Drudgefest '03!!

Hello, fellow Grunters! This last week I mailed $20 to each of my fans who took the time to e-mail me a compliment on my beautiful designer boxer shorts. Sorry if you missed out on my surprise prize but maybe next time!

I have a gripe to box your ears with this week. Kanten. What is up with this guy? I was strolling through Cavendo last week and he was wearing a path in the ground up to his ankles worrying over something.

"Hey, what's up?" I asked.

"I need your help total stranger!!"

"..."

"All is lost if I don't find a guitar soon and I've looked everywhere within a three meter radius of myself!!"

"A guitar?"

"Yes, the town elders want to put on an adaptation of 'The Sound of Osteth' and we need musicians!"

"Ah, well, how about these panpipes...?"

"No!! Panpipes are sissy instruments! I need a guitar!"

"You sure use a lot of exclamation points."

"Hurry! I only have two hours, man!"

"Well, I have a lute..."

"A guitar you fool! Lutes are for bedwetters!"

"..."

"And I see that Voices of the Ancients in your pocket. You ARE a bedwetter, aren't you?"

Now, if you'll look back a few months, you'll recall my clear and persuasive points calling for a nerfing of guitars. Look, even the NPCs won't accept anything else! But, it was a strange man who needed my help and being an adventurer, it was up to me and me alone to help him. That's the adventurer's code remember. If someone asks for a quest, no matter how trivial or stupid, you must do it.

No, you MUST.

So I set about looking for a guitar because I did not happen to have one with me. Sure, I could have traded for one or asked a friend or slapped Kanten around until he realized a lute would do but I went a-questing instead. Adventurer's code and all that.

I started by asking the drudges if they had a guitar, being the natural rockers that they are. It turns out, sadly, that drudges only use punchan instruments to do their rockin'. People on Dereth really get attached to their instruments, it seems. Nothing else will ever, ever do.

So I moved on from drudges and tried asking the mimbu and darkenfowl. Darkenfowl you ask? To that I say, shut your face! No, the mimbu didn't have any either.

Then it hit me. A real adventurer would find his prize at the bottom of a dungeon amidst a pile of treasures! So I set out for the Drudge Hideout. I wasn't convinced that there were absolutely no drudges with a totally bad ass axe I could steal.

So I battled my way into the depths of a dark creepy cave that had killer acoustics and track spotlighting all along the corridor. This has to be the drudge concert hall, I thought.

How wrong I was.

At the end was floating chest shaped like an acorn, faithfully guarded by the Elvis of drudges (he only had a lute) and his entourage of drudge groupies. I tried a dozen keys on that acorn and not a single instrument was inside. What a sucky adventurer I was. I couldn't even find a guitar to save the Cavendo Arts Festival!

I trudged my way back to town because it was growing dark and my two hours were almost up. Half-heartedly I checked a few drudges as I went, my hope reigniting occasionally as I saw a punchan bass or a piccolo. Alas, I found no guitar.

"You sure you don't want this lute, Kanten?"

"Get out of here you pansy! You ruined the whole festival."

"I...?"

"Yes you! You think anyone else is going to waste their time finding a guitar for a stupid festival?"

"Well if it would ruin the festival not to..."

"Shut up, bedwetter!"

Ah, to be an adventurer. Who knows what strange, trivial task I will fall upon next time? Maybe Kanten needs some more errands done for him...

Gurog Grunts appears every Wednesday here on AC2 Warcry. The opinions expressed here belong to the gruntmaster himself, Theiss. If you wish to grunt about his grunts, grunt to Theiss at editor@warcry.com.

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