From: mmcalees@sol.UVic.CA (Michael McAleese)
Subject: STORY: Dingbat and the Brooch (Part Five)
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Summary: See below
Keywords: Sauramud, Advice, Column, Write, Now, This, Means, You
Organization: Those Dudes
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:11:56 GMT


                      Dingbat the Monk and the Brooch
                             by "Those Dudes"

(Synopsis of Parts 1,2,3&4: The party finds a jeweled brooch that has been
stolen from Ach'ptooe and his band of orcs.  Dingbat and the brooch are
stolen by a passing band of wererats.  The party ducks the orcs and tracks
Dingbat back to the city of Vermouth where Sauramud buys it in the ensuing
battle to free the monk.  The brooch is lost however as the wererats flee
to their underground temple with it.  The party undertakes a quest to kill
the wererat priests in return for a raise dead for the wizard.  Dingbat,
accidentally torches the temple.  The party skulks through the inevitable
dungeons-beneath-the-city where Dingbat mortally insults Sauramud.)

Part Five

	"You're too late.  They're all dead." said Rodent, causing the monk to
groan in dispair.  "They put up a good fight though, for Hobgoblins."
	"Dang!" said the monk, prodding a corpse.  "I suppose you've already
searched them for treasure?" Rodent merely nodded towards Playdough who was
counting out a stack of gold coins into piles on the floor.  "Oh.  Well,
have you searched for secret doors?" The ranger pointed to the tap marks on
all the walls with one thumb as he wrapped a bandage around his left leg.
"Shoot.  Isn't there anything left in this room?"
	"Well you could check those three levers on the wall there for traps."
said Sauramud from the doorway where he was surveying the room.
	"Where?  Oh yes." said Dingbat with pleasure.  "All right!  I love
these things!  Lessee, the left one here..." Dingbat strode over and
grabbed one of the levers and cranked it down.  To everyone's mild surprise
a section of wall slid open revealing a wide stairway down.
	"Hey, first time!" cried the monk, bounding up and down with glee.
"Now I wonder what the other ones do..." he said as he heaved on another
lever.  There was a flash and a smell of ozone as Dingbat spasmed into a
little hop, still gripping the lever.  His hair puffed out dramatically and
began to sizzle, as little wispy curls of smoke drifted out of his
trousers.
	"Hey Dingbat!" called the wizard.  "Did you make your saving throw?"
	"Y-Y-Y-e-e-e-s-s-s!" chattered the monk, still gripping the lever but
now skittering back and forth on the floor.
	"Phew!" said Sauramud.  "At least we don't have to waste a healing
potion on you.  Don't worry guys, these traps usually discharge after a few
minutes.
	"Y-Y-Y-o-o-u-u-u-b-b-b-a-a-s-s-t-t..." said Dingbat, flopping around
on the lever like a gutted fish.  Eventually sparks stopped shooting off
his eyelashes and he collapsed into a heap of static sparking laundry on
the floor.  "Ohhhhh..."
	"Lucky bugger." said Rodent.  "How you monks can take so much abuse
and suffer no damage is beyond me."
	"Trade secret..." moaned Dingbat, pulling himself up.  "It's a monk
thing.  You wouldn't understand." A moment later he was dancing about
frantically when he noticed that his expensive monkish boots were afire.
The others watched until the monk had extinguished all the burning bits of
his raiment before they turned their attentions to the stairway.
	"Looks pretty dark down there." mused Sauramud looking down the
stairs.  He pulled out a new torch and touched it to the side of Dingbat's
head.  There was a burst of sparks and the torch flared into life.
	"Ooooh!  Do that again and I'll...  I'll..." sputtered the monk when a
sudden thought struck him.  "Hey!  There's still one more lever to try."
	"Nooooo!" yelled the other three but before any of them could throttle
him the monk pulled the last lever and the floor dropped out from under
them.  Twenty feet later the two fighters and wizard were tying on splints
and bandages while the monk, as usual, took no damage.  The others directed
comments in his direction which a lesser person might have taken as
personal threats but Dingbat merely shrugged them off.
	"It's just a pit guys!  Things could be worse!" he piped, and suddenly
they were.  With many a grate and groan two of the walls of the pit gave a
tremendous shudder and began to close in on the foursome.
	"Oh wonderful." groused Rodent.  "This isn't turning out to be one of
our better days.  I don't suppose we have time to search for a secret door
out of here." He glanced up at the levers twenty-something feet overhead
and rubbed his chin.  "Say Dingbat, I don't suppose you could climb one of
these walls and trip that lever the other way again.  I'm willing to bet
that it would disarm this trap."
	"Um." said the monk skeptically eying the smooth vertical faces of the
pit.  Rodent snorted.
	"I didn't think so."
	"Duh," said Playdough who had jammed his ubiquitous ten foot pole in
between the closing walls.  It was bending alarmingly and didn't seem to be
slowing things much.  "Howscum Sauramud doesn't just levitate up and flip
it?"
	"Because he probably doesn't have a levitate spell mem..." Rodent spun
and faced the wizard.  "You don't happen to have a levitate spell memorized
do you?"
	"I might." said the wizard sullenly.  "Why?  Who wants to know?"
	"Well if you do, would you _please_ levitate up to the lever and throw
it the other direction?" said Rodent impatiently.
	"Why bother?" snapped Sauramud.  "If I try to cast it a certain monk
will just jostle me and make me muff the spell like he always does."
     "For crying out loud just levitate up there and throw the damned
lever!" shouted Rodent.  His words were punctuated by the snap of the
paladin's ten foot pole.
	"Well perhaps if a certain monk was to admit that he was an idiot and
apologize for his earlier actions I might consider it." said the wizard
with a yawn.  He reached into one of his inner pockets and pulled out a
small silver flask which he unscrewed and proceded to take a long draught
from.
	"I will do no such thing." retorted Dingbat.  "You deserved what you
got and it was all your fault anyway." He crossed his arms stubbornly and
squatted down in the corner - albeit he had to move every few seconds as
the walls continued to close.
	"Well I suppose we're all just going to die then because the monk is
too pig headed to admit the error of his ways." declared Sauramud.  He
pocketed the mickey and began to examine his fingernails.
