Post by Dietymaster on Nov 22, 2006 23:48:18 GMT -5
At first, there were a few scattered tribes of them spread across a vast and largely featureless continent. They lived sordid existences, farming and whatnot, and occasionally throwing a party for someone on those rare special occasions anyone had time for. Then one day, one of them got fed up with it all and killed his neighbor in frustration. Passersby glanced at him as he stood over the body with his bloody knife, but they barely had time to become frightened or angry. There was too much work to be done, for lack of other things to do.
This murderer, however, had found something else to do. He began to go out to people as they worked in their fields (there were no farming tools at that time), and he told them the secret that would end their boredom forever: they would become destroyers.
When asked what they would destroy first, the man was at a loss, until one young boy, who was perhaps brighter than the man, thought of the idea that they would go to the neighboring village and burn it to the ground. This got the town very excited, and so they dropped whatever they were carrying and went of to their neighbors' village and burned it to the ground. It was really a glorious sight, and some of the townsfolk began to hum songs as they watched, entranced by the beauty of destruction.
The next day, the townsfolk searched through the rubble and found other things to help ease their workload back home: I mean, this night was only an indulgence! There was still plenty of things to do back home. From the ruins they managed to recover what, after many years of speculation, ingenuity, and the beginnings of mechanical knowledge, would become a primitive plough. Even the man who had started it all found new joy in life as he went back to his field (this was also a time period before names and honorifics. If anyone wanted to address anyone else, they just said 'Hey! You over there, with the red hair!', and it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all confusing).
After about a year, a village far away, yet still on the same continent, was cooking up something revolutionary. It all started when one of the young mothers gave birth to identical twins. Unfortunately, the twins were equally skilled in whatever the other one tried to do (i.e. move rocks about and throw seeds at the ground and pray that they grew). The villagers eventually got tired of having both of them answer to 'Hey! You over there, with the cowlick!', and so they decided to name each one. It must be understood, to give anyone a title was to promote them to a rank above that of the nameless farmer. The villagers, although they found life much easier after the names (Hharev'vey and Zizinak) were given, realized that they had just done something very rash. Each of the twins began walking around with identical swaggers, and each one began to give orders to each of the other villagers as if they were superior (which they were; they did have names, after all). Eventually, the villagers got even more fed up than they had the first time. It did not occur to them to kill the twins, or to banish them. There was a town meeting, in which the villagers asked the twins what it would take to keep them from being so irritating. Said Hharev'vey, "I want to be called Ting Harvu, and I want to have a Tingdom, and I want it to include half of the village! You can give Zizinak the other half!" Said Zizinak, "I was actually just going to ask for a pair of red shoes, but you know, I like that idea just as well!" And so the villagers split up their land between the two Tings, and had fewer headaches because of it, for the twins went back to their previous lives before they had names after they were made Tings of each half of the village.
Roughly simultaneously, in a village by the coast, yet more civilization was brewing. One of the fisherman there (at that time, the term referred to someone whose job it was to make sure the fish stayed away from the reed beds) had just invented a device that would allow her to float on the water, so as to be in a better position to scare the fish. Normally, such a happening would be overlooked or forgotten, except that this village had a very young child who wanted to grow up to be very famous. He stole the woman's idea for a floating device, and sought, in what little spare time he had, to duplicate it. Eventually he had a fully working floating device, and the villagers were astounded, because his had a convenient place to store drinks. And so the woman's device was overshadowed, and the man went on to be marginally famous, despite his humble origins, and went on to make six more floating devices before he died choking on a fragment of fish bone he missed when he was making his breakfast.
