(OOC: Continues from The Best Laid Plans .. and I checked with Wurzag's player that it was OK to put him here... ;) )

The practical upshot of what could only be called the farcical shenanigans with Taryn casting Fear on the man who would otherwise likely have mashed his brains and served them up for supper, was that Kirri the bar maid had told the young mage that he needed to leave, if he would be so kind.

Of course, she didn't actually ask quite that politely.

He remembered none of this as his eyes gradually ungummed themselves the following morning. All he knew was that he felt really, really, really bad. There was an army of what could possibly be dwarves stampeding gleefully around the inside of his head, kicking his brain about and leaving him feeling decidedly not well.

In addition to this, his mouth presently felt as though he had eaten seventeen tonnes of sand and then just to make matters even worse, he was feeling rather unpleasantly cramped.

As slow awareness began to creep over him, he became aware of a number of things. The first was that the reason for him feeling rather unpleasantly cramped was largely due in part to the fact that he was curled up in a little ball. He tried stretching out and bumped into something. He tried sitting up and cracked his head off something else.

A few anxious moments passed.

He realised that he had, in fact, slept under his desk at the Port Authority. This became blatantly clear as his eyes, which felt like they were melting, began to focus on a pair of legs. The pair of legs were standing just outside the frame of the underside of the desk and he had to scoot forward a little to work out exactly who they belonged to.

His eyes travelled up.

"Good morning, Master Pallerion," said his employer, without any real sense of feeling in the voice. Actually, that was a lie. There was a lot of feeling there, mostly bad. Taryn opened his mouth to reply in kind, but a surge of nausea rushed through him and he swallowed it back.

"Actually," continued his employer, "it's not a good morning at all - and do you want to know why it's not a good morning?"

Taryn, whose hand was presently clamped over his mouth in an effort to stop himself throwing up everywhere, shook his head emphatically and very slowly crawled out from underneath the desk.

It was then that he realised exactly why the Port Master was none too happy.

"What," said the Port Master, pointing a shaking finger at the corner of the main office, "is that?"

Taryn looked.

He wondered for a few moments whether this was some sort of trick question being put to him by his employer, because it was pretty obvious exactly what that was. Taryn rubbed at his unshaven jaw, swallowed back more bile and blinked a few times.

"It's a half-orc," he said.

"What is it doing on my papers?" There was a bizarre sort of cold fury there. Taryn looked at the half-orc.

"It's...sleeping, I think. And I think it's a he. Um."

"I see."

The Port Master's fingers began to drum a steady rhythm on Taryn's desk. Taryn wished he wouldn't. Every tap went through his head like a dart. "So what you're saying, Pallerion, is that you went out last night - obviously to the tavern, had one drink too many and decided you would sleep under your desk and bring a half-orc into my office."

Taryn's lips moved.

"Yes," he conceded, eventually. "I...think we were just coming back so I could pick something up...but we were tired...um. I think I've just lost my job, haven't I?"

"Master Pallerion, you always were perceptive. I want the bedroom vacated by noon, and I want that off my annual report. It was bad enough the last time you went out drinking and I came in to find three young ladies in a rather worrying state of undress sleeping in the back store. But this...this..." Again, the Port Master pointed a finger at the half-orc. "This is the pinnacle of your career. You will amount to nothing, boy. Do you hear me? Nothing."

The Port Master turned and began to stalk away. He stopped, turned round, stalked back and reaching out with one long, bony finger, poked Taryn in the chest. "And those robes belong to me," he added before leaving.

For his part, Wurzag was blissfully unaware of the confrontation going on beyond his fog of unconsciousness. The desk was no more, or less comfortable than the straw pallet he usually slept on in his cell at the battle-pit, though the office itself smelled a whole lot better. Such niceties had never really much concerned the half-orc though. The cell was a place to sleep and keep the rain off. That was about it.

When they had arrived last night the desk had seemed the best place in the world and the thick ledger made for a perfect, if slightly angular pillow.

Somebody somewhere was talking.

"Wassat," he grumbled and flailed randomly at the unwanted intrusion.

He snored, coughed, grunted and attempted to roll over to get away from the offending sound that was trying its best to drag him from the comfortable folds of slumber. As a result he fell off the side of the desk with a crash and scattering of papers.

"Huh?!" He said, blinking and trying to focus.

He was on a floor.

The was a piece of parchment on his face.

"Wass 'ere?"

Reality struggled to intrude upon his awareness.

"Fuggoff."

He rolled over on to his side, belched ale fumes noisily and broke wind, further scattering the parchment across the floor. Slowly the realisation dawned on him that this wasn't usually the place he spent his nights. Usually he woke up in his cell or on the floor or the tavern.

This place smelled too inky to be either.

