Ragnarr Stories: 18 Years Ago

(You can pretty much assume that if you've spent enough time drinking with Ragnarr, you've gotten some or all of these stories at least once.)

To be honest, I don't know what took the bastard so long to call for me. By then I'd been in Sigil for... Hel, I don't know. Too damn long. Long enough that I was almost happy to get called up to run errands for a planar bastard, just for something to break up the damn monotony. A change of scenery, if you like, even if the scenery's just going to be an arseload of mist.

I hardly even remember what he sent to fetch me. Some kind of bloody water thing, I think. Like an elemental, but with four legs and it likes to piss on your leg. It showed up with a note in it's mouth. Walked up, dropped it in front of me, and then just sat there, wagging it's blood tail like it was having the time of it's life.

It was a bad joke. The bastard liked to fetch. He'd been sent to fetch me.

Dogwater had a good head for portals, though. Led me up (or down, or whatever bloody direction) and out of sigil and right to his master. Or at least so I gather. I can't say I've ever seen the bastard, but there was a lot of wind and he was talking in my head, so I've got to assume he was around there somewhere.

It sounded simple, as these things do. Go through a portal. On the other side was going to be a water elemental, some representative of the Water plane that Misty had dealings with. Misty had been having a few wee border skirmishes, and he wanted me to negotiate for him. Give some demands, ask for some things in return, all that shite.

I told him I was a rubbish negotiator, of course. He didn't listen. Maybe I should have.

He gave me some crap to breathe water and swim about, so I gathered that I was going to be underwater. Then up the portal goes, through I go, and big surprise, I'm in an ocean.

Where some other talk-in-your-head type bastard asks me who the hell I am, and where is that misty bastard he was negotiating with.

Not the best way to start a negotiation right? Him yelling. Me telling him he could bloody well calm down, or I'd break my mace off in his arse, him saying things about Pelor I wouldn't take from my own mother, all that sort of thing. Somewhere in there, I managed to deliver the misty bastards requests, which may have sounded a wee bit more like demands when I said them, and then things got to be very, very rough sailing, so to speak.

I'm glad to say that I'd learned enough about planar traveling to get away, anyway. Misty'd given me a fork for the plane of mist, and it got me there alright. Which didn't seem to surprise Misty much, as I found Dogwater waiting for me on the other side, waiting for me to follow him.

I told Misty how badly things had gone. I felt like an ass, right? I mean, as far as I know, I had just started a bloody war.

So it came as a wee bit of a surprise when Misty laughed, told me I had done a great job, I could keep the gear, and he sent me on my way. Didn't seem the slightest bit pissed.

Somehow, it was only about then that I figured it out, and it wasn't until a hell of a lot later that I learned the rest of it.

Bastard wanted me to start a war. He knew I would be rubbish at negotiation, and that was what he wanted. But he couldn't be too open about a snub. I mean, the watery bastard was a planar lord and all. If he could send someone powerful, like some kind of representative of a god, he could claim it was all in good faith. Swear the whole war bit wasn't his fault.

It worked, too. The bastard.