How to Be an Adventurer- World of Gimmok

by Damien Hanson

  Carric thought about what he was seeing with a shudder.

  “What a mess,” he said aloud.

  Yenrab grunted in agreement.

  Carric’s brain pulsed with thought and imagination. He felt he could see exactly what had happened.

  He could see the hulking troll and his dirty orcish companions. They hooted and hollered in glee. Maybe one of them did a dance even. Then they grunted and growled in apish hunger before tearing out steaming, bloody chunks of sow as they trudged ahead. The pig had still been alive, no doubt. They were godsdamned savages. They howled in victory as they made their way to their new home. The orcs and the troll were lords over the local village now, really, unless the young adventurers did something about it. Dirty, filthy orcs leading humans.

  Then Carric suddenly felt guilty. He cast a furtive glance at Yenrab, remembered back to the orc farmer in the village, and sighed. Nah, orcs aren’t all bad. Just the ones that try to kill people for no reason.

  As Carric and his companions trudged up the hill, he felt weary. What was right and what was wrong in this world? In Icegard, it was pretty easy. Ogres and humans were the good guys even if they tended to stuff you into the latrine between classes or make you dance naked in the snow. Orcs were the bad guys. And giants. And anything that rose up out of the ruins of the old Mage College. He used to pay a local skirmisher a copper a day to hear tales of the world, and that last one, the ruins of the old Mage College, that was the one thing about which he would not tell tales. Perhaps it was that easy. Perhaps those ruins were evil, and everything else was just degrees less of it.

  He felt dizzy thinking about it. But at least it made the time pass by.

  ***

  At the steepest part of the hill there came to sight a series of rough-hewn planks, fresh and new, set into gradually inclining ramps. It was a primitive set of steps that led up to the furthest parts of the steep bluffs. Looking up, the party saw that these thick slabs of oak led to a recess in the almost sheer rocky sides. That recess, Carric thought, must hold the object of their quest.

  It would have been a hard climb but, as it was, the humanoid bandits had obviously taken some effort to make this place permanent and a bit easier to traverse, and that worked both ways. The party would arrive at whatever camp this was in a condition that left them quite fit and ready for battle. Ultimately, they would arrive with nary a breath spent.

  Winding around, again and again, the heavy wooden planks provided step after balanced step in a way that presented professional acumen. Carric had tried and failed to create his own variety of structures in Icegard—it was expected of real men to know such things. But he had studied the ideals of sustainable architecture before and found that everything he created was neither sustainable nor rightfully called architecture. Ruminating on it all made his brain itch. Either the orcs had better shaap teachers, as they had been called at his school, or else he simply sucked that bad at making things. It really was a toss of the dice, he realized, having no definitive answer to draw upon.

  Each plank had been slapped into the rocky side hard with what seemed to be multiple oaken poles, sharpened and forced into the surface by a very enthusiastic troll, held firm and solid without any shake or shiver. Despite a lack of expert craftsmanship, the humanoids had done a good job of addressing the problem at hand, bending nature to their whim, and creating quite the defensible path as well.

  We should probably keep the fight indoors and away from all of this, Carric thought with a shudder, looking over the side at the drop that awaited the unwary. He could too easily imagine the troll picking them up, one by one, and tossing them to their doom. It was quite the powerful and graphic imagination that he had. Perhaps too powerful.

  The companions walked along the plankways with weapons at the ready. A bird called out, its cry echoing against the rock face.

  “Aaah!” screamed Tracy into Carric’s face.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Carric screamed back, almost losing his footing.

  Yenrab stopped moving and just watched them. He shook his head and sighed. Suddenly the air was aflutter in frightened birds. The white pasty grit of their poo haphazardly landed on and about them.

  Tracy waved at them as they departed.

  “Gods! Both of you! What happened to well-practiced professionalism? Aren’t we adventurers now? Don’t we have a book saying we are?” Carric spoke out in shrill outrage.

  “Eh,” Tracy squeaked, her hand rocking back and forth in front of her to signify her doubts about such a concept.

