A Bludgeoning Good Time

Chapter Five





	Where shall I begin, the beginning you are, no doubt, saying.  But no 

my mind has difficulties keeping track of things that all happened in such a 

small span of time.  They say, by they I mean the short lived creatures, it is a 

common character flaw of elves.  Personally, it has served me well at times.  

When last I wrote, I discussed our adventure with the gnolls, smelly flea 

ridden dogs!  Well we took the rest of the winter off, as my feet get cold, and 

I hate hacking nasty critters to bits with cold feet.  We made it back to Kael 

and the Horny Mug Inn.  We spent the first month strapping crushed glass 

fragments to our knuckles and beating the bums who were overdue on 

paying their tabs.  Shortly after, we noticed a steady decline in our clientele.  

By the start of spring, it had diminished to the point where we weren’t 

making a profit.  

	That was when Glug did some of his finest thinking.  He came up 

with, what I like to call the "Piss Beer Happy Hour".  One late night after 

tossing out the lowlifes at closing time, Glug noticed how much beer 

remained in the some of the mugs.  Now Glug is never one to pass up a free 

drink, so he grabbed a mug that appeared to be nearly untouched and 

downed the entire draft in one huge swig.  You can imagine his surprise, 

after wiping the foam from his chin, when he realized that the mug had been 

used as a chamber pot, by one of the patrons who’d been too lazy to make it 

to the outhouse.  You would expect a powerful spasm of retching to follow 

such an observation, but Glug’s ability to consume some of the most 

horrendous foods is nearly legendary.  In that moment of understanding, 

Glug came up with the idea that saved the Horny Mug.  

	We soon began to collect all the leftover beer at closing time, and 

whenever a table was cleared, and poured it into a barrel.  At the end of the 

night, Glug mixed in his secret ingredient to increase the volume to one full 

keg.  The next day, the recycled beer would be given away free during a 

period we called the "Happy Hour", for it made us very happy.  We soon had 

more customers than ever coming in for the free beer, and they would often 

stay late into the night, spending all their time and money in our Inn.  Well 

enough of our financial dealings, lets get to the real story, namely going after 

the bad people of the world and serving justice to those normally unwilling to 

accept it.

	Unfortunately our next mission seemed to serve no purpose at all, 

except make the rich and powerful ruling class, elite, snob, scums of the 

earth, vile pustules on the enflamed POSTERIORS OF ALL THE WORLD!  

Sorry I get carried away.  I meant to say, we were hired to make some ruling 

class nobles more powerful, by way of retrieving a magical sword for some 

wrinkled up, old, pinch faced, slug like, attractive noble woman.  The task 

seemed simple, enter some empty old cavern, wrench a two-handed sword 

from some long dead corpse and return it for what seemed an extremely 

small fee.  Based on the reward being offered, we figured this sword must be 

a worthless hunk of decorative metal, meaningful only to this distant relative 

of a once important skeleton.  

	Of course you’re thinking, well you must have taken the mission, why 

else would you be wasting my time spinning this yarn of pure and utter 

vapidity.  Well of course we accepted the task.  Our greedy little minds were 

thinking, this stupid noble just gave us carte blanche to raid her family tomb.  

We of course agreed to return the desired weapon, and promised not to 

touch any other valuables in the tomb.  I had my fingers crossed behind my 

back for this part, and I know Bud did as well, I’m not sure Glug is even 

capable of crossing his fingers, much less keeping an oath.  She of course 

foolishly believed us, or so we foolishly believed.  

	So we packed up our crap 

and headed on what would be a weeks journey to the valley of the tomb.  

The trip went uneventfully except for the practical joke feud that Bud 

and Glug became immersed in.  The first day out, while Glug was napping, 

Bud chopped off the bottom six inches of Glug’s horse’s left legs.  The next 

day Glug rode at a peculiar angle and developed some rather sore buttocks 

and back.  That night  Glug discovered what Bud had done, and during his 

watch, he knitted his morning star into Bud’s horse’s tail.  It seemed quite 

funny to Glug, the next day, when Bud was knocked unconscious, when his 

horse attempted to swat a fly.  Glug laughed so hard, he fell off his lopsided 

horse and suffered some minor injuries.  Bud felt that it was necessary to 

raise the bar, so that night he removed the right eye of Glug’s horse.  The 

next day we hardly made any progress at all, as Glug’s horse would only 

slowly limp in circles to the left.  Glug of course became enraged trying to 

get his horse to go straight.  Both Bud and I laughed so hard our sides split, 

and I even soiled my trousers.  Glug of course was not to be outdone, that 

night he found a hornets hive.  While the hornets remained inactive during 

the night, Glug once again attached it to Bud’s horses tail.  The next day we 

left at first light, within fifteen minutes of our day, the hornets stirred to life, 

