Hmmm... I've been wandering the lands for a few years now, I've seen some odd things, let me tell you.

Oh! Who am I, you ask? Well, my momma named me Jarg, my family name is Stonefist for obvious reasons, I'd think. If the stories are true, my maternal grandpa got caught in a love spell trap by a lonely female ogre who had obtained the help of a witch in the area.

I guess it's a good thing that my family has always run to big men, but that lady ogre sure gave grandpa a rough ride for a while.

Well, the result after several nights and days of romping in the fields and wherever else they felt like it was that she became pregnant.

The pregnancy lasted about a year, then my daddy was born. You might have heard of him, people call him Flerg the Crazy.

Grandma Grusha taught daddy how to fight and he went out adventuring for several years before he decided to return home.

Anyhow, eventually daddy found a big, strapping human woman to love and I was the result, born early the following summer.

Grusha, my ogress grandma, and daddy taught me how to fight with my fists and feet from the time I was five. That expanded into weapons training, initially with sticks and small daggers, then working up to long knives and swords, then bigger swords and heavy clubs.

By the time I was fifteen, I could hold my own against my dad. Winning against Grusha wasn't as easy, she is one tough old ogre lady.

My parents made sure that I got at least basic schooling, I didn't like math a lot, but I knew it would be useful once I went out on my own. I enjoyed reading, although it sometimes took me a while to understand things, and I can write, well, if you call my scrawls writing.

A month before my eighteenth birthday, I told daddy that I felt it was time for me to go out and see the world around me.

At that point, I'd reached my full height of just under eight feet, a few inches shorter than my father and nearly a foot shorter than Grusha.

I have no idea why I turned to the west as I began my journey, perhaps fate was leading me in that direction.

I'd been stomping along a variety of trails for nearly three days when a giant crocodile blocked my choice of ford over a small river.

I'm big enough that I can wield a triple-point double edged sword like a normal human might wield a longsword. Not far from where I keep that on my belt is a very large double bladed great axe. Folks in the village said I should have a bow, but I like to fight up close and personal.

I had some basic provisions in a rough pack strapped to my back, mostly food, with a big iron pot that had seen a fair bit of use in our kitchen over the last few years but was still in one piece, and a large iron mug with a bit of a warp in one side that dad made years ago.

Anyway, this croc was making me just a wee bit angry. Let's just say that making a 1/4 ogre angry is NOT a wise decision.

I pulled both weapons from their loops on my belt, shattered the air around us with a booming laugh and launched myself at the crocodile.

The battle lasted for a few minutes, with the crocodile getting in a couple of bites that damn well hurt, but my sword and axe did a fine job of turning that crocodile into ogre appropriate meat chunks. I wanted to skin the thing right away, but the wounds were more important.

I took some time to tend my wounds with some cloths and clean water, then used part of a roll of rough cotton cloth to wrap the wounds, making sure it would stay in place by tying each one securely with some basic twine. I sighed briefly as I finished wrapping the second one.

Then I got down to the business of skinning the crocodile, placing the meat in the water near the edge as I used the largest single piece of crocodile hide to fashion a rough but usable sack for the meat that I decided I would take along with me as I traveled.

I pulled the pot and mug from my back, gathered the materials to make a fire and lit it with a flint and steel.

A bit more time resulted in a simple spit standing over the fire, I soon had two large chunks of meat cooking on it as I relaxed.

A mug of fresh river water was welcomed, I had been sure to leave the meat downstream a few feet while making that bag.

As the meat cooked, I checked the meat I had left in the water, then packed some of it into the new bag, which I tied to my belt on my left hip.

There was still a lot of meat left over, we're talking about a giant crocodile here, over forty feet of nasty critter with very sharp teeth.

I sat there by the fire, thinking about the leftover meat. If I sewed some of the pieces of skin together, I could make a sort of travois by stabbing holes through the skin and using those and some twine to tie two long branches to the combined skins.

The meat was cooked nice and tender well before I had finished making the rough travois, I'd get that done after I finished eating.

I had a few basic loaves left from what had been provided, so I broke those open and made myself crocodile meat sandwiches.

After I had stuffed myself with the sandwiches, I went back to work on the travois as the afternoon changed to evening, then night.

It had been dark for about an hour when it was finally ready, I grabbed chunks of meat and loaded them on it, going back and forth several times before the rest of the meat from the damn critter was laid as evenly as possible on the contraption. Now for the last part.

I rolled the second part of the hide back over the meat, then used several bits of twine to tie it all down nice and tight.

There was a rather big oak a few minutes walk up the river, on the edge of a large meadow.

I added another bit of rope, threw the other end over a branch, then slowly and with much grunting, pulled the whole thing up until it was almost touching the branch. At that point, I used the leftover rope by wrapping it around the branch, then tying it in a simple knot.

I wandered back to where I had killed the crocodile, then picked up the pot and mug, placed them in my pack and returned to the tree.

I untied my bedroll from the bottom of the pack and laid it out on the ground under the tree, but slightly away from the hanging meat.

I heard what sounded like a wolf howling in the distance as I drifted off to sleep.

The next two weeks were like that, although I didn't run into anything as nasty as the crocodile I killed by the river.

On the fourth day, there was a stallion from a herd who got the wrong idea; my loudest bellow straightened him out, he was off like a shot.

Also on the fourth day, I found a village that was happy to take the crocodile meat and turn it into smoked meat. I ended up with a bit over nine silver for the meat, which I used to buy some simple supplies and get a dozen large loaves of freshly baked bread from a farm wife.

Then on the ninth day, there was a rather lean mountain lion that was tempted by my meat one evening. I killed it, but the creature was so stringy that I simply left it there on the ground for other wild creatures to eat it. It wouldn't last a week before it would be only skin and bones.

The eleventh day after I left home, I ran into a small group of four orcs, or I should say that they ran into me.

I was relaxing after a meal when they came over a ridge a few hundred yards away and charged at me, they had smelled my food.

I made rather short work of those four, to be honest. I didn't like their smell, so I picked them up one by one and hauled them off far enough that I wouldn't be bothered by them any more. That took an hour or two, after which I was hungry again. What do you expect, I eat a lot!

It was on the seventeenth day after I had left home that I came upon a larger town, with a sign proclaiming it to be Fiddler's Vale.

I can guess as to what the men folk there were thinking as I walked along the dusty road into town. I decided to have a little fun with them.

When the biggest one, I assume he was the town's smith or one of them, approached me, I grinned, showing teeth and said, "Me Jarg. You?"

My using the most guttural tone that I could and the rather simple speech caused several men to turn pale and back away from me.

At that point, I laughed, a big laugh that likely scared them more, then held out my hand, saying, "Hi, I'm Jarg. How are you folks today?"

You should have been there to see the shock on their faces when I spoke like any semi well-bred person might do. It was great!