Chapter 6: The Seduction of Captain Duppy by the Warm Stew

Duppy was not happy.

He was not happy that he was patrolling in the cold.

Ever since he was singed by the Firelord, the cold seemed to reject him, to have become hostile. Trudging through the snow, he shivered and and wished again that he hadn’t lost so much fur.

He was not happy that he was part of the Firelord’s army.

He could not disobey the Firelord, it was a horrific whisper, a spark of flame in his heart. He had given into fear. He didn’t believe anyone was going to defeat the Firelord. He was resigned to life in Elcon without warmth.

He was not happy that he had to constantly snuff out fires.

It was adding to misery by his own hand really. Still, he had to do it. He couldn’t just escape from the army could he after all…

He was not happy that he was surrounded by gnargs.

Duppy was not himself a gnarg. He was an icy furred hunchbacked creature, possessing a long muzzle and pointed ears. His legs and arms ended in simple paws. An ioll.

His kind were attuned to the cold, having teeth and claws of ice. So normally they would not feel the cold at all, but since he was singed by the Firelord, he lost this affinity. Duppy wore blackened sooty looking armour and his weapon was a mace that was as large as his hump.

Iolls tend to be fairly solitary creatures, hunters and trackers in the cold. Some denizens however believe that iolls are ill-fated creatures. Not that iolls bring misfortune to others, but that iolls will always encounter misfortune at some point.

To those that are astute denizens, they don’t put much stock in this, after all, who doesn’t encounter bad things.

Amid the swirling snow, Duppy sniffed the air. His eyes roved over the seemingly featureless snow.

“There’s a shelter over that direction” Duppy said.

The gnargs around him looked doubtfully at the unbroken snow.

“Really Captain?” One asked.

“I don’t see anything? I think I got snow-blindness”

“W-what, you alright dude?”

“Will we be ok? What if the rest of us got snow-blindness too?”

“If the Captain gets it too, then it’d be the blind leading the blind, what’ll we do!”

The gnargs began to panic at what they believed was impending blindness.

This was the problem with gnargs. Duppy managed to resist cupping his face in his hands and weeping. If nothing else, he didn’t want to get a faceplam sprain again. He stood as imposingly as he could and then barked his orders.

“THERE IS A SHELTER THERE YOU MISERABLE BLUE BOWLSHELLS, NOW ARE YOU SORRY LOT GOING TO CONTINUE WHINING LIKE GRAPEFOLK OR ARE YOU GOING TO INVESTIGATE THAT SHELTER SOLDIERS?”

He found that gnargs always responded better to shouting. The gnargs fell in line, though they continued their chatter as they did so.

“What a dude, our captain”

“You know, I didn’t think of it before, but we really do look a bit like bowls”

“Do we? I still can’t see anything”

“I forget, was it right left or left right?”

“Do grapefolk come as a single bunch or is each individual grape a person?”

“Woah, does that mean, are grapefolk like, mini hydras?”

“Pretty sure if you cut one of them off, they don’t grow more”

“Well, none of us have seen grapefolk before have we?”

“Did the Captain?”

“Hey, Captain~ Captain~”

“HALT” Duppy shouted.

Duppy was eager to get to the shelter, if there were people like he thought there was, then there might be a fire, and sure he had to snuff it out, but he always warmed himself before the fire before doing so.

It was the only time these days that he felt warm

The gnargs eyed the snow before them. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“Hey, hey Captain, is there really something here?”

“Nevermind that, Hey Captain, are grapefolk like hydras, do they look at you with many eyes?”

Ignoring the troops, Duppy padded this way and that, searching around for something.

One of the gnargs went stock still.

“Hey, do any of you guys smell that?”

“Look, if you do that, don’t draw attention to it”

“No, he’s not talking about that, I smell it too!”

“I can’t see anything.”

“It smells like food”

“Really good food”

A series of gurgling rumbles rang out from the gnarg’s stomachs. Duppy shook his head and finally found what he was looking for.

