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First Journal Entry. 9 Malachite 1009

   I am Amon Cocutol.
   If you're familiar with the old language, you might be a little off-put by a name like "swallow-years," but I won't take any years off of your life. Yet.
   That's because... I'm not a demon. At the moment. I won't go into the gritty details, but I was sent to this mortal plane as a punishment for a particularly nasty misdeed. It has to be pretty nasty for even demons to cast you out, so I'll let your imagination run wild with that one.
   My task is to establish myself in this world. I have to say, I've made a good start. Despite having to inhabit a... rather disgusting human body for a while, my skills are still intact. I'm not bad, if I do say so myself. Not demon-level good, but not human-level bad, either. Once I bring the humans to their knees, or at least do something suitably amusing to the council down in Tartarus, I'll return to the demon realm. It's not even an interesting punishment, really.
   I've found myself in this world with a bronze two-handed sword and an equally bronze shield, and not much else. Though I will say that I find the hammerhead shark leather outfit to be quite form-fitting and attractive. Good taste, for human attire. In any case, allow me to recount the events up to this point.
   It's the year 1006 in the mortal realm. Not that that means much to me... I never did understand human timekeeping. I found myself stealthily materialized in some mind-blowingly dreary human town, so incredibly boring that I didn't bother to learn the name, so I won't record it here. Knowing the protocol for this kind of thing, I went to the nearest ridiculously ugly mud-and-straw dwelling. There was a reflective pond nearby, and I have to say, I haven't lost much of my good looks. The shark-skin getup is a nice touch, and while it's not exactly its usual beautiful scarlet, I'm definitely relieved that my skin is brown, at the very least. It contrasts quite nicely with my light "almond-milk" hair.
   Ah, but yes, the humans. I could already smell their stench from halfway across the field as I approached the hut. I'll cut this part short, but all that's important is that I opened the hovel door to find at least TWENTY of those things packed in there, crawling all over each other and wallowing in filth. Humans, that is. Trying to find a polite way to cover my nose, I shot a few quick questions at the most important-looking one in my best attempt at speaking Common, and he pointed me towards a town to the northwest. It's called Agemerchants, a dreary husk of a town sucked dry by who-knows-how-many resident vampires.
   Everything was eerily quiet and RIDICULOUSLY drab. I proceeded briskly through the town, trying not to look too hard at the unthinkably ugly, run-down architecture. The place was clearly deserted. But what I know about vampires is that they have a thing for status, so I made my way toward the biggest-looking of the awful, primitive attempts at shelter, which I suppose I'm meant to believe is a fortress.
   No guards. I found my way inside easily, and made my way to the keep. It's pretty much a honey-pot for lords and vampires, the two main types of blood-suckers in the human realm. I made my way past the echoing foyer with its gaudy, rainbow-colored statues and up the stairs, and that's when I saw him.
   A goblin. Just standing there. Right in the middle of this human keep. It was laughable, really. He wasn't even trying to hide himself.
   He seemed to have his scrawny chest in a constant state of puffed-outness, and he was wearing what I assume he thought a law-bringer's outfit was supposed to look like. I could hardly keep myself from giggling as I approached him.
   "Ho, adventurer!" he called out in his nasally little voice. "What brings you to the keep?"
   I stood there for a good thirty seconds, and if I still had my tail, it would have been swaying in sheer glee as I tried to formulate a response to this ridiculous creature.
   I couldn't really think of anything good, though, and he was still staring at me, so I settled for something a bit blunt.
   "Are you a vampire?"
   I suppose those were the magic words. His eyes immediately glowed red, and he bared his fangs. Wow. An out-of-place goblin law-bringer is a vampire in this vampire-ridden town. I'm completely shocked. You have no idea.
   He shouted his name at me, but I was so completely uninterested by it that I've forgotten it already. Something like "Goblin McGrabtrousers," or whatever "undercover" goblins call themselves these days.
   He drew his lame little dagger, and the fight was on. I have to say, he was a jumpy little guy. Jump, jump, jump. The echoes of his ill-fitting armor clanked and rattled as he hopped ludicrously around the room. I jabbed and slashed at him, looking for an opening on his tiny, stocky little body, and he put up what was admittedly a pretty good fight. My unbearably stupid bronze sword swung heavily around him, occasionally being turned aside by his dagger. Of course, he never hit me. He wasn't very good at fighting, for such a "fearsome" vampire, and his clumsy dagger-thrusts were laughably simple to avoid.
   It didn't take me long to notice that he was just wearing sandals. After getting a grazing blow in on his chest on one of his more predictable jumping arcs, I took advantage of his windedness to strike. The next time he put one foot down to hop pointlessly to the left again, I quickly spun my unwieldy sword around and brought it down heavily right on his ugly little foot.
   He screeched in pain as I tore it right open, and I have to say, his blood was exciting me to no end. I may have gotten a bit of a giddy grin on my face as I watched it gush out onto the floor.
   Surprisingly, the little guy was still pretty flighty. He was a lot slower now, trying to hop on his other foot and screeching whenever he landed on the rapidly-becoming-useless one. It took me a while to realize that his dodging was actually taking him toward the stairs. The little guy was trying to run away before we were even done!
   Ah, but the blood is a little bit of a weakness of mine, and I simply had to see more of his. With his foot the way it was, it was a pretty trivial matter to slide over to the stairwell like I was taking home plate and put myself squarely between him and the exit. The look of panic on his face was exquisite. Simply gorgeous. Using the momentum from my slide, I came up with a low-level slash, and there was a wonderful CRUNCH as the bones in his already-wounded leg shattered like fine china. He went down like a ton of bricks, or in his case, about 20 pounds of bricks. After that, he had no fight left in him at all. Not that he'd even so much as grazed me yet.
   Predictably, as the humans say, I "went to town" on him. I can't imagine how my smile must have looked when I brought my sword down hard on his wounded leg, chopping it off completely and making it fly away in an elegant arc. The vampire had clearly gone soft, sitting smugly in his position of power while he drained the vermin of the town, and he'd forgotten what it was to face a real opponent. He looked up at me with an expression of absolute terror, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I absolutely lost it, I'm afraid. He made a half-hearted attempt at dodging by rolling away, and the CLANG of my bronze sword on the marble floor must have been audible for miles around. I suppose it startled him, because he gave me the perfect opening to swing my instrument directly at his puny little wrist.
   I have to say, it went through the weak bone like a knife through butter.
   He screeched more than he ever had before, looking in horror at the gushing stump of his right hand, still pitifully gripping his worthless knife a few feet away on the floor.
   That was all I needed.
   I took advantage of his lovely, lovely terror to plunge the huge sword directly into his stupid, pathetic little chest. He looked up at me as the blood bubbled up around my sword, and the expression on his revolting face was simply marvelous. The last thing he saw must have been my wildly grinning face as I ripped the sword out of him, spraying myself with his blood. I'm rather satisfied with that.
   He fell sideways with a silly little "thump," his precious blood, the most beautiful thing about him, accumulating in a spreading puddle on the floor. Sublime. I licked my sword a little, holding my blushing face in my hand as I admired my masterwork. I have to say, he looks better than ever now.
   Ah, and that's where I am. His chilled corpse is still laying on the floor next to me. I would've started writing earlier, but I didn't have any blood yet, so now is the perfect opportunity. Ahahaha, and I seem to have gone a little overboard with the details of his slaughter, but it was such a satisfying and priceless moment that I simply couldn't help myself. Onto more serious matters, however. That is, my plan.
   Vampires seem to be abound in this place, and slaughtering them is even more satisfying than slaughtering the spineless humans they prey on. Squashing these little leeches will get me praise as a "hero" of the humans, and they'll be none the wiser... heeheehee. It's a good plan. That way, I can train this frail human body into something approaching an acceptable level of power, and claim dominion over these vermin. Surely, that will be entertaining enough for the council.
   It will certainly be entertaining enough for me!

