User:JohnB/Fanfiction/A Nocturnal Misadventure

by JohnB

Wouldn't you know it! The Gotterdammerung was to be my grand finale until this evening when a story from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, suddenly popped into my head begging to be written as a Morrowind story, as it lends itself so well to my style.

I must have bumped into this collection of tales when I should have been reading Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" for a humanities course at my university. Of course, dry-as-popcorn ethics can't compete with the ribaldry of Renaissance Italy, so guess which one made the greater impact on my adolescent mind. In his otherwise serious tome, The Renaissance, Will Durant describes The Decameron at some length. Seven young women ranging from 18 to 28 years have gathered at a church in Florence to decide how they are going to survive the plague while everyone around them is literally dropping dead. They decide that as a group they will escape to a country house and wait out the plague as long as they can.

Just then, three young dandies come to meet their lovers, the three of whom happen to be among the seven women, and the plan is modified to include the men in the country outing. Supplies are packed up and they make their way to the house. Along the way, a "fight club" rule is set in place: nobody is to speak of the plague or of anything dreary or negative. Each member of the group is to entertain the others with a story every day for the ten days they are together, thus 100 stories, more or less ribald, are to be produced: "the ladies kept up such a laughing that you might have drawn all their teeth."

However, Will Durant concludes: "After recounting a score of stories that would today be unfit for a male gathering, he makes one of the men say to the ladies: 'I have noted no act, no word, in fine nothing blameworthy, either on your part or on that of us men.' ...The author (Boccaccio) acknowledges some criticism in the license he has used, and especially because 'I have in sundry places written the truth about the friars.'

Even so, Boccaccio later came to regret having written and published the Decameron. As a student of ancient Greek, of which there weren't many at that time, he was a humanist in his own right, and Durant gives kudos to both Petrarch and Boccaccio for founding the Renaissance. Nevertheless, Boccaccio couldn't shake the reputation of being the writer of dirty stories. After all, I can count his work worthy of reading on just one finger.

"...Hans Sachs and Lessing, Moliere and La Fontaine, Chaucer and Shakespeare, took leaves from it admiringly. It will be enjoyed when all of Petrarch's poetry has entered the twilight realm of the praised unread." (Will Durant, The Renaissance [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953], pp. 30, 34) Wow, that's the year I was born!

In the original Day 2, Novel 5, a young man named Andreuccio comes from Perugia to Naples to buy a horse for his father. He is spotted by an adventuress who catches sight of the sizable money bag hanging from his belt. She lures him into her house claiming to be his long-lost sister. There he's made to feel at home, but my recheck of the online story was unable to ascertain if his trip to the loo was booby-trapped or if a misstep sent him plunging into the communal cesspit. Therefore, in my story, his misadventure only figuratively lands him in the poop. Anyway, from then on there is never a dull moment for him.

Andre-ucho was the son of a Bosmer netch keeper in the West Gash region who supplied netch leather to armorers. A rather large order came in from the Bosmer arms dealer in Balmora, so Andre-ucho was sent with a wagon piled high with the best quality leather that promised to bring in a hefty return. He was instructed to take a handful of shekels for his own entertainment at the "Eight Plates" and some cheap lodging somewhere before making the return journey the following day. But he was to avoid trouble and return with the bulk of their money.

The transaction brought in 200 drakes paid out in two money bags. As these were too heavy to hang from his belt, he tied them together with a rope and slung them over his shoulder. He had a better idea than the "Eight Plates"--Desele's "House of Earthly Delights"--so he left the wagon parked in the Balmora town square and took the silt strider to Suran.

He was gaping transfixed at the dancing girls when he felt a soft hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked up into the sweetest Breton face he'd ever seen. Of course, you don't see too many of these in the West Gash.

"Howdy, Cowboy!" she cooed.

He gulped to try and swallow the lump in his throat.

"Uh, hi!"

"You know, I can show you more than that over at my place," she said bending toward him in a low-cut dress that had certainly come off the rack in a risque game plug-in.

The rustic rube that he was, it didn't take long for him to follow her into another house, and soon she was lying underneath a satin sheet as he hopped on one foot to wrestle off a pant leg. He was down only to his loincloth when he jumped under the sheet.

Suddenly, there was a loud stomping up heavy boots up the stairs.

"WHERE IS HE?!" a roaring voice bellowed.

"Oh, no! My husband! He's going to kill you if he finds you here! Quickly, out the window!"

"My things!"

"There's no time! I'll hand them out to you!"

As soon as he was out the window, it slammed shut and was latched from the inside.

There's something bracing about standing in your skivvies in the chilly evening breeze, but Andre-ucho shook more from fear as he considered what had just happened and how to explain this loss to his dad. He waited hoping she would still be nice and return his money bags, but the light in the room went out, and he realized he was now in deep escrementi...merda!

He found a stairway leading down to the street level, and when he heard two strangers approach, an Orc and an Altmer, he jumped into an empty crate and crouched low. They saw him anyway and came to see what was the matter. He stood up in the crate and told them he'd just been robbed.

