As part of this one job application I did a while back, I needed to write a quest setup of sorts, in 500 words or less, about two groups fighting over a magical artifact in an ancient temple. I was supposed to introduce the location, item, and the two teams along with explaining their motivations. I was a bit burnt at the time (it was a time consuming application), and decided that anything serious would end up pretty generic with only 500 words so I went in the completely opposite direction. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of the result, but here it is.
It was a dark and stormy night… Not that there are really any other types of nights in these stories. Have you ever heard of a story beginning with “it was a bright and calm night”? Would you even want to read a story like that? Anyway, this night was properly dark and stormy, complete with thick black clouds, blinding rain (not that you could see much of anything in the darkness anyway), howling wind, everything a good dark and stormy night should have.
But none of that actually mattered because, as our story begins, we find our heroes in a hidden chamber deep within the bowels of the Temple of the Forgotten God. Unlike other forgotten gods, this one was no Eldritch horror buried and forgotten in the sands of history for fear that any mention of his name would bring his terrible wrath to bear upon the world. No, the circumstances leading to this god’s fall into obscurity were much more mundane. A string of poor responses to the weekly calls for offerings, a temple falling into disrepair, and the general apathy of the deity himself, who much preferred lounging in the heavenly realm with his cadre of scantily clad handmaidens to answering the prayers of his followers, led to the slow and dull collapse of his religious order.
But the temple still held one treasure, a lone relic of the lazy god’s divine power. It was this item, the legendary Magic Chalice, which our heroes had come to claim. For this chalice had another name (one given by a priest with a modicum more creativity than our apathetic deity), The Mug of Endless Ale. To claim this most desired of items, the brave Sir Snittzlepenny, the world’s most unsuccessful barkeep, had gathered his two mightiest allies, the monk Chow Mein, master of the drunken fist (due to his utter inability to stop drinking long enough to fight sober), and the elven youth Leggy Featherweight, a brave dishwasher fighting through that awkward time when a boy first starts to become a man (which, among the extremely long lived elves, lasts about one hundred years).
They had set out on a long and dangerous…well, short and mildly inconvenient, quest to claim the Mug as only its endless supply of free ale could save Snittzlepenny’s tavern from the dark clutches of Greedo Goldbags, the most compassionate money lender who ever lived (he once saw a puppy and didn’t kick it…once) and his legendary quartet of orcish barbarians, The Amazing Bruisers Five (math wasn’t part of their amazingness). Despite his (not so) great compassion, Greedo couldn’t pass up the chance to take over yet another local business, much less score another magical item for his mantle, and so he had come to stomp Snittzlepenny’s dreams (and face) into the dust.
As the two sides squared off in the dark and dingy chamber, both knew that this would be a battle to be remembered…and then quickly forgotten (endless ale and all).