  “I think the book is teaching us, Carric,” Yenrab opined with a thoughtful glance at the sky. “Right now most of it is blank so we aren’t nearly to where you seem to think we are.”

  “Yeah? Then what are we doing chasing down a troll?”

  Carric had been beginning to feel a bit better about the idea. I mean, helping poor villagers was the stuff of ballads! But it was beginning to seem as if he had been giving a great deal of good advice back when he was protesting them.

  Yenrab smiled.

  “We’ve got weapons and magic, bard. Those are formidable friends in all situations.”

  “Yeah!” Tracy added in a burst of enthusiasm. “We’ve got this!”

  Carric stared, but said nothing. Those two were bursting with energy, and to be honest, he was still feeling a tingle of it himself. How could they be defeated? It was unimaginable.

  Chapter 8: Trolling the Troll

  Rounding about the last corner, they came to a large natural cave. It was quite wide, spreading about them like willow branches from the mother trunk. Carric saw he was not alone in it as he looked about in envy of the enemy’s spunk. They had put a lot of work into the place despite its nearness to lawful civilization, chiseling out this bit and that to make it a more worthwhile abode. This group, whoever they were, planned to stay and had put in a good deal of homesteading in on their project. Timbers served as pillars here and there to keep the new additions sturdy.

  From the welcoming mouth of the cave there lead a winding throat-like aperture into its depths. The party looked about, checking the area for traps or other devices.

  “If no one is going to say something, I am going to say it,” Tracy piped up. She looked uncomfortable.

  Carric and Yenrab looked at her, waiting for her to continue. The time stretched on.

  Alright, okay. Tracy is broken. Time to wind her up. Carric sighed.

  “What are you going to say, Tracy?” the bard asked in a patient manner.

  “It!” the half-elf yelled and then laughed.

  “Bear above,” Yenrab muttered, rolling his eyes and looking skyward. He looked a bit upset, but Carric was pretty sure that he saw the crinkles of suppressed laughter in the corners of his mouth.

  “Well, guys,” Carric Smith said with a smile, “I think we can call this spot secure. Shall we enter? Ladies first?”

  “Ladies must be first, Mr. Smith,” Tracy responded. “If they weren’t, where would babies come from?”

  There was a chuckle followed by a gasp as Yenrab seemed to be intent on not laughing at Tracy’s strange brand of humor, but failed partially.

  “That’s enough of that. I’m going in,” the stalwart barbarian stated in a serious tone, getting nods of acknowledgement from the other two.

  With Yenrab in the lead, the other two trailed as they entered the gullet of the tremendous hill. They walked along a stony tunnel that was a bit damp and held clumps of mushrooms here and there in its clammy nooks. It veered a bit from place to place, not unlike the minor corrections of a drunken man or a sailor’s first steps ashore. It rose a bit as well, but it didn’t go on for long before it opened up again into a small cavern, the opposite side of which was walled with cobblestone and fitted with what appeared to be a solid granite gate. It was roughly hewn like all the rest of the constructions seen thus far. Yet it was fascinating and quite lovely to look at. It was a very functional approach to creating a bizarre and unexpected artifact o
f humanoid civilization.

  Tracy and Carric exchanged curious glances.

  “Yenrab, is this orcish culture?” Tracy, ever curious, could not hide the surprise within her eyes.

  “Ya know, I grew up in the forests with the tribes of the North. We hunted. We gathered. We fished. I don’t know.”

  “You are honestly very well-spoken for an orc,” Carric confided. “I never actually met any like you, Yenrab. How can it be that you are also a barbarian without schooling and a man of the wilderness?”

  “Well, not a lot of people know this, I guess, but the tribes are not without education. Many of us have shamans who, themselves, keep the written word. Every five years, the tribes convene and the most inclined are sent away to the Mage College. At least, that is the way among the Confederation of the Bear. Barbarian is more a state of mind than it is an indicator of a lack of culture.”

  Tracy and Carric looked at each other again, a bit open-mouthed in wonder.

  “That was beautiful, Yenrab,” Carric said with an admiring look.

  Yenrab kicked a leg to the side, an expectant look riding his face. Tracy was the first to realize what was happening as the fetid stench of sulfur burned her nostrils. She began to gasp and choke.

