[Adventure] The Ultimate Fraggin' Smith (Ankou)

[Wu Wei]

The clashing sound of a hammer striking an unyielding surface rang out, reverberating off of the trees and filling the Naturan forest with its dreadful noise. The awful sound became increasingly harsh as Ankou drew nearer to the source and, upon reaching the perimeter of Shale-Face’s workshop, Ankou could hear the faint sound of inflammatory language sharply accenting each blow.

The clearing was small by human standards, but to little people it was plenty wide to house a workshop. In the center of the clearing was a mound of moss-covered rocks; a crevice in the rocks presented an obvious entrance to Shale-Face’s lair. The oppressive ruckus emanated forth from the rocks’ opening, which acted as a kind of sound horn and focused the noise into a tight cone to amplify its painful volume. To approach the crevice induced a head-splitting ache inside of Ankou’s skull and was comparable to jabbing an ice pick in one’s ears. The local bird population cried out in agony.

[Ankou]

The awful, ear-splitting, terrible, megadecibel noise punctured the air, killing many of Ankou's hair cells, who died with a terrible ringing scream.

Of course, none of this bothered Ankou, in fact, he tapped his splitting head along with the beat, he'd been introduced to Orcish Death Music by Hazudar ages ago, and this was not only quiet in comparison to some of those bands, but actually pretty catchy. He hummed along inaudibly and flew over to the opening.

He yelled something but it went unheard, shrugging, he flew down into the depths of Shale-Face's pad, whistling quite nonchalantly.

The noise really did have a nice musical quality to it.

[Wu Wei]

The interior of the structure could be described as very raw. The floor remained natural, consisting of well compacted dirt and gravel, and the wall and ceiling was built from unfinished rock and mortar. Overall, the entire place was a kind of rock igloo.

At the center of the dome-shaped room sat Shale-Face’s forge; it’s fire generated the sole light source of the structure’s interior and elevated the internal temperature to a very uncomfortable extreme. The forge itself seemed largely unremarkable; however, upon close observation one could notice that the fire did not appear to give off any smoke.

Standing over the forge was the aptly named Shale-Face. The hideous Leprechaun had a face that looked like it was carved in stone, and not in the masculine and ruggedly handsome way. The creature’s jowls hung like slabs of raw slate on either side of his nose, and the lines in his face were like the fissures that form in rocks after much erosion. His shirtless body revealed that the rest of his homely carcass matched the ugliness of his head; his torso was accented with large tufts of grey hair that looked like a blanket of sickly moss.

The Leprechaun was wielding a two-handed hammer and mercilessly beating the snot out of some piece of red-hot metal upon the forge. Each hammering blow was accompanied by a sting of profanities as the Leprechaun fought with the raw materials of his craft. Spotting Ankou, Shale-Face stopped in mid swing and dropped his hammer upon the ground; removing a set of earplugs from his hairy lobes, he sharply addressed his newest visitor:

“What the frigg do ya want! Heh?! Make it snappy munchkin’! Can’t ya see I’m friggin’ busy!!”

[Ankou]

Ankou faked nervousness, his usual trick, inside his heart was alight with anticipation, how could this ugly old fool be of any use to him? Could he forge him a new body from cold metal and insincere ice? Could he build an artifact to rival the machine of Lum?!

Or could he use his faerie magic to seal the deal in blood and fire? Delightful, delightful. Utterly, disgustingly, delightful. He sneered. That is, he sneered internally, where this trickster smith could not read his innermost thoughts of total hate.

"I was told, kind smith." He said, using the rhetoric of old, of dramatic hero's beseeching able lordling workers for their fine magical arts. "I was told, that you have the potential, I should say, the power to assist me in my greatest quest: To increase my size a dramatic dozenfold, to expand every part of me to this new height! It is my dream, dear kinfolk. Although I doubt that will appeal to you. I offer you all I have in exchange for this boon, oh smith of wonders."

[Wu Wei]

“What?! You gotta be fraggin’ kiddin’ me! Make you frickin’ bigger?!”

Shale-Face rambled on for a few more moments, mercilessly berating Ankou and his request. After several moments of throwing a fit, the smith did regain enough composure to actually answer Ankou directly. He glared at the fairy and made his demands.

“Listen here kid! You wanna get bigger, well quid for friggin’ quo! I’ll fix you up real good, but it don’t come cheap! I want a lump of feversteel that’s one foot in diameter. You get it for me and I’ll friggin’ whip you up to human-sized!

There’s some demmed dwarves with a frackin’ mining operation up north! You should be able to acquire the feversteel from them if you don’t screw it up! I periodically trade with them but don’t feel like shelling out the price of the feversteel right now, so you go get it for me or else stay a pipsqueak forever--no hair off my beard!”

Having quoted his price, Shale-Face began to put his ear-lugs back in with the intent of resuming his work. He offered one last bit of sage advice to Ankou.

“Why you still standing here like some kind of jackass?!”