Arriving in the middle of the night with a maimed bandit on a litter might not have been the best way to see the glorious town of Tink. The bandit had attempted to lead them into an ambush the day before, and as he said, the javelin through the leg he'd got in return for attempting to backstab Glothar was fair do's really and he was lucky to be alive thanking everyone kindly, and not abandoned in the wilds to be eaten by carnivorous dinosaurs such as they have in these parts.
Still his dozy mates made one last attempt to put an arrow in the party's backs from a copse on Bushwacker Street as they came into town. As the party arrived there was something of a local celebration going on, judging by the sound of bagpipes, cheering, laughter and blood curdling screaming from one of the rune carved menhirs surrounding the town.
The procession leading from it went past, dozens of brigands led by Philigos the Black himself, self appointed chieftain of the Bushwackers. Aldani attempted to enter Bushwacker's Hall, but was spotted and, of course, robbed. Still Philigos himself did point out the way to the Dragon Inn and refrained from stabbing anybody for the fun of it.
The Inn was a hive of activity. Thagda the Storm Shaman had had an interesting night the night before, quite nostalgic really, with plenty of local beer topped off with a big pipe of hazia courtesy of a fellow Praxian exile, a huge baboon called Garzeek. Of course it all got a bit fuzzy after that and he awoke in a ratty bed with a monster hangover. He stumbled around the room and found a bucket, and went to pee, but there was a problem... he fumbled around in his loincloth but he had somehow mislaid his penis... Not unsurprisingly he got kind of angry at that and began tearing the bed apart and throwing lumps of timber out of the window.
Below Garazar and Aldani stood by the door watching a frothing mad naked guy hurling buckets and bedsteads and foreign obscenities into the night, when the tree standing by the front door observed, 'I think someone doesn't like the beer.'
It was an elf, though barely recognizable as such, since he was covered in shelf fungus and had bandaged hands, and had dug his mouldy toes into the soil. He shook Garazar's hand 'Helloo, I'm Goonflower', he said, but Garazar had no time for pleasantries, since the rancid black pine pitch that had oozed from Goonflower's hand onto his was already sprouting thin wispy mushrooms that were driving hyphae into his skin. 'Oops. sorry,' said Goonflower as Garazar ran screaming into the inn looking for strong drink to douse his hand in.
Ingana the green haired landlady obliged with some her cheapest and most toxic lunar gin just as a stark naked berserk barbarian came charging down the stairs hollering 'Where is my fucking dick you bastards! I need to pee!'.
Ingana was unfazed. 'Here, this was left for you,' she proffered him a wooden cup of Lunar gin. As Thagda prepared to throw it at his tonsils the edge of the cup became a mouth and whispered at him in a husky female voice 'Go to a side room, we need to talk, privately'. Wide eyed he did what any sensible Praxian would do and sought the help of his riding beast, his faithful Rhino, out in the stables.
Passing the Trolkin stablehands who were rolling in the dirt having a fist fight, one of whom offered to lick his rhino clean for five silver, while the other ran off with the tasty lump of rhino dung that was the causus belli. Thagda found himself in deep conversation with two measures of gin. He would get his penis back, it informed him, if he killed Philigos the Black. Thagda was surprised to find that despite being detached his penis still had feeling as the cup of gin demonstrated the pain he would suffer and the pleasure he would be rewarded with, and if he took too long than his knob would end up being poked into a nest of fire ants. He downed the gin, finding the edge of the cup had become a pair of soft pouting lips... he panicked utterly at that and gibbering about chaos cowered behind his rhino, who munched hay and produced a couple of lumps more poo, to the delight of the hungry Trollkin.
In the meanwhile Aldani had taken to the stage trying to replace his lost silver by singing. This stage was adorned with a smooth pole for some reason, but Aldnai didn't worry about that and sang his loudest shamanic chant. Only one person applauded, a huge burly baboon with his mane teased into dreadlocks and plaits decorated with bits of coloured ribbon, and a huge pipe filled with pungent hazia. Sing us a Praxian song he demanded, demonstrating with hooting and beating the table madly, until Ingana told him to pack it in.
