Dungeons and Drunkards: Part 2, The Dance of the Tarantella

This post represents the second part in the Dungeons and Drunkards series I'm doing with +Jens D., author of the blog The Disoriented Ranger, +Stelios V. Perdios, author of the blog The Word of Stelios, and +Sean Bircher, author of the blog Wine and Savages. Over the course of the next few days we'll be presenting you with weird monsters, looks at the rules for getting a buzz in D&D, and so much more! So sit back, grab an ice, cold beer and enjoy the show!

Her body writhed with orgasmic glee as she spun about the dance floor looking back at us. We’d picked her up just outside the forest that circled Fort Montgomery. She’d come out of the woods with grapevines wrapped about her head like a crown and a dress that made her look as though taking it off would have been putting on more clothes.  From the moment that she joined the patrol it was as if discipline and order had become distant memories. She laughed and we laughed with her. She called us her escort and we lifted her on our shoulders and carried her into the Fort laughing and singing like we’d just won the war.

Captain Davis rushed out his office and stormed over to us. His face was flush with anger and every stomp across the yard sounded like a drum beat to my ears. He boomed, “What’s the meaning of this?”

And she laughed. It was like music and as she slide off the shoulders of Caruthers and Ledbetter this coy smile played across her face. “Oh don’t be like that Captain,” she said as she ran her fingers across his chest and laid her head against him. The Captain stuttered and sputtered as she pressed herself close to him. Then she leaned up and pulled his ear to her mouth and whispered words that brought a blush to his cheeks and left his mouth hanging wide open as he wordlessly nodded his head.

“Oh you will,” she positively squealed. “There’s a party tonight,” she said as she spun toward us, “You all simply must be there.”

It wasn’t a request.

No sooner had she said there would be a party than did the whole garrison begin prepping for it. No man or woman was spared from preparing for the party. Hogs were slaughtered, chickens plucked, presents wrapped, and wine and liquor were brought from every corner of the Fort. Finally dusk came and the party was to begin. She came walking down from Captain Davis’ office, which he had vacated for her, in a black dress with ivory flowers in salacious patterns that made you long to trade places with the fabric.

We were all standing as she came down watching for her return. Watching her walk towards the head table made the world seemingly stop turning. My breath was caught in my throat and I knew that if she didn’t look at me that I would die there and then. But she did look at me, and she even took my hand as she passed and whispered in my ear that I must save a dance for her. If I replied then providence was with me for I fear that I merely mumbled a reply that might as well have been cabbages for all the sense it made. Yet she smiled and squeezed my hand before she took the stage and smiled at all of us. “Time to feast my darlings,” she said in that beautiful voice of hers.

As one we all tore into the food in front of us with abandon. Our hunger consumed us and we ate anything we could get our hands on. Meat, flesh, gristle, and bone were devoured with a ravenous hunger that shocked and frightened me. Yet I was no more able to stop myself than I was to slow down any of the others near me.

Then she clapped her hands. So gently and soft that I marveled at how any of us heard her; yet not a single person failed to stop their gorging when she did. “My darlings,” she said with a lovely smile, “it’s time we dance.”

Captain Davis stood and coughed before he said, “Madame, I’m afraid that we haven’t any instruments save a drum and trumpet. Poor choices for dancing music I’m afraid.”

“Oh,” she said with a pout, “but I do so want to listen to music as we dance.”

Men and women tore from the tables and ransacked the town looking for any instruments they could find that might accompany the drum and trumpet. Instruments were improvised and a chorus was made on the spot. She was so happy at our ingenuity that she jumped up and down while clapping her hands and giggling. We had saved her dance she said!

The band began to play a tuneless song that jarred the mind and made grown men grind their teeth. Yet she was happy and so we danced. We danced for hours and hours, till night turned to day and again to night. Still we danced because she was having so much fun. We didn’t want to disappoint her.

We were still dancing when the first person died. Old Lady Ward. Poor thing, her heart just couldn’t take the excitement of it all. We keep dancing but do you know what the Lady did? She was so concerned that we might become thirsty that she had a couple of the boys pick her body and let the blood out. – Not on the floor like some heathen, godless thing but into the barrels of wine. The dead would keep us going she said with a laugh, and we laughed with her as we raised our glasses time and time again to toast her health and the dance.

I cannot tell you how long we danced, or how many had their life’s blood added to the wine, only that I danced long enough to be held by her. She was even more beautiful than before. She towered over me now, nearly a foot taller, where before I would have sworn that she were but five feet. She wrapped herself about me and the thorns that broke her skin and sank into my own bought a bittersweet gasp from my lips as I saw her lick my own blood from her fingertips.

“My Lady,” I managed to stammer when she cocked her head to the side and looked at me, “have I done something to displease you?”

She carefully laid her head on my shoulder. Can you imagine a giantess doing so innocent and gentle a gesture? Yet here she had her head on my shoulder and she whispered into my ear, “I’m only sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Dearest?”

“I’m sorry that all of you are having to pay for that fool Captain’s sins.”

“Sins, Madam?”

She stood up to her full height, towering over the keep, and the music stopped. “Yes, sins,” she said, her voice booming like thunder. “He came into my temple and overturned my alter, spilled my sacrificial wine, and burned my Priestess on the stake. He defaced my images and ordered the temple burned to the ground. Why?”

I stammered as I strained to look upon her face, “I - I do not know my Lady.”

She squatted down so I could see her face again and in her eyes I saw the spiraling depths of the universe unfolding. “Because his god is modest and meek.” She said it with menace in her voice and a tinge of disgust. “Modesty,” she mocked, “in all things from dress to sex. Can you imagine Chee?”

I shook my head, “No my Lady.”

“Of course you can’t my dear, sweet, Chee,” she said as she ran her massive finger along the side of my face. “You still honor the Old Gods and our rituals. Even here during the cleansing you poured some wine out for me before drinking the rest for yourself.”

“I,” but words failed me. Here standing before me was Abita, the Lady of Amber, Goddess of the Drink, Debauchery, Dance, and Festivals. She was real and more beautiful than anything I had ever imagined. I should have recognized her and in my anger I turned my gaze away.

“Now don’t go doing that, little man. No harm has come from you, yet, and for that you will live even as all the rest die to the Dance of the Tarantella.”

So it was that I lived and became her Priest while the rest of Fort Montgomery danced itself to death. She sent me out into the world with a single message: Honor the Old Gods and their ways, for they are done with our shit.

Dungeons and Drunkards

Part 1: A pub crawl through assorted editions of D&D (and some homebrew) by +Jens D. 

Part 2: The Dance of the Tarantella by Charles Akins

Part 3: Boozing it Up in 5e by +Sean Bircher
  Part 4: When the DM Gets Drunk by +Stelios V. Perdios
Part 5: Drunken Beasts by +Sean Bircher 
Part 6: B-E-N-D-E-R! by +Sean Bircher
Part 7: Wine Angel by +Sean Bircher
Part 8: The Drunk Girl and the Game Master by +Stelios V. Perdios
The Complete Dungeons & Drunkards PDF