After about sixty two years of such small happenings all across the continent, one particularly daft young man decided to himself that he would go questing. Unfortunately, he didn't quite know what the word meant, so he went to consult the village elder. The elder, however, was just as baffled as he was, and so he sent the daft young man (Hereafter referred to as Frankfud) to the neighboring village, where the people were at least a little better familiar with such strange and foreign sounding words. So Frankfud set off across the fields of his village, and after about ten minutes of walking, found himself in the forest barrier between his village and the next. This forest was in fact only about fifty meters wide, but it was infested with such creatures as the Dreaded Wombat, the Arthuraptor, and the Gregarious Mouz, as to make the villagers avoid it whenever they could. Frank, however, being incredibly daft, didn't realize the danger he was in, even as the Arthuraptors surrounded him, snarling at him as he walked blithely on by; even as the Gregarious Mize shrilly shrieked at him as he intruded on their lairs; even as the Dreaded Wombat chewed leaves and scampered away as he approached its dwelling. After this harrowing journey, he finally arrived in the neighboring village (this one being the one that his village had burnt down before the forest grew up between them). The villagers there remembered that their village had been burned to the ground by Frankfud's village many years ago, and they were bent on getting revenge (this only after he accidentally killed their only milking cow by jumping up and down on it's spine; it's a funny ritual they had back at his town when they weren't working. Of course, they used steers, and not milking cows, which apparently makes a great deal of difference). So, when Frankfud entered the town square, the villagers demanded that he give them two cows to replace the one they just lost to his stupid ritual. This, of course, was a completely unreasonable price to pay for damaging one cow(because their ideas of justice were also slightly different), but Frankfud decided he'd play along, and so he kept walking across that village's fields and into the next village's fields. When he arrived, he informed the inhabitants that the neighboring village had sent him to steal two cows to replace one that he broke while jumping on its back. The villagers, after careful consideration, shrugged their shoulders and gave the cows to Frankfud. Frankfud took them back to the other village, and there was much rejoicing, because now they could get twice as much milk as before. Then Frankfud asked them what the definition of the word 'quest' was: this resulted in him being chased out of town by a mob of villagers wielding primitive pitchforks and carrying torches. Frankfud ran from that village to the one beyond the one with the two cows (this one happened to be the one with the two Tings). So, Frankfud walked up to the first Ting and asked him what the word 'quest' meant. The Ting thought for a long time, and eventually gave up thinking because it was too hard, and sent him off to ask his brother. So Frankfud went to the other Ting and asked him if he knew what the word 'quest' meant. The Ting thought for a moment, and gave this reply: "Well, I dunno, isn't it some sort of eastern blowfish?" Frankfud disagreed; he felt that it was something to do, not something that could be cooked. The Ting thought some more, and then gave this answer: "I think it's where a bunch of important people blackmail you into doing things for them in the name of glory and riches." Frankfud thought this a good answer, and then asked if he could go questing. The Ting thought some more, and said: "No, now get out before I have you tied up and hurled beneath a camel!" So Frankfud left the village, and he came to a large plain that had no villages. Actually, it was pretty featureless, as far as plains go. Frankfud walked across the plain. And then he walked some more, and he still wasn't across the plain. Frankfud then, in the fifth day of walking, spotted a white mountain range. He thought to himself for a moment, and then decided that the mountains might be a good place to go questing. So he walked up to the mountains, and was killed by a falling boulder.
