Redspan Revealer/December Edition 2006/Inquisitorial Goat

The Inquisitorial Goat

Building a Goat

As Karnak finished reading the reply to his duel proposal from Min he called over his scribe.

"Blaga! Get over here."

The short, weasely looking man waddled over to his commander's position and tried to solute, but failed miserably.

"Blaga, it seems the heretic has rejected my offer and is still talking about AJ."

"Well sir, if she won't duel you there's nothing you can do about it."

Karnak scratched his head as he thought, making a note to have Blaga pick up the mound of dandruff that had fallen off during his thinking process. Suddenly he snapped his greasy fingers together in triumph.

"That's it! Blaga, I've got a plan. If she won't come to us we'll go to her. She's got her-self fortified in a camp somewhere after some nice dirty folks tried to "greet" her. Now, we could storm the encampment and killin all the soap she probably has hoarded in there or we can use tact and intelligence."

Blaga stared at Karanak with much confusion.

"Um, sir, when did you become tactful and intelligent?"

Karnak laughed and slapped his greasy mits onto the scribe's back, almost knocking him over.

"Hahaha, you got me. I just remembered a story I heard one day when I was at the "library" trying to find books with pictures of goats in them. We are going to build a giant wooden goat and fill it with our men. And then-"

Blaga seemed to have caught on and interjected.

"And then we'll leave it outside her camp to make her think it's a peace offering. When she brings it in we bust out and capture her!"

"No! That's stupid! Blaga, that's why I make the strategies. When we've finished building the goat we'll fill it with our men and then push it off a tall hill. The goat will then smash through the camp's defenses and we'll jump down, get Min drunk, and convince her to duel me!"

"But Karnak, sir, why do we need a giant wooden goat for that if all you're going to do is get her drunk? Just invite her to a pub."

Karnak sighed and patted his scribe on the head.

"Ah, poor Blaga, you will never be able to understand the depths of my genious tactics."

"No, I don't think I will sir."

Karnak (Knight of Meldeen)

A Goat discovered

Vladmir trots along on the outskirts of Stargard.

There's a foul smell in the air: That can only mean there's a camp nearby. Our brave knight is just taking a walk, not looking to visit, so he doesn't start combing the woods. Nevertheless, as he rounds a bend in the road, he seems to encampment. And something else.

Many bearded, filthy men are hammering and sawing. The result of their efforts is nearly complete, and it's clearly a giant wooden goat.

"What the expletive deleted?" He splutters.

Vladmir (Knight of Bolgar)

A capture

As Karnak's men continued the construction of the 'Inquisitorial Goat' he noticed a knight headed his way. Calling Blaga over to him, Karnak whispered.

"Look, a spy has come to destroy the Goat. Assemble a group of men and some ropes. I don't want him leaving here."

With that, Blaga hastily assembled a hunting party of 8 men and ambushed Vladimir, clubbing h over the head and dragging him over to Karnak's tent. As the heretic had the dirty sock shoved into his mouth removed he began emitting a string of expletives toward Karnak.

After about a half hour of this, Karnak held up a lard covered hand to halt the protests of the "unbeliever".

"You there, state your name and what you were doing spying around the 'Inquisitorial Goat'? Come up with a good explanation or you will be drowned in beer and lard. But if it's too good it will be obvious that you already had it planned and will be beaten and then drowned. So... deliver a mediocre explanation or die."

Karnak (Knight of Meldeen)

An escape

Vladmir eyes Karnak for a moment. Then, after a moments careful consideration, he plants his foot square in the other knight's groin and bolts from the tent, the many guards and other such in hot pursuit.

"I was going for a walk you moron!" He hollers back, doing his best to keep ahead of Karnak's angry troops with his hands tied behind his back.

He reaches the edge of the camp with a decent lead on his pursuers, but a gnarly root snags his foot, and the Bolgar fugitive goes tumbling down an undetected drop and into a cold, spring-fed creek.

The creek turns out to be quite deep and rather swift, both of which are issues that concern our hero greatly as his hands are, of course, still tied. His heavy boots aren't helping much either, and his thoughts are becoming dreamy and disconnected when a notable impact knocks him out of his oxygen-starved stupor. Apparently the creek has narrowed to rapids and now he's being bashed against the rocks.

This turns out to not be a terrible thing as the water is much more shallow here. By chance or design, he plants his foot against a helpful bolder, lets's himself bang against another stone protrusion, and brings himself to a halt. Some frantic effort later, his head is above water, and air is back in his lungs.

He spends a few minutes there, trying to tear through binding ropes by rubbing them again the shale on the creek bed. He succeeds, though his wrists are now bloody. He stands, and stumbles toward the shore.

