This is utterly uncanonical in terms of character portrayal, but it didn't say anywhere that Joed wasn't from Dras Leona. And this website needs humour about Eragon of a non parodic nature, that isn't about "Eragon's night out", and isn't how to annoy character X. So lets get to it.
I come from Dras Leona. Someone had to.
When you come from Dras Leona, you either end up going along with the system and trading slaves, or ranting and trying to be different, and then trading slaves. On Helgrind, I believe that there is a sign which says "Welcome to Dras Leona. Here your life ends." Actually there isn't. I just made that up. But the place does get a hold on you. For Dras Leona is the greatest depressant known to man. You get up, look at the plains, go to work, look at the plains, come back, look out of your window at the plains, and then die, looking at the plains. This does not help to bring about a life of great vibrant ness or activity. Indeed, I hear of some people who, upon arriving on business, regularly remain there forever, having forgotten to buy their stock. This, as this is Dras Leona, is somewhat unlikely. Excuses to get out are fairly high on the list of most sentient beings.
I for one decided not to suffer this fate, so I decided to travel. And to chronicle my travels for those less fortunate types in Dras Leona. In Dras Leona, you are either constantly alcoholic, or constantly angry. Any alleviation from this depression would be useful. Admittedly, the slaves probably couldn't read, but still.
In this endeavour, I enlisted the aid of my good friend Brom. Brom, as the more terrorist minded of my readers would know, was a dragon rider of some repute, and would doubtless be helpful in finding my way around the Empire and beyond. He was a most resourceful man in pretty much every way imaginable, but he had his flaws.
One of these was a certain tendency towards alcoholism. I found him drinking himself to a standstill in the Golden Globe inn, which doesn't really say much for his taste in drink either. I sidestepped a couple of bodies on the floor, skilfully ducked under a thrown knife and strode purposefully over to him. "Good evening Brom," I said, sitting gingerly down on a bar stool. He glared balefully back at me over a foaming beer tankard.
"She's dead," he said.
"Who?" says I.
"Saphira. The bitch is dead!" said he.
"Oh, that must be awful," I said sorrowfully. And then, more tentatively, "It's been about eighty years, hasn't it?"
"Yes. But it's so awful!" This appears to be, according to the great philosophers say we should treat grief, so I maintained a tactful silence. "All those long years ago, with his sword in her…" he took another gulp before carrying on.
This didn't bode well for my grand outing. This would require an immense amount of coaxing and appealing to his superior nature. Of course, when those methods failed I gave him twenty crowns, and he went along with the adventure just fine.
The second problem was convincing Helen that she would let me gallivant off around Alagesia with a complete stranger. "I mean, what do you two even have in common?" she asked over the kitchen table. "He's a dirty, drink sodden-" she indicated our good rider, now merrily downing five bottles of our best Belatonan white- "old man! How could you possibly get along?"
"Relax, dear, it'll be great!" I replied. "We'll talk about lumbagos and middle aged moments, and then one of us will forget who started talking and the conversation will begin again!"
"It'll be hell," my wife said simply.
"I know," I replied, before packing my kit. It could be said that, when we set off next morning, this was when Jeod-Helen affairs started to head downhill.
We set off early, myself thrilled to be out on the road, Brom with his head wrapped up in a towel dipped in cold water. Our enthusiasm soon diminished when I realised just how much a respectable traveller had to carry. About forty pounds of weight and the pack bit into my shoulders, especially when the sun began to glare down on the heat soaked plains. I therefore chucked most of it out.
Brom was still a better walker than I, and was waiting four miles down the road when I caught up. "What kept you?" he asked meanly.
"I had to throw a few things out," I replied through gritted teeth. "The pack was heavy."
"What did you throw our?" Brom asked, in a concerned tone.
"Oh, not the useful stuff. Just spare boots, extra blankets, winter clothing, bread, sausage, the mallet, half the tent pegs." It seemed sensible at the time.
"The tent pegs weren't that heavy," Brom said, reaching for his sword and an expression of ill concealed fury building on his hungover face.
"I know, but they just made satisfying throwing. And I bought something to eat." I produced a large box containing pickled figs. "It can't be that bad."
Our first lunch stop resulted in the large box being chucked in a lake, where I understand it gave birth to two hooded beings. Last time I looked, they had had two children, and were merrily chasing a farm boy up and down the countryside. Which just goes to show.
But at this point, utterly oblivious to the significance of the figs, we decided to continue our long ramble north. After finding a serviceable coaching inn, we proceeded to get pissed beyond our wildest imagings. The next day, we had picked up a new friend.
She was called Angela. "Hi!" she said, cheerily leaping over our comatose forms. "How ya doing?"
Brom seemed to think for a moment that this was all a horrific dream, or that the gods had punished him. This was augmented by the lady ruffling his hair and showing us all that she was a comedian of some esteem.
"Here's one. Knock knock!"
"Who's there?" I muttered, pondering the futility of life, my hangover, and what Angela's head would look like with a poker sticking out of it.
"Paolini."
"Paolini who?"
At this point, she mentions the great deity of our world, who appears to make even the most illogical and contrived occurrences become real and whole, so I will stop now. Suffice to say that he is much maligned by other gods (mostly due to envy) and ranks highly in the world stage of such things.
We set forth, grumbling, and determined to put as much distance between ourselves and Angela's knock knock jokes as possible. The roads were good ones, and we believed ourselves to be used to this sort of thing. But Angela still chirpily kept pace.
By dinner time, I believe that Brom was strongly considering inflicting grievous bodily harm upon Angela. This was especially after an incident around four in the afternoon on the same day.
We had managed to put some distance between ourselves and Angela (she had gotten mugged by an enterprising young lad who had taken offence at her wit) and had obtained some exotic cakes.
"You know," Brom said, "I'm not going to eat this. I want to savour it." He set it on the table before him. He sniffed deeply. I sniffed deeply. It was delicious. Especially after a diet of demon producing pickled figs. "And then," he went on, "I want to admire every creamy inch of its body. I want to write a crappy elven poem- like the ones I regularly trot out to hopeful riders- about it. Then, I will open wide, and let it melt for a moment in my mouth, and then bite down…"
"Say, is that a cake? Gee, I could sure use one!" Angela swallowed it in one gulp, made another "hilarious" anecdote, and then set off again.
Neither of us spoke. Brom made a strange strangling motion in the air, and then stood and followed Angela.
"You know, Longshanks," he said as we ate our forlorn dinner, listening this time to a song Angela was singing alongside a farmyard tabby she had found and believed magical- "we should get the hell away from here. Fast, and I mean really fast!"
I nodded grimly. Angela was without a doubt one of the least savoury people it was possible to have with you in a grand boys' outing. "So, how do you propose to achieve this, my dear rider? We can't just walk away at midnight and leave her, surely?"
Brom nodded.
"But she has one of our tents!"
"Well," he said, "I had another plan."
"Oh?"
"Yes. It involved hanging her from a tree, after magicing her to death first." There was a psychopathic glint in the old man's eye, which I found less than assuring.
We set off pretty quickly after that.