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The Emperor of Bollywop Boople
Posted: 25 Jan 2005 06:45 PM |
Being a professional lackey is not always easy. The hardest part is exercising upwards management, for masters are prone to do silly things and get into trouble which could have easily been avoided if they had simply listened to your Very Good Advice.
My twelfth master, for instance, thought it would be fun to tease some badgers. “Those are not normal badgers!” I warned him. “They are killer badgers! Look how big they are!” But did he listen? Noooo. And look where that got him: scratched to bits and eaten!
My nineteenth master was a man with a skull for a head.
He was very skinny and I used to worry about his health a lot. The poor thing was on a strict diet of souls, and he had to do some really complicated cooking to make them all yummy and edible. I did my best to convince him that souls do not make for a balanced diet, but like all my other masters, he did not listen to my Very Good Advice.
His name was Mister Xaggoroth and he owned a lot of books. I have never seen so many books! There were big ones and little ones; skinny ones and massive ones; and all of them were old, but though most were rotting and smelly, a few of them were well-preserved.
A lot of them were magic and I wasn’t allowed to read them because they were protected by spells that would go BOOOOOOM or do other bad things if they were not deactivated first. That was okay because most of those were Mister Xaggoroth’s recipe books, and they were all about preparing souls and stuff rather than baking cakes.
One of them was a magic picture book with moving words and pictures. It was called “The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)”. At first I thought it was really silly for someone to write a tale and not finish it (let alone an entire book of them) but there was nothing else to read and sometimes I just got very bored. Mister Xaggoroth didn’t have many friends, and when they came to visit I always had to lock myself into my room. “It’s for your own good, Miri,” Mister Xaggoroth would say. I suppose he was right. Most of his friends, I think, would have eaten me on sight.
“The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)” was a very old children’s book. Mister Xaggoroth was very proud of it. He said it was the only remaining intact copy, and that a lot of powerful magic had gone into creating it. There was definitely more to that book than just moving words and pictures; it practically reeked of magical energy, though we would only find out why later on. Mister Xaggoroth was more interested in how the book had been made than the actual stories, but I thought the stories were very interesting.
“You should read them, Mister Xaggoroth,” I often urged him. But he would only grunt with disinterest and find something for me to do, like dig up some nice bones or feed his doggies. He should have listened.
He should have listened.
In my fourth year with Mister Xaggoroth, he left in a very strange way. |
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Re: The Emperor of Bollywop Boople
Posted: 25 Jan 2005 07:11 PM |
| (( Oh absolutely marvelous! Please continue! )) |
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;"
T.S. Eliot |
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Re: The Emperor of Bollywop Boople
Posted: 25 Jan 2005 11:22 PM |
I am completely enamored with this character, if you haven't met her IG make a point to do so, and now I get stories too!! :)
keep it coming plees *sits down and waits, listening intently* |
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Re: The Emperor of Bollywop Boople
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 02:18 AM |
| ((Absolutely amazing stuff. Had be gripped from the titled, or perhaps it was intrigued. Great story, hope I meet you IG)) |
Never argue with an idiot.
They drag you down to their level
and then beat you with experience.
Akril
Quinellieth. 20th Circle of the Order of the Ring |
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Part II
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 05:03 AM |
By far, the most interesting thing about “The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)” was that it was always changing.
Now, at first I found this very frustrating indeed. This was a book that did not know how to behave itself! Naughty book! But after a while it became interesting because completely new stories would evolve from ones I already knew.
In a way, it was a lot like how stories circulate in real life. You know how it goes: one person will tell a tale to a crowd, and the crowd will go away and tell it their own way, and then the entire thing will blow right out of proportion as it keeps going around and around.
For instance my twelfth master, the silly one who teased the badgers, has gone down in history as having bravely fended off a herd of rabid magical demon cows that were twenty feet high. This is clearly ridiculous. A cow that size would die from a number of factors, such as being unable to breathe. Giants, dragons and other huge creatures possess anatomies that are naturally adapted for... oh, but that’s besides the point. The point is, the details of each story in that book could vary wildly from day to day, even hour to hour. Every time you shut it, BAM! It randomised itself.
One thing remained constant, though: the tales didn’t end.
Perhaps I should say they were open-ended instead. At some point, the writing and pictures did actually stop and another tale would begin. It always stopped right in the middle of something interesting, too. I will get to the tale of the Bollywopples and how their tremendously silly Emperor managed to make the goddess Vilvaye very mad at him indeed. For now, this is about that book and what it did to Mister Xaggoroth.
