 The Talking Guar of Vhul I |
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| Added by | Tamriel Data | ||
| ID | T_Bk_TalkingGuarOfVhul_ITR | ||
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100 |  |
2.50 |
There are a great many beasts in Mundus known to speak, but the simple guar is certainly not counted among them. One glance into its oafish eyes reveals this to be indisputably true. And yet, there is a tale to be told of Mudfoot, the talking guar of Vhul.
There are many accounts from supposed witnesses, but with the passage of time it has become nearly impossible to strain the dewdrops of truth from the coagulated sap of rumor and jest. Indeed, this story is of personal importance to me - having heard the story countless times as a youth, yet never seeing any evidence as to its veracity, I've long yearned to get to the bottom of this local historical curiosity. My own grandfather is said to have witnessed the speaking guar himself in his time, but as he was killed in the Arnesian War when I was young, I never had the chance to hear him tell of it.
Our tale begins with Balyn Omathan, a poor whickweat farmer living in a simple shack in the mucklands southwest of Vhul. Thus goes the story - one morning, as Balyn began setting about his work of crawling through the mud to prune his whickweat stalks, he heard a huffing and puffing (or perhaps a scuffling and chuffling) behind his back.
He turned in time to see his guar Mudfoot a few dozen paces away, frantically hopping up and down, calling out "Beware! Beware!". As alarming as this sight surely must have been, Balyn was a bit more immediately concerned with the massive nix-hound that had latched onto his shoulder. It tore into his flesh with its mandibles, but Balyn was able to return the insult by sliding his rusty whickweat knife into the beast's proboscis. He was wounded, but not terribly so, and his dull hooked blade had been enough to drive the creature away.
Balyn was shaking still as he bandaged himself within the safety of his shack when he remembered that his guar had spoken. He was perplexed, and rightly so, for when he approached the beast and rubbed its great snout, it would not speak again. Had he imagined it? Was he losing his mind?
Several days later, Balyn traveled into the town of Vhul with Mudfoot, who pulled his heavy whickweat cart to market. And a strange thing happened - Mudfoot began to greet the townsfolk as they walked past. "Hello!", "Good day!" he called out as people walked past, stopping them in their tracks.
Soon a crowd had gathered to see the talking guar. Balyn sold every single stalk of his whickweat that day, and was delighted to return to his farm with a light cart and a heavy coinpurse. Soon he had made a habit of bringing Mudfoot into town every few days, whether or not he had any harvest to sell. This provided him with a steady stream of income, as travelers through the town were all too happy to throw a coin to the farmer to see such a thing. He was said to tell jokes and riddles, comment on one's appearance, and even recite poems.
This continued on for several years. Nobody really knew Balyn's name in town, but Mudfoot had become a bit of a local celebrity. And so it was for a time, until, as all things on Nirn eventually must, Mudfoot died, and his story began to fade into legend.
This is the tale as I have heard it told many times. Now, dear reader, I assure you that I am ever the skeptic, but let us consider some of the so-called logical explanations which have been offered previously by others, and I shall rebuke each one.