The Grawg

“Tonight the stars align for the first time in a century.”

Big Chief Honcho flexed his leathery green muscles. He loved a good speech as much as any politician. Luckily, orcish speeches tended to be brief. He glowered at the motley company of magic users gathered in the feasting hall.

“We gather for grog. And to repay old debts.”

The politician nodded his tusks at the one-eyed dwarf who tightened his grip on his battle axe. Famine racked the plains and the pillaged ale was gone. To let the liquor run out would be both political and physical suicide. Honcho remembered the grog riots of the 30’s. When the other orcs found out the grog was being watered down, they’d be drinking Big Chief’s blood … out of the skulls of his shamanic advisors.

Due to their tendency to swing axes at each other’s heads, orcs tend to have short lifespans. If the warband returned to find the grog stores dry, Honcho was sure there would be a surprise election, with decidely unfavourable results. He’d rather take his chances with the Grawg. 

Honcho looked around the grog hall at his company of heroes, which did little to improve his mood. His shamans were mostly illiterate yes men, and he was beginning to have his doubts about hiring Whiffer, a rail-thin wizard with a beard thicker than his torso.

“Are we ready?” Honcho shifted his bulk uncomfortably.

The wizard made a small sound somewhat similar to the word “theoretically.” His head was buried in the oversized rune book. He looked pale and spoke rushed city-tongue to the shamans, who scratched their heads in response. Honcho sighed and fixed his eyes on the only man with living memory of the Grawg, Old One-Eye. The dwarven brewmaster had been the sole survivor among the heroes who performed the summoning a century ago. He’d hardly uttered a word since.

The dwarf had lost his eye to the Grawg - now he meticulously laid out hops, rye, and barley, sprinkling it in a circle at least five males wide. Honcho could respect a man who’d make good on a hundred year grudge. The chief glanced back at Whiffer, who continued to read directions from the book rather loudly, while twisting the end of his beard between his fingers. 

The wizard resembled a disorganized dinner host who starts to read the recipe after the guests have arrived. His look strongly suggested that he didn’t have all the right ingredients, and possibly didn’t know what most of them were, but decided to just give it a go and hope for the best. Honcho frowned at the wizard, who jumped nearly a quarter-male in the air. “Well,” he thought, “at least his fear will light a-”

“ fire under his -.” the wizard added, pointing at a shaman’s donkey. “No, no, not actually under him, I mean literally where the animal is standing.” 

Whiffer’s greatest ambition was to put a continent between himself and any kind of ‘adventure’. Interpretive textual studies were gloriously humdrum. It had been an easy O* (outstanding); orcish runes were largely pictographic, and he more or less guessed at them. 

Unfortunately, Whiffer had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. While running away from another adventure, he had bumbled directly into this innocent sounding job post for a pictographic linguist. The furrows in his brow deepened. Warning labels and lists of safety precautions were standard elements in summoning texts. However, this section had been smudged to oblivion by careless spatters of rusty pigment. 

Clearly, the summoning involved a complicated ritual circle with a particular configuration of brewing ingredients. Whiffer hoped that whatever he was summoning wouldn’t be large. His mouth drooped further as he considered the size of the circle, which was generally proportionate to the size of the creature summoned. The orcs said the circle was five males in diameter, but if you laid human males end to end it would most certainly be eight. That was the problem with the standard measurement system, it was decidedly unstandardized.

Whiffer took a deep breath and tried to clear the idle thoughts from his head. He sincerely hoped it was a measurement error, as he watched the dwarf deliberately place the last grains in his intricate circular pattern on the woodblock floor. 

“S’done.” One-Eye said. 

He did not look to Big Chief for confirmation, but tensed his muscles in an offensive stance, staring hard at the empty space in the center of the circle.

The chief nodded to Whiffer, who started to sweat profusely, mopping his forehead with the tip of his beard like a hairy handkerchief. 

The trouble with old inks was that they smudged easily, particularly if one had a nervous temperament and tended to sweat buckets under pressure. Whiffer tried desperately to remember the words he’d read to himself.

“Err…” he started.

The chief looked at Whiffer expectantly.

