MONSTER GRIEVANCES

Jennifer Steen

LETTER TO THE MUNCHKINS 1:

To the Adventurers,

We, the denizens who dwell in your local dungeon, have formed a union to decide all dungeon business. Mostly, though, we have banded together in this way to stop the likes of you from ruining our day. The adventurers that continually tromp into our home are destructive and downright immature. By staying underground like this, away from the cities and villages, we are trying to live in peace. We enjoy spending our time playing games, taking naps, and just being monsters. We have every right to expect freedom from harassment by wizards and elves and assassins!

Yet time after time adventurers show up to kick down our doors, loot our rooms, and engage in destructive behavior, like throwing potions that stick to the walls (and never come off). It’s enough to make some of our more sensitive neighbors cry. Countless times, dwarves with outrageously huge axes and eleven-foot poles come bounding through broken doors hacking everything to bits. We have to clean up these messes every time, and we’re tired of using tweezers to get the splinters out of our feet and toothbrushes to try and get the potions off the wall.

You – yes, you, adventurer, reading this letter – have been ruining our homestead with your greed for years. We are finally airing our grievances now in hopes of inspiring change. Obviously, we need to educate you on what it’s like to be a monster in our dungeon. To this end, let us list some of your most egregious violations:

1. Disturbance of the Peace. The dwarves are extremely loud when they splinter the doors, and the rambunctious chanting as they run down the halls doesn’t help. Many of us take naps during the day. And then there are the ducks. Let’s be clear: we are done with you picking up the ducks – their loud and panicked quacking wakes us at all hours, and it takes forever to quiet the fowl noise. Bigfoot, in particular, is very annoyed because he needs his beauty sleep. We request that any acquired ducks be removed from the dungeon and taken with you. Then you’ll truly know our pain and sleepless nights.
2. Violation of Personal Space. This applies to all of us, really, but one monster in particular has requested that you do not sit in him. The Gazebo is a sentient being. He is not a place to hang out to watch oompah band concerts or to reenact scenes from The Sound of Music. (It’s a particularly bad idea to sing “Do-Re-Mi” near him.) He had a bad experience when two lovers were whirling and twirling around him and the girl twirled right through his spindles. His name is Jeremy, and he’s a very nice monster once you get to know him. He just has personal space issues and does not like to be touched without asking. Imagine someone sitting in your lap or, worse, your mouth without so much as a hello.
3. Insult to Injury. When you come traipsing through our halls, some of you tend to point out our flaws. Not all of us can be tier 1 monsters with names that unnerve even the bravest adventurer. The Net Troll is quite upset at those of you who kick down his door and make fun of him. Just because he doesn’t possess any special powers doesn’t mean he can’t post an anonymous nasty note about you on Internet message boards. And he thinks he has good cause to do just that. He’s angry that you don’t understand him. Perhaps you could try to see it from his point of view instead of berating him all the time, especially after you’ve just bashed him with one of those eleven-foot poles.
4. Inappropriate Use of Dragons.It has come to our attention that some of the adventurers are forcing cute little dragons to sit on their shoulders. Dragons are monsters. They do not belong on your shoulder. While they sometimes eat adventurers, most dragons enjoy flying around and sitting on their treasure. We suggest you leave them in the dungeon where dragons belong, and we will take care of them for you. Doing otherwise can only end badly for all those involved. Remember, even little dragons can sometimes breathe fire.
5. Iä! Iä! Last, but not least, our comrade, the great and mighty Cthulhu, would like to say a few words. To be specific: “Dfn’ajt hghw’klk esom’wa rtyawn si rt anna’oj.” We think this means that you should perish in the endless void, but it’s always hard to figure out just what he’s saying through all those tentacles. He’s probably upset because he is having bad dreams, thanks to all the stomping about and fighting going on here. He used to have happy dreams of fluffy bunnies and singing flowers, but now you don’t want to know what the dream bunnies look like or what happened to the singing flowers. You might want to bypass his dungeon door for a while.

To restate our central point: it is difficult to be a monster and hold down a dungeon in this day and age. We hope you understand where we are coming from, or at least can try to act more civilized. Don’t you want to be more civilized instead of stubborn, obnoxious, and immature – well, for lack of a better word – munchkins? We hope you’ll be willing to work with us. It probably won’t take much on your part to make it possible for us all to live in harmony. We eagerly await your reply by dungeon post.

Sincerely,

Monster Union 3872

LETTER TO THE MUNCHKINS 2:

Munchkins,

We apologize for using the term adventurer to address you instead of munchkin, which we have always considered kind of demeaning and a put-down. In fact, not every one of us likes being called monster. We are individuals with feelings and names, too, like Toby the Gummi Golem and Zeddicus the Gothyanki. But you know what you want to be called, no matter the connotations attached to the word by others. From now on we shall call you munchkins.

We are also sorry for the late reply. We were busy with a game of Hide and Go Seek when you last came barreling through our dungeon. While we did not enjoy the fact you destroyed half of our rooms using the Freezing Explosive Potion, we are still laughing at your failure to act as a group.

Once you got inside you were bickering so much with each other that you missed the second entrance to your right. Instead, you all walked right to the edge of the balcony and fell down into the River of Doom. We call this the River Room. It’s probably the biggest room in the dungeon and home to the Yak Yak Yaks. They weren’t too happy that you got them all wet when you splashed into the river. It takes forever for them to dry off, and we have to spend hours brushing their hair while they talk and talk and talk. They did find it hilarious that you had to run away because all your weapons and shiny armor washed down the river. They’ve collected all your precious gear and gold to resell to help fix the front door. You might be able to buy it back from the local pawn shop – at a significantly inflated price, of course.

