Tales of Nip and Gruff – Chapter 1

A new traveler to Aria finds might find themselves suddenly bereft of a pocketful of trinkets, treasures or valuables, not that the merchant walking through the colorful forest has realized this yet. In fact, the only thing they were currently counting was their luck as they found themselves surrounded by tiny friendly bipedal creatures who can do tricks in exchange for head scratches and food. 

It was lucky really, in a sense, that he had met this group of the local fauna who were friendly in this strange land. He had seen large wolf prints and some sort of bear in the distance, these small creatures were a delight by comparison. Would he have said the same thing if he had noticed the deft paws sneaking gold coins out of his pocket? Maybe, he was quite fat, and out running a bear was probably out of the question.

These creatures looked like cats he knew from home. They were furry and feline, with pointy ears, paws and a tail. Their fury was a mix of green, orange, black, white and brown. They stood on their hind legs, with their heads coming up to the average human knee, and their front paws are more like small hands. 

They had demonstrated themselves capable of swinging from branches and helping others do tricks for food. Also they made an adorable series of ‘meep’ sounds as they communicated, in his head he was already thinking of the creatures as ‘Meeps’, and wondering if he could sell them as pets in Solana, or Misteria. 

In his mind, the Meeps were just making sounds of joy as they flipped, and caught treats out of the air. But, if he had been a mage or wizard capable of casting [Translate] or a Druid capable of [Speak with Animals] he might have died of shock. For meeps might meep and howl, but in that mix of tones, sounds and body language they had created a far more nuanced and complex method of communication than anyone who could not understand them would believe. 

“Ooh, that’s a nice flip there Nipper.” came a sound from an older meep with some gray hairs, as he watched his younger friends cavorting and performing. “Oi, Jet be careful wit’ the goods, don’t get us rumbled.”

“Sorry Gruff,” came the quiet squeak from a tiny meep, who was rapidly stuffing a diamond into a small bag that the meeps had hidden behind a tree. 

Another meep, this is a small one with faint black rings around his eyes that would look like human glasses, pokes its head out of a bag on the merchant’s donkey.

“We got a live one ‘ere boss.  You prefer diamonds or gold?”

“Gold Specs, gold, get the shiny stuff first.”

“There’s so much, it’s a party. Look, I’ll make it rain.”

A flurry of coins of all sizes comes whirring out of the bag, landing on a soft patch of grass.

“Careful, careful, don’t let them…” Gruff said a bit louder, but too late. The last few coins don’t land on grass but other coins. They fall with a subtle but unmistakable clink, that sounds like thunder in the still quietness of the forest.

The merchant turns away from Nipper and his crew who are just about to finish a rather complex tandem flip maneuver, and stares at the coins on the ground and the meep heads poking out of his bags.

“What the…” He looks back at the performing meeps who have frozen mid-maneuver, visibility confused. And then his fat face contorts in rage, growing purple and full of blood as his fists clench and he tries to grab the nearest meep.

“WHAAAT!” came the yell that cut through the forest.

“Shit, we’re rumbled, scram scram.” Gruff yells out, and then the meeps are running. Their acrobatics are now being put to good use dodging the big meaty hands that grab for them.

They split in every direction, grabbing everything they could, and the merchant could only watch as the now slightly less cute animals ran off with tiny hands full of gold, gems, and one even had a necklace that had been made to order. He might have a hard time explaining this one. He threw up his hands, and sighed, and then bent down to start picking up the coins that they hadn’t been able to gather. 

He didn’t see the older meep, moving more slowly, limping away while moving from shadow to shadow. He isn’t carrying anything, but he has a broad toothy grin on his face as all of his gang has made it away another day.

As he gets further away from the merchant he pauses, and then speaks to the shadows next to him. “You were meant to go back with the others Nip”. A younger meep with a weird red patterning on his left ear that looks like a bite mark steps out from behind a giant mushroom.

“Well you know, I was waiting. Making sure you got back okay.”

“Oh did ya now? Worried about the old man?” Gruff was still smiling.

“The others wanted to make sure too, but I said I’d do it. It’s a long way back to camp. If a Faunawolf or a bear…”

Gruff laughed, “I’d just hide. Still you’re a good boy Nip. Come now let’s get back”.

As they walk on, in the distance rises the huge pointed roof of a giant striped tent, and on the wind is the sound of carnival music and laughter. As they come closer there is the camp of a giant festival, the place the people of Aria call the Everfest Carnival, because the festival never ends.

Just on the outskirts of this they come to one of the giant ancient squat trees that filled the forest in this part of Aria. It was almost 6 meters in radius. They went to a specific place in the roots where there was a small meep sized hole which they crawl through. Inside, it is not damp or rotten as you might expect, no, this is not just a tree, this is a home. The tree itself has been carefully hollowed out, and carved so that most of the tree is empty. Well not empty, the space where there had been wood and sap had been replaced by an entire meep community.  

Nip and Gruff waved to a few people as they came in, they passed through an entrance area of sorts, into a large circular communal area that was filled with seats, tables and cushions. Various meeps are sitting there, older meeps doing chores, some baby meeps sitting on blankets. A few meeps were preparing food in a kitchen area off to the side. 

Nip and Gruff didn’t stop there, they just moved over to the edge of the room where there was a spiral staircase that led upwards and opened the large heavy door sealed off the room above. 

The next room up was a mirror of the one below, but unlike the calm room filled with chores and sleeping babies, this one was a cacophony of sound and arguments.

“No no, that one is mine, I called dibs on it.”

“Paws off you greedy grabber, you didn’t even get that one, I did.”

