[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

The good ship Hyperbolic lay upon a golden strand on the mysterious island, whilst all around, her crew were occupied in sailmaking, carpentry and other assorted nautical trades. Each member of the ship’s company had been hand-picked for his possession of incomparable skills that would be indispensable on their original mission, which was all-out war as part of a large besieging army with its own support units. Accordingly they had brought mighty Exlax, before whom none could withstand the urge to run, Hennaples the Red and Chilabes with his deadly spearmen. They had even enlisted the aid of the awesome Numidian known only as Mr. Tau. What Mëanderin had forgotten to ask of any of these mighty men was whether any of them knew any basic handicrafts, so that their repair stops often required frequent reference to the mysterious tome of arcane lore entitled Boat-building the Professional Way .

'Okay,' gritted Noplan the Destroyer, squinting at the book in his hand and holding a reclaimed board in place with the other. 'Now we hammer in the nails.'

There was a sheepish silence.

'Oh come on! We must have brought a hammer!'

'I've told you before,' boomed Harald Nicehair. 'It's an insult to my people and my god to use the symbol of his might to bash in a few nails. That's a sacred weapon dedicated to the destruction of the unrighteous, that is; not some petty camping tool.'

One of the most notable things about heroes is the amount of time they don't take over discussions of religious diversity or cultural sensitivity. Soon the mighty hammer Trollbeer had been readied for the sacred task of maintaining the cosmic order by smiting the impious nailish horde. This brought the intrepid band up against their next problem.

'What do you mean "no nails"? I can see some sticking out of that plank there; the one Dimsod's almost standing on.'

'What? Oh $£%&$£@#!'

With this word of power and a questing foot, Dimsod found the nails all over again, not to mention effortlessly pronouncing an apparently random string of symbols. His enraged curses were cut off only by the sudden re-classification of the island as 'inhabited'.

Starstruc the First Mate was the first to notice them: partially clad in shimmering scarlet and brandishing strange, bulbous implements of similar hue; hair streaming in the breeze that none of the observing maritime heroes could feel. They seemed to run energetically, yet moved no faster than had they been walking, and their eyes were ever fixed on the middle distance. Yet it was none of these things that transfixed every heroic eye, stilled the working of each mighty - for want of a better word - brain. The cause of that was rather more obvious.

'Women?' muttered Starstruc.

Harald patted his flowing locks.

'Women!' growled Noplan, twitching an over-developed bicep.

Several of the crew grabbed extremely heavy baulks of timber that weren’t obviously required for the repairs to the ship and began to heft them. Entirely coincidentally, this caused their muscles to bulge heroically.

Now the word was taken up, until it spread even so far as mighty Mëanderin himself, where he sat in his tent failing to calculate their position. No one voice was raised unduly, yet their mingled murmurings were as those of the surf, and with cautious reverence, as though to speak over-loudly would dispel the vision, the crew uttered that strange and exciting word.

'Women.'

'I think there are some men with them too.'

'So what?'

Well, they had been at sea for the best part of fifteen years. One can scarcely blame them.

For the sake of a balanced description, we must now turn our attention to the male runners (and we have plenty of time, since they still have about half a mile to go before they’ll get any dialogue). They were cast in rugged mould: large of muscle, steely of sinew, square of jaw and determined of gaze, albeit that they appeared to be staring meaningfully at nothing in particular when an entire ship's company of newcomers was waiting directly in front of them to be discovered. They and their leader were like and yet unlike, for he was the elder, and his hair moved not in the invisible winds; and his torso was seemingly clad in a shirt of coarse black homespun, which upon closer inspection turned out to be his own body hair. Something glittered on his chest, but what it was could not be divined.

Suddenly, the strange runners turned sharply and rushed into the surf, diving cleanly into the waves and strongly swimming out some distance before returning, skilfully yet pointlessly, to the beach. There each tossed their heads in a manner heavy with allure for their respective opposite sexes, sending a rain of glittering droplets cascading to the sand at their feet. Apart from the mysterious leader, whose coiffure remained untouched by its total immersion in salt water, the strange figures now wore their locks flattened to their skulls; and their strange garb, immodest even by barbarian adventurer standards, clung to them closely, leaving even less of them to the imagination than before. They continued their strangely impeded approach at an even more energetically bouncy pace than before.

Starstruc dipped a comb in the sea and ran it through his hair. He straightened his tunic and brushed off the heavier patches of sand. Mëanderin donned his ceremonial garb of command with unpracticed difficulty: the mighty breastplate, which only stayed in place by virtue of some extra holes in all its straps and some strategic padding, and the great ancestral helm. This latter had a horsehair plume which had seen better days and now looked like a well-used toothbrush, and it had been persuaded to remain atop his head by the application of some rolled-up papyrus. He flung his mighty scarlet cloak about his shoulders, gathering the hem around his arm to prevent it from trailing in the sand and to hide the worst of the stains, and strode out to greet his new and winsome guests.