<3,

Amon

Using the Pantshelm-Jorundr rule set, which states that gentlemen don't have to use barons and baronesses.

Now, in this game, I want real tacticus players. The rules, other than the standard Pantshelm edition, go out like this:

1. Gentlemen do not have to use barons and baronesses.
2. No TV or movie references.
3. No walking over hot coals with a duck on your head while whistling a Dixie song backwards while you paint a picture and neuter a dog.
4. No card-oriented gameplay. Please. Dice is permitted.

'Cite new rules anytime' ruleset goes.

PLAYERS:

-Languidiir
-Duke 2.0
-Qmarx
-Dasleah

AUDIENCE:
-LASD
-A_Fey_Dwarf
-Lord_Frodo

BETS:
-LASD [bet lost]
-A_Fey_Dwarf [bet lost]
-Lord_Frodo [bet: pig tail bag that menaces with iron and mule bone spikes ; spy dwarf dies before waking]

--WATCH THIS POST FOR UPDATES--

To start, I cart up my Bronze Colossus to the front of the fortress in a cage. The wheelbarrow is not crushed because it's made of adamantine.

Meanwhile my sneaky spy dwarf sits on top of the mountain, asleep.

code:

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.....................z.....
#...####............z....##
##.##||####.......#.@.####,
,###,,,,,,####..#######,,,,
,,,,,@[C],,,,####,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
| - fortress gate
# - cliff face
. - rock surface
, - grassy surface
@ - dwarf
[] - denotes caged creature
C - colossus

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