“Yeah, finder’s keepers you greedy git”.

“Well I want it… come on let’s make a trade.”

“No, No. Its mine, I only just got it”

“Come on, I must have a shiny ya want. What about that blue shell I got last year?”

“No, you love that shell. You can’t be serious.”

“Yeah, but look at this.” And then Nip and Gruff moved into the room properly and could see Specs standing on a table holding a diamond the size of her paw above her head. There was a light there, a series of small magic lights actually, stolen from a passing mage. The diamond made almost a perfect prism as the light shone through it and made a rainbow on the floor.

“What’s this?” said Gruff as he walked into the room. “Handing out the loot without me?”

Specs slid off the table and looked down at her feet. “It’s not like that Gruff, we was just ‘aving, what do you say, preliminial discussions’ ‘.

Gruff chuckled, and Nip said “It’s preliminary you idiot,” and threw a coin at Spec’s head. The younger meep did a backflip and caught the coin.

“Thanks, I’ll ‘ave this too.” and Specs tried to run up the stairs, but Gruff caught her by the scruff. 

“You know the rules, all the loot on the table for the sorting.”

There was a table in the middle of the room with lots of small stools around it, and into the middle of the table was a large bowl divided in three. There was a raised large bowl section, and then two slopes that led to the other two quarters. The chair in front of this raised section was larger, more ornate and raised slightly above the rest.

The meeps started turning out their little bags, grabbing coins from stashes they had in the corners of the room. Soon the entire raised bowl was filled with coins, gems and jewlery, all except the gem that was still in Specs hand. She was staring at it, rotating it in her tiny paws, until Nip nudged her and she blinked, looked at everyone waiting, and then quickly threw the diamond in the pile.

Gruff sat down with a sigh, and began sorting through the loot. He’d pick up each item individually and hold them up to the light. Sometimes he’d bite a coin. Every piece of loot he touched went down one of the two slopes, and his decisions caused some arguments in the group.

There were calls of “No not that one.” or “Come on, that one was for me.” Or “Wow we are keeping that, dibs dibs dibs.” 

The gold was fast, larger coins, the purer coins went to the right. The mixed weight coins to the left. The gems were inspected carefully and ones with cracks were sent left, other purer ones were sent to the right.

Then he reached the necklace, with the ruby, and looked at it. He shrugged and said “Writing on it” and slid down the right slope. 

Soon all that was left was Specs diamond, and the young meep was dancing from foot to foot with anticipation. Gruff held it up to the light for as long as he could, but then he sighed and slid to the right. 

As he did it Specs let out a little sound, and moved forward to argue, but Nip stepped in the way.

The other meeps were already turning to the pile on the left and starting to dig through it and lay claim to certain items. Some of the older ones had brought out some sacks and were were sorting the right pile into them. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you know the rules. There will be other gems.”

“But, it’s not fair.” Specs started to cry.

“Come on, let’s go get some food, you did really well today.”

Nip grabbed the younger meep by the paw and dragged her downstairs. 

“Look, you know how it is, if we steal too much, if its too valuable, then they come for us. You know they know where we live. So we sort it, the best stuff goes back, some stuff we trade. That way we can steal more.”

“I know, Nip, but I wanted that one soo badly.”

Nip didn’t blame her, if Meeps had one common trait it was a love of all things that shined and sparkled, but this was also a lesson they all had to learn. Sometimes you couldn’t steal the thing you wanted.

“Is Gruff punishing me? I know if I had been more careful we could have taken loads more.”

Nip, stopped and bent down to look the smaller Meep in the eyes. “Listen now, you have to trust the loot master. They do what’s best for us, they don’t make it personal. Gruff has been here for almost a decade, and we’ve never been raided, not once.”

Specs nodded at that. “True. Maybe if the diamond had even one little crack I could have kept it?”

“Maybe, maybe. Look at it this way, now you know that you really like Diamonds, so you can keep a lookout for them right? If you keep taking diamonds you’ll get one you can keep?”

Specs nodded, drying her eyes. “Yeah, I’ll take all the diamonds, and then we’ll see!”.

Nip laughed and patted the younger Meep’s head. 

“Come on then, let’s get you some food and then get back before all the good loot is gone.” and with that ended another successful day in the life of the Meeps of Aria. 

###

Author’s Notes:

I have wanted to write about Meeps since I first heard about them in the Aria section of the lore book. It definitely presents a challenge as writer to tackle the idea of animals like these. How smart are they, how elaborate are their schemes? You can either treat them like animals and put a cap on their endeavors, but that has an upper limit to how enjoyable it is to read in my mind. Or you can do what countless fiction writers have done and ask your reader to suspend disbelief and convert the barks, meows and meeps into a language and a character that people can emphasise with.

Now hopefully LSS will forgive this leap, and for making meeps (at least in my head) a mix of Scottish and Cockney. It is after all just a bit of fun.

Chapter 7 is still underway, how much progress I make at the moment is coloured by how much writing I have to do at work. I have the time to write but frustratingly not the energy right now. As you might imagine, writing a 10,000 page report on the Contact Centre industry and then coming home and trying to write all evening can be a bit much. Still progress is being made, and more important work fleshing out future characters and chapters.

I’ve landed on a total number of chapters 21. Though some will be longer than others. I’m still hoping to average 2 chapters a month in the wash once we get through this period, which means this story will be done by maybe next May. Hopefully sooner. I might take a week off near Christmas to try and do a chapter a day sort of vibes we will see.

In the meantime, I plan on doing a few more filler chapters as well, like this exploring some of the more fun aspects of the FAB universe. Its not all super serious grand narratives of pain and necromancy after all.