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The Skeleton Admiral of Considerable Quality
By Richard Paul / Peculiar Richard
The Admiral was a skeleton with a most disconcerting grin. It was the kind of grin which could level walls and cause the most grievous distress in kitchen utensils. The spoons, even now, are traumatised to a one, even the wooden fellow with the bad shins.
I’m terrible at introductions, but suffice to say we’d all agreed to follow our bony master into the bowels of a horrible location to retrieve the copious treasure of his mentor and late wife, the Lady Clavicus Al Ghoril. The crew was six strong and we all squeezed into the dread battle-barge HMS Incorruptible; which to be honest was a motorised bathtub with wheels and a mast fashioned from lies.
There was no mast.
For six days we traversed the swamps and riverbanks in the realms of the ere bickering mud princes, searching for the Obelisk of Gymnosperm, which according to legend would point the way to the resting place of the treasure. It was in this land that we lost our quartermaster, a Mr. Jonas Kerr. In a rather tragic development he was seized in the elastic mandibles of a catapult crab and hurled high into the air, landing with a shriek and a splat upon a nearby rock.
What a beastly development, and as you are no doubt aware, without a quartermaster we could scarcely be guaranteed a fair and equal distribution of the treasure once we had found it, however we figured this would just have to a bridge we crossed when we came to it.
About a week later we found the treasure in a cathedral. Forgive me if it sounds like I’m skipping great chunks of the story but to be honest nothing happened between the doctor’s death and finding the treasure. There was one incident involving a dragon but all he wanted was directions to Paris and an opticians therein, that’s it.
Because such things are of course never easy, it was no sooner after we had retrieved the sixty-two boxes of jewels, moneys and miscellaneous gold-bits, that a force of twenty two ruffians led by the infamous Duke Ruffian from the house of Ruffian in the disreputable country of Ruffianland came upon us; armed all with table legs and clad in armour fashioned from bricks. They were like unto a force of chimneys arrayed against our cadaverous master and ourselves.
The Admiral bid us move the boxes back to the ship, boldly announcing to all assembled that he would hold off these interrupting ne’redowells alone. Stepping forward and grinning his ghastly grin, he drew his sword named ‘foe-tweaker’ from its scabbard, laughed an insane laugh and stood ready to meet the first of his opponents.
A youth with no nose and a face that otherwise should have been handsome but wasn’t stepped ahead of his fellows and fellowesses. Charging as fast as his brick-bedevilled carapace would allow, he promptly fell lifeless to the ground, having been tweaked in the throat by the Admiral’s sword.
The rest charged on mass, only to trip and fall over, crushing their own Duke into an unspeakable mess of Duke-ooze. As they lay twitching and disoriented on the floor, the Admiral skipped whistling around them all, tweaking all who might potentially arise under their own power.
That done, we all went home and became unspeakably rich.
I now own a scarf made entirely from pewter.
Whoo!
- - -
When not scurrying about in the dust at his workplace, or procrastinating in some form or other, Richard partakes in writing, game reviewing and more recently producing dramatic readings of short stories.
By Richard Paul / Peculiar Richard
The Admiral was a skeleton with a most disconcerting grin. It was the kind of grin which could level walls and cause the most grievous distress in kitchen utensils. The spoons, even now, are traumatised to a one, even the wooden fellow with the bad shins.
I’m terrible at introductions, but suffice to say we’d all agreed to follow our bony master into the bowels of a horrible location to retrieve the copious treasure of his mentor and late wife, the Lady Clavicus Al Ghoril. The crew was six strong and we all squeezed into the dread battle-barge HMS Incorruptible; which to be honest was a motorised bathtub with wheels and a mast fashioned from lies.
There was no mast.
For six days we traversed the swamps and riverbanks in the realms of the ere bickering mud princes, searching for the Obelisk of Gymnosperm, which according to legend would point the way to the resting place of the treasure. It was in this land that we lost our quartermaster, a Mr. Jonas Kerr. In a rather tragic development he was seized in the elastic mandibles of a catapult crab and hurled high into the air, landing with a shriek and a splat upon a nearby rock.
What a beastly development, and as you are no doubt aware, without a quartermaster we could scarcely be guaranteed a fair and equal distribution of the treasure once we had found it, however we figured this would just have to a bridge we crossed when we came to it.
About a week later we found the treasure in a cathedral. Forgive me if it sounds like I’m skipping great chunks of the story but to be honest nothing happened between the doctor’s death and finding the treasure. There was one incident involving a dragon but all he wanted was directions to Paris and an opticians therein, that’s it.
Because such things are of course never easy, it was no sooner after we had retrieved the sixty-two boxes of jewels, moneys and miscellaneous gold-bits, that a force of twenty two ruffians led by the infamous Duke Ruffian from the house of Ruffian in the disreputable country of Ruffianland came upon us; armed all with table legs and clad in armour fashioned from bricks. They were like unto a force of chimneys arrayed against our cadaverous master and ourselves.
The Admiral bid us move the boxes back to the ship, boldly announcing to all assembled that he would hold off these interrupting ne’redowells alone. Stepping forward and grinning his ghastly grin, he drew his sword named ‘foe-tweaker’ from its scabbard, laughed an insane laugh and stood ready to meet the first of his opponents.
A youth with no nose and a face that otherwise should have been handsome but wasn’t stepped ahead of his fellows and fellowesses. Charging as fast as his brick-bedevilled carapace would allow, he promptly fell lifeless to the ground, having been tweaked in the throat by the Admiral’s sword.
The rest charged on mass, only to trip and fall over, crushing their own Duke into an unspeakable mess of Duke-ooze. As they lay twitching and disoriented on the floor, the Admiral skipped whistling around them all, tweaking all who might potentially arise under their own power.
That done, we all went home and became unspeakably rich.
I now own a scarf made entirely from pewter.
Whoo!
- - -
When not scurrying about in the dust at his workplace, or procrastinating in some form or other, Richard partakes in writing, game reviewing and more recently producing dramatic readings of short stories.
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