Garazar worked his way down the drink list at the bar, falling foul of the Premium Wintertop lager, until a duck sidled up to him. Garazar sensibly clutched this money bag , but the duck offered him something for 'the connoisseur' that could be bought in a back room. In the dark hidey hole were two human goons and a further duck dressed in black leather and with huge gold chains round their necks offered him a free go of Blacksap, a lovely resinous substance that could be chewed... Garazar thanked them and scarpered, the duck had had one hand under the table during the whole meeting and seemed very keen for Garazar to sit on the stool opposite...
The baboon, Garzeek, and his human friends were much nicer, and passed a big pipe of smoking herbs that made Garazar feel much more confident about this whole expedition, really quite happy, if rather cross eyed and confused and surrounded by things that may or may not have been spirits. Anyway he had a nice chat with the table whether it was listening to him or not.
Aldani had got on with the main business they party had in Tink - meeting Farong Farosh the famous EWF revenant and seing if he could help with their Dragon cursed gold problem. They had 100,000+ lunars of the bloody stuff hidden away in various places but since everyone they bought anything off with it ended up being toasted, they found they couldn't really spend it (though they had made a generous donation to the Black Oak gang in Runegate).
Farong was a strange guy, short, a but tubby and clad in a very funky dragon winged headpiece, slate-dark silver spectacles and bronze scaled robes. He was, Ingana warned, very dangerous despite appearances and though he talked utter rubbish and fairy tales for the most part it was unwise to anger him. Oddly enough he was quite keen to help, and called in Thagda, who was now wandering forlornly around the bar with no clothes and no penis, and Garazar who was getting along famously somewhere inside and ever expanding cloud of aromatic smoke.
Farong had a problem. He was kind of ashamed to admit it, but some bastard had stolen his penis! A mouth that had appeared out of the frame of a chair had asked him to kill Ulvarius, the Lunar cart repairman who had a shop in town, who dealt slaves on the side. Get him his appendage back, before it got dunked in a nest of fire ants, and he would help persuade the dragon, who he knew from the old days, to stop toasting people.
As the party mulled over various plans,Thagda returned to his room to fetch his clothes only to find that it had been turned over and his last nine lunars stolen. The tracks indicated that it was a small person who had recently stepped in rhino dung, but he was too pissed off to go beat the tar out of any trollkin tonight.
Back in the bar the place had filled up with bandits and layabouts of all descriptions, and someone was on stage. There hoots and cheers which quickly turned to howls and shouts, and people stole vegetables from the pile by the common soup cauldron to hurl at the stage. It seems the trollish barmaid's idea of entertainment (see illustration) had not been very popular. She went into a back room in floods of tears 'But I trained for years in the temple of Uleria' she bawled. Garzeek the baboon liked it though, not that he got into her dressing room.
From Runequest Companion
Meanwhile Aldani and Garazar were chatting up some ladies (well one was a eunuch) from the Barren, a gang of fanatic Maran Gor worshipers with sharpened teeth and a way with axes who claimed to be able to summon dinosaurs. As they chatted one of them beat a passing bandit to a bloody pulp, another offered to remove the rest of Thagda's masculine equipment and initiate him into the cult, and they all ended up taunting bandits with a serious case of beer goggles with the offer of a blow job, grinning with their highly sharpened teeth and occasionally screaming 'Hail the Bloody Earth' and draining huge drinking horns of Premium Lager. They could organise a stampede of Triceratops to marmalise Philigos and his crew maybe, but it would take a sacrifice or two, someone with nice colourful bowels to spill who would please Maran Gor. 'Bloody Earth!!' glug glug glug...
Aldani, skint, noted that the crowd did seem somewhat distracted and snaffled some spare change off the bar, only to find that some 12 year old kid was busy trying to get what he could out of Aldani's money pouch, the kid shrugged his shoulders, grinned and ran off into the sweating, smoking, giggling crowd.
As the party retired, leaving Green Ingana striding up and down the bar top waving a broadsword threateningly over a crowd of manically dancing loons with blacksap stained sputum dribbling from the corners of their mouths, Garazar observed 'I like this bar, its the best one we have been to in Dragon Pass yet.'