“Here goes…” The wizard raised his hands like a wyrd conductor and his shaman orchestra began to chant and stomp, filling the hall with the eerie percussion of gravelly voices and rattling staffs. Whiffer cleared his throat and spoke in his best commanding voice, which was unfortunately rather shrill. 

“GRAWWWWWGG!” he screeched. “Grokus Drunkus, Depthus, Emergus!” He paused for a moment for effect. As the chanting grew louder, the vile smelling clay jug passed to him and the wizard took a long swig.

Whiffer had never drunk grog before. He keeled forward, trying not to vomit on the book. The last line of the ritual ought to have been a loud belch, but all that came out was a barely audible hiccup. Honcho’s eyes blazed at Whiffer, as one by one the shamans in the circle emitted loud belches in tune and time, until it came to the dwarf. One-Eye guzzled the remainder of the jug and smashed it on the floor, beating his chest and stepping into the circle with a guttural belching battle cry.

Silence fell on the grog hall, and all could feel the weight of One-Eye’s heavy breath. When a belching roar shook the foundations of the building, displacing a hundred years of filth from the rafters above. When the dust settled, there in the summoning circle, belching, snorting, and sloshing like the tides against a wooden galley, stood the Grawg.

The celestial ale cask had no facial features, save an otherworldly makers’ mark which everburned with cloying red smoke that made Whiffer’s eyes water. It had a man-sized cork as its snout. Wild and confused, it teetered slightly from edge to edge, unsteady on its wooden legs. Whiffer gave it a polite wave. He may have forgotten how to control his mouth, but his mother had taught him never to be rude to a creature the size of a small warship.

Whiffer was dimly aware of the movement of mouths shouting something. But a colossal quadrupedal beer keg teetering on its stand and regarding him with interest filled his brain with static. 

A gruff voice cut through the haze.

“Uncork ‘im.”

As recognition dawned on its featureless face, the ancient barrel raised its corked snout from side to side and snuffed deeply. It nosed the dwarf. Iron rings creaked against ancient oak planks as the Grawg slowly turned to face old One-Eye. Like a bull readying for a charge, it kicked its wooden legs back against the floor, splintering the woodblock with each impact. Its fore brushed the rafters as it reared. One-Eye raised his axe and bellowed. The Grawg charged. Whiffer fainted.

It was hard for even a seasoned politician to spin this in a positive light, Honcho thought. His green knuckles whitened where he gripped the beast’s leg, and sweat beaded down his face. He watched the dwarf hurl himself through the air towards the Grawg and land firmly on its back. It sloshed wildly as an axe thunked vigorously against thick but hollow wood. 

The giant cork was firmly wedged in its hole, probably slapped in by the hand of a tipsy god. But he had to uncork it somehow. The liquor within must be freed. Honcho began to climb the behemoth, digging his thick nails into the gaps between the boards, and hauling himself up along its backside. WHOOSH! He ducked as old One-Eye whizzed past his head, skidding through the line of oats, barley and rye, and knocking the shamans down like a row of rattling bowling pins.

“HE BROKE THE CIRCLE!” bellowed a crazed Whiffer. He danced back and forth from foot to foot, pointing wild-eyed at the dwarf. 

Unchained from the spirit tethers which bound it, the animated keg let out a mighty belch and sploshed forward, shaking the ground and scattering the shamans who had been unfortunate enough to regain their footing. For a moment Whiffer stood agape and wondered, “how does it burp if it hasn’t any mouth?” but survival instinct wrenched control from his dazed mind and puppeted his body out of the creature’s path.

It bucked furiously to rid itself of the orcish chieftain, who topped it like a small figurine. Unable to dislodge the persistent nuisance, it buffeted the chief repeatedly against the rafters.

“Uncork the blasted thing!” Big Chief shouted. 

Whiffer barely heard him over the sloshing and bellowing. Old One-Eye launched himself with renewed fury at one of its legs. But every cut the dwarf made quickly sealed with wound wood. 

“It’s healing! It’s healing! Restrain it!” Whiffer shouted. It was easier said than done.