  “No, friend Carric, that was beautiful,” the half-orc laughed, waving the stench of his fart in his direction.

  ***

  How to be an Adventurer—Volume 1 states that the children of Coraellon, even those mixed with the earthy independence of humankind, are often curious by nature and driven to seek out and understand new things. The tome surmises that this has caused them a lot of trouble in life, but that it has also brought them to great levels of existence, craft, culture, and magic.

  That could well explain why Tracy Riley was currently playing patty-cake with the gate. Nothing else really made any sense in the matter.

  Yenrab the barbarian and Carric the bard waited patiently as the sorcerous half-elf played her investigative game. Tracy murmured something just at the edge of human hearing and then stopped.

  “Did you all know that the three of us are hybrids?” Tracy asked, looking back at them in shock.

  Oh, great, Carric thought. More silly nonsense.

  “Yes, Tracy, of course. Sexy, sexy humans are the plight of our world,” he responded back with a smile.

  “Ah, yes. I understand,” Tracy said in a grave and serious tone. “We must kill all humans.”

  “What?! No! Tracy, I was joking about plight! Humans are good, usually.”

  Tracy smiled, her lips magically adjusting to a rosy hue through some process unknown to the other two.

  “I was joking as well, bard Carric. Perhaps humor is something I can understand better in this world than even you.”

  Yenrab chuckled. Tracy turned to him.

  “Yenrab. You are large and quite well-built. Could you break down that gate or, in some way, maybe take apart that wall?”

  “Well, Tracy, I’m not sure I can. Ya know, maybe we should just knock?”

  Tracy nodded, then waved at them in a puzzling fashion.

  “Good idea. But, first, let’s all gather some tinder in the corner and get a little flame going just in case. We’re dealing with a troll, and I don’t know if you know this—”

  “—but trolls die by fire.” Yenrab and Carric spoke the words simultaneously, looked at one another startled, and then chuckled. Tracy laughed as well, though she also looked a bit embarrassed.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tracy responded, “if everyone knew what I hear, everybody knows the world would be a heck of a smarter place, right?”

  ***

  The three of them gathered up combustibles from their immediate surroundings. Still, it didn’t seem to be enough. To make things work, Yenrab resorted to shaving some thicker and longer burning chunks off of the slab road at the cave entrance. Their labors uninterrupted, they soon had a small and decent fire.

  “That should last long enough,” Tracy informed them in a voice that was still feminine, but was growing more masculine by the minute. Her change was coming soon enough, for sure.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t have to last all night. Guys, I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Yenrab beamed. “And, ya know, I really want to let you know how much I’ve enjoyed this all. I feel like a real adventurer.”

  “Yenrab, I think you are destined to be more than that, considering the book you are carrying,” Carric noted, fixing him with a serious gaze.

  The barbarian stopped smiling and simply grunted in reply and then turned to face the gate with his weapons at the ready. The bard and the wild mage took up positions to the rear and side.

  “Well, I guess this is it. Ready, guys? Or, um, guy and gal?” Yenrab asked.

  “Yeah, better to die now where no one can see how much we suck at fighting, I guess,” Carric griped, a scared frown warping his usually handsome face.

  Tracy laughed hysterically.

  Yenrab frowned.

  He looked at them over his shoulder to judge their positions. Then Yenrab marched to the front and pounded one gigantic, meaty slab of hand upon the granite gate. Despite its great durability, it shuddered, and one could imagine it almost gasping under the assault.

  A slot opened in the door, previously undetected and about eye level for the massive half-orc.

  “Yeah? Nalkriuk ayh lat agh whaav do lat wanav?”

  Carric looked at Tracy, and Tracy at him.

  “I do not understand anything they are saying, friend Carric,” Tracy Riley said, his voice a little uncertain about the word friend as he spoke.

  “It sounds like guttural nonsense, I know, but that is a language. They are speaking Orcish, friend Tracy. Yenrab has this.” Carric, feeling this was important to the half-elf from Elfsmeet, emphasized the word friend as he spoke. Tracy responded well, giving him a grateful and ecstatic look in return.