	"Uh, guys..." said Playdough desperately as he braced his hands and
feet against the walls in a vain attempt to stop them.  His futile attemts
resulted only in getting the top of his great helm pushed in.
	"For crying out loud!" bellowed the ranger when an inspiration struck
him.  "Say wiz, pretend for a second that I'm the monk."
	"You don't look like him." said Sauramud critically.  "Nor do you
bound around like him."
	"JUST HUMOUR ME!"
	"Okay." shrugged the wizard, slightly cowed.  "We'll assume for the
moment that you're the monk."
	"Fine!" said Rodent.  "Then I apologize!  I was an idiot and I acted
in rash monkish fashion!  I am very sorry for being such a dolt and I will
never pull your gaunch again when you are trying to cast a spell!" Sauramud
thought for a second or two and then responded,
	"Okay.  Apology accepted."
	"What?!" yelled Dingbat, leaping to his feet in outrage.  "Why I
never!"
	"Yes you did, so there!" said Sauramud blowing a sloppy raspberry in
the monk's direction.  "Now let me see...  _Levitate_ did you say?"
	"Yes!  Yes!" said Rodent and Playdough (who had his arms outstretched,
palms planted on the closing walls) in unison.  "Cast it will ya?"
	"Don't rush me." said the magicer cooly.  "You don't just snap your
fingers and have a spell just happen.  A spell of this complexity takes
some time to do.  I have to psych myself up for it." He took a couple of
deep breaths and noticed that conditions about him were getting rather
claustrophobic for his liking.  With a shrug he snapped his fingers and
rose up the side of the narrow pit.  When he reached the top he lost no
time in tossing the lever and, to the relief of all, the sides of the pit
reversed their direction.
	Playdough collapsed to the floor and clasped his hands over his face.
In a low voice that probably only the ranger might have heard he said,
	"When I get out of here I's gonna kill everyone in the party what's
not wearing armour."
	"Amen." said the ranger.  Dingbat, now that the excitement of the
closing walls had abated began to examine some of the other contents of the
pit when his keen monkish eyes noticed something amid the rubble.
	"Hey look here!" he called.  He pulled a skeletal corpse out of a (now
scrunched to a couple of feet wide) pile of rubble.  "All this guy's
clothes have rotted away except for the boots!  Why, they look brand new!
I'll bet they're magical."
	"Didn't help him very much to get out of the pit." called Sauramud who
had landed at the top of the aforementioned pit and was tying a rope to the
handrail of the stairs.
	"I wonder..." mused Dingbat.  He dropped onto his duff and pulled off
his beloved Guccis.  In a minute we had pulled on the new boots (after
shaking the bones and cobwebs out of them) and stood up.  He took a few
tentative steps.  "They fit perfectly." he said in awe.  "They MUST be
magical."
	Dingbat picked up a bit of trash from the bottem of the pit and tossed
it straight up then, without any apparent effort, leapt four feet into the
air, executed a triple spin and punted the bit of offal over the lip of the
pit.  The others were impressed in spite of themselves.
	"They ARE!" he exclaimed in an orgasm of monkish ecstacy.  "They're
the ledgendery _Boots of Monkish Kicking_!" He began to dance a jig and did
a few cartwheels of joy singing, "I've got boots of kicking!  I've got
boots of ki-i-i-cking!  WHEE!  Send in them beasties and I'll take their
kneecaps off before you can say 'WHAM BAM KAPOWEE'!"
	_Much_ later the party managed to get themselves and their gear out of
the pit and descended the stairs (which proved to be the only other exit
from the room excepting the way they came in).  The stairs descended a long
way but presently the party arrived at a dank antechamber.  Playdough
wrinkled his perfect nose in paladinical disgust.
	"Dis place smells evil." he said.
	"Smells more like the ranger's feet to me." said Dingbat in disgust.
	"My feet do not stink!" said Rodent icily.  "They have a rustic,
woodsy aroma which the likes of you wouldn't appreciate."
	"C'mon Rodent." said Sauramud.  "We all know that you like to walk
barefoot through animal droppings when you think we're not looking.  I
think it's an apt description.  It DOES smell like your feet." He snuffled
a couple of times.  "And I do believe it's getting stronger."
	"Hst!" whispered Dingbat suddenly.  "I hear the sound of approaching
feet from the west." He cupped a monkish hand over his ear and strained to
listen down the corridor to the west.  "Sounds like a lot of feet too.  At
least fifty."
	"What, fifty creatures or fifty feet?" said Rodent.  "You're not
talking sense.  Are you talking about twenty-five bipeds, twelve and a half
quadripeds or a giant centipede on pogo-sticks?"
     "Sounds kinda like orcs to me." said the monk.
	"Wait!" said Rodent.
	"What?" asked the Paladin who was also beginning to hear the
approaching feet.
	"There is something..."
	"What?  What?" chorused the others.  "What's something?"
	"A pattern." said Rodent theatrically.  "Yesssss...  I should have
seen it before, it was so obvious!"
	"Duh, what pattern?" said Playdough chipperly.
	"All of the monsters that we have faced so far..." intoned Rodent.
	"Yes?" said Sauramud.  "Besides being all dead I mean?"
	"Giant Rats, Goblins, Hobgoblins and now Orcs." He turned to face
Sauramud.  "Well don't you see?"
	"No!  What?" cried the wizard.
	"They're all in alphabetical order." There was a stunned silence as
the others digested this information.  Playdough was the first to react.
	<WHANG> went a mailed fist accross an open helm.  "That's STUPID!"
said Playdough.  "Yer worse than the wizard.  Dere's wererats in here and
I's gonna hunt them down and kill 'em." And with that he turned and stalked
off down the corridor.
	"Putz!" snorted Sauramud who turned and stomped after the paladin.
Dingbat remained behind with the ranger for a few moments.
	"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I always thought that giant rats
were listed under 'R' for 'Rats, Giant'."
	"Whadda YOU know?" said Rodent frostily, miffed that his theory was so
easily dismissed.  "What do ANY of you know?" He shoved the monk aside and
marched off after the other two.
	"Well you'd be surprised what I know." said Dingbat defensively.  "I
can talk to plants you know and let me tell you they have some interesting
things to say - well, some of them do.  Most plants are real boring to talk
to.  All they want to talk about is water and sunlight and soil nutrients.
You know I met a spanish fern one time which said..."