Resigning himself to the fact that he was going to have to investigate his surroundings and work out exactly where he was, he sat up. A small avalanche of parchment cascaded down his chest and on to the floor.

"Whut? Where m'I?"

He glanced around and spied a young man, looking somewhat worse for wear in the middle of the room.

"Who're you? Whut time'sit?"

He scratched his back-side and then ruffled his disheveled dread-locks that had managed to wrap themselves around his neck in a hairy strangle-hold.

"How'd I get 'ere?"

It was a morning full of wonderful questions.

The stench of Wurzag's belch and other less pleasant bodily functions assailed Taryn's nostrils and the young man made a bolt for the door and disappeared outside where the half-orc could hear the somewhat muffled sound of Taryn dumping the contents of his stomach outside the Port Authority.

When he returned, he looked noticeably better.

"Sorry," he apologised, all trace of the drunken incompetent he'd so successfully been last night completely obliterated. "Now then, where were we? What time is it?"

He opened the door again and peered outside at the sun dial that sat just outside the Port Authority building.

Then he came back inside looking decidedly shell-shocked.

"Half past ten," he said, in a numb, astounded sort of tone. "It's half past ten. I've never been awake at half past ten!" He stared at the half-orc. "What happens?"

This much was true: due to his incessant tendency to insomnia and working all night, Taryn usually slept (when he did sleep) often past noon. It wasn't a particular issue with his employer - his former employer - but the discovery that the world started at this ungodly hour of the day was rather alarming.

Eventually the hangover gave in to reality and Taryn's sense of what was normal, what was abnormal and what was happening finally ground in.

"I just lost my job," he said, sounding far more cheerful than anybody who had just become unemployed should possibly sound. "Need to clear my stuff out the bedroom by noon. Sorry, Wurzag, you won't be able to stay here again."

There was a pause.

"It was Wurzag, wasn't it? I have vague recollections..."

Taryn wished, after all the memories had finished assailing him, that he had the capacity to complete obliterate the things that had happened the previous night. He had all but destroyed half the tavern when he'd sent Rembold fleeing in terror and then, when Kirri had (not very politely) asked them to leave, he had been ridiculously sick all over the tavern floor.

For some reason the words 'you're barred' kept hammering into his skull.

"On reflection," he said, with a sigh, running his hands through his hair, which was loose from its normal neat pony tail, "going out and getting rat-arsed last night may not have been the best of plans. Still...looking on the bright side, as my dear old Mum would have done - now I have a reason to leave the city and try to find something useful to do with my life."

Not that I've got the gold to support such a venture, but...

"Best go clear out my stuff then," he said, optimistically.

For his part, Wurzag was still struggling to master the basics of his bodily functions. The morning after was never as pleasant as the evening before, though he had certainly awoken in worse places throughout his drinking career. Half submerged in a cesspit had been the worst. He blinked at the mage and at the announcement of the hour.

"Whut're we doin' ... 'ere, now, at dis time?" He said foggily.

The fact that Taryn had lost his job did not seem to be having much of an impact on the young man, a fact that Wurzag could appreciate. He had never been able to hold down a stable job from a very young age until he had discovered that all he was really good for was hurting things and drinking things. After that, the battle-pit seemed like the ideal place.

"N'yeah, m'names Wurzag, Wurzag 'Elmsplitta."

He finally managed to muster the energy to pull himself erect and stood in the midst of the papery devastation like the nemesis of administration. In the darkest corners of the minds of treasurers, lurks the fear of the Antiministrator. Right at that moment, the half-orc was his avatar.

The moment passed.

"So ... uh, you gonna be on da road den?" Wurzag said with a vague sense of disappointment. It had been a long time since he had had such an entertaining evening, a resident mage could have caused merriment enough to hold his attention for at last another few days.

"Where you gonna go? Ain't much work to be 'ad around, an dem roads is crawlin' wiv bandits n undeads n pictsies n bears n fings." He nodded sagely, "course, you can probbly scares 'em away."

He grinned suddenly.

"Or sets 'em on fire."

"Or," he said with sudden inspiration, "youz could come an fight in da pit wiv me!"

"Yep," said Taryn, looking past Wurzag's shoulder and out through the window. "As you say. Looks like that's me 'on the road'..."

He paused and took that sentence in and bizarrely, a slow grin crept over his face. His eyes lit up and he crossed the short space in between them and clapped Wurzag on the shoulder. He had to stand on the tips of his toes to fully reach, but that wasy by-the-by.

"I'm on the road," he said. "I have no reason to stay in Port Adúnë any more. In fact, HELLS with it, I don't even have to stay in Lómëdor any more! I, Mister Helmsplitta, am a Free Agent. A man of the world. And this is the opportunity I've been waiting for..."

