Huffin' and Puffin
The somewhat bearable musings of a moderately tubby man
- it's Yuri Stempov's Football BlogWell that's us fucked.
You know you haven't done well when you are relying on the failure of other teams for you to be able to qualify, or even simply reach the play-off stage. Chetkosk have surpassed this level of failure and are actually reliant on the failure of
three other teams. Aren't we great?
No.
Fair play to the unnatural Wight squad with the convincing victory, it's pretty much ended world cup finals dreams for the Puffins this time round. But hey ho, we evidently didn't deserve to get through. The subject of suspicion this week appears to be the ageing squad that Chetkosk has. Byshovetsiy, providing he manages to withstand the tidal wave of public uproar and media craziness that is bound to follow this failed campaign, is surely going to mix things up with a couple of grass roots players at the next cup.
I wouldn't be too sure that Scherbak will keep his position either. He may be a young star, but his inability to keep a clean sheet will hamper him. Because, you know, generally, allowing no balls to get inside the goal is typically a good trait to have, you know, as a goalkeeper.
Anyway, please feel free to fill up the comment board of this post with irate mumblings about the Puffins and how you, Joe Public, could do a better job with your legs tied together.
Chapter IX : Saint Otto and VimprawyrmThis story in the Chetislav Mythology is unique in that it can be accurately placed in the timeline to within a few years, and occurs around the year 1002.
After the collapse of the North Byzanti Empire, a man by the name of Otto Zervlodic led the Slavic-Sovans to a crushing victory at the Battle of Uzstergrad. This was the climactic ending to the long civil war that signalled the end of the Rhomanian rule and Zervlodic went on to, by popular demand, become Tsar of the new Slavic Tsardom. However, before he could take up his throne, it was decided by a council of elder bishops of the Chetislav faith to send him on a test to prove his worth as not only a fighting man but a man of politics - a man who was truly worthy of a ruling position. This task was to defeat perhaps the most intelligent of all the demons placed upon the earth by the primal giants Rovt and Sjelag - Vimprawyrm, demon of Deceit and Treachery.
Vimprawyrm was a dragon, small by the standards of other dragon myths, and highly intelligent. She would descend from the mountaintop now known as Vimprasevo ("sevo" being the Chetkoski word for "summit") to spread lies and deceit into the ears of those of mankind who would listen. This was almost every mortal, as she was sometimes referred to as Vodyyakzt, or water-tongue, for her way of manipulating the language of humans.
Vimprawyrm's influence was thought to have shaped the course of the Slavic peoples for a very long time, long before even the Rhoman Empire rose. The lies, the corruption, the falsities and fallacies and non-truths and white lies that emerged from her mouth diseasing the development of the human race for centuries and centuries. If any human was going to defeat such a champion amongst demons, it would have to be a champion amongst men such as Otto Zervlodic.
The trek to the summit of Vimprasevo was the easy part. Leaving behind his royal escort, Otto climbed the last passage alone and found Vimprawyrm crouched upon a dead tree. Instantly falling back on what he knew best, Otto drew his blade and advanced upon the dragon.
"Not so fast, Tsar Zervlodic. The weapons of mortals cannot harm me." Otto paused for a moment and glanced at the rock hard scales that adorned Vimprawyrm's body all over and decided perhaps it was true. Luckily, the demon pointed him in the right direction.
"There is another way you can attempt to vanquish me, however. But it would require some extraordinary intellect in yourself - something which I have found the human race to be quite unsurprisingly lacking in."
If anything the rudeness of this denizen of Holheim prompted Otto to engage in conversation with her.
"So what would you have me do to best you?"
"Why, a little competition of the mind would suffice I think... a game of true or false."
"So be it, demon." Vimprawyrm smiled a crooked smile and composed herself, sitting with a straight back and with a curved neck pointing her head down to the human.
"Let's start with something easy, shall we? I...am a dragon." Otto opened his mouth to answer true almost immediately, but caught his breath at the last moment, before slowly replying "False! You are a demon." Vimprawyrm smirked and congratulated the human, before signalling it was his turn. Otto thought for a moment before proclaiming his statement.
"I have a wife."
"Hm! I think not. Your kind have a way of displaying the answer to that statement about your person, and you are not indulging in it," she said, the tip of her tail gesturing vaguely towards Otto's ring-less fingers, "but you have a mistress, I'll wager." Otto's silent glare revealed the truth.
"I tire of this game, mortal, I propose a different one. A game of riddles. If I fail to answer correctly, I will be defeated, and my physical form will disintegrate and vanish - if you fail to answer correctly, I shall devour you whole."
"Deal."
"Then let us begin." Vimprawyrm hopped from the tree and, in an act of intimidation, slowly strutted around the noble human, eyes ablaze with hunger and guile.
"I have a golden head, I have a golden tail, but I have no body."
"...you are a coin."
"Correct." Otto's turn.
"You feed it and it lives, you give it drink and it dies."
"Oh please, it is fire. A harder one next time." Vimprawyrm scoffed, then continued.
"I am the beginning of the end, and the end of time and space. I am essential to creation, and I surround every place." Otto was stumped for several seconds. He repeated the riddle to himself over and over, thinking about what could be such an omnipresent answer. Vimprawyrm continued to prowl, shifting closer slightly just as Otto yelped the answer.
