Saving Captain Snickwick

The following resulted from a failed 'reverse carousing' roll by Snickwick. Naraoia jumped in, adding Pritchard Hood, and added Naked Samurai's character Hanna Darrowkin. Each author is as indicated.

Initial Reverse Carouse

[This was Quendalon's response to Lord Bodacious's request]

Snickwick will reverse carouse in Malinbois, leveraging one jar of Leprechaun Urine and his Gnomish craftsmanship to manufacture and sell wonderful knickknacks!

Snickwick creates a number of intricate and delightful toys that will assuredly sell for a pretty penny once he returns to normal size. Which should happen right about now.

Right. About. Now.

Hm. Why is he not returning to normal? Is it some strange interaction with native gnomish magic? Is it the curse of the leprechaun? Who knows? All Snickwick can tell is that he remains very tiny, and those cats are looking mighty hungry.

Hold! Who is this figure towering over him? What is he saying in his booming voice? "This tiny manikin will surely be worth a pretty penny in Glantri City." And is that a sack he holds?

Horrors! He has swept Snickwick up into a sack! The miniature gnome is jounced around in hempen darkness. Until… are those the sounds of hoofbeats?

Off to Glantri City! They call it the big city… and never has this been more true!

(You rolled a 2, but your saving throw was a 4: failure! Feel free to fill us in on the details of your trip to Glantri City, and to set things up for the possibility of escape — maybe with the aid of your fellow PCs!)

Saving Captain Snickwick, Prologue

[Lord Bodacious, author]

… inside a hempen sack. Snickwick the Gnome (shrunken to the size of a field mouse) is crumpled into a heap, jostled among sordid gears, bobbins and carved wooden geegaws. The diminuative sprite wears a long gown … apparently cut from the toe of a red and white striped stocking….

A more suspicious creature might have seen it coming. That creepy harlequin Luc de Luc, always looking at him askance during his teatime visits with the courtiers of Malinbois. Glaring with, each "oooh" scowling at every "aaah" as Snickwick titillated the courtly matrons with his peculiar Gnomish wit.

The attentions of these ladies were simply too much for the jealous jester to tolerate! The merry-andrew's rapt audience had been stolen away, by a freakish demihuman no less, and a vengeful plot was already in the works.

For the record, Snickwick was quite aghast at the massive gowns, strange perfumes, and painted faces of these daunting dandies! Only the sumptuous pastries and delectable confections drew him back time and time again.

Within short minutes of Snickwick's sample miniature arriving at court, the jester's twisted apprentice, Garag Amel, stole into Snickwick's makeshift workshop and snatched the tiny Gnome up in a sack! The Jester's spy had struck when Snickwick was at his weakest, and without his trusty bow and loyal friends, the gnome was helpless.

Snickwick is no stranger to imprisonment, recalling the sad days when he was held captive in the dungeons of Quasqueton. But this was truly wretched. It is an especial slight to any gnome to be put into a sack, gnomes HATE to be put into sacks. On the other hand, it's not nice to be rude to people, yelling and kicking and so forth, so Snickwick sat patiently in his bag, awaiting his fate.

On the brighter side, his gout seems to have vanished altogether! This is truly amazing urine!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Saving Captain Snickwick, Part I

[Naraoia, author]

Pritchard Hood's eyes open the way a door in a dungeon might: with a great deal of creaking and false starts, and the certainty that what lays revealed once they are open will be ugly and dangerous.

He is not wrong in this assumption. He is in a bed, at least. A quite large bed. A quite large bed that is full of… other people. Not to mention jugs of wine, most of them empty. And it looks like all he is wearing is a small conical party hat of the kind quite popular in this city of wizards. He is not, mind you, wearing it in the usual place.

Glantri City. City of bards and flower mages, of grand spectacle and great romance. And, apparently, far more whores and taverns than even a man whose soul is drowning can possibly encompass.

O! Lonely Moon! he thinks, the strains and cadences of that epic poem echoing through the dark and cobweb-strewn recesses of his mind. He will be alright, he thinks. He will be perfectly alright if he does… not… sit up.

"Yeeargh!" he screeches, as the full force of his hangover strikes him.

He dresses hurriedly and heads down the stairs of the tavern, expecting to find creditors, angry husbands (or fathers, or wives for that matter), tax collectors and constables waiting for him. Instead the common room is strangely empty, save for a single char-woman cleaning up the night's excesses.