All the excitement left him almost as swiftly as it had come. It was like watching a water bag deflate. The light went out of his green eyes and his shoulders returned to their almost habitual slump.

He sighed.

"Not that I have anywhere to actually go, of course..."

And this was Taryn's problem. He always got excited and enthusiastic before his sense of reality had a chance to kick in and analyse a situation. When reality finally did bite, it was often very hard and periodically had serious consequences. He'd been the same all his life. Impetuous. Act first, think about those actions - in one memorable case - as much as a few weeks later.

Wurzag made an offer that Taryn could most definitely refuse.

"Ah, fighting in the pit with you does hold a certain...ah, what's the word I'm looking for here...yes. Appeal, and I thank you most sincerely for the offer. But you see, well, I'm not exactly built for brawling. You can see that by the mess one punch made of my face." He indicated his eye and lip, which this morning were a riotous shade of purple. "And I might be good at a large majority of mind-affecting spells, but I don't have a lot of combat magic experience."

He rubbed his nose.

"On top of which, there are a lot of undead out there. And they have a nasty tendency to resist the kind of shamanic spells I throw at them. It's tough to have your mind affected when you - well, when you don't have a mind to start with."

He rubbed his nose thoughtfully, then his eyes lit up again.

"I think," he half-announced, "that I might just take a trip to the Temple of Life. Perhaps a couple of hours meditation in the Shrine of Holiness might give me some idea as how I can train myself better against the undead. It's not a vast journey."

An idea struck him.

"How do you fancy coming with me?"

It was a wild, spontaneous, crazy idea. In other words, very definitely one of Taryn's.

Wurzag absorbed all that the young man had to say, nodding sagely all the while. The lad had a point about not being built for brawling, though it would have made for excellent sport to watch him zap the other gladiators with spells. The half-orc would particularly liked to have seen the stumpy halfling running about with his head on fire.

"Yeah," Wurzag agreed eventually, "undeads is a pain in de arse, dey dunno when dey beat an shud get back to bein dead like corpses shud. An dey smell bad," oh the irony, " an dey taste even worse, like chewin' on a ... a ... " Wurzag struggled for the words.

"On a ded fing." He finally settled for.

"Dey normally snuffs it if you chop der 'eads off though, an den jump up an down on da bits." The half-orcs ragged boots looked as though they had done a great deal of stomping in their time.

And then ...

"Da Temple of Life?"

Wurzag had heard of it, he had even seen it once, from a distance, while crossing a street to punch a vagrant who had spat at him. The only thing he could recall about the encounter was that there had been a lot of white involved, and that the vagrant hadn't had any money.

The half-orc had never had much time for Gods. He was aware of them, that many people spent a great deal of time in their worship, but had never really understood the attraction. They stayed up there, doing their thing while he blundered around down here doing his.

A twinkle of curiosity struggled through the general miasma of Wurzag-thought and lodged itself there like a piece of gristle.

"Uh, yeah, da Temple ov Life. Sands gud to me," he said with a shrug, "less go an av a look."

He paused and rubbed his chin.

"Wot 'appens der den?"

Taryn had excited himself now with the idea of an adventure that would take him out of the city and elsewhere. Right now, it didn't matter to him one bit where the 'elsewhere' actually was, as long as it was far, far away from Port Adúnë.

It may have seemed unusual, the young mage so easily trusting himself into the hands and companionship of a half-orc fighter. To all intents and purposes, there was nothing that should have drawn them together. Whilst not exactly polar opposites, they certainly had little in common. Taryn, for example, was a finely educated, well-mannered young human. Wurzag was...

Well, he was a half-orc. And that was about as kind as Taryn could make it.

But for some reason, he sensed that he could trust Wurzag. And for the most part, over the years, his instincts had seldom been wrong. Those same instincts had served him well as he had travelled through life. He had the uncanny ability to choose the right people to befriend at exactly the right time - and by the same token, knew who not to trust with even the seemingly most harmless of secrets.

"What do we do there, now there's a question," he said, a wicked grin crossing his face. All traces of his hangover had strolled off and whilst he was aware on a deep, subconscious level that they would likely re-emerge later on in the day, right now he felt bright, alive, alert and excited. "Before we even think about that, however, we have to get there. And that means me emptying my stuff out of my room. So if you wouldn't mind just giving me - say, half an hour or so - we could meet at the city gates and then, Mister Helmsplitta, you and I are going to head to the Temple of Life."

It all sounded so easy.

Taryn was very well acquainted with the deities and the religions of the world. There had been a strong theology element to his training, as the roots of many spells were there somewhere. Taryn himself, of course, had a major, direct-line affinity with the Temple of Nature, being affiliated as he was with the element of Fire - but he had visited the Temple of Life before. He had visited more than just the Shrine of Holiness, though.

A young man had to explore all possibilities open to him, after all.