In a dingy corner of the tavern sat Vargni, a slumped and dishevelled mess of flesh and hair that one could have quite easily overlooked as just another odd adventuring trophy dumped away from sight. And indeed this was the case, as Vargni gradually roused from what had been a pleasantly undisturbed slumber. Like a whipping snake, his limbs suddenly lashed into life as he stretched them and lazily rubbed crusted deposits of sleep and snot from his face.

Waking up in the late afternoon was not a particularly unusual experience for Vargni. It wasn't the drinking that did it - he could hold his ale better than most dwarves his age - but rather a sort of sticky lethargy and depression that was gradually webbing him down. It was the lack of work that was doing it, and he hated it. Vargni wished there were trolls eating the local children. He wished there were beastfolk building effigies in the forest. He wished there were goblins burrowing into the sewers. But unfortunately, monster hunting was very much a career of peaks and troughs. The monsters were there, you slayed them, and then they were dead and no one had work for you anymore.

And so, like a man dying of thirst in a desert, Vargni had crawled to The Limping Nag and gone into hibernation, in the desperate hope that something would come along to save him before he couldn't go on any longer. If there was any place where one could find work, it was here.

Opening his bleary eyes, Vargni caught a wiff of potential. A heap of newcomers had arrived, with that sort of bright energy that clings to those seeking death (when one becomes a slayer, one develops something of a cynical attitude towards the word 'adventure'). And a few dawi, at that.

Pushing himself up on his elbows and climbing to his feet, using the dry plastered wall as support, his attention was attracted to the noise of the newly arrived ranger as he addressed the elgi.

	[i]"What's this you ave'? I didn't know Übersreik was famous for 'canned elf', they'll ave' to add that to the roadsigns."[/i]

Vargni's dry lips curled into a smirk at the ranger's words as he stumbled over, and with a hoarse voice he grumbled:

	"Careful now, or he'll wear your ruddy face alongside that house-cat on his shoulder."