Howdy Ho!
You can hate orcs and other creatures of the night as much as you like, but Valar forbid, these guys really know how to throw a party! And when the party is thrown in Angband itself, well you guessed it right, there's no shortage of any mind bending and twisting substances you might be interested in or able to imagine. I've started to understand the easterling sentiment so much scorned with the nit-picking besserwissers of the west. These guys are the ones you wish to hang around with when in mood for serious partying.
But I had a mission to accomplish there as well and even if it took me a while, I finally caught up with some feline company I had been looking for. After satiating many of my not too modest bodily needs with the cool cats guarding the door I was finally showed inside a dark-lit chamber where the Lord of the Cats had his private party going on.
He was curious about me, that was clear. And even if the size and sharpness of his claws made them look like swords to me, and his piercing red eyes looked at me incessantly delving deep into my very being, he didn't actually scare me as much as Thuringwethil did when I met her the last year. I still wet myself, though. But who cares what one must go through for the sake of journalism?
After a few drinks compared to which Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blasters would be old women's medicine I finally got to interview him. Well, kind of...
I did ask him about the team Angband for this year's tournament, and that how would they keep the pay-roll in check having this salary cap and all, but he just kept telling me that the easterling dirtbags come cheap and can hold their ground while others do the heroics. It was clear he had also taken quite much as he repeated things even more I did. But it was as clear he was not willing to talk about the bigger fish.
But the cunning veteran journalist I am, even - and more often than not - under influence, I had a cunning plan to squeeze some information from him. I was pretty certain it would be either Sauron, a dragon, or some of the mightiest balrogs joining Tevildo in the attack for team Angband, so I asked quite casually, how did he find it to play alongside a winged striker? He laughed at my wittiness and asked me, whether I thought balrogs had wings or not?
I was laughing along already praising myself for a scoop when he suddenly took me by the throat with the razorsharp claws of his and pulled me to his face a few feet off the ground (his breath, btw. stinks like the worst cat's breath squared to gazillion - were I a man of lesser stature I would have totally passed out) .
"So you think you're witty, eh?" he hissed and hoisted me even higher (Valar be blessed for that for I escaped the foul breath of his). "It shouldn't take you that much to figure that if the vampire-lady is not playing then it is Ancalagon, like before..." With that he dropped me to the floor and I broke a few ribs. "Did you think lord Melkor would settle for a second best?"
Lying at the floor, my sides were aching and my neck was bleeding, but I had the news!
Somehow, I still felt maltreated, and made the stupidest thing a living creature could do in the presence of a drunken and already annoyed Tevildo. I did ask him about the rumours he might be replaced by Sauron, like in the stories - that did he feel secure he would be in the team for the posterity to know his name?
I barely escaped. And it was not my own heroism that saved me (when in decent mood I can be a hero you know), but Oikeroi and Umuiyan who thought their master had had enough and led him into his private chambers before he had time to slash me into pieces.
Mission accomplished.
Although writing this my head hurts like it never has. But hey, there's record to be broken everywhere!
