Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch

                             by "Those Dudes"

Part One

     Conjure to mind a typical night in the land of Vermouth, that is,
cold, dark and dangerous.  Add to this picture the noises of the night, not
the least being the distant, undying howls of werewolves mingled with
crashing of bulettes through the underbrush.  As a finishing touch, include
a small, dim, spluttering campfire with four figures, two of them encased
in heavy armour, shivering about it.
     "Fire's almost out." observed one who closely resembled a wizard
(though a pretty seedy one).
     "Mph." grunted a paladin affirmatively.  "An' it's getting cold." The
paladin was named Playdough, and was clad in heavy bandy armour.
     "Well talking's not going to help anything." chattered a ranger named
Rodent, idly picking at his rusty splintered mail armour.  "Somebody's got
to go and get firewood." (By 'somebody' he meant the monk, Dingbat, who
hadn't spoken as of yet).
     "I'm not going again." whined the monk, knowing full well to whom the
ranger was referring.
     "Duh, well I'm not going." declared Playdough firmly.
     "Nor I." agreed the wizard, who was named Sauramud, and so began a
round of 'not me's and 'nor I's, until finally Dingbat was slapped about
the head, pointedly reminded about how useless he was and how much more use
his successor would be if he didn't go for firewood.  As usual, Dingbat
went.
     Dingbat, being a monk, was used to excessive abuse and took it all in
stride.  He rose, de-iced, and trotted off into the dark woods whistling an
old monkish revival tune, visions of pounding his comrades into the turf
dancing through his head.  He almost enjoyed splitting logs, pretending all
the while they were the heads of his compatriots, and was just on the verge
of becoming overly excited when a gleam in the moonlight caught his eye.
     "Metal?" he mused.  "Coinage, perhaps." Upon closer inspection,
however, he saw it to be an item of jewelry.  To be more precise, a brooch
with a diamond so big he wanted to puke.  He was about to step forward and
claim the prize when his innate monkish paranoia gave him reason to take
pause.
     "All right Sauramud, joke's over." he said aloud.  "Very funny.  You
can make it disappear now." The explosion of chaotic laughter he had been
expecting never materialized, however, so taking stock of the situation
Dingbat leaped eagerly on the brooch, trying valiantly not to slaver on it
too much.

     Upon returning to the camp he was not entirely surprised to find it in
a state of relative disarray.  The two warriors were back-to-back, magical
swords drawn, and the wizard was cowering behind a large rock with a glass
rod (the material component for a lightning bolt spell) clutched in a
death-like grip.  About two-dozen other, similar rods were scattered
haphazardly about the camp, suggesting a recent state of panic.
     "What the hell were you screaming about?!" demanded the ranger when he
spotted Dingbat.  "We thought you were being eaten alive!"
     Dingbat thought quickly.  This situation obviously called for tact and
discretion.  He slid his hand easily into the folds of his robes.
     "Gee guys, look what I found!" he cried, jumping up and down gleefully
and waving the brooch.  "It's a brooch and it's got a diamond and
everything!" (A monk, you may recall, is entirely lacking in tack and
discretion).  The wizard strolled over, resisting the urge to puke at the
size of the diamond.
     "Here, lemme see." he requested, snatching the piece from Dingbat's
hand.  He whipped out a pocket jeweler's scope (standard equipment for the
adventuring wizard) and proceeded to scrutinize the brooch.  He grunted
once, spat on the brooch, rubbed it vigorously on his tackily decorated
robes and examined it again, more closely this time.
     "Zirconium." he sighed presently, tossing it carelessly back to the
monk.  "Probably worthless." Dingbat thanked Sauramud for his invaluable
(or rather, unvaluable) appraisal and pocketed the brooch, secure in the
knowledge that the wizard didn't know what he was talking about.
     "Regardless of its worth, or lack thereof as the case may be, it is
not a stone holistically unpleasing to the eye." said Rodent in spite of
Sauramud.
     "And it's mine!" piped a shrill voice.  All eyes turned contemptuously
on Dingbat, but he merely shrugged and put on his best 'I-didn't-do-it'
expression.
     "Down here, stupid!" the voice reiterated, and a sharp pain in the
ankle caused Playdough to look down and find himself gazing at the wicked
blade of a dagger.  "I'll take that brooch, if you don't mind." snapped the
hobbit at the other end of the dagger.
     "Duh, put away the knife, sonny." scolded Playdough, snapping the end
of the dagger off with his thumb and forefinger.
     "Zoicks!" screeched the hobbit.  "That was my best knife!" He then
launched into such a fit of cussing and biting that they had to slap him
around the head several times to still him.
     "Excitable little tyke, isn't he?" observed Sauramud snidely.  He
stressed the word little, but the hobbit ignored him.  So did everybody
else.
     "Now," said Rodent judiciously, "What claim do you have on this piece
of jewelry?"
     "I claim it because it's mine." cried the hobbit.  "I dropped it while
I were being chased by orcs..."
     "Was." corrected Rodent.  "Why were these orcs chasing you?"
     "'Cause me & my friends killed their chieftain and took that brooch
from them." said the hobbit with a tinge of pride in his voice.  "Too bad
all of we guys died 'cept me though."
     "Us!" snorted the ranger, lifting the hobbit by the lapels on his
leather jerkin and slamming him repeatedly into a tree.  "Not 'we guys',
'US guys'!"
     "B-but you wasn't even there!" sputtered the poor hobbit, who seemed
to be on the verge of apoplexy.  "It was us I tells ya." (If you haven't
already guessed by this point, it might be noted that Rodent hated misuse,
and misusers of the common tongue).
     "Hush Rodent and let him finish." scolded Sauramud, who was beginning
to lose interest in the matter.
     "I'm finished." snapped the hobbit.  "Now gimme the brooch!" Dingbat
looked very pensive for a few minutes, obviously weighing the hobbit's
story against all the nice sundries which he could purchase with the money
from the sale of the brooch.
     "No." he said, and "Sorry." he added, because he was Lawful Good.
     "No?!?" coughed the hobbit, whose facial veins began to swell until
they resembled a contour map of the Andes.  "A fie on you all!  May the
curse of him with 75, no!  100 names of terror descend on you!" Rodent was
unimpressed.
     "Oh can it." he yawned, dropping the hobbit in a heap.
     "May 1000 orcs defecate on your faces!" cried the hobbit, who had no
intentions of 'canning it'.
     "Watch it." warned Dingbat.  "Rodent doesn't like orcs."
     "May the fleas of a million kobolds infest your armpits!" Playdough,
who already had as many fleas, growled, but Rodent merely said in a rather
testy tone,
     "I don't like kobolds either."
     "Ach!" frothed the hobbit.  "I spit on thine feet!  Ptooee." He spat
on Rodent's feet.
     "THY!" bellowed the ranger, losing his cool.  "I spit on THY feet!" He
dashed the hobbit in the fire for emphasis, where he burned merrily after a
few initial screams.
     "Really Rodent, you must watch your temper." said the monk with mock
annoyance.
     "Ah well." sighed Sauramud, "At least we don't have to go for firewood
for a while."

