From the Diary of Rudolpho Milano

Dear Diary,

I hate monkeys.

Monkeys are like hairy, short, smelly, filthy, disgusting gnomes and it’s starting to look as if we’re shipwrecked on freaking Monkey Island. All of our current troubles started when we decided to take a detour from the old mountain road.

We found of a trail that led into the jungle and Nesta thought that it would be a simple matter to venture into the jungle to replenish our water supplies. The jungle was complete crap. The trees were all screwed up and there were snakes everywhere. Even the jungle sounds were screwed up. The jungle sounded like monkeys. It was foggy, soggy, and crappy and then Nesta got us lost.

Well, I should back up a bit. Before we got lost we found a clearing with some boring rubble of boring old structures– or maybe we were in the other clearing without the rubble. Anyway we’re in this clearing and there this guy hanging upside down babbling some gobble-dee-gook. There was a hole in his chest where his heart had been cut out but that didn’t stop him from his constant jibber-jabber about the master of something or some crap killing us and keeping us in the jungle forever. He seemed real happy to be hanging there upside down with his heart cut out.

Somebody (I don’t remember who) had the idea to question mister – upside-down – dead – loser – guy. Vin, of course, had ideas of his own. He got out his holy symbol and shouted some crap and our new friend blew up. Yep, Diary, he just blew up like a barrel of alchemist’s fire. Bits of skin and bones and brains and teeth and flaming unidentifiable grue hit us all in the face and what was left of the poor guy’s skull rolled down the path a few feet.

I had to ask, “So, Vin, did you learn anything useful from him?”

We spent a couple of minutes scraping rotten flesh from ourselves and then followed the trail to another clearing. This clearing had even less crap to hold my interest so we continued on with the mission but we couldn’t find our way to a pond or any other source of fresh water.

As a matter of fact, that’s when Nesta got us lost. I mean - we were all equally lost but it IS Nesta’s job to avoid that particular fate. We wandered around until dark. We tried everything to get out of that jungle but Nesta had screwed us all pretty well. Eventually, the second team caught up with us and then all hope of rescue was gone to shit.

About the time that the whole squad was having a big, hugging, sappy reunion, we were finally attacked. I use the word “finally” because I was so bored that anything was a welcome relief.

We were attacked by six-foot-tall filthy monkey demon thingies. They had all sorts of tricks to use against us. First, they dropped out of the making their ridiculous screeches and howls and clawing at us with their filthy paws. One of them summoned up some of that magic darkness that screws with even my darkvision. I hate that crap. While everyone else was stumbling around blind, I managed to attack one of the monkeys. I thought that I had really dealt the smelly loser a death blow but it turned out that I didn’t cut him that deeply.

Anyway, while that was going on I noticed Daria sneaking up behind captain ball-buster and letting her have it with her dagger. The captain didn’t last long. One good stab and it was over. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Daria was a cold-blooded murderer.

As the battle raged on, I was pissed off to find that the monkey-demons were capable of teleporting, turning invisible, and taking the shape of others. That made fighting them a pain in the ass. The monkey losers kept teleporting our teammates away and taking on their likenesses.

After the battle, I was still bothered by Captain Ball-Buster’s death. I was the only one that saw Daria do it and I didn’t mention it to anyone else. While the rest of the team was lamenting the captain’s loss and wondering how it happened, I figured it out: one of the monkeys had taken Daria and replaced her! I knew Daria could not have turned evil. I almost got excited about this revelation and then I remembered that I don’t really care one way or another so I just had a sip of stanky beer and went about my business.

Anyway, we killed a couple of losers; a couple of losers got away; our second team got kidnapped; and Daria may actually be an evil demon-monkey but I guess I’m coping.

-R