~*~
History repeats itself.
See? That is me repeating something that someone said, and someone else said before them, and who knows who started saying it and who got everyone else to say it after them and who really cares because it is a good saying and I am using it now, not them.
Each of the stories in “The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)” was centered around a theme. The characters changed. The situations changed. But there was always a theme that remained the same. The ending to each story, as I have said, never came. You drew your own conclusions. Sometimes, the conclusions you came to could reveal something about yourself that you didn’t know.
It was like a big book of formulae. With those formulae, you could conceivably shape life. And reality. Read enough versions of one story, and the formula becomes clear. All that remains is to change the variables around to form the desired product.
Stop looking so surprised. I am smart. It is why my first master did not eat me and why my nineteenth didn’t either.
There was one story in particular that I tried to get Mister Xaggoroth to read. I am sure that you have heard it in all its incarnations. See, at the time he was plotting to harass a major tallfolk city. I forget which one; it hardly matters. He had spent centuries amassing power and an undead army in complete secret, bla bla bla, and although no one remembered him now the unsuspecting masses would soon learn to fear his wrath and bla bla bla. I honestly can’t pay attention when he rambles like that. I tried to give him some training in basic speech-giving, body language and theatrics in general but he was not interested. Silly Mister Xaggoroth. You cannot scare people if they are not paying attention.
The story I tried to get him to read followed that formula. Big bad forgotten enemy lurks in secret and is poised to strike. Prophetic warnings start springing up. Unlikely hero emerges to face the threat because no one believes (or chooses to believe) that the threat could be true.
Characters change. Situations change. The book changes.
One day it put his name in there. |
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Re: Part II
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 05:45 AM |
| ((hee hee)) |
Purpose in life: finding better ways of allowing players to kill themselves. Repeatedly.
--
"...Cause he mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good."
--
<@James42> Lawful good isn't in your vocabulary, it's on your menu.
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Re: Part II
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 07:35 AM |
((more! more! *applauds* )) |
- Solitaire, Wizard
- Ilyana Fiirhaart, High Priestess of Naruth |
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Re: Part II
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 07:43 AM |
| ((bravo and indeed more)) |
Never argue with an idiot.
They drag you down to their level
and then beat you with experience.
Akril
Quinellieth. 20th Circle of the Order of the Ring |
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Re: Part II
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 07:50 AM |
I'll be honest. Most stories I don't read.
I will read every update to this if they get twelve pages long.
Very good show. |
- [Rob], Balthor, Jake, and Thomas. |
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Part III
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 05:45 PM |
At the front of the book in an old, old language I did not recognise was a sort of warning. Well, “warning” is too strong a word. It took me the better part of three years to translate, and most of that was spent looking through Mister Xaggoroth’s lab for the magical means to translate it. I don’t think I could do that again. It was really hard.
From memory, it said something like this:
Whatsoever thou dost read in this book
Is fiction:
It never was,
It never will be,
And if it was,
Then it no longer is.
I did not recognise any of the names in that book. Had they been quietly wiped from reality too, converted to a mere fable in a book of which only one copy remained? Or were those characters and places still out there somewhere, their former life forgotten, their history erased save for a few pages of text which would inevitably be replaced by another tale anyway?
Take Emperor Balthazag, for instance. He is my current boss and he was in “The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)”. Well, I am pretty sure it is him. He looks exactly like he did in the book: all tiny and tortoisey. I don’t have it any more, so I don’t know if his story is still in there. Do characters get released from the book after their stories are gone? I don’t know.
I said that Mister Xaggoroth disappeared in a very strange way. This is how it happened.
~*~
It was the witching hour. I knew that hour well. It seemed that every time Mister Xaggoroth sent me out on a task, it was that hour. Now, I can see in the dark as well as any Gnome, but I still prefer to walk around in daylight. I mean, the witching hour gets really, really creepy sometimes. Even if I have never seen a witch witching at that hour, there are lots of other scary things about, especially in the woods where Mister Xaggoroth had his lair. I’m pretty sure I saw some undead badgers once. I stayed well away.
He had sent me to scrounge around for big metal things that could be turned into Traps To Impale Nosy Adventurers With. The cadre of skeletons that had come with me had dwindled from six to zero, which meant that when I finally did find some nifty bear traps that still worked, I had to lug them all the way home by myself. That is no job for a Gnome! A Doom Knight, perhaps, but not a little Gnome.
There are usually wolves and bats and undead all over the place. And Shadow Fiends having shadow puppet competitions. That night, it was quiet. And empty.
