The first thing Hilda and Philly had to do was complete the mini-quest of opening the damn door to their cavern. Hilda could open the door easily enough with Medvak’s aid since they’ve both maxed out their strength scores. Philly was a dexterity-based monster, however, so she contributed little by way of pushing power.

As they struggled with the rigid door, the two women grunted, moaned, invoked the gods, and doubtlessly fired the imagination of anyone listening from the other side. Hilda didn’t plan to grill the ghoul about the quest -- the bubbly monster was notoriously bad at conveying exact information -- but as the minutes dragged on, her curiosity got the better of her. It was a good thing she was a sixth level character and not a cat, or she’d be dead a long time ago.

“Remember Mina, the dark elf who always tries to poison everyone?” the ghoul asked, leaning her face and claws against the door to keep from collapsing from exhaustion. Her oily tongue dangled to her chest and dripped saliva all over the floor. She looked like she needed a break. She smelled like she needed a bath even more than usual.

“This doesn’t narrow it down at all.” Hilda gave out a shuddering breath and slid with her back pressed to the wall, her tunic drenched like she’d spent the whole evening swimming. She probably needed a bath too.

“You met her. You said she has lovely hair.” The ghoul crouched beside the resting dwarf, much closer than Hilda was comfortable with anyone except Gloin and some of her sisters. Hilda pushed the ghoul out of her face and started walking toward the center of the cavern.

“Hey, where are you going?” The ghoul jumped to her feet and started running after the dwarf. “You’re just teasing me!”

Hilda gave the ghoul a tired sideways glance. “I tease you by breathing.”

The ghoul grinned briefly. “Anyway, she has a friend who needs someone to get some stuff for them. Ob-something. She told me, but I forgot. The more of this stuff you get for her, the more she pays. You need to get it into the underground though, because the dark elves aren’t ready to go to the surface yet.”

“Good thing too,” Hilda said as she reached the weedy little pond by her hut. It rustled with clear, cool water and housed a family of crabs that hoped to eat the beefy dwarf one day. “When they crawl from their dens, the whole continent will burn.”

The ghoul shrugged. Her standard response to any statement of a political nature. “Lizardmen also have something to do with it. They are sending a shaman to the meeting.”

“That’s fine.” Hilda said. “I have a peace treaty with them.” She turned her back to the ghoul and slipped off her sweat-soaked tunic before jumping into the numbingly cold water. A human would have died from a heart attack. Hilda just felt a pleasant chill. From behind her, she heard the ghoul gasp.

After hearing the pitter patter of bare feet for a while, Hilda smelled the ghoul squatting on behind her. The slender monster didn’t mind rolling in any manner of filth and could watch any level of gore without flinching, but water made her uncomfortable. Just as well. Hilda wasn’t in the mood to keep the thing’s paws off of her while she chilled. Usually, Hilda hated to be naked in the presence of others. Ritual purification and communal baths were hell during her basic training. Somehow, however, Hilda has gotten so used to the ghoul constantly lurking about, she barely viewed her as a separate entity anymore. She was just a large talking pet that sometimes killed people. Besides, the only way to get rid of the ghoul would have been to kill her. Despite threatening to do so daily, Hilda had no plans to ever carry out this threat.

“A treaty?” The ghoul snorted. “You brained their warlord!”

Hilda shrugged. “You ate his brain.”

The ghoul giggled. “It was such a small brain.”

“Obviously,” Hilda said, rubbing the grime off her shoulders. “He thought he could beat me. It’s for the best really. The Book of Heavenly Deeds teaches us that peace comes from victory, not compromise.”

“Because you kill all the non-peaceful people?”

Hilda shrugged again and commenced rubbing her flanks.

The ghoul walked around the little pond so she could leer at the dwarf. Since their first meeting a few months ago, the purple monster made no attempt to hide her attraction to the dwarf. She made no attempt to hide her attraction to anyone.

Truth be told, the ghoul was a pretty creature. In a former life, she was an elf maiden, and it still showed. However, despite her slender figure and fine features, she reeked like a landfill in summer, ate literal garbage, and was a toxic, disease-spreading monster with fangs and claws that could rend metal. The only reason she and Hilda could live in relative harmony was because Hilda was immune to both poison and disease and was so open-minded she was actually slapped by her orthodoxy teacher once. (Hilda then slapped her back and was nearly kicked out of the seminary). The ghoul couldn’t stand her kind and was always on the lookout for non-ghoul partners… but this wasn’t Hilda’s problem.

Well, it was her problem a little bit. Every dwarf fancied herself a matchmaker. It was in their blood. However, it was just the two of them in the cavern and the only other creatures they met were either forest monsters that were so ugly that even the ghoul wouldn’t touch them or Hilda’s people who knew better than to touch anyone afflicted with ghoulism.

The dwarf leaned back and studied the neverending light show provided by the bioluminescent fungi that grew all around her cavern. It was pretty, but she wondered if there was anything she could do to make it more… her.

Hilda looked down. The ghoul was still there, studying her. “Why were you hiding all the time Gloin was here?” Hilda asked. “You weren’t scared of Medvak… and he’s much bigger and stronger than Gloin.”

“Medvak is a teddy bear,” the ghoul said dreamily, resting her chin on her bony knees. “I went away because you and Gloin were having sex. I was afraid I’d lose control and--”

Hilda raised a hand sharply into the air. “No need for details. Are you sure you don’t want me to cast remove curse on you?” She asked in a softer tone. “You’d lose all these strange drawbacks.” The dwarf sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. “You’d smell nicer.”

