The Gaardian - December '05 edition

Apparently, a miscreant had decided that poisoning all the stray Fidos and all of the 32 city guards in Midgaard with a mild laxative relatively harmless to them would be an amusing trick. This however, had resulted in a mass epidemic of blood poisoning in the vampires in Midgaard due to the fact that most vampires had decided to save on gold by quenching their thirsts instead of the hygienic and strategically placed root beer and milk fountains in Midgaard.

While almost all of the vampires have decided to demand that the city guards and the immortals in Aardwolf apprehend the miscreant for the crime, the other races have taken different views on the incident.

This reporter managed to corner a sprite who had gone visible to plant a whoopee cushion in the chair in Hassan's office. The sprite laughed gleefully and shook her head in warning to this reporter to not reveal her prank, then commented when asked about the incident, "Oh, that prank. You're asking if it was harmless? It was fantastic! We should have more pranks like that in Midgaard and in fact, that prank just gave me some ideas!"

Shortly after leaving Hassan's office, this reporter was then stopped by a human who most kindly pointed out a tiny pink scrawl on her back that read "Punk". When the human heard that this reporter was from the Gaardian newspaper, he had a lot of opinions to share. "Oh, regarding the vampire incident, well I think they deserve it. Those disgusting creatures are so miserable that they don't even want to pay decent gold to buy real food. I had a great uncle once who was found blood-less in his home and he lived next to a vampire. Nasty creatures, vampires." A note to the reader though, the human was next found blood-less in an incident which has absolutely NO relation to this vampire reporter.

After retreating to a nearby fountain and washing off the sprite scribbling, this reporter had the luck to encounter a troll who was watching his reflection in the water rather intently. When approached and queried firstly about what he was doing and secondly what he thought about the vampire poisoning incident, the troll replied with "Doh'errm ah, ugly peoples in wet thing and prettiness fangs". Which this reporter might add, was probably about as eloquent as trolls would get.

In response to vampire threats of a bloody outcome, Midgaard city guards have installed crosses in their offices and made garlic and wooden stakes an official part of their uniform, while promising to investigate the matter and resolve the issue. More news on the activities of the criminal will be reported when this reporter finds a way to actually go near a city guard to pose her query.