THE STORY OF
THE GREEN
KNIGHT
And so, one day, it came to pass that as Thein and his brave knights
were feasting, a large man clad all in green entered upon the hall saying:
“Let any man who is brave enough take up the challenge I present,
for I have heard many a time that the Order of Thorn are the bravest men in
the land, and that no man can ever shake their unwaving loyalty and duty,
commitment and honesty, and--”
To which a response came...in the form of a piece of bread, soaked in
butter, which bounced off the man’s head and landed on the ground. When the
laughter quieted, a skinny knight ran over and picked the bread up.
“Can’t let good food go to waste, sir,” he apologized quietly.
The man went on:
“Are any of you men brave enough to undertake my challenge?”
Paslen the Knight answered:
“Depends on what it is.”
The green clad man replied:
"Ah! I, too, am a knight, and my challenge is only for the brave!
It is so great that only a knight could undertake it.”
At which time Glendarin the Dwarf replied:
“I don’t know... I once saw a peasant who was blind-drunk kill a
four-hundred-foot-long Polydemon by running up to it and jabbing at it with
a pitchfork.”
The green knight resumed:
“I challenge you to trade blows with me. With the weapon of your
choice.”
Thein thus replied:
“You must be mad! All of us against you?!?”
The Green Knight spaketh:
“What? No! One of you against me!”
To which Paslen replied:
“Why? Afraid you’d lose?”
The Green Knight answered:
“No! Look: One of you, and you can strike first.”
The reply, from Paslen, went:
“I’ll do it. The bugger’s not going to leave till one of us brains
him, bloody stupid waste though it is.”
The Knight brightened:
“Pick your weapon, young knight, and let us get under way!”
Noticing the look of triumph in the Green Knight’s eyes, Paslen chose
his weapon:
“All right, then. The IX Crossbow! I get the first shot, right?”
The Green Knight answered:
“Of course, good knight, but I expect my opportunity later.”
Paslen laughed:
“Ha!”
And picked up his bow, drew back the six crosspieces, aimed it at the
Green Knight, and fired.
The Green Knight screamed:
“What the HE--”
The Knights ducked beneath the table.
Paslen asked:
“Where’d he go?”
To which Cedric, the blacksmith, answered:
“It vaporized him! Wow! I thought it only did that to elephants!
And it took out some of the floor! And most of the wall! And the ceiling! And the building next to us! And it kept going!”
And so the adventure of the Green Knight was ended by Paslen the
Opportunist with the IX Crossbow. Paslen was later forced to pay for the
wall, ceiling, and some of the floor. The shockwave ended twenty miles away
in a farmhouse, which, surprisingly, was hit so hard that it only has two walls, which are twice as thick as they were originally. He charged these
to the Bloody Stupid Waste Account. Upon later inquiries, it was discovered that Paslen had no intentions of waiting around for the other’s turn.
“That would have been really dumb, if you ask me.”