The Return of the Entish Beings (RPG) - and perhaps also of a King...

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Gravendil’s light-footed, sure-footed Elven steps led him rapidly further in and further up, following the direction Merisuwyniel had taken earlier. Concern for her welfare filled his mind, perhaps not very logically. After all, she had survived the greatest part of her adventures without him, coming through victorious as well as flawlessly coiffed and attired. Surely this small island could present no danger that would imperil her more than combat with the Dread Developer himself?

Nevertheless he sped up the wooded hillside, dodging tree trunks both vertical and horizontal, until he was almost at the pinnacle. He entered a clearing, pausing (no, not for breath – running is of course effortless for an Elf!) to get his bearings. To his astonishment, a completely unexpected sight met his eyes.

There stood a female, to all appearances Orcish in nature, though her only deformations seemed to be abnormally swollen mammary glands. Strangely enough, those did not rend her unattractive to him.

She was clad – well, at least those body parts that were clad – in a dark material, neither hard as metal nor flowing as fabric, but shining and supple, following every swaying movement of her lithe body. Had he been capable of coherent thought and speech at that moment (he was not), he would have said that it was neither feminine nor practical, though it certainly affirmed her gender and did not hinder her with any superfluous abundance.

One of her hands clasped the slender trunk of a birch tree, apparently needing its support for her slow, rhythmic motions. She sang, and as Gravendil involuntarily drew closer, he heard the words of her song.

The minute you walked in the woods
I could see you were an Elf of distinction,
A real big quester,
Good-looking, really hot –
Say, wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on in my plot?

So let me get right to the point,
I don’t pop my sword for every Elf I see.
Hey, big quester!
Quest a little quest with me.

She stopped, looking at him suggestively, with an indication that he was welcome to join in her – well, call it ‘dance’, for lack of a more appropriate word.

His brows drew together as he pondered her words. She seemed to expect an answer.

“Sorry,” he replied, “but I’m already questing with my wife.”

“Married, eh?” she said. “Aren’t they always! But that doesn’t stop a guy from having fun with me. You know that we bad girls are always more interesting than the good ones at home, with their cheerful songs about the hills being alive with the sound of music, and a few of their favourite things, and the musical alphabet. You know what? If your conscience bothers you for liking me, just remind yourself that I’m only a fictional character, so ‘evil’ is irrelevant.”

“B-but,” Gravendil stammered, “she’s having my baby – what a lovely way of saying how much she loves me.”

“Got herself knocked up, did she?” the dancer grinned. “Then just what do you think she’ll look like soon? Do you really expect her to be able to compete with this?” With one long, blood-red* fingernail she traced a line from the hollow of her throat down to her shapely navel.**

Swallowing hard, Gravendil made one last valiant stand. “She’s the woman I love, and I love what it’s doing to her,” he gasped.

His words were ignored. Her hand moved toward the straps of her upper garment, and though the days of his Orcness were long gone and nearly forgotten, he recalled a chant used by his soldiers in times past:

Take it off, take it off!

He hardly knew whether he had actually spoken the words, but suddenly realizing that he was in danger of losing all that he had achieved in Mantoe’s Educational Halls and the Elven love of his life for whom he had gone through it, he cried out to himself, “You fool!”

The Orc female looked enquiringly, but he no longer cared. Resolutely he turned his back on her and strode onwards purposefully. She shrugged, then called out, “Hey! If you ever want to come back and take me up on my offer, here’s where you’ll find me.” She tossed a small oblong card at him and, startled, he caught it instinctively, thrusting it into his pocket without looking at it. Had he done so, he would have seen the runes inscribed upon it:

Tel-Éporniel Dôtkömm
‘always ready to help you while away lonely hours’



*the colour of human and Elvish blood, of course – for some reason more attractive as a makeup colour than that of Orcish blood

**which, if you think this through to its logical conclusion, provides the answer to speculations about the nature of Orcish reproduction.

[Thenamir]

"So," thought Windsor Gummidge, left standing alone on the beachfront, "my mistress could be in mortal peril, but my master has run off to rescue her. I guess I should thank my luck that neither of them left me any instructions, and I’ve got an unexpected holiday. Well, as me old gaffer used to say, 'when life gives you lemons, don't look that gift horse in the mouth,' and no mistake." Before you could say “knife and fork” the hobbit had used both to consume a second breakfast out of the leftovers from the first, after which he got out his pipe, stuffed it from his pouch of Old Toady, and sat down on a rock overlooking the shoreline camp to smoke it.

He was just working on his third smoke ring when he caught a whiff of a passing smoke ring on the ocean breeze that definitely did not come from his own pipe. It had to be Troll’s-bottom Leaf – Windsor claimed that he could sniff out the brand last smoked by a week-dead orc at a hundred paces – and better than his own smoke by half. Clambering down from his rock (one small step for a man, one giant leap for a smallish hobbit), he prowled up the beach to find out who’d been holding out on him.

