Lok'tar muttered to himself as he walked through the streets of Teranok, trying hopelessly to remember everything that he was supposed to do for this job. He abruptly stopped, snuck a peek at the paper that he was given and the crudely drawn figure on it, muttered his mantra again and continued on his way. About five minutes later, he repeated the process until he finally reached the outskirts of town. A while later, he reached the gates of a wall and behind it, a large building that reeked of smoke and metal.


An unusual thing happened when he made his usual proclamation as the land's greatest hero at the local pub – another hero of renown walked up to him and offered him a chance to join with him on a quest for glory. Lok'tar was completely thrilled at the prospect and immediately accepted. The man, whose name had been scrawled on the paper told the orc that he needed to go to this place and get some supplies for their journey. He was supposed to talk to the...some kind of man with the number four and ask for a bag of the stuff that he needed. All he had to do was use his name and there would be no problems at all.

He looked back at the paper and muttered once more...confident in the name, he pushed open the metal gates and with a great, protesting squeal, yielded to his push.

He was now in front of the great Cutlery Works of Teranok.

The origin of the Cutlery Works has always been shrouded in a bit of mystery. Some speculate that it was originally a woodworking shop set up by a few local foresters that wanted somewhere more permanent to process their materials and sell their wares. Unfortunately, due to the fact that this town was close to a desert, the legend was just that – merely a legend. Although many believe that there was forests here before some cataclysm caused the rapid desertification of the area ages ago. However, the proprietors of the Cutlery Works loved the tale, causing them to use an oak tree as the manufacturing mark that was imprinted on each piece that left the foundry.

The more modern history of the Cutlery Works began as a place for those who had extra slag and metal to dump off their waste that couldn't be used for any other purposes. Being on the outside of town, the barely functioning woodworking shop became a place for local blacksmiths to dump their reject metal. Being a tournament town, there was a lot of the stuff and it began to pile up. Eventually, the shop just filled up with metal and they were running out of space. One of the owners of the shop hired a local blacksmith to start melting down the metal and turning it into useful household items, due to the fact that it wouldn't be strong enough to use for arms and armor.

The rest, as they say, is history...

Lok'tar looked up at the structure in front of him. It was a bizarrely shaped sprawling structure made of stone and brick that would be about two stories high. There were smokestacks and chimneys bellowing different shades, colors and quantities of fumes and exhaust sticking out of the roof and walls at strange angles and orientations. The walls were covered with the mix of mud, sand and terracotta indicative of the architecture of the area. There were a few other outbuildings dotting the fenced in area, each with some purpose related to the main one that was totally lost on our hero. It definitely left a footprint on the land, as litter, debris and metal bits were strewn everywhere, especially close to the buildings themselves.

The orc managed to get to the door of the main building before having to check his piece of paper again. When suddenly the double doors flew outward – the sheer surprise of it all knocking the orc on his butt. A rider on horseback with a large, jingling bag bearing the tree-shaped icon went thundering out of the doors, took a sharp right turn and went out behind the main factory, likely to another gate to set off on a delivery. A short man robed in clothes that looked functional, yet somehow more impressive than a common factory worker should have, looked down at Lok'tar and said, “Orc! Get back to work! I don't pay you to sit around in the front of the factor all day! Go man the vats!”

To which Lok'tar responded “I'm not working for you!”

“Like hell you're not! Guards!”

“I'm here to get supplies for a very famous man. His name is on this paper!”

Knowing that orcs were not the smartest bunch, seeing an orc with a piece of paper to state his business was not horribly surprising. It would likely be a large order because orcs came when bulk was needed more than brains. There would be no money today; it would all be on account. Cursing under his breath at that prospect, the man ushered him in, chuckling a bit to himself.

“Don't worry son, there's no guards today – stupid tournament has got 'em all three sheets to the wind. Good riddance I say anyways. Couldn't have paid them today as it is.”

They walked into the main building and walked over to a desk about ten meters away from the door. The man opened a large ledger and said, “Who are you here for?”

Lok'tar looked at his well worn sheet of paper again, muttered to himself and with a very even, practiced voice, stated calmly, “I'm here for Mr. Stick.” He facepalmed. He had screwed it up. He wasn't supposed to call the hero “Mister”. People would only know him by his full name.

“Excuse me?”

“I'm here for A. Stick.” Lok'tar winced again. That wasn't it either. Something was a bit off. The man was totally confused.

“A stick? You must need the woodworking shop – we don't do that anymore...”

“No,” Lok'tar insisted, his voice getting louder with the frustration he felt, “I have Mr. Stickup's paper.” With that, the man behind the ledger started to get a little bit worried and it showed on his face.

“Let me see the paper, son.” He slowly, gingerly stuck out his hand.