"Sorry about that wet bit," he says to her, as she stares at him expectantly. "And that place on the wall that looks… well, it's not what you think it is. And that mess in the corner is probably still breathing, thought you might want to take it to a temple."

Still she stares at him, as if she's never seen his like before.

"Er, what hour of the clock is it, goodwife?" he asks.

"Just past dawn, sar. The roosters musta wakened ye, I think."

"Hmm." Just past dawn. Adventuring time, normally. He thinks of empty chests, magically unlocked until they can never be closed again. Of wands ensorcelled to look magical that turn out to just be more dross. No adventuring today. No, he needs to break his fast. Preferably with as much grease and water as possible.

Heading out of the tavern, he is spun sideways and cast down into the mud. In point of fact this probably makes him smell better than he did before, but still he jumps to his feet, a silver dagger between his fingers, ready to throw it as his assailant. But he has forgotten, again. This is Glantri City. A lawful place, supposedly. The man who knocked him down was simply some diligent merchant, bringing wares to market. The man is a rough sort of fellow, burlier and more worldly-looking than most merchants, but he has a squirming sack over his shoulder. The kind one would stuff with piglets for the butcher.

"Sorry," the merchant grumbles, in a way that suggests he is anything but.

"Entirely my fault," Pritchard is quick to answer, rubbing at his cheek. Is something stuck to his face? He turns away, worried the man might see what it is. Pritchard has a sneaking suspicion, based on what happened the previous night, and it would be embarrassing if…

But… no. The thing he peels off his cheek is not that at all. Instead it is a kind of miniature gear, with tiny, perfectly regular teeth. It must have fallen out of some kind of mechanism, though one of exceeding fineness and masterful workmanship. The kind of thing only his companion Snickwick could construct.

Snickwick? But he was in Eastkeep, the last Hood saw him, recovering from a bad case of gout. What could Snickwick be doing in Glantri City?

That sack… the way it squirmed. The way it seemed to call out in a tiny, piping, almost inaudible voice…

Dagger once more in hand, Pritchard Hood races after the merchant, intending to ask him a few… pointed… questions. Before he has taken a dozen strides, however, he is bowled over once again, this time by an extremely fast-moving and solidly built mass no more than three feet tall.

The identity of this obstacle is almost beyond belief. It is, in fact, Handsome Hannah. And she is wearing a ball gown of style and taste. Her hair has grown out overnight, it seems, and her face would be powdered and rouged to a favor of exceptional comeliness… if she were not so close to tears. She stares at Pritchard with wide, defiant eyes, as he sprawls in the gutter for the second time that day.

"You look… nice," he says.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Saving Captain Snickwick, Part II

[Surprised at the call-up, Naked Samurai wrote his response… Hanna was already in Glantri City as part of a failed carousal and was wearing a dress.]

"Wow, Pritch… you smell like…" Hanna sniffs some more, her eyes widening in shock. "Oh, gods, I don't want to say. Knowing you, my suspicions couldn't possibly be right."

"They probably are."

She is unwilling to believe it. "You look like you've been tossed in a sheet all night."

"You could say that's pretty close to it. Tarnation. Help me up." He winced as he tried to roll out of the gutter. No success. Thundercracks of a hangover shot in his brain. "Oooooh," said his ghostly voice, followed by a torrent of splashy, beery vomit, causing the spritely, rouged halfling to dance aside while pulling back the fabric of her gown.

"Well, that's done! Probably feel better. Whatcha gonna do with that dagger, make yourself upchuck on it? You always were a little too with stuff, blowing holes out the sides of inns and killing cats. Use a finger! By heavens, that's disgusting." She fondly rubbed his sweat-drenched hair while his hat rolled down the cobblestones.

"Listen, I need to return to the finishing school to get back my clothes. Not these frilly rags, damn they were expensive; the real stuff. Britches. A real shirt. I'll probably get a snout-ful of rage from those swan-necked highly born ladies of deepest darkness when I get back. Aw, what was I thinking?! You'll have to explain it to me sometime.

"Where have I been, you might as well ask. I've been wandering all night, almost! Left that swaa-raay with no place to go until some constable tried to bust me for streetwalking. Streetwalking! Can you imagine? I nearly busted him! That sword was going straight up his kiester! Fortunately we're allowed a small change purse when wearing these lousy things, you slip it either down your sleeve or down… wel, it's what you call it: your bosom… don't worry, I won't show you… Anyway, I got a private bed down in some stinkly little second-rank flophouse for the rest of night. I had to crack this dwarf called Longlimb Davies over the head. Marry you? Longlimb Davies? I don't think so, pal! And they left me alone and I barely slept and… here I am!"