The entrance to Mister Xaggoroth’s lair is fairly obvious. Apart from the telltale ruins, there is a massive crater where nothing grows and a crumbling tower that looks like a Dragon has come along and gone, “What a yummy tower, I think I will take a bite out of it.”
I got there but it was not there.
Not there, I tell you! Well, I dumped the bear traps where they were because they were heavy and I think I searched that entire forest (and then some) in the silent darkness. Nothing moved. Nothing. Not even the leaves in the trees. There was only me walking around, going crunch-crunch-crunch through the dead undergrowth, looking for something that was no longer there.
I felt a little sad in a way, because Mister Xaggoroth had been really nice and he had let me play with lots of the magic toys he had and read his books (the non-explodey ones). He was certainly a lot nicer than my thirty-sixth master, who I will tell you about later. That was one nasty man. I am glad the Emperor told me to leave him.
~*~
Days later, while reading “The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)” (and you would lug around a five pound book at all times too if you knew Mister Xaggoroth!), one of the tales caught my eye:
“The Curse of Xaggoroth”
Do I need to tell you what I guessed had happened? I think you already know. |
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Re: Part III
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 05:54 PM |
((Absolutely brilliant. One of the best reads that has been posted here in a long, long while. Outstanding work
-Byron)) |
My name is Byron Lorian....I am the Last Son |
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Re: Part III
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 06:33 PM |
| (( "You cannot scare people if they are not paying attention." - Absolutely brilliant and my favourite quote from the past ten years... )) |
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;"
T.S. Eliot |
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Re: Part III
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 09:01 PM |
| ((These are so great....and Ali loves running around with her...she is such great fun)) |
Shalee Windwalker.....wife of Chandler, Ranger, Cleric of Elbereth
Alianda - Change can happen.
Lara - half-elven Ranger, trying to reshape her life
Tia - Cleric of Vilyave
"Delicious Ambiguity" |
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Re: Part III
Posted: 26 Jan 2005 11:57 PM |
(( Adding another fangirlish spazz here. There are so many bitingly wonderful lines and hilarious bits and shocking turns that I don't know where to start. Let me just say that it's utterly brilliant and I am waiting (impatiently ) for more. )) |
Consequences
Unsent
It's hard to say it, time to say it...
Goodbye, goodbye |
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Hee Hee Hee
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 01:45 AM |
((Hi everyone! Thanks for the kinds words. Miri cracks me up too. She’s just a squiggly little bundle of hilarity, especially in-game. Things just got SO much better today when Ali got herself an animal companion. Bob is such a nice doggie.))
((Part IV - of V - is the longest but I am working on it! At long last we get to the actual story of the Emperor. Until then, if you are wondering where her personality came from, a lot of it is unintentionally similar to Shelley Winters of Scarygoround fame.)) |
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Part IV
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 07:11 AM |
Whenever one wishes to tell a fable warning against the dangers of pride, one should use a central character who has a great deal of power and authority. Tales of kings and queens, lords and ladies who have fallen from grace due to an overabundance of pride abound in mythology... and history.
Sure, there are tales of proud peasants, but they don’t have very far to fall, do they? When you want a tale about a fall from grace, you want the character to go “AAAAAAAH! SPLAT!” rather than “SPLAT! AAAAAAAH!”: it is more effective, more impressive, and more entertaining.
Now, let’s consider the sky—that is an impressive height to fall from. I cannot imagine falling from somewhere higher, and if there is something higher I don’t really care. It’s not a competition, you know. High is high. That is that.
Emperor Balthazag came from the sky.
This is the Emperor’s tale, as best as I can remember it. I don’t have the book any more. Don’t complain if it doesn’t end; it isn’t supposed to.
~*~
Up, up in the clouds where the Bollywopples live is a big blue castle surrounded by a big blue city. Now, the Bollywopples were content with their little city of Bollywop Boople, but their King was not. He sought to rule the entire sky, and so plotted to build himself an Empire. Bollywop Boople was not enough! He wanted the clouds, the sun, the moon and stars! He wanted the winds and the rain, and every bird that ever flew!
Thus, would-be Emperor Balthazag gathered the most learned Bollywopples in his kingdom and got them to do so much research that it hurt their poor knees (Bollywopples, you see, have three brains: one in each knee). Long did these sages search through the archives of Bollywopple knowledge, and at last they presented this solution to their Emperor: he must find Magic Artifact X, an artifact so mysterious and powerful that they did not even know what sort of an item it was!
