Barakunde's Mice (ba-ra-KOON-dee's Mice)

In the early days of the Khazigiri age, a great and mighty warrior named Barakunde defeated the enemies of angels, men and Aan. He was a strong fighter, because in his youth he had fought zombies and goblins. Then he learned to defeat ghasts and bugbears, and from there he was strong enough to match his sword against blackguards and giants. He learned from this how to defeat the daemogoth, and the wild Slaadi. In his prime he fought hateful yugoloths, bold dragons of red, green and blue, and finally, with all his knowledge, skill, power and accumulated magical items, he defeated the demilich known as Valsvain.
After this, with the accolades of the nobles, he retired to his stronghold, a large castle filled with trophies of his victories. He hired many servants and helpers, and hosted many grand balls and parties.
But soon his servants began to notice that the castle had mice. Just a few at first, but soon enough, the small vermin were a common sight. The cleaning staff did their best to kill them, and eventually they were trapping them by the hundreds each week, but still more would appear.
The head steward apologized to Barakunde and proffered his resignation for failing to clean out the mice from the castle, knowing the responsibility fell on him. Barakunde, however, was merely amused and wouldn't hear of it. "Of course you failed - I've been breeding them. I want the castle to have a certain amount of mice at all times. Not too many - perhaps I've gone too far - but simply a certain amount, to keep the balance. I drop little packets of seed grain and cheese for them so they have a reason to stay."
The head steward chalked this up to the strange eccentricities of wealth and power, and from then on he commanded the servants to do their best to leave the mice be, except where they interfered with the servants' duties. The Head Steward didn't like occasionally seeing the mice out of the corner of his eye or the mouse droppings in the corners of the rooms, but they cleaned up after them, and were sure to seal up the cupboards and shelves to keep them out of the food and eating utensils and such.
At one party, however, on a fine night in Niphonel's Month, the Head Steward was serving the wine when he heard a countess from the nearby village complaining about the quality of Warlord Barakunde's staff. "Honestly, they must be the most incompetent servants in the entire Barony . I've already seen no fewer than three mice tonight, and the party has barely begun. Surely if the servants can't manage it, they should bring in some cats to do the job."
Incensed that he and his staff were being insulted behind his back simply for giving in to their lord's foolish peculiarities, the Head Steward resolved to bring in some cats to be rid of the mice once and for all. The next day he procured a number of cats from the farm fields on the Warlord's parcel and set them loose in the castle. For weeks they feasted on fresh mouseflesh, slinking in the shadows out of the notice of the Warlord, and heading back to the fields once the mice had been eaten. But once the mouse population began to decline, the servants discovered that mixed in among them were a few opportunistic rats eager to eat the seeds, cheese, and anything else they could get their hands on. The rats were too much trouble for the cats, who wanted to live easy on mousemeat. The Head Steward could hardly confess to having killed off the mice or to have created an even bigger issue with rats, so he decided the best course was to bring in ratter dogs to kill the rats.
These got the job done, driving off the last of the cats as well, but they were certainly a lot more work to care for and feed than a few dozen mice had been. Moreover the dogs readily bred amongst themselves, and by the days of the St. Niclaus Feast that year, they had more than three dozen pups. The Head Steward couldn't sell or even give the pups away without risking the discovery of how his simple plan to be rid of the mice had spiraled out of his control, and even releasing the dogs when they had grown didn't work, as they all happily returned to the castle as soon as their bellies started to grumble for more food, which he had been tasked by the Warlord to pay for from his own funds since the Steward had asked for the dogs in the first place.
In a fit of pique he decided to run them down into the moat where the crocodiles therein could finish them off. it was a dreadful thing to do, he knew, but his fear of Barakunde's anger and his unwillingness to face his own failure were stronger than his moral sense of fairness and decency now. So he ran the dogs down the slopes at the side of the castle, towards the moat and the maws of the hungry crocodiles there.
But Barakunde had known from the beginning what the Head Steward had been up to. When the Steward arrived at the bottom of the hill, instead of seeing the crocodiles feasting on hapless dogs, he found Barakunde angrily standing on the tail of a crocodile, while the dogs yipped and brayed at it. He scared the dogs off with a shout, and they dashed back up the hill towards the castle. Barakunde regarded his unfortunate servant for a while and then spoke. "I've seen how these things progress; I've made my career on starting small and ending big. At once time I felt it was best to be rid of zombies, and by the end of my fighting I had to face a demilich, which I very nearly failed to defeat. So tell me, Head Steward - which would you rather have - Mice, or crocodiles?"
"Mice, of course, but it's nobler to have crocodiles in the moat than mice in the kitchen!" Before the steward could answer any further, Barakunde took his foot off the crocodile's tail, and that was the end of the head steward, and of this story.