[Argh]

The elven lord sipped on a bottle of Bertle's Best and burped. Staring around at the assembled group of adventurers, he noticed that at least one had been unfortunate enough to have sampled the Two-Headed Annoying Guy drink, which is a bit on the strong side for anybody who's not at least part Troll.

Mumbling a bit, he started to say something about "the Gem of. . . ah. . . let's see. . . it was. . ." until he was interrupted by a roaring curse from the Vampire across the hall, who'd apparantly drunk something unpleasant. The Vampire spat out a stream of what appeared to be burning blood while holding the Halfling responsible in one fist. When he'd calmed down, he stared at the Halfling in his odd Vampish way, and soon the Halfling started to turn slowly, like a zombie, toward the table where the adventurers sat.

With growing horror, the elven lord realized that this somehow meant he was now on the bad side of a Vampire, and he very quietly muttered, "I sure hope you people realized what you've done with that prank. . . we'd better go, don't you think?"

But it turned out that there wasn't any need, for the Vampire, after carefully recording each face with his cold dark eyes, turned into a veritable cloud of bats and flew out of the room.

The elven lord and all present blew big sighs of relief, drank up another brew, and listened to the sound of a rather garrolous dwarf arguing with Ilfred, of all creatures! At one point, the bearded little fellow was gesticulating and saying something about "-anna drink that bat pee! If you knew better, you'd suggest that me and me mates roll ourselves in pigswill and call ourselves supper! You know that they don't even fully hull their hops first, madam? Well, it's like this-"

For some strange reason, Ilfred didn't seem to appreciate this Last comment(ogres are incredibly intolerant of the word "madam" in any setting not requiring pain) and, with great restraint(for an ogre) simply picked the dwarf up, placed his garrolous and angry form upon an enormous platter used for drinking games, and slid him all the way into the back row of seats- in fact, not very far from our heroes. . .

[This message has been edited by Argh (edited 24 May 2001).]