The Drunkard's Tale

A Story Told in an Unnamed Tavern, Part 1

Alright, alright... I'll give ye yer story. Reckon you earned that much for all this fine drink ye've bought me. The name is Landorff - What? - Yes, that's Susan Landorff. Fuck, how do people keep findin' out that bit?

Okay, so my name's Susan, and I'm originally from a little village out in the province of Parad. The whole shit started when I was out trailing a deer. Reckon I'd been on it for hours. Bitch of a hart. Ended up trailing it into that skanky area in the borderlands where things had gone a bit queer. Plants turning all white, animals getting all queer.

Sorry, what? Yeah, queer. Like, you know, queer. Freaky queer.

Reckon I finally catch up to it, and I figured at the time that it was caught up in some net. Couldn't see the net, as I was sliding under a bush on my belly, but it seemed a good guess. It weren't on the ground, and its legs were runnin' like it was trying to find the ground. Looked like it was in a net. While I'm there getting ready to feather the stag, two chaps come up. Dressed a little queer.

No, not freaky queer. More like... foreign queer. Though one of this was freaky queer. Summat 'bout his robes just didn't rub me right.

So, the non-freaky queer guy says, "We shouldn't be this close to the border."

And the other guy says, "Well, if we did this in your lands, all the game would be gone."

Then bammo, the deer turns all white powder on me and crumples to the ground. Reckon it was some sort of indicator that they were somehow involved in this stuff. That's what I figured.

So, on the way back to getting the fuck away from creepy and not-so-creepy, I stopped by my pal Maggie's place. She's an old hag of a woman, but she taught me a few little charms and stuff that help me with my tracking and such. She's sort of aware of stuff that others aren't. So, I described the situation, and she asked to get a piece of that white powdery stuff. I was going to try and do it in the morning, but then the rains came and fucked that all up.

So, I got home, and found my friend Frank waiting for me. By friend I mean he's someone I drink with once in a while, and occasionally get in a scrap with. He took out one of my teeth once. By waiting, I mean he jumped me and tried to get a second tooth out of me.

I backpedaled and tried to calm him down while looking for a stick to hit him with. I was more successful with the stick.

So I tied Frank to one of my rafters, and set about gettin'-

Yes, I tied him to my ceiling.

Why? Because I had to get up early the next day and didn't want for him to wake up. I also didn't want to go to sleep and wake up dead. So, ceiling it was.

I was in the middle of my evening constitutional, a half bottle of some cornmash one of my neighbors makes, when a knock came at my door. It was Eliza, Frank's sister. We'd had a noisy, sticky rumpus or two in the past. Her showing up would probably explain why Frank wanted to beat me senseless: He found out about us.

And sure enough, that's what she told me. She also told me she was pregnant, which I didn't expect. She asked me if I wanted her to do anything about it. Which I thought meant, "Should she get rid of it?" Now, I figured I'd been around long enough not to fall into the trap of not telling a woman what she should do with her body. You know, you live in a land full of witches; you learn how to keep your mouth shut once in a while.

So I told her it was her call. Reckon that didn't come out right. Might have had summat to do with her brother tied to my ceiling. Them's the breaks, I guess. So, she took her brother and left me to my constitutional.

I was just about to hit the sack, when I reckon lightning hit my house. Can't think of any other reason the roof would suddenly start burning in the middle of a light rain. The rain wasn't putting it out. Neither was me hitting it with a blanket. It looked like the house was doomed and I'd have to build a new one in drier weather. So, I gathered up what was important to me and headed over to Uncle John's to sleep.

Woke up in the morning with my uncle futzing about the house and his old dog licking my face. He sent me out to avoid his goose, also named John, and get some eggs for breakfast. The goose seems to think it owns the chickens and doesn't like intruders.

So, had breakfast, hit the road. Uncle John was still tinkering around the place when I hit the road. He said he'd catch up. I join the others in the caravan to the Festival. Manage to hitch a ride with a beer brewer. Scared up some rabbits for him to pay him back. Got to the Festival just fine. Went around doing odd jobs for some coin so I wouldn't have to worry about having enough money for drinks later.

One guy that I ended up having far too much to do with later was some wine making guy named Laurent. He had some prat of an acquaintance named Quincy. Dunno what his deal was, but he was breaking bottles and I scared him and his thugs off. Also helped wrangle out a curious kid. My mom used to give me some wine when I wouldn't settle down, and it worked just fine on this kid.

