Warning: It helps A LOT if you know the story to tLoTR. This is set in a
rural British pub called the Abyss somewhere on Middle Earth, but the
scenes described follow the fellowship from a day into Moria to the bridge
where Gandalf fell. It's quite silly.
'I don't know when I first got to know him. We'd both been regulars in the Abyss for years before we started talking, but MarySue could certainly tell stories, for all that his voice sounded like he breathed mustard gas for 5 minutes each morning. It always seemed impossible that they could be true, and I never believed them. Well, maybe briefly, in the time between him starting and finishing, but not to really believe them.' 'The Abyss is an old pub, the beams are low and dark, smoke curls mysteriously about the place; there are strange... trophies tied and nailed to the walls. I haven't seen it for years, obviously, but I remember, before,' I pause and gesture at my face, 'Fungus ate my face, I went on an expedition into the cellars, and found graffiti where Catholic priests hid during the reformation, and possibly druids from the Romans.' 'It was a sunny afternoon, the time I'm telling you about, and he was already drinking when I arrived. I got my round in and carried two pints over to the table in the corner, and he was still recounting some alleged adventure of his. It ran something like this.'
' "Things were bad. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on, I didn't know why I was there, and I'm certainly not going to explain what I was doing beforehand to you, 'coz you're a petty minded bigot." I took exception to this slander of my character, and told him so, not that it did any good'
' "Now let me get on with the story," he said "There I was, an Arkham/ Miskatonic educated necromancer, 200 years behind the shovel, boy, man and hideously re-animated corpse, and, for want of any understanding of what was going on, I was hanging around in some abandoned mines with a bunch of naive yet knowing women and some near-deranged henpecked guys of various species." '
' "According to Gandalf, who was the most together of the guys, the mines were, and probably still are, inhabited by a race of stunted troglodytes. They must have struck uranium and decided that the glow was pretty; poor dumb sods. Still it could be worse; I heard about one place where, as a natural land formation, there's a circular valley 20 miles across surrounded by mountains, oh and the local sheep have 3 legs, and fangs." '
'I nodded knowingly, natural nukes are incredibly rare but the world is quite old, and statistical abnormalities do tend to pile up'
' "I digress; you might have noticed, it comes of talking to yourself, and frankly, apart from you blind, noseless guys, who else am I going to converse with?" I didn't really mind the dig; most people are sufficiently creeped out by a guy with no face that they don't say anything, and hell, he had problems too. "You think the dead guy in Frankenstein had it bad? Well yeah, but at least he didn't last long enough to get corpse-worms. Feh" '
' "So there we were, crawling around like blind moles in a place that is a lot more convivial than the Plateau of Lang, when we found the city. It's bloody big; you could handbrake-turn a Challenger Tank round some of those streets. The guys start poking around the tombs. Well I'm not one to object, so I follow them in. It's a bit odd: the dwarves (not dwarfs) keep city records in the tombs. Must remember that next time I need to doctor my tax records." '
' "The city fathers knew about Kth'yRak! lurking outside the front gates, but don't seem to have got to know him at all well; which is hardly neighbourly, in my opinion. Then they died. Then just when the story was getting interesting (Althea was reading it in that velvety middle soprano of hers), Rosie reached over and grabbed Pippin. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but I think he was about to knock a rusting suit of tin down a well." '
'It was always a habit of his to introduce new characters to his story as they did something interesting. He claimed it saved time spent making descriptions of people you didn't need to know about. I think he just made them up on the spot'
' "It was hardly unlikely that Pippin would fuck up, he's inept like that." '
' " 'No harm done' she sez, with a fluttering little laugh. The armour was chained to lots of scrap iron. Why? I looked down that well, it would be too dark for most people to see it, but my eyes went the way of all flesh years ago, so I don't use light anymore. I...saw, for want of a better word, a couple of ledges, and just round the corner, a couple more perfectly tuned sounding boards, some heavy machinery, a few of deadfalls and some huge caverns filled with intelligent life. How very... fortunate that the little hobbit lass stopped Pippin just in time. It could have been a disaster. She knew, I swear it, although she couldn't have unless she'd either been here before and set it up, or... what? how else could she possibly have known? So I waited 'til no one was looking, then kicked her repeatedly in the back of the head until she fell down it herself." I may have looked slightly accusing at this point, although how I don't know, for he continued with a defensive note in his voice, "Hay! The smug little bitch deserved it. As predicted, this resulted in enough banging and crashing to awaken Cthulhu, so I yelled down after her 'You are lame! I mock your stupid well-diving exploits.' " He paused and we both drank. '
' "Soon we had lots of little green scaly buggers who wanted to play with us. I'd never seen goblins before, or cave-trolls, and I wasn't impressed; poor effort, whoever bred them. They are small, weak, and generally quite pitiful, although I did like the ceiling-crawling and the 'mass suicidal rush', so I may have to get a small horde one day, and see what can be done to improve them." '
' "After a couple of minutes they all died, although not before they got a couple of blows in, either on Lisa Flowerbright, who can regenerate like you wouldn't believe, or a passing flesh wound, which was quickly treated by Eleanor, using 'some incredibly rare herbs I just happen to have on me'." '
' 'Convenient' I interposed, 'That the only person injured should be able to ignore it so utterly. "Yes, I thought it was, too, not that anything hit me. Then the others left. Well, I thought I could maybe find out a little of what was going on, so I stuck Ord's ring under some poor dead bastard's tongue and make him talk. The guys seem to be down on golden jewellery so I thought it best to wait 'til they'd left. The dead goblin I asked thought that there are thousands of them, although I suspect that what he meant was 'more than 20'- he wasn't wearing shoes." He laughed unpleasantly; I got the impression that Mary didn't respect Gobbos much, "and that their captains were mighty. He didn't know if the captain wanted an undead horde, or how well he'd pay, so I left." '
' "I caught up with the lads in time to see Siggy attacking some big smoky thing." Siggy he had spoken of before, describing her as a "tall, proud human female warrior with buns of steel." I was always slightly suspect about his descriptions of ladies he'd met; they had a tendency towards perfection that went beyond the believable.'
