ziggy3k

What line from the America the Beautiful best describes your sex life?

feet first

What will be the first piece of technology to gain sentience?

the last known vestiges of humanity

What do you call a bullfighter in East Texas?

Pink hiking boots

How do you catch a feral lathe?

A binding agreement

What's Dolly Parton's nickname in Paris?

One crazy bat!

What did you name your junk?

He's full of regret.

I was seeing it more as a shnozz shadow but I see your point. In fact, that makes him/her seem a little more dangerous... like an evil Divine.

I don't usually do anything real cartoony but I saw something in a smudge and ended up with this...

I call her Fat Head

Why did the Coroner get fired?

Six-pack abs

What starts with Mister but only ends in Opus 50% of the time?

Fifty dollars and a pack of pre-chewed gum.

What's better than shaving with walrus tusks?

Solid gold shaft

What did you use to put that Stryper poster up?

an all-tuba composition

What does it take to get a drink around here?

Seven, six and nine

Which girlfriend stole your car?

A fat lip

* * *

The descending arc of the suns cast a brilliant array of color across the billowing clouds thus drawing all eyes to the resulting beauty. Of the four travelers, Pencimyss was perhaps to most delighted as she gasped and cooed from atop Grumblethump's shoulders. Isavol, periodically glancing over her shoulder to the pair, could not help but notice their polar opposition. To imagine such a duo in prior days would have been a leap of fantasy beyond the capability of even the greatest poet or bard. A bright, sunny, golden child of the fairest, forest-dwelling elves befriended and beloved to a dark, massive, stone-hewn beast of war bred by deities of entropy and destruction was an unheard of thing. Of course, that was based purely upon the visual if and historical perspective. To know them and to be touched by their equally unblemished souls, one could certainly understand their friendship. In fact, one could go so far as to say they were meant for each other. One so delicate and the other so stalwart, one so wise in youth and the other so childishly optimistic in the face of torment, each completed the other to form a most unique and attractive bond. One could not help but want to be a part of their mutuality. And with such a thought, the Green Sorceress sighed. Turning to look to Tantrifax's back, as he scouted a distance ahead, she smiled inwardly and outwardly, though both would go unseen.

A giggle from Pencimyss was too common a thing of which to take much notice, as was her laughter and playful commentary. “You must really like that cloud, Grumby,” she chuckled. “What do you see?” Isavol continued to walk as she listened. “Grumby?” The elven lass spoke with a note of concern. It slowed the sorceress' step. “Grumby... you look funny.” That finally forced Isavol to stop and turn. Looking to the ogre and elf behind her, she saw what Pencimyss saw. Grumblethump stood in stoic stillness, a strange, unblinking stare upon his face directed unmistakably at Isavol herself. But then, just as swiftly as she had turned about, the ogre stepped forward. He blinked somewhat confusedly and looked to the girl on his shoulder.

“You're silly!” Pencimyss declared. At this the smiled and his smile was returned. But as their march recommenced, Isavol was left to wonder what had just gone through Grumblethump's mind. She looked to the fiery, churning clouds and pondered their mesmeric patterns. Could such a sight captivate a simple ogre? And if the clouds were the culprit, why had he been staring at her?

“There's a good spot, m'lady!” Tantrifax announced a short distance ahead. He pointed towards a gathering of boulders in an otherwise open field.

Upon nearing the satyr, Isavol said, “The Dale of Graves.”

A bit unsure of her words, Tantrifax replied, “Beg you pardon, madam sorceress?”

Waving a hand in the direction of the boulders, she explained, “This place is called, the Dale of Graves. It is said that great champions of ages past were buried here and that these boulders are their headstones.”

An astonished elven girl spoke from behind them saying, “They must have been giants.”

“But good giants,” Grumblethump assured both Pencimyss and himself. “Huh, pretty witch?”

Isavol smiled back at her lumbering companion and answered, “Yes, indeed, sweet Grumblethump. They were good giants. And even if they weren't, they've long since left this realm.”

“In any event, their headstones will make fine windbreaks as well as being something to lean against,” Tantrifax settled, moving toward the immense rocks. Giving Grumblethump one more curious glance, Isavol soon followed and that night they camped in the Dale of Graves amid the supposed bones of fallen demigods and shared tales of mystery.

What's the gayest tribal name you've ever heard?

A unified front

I've posted this one before...

Impaled

[ QUOTE ]
Here's mine.Hurts!

And that fail video is a real lolfilm.


//Jack

[/ QUOTE ]

ROFL! Good thing you didn't get poked in the eye with that branch!

On a bit of a roll... but still not satisfied....

Tzimisce?

Yeah I can't thank Snow_Globe or Bert enough. Pixelperfect ist wunderbar! I'm amazed, inspired, invigorated and ultimately HOOKED. I'm on dialup so I don't have what you'd call instant access to those podcasts but I've been downloading 1 a night as I sleep and he's already woke me up to uses of the various tools I had never even noticed before! As such... in just a few short days I've managed this much:

A further installment of the previous image

and

A new Grumblethump pic!