The kid belonged to some priest named Brother Peter. The Brother seemed a little upset about his kid smelling of wine, and a bit more upset when the kid got sick on him.

Used the money I got from the wine guy to get me some service at one of those big fancy bath places. Got a massage and everything. Ran into Brother Peter on the way there. He didn't seem so happy to see me.

Got a jug of summat to drink, went and camped out by the wine guy's tent some. I was hoping that Quincy would be around to cause trouble later that night, but he was a no show. I reckon Laurent had enough guards hanging around to scare the prat off.

So, I went and sat with everyone else who was going to listen to the storyteller. More like than not I'd probably fall asleep, jug in hand, while the old coot droned on. Happened last year, prolly would happen again this year.

The old man finished his first story, went to get some wine. A tussle broke out and the coot got stabbed just as Monitor Meridian got up there to break it up. Old man died in the monitor's arms. Just as he did, or as near as I can reckon, this weird feeling passed through me. Like a rock was dropped in the water and a wave hit me, like. Not many people seemed to notice it. Fact o'matter, most folks just got up and wandered slowly off. Monitor took the body back to his tent for whatever monitors do. I wandered around a bit more.

Everywhere I went, people were moving slow. Like, weird slow. To prove my point, I pinched some tough on the nose and lured him swinging back to the monitor's tent to see what the monitor could make of it. He was upset by the whole thing, and did some of his monitor experiments. I noticed that some of the people near the monitor tent were doing okay. Namely Laurent, Brother Peter, that Monitor Meridian, a couple Ranger prats, one of the other monitors, a woman named Syrone.

After the monitor checked things out, I went to see who else was acting funny. As I traveled, I noticed a bunch o' people that had fallen asleep where they stood. Some had fallen over and turned to dust. Not the white dust like that deer, but just normal dust, like. Rangers seemed to all be okay. Fuckheads. So were Quincy and one of his gits, who were both packing up to leave. Gave Quincy a wedgie to send him on his way. Some other priests, the not-so-nice variety, were getting out of there as well. Tried to get people rallied near the monitor tent, but didn't have any success.

So, the monitor figured that we shouldn't disturb the bodies, so we all clustered near the Ranger camp. I sat a bit away. Never had much truck with those Ranger types. Some Rangers went out to warn away newcomers and came back to report the ways into the glade were closing off. Like they do when the festival is over, only much earlier.

So, we decided we should skedaddle. I voted for going to Parad, since this was a pretty weird magical thing and the witches would know what to do. Monitor Meridian wanted to go to Adzgar because he had some books there he thought might help. I'd heard about Adzgar from Maggie. They used to have a big library, now they just had know-it-all monitors who had small collections of books. I couldn't think of any way to tell the monitor he was full of shit, though. Laurent wanted Adzgar because it was supposed to be the most civilized. Brother Peter had been drugged to keep him from being hysterical over his boss and kids he was taking care of turning to powder, so he didn't have much input. I really didn't give two shits what the Rangers wanted, but it looked like they wanted to stick with the Monitor.

So, with the assurance that we'd maybe get a Wayfinder to take us to Parad if shit didn't work out, we went to Adzgar. I'd normally follow my gut, but frankly I didn't know if anyone else was alive anywhere, and I didn't want to see Parad turned to dust when I got there.

So, we hoofed it to the Adzgar ways. Most of the Rangers went off in different areas, as I guess Mr. I-Don't-Believe-in-Magic Monitor was a farseer and could see messages they left. Fucking whatever. The two Rangers that came with us killed some monster boar along the way. We got through to Adzgar just as dawn broke. I went to the inn, got a bottle of the local strong stuff, and got good and shit faced.

I reckoned I was the only one with any magical experience, being trained by an old witch and all. So, I figured I'd have to figure out ways to study the whole problem. I had a couple o' things I wanted testin' out.

First off, some of my spells involve attracting things to me, some of them involve attracting me to them. It involves a lot of symbolic stuff. Like if you want to catch a rabbit you need a piece of a rabbit, or summat that looked like a rabbit. So, I reckoned I might be able to figure out what pulled us together and kept us from becoming powder and all.

Secondly, I seem to recall summat about some witches using herbs and mushrooms and the like to receive visions. I reckoned I could find a mushroom or summat that would possibly grant me some sort of vision. So I figured I'd get me some of that. Have me a vision while the monitor was wasting time with his books.

What happened? Well, it happens that my throat is running a bit dry. Get me another drink and I'll tell you more.