Here's the REAL story, folks. Don't believe what others try to tell you, because they're just plain WRONG.

At approximately 8:35:02 on Thursday, October 9th, three witnesses who were at the time strolling quite innocently through New Kerofk soon found themselves beset by a squad of five Tough Citizens of that southern city. There, they consumed approximately 8 12oz bottles of Stanneg Stout of some variety and half a pint of a kind of Arkham Blue Death whiskey, three blt sandwiches, approcimately 12.8 chocolate-chip cookies, and approximately 358 beer nuts. At around 9:10:02, they left.

Immediately as they were leaving the bar, they entered the New Kerofk Eating Bar. The fight was quick and brutal, with the three witnesses witnessing their murders of approximately five Tough Citizens to death. After this furious battle, they proceeded to scrutinize approximately one piece of paper each, mumble a few words, and promptly disappeared in what an onlooker described as a 'black cone.'

At the same time on that fateful evening, approximately 10 minutes and 25 seconds later, almost an hour afterwards, within twenty minutes, sometime that week, the noted thief Titan was spotted at the Gateway at Nirenoft. Onlookers looked on while he went about one room to the east, nearly a room to the north, a second room to the north, and just about one room to the east AGAIN, to enter Jeraad's Magicks Emporium, where he purportedly bought around the area of 4 scrolls of homecoming, a floating wand, and approximately 3 scolls of knowledge. Soon afterwards, about two minutes and eight seconds after entering the Emporium, he was seen to leave and head south along the Duke's Highway.

Reports also tell of reports telling of one witnesses' account of a heinous crime which occurred about three minutes and twelve seconds or thereabouts after Titan's emergence from the Emporuim. The famed Tracker Iblith, meaning, coincidentally, 'fecal matter' in both drow and tak'arran, was brutally assaulted and murdered by a 'man in dark clothes who placed a knife in the poor man's spine,' says one witness. Says another that Iblith was 'beset on all sides and the front by a level 70 thief' who 'sheathed his blade in Tracker <expletive>'s back.' Another eyewitness who heard of the incident reported that 'Titan backstabbed Iblith' in cold blood.

We went to Alanholt Keep, popular haunt of the Realms' Trackers, to ask officials there what they intend to do to continue this investigation and exact punishment. A somewhat sloppy guard told us that his mother sometimes had to dress him. A lazy guard refrained from comment. A very tall guard who says he says he says he wasn't loaded at the time and therefore is not able to add anything. The reply given to us by a thin guard was 'ouch' immediately following his being fallen upon by an unstable rotund guard. We saught more information, so we went directly to the Captain, whose office is near to where the incident took place. When asked what he intended to do about the situation, he replied quite formally, 'There will be no violence in my presence.' We noted this, and asked him what he thought of the state of the Realms when such things happened everyday these days, and he told us that 'the Realms used to be such a peaceful place.' We asked for a final statement from him before we left, and he said, 'There will be no violence in my presence.'

Unsatisfied with what facts we had dug up from the peacekeepers of Alanholt Keep, I personally went before Duke Thomas Perkins. I asked him if he had anything to add to what his Captain had already told us, and he replied not. I oggled at his personal guards, whereupon he caused the earth to shake. I left with haste.

There may be some confusion concerning the lawfulness of this whole ordeal. But whether or not it was done within the laws of the Keep does not concern us. We merely wish to publish juicy stories of heinous acts and make lots of money.

Earlier this evening, the following comment was made from one of the citizens: I mean Shire, not Shirt.

How does this fit into the puzzle?

We went all the way to the information centre of the Realms, Fate's Peak, for some insights. However, our trip was in vain. The majority of the people there did not bother to reply. Those who did speak to us offered to train us in various arts as well as to sell to us various goods. Frustrated, we went up to the second floor to search the archives ourselves.

What we found there was quite flabbergasting. Lining the walls, lining the floor, forming aisles, were shelves which stretched from floor to ceiling. Each was filled with books upon books upon books, and some scrolls, too, approximately a lot of them. They were in total disarray, however, ordered alphabetically and meticulously by the last name of the author and my subject as well, all decidedly impossible to categorize and making finding what we were looking for insanely easy. So we gave up and decided to search the top floor for more hints.

Quite a ways to the southwest, we found a large puddle of blood on the floor. Apparantly, it has lain there for many months, yet it was still very wet. We attributed this to the fact that, the Fortress being at such a high altitude, the Fortress was at such a high altitude, and let the matter drop. The question was: whose blood was it?

It was mine, as it turned out. I purged it and made the floor nice and clean. That done, we went back to our headquarters, the thingie-do. Pizza and iced tea (of a decidedly obscure brand) made up a lunch while we thought things over and ignored the little brown weirdo which inhabits that particular thingie-do. We came to the decision that there were too few facts to bring us to any sort of conclusion and, by approximately unanimous decision, decided to immediately forget the entire matter.

What was I saying? Doh, I hate that!

-Cyng Swiftwind, the, um ... drat, I forgot

(written by Cyng)