Facestealer Beuller's Day Off
A Wandering Inn Fan-fiction by MidniteLulz

The sun was shining on the floodplains of Liscor, which was great news for everybody who wasn't hundreds of feet underground.

Down below, in Liscor's world-famous Dungeon™, a massive, horrible creature was busy having its head torn off by a large torso carrying a sack. The torso finished wrenching off the head of the giant lizard, and began examining it for any defects, before noticing an adventuring team out of the corner of his eye-hole.

"R-RUN! IT'S THE FACESTEALER!" one of the drakes shouted, and before the torso could react, the entire team had fled around a corner. Pausing a moment, the our hero put the lizard head into his burlap sack, and made ready to pursue them.

Until, that is, a commotion attracted his attention. He opened his sack and pulled out a mouldering head of a human. He looked deeply into what remained of its eyes, and its jaw flopped open, as if to say "It's quitting time."

He shook the head slightly, as if to respond "Darn, bad timing. I'll have to go after those ones later."

With a heaving of his shoulders in an approximation of a sigh, the torso put his heads and sticks back in his sack and started heading for home. Annoying. That was the main thing. "Snatcher." "Facestealer." They called him these things, but these were just a JOB TITLE. Dennis Carrobar shook his favorite head as he dragged the sack behind him. It was a Drake who had had a gold tooth. It was a good head.

Dennis arrived in his apartment, a small room of the Dungeon™ (a classy 1 bed, 1 bath, 2 death trap affair, good location, better school districts), and set his sack in the corner. He slumped into his chair, setting off the fire jets in the center of the room, on which he warmed his feet.

Some people could only see him for his job. Admittedly, he loved to paralyze people and steal their heads. There was an art to it that many couldn't appreciate. Too many tendons and vertebrae for the layman. But love it as he may, it was just a career.

No, his true passion lay elsewhere. His newfound hobby, and newfound raison de living, the stage!

Dennis fetched a skull from his bag, and held it aloft in a very dramatic way, gesturing with his free hand. After a silence about the equivalent of two lines, there was a silence of a fair bit longer, as he froze, paused, and scratched his head. He'd forgotten the next lines.

He'd have to touch base with his contact again. He pulled aside a large rock to reveal his storage closet, which contained more heads, a frightened and screaming adventurer who had been hiding, and the object he was looking for, a scrying mirror.

He casually cracked open an adventurer as he sat down, and shook the scrying mirror to activate it. A [Mage] on the other side appeared, with a somewhat bored expression that enlivened in a major way once the connection took hold.

"Uh... uh... W-Wistram Telemagic services, what can uhm...?"

Dennis gave him a flourish of the hand, as if to say "Hello, chum. I'd like to speak to my friendly correspondent, you see I have a few questions to ask him."

The Wistram [Mage] simply boggled at him. With an inaudible sigh, Dennis dropped the corpse he was holding, and pulled out the special head he had enscribed a name onto.

As he held the head up, the [Mage] recoiled in horror, before noticing the name written on it.

"Oh, uh.. y-yes, sure. Right away."

In the heart of Wistram, Rimbus Wandvandenstein connected Dennis' call, and leaned over to an associate sitting next to him.

"Um, hey, I know we're not picky with clients and all, but I think this guy was a literal monster. Should we...?"

His associate interrupted him, gesturing to the large sign on the wall, which read "YOU ARE PAID TO LINK, NOT THINK." Rimbus sighed and returned to his work.

Dennis drummed the corpse's fingers on the arm of his sitting-rock as the call connected through.

"Moshi-moshi, Typhenous de- Oh, it's you."

On the other side of the mirror, an elderly man with a gray beard, clearly a [Mage] was cautiously speaking into a small compact mirror, while an Inn in the background was abuzz with activity.

"What do you need, we're a bit.. busy here?"

Dennis tapped the area under his eyeholes in a way that clearly meant: "Typhenous, my old friend! I've forgotten the words to that moving monologue you told me the other day. I apologize, I should have commited it to memory, but you know how these things go. Would you happen to remember it, so that I can practice it some more? My apologies for interrupting you at such a busy time, but I would really appreciate it :)"

Typhenous blinked at him. There was just no getting through to some people.
Dennis lifted his skull into view, and held up 3 fingers. Typhenous sighed.

