Little Bavis sweat beneath his leather armor. This was not on account of the heat, it was noon and yet a cool breeze passed through the guildhall, but instead from the dread. He knew the first member of his harem would determine his eligibility into the greater monster hunter guild the north-western continent of Profus had ever seen: the Gaping Skull. Tapestries depicting the Skull's heroes of old anointed the walls elaborately carved wooden walls. Each hero was surrounded by beautiful women of every monstrous variety. A door opened at the far end. An old hunched man approached Little Bavis. Upon seeing the elder scholar, a trembling began in the recruit's chest all the way down to his ankles. He knew he could not have a more strict or demanding Overseer than the man before him. Infamously known as Edward, the Historian of Depravity, he wore several black robes with arcane sigils and several occult trinkets on his gaunt hunched person. Most obvious of all was the shinning codpiece that bore the silver demon skull insignia of the guild. All in the Skull had one as their badge of membership. Beside him was his ever present assistant. She was a woman made of semi-transparent dark blue fluid, a rare kind of slime girl. Her figure pushed the maid's outfit she was wearing to its limits and her body's composition caused it to jiggle excessively with every step. Little Bavis swallowed hard at the thought of the woman he had brought in comparison.
"What is this?" The Overseer demanded. His voice was dry like parchment and wicked like scrawled blasphemies.
"Th-This is the first member of my h-harem, sir!" Little Bavis answered too loudly. In his anxious haste his voice cracked causing his companion to scoff. Edward looked up and down the wood elf standing next to the young leather-clad recruit. She was easily twice his age in elf years and four times that in human ones. She had a thin figure who's posture revealed no interest in Little Bavis or anything else for that matter. The tall brunette languidly looked at Edward. She was absent-mindedly picking something from her teeth.
"Hello again Levalin." "Master Overseer." She replied with the barest attempt at a curtsey. Little Bavis flew into a panicked confusion at how the two could know each other. The Historian of Depravity reached into his robes and pulled out a small pouch of gold coins, counting them before tossing them to the woman in barmaid dress. She casually lifted up a hand to catch the coin purse and then, swift as a sparrow, drove that fist into the stomach of Little Bavis. "OUGH!"
"That was a test boy! You're a disgrace!" The Overseer railed as the brown-haired hireling left the guildhall counting her coins. "The Gaping Skull is not a bring-a-friend-you-just-met tavern. It is a guild. A guild for adventurers that burn with a yearning for life's greatest pleasure: a harem of beautiful monster girls!" The old man was riled up now. He was rubbing his temples in abject frustration. "And you call that an elf?? Where was her elegance? Where was her pride? Where was the inextinguishable purity? Where was the ASS, boy!?" The raving old man spat on the recruit still doubled over in pain. "You know NOTHING of elves! You think any barmaid with pointed ears will do for the Gaping Skull??" The Historian of Depravity hobbled back to his assistant whose inky liquid stretched from the pool at her feet to form a similarly semi-liquid chair. He took a seat facing the whimpering recruit. "So you like elves? Then let me tell you a tale of the greatest elf-layer Profus -nay THE WORLD- has ever seen before I send you off." He settled into the wobbling seat with his eyes fixed on the stammering recruit, "He was six feet tall and almost three hundred pounds. He wore a helmet in the shape of a tusked boar. His name was the Iron Hog and he was man with a passion for elves. "
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The dwarves were laying siege to Ellis, the elven nation to the north but their advance had been stopped by the elves' unsurprising ability to be comfortable staying still and doing nothing for long periods of time. All the sieges of the major cities were at a standstill and the dwarves no longer had the manpower to hold the line and continue pushing north. They turned to the Gaping Skull and we sent them the best man for the job.
To call the Iron Hog a man would be a generosity he would scoff at. He was a putrid beast of a person whose armor needed to be built custom to accommodate his massive gut. Armed with a blunt mace that was used more as a two-handed club and a truly unrelenting endurance, he was insurmountable in battle. Most overbearing was the smell of the man who refused to remove said armor to sleep or bathe. He was a living, panting, stinking siege engine and all of us in the Gaping Skull knew he loved it. The only thing he loved more than his own capacity for destruction were elves. When I asked him if he wanted the job on the southern front of the elven war he dropped the full roast beast he was loudly devouring onto the floor and asked me to repeat myself as though he could not believe it. Once I did he shoved me aside and nearly took the front door of its hinges, panting and squealing with excitement. He was unstoppable and that was exactly what the dwarves needed.