Well, King Balthazag was very excited by this news indeed, so he proclaimed that whosoever brought this wondrous Magic Artifact X to him would be granted a great reward of gold and magical items, as well as the gratitude of the Emperor of Bollywop Boople... nay, the Emperor of the Skies!
Needless to say, it was not long before a foolhardy band of adventurers turned up at the King’s doorstep with the wonderful and mysterious Magic Artifact X.
“It is very wonderful!” marvelled the newly-minted Emperor upon seeing it, “And mysterious, too!”
Then, having sent the adventurers off on their way with their reward, the Emperor decided to test the capabilities of the wondrous Magic Artifact X.
~*~
I should mention at this point that the Emperor was not an evil Bollywopple; he was merely rather silly. Having said that, this in of itself is a rather dangerous trait in a leader, particularly one who wields great power.
My fourth master was a sorceress. She was a full-time adventurer and a mother, so I used to help her with things like getting ingredients for potions and stuff like that so she would have time to look after her little boy.
When I read the story of the Emperor of Bollywop Boople, he reminded me a lot of little Johnny Strudelmeyer. See, a lot of things have changed in the past forty years. People say the world is dangerous, and it is, but it used to be a lot more dangerous. Not in the wilds; for the most part, the wilds are as wild and dangerous as ever. No, I mean in civilisation. The most tragic stories I have ever heard do not involve nature at all.
So here is little Johnny Strudelmeyer, frolicking in his mummy’s lab one day, when he picks up a wand (I think it was an Isaac brand) and accidentally triggers it.
I don’t know what became of little Johnny Strudelmeyer. Humans live rapid lives. He is probably old enough to be a father or grandfather by now. I wonder how he is. It cannot be a good thing for your mental health, being responsible for the death of both your parents.
They have installed safety devices into magical artifacts now, but it still goes to show that magic devices don’t kill people: people kill people.
~*~
If there is one thing that annoys gods, it is having huge masses of their followers wiped out. Well, that and being outsmarted by mortals (except, perhaps, for Kaldair Swiftfoot, who would probably be amused and impressed).
It was with great glee that the Emperor put Magical Artifact X to the test. He shifted the stars in the heavens! He turned the sun on and off with glee, cycled the moon through its phases with dizzying rapidity, summoned a storm and orchestrated a symphony of winds, accompanying it with the percussion of hail and thunder!
What a storm that was! CRACK, went the thunder! ZAP, went the lightning! ZAP! Right onto a tower where a large congregation of the goddess Vilvaye’s followers were prettying themselves up, ready to begin a ceremony in honour of the Sister!
There was so much energy in that single lightning bolt that every last one of those people exploded. Literally exploded. I could go into the physics of it, but that would take a lot of explaining and the point is that they all died, okay? And rather spectacularly at that.
Needless to say, the goddess was Not Impressed At All. Oh, the Emperor was in SO much trouble then. Vilvaye, usually a gentle and quiet lady, was so mad that she turned him into the tiniest tortoise and cast him down from the sky.
“I would turn you into a worm,” the goddess is reported to have said, “but I am so mad right now that I cannot think clearly enough to do so!”
Naturally, the Emperor begged and pleaded and whimpered and grovelled to the goddess for mercy. “Alas!” he lamented. “What a pitiful existence you have condemned me to! For tiny tortoises do not lead terribly interesting lives, and cannot do fun things such as play table tennis. Oh woe! Oh miserable me! Surely I did not deserve such a fate as this, most beautiful of goddesses!”
This tremendous reasoning was too much for the goddess, who suddenly felt great pity for the former Emperor. She realised that he was not an evil Bollywopple, just a tremendously silly one. Yet she could not permit such a silly Emperor to hold such great power. So she thought and she pondered and she cogitated and ruminated, and at last came to a decision.
~*~
It ends there. Honestly, it does. I turned the page and it was the beginning of a tale titled “How the Cart Got Its Wheels”.
There’s only one last thing I need to add, and that’s the story of how I found the Emperor and how he came to be my thirty-seventh master. |
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Re: Part IV
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 11:03 AM |
| ((superb. Splat Ahhhh! Genius!)) |
Never argue with an idiot.
They drag you down to their level
and then beat you with experience.
Akril
Quinellieth. 20th Circle of the Order of the Ring |
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Part V
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 04:42 PM |
My thirty-sixth master was an Elf.