	<much later>

	"...  and then the tree replied..."
	"WILL YOU SHUT UP!" screamed Rodent.
	"Shhh." said Sauramud.  "The temple's just right up ahead."
	The party had arrived at the end the corridor and were huddled outside
a set of double doors - one of which was partially ajar.  They peered
through this opening into a large, dimly lit temple teeming with figures
dressed in black robes.  Though the deep cowls of the robes hid any
features, each of the figures was dragging a long ratty tail behind.
	The room itself was large with columns rising to a vaulted ceiling.
Through many archways the cowled figures moved in and out and strange
incense filled the air.  (Dingbat would later describe it as 'essence of
sewage'.) A huge alcove at the far end was brightly lit with burning
torches and oil lanterns and contained a massive stone idol depicting a (in
Playdough's words) big, ugly, bug-eyed ratty thing with big sharp teeth
(gnash gnash) and real nasty claws.  In the centre of its forehead a
strange glint caught the everyone's eye.
	"The evil temple." growled Playdough.
	"My Brooch!" drooled Dingbat.
	"At last!  Our quest is at an end." hissed Sauramud.  Rodent leaned
close to the wizard and tapped him on the shoulder.
	"Notice?" he said with a smug grin.
	"Notice what?" sighed Sauramud.
	"Wererats comes after Orcs, doesn't it?" said the ranger nudging the
wizard in the ribs.  "Coincidence?  I think not."
	"Wererats," said Sauramud slowly, yet building in volume, "comes under
'L', for 'Lycanthrope', or maybe 'M' for 'Monster' or perhaps 'N' for 'THE
RANGER IS A NINCOMPOO...MPH!" Both Playdough and Dingbat had clasped hands
over the wizard's mouth and said,
	"Shhhhh." A number of cowled heads turned the party's way exposing
long twitching noses and bright beady eyes.  The party froze.  Presently
the heads turned away again.

End of Part Five
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
*     mmcalees@csr.uvic.ca (Michael McAleese) : I speak only for me...       *
  "Man can believe the impossible, but never the improbable." - Oscar Wilde
  (For snooping governments: heroin, cocaine, FBI, CSIS, CIA, albatross...)


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