Dragondown

by Mark Kung and Weston Mcgarrigle, 9/9/19

Feeling that his friend Skorg needed to be cheered up, Fiego decided to make Dragondown a spectacle to be remembered. It wasn't hard to find a dozen young half orcs who were eager to play Skorg. He found that they were also hungry for the people of Waterdeep to see them as more than hooligans and ruffians. He wrote a very brief script and set his Unseen Servants to copying it down for dozens of players. He hired seamstresses to make very cheap costumes that gave vague suggestions of character and borrowed liberally from the Lightsinger Theater’s props department for his paper effigies.
When all was said and done, he made sure that Skorg was out on the balcony of his mansion on Dragondown when one of these groups of street players was performing:
First a horde of children dressed as orcs went screaming down the street, menacing everyone they met. They were told specifically to only pretend to attack people and that they would not get any treats if they actually hit anyone, so they didn’t actually strike anyone. Then a handful of the more responsible children came down the street bearing a badly made effigy of Nas’Turik that did very little to disguise that it was a paper Last Sheaf turkey with a coat of blue paint. The children playing the orcs quelled a bit at the sight, the memory of the attack still fresh in their minds.
From an alleyway stepped two teenagers, one of them dressed in a flamboyant cloak and the other a half-orc with her hair spiked up into Skorg’s signature crimson mohawk.
The weedy boy playing “Fiego” threw his cloak out before him in a melodramatic flourish before declaiming in a strident voice, “Behold, Skorg the Gray Wall, the Wolf of Waterdeep, Giant’s friend the umm ..” he faltered before hastily adding, “the Bane of Duergar! Kneel before your future king and forsake the vile blue worm!”
Then “Skorg” stepped forth and gave a mighty roar, brandishing her wooden weapons.
The horde of children dressed as orcs all gave mighty gasps, one small child even going so far as to swoon with a shrill scream, before throwing down the blue effigy and beginning to kick and stomp it into the dirt. Onlookers were then invited to add to the beating, and not a few faces were grim as they did so.
Fiego winced a little bit at the overacting, but still nudged his large friend with an elbow.
“What do you think, eh? There were so many young half orcs who leaped at the chance to play you, their hero. I had to put on a half dozen more of these productions throughout the city because they kept turning up to audition and I had not the heart to turn them away.”
Was that a glimmer of mirth in Skorg’s eyes or just a trick of the light? Skorg’s chest and shoulders began to rumble gently but then swell into a roaring guffaw! “What a fool I’ve been.” Turning slightly to Fiego and embracing the half-elf with one arm. “My friend, you’re not one for plain speech, but you provide sound counsel. Our defeat in the Sword Mountains was shameful, it made me feel small, but this reminds me how much bigger it all is. Bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than what we’ve been doing...” Skorg leans forward against the railing to better observe the merriment. “Only a horde can fight a horde...”

Drusilia Nightbreeze looked everywhere in the prop department for the paper turkey puppet she had made for Last Sheaf. She had wanted to repurpose it into a greedy Halfling land baron for the Midwinter show, but couldn’t find it. “By Dendar’s fangs, if I find the cad that took that stupid turkey...”

Relations

Protagonists

Fiego Skorg Drusilia

Plot type

Off table scene