It was just another night at the Drumless Tavern, so named because its picture (so helpful to those who did not possess the arcane skill of reading!) didn’t have a drum on it; in fact, it featured an image of a Unicorn engaged in…in…let’s just say the Unicorn would, in another Universe, have been earning merit badges in certain esoteric subjects, such as helping little old ladies across the street.
The patrons were rowdy; it was the start of the weekend, at least according to the ethos of this particular band of bargoers. (“If you drink too much to know what day it is, just assume it’s Friday evening.”) There was much dancing, boasting, and even some carousing, the latter occurring much to the dismay of the bartender, who had been hoping to get through the current fiscal year without opening a dictionary.
Yet amidst the hubbub, the barmaids pinching the bottoms of saucy patrons (all barmaids are one-third lobster, which is why you ought not pinch them without their consent; their grip is perfectly capable of dropping a Vulcan in under two seconds), and the hearty sips taken of good wine (oh, surely, this was the “good” wine. You wouldn’t want to meet the “bad” wine. Let us, for just a moment, forget the condition of what was once called ‘wine’ in the first place. Realistically, it wasn’t just terrible, it just had a fairly low alcohol content. Consider that face you make when you drink whiskey. Now imagine that your wine tastes worse, but also, you have to drink a lot more of it before you begin hitting on traffic lights. That’s a sad state of affairs, mitigated only slightly by the fact that traffic lights don’t currently exist)—
And, of course, the infrequent barfights, but that’s really more romantic myth than anything else. No innkeeper wants her furniture and glassware destroyed by idiots. In those days, places which served alcohol didn’t exactly have bouncers to keep out anyone in particular; they just had a few large people on-hand, and iron-tipped truncheons below the bar. These were precautions against the offchance that anyone engaged in the very healthy sport of replacing one’s rather thin and sickly blood with good, strong, healthy might momentarily decide, rather than falling over onto the floor, to fall over onto someone else, starting a fight which might result in spilled drinks.
But Adventurers gather here with a far more serious purpose than drinking ale: namely, drinking mead and whisk—that is to say, they gather here for the valuable practice of renewing vital energies and reviewing their recent harrowing dungeon escape.
And, of course, to find out what the hell to do next.
Evil takes a number of forms which are, unfortunately, as nefarious as they are multifarious. This results in certain difficulties. For example, particularly well-organized evil, such as the Dark Elven Empire, is, as one could potentially guess by the name, an empire, which is to say, an entire civilization, consisting of, among other things, its own military forces, cities, and (in this case) multiple giant horrible arachnids. It’s quite difficult to strike a blow for freedom under such circumstances; or, to be precise, striking a blow is not, in and of itself, impossible; it’s just that the blow itself is likely to land on armor, a shield, or some chitinous arthropodal structure, and do very little, except to bring down upon you a level of firepower incompatible with the practice of continuing to breathe.
It’s difficult to find appropriate missions. They like calling themselves ‘adventurers’, because it’s an ideal. It’s exciting to travel to various places, battle monsters, win, and come back covered in gold and new knowledge. On the other hand, while being roasted into oblivion by a Dragon is certainly more exciting than being a farmer, it’s not so much ‘adventurous’ as it is ‘fatal in an unusual and horrible way’. Realistically, adventurers are good at completing missions which would be impossible for those without their courage, bravery, special skills, magical items, and ability to dive out of the way of hideous danger and emerge with the same ten fingers and ten toes as when you started (Adventurers call this “rolling a natural 20”.)
That’s why the cloaked figure is sitting in the corner, gazing deep into the heart of a glass of the very finest wine, an extraordinary vintage which might actually have been made from grapes of some kind, although in your typical village tavern, you really didn’t want to ask such things. Generally, you sniffed for alcohol, in the hopes that the fermenting process had killed enough of whatever else might be in the bottle that you’d probably be able to walk away relatively unscathed.
No-one knows where he came from, or what thoughts lie behind the penetrating eyes which were almost invisible within his garment’s voluminous hood. (The bartender didn’t even want to think about the world ‘voluminous’.) No-one could speak to the figure’s origin or nature, or even his age, for though his brow is lined with worries, his face is ageless—what rare glimpses of it can be seen beneath the aforementioned cloak. One would wonder how anybody could see out of that damned sartorial rat-trap, and if you think hat-hair is a challenge, behold those who attempt to bear the awesome and hideous weight of hood-hair. Which is another reason why he never removes the thing in public.
(To be continued…)