“I'VE GOT IT!” And the orc was visibly impressed with himself. He unfurled the paper, showing a crudely drawn stick man in charcoal. He joyously waved the paper in the man's face “THIS IS A. STICKUP AND I NEED ALL OF HIS STUFF!”

The clanging, hissing and miscellaneous working noises that permeated places like this suddenly stopped for a brief moment. There was the sound of air escaping a few bellows near the back, but the clanging of the metal workers, the hammers and anvils and grinding of metals and gems all stopped for a brief moment in time.

The man at the desk looked on in shock – he was being held up by a half-wit orc with a club and a piece of paper!

The moment in time having passed, a scream rang out from one of the female workers who threw up her arms and bolted for the nearest exit in the side of the building. Most of the others followed suit. A few of the blacksmiths threw metal into cooling troughs before they left so that the work wouldn't be lost by being melted into slag in the fire.

In about ten seconds, the workstations, anvils and benches of the Cutlery Works were all completely empty.

The only person left was the man at the desk, who was backing away slowly. “Take whatever you need for Mr. Stickup.” And he bolted for the door.

“THAT'S A. STICKUP! TREAT HIM WITH SOME RESPECT!”

Lok'tar looked at the giant room. Forks, knives and spoons of every grade, quality, shape and size sat littered all over the place. Most of them were normal size, but there was a giant fork and spoon each about the size of his arm at the other end of the factory. He had to go check those out!

Boreas stood straight as he could with his arms rigidly stuck out, making perfect right angles that would fit smugly up against a crucifix. He was even getting small metal objects pushed into him, though these where much smaller than the large rusty nails usually used in a crucifixion. They were the pins of a tailor, and Boreas was regretting walking through the jingling doors and paying good gold to stand up for over an hour and get pinned and stabbed by an smiling elderly lady. And there was no saying no to this elderly lady once she got going. If you tried, she would either pretend not to hear you and say “Speak up, dearie” or, if she did acknowledge that you spoke, she would give you a deep frown that cause the young duellist to cringe mentally and say accusingly “You do want this done, right?”.

When she finally said “You can drop your arms now dearie, we are all finished.” Boreas let out a sigh of relief and jumped off the little podium. This, of course, was a huge mistake, because the elderly lady had carelessly left one pin still stuck in the stomach area of the outfit and the motion of the jump caused it to stab with extreme prejudice into his soft flesh. A curse, quickly muffled against the possibility that the elderly lady might overhear it and frown some more, escaped from his lips as his hand passed over his stomach. The pins, as there was more than one still left in, leapt joyfully into Boreas’ hand in response to his annoyed summon.

Muttering under his breath, Boreas marched over to the counter and pulled out his coin purse. He winced and started to complain when the elderly lady told him the price in her sweet, innocent voice, however the frown that swiftly developed on her wrinkled face caused him pay up quickly enough. Before he knew it Boreas was out of that pink frilly hell hole and walking down the street the proud yet annoyed owner of a new outfit.

It might not look fancy, however the plain, long sleeve white shirt and full length brown towers were made to be extreme durable, in clothes sense. They were nothing like his new swishing dark green traveller’s cloak or his simply black vest, both of which were more than they appeared, however the shirt and towers would at least not fall off his back like his old clothes had started to. He straightened his shoulders as he walked down the nameless town’s streets, and a small strut even started to develop until he realised that even after all that time, the shoulders of the shirt was still tight enough to be uncomfortable.

Boreas was so busy muttering to himself about the prime evils of this world using sweet elderly ladies to play havoc with his life that he didn’t even notice the screaming people as they ran right past him. It took one of them actually running into Boreas before he noticed something was out of place.

”What’s the matter with you?” Boreas snapped at the terrified townsfolk as he helped the poor fellow to his feet.

“Haven’t you heard? There’s a whole hoard of bandits raiding the local cutlery works! We have to flee for our lives before they move onto the rest of the town!” The man’s panic quickly overcame the disorientation of being knocked on his rear and he ducked around the duellist, fleeing once more. Boreas watched him go with a confused expression on his face, before turning around and heading in the opposite direction.

“Cutlery works…” Boreas muttered to himself, realising that he had no clue what the unfamiliar word meant. In fact, the simple duellist didn’t have any clue what town this was, but he did know of the trouble that bandits could cause. “Sounds important, perhaps I should check it out.” He said to no one in particular, causing a passing tabby cat to look at him weirdly. Boreas ignored the cat and started moving in a gentle trot, dodging past the few late fleers that where screaming there head off about giants and ogres and other such imagined horrors. Boreas paid these people no heed as he prepared himself to face a band of poorly armed yet desperate man, as experience had taught him that bandits usually meant just this.

He reached the boundaries of the town without seeing any signs of pillaging or flaming wreckages that usually were present when bandits were around. He did, however, hear the loud noises of an overly large clumsy person coming from the odd collection of buildings to his left. Deciding that this could indeed be the unseen bandits, Boreas trotted over to the largest building and looked through suspiciously wide open double doors. He slowly drew his rapier as he walked through the massive portal, and it wasn’t long till he spotted the source of the noise.

