Perochin was having a good day. After a lazy morning of working in his
garden, he ate a big lunch and retired to his hammock for a nap in the
midday sun. A cooling breeze wafted over the Windybrook, and the trickle
of water and chirping of birds filled the air. Life was good. That every
day was comparably pleasant bothered Perochin not in the slightest, and for
all of that he enjoyed this one none the less.

Such a placid scene as this makes a silly starting point for a tale of
world-altering heroism, doesn't it?

Fortunately (for the story), it changed rather quickly.

"Pa! Pa!" A little voice shrilled to Perochin from a direction almost
exactly opposite to that of sleep. The voice did not actually belong to
one of Perochin's offspring; everyone in Shadybank called him "Pa" in
recognition of his wisdom and good nature. In fact, the voice belonged not
to any child of Shadybank, but to Loem, a human boy from the neighboring
village of Green Valley. "Pa," he yelled, "the bad men are coming! You
have to save my mommy and daddy!"

Perochin tugged his beard with increasing worry as he drew from Loem a most
disturbing tale of wasteful exertion. The boy lacked the perspective to
fully understand what was afoot, but Perochin's shrewd questions adeptly
guided Loem's testimony to give him a good idea of what had transpired.

For more generations than anyone could remember, halfling and human had
lived together in peace, Perochin's folk in the river bank and humans on
the plain, each coaxing a simple living from the earth and enjoying the
leisure that the fertile soil allowed. Although their children
intermingled freely, the two peoples, each self-sufficient, interacted but
little. Both were, on the whole, happy.

Then, one day, a terrible man named Nicolo got a terrible idea. Nicolo
decided that he didn't want to work at all. He convinced all his friends
that they didn't want to work either, and they imposed their will by
beating up on anyone who didn't think their idea was so great. Not only
was this unfair, it was also hard on those who got beat up.

Nicolo found that one unintended result of his plan was that his friends
became suddenly accident-prone. He countered this by finding men with a
knack for being near accident scenes and forcing them to go off and beat up
other people far away. He gave them added incentive by taking some of
their children hostage in his fortified village, and left the women behind
to
tend the fields and keep everyone from starving.

Where once everybody had worked together to produce only what they needed,
now half of the people had to do the work of everyone, and more. Not only
did half of the people have to support themselves and their kidnapped or
conscripted kin, they also had to support Nicolo's ever-growing military
infrastructure. The military had to keep growing, as the dissidents in
each newly conquered village had to be given ever newer villages to beat
up, ere they grow restless. This whole system was disastrously
inefficient, and nobody was happy.

For several minutes after Loem fell silent, Perochin sat with his eyes
closed and sorrowfully twisted his beard in his fingers. Even the warm sun
had lost its power to make him cheerful. Perochin's people faced a most
difficult dilemma. For generations untold, their policy toward the other
races could be simply stated: "Don't get involved." Yet, he knew without a
doubt that Nicolo's people would not make as good neighbors as the gentle
folk of Green Valley.

"Loem," he sighed at last, "I have an idea. Go home and tell your elders
they must hold the village today. I will speak with them tonight."

Abandoning any hope of finishing his nap, Perochin deliberately rose and
walked off to discuss the plan with Hender, his barber.

Although there exists no record of any meeting between halflings and humans
that night, a sentry of Nicolo's army did apprehend three rather pudgy
little people he quite reasonably took to be children of Green Valley
trying to sneak home from an apparently very successful berry-picking
expedition. His captain detained them in camp when, upon questioning, one
broke down crying about a secret.

The following dawn fell upon a defeated and compliant village of Green
Valley. After taking the men into custody and sending off seemingly all
but the youngest children under guard to his keep, a triumphant Nicolo
exulted, "You will learn to serve me even as your children have. Behold!
Your nefarious betrayal has failed. I know of the where your real
defenders are hiding. Now stand back, and watch me trap those rats!"

As the captive men and women watched with dismay, little figures mingled
unregarded as Nicolo ordered his men to flush the defenders from caves
behind the cellars on the banks of the Windybrook. Nicolo's grin of
triumph became a grimace of horror when, as soon as the bulk of his forces
had entered the little spaces, those who he had arrogantly dismissed as
"only harmless children" slammed and barred the doors. He never saw what
became of the remaining men, as loops of coarse, hairy rope ensnared him
and his officers and pulled them from their mounts.

To this day, on every anniversary of the evil Nicolo's overthrow, the
halfling men of Shadybank celebrate with a big public shaving festival.

You may think that this was a fable that explains why halfling men to this
day do not wear beards. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. Their wives
just think they look better that way.