“Sure, I’m sure!” the ghoul said angrily. “I love having three natural attacks, two types of poison damage, resistance to a ton of things, and a tongue that can make anyone happy. Without this I’ll just be, um, eh…” the ghoul frowned. “I can’t remember my original class. It was something to do with flowers, I think. In any case,” the ghoul sighed loudly, “I barely had any levels in it.”

A pale crab started climbing up Hilda’s smooth shin. She watched with amusement as it toppled each time it nearly reached her knee. “Well, as a monster you can’t gain levels at all. You’ll never be more than you are now.”

“Life is not about gaining levels. It’s about the friends you make along the way.”

“We’re not friends,” Hilda said sternly. “You’re my follower. Very few people want to be friends with ghouls.”

“Semantics,” the ghoul waved a dismissive hand. “Do followers shower naked together?”

Hilda stared at the ghoul. “When was the last time you showered? When halflings were still classified as monsters?”

The ghoul shrugged. “Hey, do you need a hand--”

“Touch me and I’ll break your arm.” Hilda yawned. “Tell me more about the quest.”

The ghoul blew an unruly strand of dark hair away from her eyes. “I told you most of what I remember. They need this ob-something. Oblivion maybe? No, that doesn’t sound right. Obtanium? No… That’s something I just made up. Maybe it was an orb of something. Do dwarfs make orbs? Do you know that small orbs can be inserted into--”

“Focus!” Hilda commanded.

“Anyway,” the ghoul said. “For every kilo of that thing, you’ll get at least 50 gp, more if you can get it for a good price. The patron is paying, of course.”

“Do you remember how much of it they need?” Hilda asked.

“A ton.”

“A ton?!” The dwarf jumped to her feet, splashing water everywhere and treating one crab to the brief sensation of flying. The ghoul’s eyes widened and her tongue rolled out like a very happy snake.

“That would make the reward,” Hilda paused to make the calculation in her head, her lips moving silently as she crunched the numbers. Hey, she had good Wisdom saving throws. No one said she had a high Wisdom score. “That would make it… 50,000 gp!”

The ghoul made a muffled sound. Her huge tongue got tangled with her fangs and for a while she couldn’t speak. Finally, she sucked in her banana of a tongue and regained the power of speech.“At least, minus my commission.”

“Commission for what? You can’t travel with--”

“I found you a patron,” The ghoul crossed her hands over her knees. “I deserve to get a little something.”

Hilda rolled her eyes and slumped back into the pond. “Fine… minus your commission. I can’t imagine Medvak asking me to pay him just to get a quest.” Hilda sighed. “I bet Mina will want a commission as well… Underground creatures are so stingy.”

“You’re an underground creature.” The ghoul said.

“Yeah,” Hilda agreed, “but from a different planet.”

The dwarf got out of the water and ambled for her hut to get a fresh tunic. The ghoul’s tongue rolled out again. I wonder, if I grabbed that tongue and pulled really hard, how far would it come out? Could I use it as a rope in case of an emergency…

Inside, Hilda quickly dried herself and started sorting the items she’d take on the journey. On the one hand, she wanted to look professional and prosperous (neither of which was true). On the other hand, she wanted to survive the journey, which would require dressing in her scratched and dented battle armor.

She could leave in her battle armor and change into ceremonial robes right before the meeting. However, the idea of carrying all this dead weight for Goddess knows how long didn’t appeal to her. Besides, with her luck, she’d fall into a mud pit or be sprayed with corrosive saliva or ruin her only pretty dress in some other unlikely way.

If life was a soup, Hilda was a fork.

No, her only good dress would stay in the closet, where it had a chance to survive another year. Instead, Hilda started looking for her armor grooming kit. When she’d face the dark elves and/ or lizardmen, she’d literally be a knight in shining armor. This would make her look like a serious adventurer if all went well, and help her blind her foes in case the meeting went south (or wherever the hell meetings in the underground went before everyone started killing everyone.)

“How do I look?” Hilda asked the ghoul, who was looking at her, face and claws pressed to the window. Despite its hard life, Hilda always thought her armor was quite snappy. It’d look even nicer once she cleaned and polished it.

The ghoul sucked in her tongue. “Um, difficult to hit?”

“Just the look I was going for!” Hilda shouldered her backpack, which she crammed with all the items she wished she’d packed on her last adventure, and stepped outside. “Let me recite the wayfarer’s blessing and we’ll be on our way.”

The ghoul walked around the hut to join Hilda. “Can I recite it with you?”

“You don’t have to. You’re a follower. Only the leader needs to bless the party.”

The ghoul frowned. “But I’m leading you…”

“Semantics.” Hilda waved a dismissive hand. “Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

Her blessing done, Hilda looked back at her cozy little hut with its scuttling coffee table, luxurious bed that still smelled of Gloin, moon-shaped doors and windows, wide leaf shower (that really needed to be replaced…), and just general sense of homeiness.

She wasn’t quite there yet, but she was getting there. This was the nicest place she’d ever lived in… and it would be ten times nicer as soon as she secured the funds. It would be so nice that humans with too much time on their hands would come to look at it and then write about it in magazines.

Hilda took a deep breath and let it out slowly to steady her nerves: she really, really hoped it would be there when she returned.