A great buffoon of an Orc was charging down the length of the hall to some objective that Boreas couldn’t quite make out. Worrying that this objective might just be a person or something else rather breakable and considering that most things where breakable when an Orc was charging about like that), Boreas started after the figure and drew in a great breath.

“OI! YOU! YOU BANDIT!” Boreas bellowed, quickly using up that great lung full of air he had just gathered. “STAND AND FIGHT, YOU BRAINLESS MUT!” Hoping that his challenged might stop the big green Orc from charging down whatever it was that he was charging, Boreas bolted after him with his rapier held low.

Lok'tar was very curiously and very quickly running down the length of the workshop where all manner of utensils and cutlery were forged and formed into rather function works of...well...eating tools. Considering the hasty retreat that these people had beat when the orc had unintentionally held up the place, it was in rather good order. There was a minimum of items on the floor, the majority of the tools were still in their storage positions and things tended to be smoldering nicely in an almost orderly fashion. All of this meant that the orc's path was rather unimpeded. That was a good thing, considering the fact that not much would get in the way of what was going on.

He had to see those shiny...things. Things what you eat with. Things what you eat with that were as big as your arms!

After running about three-quarters of the way towards his goal, he heard a voice yelling at him from the doorway where this fiasco had started. Well, it was a fiasco to everyone else. Lok'tar just needed to pick something up. He wasn't really sure what that was, but he knew that he had to go back and see Mr. Stickup with something. He couldn't just go back to the tavern to meet him empty handed. Who knows what they needed for their trip? When they were going to find treasure and achieve glory, it would be a beautiful thing! He would have yet another reason for everyone to believe that he was the world's greatest warrior. Now if only he could figure out what he was supposed to get here. There was something about a bag.

What was that voice about?

The voice said something about bandits - which stopped him in his tracks. Were there bandits about? Would he get a chance to prove himself as a great warrior here? Now? Right now? He quickly grabbed the club that he carried on his pants and looked around with joy - there was going to be a fight! After quickly scanning the area and seeing no one but some over-dressed humie (bandits don't look like that), he got disappointed, put the club back on his pants, gave a shrug and started walking back towards the over sized fork and spoon combination.

As he got closer, he could see that these two were leaning up against some sort of rack. They sat there, shining, waiting for him to pick them up and take the back to the man with whom he would go on great adventures with. He picked up the fork, which was about as long as his arm and noticed that this one was really heavy. It was made out of two, maybe even four big rocks worth of metal! The man would be happy and they would be able to take this fork on adventures with them. It would be good for cooking deer over the fire during supper time at night or the whacky part on the back could be used to hit pointy-ears over the head. This thing was such a useful thing, Lok'tar decided.

He looked down at the spoon, with the fork still in his left hand. There was something strange about the spoon, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was - so he just stood there and puzzled it out.

Boreas’ voice echoed in the huge hall, and the great lump of an Orc skidded to a stop as he heard it. Well, eventually he stopped, but it took a few seconds for the new sound to be noticed before the brain kidded the legs into gear. Those large green eyes swept the room eagerly, the ugly green face alight with joy as he searched for the source of the challenge. Boreas’ began to mentally prepare himself for what was sure to be a fierce struggle; a struggle that was sure to begin the moment those eyes came to rest on his own form.

The orc’s eyes briefly flickered onto Boreas before dismissing him without thought. Boreas stumbled as he saw the eager joy on the orc’s face be replaced with disappointment, and he realised with chagrin that he had been overlooked! The great oaf didn’t think that he was worth even a flicker of interest, and this struck straight at Boreas’ self-esteem. Here he was, a veteran of 2 whole years of the worse that DI could throw at him, and some green newcomer just dismissed him without a moment’s notice. ‘And what is he doing now?’ Boreas thought to himself as he slowly walked towards the orc who was standing motionless, starring at an enormous fork.

Irritation swelled up within Boreas, and he reached out with his free hand to scope up a normal sized fork off a nearby bench. He flicked it once in the air, grabbed it by the tip of the handle and raised his arm over his shoulder before shouting, “OI! YOU GREAT OAF! I WAS TALKING TO YOU!” His arm dropped as he yelled that last word, sending the fork tumbling through the air towards the orc’s head. His skill with a throwing knife was almost legendary in DI, however he had never tried to throw a different kind of cutlery before and the odd distribution of weight was difficult to compensate for. Still, the orc was completely stationary, so the fork was likely to hit in the general region of his head.

Hopefully that would draw his attention; however there was still a considerable amount of distance between the two. The orc had big legs and could charge at greater speeds then the little duellist, so Boreas took a little longer to cross the hall and was starting to breathe a little heavily as he closed in on the orc.