• * *

It's about an hour later when the wet, cold, bedraggled knight makes it back to the gates of Stargard. He recieves more than one horrified look from various pedestrians, as he's relatively clean after his impromptu bath.

He notes a tavern and stalks through the door. Fortunately, the goat-building lunatic in the woods hadn't had his guards take his money.

"Ale. And keep it coming." He growls out. Then he sneezes.

Vladmir (Knight of Bolgar)

Even a Goat-Builder needs a Drink

After having beating the living day lights out of Blaga for letting the prisoner escape, and kick him in his daddy bags, Karnak decided to get a nice stiff round of drinks at the local tavern. Sitting down at the bar he slammed down some silver and ordered a round of drinks. Turning to the drunk to his left who looked like he had been through as much as Karnak, he was wet and he had rope burns on his wrists? Probably something he did for beer money.

"So what happened to you buddy.... wait have I seen you before?"

Karnak (Knight of Meldeen)

Reporter investigates

Now that I have returned to Stargard, I will be investigating the stories of the soddenly drunk men in The Wobbly Goat. Rumor has it that both men contend that they have seen gigantic wooden goats. One of them claims to have constructed such a goat and is amazed that someone else has constructed another. The second man, who is drip-drying from some horrific near-bath experience, occasionally asks the first one if "you two have a third brother", apparently seeing double.

I also recently received a tip that a man bit a goat, but knowing RedSpanian religious vigor as I do, put no faith in the accuracy of that story.

Dabug (Knight of Meldeen)

The assualt

Karnak yelled encouraging words to his men as they lifted the Inquisitorial Goat to the top of a hill.

"Yes that's right chaps, position it a few paces to the right wot and we'll be right as rain and ready to go! I'll show those soap loving heretics to build a mockery of the 'Inquisitorial Goat' and say it was their idea!"

As the men struggled to finish filling the gargantuan construct with goats and ale while still leaving room for themselves Blaga waddled over to Karnak.

"Um, sir, I think that the drunk you met was just talking about the same giant wooden goat. He may have even been the man that escaped from us."

Karnak laughed at how naive his scribe could be before pointing out,

"That's impossible Blaga, everyone knows drunks can't lie! Now Get in the 'Inquisitorial Goat'! I spotted a group of undead and I think they might be the ones that make the fake goat and stole my idea!"

Blaga stared at where Karnak was pointing and replied,

"Um, sir, those are old people. I think it's a retirement home, not a group of undead. Maybe we should aim the goat away from them."

"Ah, poor Blaga. It seems that the undead have cast their magical spell upon you and now you think they are old people. Get in the goat and tell everyone to blindfold themselves and get drunk to keep from being enchanted. We're going to destroy those undead and their fake goat before they destroy our great nation!"

Blaga continued to try in vain to convince Karnak not to attack the retirement home but Karnak had already made up his mind when he cast of the brakes and sped down the hill. If the old people had been able to see further than 10 paces in front of them they would have been greeted with the sight of a Giant wooden goat filled with 50 barrels of ale, 32 drunk and blind-folded soldiers, 28 goats, a fat and sweaty scribe, and being driven by a naked man covered in red curly hair and wearing a cape made out of the flag of Redspan.

Karnak (Knight of Meldeen)

Off to Rogeshore

The 'Inquisitorial Goat' smashed through the retirement home with ease. Blaga took a moment to stop cowering and stare in amazement at the fact he wasn't dead. Before he could savor his small victory Blaga was snapped back into his normal life of chaos as Karnak yelled out a war cry.

"Men get ready! looks like there's an even bigger horde in Rogeshore! lard up your weapons and hold onto the goats old chaps, its time to show those undead what the 'Inquisitorial Goat' can do!"

Karnak's orders were met with a few drunken moans as his men became even more intoxicated from the ale flooding the inner compartment of the giant wooden goat. Apparently the collision with the retirement home had broken the barrels of ale open and caused them to empty their contents.

"Karnak, sir,um I think that we should turn around. It looks like the attack on the retirement home made a few of the locals angry and now they've formed a mob and are chasing after us."

Karnak turned away from "steering" the wooden goat and looked back to see a massive group of peasants armed for war chasing after his band of crusaders.

"Looks like the undead managed to infect some of the peasants. Thanks for volunteering to hold them off Blaga, you're a good man."

Before Blaga could protest, Karnak had shoved an axe into the scribes hand and tossed him off the top of the 'Inquisitorial Goat' with wishes of good luck.

Karnak (Knight of Meldeen)