We had mentioned in our previous letter that you should not pick up the ducks. Of course that was the first thing the Dwarf Thief did, and he did it repeatedly. The noise was absolutely horrific. How could he not notice that the ducks kept getting louder every time he picked one up? It’s not just about the noise; it’s the lack of respect these actions show for our personal space. Please stop doing this!

Also, your Hirelings thought it would be a great idea to take a selfie with every monster without asking. We are not responsible for what happened after the camera flash went off.

We understand that some of you munchkins were having difficulty figuring out the meaning of our first letter. In the simplest terms, we, the monsters of Union 3872, would like to propose a truce. To show our sincerity, we want you to know that we have something precious of yours. You may not be able to figure out what it is but we are holding it for ransom. It might take you a while to figure out which treasure is gone; trust us when we say you’ll miss it. Below is a map showing a location where you can meet us to discuss the truce. We hope you are amenable to this proposal.

Sincerely,

Monster Union 3872

LETTER TO THE MUNCHKINS 3:

Munchkins,

We have had it up to here with your selfishness. You didn’t show up for our proposed meeting. Instead, you have shown complete disregard for us by entering our dungeon and stealing more of our treasure. This is the second time in two days that you have blasted our front door into pieces. (Squidzilla had just put the finishing touches to a final coat of brown paint on the new door, too.) And why even enter that way? Did you even read the map we included in the last letter? If you had, you would have realized that there are a dozen less destructive places to enter the dungeon. Really, give the map a look. Get your friends to help you. Perhaps one who knows which side of the map is north.

We really wanted to settle our mutual grievances like civilized monsters and munchkins. We believed you could handle that kind of discussion, but perhaps we were wrong. This letter may come off as a bit more ominous, but we are trying to make a point. We were going to make amends and return your property to you, but now we won’t unless you start being nice. Hopefully by now you have figured out that we have your precious Munchkinomicon. Don’t worry about how we ended up with your spellbook. We have it. Let’s move on.

The book is being safeguarded by the most ferocious of beasts, one you may have never before encountered. If you want to have the Munchkinomicon back, send a designated representative to the darkest part of the dungeon to sign our truce. If you are thinking of using the truce meeting as a cover for you to attack our home elsewhere, we’ll only note that the dungeon is boasting some new traps. Psycho Squirrel and the Hippogriff haven’t been happy with what’s been going on. They’ve spread some really nasty stuff around, such as buckets of sticky purple paint. The squirrels have used some of that potion that changes the size of an item to create boulder-sized nuts. Also, the Plutonium Dragon really outdid himself this time.

Attached is a new map of where you can find your precious book. Being munchkins and all, you’ll need all the help you can get, so we’ve made the map really simple. We will be awaiting your arrival. Remember: do not pick up any ducks you encounter along the way.

Annoyed,

Monster Union 3872

LETTER TO THE MUNCHKINS 4:

Munchkins,

We are deeply saddened – and, frankly, infuriated – by your inability to understand what it means to attend a meeting. We hoped you could follow our directions from the previous letters and conclude our dealings in a positive fashion. Once again you decided to raid, and you continue to pick up the ducks. We have to conclude now that you are doing this out of spite. Regardless, your behavior has had dire repercussions. Some of the ducks have taken to dyeing their feathers black and moping around like the sun will never shine again. We can’t make these gloomy ducks happy, and those that remain yellow simply act out all day. This is just one of the more obvious ways in which you’ve made a mess of our dungeon.

We found our three previous letters crumpled up in the bottom of a sack that was dropped by a fleeing munchkin. It’s utterly appalling that you would treat the letters like trash, particularly after we spent hours making certain the penmanship they displayed was perfect. We have to wonder now if you even read the letters, or if you simply don’t care about their message. Either way, based on your utter lack of respect, we are taking extraordinary measures.

We’re going to let you in on a little secret. By now you’ve probably gone through your loot that you stole from the dungeon last night and are cheering that you got your Munchkinomicon back.

Before you entered the dungeon, we, as a union, decided that if you weren’t going to be amenable to a truce, we’d have to do something drastic to keep you out of our home. To this end, we created a new book identical to the one you used to possess. Then, while you were looting the rooms, the Poison Ivy Kudzu Flytrap hid the book in Fredrick the Bard’s burlap sack.

Some denizens suggested putting a curse on the book that would make you paranoid so that you would constantly squabble amongst yourselves and sacrifice your treasure. But the dragons sagely noted that you already act like this. Instead, the curse we ended up placing on the book will make you cooperate with each other and suffer from guilty consciences when screwing each other over. You will be so busy being racked by guilt that we should finally enjoy some peace and quiet around here.

All we really wanted to do was come to an understanding, and we’re sorry (well, some of us, anyway) that this is how things turned out. Good luck if you try to get back into the dungeon. Take that as a final warning. But just in case that doesn’t work, let’s be clear: we’re done playing nice. Bring it on.

Defiantly,

Monster Union 3872

 

Jennifer Steen hosts the ENnie-nominated Jennisodes podcast, where she poses hard-hitting interview questions to a myriad of individuals in the gaming community. She has conversed with game designers, authors, editors, artists, and players of all sorts over the past three years. She is also the designer of the zany and outrageously fun storytelling RPG, Project Ninja Panda Taco. When she isn’t taking over the world through podcasting and reining in minions, she enjoys playing Magic: The Gathering, eating tacos, and wishing she had a panda. She lives in Philadelphia, PA, and is often found playing games with her wonderful husband, baby munchkin, and two monsterlike puppies.