Case narrative
What the report says
There were ten rules in Riverside. This was not unusual. Every halfling village in Greenhollow had rules, because apparently civilization had reached its highest form when somebody carved extremely specific municipal grievances onto a sign.
Riverside's laws covered arguments, sausages, drinking vessels, cart parking, corpse handling, contest prizes, ladders, burial schedules, onions, fireworks, poultry, and, naturally, goats. F.U.B.A.R. was instructed to obey all of them.
Headquarters was particularly emphatic about this. The team's supervisor had not forgotten Brambleton, the dead goat, the destroyed scarecrows, the burned building, or the expense involved in training replacement agents. He made it very clear that the Riverside assignment was not to become another incident.
The unit arrived with three agents: Vokkia Gatewood, Hobitus Wobbleknees, and Iven Oldbum. Vokkia immediately informed Hobitus that they had known each other for years. They had worked together, shared adventures, and formed a friendship that she clearly valued more than he did.
Hobitus did not remember any of this.
Vokkia was deeply hurt.
A natural twenty later, Hobitus was apologizing for forgetting their long history together.
Vokkia had never met him before in her life.
The mayor led the agents to the home of Benny Goodbarrel. Benny was lying facedown with eight knives in his back. Five matched his kitchen set. Three did not. There was blood throughout the kitchen, and the mayor was far less concerned than anyone standing beside a freshly murdered citizen had any right to be.
The mayor checked the time.
Benny had been dead for almost an hour.
Then the mayor began counting down.
When the final second passed, Benny sat up.
He was annoyed.
This had happened before.
Roughly six times, according to Benny. He had been burned, strangled, drowned, crushed, poisoned, killed by a goose, and now stabbed repeatedly. Every time, exactly one hour after death, he woke up wherever his body happened to be.
Benny regarded this less as a supernatural miracle than as an increasingly irritating personal problem.
The source of the problem appeared connected to an old drinking contest at Riverside's tavern, The Bottomless Mug. Benny had won. His prize was free beer for life and an enchanted mug that refilled itself endlessly.
The contest had produced several memorable finalists. Benny won. Pippin Thistletoe and Ellie Mossbrook placed well. Aiden Honeyborough came second.
Aiden was also the town drunk.
Aiden was not happy about losing.
Before following that obvious lead, Hobitus became concerned about Riverside's sausage ordinance.
Rule Two prohibited more than seven sausages from hanging in a single exterior window after dusk. Benny's house had fourteen windows. Hobitus therefore conducted fourteen checks and produced a collection of numbers that required an average.
This became a problem.
Hobitus and the investigation spent several minutes arguing about mathematics. Numbers including 131, 24, 16, 14, 12.2, and 9 entered the discussion. Nobody could agree on what had been added, divided, counted, or possibly imagined.
Iven eventually asked how much everyone had been drinking.
The calculation was finally resolved.
Three sausages hung in one window.
None hung in the others.
The result had no connection whatsoever to Benny's repeated murder.
The investigation continued.
At The Bottomless Mug, the agents found an old wizard named Fladnag, whose name was simply Gandalf spelled backward. Nobody pronounced it consistently, which seemed appropriate.
Fladnag wore the expected beard, hat, and pipe. He also kept one hand permanently raised because, according to him, it was comfortable.
Hobitus hated this.
When asked to examine Benny's enchanted mug, Fladnag studied it carefully. He turned it over, looked inside it, inspected the handle, put on his glasses, and examined it again.
He reached a conclusion.
It was a mug.
Hobitus explained that everyone already knew that.
Fladnag performed an actual magical inspection and found two enchantments. One caused the beer to refill endlessly. The other created resistance to death. Years of drinking from the mug had gradually made Benny extraordinarily difficult to keep dead.
The second enchantment had not been intentional. Whoever created the item had apparently produced immortality as a side effect of bottomless beer, which was a result several religions would probably have found irritating.
While the investigation continued, Vokkia began pursuing a separate objective: breaking Riverside's laws.
She interfered with drinking vessels. She tampered with cart orientation. She violated corpse-handling procedure. She became involved in the goat rule. She interfered with a lawful contest prize. She violated the burial rule. At one point, onions, fireworks, and live poultry ended up together despite an ordinance very specifically forbidding exactly that combination.
Nobody knew why Riverside had needed that law.
Afterward, they understood better.
A goat entered the tavern and became another investigation entirely. Vokkia claimed the goat was named Steven. She then attempted to convince Hobitus that Steven was not her goat, had never been her goat, and was merely a common-looking goat who happened to be near her.
Hobitus's ability to determine the truth was impaired by both bad rolls and alcohol.
Steven's legal status remained complicated.
Meanwhile, Hobitus became increasingly obsessed with Fladnag's raised hand. He established a procedure: if Fladnag wanted to answer a question, he was supposed to lower the hand, count, and then raise it again.
Fladnag listened.
Fladnag kept the hand raised.
The matter became personal.
The actual murder case eventually returned to Aiden Honeyborough. He had placed second in Benny's drinking contest and was the only finalist described as bitter about Benny's victory. More importantly, he wanted the mug.
Vokkia searched Aiden's pockets with the effortless professionalism of someone who considered other people's property a temporary storage arrangement.
She found a document stating, in effect, that ownership of Benny's mug belonged to whoever possessed the paper.
That was approximately when the case stopped being subtle.
Fladnag confirmed that Aiden had killed Benny multiple times.
Aiden drew a knife.
Benny reacted with unexpected athleticism and threw a blade directly between Aiden's eyes.
Aiden dropped dead.
The sheriff arrested Benny.
Benny was confused.
From Benny's perspective, Aiden would simply wake up in an hour.
This was when everyone realized Benny had spent long enough dying and returning that he had begun to assume death worked this way for everybody.
Hobitus responded to Aiden's death by running over and beating the corpse with Flurry of Blows.
Then he became Benny's attorney.
Riverside Rule Seven prohibited interfering with another citizen's lawful contest prize. Benny had lawfully won the mug. Rule Three protected personal drinking vessels from unauthorized use, borrowing, swapping, hiding, or testing.
Aiden had violated both.
Therefore, Hobitus argued, Benny's actions were legally justified.
This argument should not have worked.
Hobitus rolled a twenty.
The sheriff considered the law, considered the corpse, considered the agents responsible for explaining all of this, and removed Benny's handcuffs.
Hobitus celebrated the successful defense with an enormous burp.
During the final discussion, Fladnag finally had something genuinely new to contribute. Rather than lowering his perpetually raised hand, he raised his second hand.
Hobitus nearly broke.
Vokkia stole the ownership paper.
Then Vokkia stole the enchanted mug.
By the time the agents left Riverside, Benny was alive, Aiden was dead, the murderer had been identified, the murder victim had killed the murderer, the murder victim had then been legally acquitted, the immortality mug was missing, and Vokkia had successfully broken seven of Riverside's ten posted laws.
On the way out, she noticed one last cart parked correctly.
She kicked it forty-five degrees.
Headquarters would later receive a report indicating the case had been successfully resolved.
This statement was technically true.