' "Presumably this was the little bastard's boss," he continued. "Althea had knocked Gandalf on the head and was dragging him away down a passageway. From the looks of things the creature of fire and darkness wanted BDSM, but instead of talking out scenarios, and deciding on a safety word, Siggy waded right in and hit it with an industrial revolution: 20 years of unrivalled technological improvement and prosperity right between the horns. Needless to say, it jeered at her, billowed smoke and cracked its whip. The industrial revolution gathered momentum, water mills spreading along major river systems, productivity rising by a staggering degree, but it was too late; 20 feet of fire lashed out again, ripped half Siggy's face out. The shock and pain must have killed her instantly, because she just sort of flopped to the ground, missed and fell into the yawning cavern below." He sounded like he would be sad, except he hadn't much liked her, and would have done the same thing himself. "That's when I elbowed my way through the horde behind him and booted it in the nuts. Silly bugger wasn't watching behind; he deserved it. So I began my spiel, you know, the whole 'are your minions shit? Are they small and weak? Do they let people sneak up behind you and knee you in the 'nads?' thing, although there wasn't really all that much I could do for him". I nodded wisely; many was the times that I'd heard some bragging, apparently over- muscled bruiser cut off short in the middle of some self-glorifying tale as a couple of squelching impacts attested that MarySue had kneed him in the balls and again in the face as he doubled up. The dead guy had problems, but the idea that he should fight fair wasn't one of them.'
' "Unfortunately, as it turned out, demons of might are fully capable of taking a booting to the groin, then turning round and sticking a pair of talons right up your nose, which is what this one did. Damn all genderless Maia anyway. I guess that it expected me to stop moving, for there was a noticeable pause after I tore through the 2 inch-long nails. This gave me time to scramble up the creature's bulk, get a finger-hold on a horn and dyno into a dive over its shoulder." I think I must have looked slightly blank, for he took this opportunity to explain that "Dyno" is simply a climber's term meaning a dynamic move.'
' "With a mighty leap and a flare of tattered bat wings it turned once again to confront my rapidly retreating back. Despite the time I'd won them, the Fellowship were still hesitating on the far side of the bridge, surrounded by a growing pile of missed goblin arrows. I didn't look back; I spent years studying with an order of saffron-clad monks on Leng's icy plateau, and I understand The From of Running. The From of Running is highly specific. It is this: if you need to Run, Run. That is what you do. That is what you are. Without pity, without remorse, you Run. Do Not Panic. Do not stop to rescue friends, relatives or loved ones. Run. If distance is your only protection, then Run. What happened to the others was not my concern, they'd seen it take a solid kick in the 'nads and not flinch. In my book that's close enough to invulnerable not to bother trying." '
' "I kept going. If they were dumb enough to face that thing that was their business, but it was clear that in a fight they didn't have a chance..." He paused dramatically, "Damn my conscience. They'd said something about a ring of power that Frodo was carrying for them, which corrupted all that held it. I turned round, sprinted back in time to see him and the rest of the pathetic hairy-footed freaks drawing oh so weenie swords and, heads tilted so far back as to be comical, cower heroically behind their women folk, and the other, larger members of the party. I lent down and picked up Frodo. 'Give me the ring you fat little slob then, maybe, we can survive'. He whimpered gently and curled up foetally. 'Hay guys, I think we've found a better ring-bearer. I mean look at the bastard' They looked, except for Gwendolyn and Gimli, neither of whom would ever be seeing anything ever again, at the demon. It was easily 30 foot of roughly humanoid fire and darkness. 'Do you honestly think that the ring is going to corrupt him?'
