# The (mis)Adventures of Lord Montague Peregrine III



## Magius del Cotto (Oct 24, 2003)

Though they may be noble born, Lord Montague Peregrine the III and his sister, Mary, seem nothing like it.  Between Mary’s affinity for the path of the Wolf, and Montague’s wild mane of black hair, you’d suspect that they were woodsmen instead.  However, both have been banished from their home by their father, Mary because the Prime Minister convinced him she was ready to follow in her mother’s footsteps and rebel against him, and Montague because he decided that not keeping in touch with his banished sister because his father said he couldn’t was sort of stupid.
They decided to join once again and make the most out of their life as they could.  Montague made some money from his sleight of hand tricks and acrobatics, while Mary scrounged the food they’d need to survive.  Fortunately, they both were quite good at what they did, so survival wasn’t an issue.
However, escaping from their father’s wrath was.  Though they hadn’t been doing anything illicitly illegal, the Prime Minister convinced their father that they were fermenting rebellion (even though Montague’s antics made it hard for anyone to take him seriously).  Not wanting to lose his power, the lord Peregrine hired a mage to banish them to the lowest level of hell.
Things, of course, did not go according to plan.  Maybe it was the fact that the pair wasn’t drawing much attention to themselves, maybe it was the fact that as soon as the wizard started casting the spell, Montague charged forward, shouting, “Can I call you Dadoo?”  Whatever caused it, the spell miscast, blasting the mage backward, smashing everything he was carrying in his backpack.
The sudden release of a lifetime’s worth of adventuring was enough to rip a hole in the fabric of reality, drawing Monty and Mary into a portal to an unknown world.  They awoke to what they at first took to be a dark sky, filled with stars.  Not having anything particularly better to do, Monty decided to take a short walk around.  He didn’t know how short until he walked all the way around the world and collided with his sister.  He took a few trips around the world, and he kept coming back around to her.  At a loss for what to do, he decided to go a few steps away and do some jumping jacks.
This changed after the first one, when he found that he just wasn’t coming back down from his jump.  Instead of doing the jumping jacks, as he had intended, he went into a complex series of spins and twirls.  Growing bored, he made his way back to the little planetoid by way of the grappling hook and rope that he always kept with him.  Instead of sitting around, waiting to be bored to death, he launched himself at the nearest planetoid, landing perfectly.
Mary, however, didn’t have such luck.  She was hurled the other direction by the now whirling planetoid.  Montague, not wanting to lose his only companion at this point, leapt after her, pushing off two other planetoids, and landing just in time to watch his sister disappear in a flash of light.
Montague spent a moment looking around for her, and just as he was preparing to leap for the next planetoid, he spotted what looked like a tiny emerald set in the ground right where Mary was standing.  He bent over and poked at it, disappearing as well.
Mary had been studying the red and black stone tower that she had appeared on when Monty appeared, right over her head.  Once they had sorted themselves out (and a hasty apology had been drawn from Monty), Monty pulled out his rope once more and used it to help his sister down, before climbing down himself.
When they reached the bottom, they found themselves surrounded by bones many times larger than they were.  “Well, I guess everyone was big boned here…” Monty said as they set off to find the entrance to the castle.  They found it reasonably quickly.  However, they found it torn asunder by a set of giant claws.  “Makes mine seem relatively minor in comparison…” Monty muttered as he followed Mary inside.
There they found a code of conduct carved into the walls in giant, as well as another set of writing that they could not decipher.  Shrugging, Monty lead the way into the city, taking a right when they came to their first intersection.  The found a series of relatively well-to-do houses, all run down with neglect.  The sound of rats came out of each.  “Sounds like the rats want us to be their friends,” Monty said off-handedly as they turned around and went back the way they came.
Back at the intersection, they went toward the center of the city.  The claw marks they had seen on the entrance of the castle were more apparent here, as was the sound of the rats.  When they came to a rather large building that seemed to be important, they found a set of rats chewing on some food in a recently broken barrel.  The rats scattered as Monty and Mary entered, hissing at them from a distance.  “I take it back,” Monty said to his sister, a slight tinge of nervousness in his voice.  “I don’t think the rats want to be our friends.”
Without warning, the rats leapt forward, intent on driving out the intruders.  Mary drew her sword and swung at them at first, but she quickly realized the futility of the action and turned to stomping on them instead.  Monty, on the other hand, did a six-second jig in the middle of them, then dropped to his knees and started swatting at them with his battle claws, whiskers sprouting unnoticed from his face.
Though the rats weren’t that much of a threat to them, the battle took longer than it probably should, and Monty managed to get his battle claws stuck in the ground twice over the course of the battle, bringing much mirth to Ferrin, the God of Mischief.  “Glad you enjoyed that as much as I did,” Monty said brightly as he freed his claw from the ground.
“Oh, yes.  I haven’t laughed that much in far too long.  The name’s Ferrin, god of mischief.”
“Monty.  Good to meet you.”
“You know, you’d think that the people that worship the god of mischief would be a little more, well, mischievous, but no!  They always act all reverent when I’m around…”
“Yeah, I can see how that would be annoying,” Monty said, a grin still on his face.
“Well, it comes with the job, I guess…” Ferrin’s face lost it’s humored edge, then fell into an annoyed frown.  “Ah, duty calls.  I must be off!”
As the god of mischief faded from view, Monty felt something new poking out from beneath his clothes.  Looking behind him, he found that he had suddenly grown a brand new, tawny cat’s tail.  “Well, not exactly your normal adventuring souvenir,” he said, as they looked toward the darkness, his grinning mouth looking strangely like a cat’s snout.


----------

