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12. Spume could learn a thing or two from these folks.
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13. Usually this is as straightforward as animal head/human body, but there are exceptions: the unpleasant Toadman is simply a large toad with human feet, while the Badgerman resembles a human with the weird, beanlike nose of the well-known woodland creature.
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14. The tragic Anteaterman must spend all day huffing termites through his stupid little pipe of a face in order to avoid dying of starvation, while the Slothman’s brain is completely unable to cope with the speed at which his human limbs move, and spends most of his time staring sadly into the middle distance as his body thrashes and flails.
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15. A moon-moon, to be precise.
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16. Well, it’s not really, is it Floyd? It would have been really fucking simple if you’d actually listened to the briefing, and I wouldn’t have had to beg them to let you free. – ES
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17. One: ‘snippies’ is really not OK – we’ve been through this. Two: you’re the one who’s confused, mate. By and large, all Animalmen identify as male regardless of anatomy, so they’re men. That’s it. I don’t care how progressive you think you’re being it’s their decision. I wouldn’t mind, but they told you this again and again, Floyd. – ES
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18. Well, that explains why you were so anxious to know whether cheetah bites were infectious that one time, doesn’t it? – ES
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19. Around 72 per cent of the population.
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20. Rather predictably, the combination of amoral magic users working with no constraints and tombs full of mummified warriors has led to a serious problem with the Undead on Grondorra. It is a problem to which the solution, as usual, is Barbarians.
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21. Please, for the love of God, stay clear of the citadel of Wrigglar the Worrying, in the western Vathek. She’s spent the last thousand years trying to perfect ‘a new kind of worm’ (her words, not mine; looked like a normal worm to me), and will tell you about it at length if you so much as make eye contact with her.
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22. Eliza objects to me lumping all of Grondorra’s fauna under the category of ‘monsters’, but I’m sorry – even the slugs here have jaws full of venomous, razor-sharp fangs. It’s a monster world, and that’s that.
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23. Keen naturalists can read up on Grondorran wildlife in ‘adventure textbooks’ such as Fistfight Kalligan’s Bestiary for Bastards and Ernst Blunch’s Grondorra!: How I Fought Everything There.
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24. Fascinatingly, the dinosaurs are not surviving relics of a bygone era, as was first presumed. Recent discoveries of advanced ruins in Xular now tell a far more interesting story, of a vanished society that just would not stop building hubristic dinosaur theme parks, despite their safety record. It seems at some point they went one theme park over the line, and while the dinosaurs survived, their creators did not.
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25. In fairness, they probably won’t even think once, since they’ve got the neural architecture of a child’s toy calculator.
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26. The dinosaurs of Xular are so cosmically, elementally stupid that they can literally be baffled to death. I once saw a Lizardman confront a Megacarnossus with nothing more than his own scaly hands; as the rot-reeking abyss of the beast’s mouth descended from the clouds, he simply clicked his fingers to focus the monster’s attention, and performed the classic illusion where it looks like someone has pulled off their own thumb. The dinosaur stopped in its tracks and made a noise like a seal being hit in the gut with an iron girder. Its grape-sized eyes rolled up in their sockets, and it keeled over stone dead, blood trickling from its ear-holes. It had died of confusion.
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27. Waggly, mind-controlling mushrooms, Floyd. – ES
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28. By amazing coincidence, this translates exactly to ‘gravy’, because that’s what the drink is.
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29. If you’re wondering: 1) yes, mammalian Animalmen produce milk, 2) yes, I’ve tried it, and 3) no, I don’t want to talk about it.
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30. Others will respond to a challenge by battering a spoon into your heart with the heel of their hand, however, so there’s an element of luck involved.
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31. Interestingly, the Barbarian word for ‘theft’ – Yuth – is the same word used for ‘harvest’.
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32. Pronounced like a cartoon character chugging a bottle of oil.
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33. After all, the wheel was only invented recently – and it’s a single giant stone wheel, used by the Barbarian king Qelzadd to crush prisoners of war.
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34. Think about this for more than a few minutes and the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance involved will start to fold your brain over on itself like grim meat origami. Several economists have travelled to Grondorra to try to comprehend the Barbarian financial mindset: without exception, all have either been slaughtered or gone completely mad and become warriors.
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35. As you wait for said moment, you might as well enjoy the sheer ineptitude of the rest of the ceremony, which is easily mistakable for pantomime.
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36. The end of the trip rather depends on how well you get along with the would-be sacrificial victim. It’s traditional for rescuers to fall in love with rescuees, but this is by no means compulsory – if there’s just no chemistry, or either party isn’t feeling it, things will likely end with an awkward peck on the cheek and a sheepish wave as you walk in opposite directions across the plains.
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37. The poor Space Men. Although I pity them, I truly loathe them.
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38. You know what they say: ‘What happens on Grondorra, IS WEIGHED UP AT TIME’S BITTER END BY THE IRON HAND OF GRUM.’
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CHAPTER