     Not uncoincidentally, hardly half a league to the east, a troop of
orcs had thrown a hobbit into a fire at precisely the same moment as
Rodent, albeit this one was dead first.
     "Ach!" growled Ach'ptooe, acting chieftain due to the untimely demise
of the last chieftain (the latter was killed by a bunch of hobbits in
leather who then made off with the main tribal treasure, a jeweled brooch.
The passing of a chieftain was a matter usually heralded with as much grief
as the passing of a boulder-sized gallstone, but the loss of the brooch was
another matter.)
     "Findt der fershlugener hobbit." he commanded the tribal shaman who
was sitting crosslegged before him.  The fact that it was the seventh time
that evening he'd given the order mattered not.
     "Ya, ya." flatulated the shaman absently as he concentrated acutely on
a bottle that he was spinning on the ground.
     "Nein!  Forget der hobbit, first findt der brooch!" reconsidered
Ach'ptooe, who then paced and cursed volubly (in fact, cursing made up most
of his vocabulary) while the shaman hemmed and hawed.  Finally the shaman
gave a shout of triumph.
     "Ach!" he cried.  "I findt dem!  Dey ist dere!" Ach'ptooe followed the
direction which the shaman's arm pointed.  It was due west...

     It has been theorized that the magnitude of the chances for a
wilderness encounter is a direct function of the time of night and the lack
of armour on the person at watch.  It came as no surprise then, that during
Dingbat's watch the camp was invaded by a multitude of furry quadrupeds,
each about the size of a small Volkswagon.
     "Rats!" screamed Dingbat as one leapt for his throat.  Rodent awoke in
the foul mood he usually had when he had tried to force himself to sleep in
his armour.
     "What're you cursing about at this time of night?" he demanded.
     "Rattus Humongous!" translated the rudely awakened Sauramud
(translated to a form more likely to be understood by Rodent, you
understand).
     "Duh, Rodents!" yelled Playdough, catching on at last.
     "What?" demanded Rodent, thinking he had been addressed.
     "Er, guys..." prompted Dingbat, slightly distraught with the fact that
he was presently being mauled by the pack.
     "Ah well, chopping time I suppose." sighed Rodent grabbing his magic
bastard sword and leaping into combat.
     "Yeah." agreed Playdough, abandoning attempts to don his armour and
leaping in after the ranger (returning only long enough to grab his magic
two-hander - and to get Rodent's sword, which had flown from his grasp on
the ranger's first swing).  Sauramud, meanwhile, evaluated his own
situation as four rabid rats boxed him in.
     "Let's see," he muttered.  "I can either aid my friends in combat,
possibly forfeiting my own life, or I can do the cowardly thing and vanish
in a puff of smoke."
     He vanished.
     "Duh, where's the wiz?" asked Playdough, wondering at the lack of
magic missiles.
     "Who cares." choked Rodent, trying to pry a rat off his throat.  From
the fringes of the clearing meanwhile there erupted a stream of maledictive
garrulity, followed by a bolt of lightning and a charring of rats.  "You
see?" said the ranger.  "He's being chewed up somewhere over there."
Playdough didn't respond, however, for his paladinical blood-lust had begun
to take over and he was hacking at everything that strayed into reach (and
even Rodent on one occasion).
     Dingbat meanwhile had taken up a more defensible position in the
topmost branches of a nearby tree where he called down words of support to
his friends such as:
     "Rodent, behind you!  Playdough, watch your flank!  Shit!" The last
because a stray magic missile had caught him in the side of the head,
knocking him from his perch and sending him tumbling into a mass of rats,
where he disappeared from the story for a while.
     The tide of battle was turning from bad to worse as the fighters
tired, when suddenly the rats withdrew and fled off into the night.  When
the sound of their departure had faded to nil the wizard reappeared,