Unluckily, Honcho believed in hands-on leadership. The chief hoisted himself onto a passing rafter, steadied his feet, and drew a bow from his back. Notching an arrow, he held his breath and took aim. The arrow flew true to its target, trailing a silvery rope. The shaft sunk deep into the beast’s cork. Honcho braced himself, and quickly tied the enchanted rope around the nearest beam. This was followed by a brief shout as the beast shook violently, reducing the beam to splinters, and flinging Honcho downward to the woodblock below.

The deadly battle had a strange quality, in part because the participants had started drinking before the ‘party’ started. The summoners had been pre–drinking as per the ritual, and the beast itself was not only permanently intoxicated, but also had an aura of drunkenness that caused anyone nearby to become slightly soused. 

“You Pox carrier!”

“You Jinx faced burbleberry sniffer!”

The shamans slurred visible curse words that tottered through the air - they would have had a devastating effect on a humanoid, but the curses bounced harmlessly off the celestial construct, and boomeranged right back at their casters, who shook their noisy staves in futile attempts at defense. The wizard had a bad case of the hiccups and the chieftain lay dazed on the floor, draped in his silvery rope like a strange party streamer. The dwarf, a true dipsomaniac, was the only one who seemed utterly unaffected.

Determined to be the life of this strange party, the Grawg charged freely around the hall, rearing and colliding with the log walls with a force that formed fissures along their lengths.

Something had to be done. Whiffer was the last person you wanted to call on when something needed to be done, but no one had much choice in the matter. The trouble was, he was considerably intoxicated, and the only spell he could remember was slippery pubble - err puddle. Still, any storm in a port.

“Hicc. Spli- er - SLIPPERUS WETTICUS - hic - GIGANTES!” Whiffer raised his arms and toppled over backwards, delivering the last words of the spell to the ceiling.

The beast careened left, then right, crashing into a wall, and falling on its side. It tried to get up, but kept slipping on the lubricated floor.

“Charge!” Whiffer yelled at the roof. And the shamans did, slipping and sliding toward it and casting ropes to bind it down while it struggled to right itself. One-Eye, battered and bruised, puffed out his chest and made quick time limping towards it, seizing the cork between meaty hands and pressing his feet against the round flat of its face. While everyone else watched the beast roll and ram the walls, the dwarf held fast. And the cork slipped a little further outwards. One-Eye strained against it, his feet firmly planted and the veins in his jaw bulging.

Honcho saw his chance.

“Prepare the floor!” the chief shouted.

Two shamans began turning a crank on the wall, as slowly, the intricate woodblock pattern in the floor opened like an aperture, revealing a deep pit below. As the Grawg swayed back towards the middle of the floor, One-Eye twisted and pulled with all his might. The cork popped with a loud sucking sound, and the dwarf and cork sailed as one into the depths below, One-Eye laughing as he went.

The reservoir was so deep that there was no sound of impact, or at least it was drowned out by the sounds of liquid gushing out of the titanic barrel beast, which bellowed another ground shaking belch before drunkenly giving in to its fate.

Honcho appraised the situation as the blessed grog flowed freely into the cistern below. He could feel his leg twisted and broken beneath him. Three out of eight advisors still stood. The dwarf was surely dead, and the terrible wizard had either wet himself or fallen in his own puddle.

Honcho begrudgingly noted that Whiffer had the big book open again, and was giving direction as to how the offerings of brewing supplies ought to be stuffed into the beast’s cork hole. It hiccuped loudly, spraying oats everywhere and sending another shaman tumbling down the hole after the dwarf. But the reservoir filled with supernatural speed and although considerably drunker, the gurgling shaman was duly fished out.

Whiffer had the shamans “scooch” the circle to the beasts new location, and before anyone had a chance to consider the logistics of sending it back, the floor sealed up, and the beast, with more barley than grog in it, let out a deafening belch that knocked the four walls of the hall out, and sent the remaining men soaring into the courtyard. It rocketed up through the remains of the roof, as if pulled by an invisible hand.

Big Chief Honcho noticed the wizard disappearing on the horizon as fast as his legs could carry him. Honcho smiled. One less man to pay. Three out of eight shamans wasn’t bad. Best of all, he had survived. And with the cellars full, he knew there wouldn’t be an election anytime soon.