Pritchard is too weak to fight the tide of words. Even on his best days it was tantamount to fording riptides of tangent and random leaps of logic. It was no use. He fell back on his flank as the gnome - presumably the gnome - vanished further on the streets. "Snickwick." he gasped. "Snickwick…"

Hanna stopped short. The gnome… what? What is it? Small, frantic emotion exploded in her heart. They couldn't possibly have lost another friend and companion!

Recounting what he had seen, breathlessly with all his willpower, a sack bulging, a tiny gear - what he heard, the shrill voice of a tinker-gnome gone shriller.

Hanna's hunter's eyes narrowed. "Give me your belt. Your shoelaces. Quick! The buckle… but I need one more heavy thing. Quickly!" Her hands frantically sewed these things together: small handpurse, belt, the leather bindings on his shoes. "What did he look like?" "Snickwick?" "The merchant, dummy!" "Heavy-set… Dark, ringletted hair!"

The rest has Hanna, costumed for a ball and drenched in the cold, early morning springtime sun, racing down the cobblestone street, the hoop of the dress bonging around like a bell, perspiration prickling the make-up still smartly attired on her face, her ankles almost bending here and there, bound in their strange, high-class shoes.

She thinks she sees him. The nearest marketplace, he is turning the corner. In a few moments he could fully disappear. All these merchants… heavy-set. All their hair — dark ringlets are not uncommon!

The bola whips over her head, whirring as it picks up speed. She launches it. The early morning flowermaidens and egg-sellers turn to witness the spectacle of a small, waifish huntress ferociously zip a leathery contraption close to the ground across the square.

It flies toward his boots, just above the ankles… thirsty for his stride…

TO BE CONTINUED

Saving Captain Snickwick, Part III:

[Naraoia takes over.]

The bola flies true. Impossible, it seems, this makeshift weapon in flight, a hurled belt and nothing more. Not for the first time, Pritchard Hood is astounded at the skill and power folded up in Hanna's diminutive frame. The belt wraps tight around the fleeing man's ankles, tumbling to the ground… and spilling out the contents of his sack.

It is Snickwick indeed! The gnome, who seems even smaller than usual to Pritchard's bleary eyes, goes tumbling along the cobblestones, "ouch!"ing and "oof!"ing as he tumbles. Yet even as Snickwick is freed of his burlap durance, that liberty is yet in question. The miscreant who stole him away from his workshop has managed to struggle free of his bola bonds, and is grunting once more to his feet.

"Hmmph," Hannah says. "A real bola would have shattered his ankles and kept him down. Remind me never to go to a ball again unarmed. There's plenty of room to conceal weapons under this ridiculous crinoline."

"I'll remember to… to remind you to…" Pritchard is too busy watching the spectacle across the way. The giant-seeming captor is reaching out one ham-sized paw to snatch up the gnome. Wait, there's something wrong with the scale here, or the perspective, or… Pritchard can't quite seem to focus. But he knows it's his turn to step in and lend a hand. He lifts his fingers, wiggles them experimentally. They seem to remain under his command, and to be the right size. The words of his sleep spell come bubbling out of his throat, and he feels the lines of magical force bow and buckle as they connect him to his target. The burly kidnapper turns and stares, perhaps sensing what is coming his way.

And then he yawns, hugely, like the giant he is. Except he is no giant. Is he? He yawns… and nothing more.

Snickwick, running desperately for a drain pipe on the side of a nearby house, stumbles and falls to one knee. "Mr. Hood?" he has time to ask, with a tinge of accusation in the words. And then he collapses in a snoring heap.

Somehow he got the ratios wrong, the distances mixed in his head… somehow he was unable to see that Snickwick has been reduced in size until he is no larger than a squirrel. Somehow he has just made things worse. For the thug grabs up the tiny Snickwick and dashes under a stone arch, headed deeper into the city.

"Charm person! Charm person! What was it you called that spell?" Hannah asks. "Free hireling? Before he gets away!"

"I… can't," Pritchard says. "I can't cast that spell. Not upon a civilized human. I'm so sorry."

