Fooled Gold
The sun rose over Remacai on this fairly normal day. Indeed, it was going to be a perfectly normal day for Joeb, a man who lives in a village so small you'd have trouble finding it on a map of itself. But this story isn't going to be about Joeb. Instead, it will be about Grock Grockson, a dwarf archaeologist who's about to break into an ancient temple of Talot the god of vast riches. Sounds more exciting doesn't it?
Grock Grockson always thought of himself as being in top dwarf fashion, which having been more or less the same for centuries, he was. This consists of a chain mail shirt, leather boots, a large, two handed axe/warhammer slung across their back, and an iron helm. The only real difference from an archaeologist and a common dwarf is the small, golden bomb insignia on their helms. Also like most dwarves, Grockson has a large, bushy beard almost to his waist, and is only a little over three feet tall.
Grockson was currently leading his team of dwarven archaeologists up a hill towards the temple. Now, it's important to know that dwarven archaeologists are different than human ones. Where humans take careful steps with delicate tools to find historical artifacts, dwarves use high power explosives to see how much gold they can unearth. Anything that isn't gold is sold to humans for more gold.
Now that that's been said, you'll understand why the dwarves were piling about two score pounds of explosive charges at the base of the temple doors.
When Grockson had decided that they've used enough explosives, he called them back with an ancestral dwarvish saying, “Alright lads! That looks like enough! Now let's get behind that hill lest you want to get gutted by shrapnel!”
They all scurried for cover behind the hill, and Grockson prepared himself to push the switch that would unleash the power of 40 pounds of gunpowder.
“Alright,” he announced, “has everyone been accounted for?”
There were some whispering amongst the assembled dwarves, followed by a chorus of “aye”s.
“Right then,” said Grockson, “let's do this! Three, two, one!” Grockson pushed down of the lever, not setting off the power of 40 pounds of gunpowder, and not setting off a Shockwave that could be felt from a mile away. Instead it was replaced by some rather disappointing silence, accompanied by some birdsong.
“I hate it when this happens.” muttered one dwarf. Grockson glared at the direction he heard it come from.
“Well you all know what this means,” announced Grockson. “Someone's gonna have to see what the problem is.” He quickly added, “And it's not gonna be me.”
Every single dwarf failed to meet his gaze.
Grockson sighed. “Look, I know no one wants to, but there's most likely gold in there! You're all telling me you'd rather not risk a limb at best, for mountains of gold!”
Unfortunately, their silence indicated that they weren't. Someone coughed.
Again, Grockson sighed. “Fine,” he said, “have it your way.” He then pointed to two dwarves at random and said “You, and you. Go check it out.”
This created two very frightened looking dwarves in the midst of many relieved looking dwarves. “But why us?!” demanded one of the terrified ones.
“Because I said so.” said Grockson, “Now just go!” The two dwarves scurried off over the hill towards the temple. While they did that, the rest of the crew waited.
And waited.
This is gonna take a bloody long time, thought Grockson. He decided that if he was going to wait a while, he might as well do it sitting. So he sat. It was from this new vantage point that he saw where the wire leading to the charges had snapped at the base of the switch.
Grockson stood up with a shout of triumph. “Look here lads!” he exclaimed, then remembering himself, “and lasses.*”*
He then continued, “I found the problem!” proudly holding up the two lengths of wire. The crew burst into cheers, and there was much rejoicing for about five seconds when Grockson started to reattach the wires and the crowd quickly stopped him before he destroyed the two dwarves on the other side of the hill.
After the two dwarves got back, Grockson prepared to blow up the doors a second time. “Ahem, sorry about that,” began Grockson. “But now it's time to blow down those doors!” There were moor cheers from the crew. This was the good part, and it was actually going to happen this time!
“Three, two, one!” Grockson pushed down on the lever as ever dwarf covered his ears. This time there was an explosion.
The shockwave hit the dwarves like a thump in the chest, and some of the newer dwarves fell down. The sound deafened every animal within a one mile radius, including the dwarves.
When the experience was over, the dwarves rushed to the top of the hill to see how much damage they had caused, they were a little disappointed.
It would have been nice to say that the doors were completely obliterated, and that mountains of gold coins could be seen within the temple, but that's not how it was. The doors remained completely intact, pristine as ever. There weren't even any scorch marks, you wouldn't even know there was an explosion.
“ !” “ !” “ !” the curses of angry archaeologists could not be heard by any of the dwarves, since none of their ears had recovered yet.
