S.Y. 307.10 (May
4, 2001)
Dudagog's Tale
From the BNN
Author Unknown
A sore eye encrusted with blood, received as a
"blessing" for questioning the elder shaman during the previous
night's war council, was a minor irritant in a long line of irritants
that Dudagog had learned to accept. Although it had been only twenty
cycles of the day fire since the shaman council had rolled the bones
and driven the tribe to move, Dudagog could barely remember the logs
and bone piles he called home. He could remember the rich hunting ground
though. Always fresh deer and hummies to munch on, and the strength
of a combined tribe of hundreds had made life as good as it gets for
an old, fat orc. In his younger days Dudagog would have perhaps enjoyed
this nomadic lifestyle, but age had given Dudagog a wisdom that only
comes through corpulence; hunting is good, but sitting down for a meal
is better. Thus when Dudagog had questioned the shaman about the wisdom
of his training the young orcins to hunt with the new long way killer,
the shaman elder chastised him with a swift staff to his eye. Dudagog
was not stupid enough to retaliate in kind, as the shamans had been
known to cause the air around an orc to burn as hot as the home of a
lava lizzie.
This morning Dudagog was up earlier than he would have wished for. The
day fire was barely awake and it irritated Dudagog that he should share
anything in common with that wretched ball of torment. The shamans demanded
that training start early and end late so the clans would be prepared.
What was it that they should be prepared for? This unseen danger to
the clans could certainly be no worse than roaming about the land in
search of prospects for new orcish conquest. What did orcs need of more
places? What orcs needed, they took. The Disway Datway clan of ettins
had been good partners for the orcs, and now they were far away from
their large allies. Dudagog might not be a shaman, but leaving that
alliance was a bad idea to his way of thinking. Of course, his way of
thinking was usually, "Hungry, want eat." "You in my
way." "Tired, want sleep." "You still here? You
still in way." And so on.
Sharpening his axe was something Dudagog only did when he was nervous.
His whetstone, fresh when he left home, was now barely a nub. The time
of training would not be for a while yet, and Dudagog discovered that
his axe sharpening had made him thirsty. Of course, it had made him
hungry too, but even eating made him hungry, and it was a state he had
grown accustomed to. Since being thirsty was something he could correct,
Dudagog decided to travel to a nearby stream and have a drink. Beer
would have been better. Even stale beer would have been better, but
Dudagog was not permitted to drink before training. The decision made,
his brain finally motivated his legs to carry him to the stream.
Dudagog was startled to find what must have been one of his pupils already
in the stream. This gave Dudagog pause. He seemed to recall orcs disliking
water for drinking, and disliking it far more for bathing. No orc could
stand water long enough to even fathom the concept of swimming, not
that fathoming concepts was a particularly strong orcish skill either.
Dudagog, in what was to be one of the quickest decisions in his life
not involving food or food-like substances, decided the skinny fool
had fallen in the stream. In an effort to be helpful, to himself of
course, Dudagog felt that ordering the fool out of the stream was the
quickest way of removing the distraction to an otherwise bleak morning.
Dudagog was somewhat shocked when the wretch did not acknowledge his
orders. If orcs liked anything less than bathing, it was being shocked.
Clearly this was turning out to be a bad morning, and Dudagog had just
about had enough irritants to last a lifetime. Or so he thought. Dudagog
had three more episodes of being shocked before his life came to an
abrupt end. Throwing the whetstone at the fool in the water seemed like
a good idea. It was when the skinny orc caught the whetstone that shocked
Dudagog for the second to the last time. That shock was immediately
followed by the rather gruesome sight of the orc reaching into the fold
of skin under its neck and ripping the skin off its face while its body
was surrounded by a green light. What was not surprising in any way
was the immediate turn of Dudagog on his heels to presumably warn the
clan, but in reality to simply run away from this magical orc. The final
surprise of Dudagog's life came just as his right leg had gained some
forward progress. His whetstone halted his progress as it came hurling
back at him and caved in the back of his head. The cut across his throat
was not the way he had hoped his thirst would be quenched, but he did
not have to worry about the problem for long, as the morning ended for
him far sooner than for any other beast in the land.
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