Library: Adventures of Grum, the drunken bard

It was a rainy and stormy night, young bard called Grum thought that he should do something with his life. He had been drinking heavily and this was his first sober night for three months. As he was curing his dreadful hangover, just drinking soda, someone yelled in the bar: -"Grum! Great to see you! Haven't seen you for uhm, 2 years?!" -"Ooh! It's you my dear friend, I've really missed you. Where have you been all this time?" replied Grum to his one of the oldest friends who was a powerful healer. -"Here and there." was his, Rudil's, only answer. This short and odd answer woke Grum's interest, but he did not say a thing. As the night passed chatting and they had had few mugs (and not so few to be honest) of Shadowkepian beer, Rudil suddenly started to tell Grum about his absence. -"Listen Grum, I've heard tales of an old village, near the Bat city, and I ñ think I've discovered the whereabouts of that village. But as I am a mere healer, I didn't have the courage to proceed there." Rudil almost whispered to Grum. -"Wow, what is this place and what have you heard about it?" said Grum eagerly as he was starting to get excited about this secret village. -"Ssshh. I heard that the entrance to this village is hidden in an old tree, and I think I found it few days ago." Rudil suddenly look over his shoulders, got closer to Grum and continued: "I've heard there's lots of gold, but also that there lives sinister people, as small as a dwarf, or even smaller, but they are guarding their treasures with their life." -"Sounds bad, but if you are going to go there, I'll stand by your side!" Grum muttered. And so it was set, they were going to raid this village. Few hours later, and tens of beer mugs later they decided to take a short nap and continue in the dawn of the day. Rudil woke up when the sun was rising and it was almost a mid day. He poked Grum on the side to wake him up. Grum groaned and started to rub his eyes. -"Why did you wake me?" Grum asked from Rudil. -"Don't you remember what you promised last night?" was Rudil's only reply. -"No, uuhhm, wait. Oh no! I DID promise you to help you finding the gold!" said Grum and grinned in discomfort as the idea fully struck his mind. Grum still tried to protest a bit but Rudil was determined to go there, and Grum was a man who stood behind his words, they leaved after few beers and breakfast. They travelled to the city of Bats and Rudil started to walk southeast with Grum behind him, feeling a bit joyful from beer bottles he had bought. Eventually Rudil stopped and pointed at a small hole. The hole just at the base of the tree and was somewhat disguised with bushes in front of it. As Grum knew how to fight a bit, he was the first one to enter. He threw his legs inside the hole and pushed himself forward. He landed on a small green hill Rudil falling right next to him. -"I was right! Now let's go get the gold!" Rudil yelled in extacy. Grum got in front of Rudil and they started to proceed further in the village. They ran in the village slaughterin all. At some point Grum started to wonder what a heck, why are we killing all of these happy lads who are greeting them! But it was too late, Rudil had gone insane and attacked everything he could see. And soon all villagers were dead and still there was no sing of the gold treasure Rudil had spoken of. They continued to search around, killing poor little bunnies and a squirrel on their way. Suddenly they got to a different part of the village. Everything was trashed and the smell was awful. Again they encountered villagers, but this time they were aggressive towards them. This made Grum feel a bit better about killing these for the gold. As they roamed the village killing those nasty little buggers, the stopped at the front of a big house. -"This must be where the gold is" thought Grum without saying anything. They took few breaths and Rudil cast few healing spells on Grum. As they thought the were ready to face the perils of that rumshackle house they charged in! At first Grum was terrified as there were five opponents against them two. But soon he found out that they were inferior at handling their swords and he had no problems at all dodging and avoiding their hits. It seemed that they are going to win this battle until the leader of the villagers, somewhat more experienced guy, started to cast a spell. As he was finished with casting, the spell hit Rudil who was standing behind Grum, healing him as fast as he could. Rudil started to shrink immediately, as he was shrinking he also started to turn to green. When Grum noticed little croacking from behind him, he turned and grapped Rudil, who now was a frog, onto his palm and ran! After running like a madman in the village, being ambushed by a wolverine, and stumbling across more villagers, Grum found a hot air balloon, at the outskirts of the village. He threw Rudil in and jumped after him, he let the rope loose which held the balloon on the ground, and finally: safe. After they had escaped the certain death, Grum headed for his usual tavern with Rudil croaking still in his hands. There he talked to a few people who guided him to and old healer, who possessed many great spells. He found the healer, who after a while promised to return Rudil back to his old form, but of course he wanted a payment. The healer cast his spell upon Rudil and he started to grow and look more the like an ent he was. After Rudil was fully restored, was the time to pay back to the healer. As they did not find the gold in the village, they had to get money from the bank. They paid the healer thousands of gold coins for his services and headed off to the tavern. -"Sigh, no gold there, but I'm sure I'll find it someday." groaned Rudil, pissed of because he had to pay the healer. -"Nah, don't you worry about gold, we're lucky to still be alive! And besides it was an great adventure." replied Grum. -"Yeah, i guess." Again the night went on and our heros had had more than enough beer when suddenly Rudil got an maniac gleam in his eyes and started whispering: -"I've heard of this place where we could make ourselves rich. It's near the Keep of Shadows, just nortwest from there...."

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Library: Adventures of Grum, the drunken bard