  Indeed, Yenrab spoke the crackle and spit of the language quite fluidly, the half-orc and the other being exchanging a quick back-and-forth conversation that ended with an orcish laugh and a grunt from the gate’s other side. The half-orc turned back to the group. He looked a bit annoyed.

  “Alright, guys,” Yenrab said back to his companions. “They say we are young nothings and say they’ll eat us if we don’t stop bothering them.”

  “Well, we need them to open that door. Can you maybe show off our equipment a bit and let them know that it’d be really profitable to rob us?” asked Tracy.

  Carric started at that, but Yenrab chuckled a bit and then scratched himself between his legs.

  Ugh, Carric thought with a grimace.

  Yenrab sighed with content, having gotten rid of that wearisome ill, and then shrugged.

  “That’s not a bad idea, Tracy, but I might have a better one.”

  Carric piped in, “Maybe we should just look at the book?”

  “I’m not sure the book likes being used that way,” the barbarian mused, thinking out loud. “It sure had opinions on how I used it earlier.” Then he suddenly looked at their faces with realization and guilt.

  Both Tracy and Carric started to ask questions at the same time.

  “What do you—”

  “Why are you—”

  “Anyways, guy and gal, that will all have to wait,” the man interjected in haste. Then he lowered his voice. “I have an idea that might settle this quickly. Guys, just hang back and stay ready for a fight,” whispered Yenrab.

  The half-orc began to go through a series of motions. There was something about the tribal dance that made it quite spiritual, and it nagged at Carric’s mind. A dim memory from a classroom so long ago rose up and broke, not into an image, but into a few paltry words. Tribal Barditry and the Contest of Insults! It was a vague subject in his schooling, but one he had been interested in for a brief time. Yenrab was going to taunt, intimidate, and insult the orc through the door in a contest of wit. The bard considered the barbarian again with a critical eye and then realized something interesting. The b
arbarian would probably win this.

  “Lat ayh noavhing, kuu bur. Your famipak iuk an inukulav. Your moavhas iuk uko faav avhaav lav-li nauk-mainuk liwo encompaukuk avhe enavireavausan ro narania.”

  The orc across the way laughed.

  “Funnausan, young gijak. Buav jiak liwo noav be rilun inavo ukome ukavupid avrap. Juukav give up. Gimb eaukias markuk.”

  Tracy whispered to the bard, “Any idea what they are saying?”

  Carric, whose knowledge spanned unsuccessful lessons in dozens of languages, shrugged and whispered back, “Well, I think Yenrab told him a joke about his mother and told him he was a coward. And the other orc said that the joke was funny and something about a trap?”

  “Darn,” Tracy said, loosening up in tone a bit since the bard had admitted to friendship.

  “Okay. I think I know what Yenrab is going for. Hey! Yenrab. Do trolls speak Orcish?”

  “Sometimes,” Yenrab answered with authority. “But mostly they speak Trollish.”

  “Troll? The trolls are smart enough to have made and compiled their own language?” asked a surprised Tracy.

  “Nah. Mostly colloquial Trollish is just Nemedian common and Northland Orc, mixed together with a bad accent.”

  “Alright. Why don’t you just start mocking their troll leader? Do it as loud as you can. Try to get it to echo through there,” suggested Tracy.

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay, Tracy. Let’s try that,” Yenrab said through a goofy grin.

  Yenrab switched to Troll as best as he could, mixing common with Orcish and a horrific mispronunciation of multiple words. “Hey, troll. Troll! Okak Kog there? Can Okak Tan me? Nart are your orc friends keeping Okak Kog a cage. That’s Ega Ok’d keep Okak. A dumb Gorak Tek Okak needs narg kept away Kor real people.”

  “Carric what’s he saying?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds nasty though. I guess you could say he is trolling the troll.”

  Tracy just stared at him. Carric threw up his hands, his joke absolutely misunderstood.

  “Hey, troll. Troll! Teg do Okak Ek On a half-orc has sex Ar a troll? Your mom last Nadul!”

  “Carric, did he just say what I think he said?”