Days later when the Iron Hog pushed his way into the war council's tent the dwarven men were disgusted and nearly sent him away. He gestured to his massive demon skull codpiece and assured them that he was in the right place. They had hired a member of the Skull and he was our representative. Begrudgingly, they welcomed him in and explained the situation to him. The small elven town to the north, Tremlin, was the target of their present siege. They knew the elves were desperate because they had cut down trees to fortify the already existing naturally grown wall surrounding them. The gate and surrounding wall were not only several dozens of feet tall but impossibly thick. They explained that the elves inside were mostly civilians, untrained mothers and daughters, and they wanted to take the place without the excessive loss of life they would reap from burning the whole town down. At the end sharing this, or maybe even before, the dwarven commander was shocked to see the Iron Hog had vanished.
Squealing, howling, and sprinting down the forest hill with an excitement between that of a madman and a child, the Iron Hog rushed the town's fortified wooden gate, iron club in hand. The elves on guard at the top of the wall were surprised by the sudden noise and hurriedly went to their bows. Upon seeing the Iron Hog, however, they did not bother wasting an arrow on what they thought was a single solider. They were fools. The deafening snapping of timber awoke all in Tremlin and the dwarven encampment. With one strike the Iron Hog had severely damaged the gate. He was panting like a beast at this point. He would often say he could smell the elves that were most his type. Those simultaneously most pure and more depraved. He smelled that sweet aroma coming from within the village and he would not be denied it. His great iron club was pulled back and with another mighty swing the gate was knocked open and broken beyond repair.
"They've breached the gates!" The few elven soldiers yelled but it would not be louder than the triumphant war cries of the dwarven infantrymen pouring into the city. The Iron Hog, however, had his own mission. As typical of our contracts, guild members are entitled to the living (or undead) spoils of the conquered. A shining example of Gaping Skull ethos, the Iron Hog bound through the chaos in search of his prize. He brought his helm's iron boar nose to the sky and breathed in deeply through his mask. He would then dart with startlingly speed in pursuit of the intoxicating aroma of elven lust. He crushed any remaining guards beneath his feet and club without a second thought. I am told from some dwarven infantrymen that were present that he was breathing so heavily and so desperately through his nostrils that the sound echoed from his massive helm like a swine grunting. "Too thin...too short...no...not right...move. Move! Get out of my way!" He stuttered and roared. The Iron Hog was like a man possessed and yet the only one driven by purpose in the sea of screaming chaos.
He found what he was looking for in what I am told was once the wealthy part of town. A large wooden manor seated near the center of the townscape. The sudden crack and subsequent snapping of the door was nothing compared to the gate he had caved-in outside but it must have startled the family inside. When the Iron Hog forced his way passed the doorframe built for slender Elves he found a small family cowering inside. He entered, hunger incarnate, and at the end of the lavish living room he beheld his prize. Behind an elven man dressed in fine silks and a young elven boy dressed in the same, each carrying knives, was a woman who looked the combination of the two. The mother of the household. The obviously older but still ageless elven gentleman said something in Elvish but the Iron Boar spoke nothing of the language. He pointed at the woman fearfully standing behind the two quivering men. The elder looked at the younger one, his son, and ran forward recklessly, screaming with his blade. The Iron Hog merely swung a gauntlet-laden fist and knocked the fool almost into the next room. The son dropped his blade in panic and ran to his father. Finally, our kinsman could gaze upon his prize unobscured.
The high elven woman stood just beneath the height of her intruder. She wore a white silk dress clasped around her neck with a wooden ring, falling loosely down her front while exposing her light fair shoulders and arms, only to be bound again by a thin leather belt before splitting into two sections and exposing the sides of her long legs. Her bare slender back was to the wall and she grasped at it in fear. Looking at him with caution in her golden eyes she spoke in the Common tongue. "Wh-What do you want with us, you brute?" Her voice was melodic, pointed, intentional, like that of a trained orator or singer. The terror of the intrusion did nothing to rattle her appearance. Her blonde hair was still perfectly in place with a single elaborate braid falling down her shoulder.
"Mmph..." The beast grunted, "You." And he once again lifted a finger this time explicitly to her full round breasts.
"Me?? With you? Surely there must be something el-" Her protest was cut off by the one handed swing of Iron Hog's club into the perfectly manicured wooden floor cratering it with a horrific crack. Several instruments and trophies mounted shelves fell over with a deafening clatter. The woman gulped hard and approached. "If I do this. Will you...spare my family?" The Iron Hog only grunted in reply. She dropped to her knees. Her thin hands were quivering as she placed them down to support herself. "Your name." The low panting voice above her declared more than asked. "Ah! M-My name is Cithreal. Cithreal Walwynn." Her confidence returning, "Maybe you have heard of me? I was once a famous bard in-"
