Thursday, January 14, 2010

Misadventures Past

When the children finally fall asleep, the priest Roly reaches for another bottle of red wine and tells the Party the sad tale of Ape city.
“A few years ago we were visited by a dark haired stranger. Our entire population was under constant attack by the monstrous, carnivorous apes and we thought all was lost until the good-looking stranger came up with a ridiculously simple plan.
We gathered up pebbles from the beach and when the apes attacked we pelted them with these simple missiles. Most of us missed but the few that hit so enraged the apes that they cast about for something to throw back.
All they had was the fruit growing on the trees. They pelted us with barrage after barrage of bananas and mangos. Even a few of the more dangerous fruits such as pineapples and even the occasional coconut!
The food, although mushed up was still edible.
We were saved!
… Or so we thought.
The stranger, Mendez was his name, left us and after a few more weeks, one of the apes got smart.
When searching for something to throw back at us, one of them simply picked up one of the hundreds of stones left scattered from the previous exchanges.
He threw it back and, unluckily for us, it hit one of the Warriors on the wall.
His skull caved in, the poor Warrior died instantly.
The other apes saw what he’d done and copied him. The tide of the battle changed immediately. Guard after guard was killed and then they scaled the outer wall and were in.
It was a massacre.
I managed to hide some of the children in the basement of the church but could do nothing more. Petitions to Pelor feed us and perversely, we’ve learned that if we stay dirty they can’t seem to sniff us out.”

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