2001-05-04: Dudagog's Tale
A sore eye encrusted with blood, received as a “blessing” for questioning the elder shaman during the previous night’s war council, was a minor irritant in a long line of irritants that Dudagog had learned to accept. Although it had been only twenty cycles of the day fire since the shaman council had rolled the bones and driven the tribe to move, Dudagog could barely remember the logs and bone piles he called home. He could remember the rich hunting ground though. Always fresh deer and hummies to munch on, and the strength of a combined tribe of hundreds had made life as good as it gets for an old, fat orc. In his younger days Dudagog would have perhaps enjoyed this nomadic lifestyle, but age had given Dudagog a wisdom that only comes through corpulence; hunting is good, but sitting down for a meal is better. Thus when Dudagog had questioned the shaman about the wisdom of his training the young orcins to hunt with the new long way killer, the shaman elder chastised him with a swift staff to his eye. Dudagog was not stupid enough to retaliate in kind, as the shamans had been known to cause the air around an orc to burn as hot as the home of a lava lizzie.
This morning Dudagog was up earlier than he would have wished for. The day fire was barely awake and it irritated Dudagog that he should share anything in common with that wretched ball of torment. The shamans demanded that training start early and end late so the clans would be prepared. What was it that they should be prepared for? This unseen danger to the clans could certainly be no worse than roaming about the land in search of prospects for new orcish conquest. What did orcs need of more places? What orcs needed, they took. The Disway Datway clan of ettins had been good partners for the orcs, and now they were far away from their large allies. Dudagog might not be a shaman, but leaving that alliance was a bad idea to his way of thinking. Of course, his way of thinking was usually, “Hungry, want eat.” “You in my way.” “Tired, want sleep.” “You still here? You still in way.” And so on.
Sharpening his axe was something Dudagog only did when he was nervous. His whetstone, fresh when he left home, was now barely a nub. The time of training would not be for a while yet, and Dudagog discovered that his axe sharpening had made him thirsty. Of course, it had made him hungry too, but even eating made him hungry, and it was a state he had grown accustomed to. Since being thirsty was something he could correct, Dudagog decided to travel to a nearby stream and have a drink. Beer would have been better. Even stale beer would have been better, but Dudagog was not permitted to drink before training. The decision made, his brain finally motivated his legs to carry him to the stream.
Dudagog was startled to find what must have been one of his pupils already in the stream. This gave Dudagog pause. He seemed to recall orcs disliking water for drinking, and disliking it far more for bathing. No orc could stand water long enough to even fathom the concept of swimming, not that fathoming concepts was a particularly strong orcish skill either. Dudagog, in what was to be one of the quickest decisions in his life not involving food or food-like substances, decided the skinny fool had fallen in the stream. In an effort to be helpful, to himself of course, Dudagog felt that ordering the fool out of the stream was the quickest way of removing the distraction to an otherwise bleak morning.
Dudagog was somewhat shocked when the wretch did not acknowledge his orders. If orcs liked anything less than bathing, it was being shocked. Clearly this was turning out to be a bad morning, and Dudagog had just about had enough irritants to last a lifetime. Or so he thought. Dudagog had three more episodes of being shocked before his life came to an abrupt end. Throwing the whetstone at the fool in the water seemed like a good idea. It was when the skinny orc caught the whetstone that shocked Dudagog for the second to the last time. That shock was immediately followed by the rather gruesome sight of the orc reaching into the fold of skin under its neck and ripping the skin off its face while its body was surrounded by a green light. What was not surprising in any way was the immediate turn of Dudagog on his heels to presumably warn the clan, but in reality to simply run away from this magical orc. The final surprise of Dudagog’s life came just as his right leg had gained some forward progress. His whetstone halted his progress as it came hurling back at him and caved in the back of his head. The cut across his throat was not the way he had hoped his thirst would be quenched, but he did not have to worry about the problem for long, as the morning ended for him far sooner than for any other beast in the land.