and you can imagine what happened.  Unfortunately Bud’s horse panicked 

when the hornets attacked, and bolted up the road.  Glug and I did not catch 

up to Bud until nearly dusk.  We found him sitting in the middle of the road, 

leaning comfortably against his dead horse, it seems the creature ran until its 

heart burst.  Multiple red sores could be seen on Bud’s face from a good 

distance off.  Luckily for Glug, he was trailing a good distance behind me, as 

he continued to fight to get his horse to go in a straight line.  By the time he 

arrived, I had cooled Bud down to the point, where he only hacked off 

Glug’s horse’s front quarters when he arrived instead of Glug’s head.  Bud 

and Glug spent the rest of the trip riding the pack horses, and keeping a fair 

distance from each other.

	The swelling in Bud’s face had decreased almost to normal by the 

time we reached our objective.  It appeared to be a pillared entrance and 

doorway in the side of a cliff.  Upon closer inspection we noticed that the 

door was locked, and that there was an opening some 60 feet above us.  We 

of course assumed that the doorway was a trap, so we sent Glug up the side 

of the cliff to investigate the opening.  Bud and I remained below, with 

arrows nocked in our bows, ready to impale any would be attackers.  Glug 

had just reached the lip of the opening, when out floated these huge beaked 

and tentacled brains.  Bud and I let fly.  The giant gray sponges accepted our 

shafts pretty well, but one attacked Glug, wrapping him in it’s tentacles and 

tearing at his flesh with his beak.  Luckily for him, he was wearing leather 

armor.  The second brain balloon dropped straight at Bud and I.  I continued 

to direct my attack at the creature that had Glug wrapped up, as it had pulled 

him off the cliff face and was rising.  Glug managed to free one hand with a 

dagger and proceeded to puncture his enemy.  Bud pulled his axe and sliced 

at the other floating brain as it attacked him.  Glug must have injured the one 

that had him, for it began to sink quickly towards the ground.  The second 

gray monster caught me up in it’s tentacles and began to lift me into the air, 

but no sooner had it done this, than Bud and I were able to finish it with our 

daggers.  Glug had also finished off the creature that had entangled him, once 

they had reached the ground.  None of us had ever seen creatures like this 

before, and were amazed that something with such large brains would be 

stupid enough to attack us.  After ensuring that we were all OK, Glug 

proceeded back up the cliff and found their lair to be devoid of anything of 

interest, except for a large tarnished key.

	Sure enough the key fit in the lock of the door at the base of the cliff.  

We decided at this time, that it would be prudent to put on our heavy armor.  

I grabbed my glaive, Bud his great axe, and Glug his battle axe and shield.  

We then opened the door into what should be a cake walk to riches.  Inside 

we found a group of rooms near the entrance containing an empty coffin, a 

couple of rooms, and quite a few statues of large human figures.  After 

finding nothing of further interest, we proceeded further into the side of the 

mountain.  

	The passageway came to a large room, with passageways stretching 

off to both the left and the right.  I discovered a hidden door in the wall 

across from the entrance, but could not contrive a way to open it.  We went 

down the passageway on the left, and soon discovered a large well like room 

burning with an eternal magic flame.  We proceeded in the opposite 

direction, and found a similarly shaped room opposite the flame room, 

filled with water.  An idea struck me, and I collected some of the water in my 

helmet, and went back to the fire room and threw the water into the flames.  

Nothing seemed to happen.  We proceeded back to the central room, and found the 

hidden door to be ajar.

	A passage led straight ahead to another large room, flanked 

by four more of the large statues.  The passage continued ahead, while this 

room seemed to be otherwise empty.  We moved further ahead, straight into 

the hill, and soon reached another room, identical to the last one, including 

the statues, but with a large stone sarcophagi at the rear.  This room was also 

void of outlets.  We cautiously approached the stone box, sure that our goal 

was at hand, and somewhat disappointed by the lack of any treasure.  It took 

all three of us to remove the lid, and when it came crashing to the ground, we 

barely had time to look at the decrepit human remains inside, before the 

statues shed their stone skins and came to the attack.  We quickly moved into 

a defensive position in a corner of the room and faced the four giants.  No 

sooner had combat began, before I was beaten into the floor by a giant club, 

and there I remained.  

	I regained consciousness to see eight of the giants scattered dead 

about the area.  Bud and Glug claimed that I had inflicted some wounds 

before being smashed like a pinata, though I remember none of it.  Glug 

healed me to the point where I could function again.  Upon inspection of the 

casket, we found no sword, or anything worth pilfering for that matter.  We 

did, though, find an opening behind one of the alcoves that a statue had been 

standing in.  We looked into the darkness to see a narrow passageway bend to 

the left, deeper into the mountainside.


	

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