"Are you going to let him take Snickwick, just like that?"

Pritchard draws himself up to his full height. His cloak billows about him. "No, I will not," he replies. And then he hurls himself forward, his feet blurring as he runs through the arch, his eyes flicking from side to side as he seeks his prey.

Yet even as he closes the distance, he sees to his horror that the gnome-napper has already reached his destination: the castle of Glantri itself. As Hood slides into the grand square, a portcullis falls shut behind the bandit and two guards cross halberds to bar his way.

Behind him Pritchard can hear Hannah scream in frustration. He understands her pain.

"Come with me," he tells her, giving the guards a withering look. They fail to turn to steam or catch on fire, but that's alright. He retains certain resources he has not yet expended.

The halfling and the conjurer head around the side of the building to a more discrete spot. Pritchard knows how much every moment counts now, but he takes his time to make sure they are not observed. Then he draws the piccolo of levitation from his sleeve. "Forgive me, my… milady. This may be undignified, but it's necessary." Then he scoops up Hannah with one arm and blows a long sustained note on the magical wind instrument. Together they lift into the air and just as his breath gives out (hangovers are hell), they alight on the castle's parapets.

Together they slip inside and after a desperate search, find what they are after. A room near the castle stables, a place where fodder is stored in great heaps. In the midst of the hay bales a simple pit has been set up, with a waist-high railing erected around its edge. The kidnapper and a dozen other rough-looking men stand at the rail peering down into the pit.

From their perch in the chamber's rafters, Hannah and Pritchard have a good view of the pit's contents. Inside, penned in by the rail, dozens of rats are scurrying in panicked circles round and round the enclosure, looking desperately for some impossible way out of their pen. Amongst them is Snickwick, not much larger than they are, and looking just as frightened.

"Ah," Pritchard says. "Oh, dear."

"What is it?" Hannah asks. "What are they doing to him? What is this?"

"It's called… rat coursing. It's considered good sport among a certain class of men," Hood explains. He wishes he could say he'd never seen such a pit before.

The halfling clearly has not. "So it's like a race? They're making Snickwick race against the rats?"

"Not exactly," Hood says.

Below, the kidnapper shouts, "Twenty good the little bugger lasts less than a minute!" His wager is instantly taken, by a man holding a squirming sack of his own. This other man, whose face is badly scarred, reaches into his sack and removes its contents. A yapping, snarling terrier. Other men bring forth their own dogs.

"They bet," Pritchard says, with measured tones, "on how many rats each dog can kill. And how quickly."

As the first dog is lowered into the pit, Pritchard turns to his companion. "We only have seconds left to save our gnomish Captain! I possess some magic, still. I have the conjuration called Phantasmal Force at my disposal, and I swear, this time my spell will not go astray. You have the heart of a warrior and two good hands. One of us must get Snickwick clear of that pit, while the other takes on all these men by him- or herself. Tell me, Hannah. Which do you choose?"

TO BE CONTINUED…

Saving Captain Snickwick, Part IV

[Back to Naked Samurai. Tying the gnome to the rat belly was supposed to be a reference to the Odyssey's Cyclops section. Erk.]

"Never at my best could I take on so many men at once," Hanna eyed the assortment of mangy individuals below before crinkling her nose in disgust. "Ugh… well that's a phrase I should never use again! Give us your dagger."

A pint-sized angel of white taffeta launched from the ceiling, flouncing onto several barrows worth of hay.

"Harrr??" and "Urrk!" went the crowd. The handler, in his surprise, unhanded the terrier, who shot toward the rats, bets unsecured, far too soon. But no worry! Jaws snapping inches away, the dagger found warmth beneath its brain pan. Nice shot, halfling! Its eyes dimmed red and it toppled over, the dagger's pommel winking in the lantern light.

"Ha! You! What the hell is that?"

Hanna did not pause from where she had thrown it and had hurdled into the trench of rats. Without pockets, there was only one thing she could do, ripping threads of lace from her sleeves at the wrist.

Scooping up the sock-clothed Snickwick and the largest rat nearby. The gnome was piping in furious fear and anxiety, like an angry tea-kettle. "Cast your damn spell, Pritchard," Hanna cried, some of the men beginning to vault the walls to reach her.

"Snicky, remember the stories of the gnome hero Ullisso you were telling me about, the one in the one-eyed pirate's cove?"