“What?” mouthed Grockson.
“I said it didn't work!” shouted another dwarf. Grockson put his hand to his ear to signal he couldn't hear him. The other dwarf tried yelling again, then gave up.
They waited for a few minutes, until they could begin to hear each other. “Now,” said Grockson, “what was it you said?”
“I said it bloody well didn't work!”
“Oh, yeah I guess it didn't.”
Another dwarf piped up, “Do we have a plan B?”
“Well,” Grockson began, then realized they didn't, “Err, no we don't.” They all just stood there, staring at the doors.
“You'd think two scores of gunpowder would do the job.” said one dwarf. This got a couples of “aye”s from the other dwarves. They all continued standing at the top of the hill, trying to think of what to do next.
The sound of hoof beats coming up the path answered that for them. They all turned around to see a figure on horseback trotting towards the temple. It was human, they could all see that. They could also see that he was wearing a green and gold suit that identified him as a member of National Association of Talot.
Some of the dwarves panicked. “But I thought this temple was abandoned!” exclaimed one.
“It is!” hissed Grockson, “Now just pretend we're supposed to be here and we'll be fine.” The dwarves all immediately went into what they each thought looked like a nonchalant pose, which was mostly just a lot of whistling.
The rider heard the whistling and looked up. He looked puzzled at first, but quickly switched that with a fixed grin. “Hello there,” he greeted them, “Uh, why are you dwarves here?”
Grockson was about to lie when another dwarf said, “We tried to break into your temple; only it didn't work.” Grockson glared at the dwarf.
This however, only made the priest chuckle, “Well I'm not surprised. Those doors are stronger than the walls.” This made the dwarves look at one another, they never thought of that.
“So, ah, why are you here?” Grockson asked.
“Good question,” remarked the priest, “I'm sure you dwarves probably thought this temple was abandoned, am I right?” Some dwarves nodded. He continued, “Well it is. The only reason I'm here is because we've sold the land the temple's on and I need to go in and get the deed. Some company wants to destroy the temple and put up a theme park. I figured-”
“So they don't care what shape the building's in since they'll just blow it up anyway?” asked Grockson.
“Well, no. Not really. But-”
“Ready the cannon boys!” commanded Grockson.
The crew hurriedly pushed the cannon they brought with them up the hill and prepared it to be fired. “Now wait, I know we don't need this temple-” started the priest.
“Fire!” ordered Grockson. The cannon gave off a loud pow noise and broke a roughly dwarf size hole right next to the door. The cheering dwarves surged forward to get through the hole and get to the gold.
And what a sight it was! Vast mountains of gold coins piled high into the air, chests overflowing with treasure. The dwarves threw themselves onto the piles and celebrated. That is they did, until they realized that it wasn't real gold, it was all made of plastic.
“What's this?” demanded Grockson. The priest, who had climbed in through the hole, explained.
“I thought it was obvious. Why would we leave mountains of gold in an abandoned temple? Even if we did we'd have to spend most of it on booby traps, and then some dashing young lad would just come in and get past all them anyway. We always take our gold with us when we leave.”
“Well then why all this?” asked Grockson, gesturing to the mountains of false treasure.
“Those where always there. There never even was that much gold here, I assure you.”
“Oh.” Grockson sat down on a plastic chest dejectedly. “I just thought Maybe I'd find some gold this time. I've never found any gold before you know. I mean, sure I've found some lizard bones, and some ancient pottery. But I've never found any gold in my career.” He sighed, then continued sulking. The other dwarves followed suit.
The priest stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, then walked off saying he needed to find the land deed.
Eventually, a dwarf said, “Now what?”
Another dwarf piped up, “I know! How about we go to the pub!”
This brightened Grockson up. “Aye! The pub!”
The crew gave a shout of “aye”s, and they all raced off to the pub.
* * *
About ten minutes later, the priest returned to the fake treasure room. “Hello?” He shouted. “Dwarves?” He looked around. “Now where are those little buggers?” He climbed through the hole back outside, and gaped.
The scene before him looked reminiscent of a military bombing range. Apparently, in their good spirited race to the pub, the dwarves had set off every remaining explosive they had left, so they wouldn't have to lug it back home.
The priest groaned, “Great.” he said, “Now I'll never get this place sold.”
*Females dwarves also have beards. This unfortunately, can lead to some very awkward situations at public restrooms. More than once a poor bathroom attendant has said, “Excuse me sir, but you can't go in there.” only to find out he's talking to a women.