"E! It's the letter E!"(*) Vimprawyrm scowled but gave a nod to indicate Otto was correct.
"The person who makes it, sells it. The person who buys it does not use it. The person who uses it is not aware that they do so. What is it?" This one made Vimprawyrm think for a moment, for her knowledge of mortal customs was not without limits. However, the answer came before too long.
"A coffin. Deliciously morbid for when the stakes are this high."
"I drive men mad for want of me, easily beaten but never free."
"Gold. How far can a blind man walk into a forest?"
"As far as halfway in. Say my name and I disappear."
"Silence. The more you take, the more you leave behind."
"Footsteps. Only one colour, but not one size. Stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies. Present in sun, but not in rain. Doing no harm, and feeling no pain."
"A Shadow."
The back and forth of riddles continued for a long while, and the sun had time to rise up to the top of the sky and begin to fall again before the exchange reached it's conclusion. Vimprawyrm had had enough of this mortal's surprisingly sharp smarts and ended it all.
"If you squeeze me I will pop, if you look at me you will pop. I never travel anywhere, and yet I never stop. I stand atop the world in a hundred different places, and yet I am as low as any underground spaces. Can you guess the riddle?" This, Otto did not know. He searched his mind for the answer to this seemingly impossible riddle, all the while Vimprawyrm stoppped circling and instead sat in front of the human, claws digging shallow trenches in the ground, a display of strength given that it was hard rock.
"Well?" Otto was dumbstruck, lost for words, and almost certainly doomed.
"Well then, you know what must happen now." Vimprawyrm raised a sharp talon and prepared to strike down the mortal.
"No!"
"We made a deal, mortal. You cannot answer, so I may kill you."
"No, the answer. The answer is "no"." Vimprawyrm paused, looking at Otto with narrowed eyes.
"There is no answer to the riddle. I made it up, it is false, it does not work."
"The answer is "no"." Vimprawyrm began to get angry.
"There
is no answer. I made a riddle up such that nothing in the world or any other could fulfil the terms." Otto smiled broadly, having found the hole in the demon's lie.
"Of course you did, but that was not the final question you asked me was it?"
Vimprawyrm was confused at first, but then recent events were replayed in her head, and she frowned at her own mistake. She had recited the imaginary riddle, and then asked...
"Can you guess the riddle? No. No I cannot because you made it up. The answer to your question was "no"." Vimprawyrm screeched a demonic curse in frustration, before grinning wickedly, her teeth glinting in the afternoon sun.
"Of course, you missed the original lie. I was never going to let you win, I was never going to vanish, you were always going to get killed." Otto did not seem phased, in fact, he was still smiling, and he drew his sword once more.
"No, that wasn't the original lie," he said, raising the long shining fang of cold steel and thrusting it into Vimprawyrm's body.
The original lie, the first thing the demon said to Otto, was that her scales were impervious to mortal weapons. Instead, the blade of the Tsar cracked the scaly skin as if it were but a thin layer of weak ice. With a terrifying death scream Vimprawyrm's body melted away form the blade like butter from a hot knife and she perished - the lifeless dragon corpse sizzling away into nothing.
Otto Zervlodic returned from his task victorious and was granted with not only the Tsardom but also sainthood, forever remembered in the scriptures of the Chetislav peoples. Thus the sins of deceit and treachery were forever confined to the hearts and souls of mankind and another of the primal demons was vanquished.
(*) Funnily enough, this riddle works in Chetkoski just as well as it does in English, except not with the letter E or even the Chetkoski vowel that produces a similar sound - it is the letter П ("enat").
-------------- Deity Spotlight --------------Zimokan is perhaps the most mysterious of all the deities of the Chetislav Pantheon. Along with Wielov the Shapeshifter, the Wanderer is bound to the mortal world and can never step foot in Hestzhall. Instead he travels the world constantly, rarely ever remaining in one place for any long period of time. Some say that it is because he micromanages the snow and ice of the world, others say he must move where the seasons take him - but the dominant theory is that he simply dislikes fraternising with any living being other than himself and thus avoids contact with the humans who so dearly wish to document more about this ever-absent enigma.
In perhaps the best recording of mankind interacting with this deity, an injured, lonely warrior took care of the god when he was injured and nursed him back to good health, thus giving rise to the seasons and granting the Chetislavs with some warm months of the year, thus identifying compassion as a trait of Zimokan.
BYE
Jedi8246 3-1 Chetkosk
Chetkosk 1-1 Branta Island
Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuk 0-2 Chetkosk
Chetkosk 4-1 Wight
Vergenskia 2-0 Chetkosk
Chetkosk 2-0 Soviet Canuckistan
Puerto Candelaria 1-1 Chetkosk
Chetkosk 2-2 Kulverint
BREAK
BYE
Chetkosk 8-1 Jedi8246
Branta Island 1-1 Chetkosk
Chetkosk 7-2 Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuk
Wight 2-1 Chetkosk
Chetkosk v Vergenskia
Soviet Canuckistan v Chetkosk
Chetkosk v Puerto Candelaria
Kulverint v Chetkosk