"Dire Delusion of Death"
by Mark L. Stinson
The Bard looked across the smoke-filled room. He saw two men walk into the bar. "No," he thought, "the one on the left is obviously an elf." The human's name was Mandar, he had worked for the king since the Dark Wars. His face was cracked and dry, and covered with scars. He wore a ring-mail shirt and padded armor on his legs and arms. His helmet bore the king's crest...a sword with blood dripping from the tip. The elf was new in the capital city. Farlorn the Bard could tell these things...it was the look in the elves eyes that gave him away. His eyes shifted back-and-forth,and Farlorn noticed how the mrrn smoke made them water.
"Farlorn, we must talk with you in private."
"O.K., Mandar. Let's go back in the storeroom." Farlorn noticed a glint of metal when the elf's cloak parted slightly open as he walked. "Probably elvan chain mail," he thought. The Bard knew of the mail, for he had watched the elves make it in the tree city when he had begun his bardic training there. The elvan mail was stronger than plate armor...and two times lighter.
Once in the storeroom Mandor explained the urgency of the meeting. "I know you gave up going to the ork wars, hoping to get a job playing your harp for King Jestak, and in the last couple of months, since your friends left, you haven't been given an audience to see the King. But that could change...."
"Get to the point." Farlorn wondered if he got to work at the castle, would he get as wordy.
"We have a job for you." These were the first words the elf had spoken. His voice was almost as smooth as Farlorn's. "But it doesn't have to do with your singing or your harp. Its your quarter-staff abilities in which were interested."
"I'm not a mercenary. I don't...."
"This place might not be a good place to talk." Mandor quieted the Bard in mid-sentence. "Let's go out back to the alley."
Farlorn frowned. "No, first let's go back in the bar-room and buy some mrrn...I have a feeling I'm not going to enjoy our discussion." Mrrn was a type of tobacco. It was grown on fields where great wars had taken place, up to the north about 100 miles. It cost so much to bring the mrrn across the desert, that Jestak the King had made it unlawful to buy except for medicinal purposes. But in Phil's Bar, law was non-existent. The warriors' blood along with enchantments cast by northern wizards during the ancient battles, caused the tobacco when smoked to make a person lose control...become outgoing, and go to another place. Addictive, yes...but harmful, no. If a person who has smoked mrrn recently, gets over-excited, he will usually pass out. Not many mrrn users were violent...they couldn't be without losing consciousness.
"Sounds like a fine idea to me." Mandor was a known mrrn addict, and that's probably why he was an advisor to the King, rather than a mercenary or a guard.
"How about you elf? Do you smoke?" Farlorn was sure that the elf did...all elves did.
"No!"
"O.K., that's fine." Farlorn was perplexed. An elf that didnt' smoke mrn? "Wait-a-minute," he thought. "His ears...they look longer, and his eyes had been blue!" Farlorn looked away from the elf's now green eyes, and thought, "I better keep cool." Farlorn turned to to King's advisor, "Mandor, I'll buy it for you. It will cost five gold pieces. They will think it is a set-up if you try to buy some."
Mandor fumbled through his coin bag as the three of them walked into the bar toward the mrrn vender. After purchasing the mrrn, they went out back, into the alley. Farlorn lit a mrrn cigarette for Mandor, and then one for himself.
"Well, what is it? What do you want me to do?" Farlorn noticed Mandor's face become a blur. He looked at the elf and then back at Mandor. It wasn't just his eyes...his whole face was re-forming. "Shapechanger," Farlorn pulled his quarter-staff from its restraining straps on his back, and blocked the sword blow delivered by the elf. So, the shapechangers, or dopplegangers as wizards call them, were seeking revenge. Farlorn had discovered a family of dopplegangers in Citadel, the capital city, and had turned them in to the authorities. Without a trial, the city guards had slaughtered them. They were seeking justice, and Farlorn wasn't about to let them have his life without a fight.
Farlorn circled for position as best he could in the small alley. He was trying to get next to the still sitting Mandor.
"You should be passing out soon, Bard...you smoked mrrn. You can't stay excited and conscious!" the elf/shapeshifter screamed.
"To bad you didn't notice the signals I gave the mrrn dealer, otherwise you'd know different. He sold me normal tobacco, city-grown...the worst. For Mandor I got the real stuff." Farlorn noticed the look of realization on the shapechanger's elvan face.
"You knew we were shapeshifters all along, and that the mrrn would make us lose our shapechanging abilities. I commend such an intelligent human."
"Shapechanger, I'm half-elf and half-human. I studied your race for years at the wandering tent city's libraries." As he spoke, Farlorn had circled, constantly blocking sword blows, until he was next to Mandor...who was attempting to get up. "Bye, bye, Psuedo-Mandor" Farlorn, in between bone-jarring sword blows, stuck one end of his staff through the the shapeshifter's eye-socket, and then quickly removed it in order to block a sword blow at his legs. Then, before the shapeshifting elf could attack again, Farlorn, with a single chest puncturing blow, knocked the lifeless tottering body of Mandor's imitator through the bar's smoke darkened back window.
The people screamed as they saw the man, with blood pouring from slashes and holes rendered by flying glass, change back into a molted green and brown skinned shapechanger. Several men scrambled for their weapons.
This action shocked the doppleganger/elf...distracted him enough that he made a mistake...he let his sword drop three inches. Farlorn saw the opening and swung his staff. No man watching this fight ever said a staff was inferior to a sword, for the staff caused the shapechanger's skull to shatter. Teeth, chunks of brain, an eyeball, blood, large pieces of flesh, and bits and pieces of skull splattered across Farlorn's arm, upper chest, and face. The pressure caused when the right side of the doppleganger's head had been smashed in caused his head to pop.
The half-headed body stumbled past Farlorn, dead...but not down. The Bard stuck out a leg and tripped the now senseless form. It fell on its sword in a way that sent the blade through its user's now totally lifeless body.
Phil, with a grimace on his face, gave Farlorn the night off and sent someone to get the city guards. Farlorn went into the storeroom to get some sleep after searching the two bodies for valuables. "Damn creatures don't have the decency to carry my reward!"
Many people that very night, thinking the fight to be an hallucination of their mrrn soaked minds, swore to never smoke again....
STORY NOTES:
Citadel was the capital city of Jestak the King's territory. It seemed that Jestak's kingdom was always at war...with other kingdoms, and especially the orks. Matt Johnson created Citadel for his D&D campaign, and started our characters at 0-level. Not first level...but 0-level. We struggled through our life in the city...encountering every sort of hardship imaginable...and it was a lot of fun. Matt had used an old high-level character named Jestak to be the king...and when I borrowed Citadel for my own campaign...I kept Jestak in charge of the whole mess, and made him an Emperor. See the World of Kempin and the Elder Players Campaign on this website for more details.
When writing this story originally, I named the Bard in this story Felimid. During its writing, I changed the Bard's name to Farlorn. When typing the handwritten story for this website, I laughed when I realized that in the story, half the time I called the Bard Farlorn and half the time Felimid. I had to make a choice for this posting...so I went with Farlorn!