The Case of the Problematic Piano
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 25154
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Then, one fateful day, during an act of sexual congress, Lord Frederigo D'Honaire was hit by a giant piano that had been dropped from what was later determined to be an altitude of about 500 feet. (This was known because the guard in the highest tower of Castle D'Honaire, which was that height, had seen it materialize at approximately his level of vision.) Naturally, this killed him.
The apparent murder (for giant pianos do not generally appear out of nowhere and crush major lords to death in the natural course of events) of Lord Frederigo D'Honaire created quite a stir in Allaria, although not many people mourned his passing. His funeral was held seven days later, mainly attended by masseurs, whores, lemonade manufacturers, and others who would be much the poorer for Fred's death. His father was quite proud of him. "He died a death truly worthy of a D'Honaire," said Drederick at the funeral. The Allarian police now had to deal with the question of just who had killed Lord Frederigo D'Honaire and why. The piano was a perfeclty normal piano, of Califiean make. It had no magical traces to point to who had used it. Many people had claimed that this assassination was carried out by the Aqualarians in one of their invisible airplanes, but they were largely ignored as cranks. Reputable experts agreed that this had to be the work of a mage. But which one? It was decided that there were three mages who had the motive to carry out such a deed. The first was Zerm the Unspeakable, an infamous and wicked rogue mage who was said to be in league with Duke Zular Mollari. He might have planned to help Zular take Fred's lands. The second was Scott Chen, a psychotic entity of immense power who had taken up residence in the Fens of Canmoor. His motive was mainly that he enjoyed killing people for no reason. The suspect who most people found the most probable, however, was Fred's brother Jarlath. His father considered him a disgrace to the D'Honaire family, and rightly so--although he was only 15, he had saved Allaria from certain destruction four times. Once from the Hespaniards, once from the Orcs, once from the Attari, and once from the fearsome mystic tribe of Zkgeonerou from the lost continent of Iowa. In spite of that, however, he was must less famous and popular (especially with women) than Fred. What's more, his conduct was a serious bone of contention between him and his father. This was not the D'Honaire way. Jarlath certainly enjoyed drunken carousing and whoring, but actually believed in not necessarily running away from big nasty sharp-toothed dangerous things, at least if other people's lives were at stake. His father, however, found this absolutely intolerable, as going off on long quests to save the world and actually trying to succeed in them gave him less time for the truly important things in life. Such as drunken carousing and whoring. Three days before the murder, Dred D'Honaire had said that Jarlath was no son of his and threatened to disinherit him. He also called him a "dirty stinking warlock," which he naturally did not like, although he was indeed not only a warlock but a dirty and stinking one too, as this was an age when bathing was considered rather disreputable. What's more, after the death of Lord Fred, Jarlath inherited his villa in North Umbria, with both of its whorehouses and all seventy of its lemonade stands. Therefore, a month after the murder, Jarlath D'Honaire son of Dred D'Honaire (although the latter was not too glad of it) was arrested for murder.
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Knight Random
3/21/2003 4:25:55 PM
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