"Squeeak… hwaak… meeep meeeee!" She could barely understand him for his size and his pale white, bootless, shaking fear. Instead of figuring it out, she lashed him limb, limb, limb and limb to the rat's soft underbelly, the rat which was squirming violently in her hand. "Ack, I nearly forgot. Take this, and when you are out of the stables, gut the vermin and wriggle out of the knots." She slipped a hairpin out of her toppling hairstyle. "We're gonna have to find you again."

A deft dodge took that decorous style away from a swinging hatchet. Wood chunked and went spraying and she was overwhelmed with shadow and the smell of grog and sweat. She elbowed him above the codpiece and sprinted among the scurrying rats. A boot to a post banged the flimsy track wall down.

"Run, run, you rats! Everywhere in the castle!" Snickwick was among them, his nearly bare bottom chapped and bruised by his bounding host. Young wranglers ran out to try to catch whichever ones they could. "The tiny man! The tiny man!" the kidnapper screamed at them. They only saw a sea of dirty brown rats.

"Pritchard! Your spell!"

She didn't realize it had already went off, but she was busy. A plank halted the hatchet's plunge. She stomped on the large man's foot. "If only I had my sword, your throat would cloak the end of it!"

The gnome held dearly to the hairpin as he jounced toward the flagstones. If he lost hold, it was the bowels of the castle for him, possibly forever…

TO BE CONTINUED

Saving Captain Snickwick, Part V:

[Back to Naraoia]

"I was afraid you'd say that," Pritchard Hood quips, but Hannah is already falling through the air, tucking and rolling as she strikes the hay. Up in the rafters, Pritchard Hood watches in disbelief as she stabs one of his best daggers through the head of a dog.

Ah. That… wasn't exactly what he'd planned. He supposes perhaps if one were only three feet tall, dogs might not seem as lovable as they did to…

Lovable? Dogs? He remembers feeding his horse an apple the other day. "I've changed," he thinks, remembering the arrogant bounty hunter who first rode into Glantri, full of confidence and ready to single-handedly take on all the forces of chaos, the younger, less conflicted man who…

Hannah. Handsome Hannah is down there, right now. Standing in a pit with a hundred crazed rats, one much-smaller-than-usual gnome, a dead dog, and a dozen bravos staring at her with evil intent. She is doing something with her skirts and he looks away, blushing despite himself, and so he misses the moment when weapons are drawn, when the initiative born of surprise is replaced by the move to close distance.

"Pritchard, your spell!" she shouts, snapping him back to the present moment.

But he's already on it, tweaking the light. From shadows and the few stray beams of sun that come in through the high windows, he weaves together an illusion with deft movements of nimble fingers and the words, the magic words that seem to claw his way through his parched throat.

He will not fail this time. Last time he made a mistake of perspective, but this time… this time he will use unnatural disparities of size to his advantage. The rats are flooding out of the broken pen now, racing in every direction. Some of the younger varlets are trying to snatch them up. These are prized coursing rats after all, chosen for their size and strength, the kind of rats that could give a terrier a run for its money.

So proud these men are of their big, strong rats. Pritchard resists the urge to cackle with glee. For now the rats have begun to grow, to become the size of dogs, no, as big as wolves. Better make it dire wolves, he thinks, just to be sure. Pritchard scrimps on no detail. Bristling pelts swarm with vermin, with fleas the size of plums. The mouths of the rats drip plague venom that falls to sizzle on the hay-strewn floor. Their segmented tails flash back and forth like bullwhips.

The sportsmen below can only stare in horror as the rats turn toward them, beady eyes glowing red, gnawing teeth gnashing together. At least, for the first few seconds they can only stare in horror. Then they run in horror.

Faster even than the giant rats, the blackguards hurry screaming for the door of the foddery. They trample each other in their haste to escape, to avoid the teeth of the demonic rodents. A moment later and they are gone.

A quick toot on the piccolo of levitation, and Pritchard descends from the rafters to land next to Hannah. "All in good sport," he says, smiling.

Hannah's face is a mask of utter terror. It takes him a moment to realize he has not yet released the phantasms he called up. With a snap of his fingers he vanishes the rats. Scraps of torn light flutter on the air a moment longer and then are gone.

"No need to thank me," Pritchard says. "Now that that's done, let's secure Snickwick and be off. Those men will go to summon guards, no doubt, and it would be best if we weren't here when they arrive."