looking much the worse for wear (not unlike he had been mauled by a cave
bear for a few hours).
     "Phew." breathed Sauramud.  "They were no ordinary rats, they were
lycanthropes!"
     "No wonder my dagger wouldn't hit." said Rodent, who had fumbled his
bastard sword a second time at the end of the battle.  "By the way, where's
Dingbat?"
     "I wonder if those were his blood-curdling cries for help which I
heard near the battle's end?" pondered Sauramud.  "If so, then methinks
he's been dragged off as a hostage, or perhaps ratfood."
     "Damn!" cursed Rodent.  "And he's got the brooch!"
     "Yeah." mourned Playdough.  "The brooch." They spent a few moments to
reflect on their loss, when a voice broke into their thoughts.
     "Ach!" it barked, and they spun to face Ach'ptooe!

     When relative order had been restored to the mental processes of our
heros, the group found themselves surrounded by irate orcs (not that
there's any other kind) and being submitted to questions and demands
concerning a certain brooch.  At first they denied any knowledge of such a
brooch, but under threats of torture Rodent finally unleashed a flow of
half-truths and double-talk to pacify the orcs.
     "...so you see," he concluded.  "The monk's got it and we don't know
where he is."
     "Ach.  Der monk's got it?  Ya?" snorted Ach'ptooe with open scorn.  "A
likely tale, ya!  Vot's everyvons say!  Der monk's gots it!  Hokay
vise-guy.  Kaff it up!"
     "Look you ignorant barbiturate..." began Rodent with ill-disguised
loathing, but Sauramud wisely jammed the end of his quarterstaff into the
ranger's mouth before he got any further.
     "Vot's he say?" demanded the orc chieftain suspiciously.
     "Duh, he said 'look you ig..." began Playdough dutifully before he got
the other end of the staff.
     "He said that maybe we could combine forces to locate the monk." said
Sauramud hastily.
     "Ach nein!" laughed the orc.  "Ve orcs ist der chaotic!  Der nasties
you know!  Undt chaotics can't form der alliance!"
     "You are not chaotic!" snapped Rodent, plucking the wizard's staff
from his mouth.  "Orcs are lawful!  I'm a ranger!  I know."
     "Ach, got me dere." nodded the orc.  "Hokay, ve go."

     The trail of the monk was not difficult to follow.  Where there
weren't markings of monkish fingers clawing at the ground, there were
spatterings of Dingbat's blood and scraps of monkish apparel.  Following
the trail would pose no problem as long as the weather held.  The only
problem stemmed from the company.
     Orcs, they decided, were the lowest, filthiest, foulest creatures ever
to tread the face of the land.  It seems that the feeling was mutual,
however, for as they moved on they found the gap between themselves and the
orcs widening mile by mile until, on the dawn of the third day, the orcs
were nowhere in sight.  Around midday Playdough noticed the loss of the
orcs.
     "Duh, the orcs are gone!" he cried with dismay.
     "Hmm, yes they are." agreed Sauramud rather matter-of-factly.
     "Well, maybe we oughta wait fer 'em here." suggested the paladin.  The
other two said nothing and quickened the pace.  The hint bounced off of the
paladin's skull with an audible 'thunk'.  Not one to be daunted, he reared
his horse to a stop and insisted.
     "Well maybe we oughta leave a message or somethin'!" This time the
others gave him a slightly blunter hint, that is, they knocked him down and
bound him hand and foot, gagged him, tied him to his horse and resumed
their progress.  They continued travelling in silence for a few more hours
while Playdough fumed and Sauramud could not resist the odd comment like
"We ought to travel like this more often" and "'s funny how many of the
woodland noises we normally miss." Finally he tired of this game and
contented himself with noting the paladin's muffled curses for eventual
reporting to the high priest of the temple.

End of Part One
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-- 
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