[Kransha]

Hands still clasped in front and thumbs twiddling away, Kransha made his way through the crowd yet again. He hadn’t had good exercise like this in a while, but he hadn’t had a drink in a good while either, so he headed very ceremoniously and forthwith towards the bar tents and multitudinous buffet tables that speckled the area like spots on a spotted gorcrow, if such a thing existed. Kransha distinctly remembered eating a spotted gorcrow, or at least seeing one hanging from the sticky mass of webs in Shelob’s cave back on Cirith Ungol janitorial duty, but he couldn’t place the exact look of the aviary creature that, for all he knew, was a figment of his orc imagination brought on by a night of partying on Gorgoroth Party Plain.

Fetching a small plate for himself, Kransha sauntered jollily to the lavish tables, decked with every sort of food imaginable. He quickly rooted through the finest delicacies, omitting every imperfect foodstuff from his very sight as he dipped conservatively into the well of edible material. As he continued on into the nearest bar tent to sit down in a more subdued atmosphere, he looked down hungrily at the platter he’d constructed for himself, which at the moment consisted of a Everholt Boar Burger, some cheesecake stuffed with strange-scented Gallows-Weed, several ample strips of lemon-sprinkled venison, a trio of bramble pies, and a whole handful of Turkish Delight (to be devoured first and foremost).

He took a seat coolly on one of the jutting bar stools. Smiling to himself over the food, hovering above the plate like a ferocious feline ready to pounce, he made the dire mistake of looking to his right. The poor orc couldn’t help but stare at the figure he saw, which, in his keen green eyes, could barely be called a figure. It looked much more like a brimming mass of twisted metal, but after Kransha gave it swift inspection, he found that this ‘person’ was more or less a mass of pots, pans, and a number of things that were either pots, pans, or something else. The orc always avoided rudeness, but he found his beady little orbs fixed irreverently on the being, his jaw narrowly avoiding a long fall to the floor. He took acknowledging notice of a girl who was curiously rattling an oversized stick against the pan man’s pots. He managed to turn his eyes away, nodding politely to the fellow as the smell of his food wafted through a pair of great nostrils set upon his snout.

As he refocused on the food, he felt a very horrible feeling come over him. He knew what it was instantly, and resisted the urge to utter some foul curse in the Black Speech as he realized what was happening (his mouth was too busy pouring out saliva for him to say such a thing anyway). Orc genetics did funny things, as Kransha knew. Now, Halflings and their kin obviously had a love of food, but there relishing of it was more in fun. Orcs had a very primal way of dealing with food, and even a cultured uruk such as Kransha could not fight his hereditary instincts. He fought them all the same, but it was too late already. The orc’s head plunged forward with ravenous intensity and, for almost a minute, was buried in his plate, from which a veritable cornucopia of gnashing and munching noises emerged as the contents of Kransha’s plate splattered everywhere around him in a surprisingly wide radius. Bits of Turkish Delight soared across the innards of the pavilion. After a lagging moment of extremely loud eating sounds, the orc emerged from what remained of his delicatessens. As he pupils halted their dilation, Kransha realized what he’d done.

“Blasted orc table manners.” he mumbled with caustic irritation to himself as he attempted to clean the great mess from his chin and face. He looked around very nervously; fumbling with a handkerchief stuffed into his coat pocket and swiped all the clinging venison chunks from his lips. As he dabbed mercilessly at his face, he felt another uncomfortable sensation surging up his throat. The hapless uruk, whose day this most certainly was not, let loose a rather incendiary belch that blew his empty plate right off the bar and over behind it, where it flew forward and ripped right through the pavilion wall. As a shocked shriek could be heard from outside, Kransha promptly covered his mouth and gulped.

“Excuse me.”