Hannah, however, dashes across the floor and stoops to rummage through a pile of trampled hay.

"Oh no," she says, plucking something from the hay and holding it up to show him. "Oh, he must have dropped it! Maybe he was scared when the rat I tied him to grew so big or maybe he just didn't know what I meant for him to do with it or maybe it got knocked loose or maybe or maybe or maybe…"

Pritchard bends over to see what she's holding. A lady's hairpin, that's all.

"I seem to be missing something," Pritchard says.

And he's not the only one. Just then, still tied to the underside of a panic-crazed rat, Snickwick cries out for help. "Get me off this crazy thing!"

TO BE CONCLUDED…

Saving Captain Snickwick, Conclusion:

[Lord Bodacious with a great conclusion]

Snickwick was perplexed. He was elated to to see Hanna and Pritchard bounding to his rescue, daggers and spells flying! But just when he thought himself saved, the inscrutable little hobbit tied him to a rat, jabbed in the bottom with a hatpin, and set him loose into the streets of Glantri! It certainly did get him out in a hurry, unfortunately, the maddened tide of rats fled through the sewers, alleys and into walls of the city, leaving the shrunken gnome not only confused, but thoroughly lost.

After a time, his beady eyed mount settle among a series of filthy nests, and the littlest Capitan was able to free himself from his bonds. Then, as he was fixing his makeshift robe a strange thing happened… Two particularly fine looking rats approached Snickwick, stood upright on their hind legs, and greeted him with good cheer and congeniality,in perfect (if somewhat archaic) Glantrian!

After his initial bewilderment subsided, he would learn that these fellows were in fact Glantri City High Rats, and that they had been waging a war against the cruel ring of Rat-Baiters that had so recently escaped. Several of their members had been likewise captured, and the distraction provided by Hanna and Pritchard had given them the opportunity to escape.

The High Rats of Glantri City are a strange and unique subset of the capital's rodent population. Several generations before the civil war, the keeping of trained rats as wizardly familiars took the wizard community by storm. Being the obsessive and competitive sorts that they are, the wizards magically bred their pets for increasing levels of intelligence, eventually resulting in a large community of incredibly intelligent rats, possessing the ability to speak and reason near the order of common man. Eventually the rats, independent minded creatures that they are, revolted against their keepers, and in a grand and notorious moment in Glantrian history, they turned their captors magic against them and escaped to freedom! These intelligent creatures look exactly like normal Glantrian rats (albeit with a higher occurrence of the white/albino phenotype), and like their distant cousins, are known to live in walls, eat garbage, and occasionally spread disease.

Well let me tell you, they had a great time! The rats were initially very grateful to the bearded Capitan du Sapeurs. As the yapping of the ratters died down, the high rats led the gnome through cracks and under floors to a finely accoutered apartment of lilliputian scale, hidden in the walls of a local sundries shop. A tiny drawing room was equipped with a fine bar of filched cordials and purloined delicacies (greatly enjoying his reduced size, Snickwick gorged on a candied Snozberry that seemed to him the size of a Pumpkin!). An entire living room set (seemingly taken from a child's doll house) decorated the chamber, and lovely sable rat played an respectable rendition of Chartrembelle's Fourth Opusetta on a tiny cello. The generous rodents were even so nice as to offer Snickwick a comfortable bed in a guest chamber, with a feather mattress made from a throw pillow and blankets sewn from fine linens (apparently stolen from the house Aubergine to judge by the embroidery).

Unfortunately, the deep slumber afforded by this fine bed kept the Gnome from noticing as the magic elixer had started to wear off in the night. Sleeping soundly, the gnome rapidly resumed his normal size, his legs and arms bursting through the flimsy walls, his increased mass crushing the fine salon which the High Rats had decorated so fastidiously, even as he snored. Needless to say, the generous rats were aghast. Quite nude, Snickwick was chased off into the night under the hail of tiny arrows and spears.

After all of that adventure, Snickwick was filthy, dead tired and naked. Luckily he was able to find a potato sack to cover his nakedness and retrace his steps to the location of the rat pit, where his captor had so rudlely dumped him, holding out a tiny glimmer of hope… Indeed, most of the tiny toys he had crafted were still there, having been snatched up during his kidnap!

Making his way to the apartment shared by his friends Grittlesby and Frognettle, Snickwick recounted his story, and settled for a nice hot bath…

FIN!

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