* * *

Even while moving as stiffly as if his every limb were bound in splints, the ogre would not relinquish his hold on the petite, elven girl. Lowering her from his shoulders only when ducking through doorways, he had resolved himself to never again hear such sadness come from such a beautifully innocent creature. And by his logic, in order to keep her from falling into melancholy, he would always keep her near and thusly protect from harm. Isavol could see his reasoning in action without his saying a word but she did not have the desire to dissolve his protective fantasy. Of course the child could not be shielded from further grief. Certainly tragedy would visit a being with such longevity as an elf many times over without even recounting the terror through which she had already survived. But, Isavol decided, let the gentle ogre have his duty. Both he and Pencimyss would mature into the truth soon enough.

For by the next sunrise they would be leaving for the court of King Tzaemaard, in the city-state of Firdraasmoth. Word had come that war was afoot and the counsel of the Green Sorceress was needed. She was certain this meant that the Book of Terrors had indeed fallen into the hands of the Dark Templars as she had feared. The unholy knights of the Chaos Gods were the only beings in all of Hyanthis who could or would even dare to invoke the vile magic scrawled upon its pages. Wrought with malice and penned with venomous will, it was said that the spells therein seduced, warped and perverted the mind of both the caster and victim alike; that once read from, it became an undeniable vice from which all sense of self was lost. It was, as Isavol understood, a damnable link to the Dark Deities themselves. When last it was opened, thousands of lives met gruesome, agonizing, maddened ends. Even more were left morbid, invalid, vacant husks; their psyches torn asunder while their bodies withered in such absence. The thought of returning to those traumatic days made her shiver.

Still what troubled her most was that the horrible book had been in her care when it was lost. It was true that Grumblethump and Tantrifax had failed to recapture the terrible libram after reaching the very heels of the thieves who took it but those two could not be blamed. The fault was her own. She had grown complacent and selfish, forgetting completely at times that she had ever stowed the book away with the spirits of the the Lofted Valley. So engrossed in her mystical forays and enchanted endeavors was she that she had even ignored the chilling shrill call of the dead guarding the sinister volume as their cries reverberated across the astral realm. Sadly, by the time she turned her attention to their alarm, the ghosts of the misty mountaintop vale had been exorcised and the Book of Terrors was swiftly en route to Quithmat and the Dark Temple. She doubted the King knew this much and she was hesitant to admit it but she could not afford another mistake. She would heed the summons and aide the noble monarch in what was sure to be warfare fought in a way unseen by mankind for generations. Alone in the world perhaps, only her mystically endowed youth allowed her such venerable insight.

“Why do they call you Grumblethump?” Pencimyss chimed, drawing Isavol from her introspection and back to the present.

The big ogre looked to the ceiling for a moment but ultimately shrugged and replied, “Why they call you Pencimyss?”

“That's just a name, silly. But your name is words put together to make a name. Like when you call me Gold-hair. See?”

He seemed to think on it a moment longer but once again only shrugged, “Is what they call Grumblethump before me set momma rabbit free. Then they call Grumblethump: Rabbit-spawn. Me no know why am Grumblethump. Just am Grumblethump.” A third shrug cemented his conviction to his ignorance.

“Well they must have given you that name when you were a baby, so maybe you were a grumpy baby,” the elven lass surmised.

“That's hard to imagine,” Isavol noted with a smile.

“Hardly,” Tantrifax interrupted, looking up from the doll he was whittling for Pencimyss. “Ogrynn children... or cubs... or larva... whatever they're called, are just as mean as a full grown one and twice as dumb.”

Grumblethump sneered at the satyr but did not need to respond as Pencimyss came swiftly to his defense. “Hush you!” she demanded. “How would you know anyway? Maybe you were once an ogre baby's nanny! Is that it?”

Isavol laughed and Tantrifax had to chuckle a bit himself but he did reply by saying, “No, I was never a nanny. But I've been on some raids into ogrynn caves and I've come across some of their young.” He pointed to Grumblethump with his whittling knife and said, “It was long enough ago, I might have even laid eyes on you when you were just a wee Grumby.”

Grumblethump scoffed, “Bloodstones squish sneaky goat-men. You no see baby me.”

Tantrifax laughed and was about to respond when Isavol asserted, “Come now. Prepare your traveling gear. We make haste for Firdraasmoth.”

All eyes turned at once with startled expressions to the Green Sorceress. But of course it was the word-wielding Tantrifax that asked what they all wondered, “Why are we going there?”

Still unable to admit her guilt or burden them with guilt of their own, she held back her fears and simply said, “I have been summoned to Tzaemaard's palace. At sunrise we go.”

New Grumblethump Image!

Thanks, y'all... and I will most certainly try.