And those fellows who seemed to be travelling with them.

'Hail, fair strangers,' he intoned grandly. 'I bid thee welcome to our encampment.'

He was answered, not as he had hoped by one of the lovely damsels, but by their hirsuit companion, who hailed them with courteous greeting, thus:

'Hi. Put it there.'

The great travellers of legend are never fazed by strange local greetings. Mëanderin, as has already been discussed, was not one of them.

‘Erm… Put what where now?’

'Uh, put your hand on my hand so we can indulge in a comradely test of strength and endurance by squeezing one another’s hands really hard.'

'Forgive me if the idea of squeezing another man’s hand isn’t quite my beaker of tisane. Who are you anyway?'

'I am Botherhonn, who is also called "He who rides at night"'.

Miraculously, the entire crew failed to rise to the tempting bait.

'I am Mëanderin, grand high admiral of the fleets of my lord Rǿdidendrun, who is reckoned the flower of chivalry. What manner of travellers are you?'

'Actually we, uh, just watch this beach.'

'Then you are sentinels, set to bar landing to all who may not best you in single combat! We shall choose a champion by the drawing of lots and…'

'Wait a second there. We kind of just watch to make sure nobody drowns. You know, just keep everyone looking happy and attractive; say "hi" to all the pretty girls. You know, just… hang out, really.'

Once more our intrepid heroes refused the obvious opportunity for risqué comic misunderstanding. It was left to their captain to point out the obvious.

'There's nobody here but you and us. Who’s going to drown?'

'Well, you might. That boat of yours ain’t in such good shape.'

'Which would be why it's on the beach being repaired and not, for example, plying the seven seas.'

'Yeah, well, just don’t sail it before it's fixed, okay? I've got to go off now for mysterious reasons of my own and leave you and your men alone with these scantily clad women. Ladies: make sure that these guys don't try any sailing before I've given their ship a checkup. Guys: we've got a lot of posing to do, so let’s hit the beach.'

Before Mëanderin could point out that, in fact, they meant to be finished by the end of the day, and that in fact they did not mean to set sail in any case until their ship was fully restored, his crew had clustered around their new guardians. Meaning, as the nominal commander of the expedition, to greet their unnaturally curved leader, he strode forward; but as he did so he noticed his men’s strange inactivity. Normally they would be engaging in the ancient custom of putting on the moves in no uncertain terms, and indeed already some voices were raised in disappointment. However, the destructive mass-brawl that would normally have broken out at this point had failed to materialise, and this meant more than the absence of a decent bar to wreck in the process. As he thrust his way to the centre of the admiring throng he understood the absence of facile tableau scenes: their strange new acquaintances were standing motionless, their hands held palm-outward in token of warning. As one, and in voices empty of emotion, they were intoning a strange and mystifying incantation.

'Thank you for using Môgul Bildûr Temptations, Inc. All our incubi and succubi are currently busy with the unvoiced cravings of others, but your soul is important to us. One of our demonic agents will be free to tempt you to eternal damnation shortly.'

Something about this cheerful, friendly message caused Mëanderin some concern. He called for silence, rallying the attention which had so recently been focused on more prepossessing things.

'Err… Is anyone actually talking to one of these people?'

Everyone looked at everyone else. One or two people accused Glaucomar the Seer of talking to someone they couldn’t see, but he did this too often for it to be considered noteworthy.

'So who is, in fact, getting this rather poorly disguised temptation scene?' the gallant captain mused.

'Logically speaking, captain,’ Starstruc's voice was grave, as usual. 'If we are all receiving this ridiculously anachronistic hold message, then there must be someone else on the island; possibly someone whose soul is more valuable than all of ours put together. Perhaps we should find them and somehow warn them of this danger.'

'Either that,' replied his commanding officer, still smarting from this disappointing response. 'Or somebody botched their Create Magic Island spell and left us with a broken plot hook, which will only annoy them as much as it has us. In any case it’ll do no good to warn them; it never does. Whoever heard of a half-way decent trap being set up without somebody triggering it so that the gods can enjoy the sick pleasure of watching it in action? Back to work, lads.’

With that he would have turned back to his tent, where he had unfinished napping to continue, but instead he remained rooted to the spot, his face suddenly frozen and waxy. All around, his intrepid adventurers were likewise immobile, all enchanted by a mighty spell of holding. As his limbs froze, Mëanderin caught the gentle strains of elven harps as they picked out a mournful yet popular refrain. It was a beautiful piece, but after the twelfth repetition he still wanted to cut off his own ears rather than hear it again.