He rounded a bend where the beach turned to the left, and hey presto! sitting there on the sand, blowing smoke rings as pretty as you please, was a hobbit lass as pretty as Windsor pleased and more. A fair and wonderous hobbitess the like of which Windsor had never seen -- the pearl-white teeth, the protruding bosom, and oh, the beautiful fur that curled aound her dainty toes! But all that was beside the point -- she was smoking a pipe of Troll's-bottom! Could it be that he had found someone that shared his favorite pastime? Such a woman he would give his all for! (At least, all but his favorite pipe!) So startled was he that he nearly fell face forward into her lap, which he really didn't want to prevent. Recovering slightly, he put on his best smile and blurted out “Good morning!”

The Hobbit lass looked at him from under long delicate eyelashes that stuck out further than the whiskers of a shady cat. "What do you mean?" she said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"

"All of them at once," said Windsor, warming to the conversation -- at least, he tried to tell himself it was just the conversation. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.” Then Windsor sat down on the sand by the lass, crossed his legs, and tried to blow out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over the dunes, but all he could manage was a short, roughly cylindrical column of smoke which hung in the air before them.

"Very nice," commented she sarcastically, then with a wink and a sly grin she blew a ring of smoke which drifted over to encircle Windsor's, moving slowly up and down the column which inexplicably doubled in length. "But," the winsome hobbitess continued in a sultry voice that curled the hair on Windsor's toes, "I really have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an...adventure...that I am arranging, and as you can imagine it's very difficult to find anyone here on this nearly deserted island, you big strong hunk of hobbit, you!" At this the petite femme fatale looked longingly at Windsor with her big blue eyes, fluttering those eyelashes like some kind of organic chaff flails. She took another draw off her pipe and blew the aphrodisiac vapors gently into his face as she dreamily intoned, "is that a ring in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

Windsor was now almost completely under her spell. Since leaving Pimpiowyn in Valleyum he'd had a difficult time trying to forget her, but now all thought of the half-halfling was banished. Now there was just...her...and her pipeweed...but then he began to feel something in what passed for his brain. When he tried to recall it later for his friends he could only say, "If you want to know, I felt as if I hadn't got nothing on, and I didn't like it...well, I might have liked it but that's beside the point. She seemed to be looking inside me and asking me what I would do if she gave me the chance of flying back home to the Mire to a nice little hole* with a bit of garden of my own."

Windsor remembered his pledge to Merisu and Gravendil to be their servant and gardener, and then the face of Merisu came before his mind. And it seemed to him in his reverie that Merisu spoke to him, saying "No oath or bond do I lay on you to go further than you will, but if you want my advice, get up off that sand and get away from that floozie!!"

From where he lay on the beach, with the tiny temptress nearly atop him, he threw her off of him, jumped up, and fairly ran for his life back towards the camp.

----------

* -- the translators were unclear as to whether the word here was "hole" or "ho'", but the coin flip went for the gentler word.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Gravendil was relieved to see Merisuwyniel standing at the top of the hill, apparently unharmed. (He was also relieved to see that her gaze was toward the sea, not toward the woods whence he had come, though he would not have liked to admit the reason for that relief even to himself.) She turned to smile at him tranquilly, yet he recalled the possible danger lurking on the island and grasped her hands, pulling her into his arms urgently.

“What is amiss?” she asked.

“There are signs that we are not alone on this island, and we know not whether there be friend or foe awaiting us. Let us hasten to rejoin the others, for in numbers there is strength,” he replied hurriedly.

Hand in hand they ran down to the shore, arriving almost simultaneously with Halfemption and Windsor. They stopped short when they saw Gateskeeper surrounded by strange men and an even stranger woman, apparently heavily armed. In an instant their weapons were drawn.

The captain reacted promptly. Since he was not sure that ‘fight’ was the best option, he decided on the alternative. “To oars, to oars!” he cried out. Unfortunately, in the din a number of his men understood his words imperfectly.* They turned away from the shore with cries of “Girls, girls, girls!” Complete confusion reigned for several minutes, with jostling and shouting and a general lack of efficiency hindering any kind of purposeful action.

“Pause!” a voice called. Noise and activity ceased, and Gateskeeper was finally able to make himself understood. “Peace, my hasty friends!” he called out with a broad smile. “Let me introduce you to Captain Meanderin and his crew. They have, um – appropriated parts of our ship for repair work and are willing to carry us onward to Muddled-Mirth.”

The Questers looked at the motley crew dubiously, but quickly realized the advantage of accepting the offer of a bird in the hand instead of holding out for more elusive possibilities.

And so it came that Merisuwyniel, Gravendil, Squire Windsor Gummidge, Halfemption Gormlessar, and the Gateskeeper (plus his newly-found female companion, of whom no one took notice in the general hullabaloo) again boarded a ship, again hoping that this one would take them safely to their homelands.


*The document does not name the word which was substituted for “oars” by the misunderstanding men, so the translators could only conjecture that it must have sounded similar, perhaps rhyming with the original word, and that it must have denoted something familiar to sailors on shore leave.