There is a blight upon the land. Parts of the forest have withered and died from an infection of sleazies. As King of the land, I, Bogart, must find and destroy the sleazies before the whole world is wasted.
Sleazies have the appearance of small, hairy, greasy, filthy men. They are two to three feet tall and wear no clothing, but bear constantly in their black eyes a look of pathological stupidity. They spend their days scratching in the dirt, eating the tender roots of trees (thus infecting them), and hiding from lawful authority.
Recently I have called upon my army to join me in sweeping the countryside, hunting and exterminating the sleazies. We do this with seriousness and dedication, but without remorse. The sleazies are not human, rather an illusion of humanity.
When a sleazy is struck by a sword or a club or an arrow, it falls apart like a smashed pumpkin. Sleazies have no blood, rather a black goo. They have no kinship, rather are born of desecrated earth, fully grown.
The slopes of the Great Eastern Gorge were not often patrolled in the years before the blight. I was focused on developing the cities of my kingdom and ignored the early reports of trouble there. By the time I responded, sleazies had spread from the lower slopes to Superior Hill, in packs of a few dozen each.
I marshaled my army in mid-summer. The sleazies were easy to find but hard to engage, as they seemed to melt into the forest at the first hint of a frontal attack. Gradually I developed more subtle techniques. My scouts are able to observe the sleazies from a distance and with coordinated effort we can surround and rout them pack by pack.
I recall one such occasion as the first wholly effective execution of my new strategy. We were coming up the gorge on a bright-but-cool day in late July. My scouts reported a pack of sleazies feeding in a stand of majestic oaks at the base of Ceres Rocks. We assembled well below them.
Veritt’s patrol of 30 horse I sent west, behind the rocks, to where the high road passes through the notch. Juriss’s patrol I sent back east, down the path a bit, to climb to the road by another way and come back to the rocks from there. With scouts in position ahead of us, the bulk of our foot and horse waited for the right moment.
Veritt monitored the road from behind the rocks. As Juriss came into view, far down the road, the sleazies were observed to take notice. Fearfully they crept down the slope and collected under the cliff. Juriss then turned down the hill and arrayed parallel to the cliff. Veritt took to the road and sealed the upper edge while I came up with the rest of my army and closed the box.
One measure of our success was the fact that all quarters of the sleazy horde seemed to panic at once. Even when cornered, a sleazy will not fight but attempt to run. A forward rank of elven archers felled many. Swordsmen stepped up and sliced many frantic sleazies neatly in half. Finally, the boyish giants crushed the least mobile of them with their heavy clubs. The heads of the sleazies seemed to explode on impact.
The entire battle lasted barely 60 seconds. Within minutes, the tarry flesh melted into the soil. Weeks later, healthy new vegetation has begun to spring up from the furrows. Meanwhile, the hunt continues.