After the
encounter with the surreal stasis trap, we continues northwards. Food
was starting to be a problem for try as we might we could barely forage
and hunt enough to reduce our provision consumption by more than a mild
amount. By the Gods! If Razors were meant to hunt we wouldn't have
grocery stores! In any case, we staggered on and hoped to come across a
village or local food mart.
Fortunately, Tev stumbled upon signs of civilization. A two-man
outpost. But what two men these were! Small and furry, a miniature
version of a Care Bear. Ewoks we named them, because their language as
far as we could tell was solely composed of "ewok ewok ewok" in
different inflections and pacings. As we approached the outpost the two
ewok lookouts took one look at us, then dropped their spears and ran
away. Not an auspicious sign.
We continued on, a bit mystified. Coming over a hill we saw a pleasant
valley with a river meandering through it. Along the river was a small
primitive village, tepees and lodges snuggled close together. Already
we could see some sort of commotion in the village as the two lookouts
informed the others of our arrival. Commotion quickly turned to panic
as the Ewoks rushed madly about, fleeing in every direction, though
predominantly into a cave on the other side of the valley.
Never have I seen us cause such a ruckus by our mere appearance.
Obviously the Ewoks didn't approve of our dress. Tok split us up in the
face of the enemy, having each halve of the party on opposite sides of
the river. I told Major Reno that we should chase the Indians fleeing
to the cave, but he wisely decided to keep in contact with Colonel
Custer's command. We entered the almost deserted village, where the
chieftain and his wife waited for us.
"Ewok ewok ewok." "Talk the Queen's English why don'tcha!" "Ewok ewok
ewok!" "Stop yelling at me!" The language barrier was daunting. Tev
requested that we kill them all so that we wouldn't have to listen to
their yammering. But slowly and painfully we started to get the gist of
their story. A story told through pictures and sketches drawn on the
ground. And let me tell you, we don't have an artist among us.
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The ewoks are
a peaceful people, almost harmless. They spend their time
having fun and gathering food. But periodically an evil Death Rabbit
with a band of ruffians descends upon the village. They take some of
the ewok food and burn the rest. The ewoks go hungry and their children
starve. The heinous deeds commited against these innocent creatures
stirred our very hearts to help them. That and the promise of as much
food as we could carry
The only problem was the opposition. Though the raiders' numbers
varied, on average we expected to enounter about 15 of them. With only
seven of us that meant two to one odds. So the next option was to train
the Ewoks to fight. Unfortunately we only had two or three days to whip
these bunch into shape. They didn't even know to sharpen their spears!
It was going to be a long three days. But we could eat as much food as
we wanted and I wasted no time gorging myself. Ahhh.
Still, we developed a plan. A pit trap to hopefully trap one or two
raiders when they went for the food. At the same time we would burst
out and attack the raiders from all sides. We split up our Ewok cohort
into teams of three, with two teams assigned to each of us plus three
roving teams as a reserve. There wasn't really much of a plan, just a
hard fight up ahead that would be decided on the element of surprise.
The bandits arrived. A putrifying Death Bunny leading a hodgepodge and
unsual troop: two Vulkats, three Rezla, two Care Bears, two Razors, and
two Lapadors -- a real menagerie there. The Ewok chief came out and
threatened the Bunny, almost giving away our surprise. But the bandits
laughed and the two Vulkats went into the storage hut, where one of
them fell into a pit.
And then the fight was on. Screaming and clashing and blood everywhere.
Then suddenly I was the only one left standing on our side and I saw no
point in continuing a hopeless cause, so regretfully I surrendered.
Later we learned that it had all been a misunderstanding. The Ewoks
breed like higvul and have no concept of contraception. Each year the
inhabitants of the land come down and destroy as much Ewok food as they
can, for if they didn't then next year the Ewok hordes would overrun
the land and eat everything.
Ok, simple enough to understand, so why don't they just kill all the
Ewoks? That would be cruel they claim. Not any crueler than starving
them every year, I thought. In any case, they let us go, bygones be
bygones. We took as much food as we could carry and bade the gentle
Ewoks goodbye. Strange land, strange customs. I miss home. |