“OI! YOU GREAT OAF! I WAS TALKING TO YOU!”

The little man was talking again.

Lok'tar wasn't sure exactly who he was talking to. As far as he knew, there were no "oafs" around these parts, but he decided that a "great oaf" might be something that he should watch out for. Never could have too many chances to go for glory. He would go on a great adventure with the fork that he had and with Mr. Stickup, they would hunt down many great oafs and then bring them back to the cheering of the people! There would be joy and glory and food and more pointy, shiny and tasty objects than he could possibly imagine.

Yes, this...thing would be his path to glory!

But, then he felt something hit him in the back of the head. The word "YOU!" from the man that he had seen earlier (who obviously did not look like a bandit) was still ringing in the air and he felt the dull thunk as something hit him. Those twinned sounds made the orc turn around again, looking for the source of the yelling. The man was still standing there. He could only assume that the man had called him an oaf. He wasn't totally sure what that was, but he was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

"Who you callin' an oaf? What's that mean? You aren't calling this fork any names are ya? I'd be really mad if ya went around talkin' bad about...this..." He looked down at the fork, not totally sure what he was carrying in his hands. Instead of finishing his sentence, he held out his arms while securely gripping the large eating utensil.

He waited intently for the response. If the little man was making fun of his newly found treasure, then he would be really upset. If the man was mocking him, he would be upset. In other words, he was likely to be really upset, really soon.

Boreas stumbled once more as the orc finally replied to his insult in a very confusing way. “Calling the fork what????” Boreas repeated in a half mumble, not quite sure he had heard that question properly. “Wait a minute! You think I am calling that dumb piece of metal names? You’re more of an oaf then I first thought!”

Boreas finished his forward progress, finally placing himself within a close distance of his foe yet leaving enough room for him to manoeuvre if things get dangerous. His eyes narrowed as he warily watched the large fork that was no longer gently held by green fists that just happened to be the size of small boulders. Great muscles rippled and tensed all the way up the tree stump arm as the orc held the eating utensil is a way that could only be called offensive. The overly large fork combined with the orc’s towering physique suddenly appeared rather dangerous, and Boreas suddenly doubted his own wisdom in the act of openly provoking such a large foe.

He considered the wisdom shown by the other townsfolk in their flight from the area, however he was far too close to the great buffoon to be able to turn his back safely, especially with that fork held in a ready position. He realised that he was committed to fighting this green hulk, and he found the prospect of a test of his skills against such a challenge was slightly exhilarating. Still, Boreas considered that he should probably try to gain some advantage, like ridding the orc of that overly large fork. Perhaps guile will work.

“How dare you break into this factory this way? Have you no shame! I demand you put that fork down right away and leave, you criminal!” Not knowing how this orc would react, Boreas shifted his feet ever so slightly to place himself into a ready position. Boreas had never fought an orc before, so he was slightly unsure of what to expect. The size of the orc and his utensil would make parrying rather difficult, so it looked like he would have to dodge most of the attacks that might come his way. Still, his own agility should allow for him to run rings around the great oaf, and his new armour should allow him to take the occasional hits, if he was careful. All in all, the fight looked rather positive at this point in time.

Long speeches were never Lok'tar's thing. If there were more than three sentences involved in someone's part of the conversation, it had either be a really good story that involved skull cracking, a stick of meat or some glorious tale. Otherwise, it was just too much. The conversation that he was in was bringing the orc to his breaking point when it came to comprehension. The man in front of him was asking him a lot of questions, which his mental processes were sweeping aside in search of more pertinent information. The only thing that really stuck in the orc's mind was the last part of the man's accusation.

Criminal.

The orc was branded with that title on several occasions. He had never been too sure what it meant. He very rarely meant to do someone harm without intentionally doing it. Anything that he owned was either paid for with cold, hard gold (there was that one time) or rippling muscle (pretty much every other time). Mental images flashed across his mind's eye as he remembered crowds of people pushing him out of town as he covered his head with his arms to protect from the rocks being thrown by children. He remembered the shrieks of scared and confused people within those mobs as they yelled various insults at him, "criminal" being chief among them. Most of the time, he wanted to gain glory in the local tavern. But other times, his reputation got him in just as much trouble when he just asked for a loaf of bread or something to drink. He remembered the dust on the road as he would stumble and fall under the blows and shots of his oppressors. Being different was often a curse in this land - something he found out too well after briefly winning the leadership of his tribe before they all walked out on him.

I AM NOT A CRIMINAL! Does it look like I broke in here?

He threw the crumpled piece of paper down at the man's feet.

I work for him! You have one chance to apologize, or I'll make ya!

Due to the distinct lack of posting on the part of Chase for over a month, I'm going to have to call this battle closed.

Sorry, man.