Blinded by Beauty – Chapter 7, Prologue 23

And here I’m introducing two new (meta-)characters, who are bound to gain rapidly in popularity: The “Skip-a-bit Monks”. They are here to speed up the narrative, and that’s always appreciated. Plus, they come with legendary movie credentials and fit the mood of the setting near perfectly. King Arthur also had to do a lot of level-grinding to get to where he ended up at, and it’s largely thanks to these guys that we never had to hear of it. >_> I mean, on the one hand it’s sad that so many medieval chronicles did not survive, but on the other hand a lot of that stuff was probably pretty boring to begin with…

But the legend of K’ip, the courageous En’ilef is certainly not! (I should hope.) Especially not right now, when our hero scores his first substantial victory…not using his somewhat questionable* combat ability, but instead relying on his newly gained macramé skills. This skill, empowered by an En’ilef’s natural affinity to playing with string, enabled him to create a fiendish macramé trap. Which from afar looks like some harmless decoration hung in a tree by somebody out to beautify the forest…but when you get near…too near…well, then it still looks like that, but while you’re looking at it, you’re bound to overlook the steep cliff immediately behind it. The clever thing about it is the psychology behind it – monsters, like this hobgoblin, constitutionally hate beauty, so they’re bound to charge at the masterfully crafted decoration in a blind rage.

Speaking of the hobgoblin, I went with a ‘classic’ look for it – based on the illustration in the original AD&D Monster Manual. For no apparent reason at all, that hobgoblin was wearing a clearly Japanese-inspired suit of armor – up to and including a sickle-moon-shaped tatemono, a style of course most commonly associated with Date Masamune. Quite a few of the illustrations in those early products looked a bit random, but that’s what you get for living in the pioneering days. =P

Oddly attired or not, the hobgoblin went down, and K’ip received some meaningful amount of EXP for the first time. At this rate, it’s only a question of little time until he’ll be a renowned macramé master!
…wait, was that even the objective?…

Uh, more on Thurs…uh, Monday.

* There’s no doubt that his abilities in that regard can be questioned, since Si’ri did so. On the record.

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