"You need line 3 again, right?"

Dennis nodded with the adventurer's corpse. Typhenous glanced at the corpse and opened and closed his mouth a few times, before rolling his eyes.

"Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/
And, by opposing, end them?" Typhenous recited.

"I don't think it should be this difficult to remember more than the first two lines. This is, what, the 5th time you've called?"

Dennis waved off his chastisements and stared intently at the skull in his hand.

"Right... well... Oh, but actually, this is a bit important. I know you're not really friends with the Raskghar, but I know you monsters have a tendency to stick together. A bunch of adventurers are working on this plan to to uh.. okay, you're not listening anymore."

Dennis closed the connection, and held his skull aloft.

He gestured, in a way that was obvious to all observing to mean: "To be, or not to be. That is the question. Whether tis nobler..."

He paused and scratched between his shoulderblades in a way that meant a whole bunch of stammering and embarassed noises.

Practice makes perfect, he supposed. He needed a drink.

Several minutes later, Dennis pulled into his favorite establishment, an Inn that had just opened up nearby. The skeletal barkeep waved at him as it wiped the counter with a bloody rag.

Dennis waved back, and sat at the counter, tapping on it in a way that said "Give me the usual, and make it a double this time."

The skeleton set a battered golden goblet onto the counter, and filled it with offal. He clattered in a way that clearly meant "What's wrong, Dennis? You seem down. Trouble at work?"

Dennis shrugged and splashed the offal on the spot below his eye-holes, which could only mean "No, it's just that this latest monologue is really frustrating. I know it can be great, but I just can't get the words down. I doubt I'll be able to perform at that stage if I can't get this down."

The skeleton wiped at a bit of blood and minced organ that had splattered on the counter. Dennis knew from their close friendship that this meant "Keep at it, chum! You've talked a lot about this stage up above. It's that other Inn you mentioned, right? If they can have smarmy drakes or humans or gnolls performing, they would be well remiss to not have an actor of your caliber performing up there!"

Dennis mimed wiping a tear away, in a move that was calculated to imply,
"That means a lot, but I know I have a long way to go. Oh, but I saw her in the background when I was talking to Typhenous, the head I was telling you about. She's so beautiful, you'd think she was a [Queen] or a [Small Queen]. Even if they won't let me perform there, I'd like to at least get up there and take her head for my collection."

The skeleton took the empty cup and placed it behind him, as a confirmation: "Ah, that's that blonde you were talking about, right?"

Dennis tilted his body to correct him: "No, she's a redhead. I mentioned that."

The skeleton glanced around as if to say "Oh, I thought you had said she was blonde. Sorry, my mistake."

Dennis stretched his arms up, which anybody would know meant "Oh, no need to apologize, my friend. It's an easy mistake to make. Would you like to hear my monologue?"

The skeleton stared motionlessly at him, which Dennis could only take as a sign of approval.


As Toren watched, the hideous creature, Snatcher, leapt away from his counter after splashing guts everywhere. Even if it didn't have a mouth, it was impolite for it to make such a mess. Toren was confident in his abilities to regenerate, but this freak always made him a bit worried.

Toren had his doubts about being able to escape from that sack and reform in any sort of reasonable time. Thankfully, Snatcher rarely seemed hostile to him, for some reason. It usually came in, sat at the bar until Toren gave it something, then danced wildly, as it was doing now. Toren watched it, hoping it would hurry up and leave.


"And by opposing, end them?" Dennis implied, with a twinkle of his fingers. He turned towards the skeleton and bowed deeply. He'd done it! He finished the monologue! The skeleton clapped its hands together, in a way that could only mean "Bravo, Dennis! Bravisimo! You are truly the light of this dim cavern. Go now, share your craft with all the rest of the world!"

Dennis would have grinned a smile if he had a mouth. He reached out to the skeleton, which flinched in alarm as if to say "Come again, friend." He quickly shook the barkeep's hand, and left. Maybe next week, he would try his performance with the Minotaur again. He knew the leader of the Raskghar came from aboveground, so he'd be sure to be a great patron of the arts.

His thoughts were interrupted by a commotion in his bag. As he reached in, he pulled out the offending head, from which a maggot wriggled, which could mean only one thing.

Snatcher took his sticks from the bag and affixed some appropriate heads.


"Time for work."