They were a formidable duo.  Tomas the Rabid Dwarf: a very short man – although not truly dwarfish – with bad teeth and an impressive mustache, so called for his temper and predilection for explosions and unprovoked violence.  And Yelm the Iron Giant: single-armed and Cyclopean after the final engagements of the War, so named because he stood eight feet tall and consistently survived what broke other men. Together, they ranged the European lands once ravaged by the armies and the creations of the New Scientists and the Madboy Kings, hunting down the Haunts which had survived the Second Thirty Years War.  Those peasants and burghers who had likewise survived the conflicts, and who now found themselves piecing back together the old nations in spite of the vestigial aristocracies, paid well for proof that yet another of the monsters and machines created by the Madboys had been destroyed, and so Tomas and Yelm were able to stitch together a living in the midst of the ruins and the fear.

“Yeah.  So?”

“So why do you do it?  You really want to cause yourself irreversible brain trauma?”