respondin’ to stuff like that!” he said. “Nay lad, in MY day, we had to work for our living! None of this nancy-boy adventuring stuff – ye started at the bottom, and by the gods, you STAYED there!”

I thought for a moment.

“That’s nothing, rivvil. In the Underdark, in MY day, we started at the bottom, and we DUG!”

Lumbar thought yet again.

“That’s nothing, lad. In MY day…”

This was going to be tiresome.


“… and in MY day, we had to do that with porridge on our heads!”

“That’s nothing, rivvil, in MY day, we had to do it with porridge on our heads, a 60lb Bergen on our backs, and a Handmaiden threatening to poke a sharp object through our bifkins!”

“That all? Heh! In MY day – “ Lumbar began.

“Scuse me boys,” came Shayla from out of vision. “But I’ve spoken to that dwarf Jorun Tamewater down by the docks, and he says he’s got a spare wheel, but he needs some time to find it. We’re to meet him at the pub…”

“Pub?” said Talyn. “I’m confused! Why the feck we need to go the pub?”

Oh dear.

And so we trucked off to the Salty Dog, where Jorun was sitting, and we all sat round him. Yet as Darik sat down, there was a sickening crunch which is almost never good…

“Oh, I say…” perved Darik.

“Darik?” I replied.

“Yes?” he said, as if nothing had happened.

“YOU JUST SAT ON THE SPARE WHEEL YOU COLOSSAL IDIOT!!!!”

In resignation, and drained from my outburst, I slumped my head in my hands.


When we retired to bed that night, we were aching all over. I for one felt like the muscles in my back, shoulders, and thighs were going to cramp up. After all, we just had carried several tons of logs up from the docks to the palisades. My right shoulder had a near visible dent in it from where we’d been carrying them, and I could barely walk.

“Ah well,” began Talyn. “Look on the broight side. If any fecker wants a telegraph pole delivered in a hurry, they know who to call!”

Shayla was not amused. “Maybe so, but if it hadn’t have been for my Strength spell some of us would have eight slipped discs by now! It wasn’t easy supporting a log and Darik!”

“HEY!” half-yelled Darik. “That’s no fair! I am a dwarrrf, ye know! But, hurhurhur, size is no indication of quality…” And with this he grabbed Shayla’s buttock.

Let’s just say that “Turn the other cheek” means you get symmetrical slap marks.


That’s all for now, people. Coming next – Shawford’s Barmy Army…

#2 Guest_Withiel_*

Posted 11 September 2003 - 08:32 PM

Heh.
Vewwy good as usual, and I'm looking forward to the Palisade battle....
keep it up (hur hur)




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