Although Frankfud met the end that many questers eventually meet, his journey had alerted the villages of the central plains that they had neighbors, and these neighbors were not nice people (normally they would assume that people working in neighboring fields were part of the same village, and they would try to seek them out at parties to say a friendly hello). The villagers of Frankfud's village became angry at the villagers of their neighboring village for forcing Frankfud to get them cows. The next day, all of the villagers marched over to the neighboring village and beat up the people who lived their, and forced them to give back the cows. The villagers of the second village (Roper, for the sake of clarity) returned the cows, but then they beat up the people of their neighboring village (Miranda) and took the cows back. So the villages of Frankfud, Roper, and Miranda were pretty much going over to each other's villages and beating up the villagers there. As this was going on, the two Tings were having a disagreement over the definition of the word 'quest'. Long story short, the second Ting (Zizinak) killed the first Ting (Hharev'vey), and established his Tingdom in Hharev'vey's Tingdom, and he called it Zizirika (because he couldn't spell his own name). Thus, the first military coup occurred. Meanwhile, Miranda, Roper, and Frankfud were still fighting, but they had been fighting for a couple of weeks and the villagers were getting pretty worn out. So the villagers of Miranda put their heads together while the villagers of Roper were beating up the villagers of Frankfud and they invented a weapon to help them defeat the evil villagers of Roper. It was pretty crude (a kitchen knife tied to a plough), but it was effective enough it its purpose, and it allowed them to kill three Roperians before they all got beat up and their invention was stolen. The people of Roper began to duplicate this magnificent thing until they had about eleven of them. The villagers of Roper, intent on trying out their new invention, went to the villagers of Miranda and killed a bunch of them (The weapon was eventually called the Miranda's Nightmare because of this). The villagers of Miranda begged for the villagers of Roper to stop. After a couple of minutes of intense negotiation, the villagers of Miranda agreed that every now and then they would share their cows with the villagers of Roper. And then the Roperians stole most of the Mirandian's cows anyway, except for a pregnant that couldn't be budged, and a bull that wouldn't allow anyone to touch him. The villagers of Frankfud heard about the incident with Miranda, and decided that they were going to beat the Roperians to the punch and invent their own weapon (a sort of whirlygig-type thing tied to an angry monkey). Funnily enough, the Frankfudan weapon proved to be more lethal than the Roperian weapon, but the Roperians had more of their weapon, and so the Roperians just barely lost. The Frankfudans, probably as a result of their victory celebration, accidentally demanded that the Roperians be the Frankfudan's slaves from here on, and that they stop being so unreasonable. This became quite a problem, because the Frankfudans didn't really have a use for slaves, except as field hands, but then there was nothing for the Frankfudans to do. And so, boredom reigned in Frankfud as the Roperians tilled the fields and the Frankfudans stood around and sort of yelled at them to work better or something (civilization takes some getting used to, doncha know).
*This tale is comprised largely of conjecture and guesswork based on scant archaeological evidence and allegories passed down by the elders of Vardinum; similar stories also appear in the folklore and urban legends of the Prairies, the Murtwurts, and the Stymies. The weapon known as the Miranda's Nightmare is still widely used today.
This murderer, however, had found something else to do. He began to go out to people as they worked in their fields (there were no farming tools at that time), and he told them the secret that would end their boredom forever: they would become destroyers.
When asked what they would destroy first, the man was at a loss, until one young boy, who was perhaps brighter than the man, thought of the idea that they would go to the neighboring village and burn it to the ground. This got the town very excited, and so they dropped whatever they were carrying and went of to their neighbors' village and burned it to the ground. It was really a glorious sight, and some of the townsfolk began to hum songs as they watched, entranced by the beauty of destruction.
The next day, the townsfolk searched through the rubble and found other things to help ease their workload back home: I mean, this night was only an indulgence! There was still plenty of things to do back home. From the ruins they managed to recover what, after many years of speculation, ingenuity, and the beginnings of mechanical knowledge, would become a primitive plough. Even the man who had started it all found new joy in life as he went back to his field (this was also a time period before names and honorifics. If anyone wanted to address anyone else, they just said 'Hey! You over there, with the red hair!', and it was perfectly acceptable, and not at all confusing).
After about a year, a village far away, yet still on the same continent, was cooking up something revolutionary. It all started when one of the young mothers gave birth to identical twins. Unfortunately, the twins were equally skilled in whatever the other one tried to do (i.e. move rocks about and throw seeds at the ground and pray that they grew). The villagers eventually got tired of having both of them answer to 'Hey! You over there, with the cowlick!', and so they decided to name each one. It must be understood, to give anyone a title was to promote them to a rank above that of the nameless farmer. The villagers, although they found life much easier after the names (Hharev'vey and Zizinak) were given, realized that they had just done something very rash. Each of the twins began walking around with identical swaggers, and each one began to give orders to each of the other villagers as if they were superior (which they were; they did have names, after all). Eventually, the villagers got even more fed up than they had the first time. It did not occur to them to kill the twins, or to banish them. There was a town meeting, in which the villagers asked the twins what it would take to keep them from being so irritating. Said Hharev'vey, "I want to be called Ting Harvu, and I want to have a Tingdom, and I want it to include half of the village! You can give Zizinak the other half!" Said Zizinak, "I was actually just going to ask for a pair of red shoes, but you know, I like that idea just as well!" And so the villagers split up their land between the two Tings, and had fewer headaches because of it, for the twins went back to their previous lives before they had names after they were made Tings of each half of the village.
