Several of my men had already drawn weapons and were ready for him, or any hidden friends of his, to attack us.
As he noticed the movements of my retainers, he twitched and fell over flat on his back. As he lay immobile, a tense second of silence stretched into several seconds, then a minute. My retinue exchanged confused glances. I quietly instructed them to keep their positions and remain alert, but not to do anything...yet. This standoff was broken by him suddenly thrusting a bottle at the sky and laughing uproariously for a full five minutes.
Still chuckling, he stood up, but broke his bottle in the process. His face turned red and contorted in rage. My men shuffled nervously, as the goblin drew a deep breath. Before they could decide on their actions, he launched into a indecipherable roaring goggle-eyed rant, seemingly aimed at his broken bottle, the skies, the woods behind him, and anything in between.
I believe, could it understand but a single word of it, this stream of (I assume them to be) profanities would have greyed my hair and bleached my heraldry, such vitriol was behind it!
At some point, seemingly halfway into a sentence, he suddenly fell quiet, sighed deeply, and started to sniff. Seconds later he was sitting on the forest floor, hands limply in his lap, crying as if all the grief of the world suddenly was on his shoulders.
He cried for quite some time...
All this time me and my men stood there, astounded and confused by this strange specimen of the goblin species, and his indecipherable actions and language.
Just when we were at the point of deciding to move on and leave him be, he suddenly jerked his head upright, wiped away his tears and stood up.
He looked around until he saw me. Then he walked towards me and looked me straight in the eye. He shouted something at me, "Tha gaol agam ort!" I believe it was. At that he seemed himself to blink in confusion, and then said "Is mise cliamain" or something like it, in a more quiet voice.
Muttering under his breath, pointing at various member of my retinue or items in our baggage train, he walked to the rear of the column, and sat in the grass until we departed. When we left, he walked after us.
He has followed us ever since. At least, until 5 months later, when we met another group of traveling adventurers on the road and he apparently decided to follow them along instead.
Sometimes we encounter him again, always with another group of heroes. Sometimes he joins us, sometimes he doesn't. We still don't know why.
Drunk or sober (rarely!), he hasn't been any more intelligible than on that first day.
He always knew to find the best loot and booze, though...
Gilbert D'Abelard, traveling knight, recounts his first meeting with the goblin adventurer known only as "Mad" McHaggis the Fighting Drunk.
This is the second miniature I got in a gift package from fellow Lead Adventure Forum member Elprez. It's Hasslefree Miniatures' Sparr.
I knew the triangular whiskey bottle is specific to a small family of brands, namely Grant's and Glenfiddich. Of the two, Glenfiddich has a green bottle, and as there would already be a fair bit of green in the model, I opted for Grant's, in their clear bottle. Specifically, he is holding a bottle of Grant's Family Reserve.
Tying in to this theme, "Mad" McHaggis is dressed in the Grant clan tartan, or at least as close an approximation as my eyesight and painting skills will allow.
Here is a shot from the behind:
The treasure chest is from the old GW Mordheim accessory sprue, and will be part of my wife's Warhammer Quest set. I painted it to look old and dirty, but still solid. It's fairly subdued in colours, so that it would set off the richness and colour of the gold. Have to make sure the riches draw the eye...