'I don't know when I first got to know him. We'd both been regulars in the Abyss for years before we started talking, but MarySue could certainly tell stories, for all that his voice sounded like he breathed mustard gas for 5 minutes each morning. It always seemed impossible that they could be true, and I never believed them. Well, maybe briefly, in the time between him starting and finishing, but not to really believe them.' 'The Abyss is an old pub, the beams are low and dark, smoke curls mysteriously about the place; there are strange... trophies tied and nailed to the walls. I haven't seen it for years, obviously, but I remember, before,' I pause and gesture at my face, 'Fungus ate my face, I went on an expedition into the cellars, and found graffiti where Catholic priests hid during the reformation, and possibly druids from the Romans.' 'It was a sunny afternoon, the time I'm telling you about, and he was already drinking when I arrived. I got my round in and carried two pints over to the table in the corner, and he was still recounting some alleged adventure of his. It ran something like this.'
' "Things were bad. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on, I didn't know why I was there, and I'm certainly not going to explain what I was doing beforehand to you, 'coz you're a petty minded bigot." I took exception to this slander of my character, and told him so, not that it did any good'
' "Now let me get on with the story," he said "There I was, an Arkham/ Miskatonic educated necromancer, 200 years behind the shovel, boy, man and hideously re-animated corpse, and, for want of any understanding of what was going on, I was hanging around in some abandoned mines with a bunch of naive yet knowing women and some near-deranged henpecked guys of various species." '
' "According to Gandalf, who was the most together of the guys, the mines were, and probably still are, inhabited by a race of stunted troglodytes. They must have struck uranium and decided that the glow was pretty; poor dumb sods. Still it could be worse; I heard about one place where, as a natural land formation, there's a circular valley 20 miles across surrounded by mountains, oh and the local sheep have 3 legs, and fangs." '
'I nodded knowingly, natural nukes are incredibly rare but the world is quite old, and statistical abnormalities do tend to pile up'
' "I digress; you might have noticed, it comes of talking to yourself, and frankly, apart from you blind, noseless guys, who else am I going to converse with?" I didn't really mind the dig; most people are sufficiently creeped out by a guy with no face that they don't say anything, and hell, he had problems too. "You think the dead guy in Frankenstein had it bad? Well yeah, but at least he didn't last long enough to get corpse-worms. Feh" '
' "So there we were, crawling around like blind moles in a place that is a lot more convivial than the Plateau of Lang, when we found the city. It's bloody big; you could handbrake-turn a Challenger Tank round some of those streets. The guys start poking around the tombs. Well I'm not one to object, so I follow them in. It's a bit odd: the dwarves (not dwarfs) keep city records in the tombs. Must remember that next time I need to doctor my tax records." '
' "The city fathers knew about Kth'yRak! lurking outside the front gates, but don't seem to have got to know him at all well; which is hardly neighbourly, in my opinion. Then they died. Then just when the story was getting interesting (Althea was reading it in that velvety middle soprano of hers), Rosie reached over and grabbed Pippin. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but I think he was about to knock a rusting suit of tin down a well." '
'It was always a habit of his to introduce new characters to his story as they did something interesting. He claimed it saved time spent making descriptions of people you didn't need to know about. I think he just made them up on the spot'
' "It was hardly unlikely that Pippin would fuck up, he's inept like that." '
' " 'No harm done' she sez, with a fluttering little laugh. The armour was chained to lots of scrap iron. Why? I looked down that well, it would be too dark for most people to see it, but my eyes went the way of all flesh years ago, so I don't use light anymore. I...saw, for want of a better word, a couple of ledges, and just round the corner, a couple more perfectly tuned sounding boards, some heavy machinery, a few of deadfalls and some huge caverns filled with intelligent life. How very... fortunate that the little hobbit lass stopped Pippin just in time. It could have been a disaster. She knew, I swear it, although she couldn't have unless she'd either been here before and set it up, or... what? how else could she possibly have known? So I waited 'til no one was looking, then kicked her repeatedly in the back of the head until she fell down it herself." I may have looked slightly accusing at this point, although how I don't know, for he continued with a defensive note in his voice, "Hay! The smug little bitch deserved it. As predicted, this resulted in enough banging and crashing to awaken Cthulhu, so I yelled down after her 'You are lame! I mock your stupid well-diving exploits.' " He paused and we both drank. '
' "Soon we had lots of little green scaly buggers who wanted to play with us. I'd never seen goblins before, or cave-trolls, and I wasn't impressed; poor effort, whoever bred them. They are small, weak, and generally quite pitiful, although I did like the ceiling-crawling and the 'mass suicidal rush', so I may have to get a small horde one day, and see what can be done to improve them." '
' "After a couple of minutes they all died, although not before they got a couple of blows in, either on Lisa Flowerbright, who can regenerate like you wouldn't believe, or a passing flesh wound, which was quickly treated by Eleanor, using 'some incredibly rare herbs I just happen to have on me'." '
' 'Convenient' I interposed, 'That the only person injured should be able to ignore it so utterly. "Yes, I thought it was, too, not that anything hit me. Then the others left. Well, I thought I could maybe find out a little of what was going on, so I stuck Ord's ring under some poor dead bastard's tongue and make him talk. The guys seem to be down on golden jewellery so I thought it best to wait 'til they'd left. The dead goblin I asked thought that there are thousands of them, although I suspect that what he meant was 'more than 20'- he wasn't wearing shoes." He laughed unpleasantly; I got the impression that Mary didn't respect Gobbos much, "and that their captains were mighty. He didn't know if the captain wanted an undead horde, or how well he'd pay, so I left." '
' "I caught up with the lads in time to see Siggy attacking some big smoky thing." Siggy he had spoken of before, describing her as a "tall, proud human female warrior with buns of steel." I was always slightly suspect about his descriptions of ladies he'd met; they had a tendency towards perfection that went beyond the believable.'
