The Tale of Mu'c'us
From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki
It was a dark and stormy night…. Well, actually, it wasn’t all that dark and it wasn’t all that stormy, but Mu’c’us (the Mojo Mastah Metul Wurker pug of the Stormreaver Orc Clan) didn’t mind. He raced through the woods north of the Yew Orc fort – really it was more of a lumbering waddle than racing – as he headed for the cave within the Shame Pass for a night of mining.
“Meh gots meh piks and meh shubbels, so meh ib all set to gwo tu work,” he thought to himself with smug satisfaction. In truth, being an Orc, it wasn’t so much thought as a human might understand it, as it was a vague, miasmal sense of impending achievement.
Mu’c’us pulled his green mask of Orkish kin more securely over his face as he dodged around the brutish Urks who populated the forest. He had had to reduce his fighting ability to further his crafting skills. Of necessity, he now had to rely on avoidance of conflict and on healing for survival in these harsh, uncompromising surroundings.
He entered the gloomy cave with a pick in one hand and a sputtering torch in the other. He began chipping away at the rock wall in the deepest recesses. The pile of ore grew, overflowing his backpack onto the ground at his feet. “Dis ib mojo!” he thought. “Soon meh hab elebenteen metul inguts and can gwo home to make sum ahmah and weppuns fur da Sturmreabers.” In fact, Mu’c’us had not the faintest notion of numbers. He could count to “wun, twu, twee,” and any larger number beyond that was just “elebenteen.”
With great effort and much boredom Mu’c’us dragged each pile of iron and colored ore out of the cave to the forge located in a small house in a wide spot in the Shame Pass. As it happens, Orcs are unusually well suited for backbreaking labor and mind-numbing tasks. Their great strength is matched only by their lack of intellect. Other than being able to tell day from night (and in the cave, it was always night), Orcs have no sense of the passage of time, and they will keep at a task until it is finished or they drop in Orcish exhaustion.
At last, after many trips back and forth between the cave and the forge, Mu’c’us’ backpack was full to bursting with ingots. He loaded up his remaining mining tools, ate a few hursie ribs, and drank a couple of flasks of bludale. In the predawn darkness, he carried his torch to light his way through the dreary woods back to the Orc fort. Unfortunately, the flickering torchlight also served as a beacon to mark his position. It was not long before two humans approached him. Mu’c’us recognized the pair as murdering “bludnames,” and recited a quick prayer to the Bludgod for protection. A paralyzing spell from one and several swift halberd blows from the other, and it was all over for Mu’c’us. His spirit watched helplessly as the two assassins looted his corpse of the “lebenteen” metal ingots. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone.
“OOOooo well,” Mu’c’us said to himself in a spectral voice. “Meh just hab tu find a healah and get meh fleshied agin. Den meh gwo bak tu da cabe and start ober.”