"You say in this house?" the Orc inquired, and Andre-ucho nodded.

The two strangers laughed uproariously.

"It appears, my friend, that Millie the Moocher has thoroughly cleaned you out!" the Orc said wiping tears from his eyes. "You fell for the old 'my-husband'll-kill-you' scam."

"But if it's any consolation to you," the Altmer added, "at least she left you with the means to cover your private parts. She could have left you standing here like a bewitched Nord."

"Listen, this is a rather compact fellow," the Orc said to the Altmer. "Maybe he can help us."

"Hmmm," the Altmer responded narrowing his eyes at Andre-ucho.

There was no doubt that he had just fallen in with two robbers out to commit a heist as they were shouldering tote bags containing mallets and crowbars, and the question was how they were going to divide the spoils three ways instead of just two. At least this is what Andre-ucho guessed was this cut-throat's concern. No crime had been committed yet, so it wasn’t too late for him to save his own neck.

"Look, all I need are some clothes and the fare to get back to Balmora. I'll pay you guys back later."

"Hey, we'll take care of you!" the Altmer said feigning camaraderie and clapping him on the shoulder. "Come with us."

The two were on their way to the Hlaalu Canton in Vivec with Andre-ucho in tow. A Hlaalu house father had recently died and was interred in the Hlaalu crypt beneath the underworks. Unlike most non-believers in the Tribunal and the Daedric Pantheon, this elder wanted to be interred as if he were to enjoy the hereafter anyway, like King Tut. In his spacious sarcophagus were to be placed the precious possessions he would take with him and continue to use in the hereafter. The Orc and the Altmer gave an account of the splendiferous treasures rumored to be had, but they kept quiet about a ring set with a diamond as big as an almond — a rather large almond. Furthermore, the ring itself was of exquisite Daedric craftsmanship and was said to contain a myriad constant-effect enchantments.

As both of them were too big to fit through a crawl space they could make by raising the heavy stone lid of the sarcophagus, Andre-ucho would do just fine. And fortunately for them, House Hlaalu had stipulated that this house father see to the security of his own tomb, and with his not having done so, no Hlaalu guards were posted in the crypt. So there was the huge sarcophagus that dwarfed all the other coffins and sarcophagi, and nobody was there to raise the alarm should anybody pillage it. The big guys set to work with crowbars to lift the stone lid high enough for Andre-ucho to wedge a piece of masonry into the gap for a crawl space wide enough for him to enter.

"Upsy-daisy!" the two joked as they lifted Andre-ucho into the crawl space and helped him wriggle his way in.

It was dark and smelly to be sure, but the fantabulous wealth helped him forget all that. He set to work handing out all manner of gold and silver utensils, Daedric weapons, jeweled daggers, enchanted amulets, and what not through the gap to the two partners below.

"A ring! Can you find a ring?!"

Nobody had said anything about a ring, and this put him on the alert. He felt around in the darkness, found it, and placed it on his own finger.

"No...no ring!"

"Are you sure?! Check again!"

"Still no!"

"Then rot with the dead!"

Before Andre-ucho could do anything, the masonry was pulled out and the sarcophagus lid clapped shut.

Andre-ucho was the least bit surprised by this, considering this is what they would have done even if he had surrendered the ring. He thought if they were able to raise the lid with the poor leverage of the crowbars, he certainly should be able to push upward with his feet and jigger it to the side to let him crawl out again. However, the lid proved to be somewhat heavier than he expected, and he doubted if his ankles were powerful enough to do this. For the first time he was starting to feel a panic like none he'd ever felt in his all-too-short life. However, unbeknownst to him, one of the myriad enchantments was Fortify Luck 100%.

Suddenly there was a noise outside, and Andre-ucho listened intently. Had the two former partners returned to take the ring by force? Andre-ucho waited in trepidation as he heard the stone lid scrape against the sarcophagus as it was being forced sideways. Fresh air flowed in, and he could breathe easily again. He waited quietly as the crawl space got wider. The voices outside indicated that this was a new group of tomb-raiders who were totally unaware that they'd arrived too late.

By and by, a hand and then an arm appeared through the crawl space. Andre-ucho took hold of the arm and yanked it as if to pull the intruder into the sarcophagus. The intruder's face banged against the lid hard enough to break a tooth, and he let out an ear-piercing scream.

"IT'S ALIVE!" he yelled.

Andre-ucho released the arm, and the intruder fell backward. There was the sound of feet scurrying to get out of the crypt.

He waited in case yet another team of grave robbers came. The coast was clear, so he crawled out of the sarcophagus and made his way out.

Andre-ucho came home a bit prematurely gray. He appeared somewhat older and wiser from his two-day adventure, and his father was glad city life had finally taught this goober some street smarts. The ring helped pay off all their outstanding debts and also helped pay for Andre-ucho's training to become a netch-leather armorer, thereby keeping all their production in the family. An amount was also set aside to pay for a mind healer to cure his nightmares of being buried alive.