* * *

“See now? He's gone nowhere but to sleep,” Isavol described to the elven child in her arms. Before her, upon a straw-matted slab of granite, lay the enormous ogre. Quite unconscious and oblivious to the three figures at his bedside, he sporadically quivered, jostled and mumbled incoherently.

“I wonder what he's dreaming about,” said Pencimyss, her previously saddened face having turned to a tender smile upon seeing her champion lying there.

“Undoubtedly he struggles against great adversity and penultimate danger for the welfare of some small but lovely creature,” Isavol teased, nuzzling playfully into Pencimyss' neck.

The tiny girl squealed and giggled in unexpected delight at the sorceress' uncharacteristic antics but managed to reply, “No! He's in a vast meadow of wildflowers... jumping and tumbling his way from pretty flower to pretty flower, all the while collecting them to put in my hair!”

“Yes! That must be it!” Isavol agreed.

“Grumblethump? Picking flowers? With those boulders for hands?” Tantrifax scoffed. “You'll be getting a handful of pulp, my wee elven lass. Don't try putting that in your hair.”

Pencimyss stuck her tongue out at the satyr before answering, “He won't crush them! Because you're seeing to it that he's careful. In his dream, you're walking right beside him!” She said the latter with a solid nod to emphasize her certainty.

“Oh am I? Well in that case I hope I'm telling him not to collect anymore giant hammers. What a pain in my back that was!” He turned to look at the massive weapon leaned against a corner of the room. The elongated, iron cube, laden with moss and stained with ogre's blood, leaned lazily in the corner of the room on its trunk-like shaft. “Imagine me, tiny me, very-much-not-a-giant me, dragging that massive bludgeon from the Howling Mountains back to here. And all while he limped and hobbled his way home from injuries given to him by that very hammer!” Tantrifax shook his head at the ogre. “He must get attached to every little scrap he comes across in this world,” he noted wryly, giving Pencimyss a mischievious wink. He received another view of her tongue in return and he laughed.

“I'm not scrap,” she snapped. “I'm a lost treasure! A rare gem! Had not Grumby found me, no one would ever know I existed. And then you'd be sorry.”

The satyr pursed his lips and nodded, saying, “Agreed.”

“A rare gem, eh?” Isavol pondered. “Certainly that you are. But when you speak as such, I forget your youth.”

“Well she is an elf, m'lady,” Tantrifax answered. “Chances are she's not much younger than you... as young as you are m'lady.” Another mischievous grin accompanied his words.

The Green Sorceress answered his wry smile with a playfully wicked one of her own before looking back to Pencimyss and asking her, “So how old are you? Twenty turns of the seasons? Thirty turns?” The tiny girl shrugged, lowering her head and gaze as whimsy was snatched away by the recollection of her prior existence. “Yes, I suppose mountain giants aren't keen to keep track of the calender. But if you had to guess, what would you say?” Again she shrugged. “Well how old were you when the giant took you?"

“I forget,” the now sheepish child muttered. She began to sniff and then to heave and sob and all at once she burst into tears declaring, “I don't even remember what mother looked like!”

Tantrifax winced with empathy at the child's pain as Isavol hugged her closer to her breast. “Oh, sweet Pencimyss... I'm so sorry. How very rude and foolish of me. Please believe I meant no harm.”

“That horrible giant! [sob] He tore down our home... tore it down from the trees! [sob] My brothers and sisters! My mother and father! [sob] He killed them all! Everyone I loved. Everyone who loved me! He killed them all for no reason! [sob] Why didn't he kill me? Why?”

The flood of rage exuding from such a minuscule creature was overwhelming. Neither Isavol or Tantrifax could keep the tears from their eyes. The sorceress, still clutching the girl in her arms, swayed gently from side to side and allowed the child her grief. Certainly this had been a long time in coming. Broken by involuntary jolts of sorrow and pain, Pencimyss declared, “I wish [sob] he [sob] would [sniff] have killed [sob] me too.”

“There, there,” she cooed. “Don't say such things.”

“It's true,” Pencimyss murmured. Lifting her head from Isavol's now dampened shoulder she said quite plainly, “I would be happier if I were dead.”

“Grumblethump wouldn't,” a deep, stony voice entoned. “Grumblethump would be sad, sad, sad.” Pencimyss gasped and twisted in Isavol's arms to find her ogrynn champion looking up at her somberly.

“You're awake!” she shrieked with glee and began to squirm with vigor.

Grumblethump nodded slowly and told her, “Grumblethump no sleep when Gold-hair cry.”

Her fitful, joyful squirming became too much. Isavol happily released her and Pencimyss leaped upon Grumblethump's broad torso. Wrapping herself around him as best she could with such tiny arms, she began to cry again but this time the tears were warmed by her love for the ogre.

Sweet!

Wow! Thanks!

Edit: Though it looks like I'll be needing to buy a pen tablet. I've just been using a mouse thus far.