Roughly simultaneously, in a village by the coast, yet more civilization was brewing. One of the fisherman there (at that time, the term referred to someone whose job it was to make sure the fish stayed away from the reed beds) had just invented a device that would allow her to float on the water, so as to be in a better position to scare the fish. Normally, such a happening would be overlooked or forgotten, except that this village had a very young child who wanted to grow up to be very famous. He stole the woman's idea for a floating device, and sought, in what little spare time he had, to duplicate it. Eventually he had a fully working floating device, and the villagers were astounded, because his had a convenient place to store drinks. And so the woman's device was overshadowed, and the man went on to be marginally famous, despite his humble origins, and went on to make six more floating devices before he died choking on a fragment of fish bone he missed when he was making his breakfast.
After about sixty two years of such small happenings all across the continent, one particularly daft young man decided to himself that he would go questing. Unfortunately, he didn't quite know what the word meant, so he went to consult the village elder. The elder, however, was just as baffled as he was, and so he sent the daft young man (Hereafter referred to as Frankfud) to the neighboring village, where the people were at least a little better familiar with such strange and foreign sounding words. So Frankfud set off across the fields of his village, and after about ten minutes of walking, found himself in the forest barrier between his village and the next. This forest was in fact only about fifty meters wide, but it was infested with such creatures as the Dreaded Wombat, the Arthuraptor, and the Gregarious Mouz, as to make the villagers avoid it whenever they could. Frank, however, being incredibly daft, didn't realize the danger he was in, even as the Arthuraptors surrounded him, snarling at him as he walked blithely on by; even as the Gregarious Mize shrilly shrieked at him as he intruded on their lairs; even as the Dreaded Wombat chewed leaves and scampered away as he approached its dwelling. After this harrowing journey, he finally arrived in the neighboring village (this one being the one that his village had burnt down before the forest grew up between them). The villagers there remembered that their village had been burned to the ground by Frankfud's village many years ago, and they were bent on getting revenge (this only after he accidentally killed their only milking cow by jumping up and down on it's spine; it's a funny ritual they had back at his town when they weren't working. Of course, they used steers, and not milking cows, which apparently makes a great deal of difference). So, when Frankfud entered the town square, the villagers demanded that he give them two cows to replace the one they just lost to his stupid ritual. This, of course, was a completely unreasonable price to pay for damaging one cow(because their ideas of justice were also slightly different), but Frankfud decided he'd play along, and so he kept walking across that village's fields and into the next village's fields. When he arrived, he informed the inhabitants that the neighboring village had sent him to steal two cows to replace one that he broke while jumping on its back. The villagers, after careful consideration, shrugged their shoulders and gave the cows to Frankfud. Frankfud took them back to the other village, and there was much rejoicing, because now they could get twice as much milk as before. Then Frankfud asked them what the definition of the word 'quest' was: this resulted in him being chased out of town by a mob of villagers wielding primitive pitchforks and carrying torches. Frankfud ran from that village to the one beyond the one with the two cows (this one happened to be the one with the two Tings). So, Frankfud walked up to the first Ting and asked him what the word 'quest' meant. The Ting thought for a long time, and eventually gave up thinking because it was too hard, and sent him off to ask his brother. So Frankfud went to the other Ting and asked him if he knew what the word 'quest' meant. The Ting thought for a moment, and gave this reply: "Well, I dunno, isn't it some sort of eastern blowfish?" Frankfud disagreed; he felt that it was something to do, not something that could be cooked. The Ting thought some more, and then gave this answer: "I think it's where a bunch of important people blackmail you into doing things for them in the name of glory and riches." Frankfud thought this a good answer, and then asked if he could go questing. The Ting thought some more, and said: "No, now get out before I have you tied up and hurled beneath a camel!" So Frankfud left the village, and he came to a large plain that had no villages. Actually, it was pretty featureless, as far as plains go. Frankfud walked across the plain. And then he walked some more, and he still wasn't across the plain. Frankfud then, in the fifth day of walking, spotted a white mountain range. He thought to himself for a moment, and then decided that the mountains might be a good place to go questing. So he walked up to the mountains, and was killed by a falling boulder.