Now, regardless of what Dwarves like to tell me, there are some nice Elves in this world. He was not one of them. His name was Luvalior El’wyl’aren and he is the one responsible for parting me from that last remaining intact copy of “The Biggest Book of Unfinished Tales (Unabridged and Copiously Illustrated)”. I don’t think I ever cried so hard in my life than that day.
But that was okay, because I found the Emperor two weeks later.
This next bit is the shortest story I think I will ever tell, but it needs to be said.
~*~
Luvalior El’wyl’aren was snooty, even for an Elf. With him, it was “lesser races” this and “lesser races” that. And oh, you did not want to get him started on Dwarves. He is the only person I have ever gotten cranky at. Whenever he started to get on my nerves, I would subtly bring Dwarves into the conversation and sit back as he went ballistic.
It was during one of those episodes that I spotted the Emperor. We were at a rock pool, and I was collecting various shells for Luvalior El’wyl’aren when I spotted the Emperor perched atop a rock. It was him! It had to be! He looked exactly like he did in the book!
I felt a little dizzy then, and when it passed I knew what I had to do. It was an epiphany that lasted all of two and a half seconds, but it changed my life.
“Mister Luvalior El’wyl’aren, sir?”
He stopped in mid-rant and looked down the length of his nose at me. He could have been a Gnome with that nose.
“What is it?” he demanded in that sneering way he had.
I picked the Emperor up off the rock.
“The Emperor says he wants me to go with him. Bye bye, Mister Luvalior El’wyl’aren.”
I think he sputtered something and went very red. I don’t know. I was already walking off with the Emperor in hand.
~*~
The Emperor doesn’t speak with words.
Have you ever looked at a pet doggie or something, and known exactly what was on their mind? Or read someone’s face and posture, and deduced what they were feeling? It is communication of a sort; communication that does not require a rigidly structured language to interpret. You could say it is empathy; I don’t know what to call it.
I say that he tells me what to do, but that is not strictly true. I just know without him telling me. He does not speak in my mind, or speak a secret tortoise language. He just communicates in that silent way that only people who are actually listening can hear.
I think I have discovered why the tales in that book don’t end.
It isn’t because the author could not be bothered writing a conclusion; in fact, I don’t think the book had an author. The book writes itself. Someone invented it and left it to its own devices, and the book quite happily stole tales from reality and turned them into fables throughout its existence.
Somewhere out there, someone has that book. I miss it but I don’t need it. I may not remember the specifics of every fable I read, but that wasn’t the point of the book. After all, the important thing about a fable isn’t the story. It’s the message. It’s the moral.
Do characters and places get released from the book when it is their time to be real once again? I’d like to think so. Reading a fable is nice. Living it and making your own ending is better.
~finis~ |
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Re: Part V
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 05:06 PM |
| (( Four things: you are my hero; this was utterly wonderful; I can't wait to meet her IG; and, for the love of all that's holy, start a journal or ongoing tale or such for her, I begbegbeg you. Oh, and <3 [five things, sorry] )) |
Consequences
Unsent
It's hard to say it, time to say it...
Goodbye, goodbye |
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Re: Part V
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 05:41 PM |
...for the love of all that's holy, start a journal or ongoing tale or such for her
((First Impressions: in which Miramil records her encounters with the characters of Vives.
I keep notes on everything she does but I am already up to 9 pages despite having only been on for less than a week. That is a lot of notes to sort through. So for the moment I am going to keep it to PC Encounters, because I know people like reading about themselves and she has some very entertaining observations about allll your characters! Hee hee!
There was a lot of drama yesterday so there may be a story up soon about 3 (at one point, 4) very foolhardy adventurers who each got a turn at being pulverised and worried over. You know who you are (Sam, Ali and Lysse).)) |
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Re: Part V
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 05:49 PM |
((heyain an effort to help you write more of this great stuff, in-game chat logging may help you. The info on how to do this is here
Hope this helps.
Sol)) |
- Solitaire, Wizard
- Ilyana Fiirhaart, High Priestess of Naruth |
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Re: Part V
Posted: 27 Jan 2005 06:13 PM |
((Absolutely wonderful writing here Fictrix. I enjoyed it alot and laughed often. I enjoy the character alot to, really entertaining.
Keep up the good work and more importantly have fun !!! :D )) |
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Re: Part V
Posted: 28 Jan 2005 01:44 AM |
((heyain an effort to help you write more of this great stuff, in-game chat logging may help you. The info on how to do this is here
Hope this helps.
Sol))
((Oooh. Well I already had chat logging on, but the others are good because they automate the process. I'll look into that. Thanks, Sol!)) |
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