' "Presumably this was the little bastard's boss," he continued. "Althea had knocked Gandalf on the head and was dragging him away down a passageway. From the looks of things the creature of fire and darkness wanted BDSM, but instead of talking out scenarios, and deciding on a safety word, Siggy waded right in and hit it with an industrial revolution: 20 years of unrivalled technological improvement and prosperity right between the horns. Needless to say, it jeered at her, billowed smoke and cracked its whip. The industrial revolution gathered momentum, water mills spreading along major river systems, productivity rising by a staggering degree, but it was too late; 20 feet of fire lashed out again, ripped half Siggy's face out. The shock and pain must have killed her instantly, because she just sort of flopped to the ground, missed and fell into the yawning cavern below." He sounded like he would be sad, except he hadn't much liked her, and would have done the same thing himself. "That's when I elbowed my way through the horde behind him and booted it in the nuts. Silly bugger wasn't watching behind; he deserved it. So I began my spiel, you know, the whole 'are your minions shit? Are they small and weak? Do they let people sneak up behind you and knee you in the 'nads?' thing, although there wasn't really all that much I could do for him". I nodded wisely; many was the times that I'd heard some bragging, apparently over- muscled bruiser cut off short in the middle of some self-glorifying tale as a couple of squelching impacts attested that MarySue had kneed him in the balls and again in the face as he doubled up. The dead guy had problems, but the idea that he should fight fair wasn't one of them.'
' "Unfortunately, as it turned out, demons of might are fully capable of taking a booting to the groin, then turning round and sticking a pair of talons right up your nose, which is what this one did. Damn all genderless Maia anyway. I guess that it expected me to stop moving, for there was a noticeable pause after I tore through the 2 inch-long nails. This gave me time to scramble up the creature's bulk, get a finger-hold on a horn and dyno into a dive over its shoulder." I think I must have looked slightly blank, for he took this opportunity to explain that "Dyno" is simply a climber's term meaning a dynamic move.'
' "With a mighty leap and a flare of tattered bat wings it turned once again to confront my rapidly retreating back. Despite the time I'd won them, the Fellowship were still hesitating on the far side of the bridge, surrounded by a growing pile of missed goblin arrows. I didn't look back; I spent years studying with an order of saffron-clad monks on Leng's icy plateau, and I understand The From of Running. The From of Running is highly specific. It is this: if you need to Run, Run. That is what you do. That is what you are. Without pity, without remorse, you Run. Do Not Panic. Do not stop to rescue friends, relatives or loved ones. Run. If distance is your only protection, then Run. What happened to the others was not my concern, they'd seen it take a solid kick in the 'nads and not flinch. In my book that's close enough to invulnerable not to bother trying." '
' "I kept going. If they were dumb enough to face that thing that was their business, but it was clear that in a fight they didn't have a chance..." He paused dramatically, "Damn my conscience. They'd said something about a ring of power that Frodo was carrying for them, which corrupted all that held it. I turned round, sprinted back in time to see him and the rest of the pathetic hairy-footed freaks drawing oh so weenie swords and, heads tilted so far back as to be comical, cower heroically behind their women folk, and the other, larger members of the party. I lent down and picked up Frodo. 'Give me the ring you fat little slob then, maybe, we can survive'. He whimpered gently and curled up foetally. 'Hay guys, I think we've found a better ring-bearer. I mean look at the bastard' They looked, except for Gwendolyn and Gimli, neither of whom would ever be seeing anything ever again, at the demon. It was easily 30 foot of roughly humanoid fire and darkness. 'Do you honestly think that the ring is going to corrupt him?'