Although Frankfud met the end that many questers eventually meet, his journey had alerted the villages of the central plains that they had neighbors, and these neighbors were not nice people (normally they would assume that people working in neighboring fields were part of the same village, and they would try to seek them out at parties to say a friendly hello). The villagers of Frankfud's village became angry at the villagers of their neighboring village for forcing Frankfud to get them cows. The next day, all of the villagers marched over to the neighboring village and beat up the people who lived their, and forced them to give back the cows. The villagers of the second village (Roper, for the sake of clarity) returned the cows, but then they beat up the people of their neighboring village (Miranda) and took the cows back. So the villages of Frankfud, Roper, and Miranda were pretty much going over to each other's villages and beating up the villagers there. As this was going on, the two Tings were having a disagreement over the definition of the word 'quest'. Long story short, the second Ting (Zizinak) killed the first Ting (Hharev'vey), and established his Tingdom in Hharev'vey's Tingdom, and he called it Zizirika (because he couldn't spell his own name). Thus, the first military coup occurred. Meanwhile, Miranda, Roper, and Frankfud were still fighting, but they had been fighting for a couple of weeks and the villagers were getting pretty worn out. So the villagers of Miranda put their heads together while the villagers of Roper were beating up the villagers of Frankfud and they invented a weapon to help them defeat the evil villagers of Roper. It was pretty crude (a kitchen knife tied to a plough), but it was effective enough it its purpose, and it allowed them to kill three Roperians before they all got beat up and their invention was stolen. The people of Roper began to duplicate this magnificent thing until they had about eleven of them. The villagers of Roper, intent on trying out their new invention, went to the villagers of Miranda and killed a bunch of them (The weapon was eventually called the Miranda's Nightmare because of this). The villagers of Miranda begged for the villagers of Roper to stop. After a couple of minutes of intense negotiation, the villagers of Miranda agreed that every now and then they would share their cows with the villagers of Roper. And then the Roperians stole most of the Mirandian's cows anyway, except for a pregnant that couldn't be budged, and a bull that wouldn't allow anyone to touch him. The villagers of Frankfud heard about the incident with Miranda, and decided that they were going to beat the Roperians to the punch and invent their own weapon (a sort of whirlygig-type thing tied to an angry monkey). Funnily enough, the Frankfudan weapon proved to be more lethal than the Roperian weapon, but the Roperians had more of their weapon, and so the Roperians just barely lost. The Frankfudans, probably as a result of their victory celebration, accidentally demanded that the Roperians be the Frankfudan's slaves from here on, and that they stop being so unreasonable. This became quite a problem, because the Frankfudans didn't really have a use for slaves, except as field hands, but then there was nothing for the Frankfudans to do. And so, boredom reigned in Frankfud as the Roperians tilled the fields and the Frankfudans stood around and sort of yelled at them to work better or something (civilization takes some getting used to, doncha know).
*This tale is comprised largely of conjecture and guesswork based on scant archaeological evidence and allegories passed down by the elders of Vardinum; similar stories also appear in the folklore and urban legends of the Prairies, the Murtwurts, and the Stymies. The weapon known as the Miranda's Nightmare is still widely used today.