He pointed at a snow dune.

“One of you, run into that dune!”

The gnargs on hearing this formed a huddle. There was raised voices and arguments, the huddle writhed and twisted, until finally like a cat throwing up a hairball, one gnarg was ejected from the group. This gnarg dejectedly turned to the snow-dune and looked hard at it.

“Get on with it” Duppy commanded.

The gnarg gave a heavy sigh and hoped that whatever happened wouldn’t be too ghastly. He broke into a run and tumbled into the dune.

“AHHHHHH IT’S SOME KIND OF CONSTRICTING BEAST, HELP HELP HEEEEEEEELP!” he cried.

However, everyone could see that what happened was a heavy cloth that had been put over the mouth of a crevice had been ripped off by the gnarg, and was currently wrapped around him. Beyond his writhing body was a bunch of tense adventurers. A freakishly muscled carrot. Some leathery thing with one eyes, A misshapen gingerbreadman with scary gauntlets, a horse and a bat.

What drew the gaze of Duppy and his gnargs however, was not the adventurers but the bubbling pot near the adventurers.

They collectively swallowed, and the adventurers got a hard and nervous look in their eyes.

“BY ORDER OF THE FIRELORD, ALL FIRES MUST… huh, wait, there isn’t a fire? How are they cooking?”

“I bet they hid it Captain!”

“The fiends and their tasty tasty food. For such tricks, we should eat their food!”

“Yeah”

“Hear, Hear!”

“We used boilstones” Eadam called out sullenly.

“A likely story” One gnarg said.

“I’M BEING EATEN ALIVE” the gnarg wrapped in cloth shouted.

“Really? It is? I thought that was just an excuse we get a lot?”

“Wait, do you mean all those other times, we harassed innocent denizens?”

Duppy’s gaze had not moved from the pot.

The stew.

It looked…

Warm.

He licked his jowls.

“Well, I’m sure you lot are honest Firelord fearing denizens. I’m sure you haven’t lit any fires, and you are so supportive of the Firelord’s reign that you’ll donate your stew to the cause” Duppy said slowly.

The adventurers got ugly looks on their faces.

“Stew thieves” Spongy Snaps muttered, getting a crazed look in his eyes, looking ready to leap out and tear the gnargs and their captain to pieces.

“Hiiii” One of the gnargs cried out in fear.

The others took several steps back.

Ulex however held Spongy back, thoughts were running through his head. They could possibly flee the gnargs, they might even be able to defeat them. The issue was the risk. That and they needed to rest. It wasn’t the best situation for a fight.

That and there was a lot of gnargs. Seriously a ton. He had an idea to end things peaceably. He was pretty glad to not have run into one of the seriously wicked captains.

“Look friend, captain, what’s your name?”

Still eyeing the pot, Duppy spoke.

“I’m Captain Duppy” He said.

“I’m Ulex McHeft, a powerful buff mage. Captain Duppy, there isn’t enough in this pot for everyone, but we hunted a few rhagulars earlier. Tell you what, if you have the rest of the ingredients, we’ll whip up some stew for your troops. You can join us on having some from the first pot”

This gave Captain Duppy pause. Everyone had been on dry vegetable rations for a few days, even back in the village. Duppy missed the jam. There used to be jam supplied to the troops. Though he had always felt strangely guilty after eating it, the jam had been very nice.

The stew looked warm.

The carrot, Ulex was massive. They had a sinister bad and that one eyed thing looked fairly dodgy too. There was also the gingerbread man. It was the most dangerous looking one he had ever seen.

Duppy shivered. Did he really want to fight? He’d get some stew even if he didn’t fight.

The gnarg that was wrapped in cloth finally managed to disentangle itself.

“Ha! Don’t worry guys, it was just a sheet! Only mildly deadly!”

Duppy wasn’t thinking about sheets, deadly or otherwise.

He stared at the pot.

He had to make a choice before the gnargs got fidgety.