Wight Sporting Journal

by **Miskatonic University** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 9:47 am

The Tea Party At The End Of The Multiverse
And Then... Nothing

The Ultimate Retcon
by Jimmy Costello

by **Miskatonic University** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:39 am

OUT OF CHARACTER
Invocation

Well, what goes around, goes around, as they say in Wight. And sure enough, it was around again.

I’m glad to be home, says Búa, I’ve missed you crazy kids.

A great cheer went up in the stony hall, cups of Wightbeer were raised and emptied, songs broke out and The Clone of Brian Blessed laughed like thunder on the heath. At long last, in the granite fortress under suicide grey skies, in the court of Wight Spit, Búa King of Uncertain Dimensions was back at his throne and speaking in that way he does, without speech marks, and in the wrong tense.

“And we have missed you,” replied Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin, First Lieutenant of Búa and halal butcher, “my King and friend, welcome home!” Hassan smiled his white and dangerous smile at the Welder of Realities.

After making a small and inhospitable volcanic island in Atlantian Oceania of the Enness dimensional plane twelve years ago¹, for reasons yet to be satisfactorily explained, he promptly disappeared on an adventure. The sentient bubble universe who materialises as the mischievous and wholly disorganised avatar Búa had then not even sent a postcard home to the denizens of Wight. The poor Wightlings who not so much worshipped him – or it – as relied upon him for their nightly entertainment, lacking anything better to do with their evenings, had no choice but to go out and steal a World Cup from the Polar Islandstates, for fun.

Let them get Lillehammer & Skye detectivating on that one, exclaims Búa, but omitting the exclamation mark on purpose, and inventing a nice sounding word in the process. You can have too many of them, he says, referring to the exclamation mark.

Hassan i Sabbah laughed his joyous laugh, the one he usually employs just before skewering someone, and slapped his thigh. “Yes indeed,” he said, as many courtiers frowned in an attempt to work out what Búa had actually said, and what he meant by it, “indeed we have missed you, Oblique One.”

In The Holy Asylum² unnumbered monks shook their heads judgmentally at the gramatically [sic] erratic phraseology of the King of Uncertain Dimensions. Some things never change, they are thinking (here is another place where time and tense shift like quicksands). But while some things certainly hadn’t changed, Búa most definitely had. Gone was his handsome pirate look with the tattooed face, the jewelry, the bald head and bronzed chest and baubles and bangles and attendant army of little adoring golden tamarins (with those teeth, like needles, and their atrocious attitudes). Now before them was, though the whole court was reluctant to admit it, a slob. A yellow-skinned, fat-bellied, three-haired comb-over oaf. Búa had returned as a materialisation of Homer Simpson. It was most out of character.

It’s an Asylum thing, says Búa, by way of explanation. Now what’s all this about winning the World Cup?

They presented their Imaginator-in-Chief with the World Cup trophy, which of course has never been illustrated in all the long years of these forums, and therefore has an elusive form, so that if you look at it straight on, you can hardly see it³. Búa held it up, and looked away slightly. Joy washed over him.

Woohoo!!! Says Búa, using up all his exclamation mark allowance in one go. Someone get Doctor Sunshine on the phone, I need to brag⁴. Will the Cup show up on FaceTime, do we think?

There was much jollity and facetiousness in the court at granite Wight Spit then, way out in the Uncertain Dimensions where Búa keeps his home, at the expense of Doctor Sunshine and of the monks of The Asylum, with a few jokes about elves thrown in for good measure. Finally that oafish avatar of a sentient bubble universe called order on the frivolity. After all, he said, the writer of this story is beginning to fall asleep at his desk, and his eyes are unfocused, and he needs to go to bed, since he has work in the morning. Plus someone else wants to use the computer to post roster.

The people of the court looked at each other baffled – there were always strange things to wonder about in grey Wight , but Búa was not making any sense. The Fourth Incarnation of Tommy Cooper prodded the airspace in front of him, suspicious that there was some invisible wall that Búa was pushing up against. And later, that great Tamarindian, Masvidal, would read about this Invocation, and things would fall into place for him, and end badly. But that is a story for another matchday.

Now then, says Búa, where is my –

“Here!” called out Michele de Nostrodame, the court Geometer and good at predicting things. He knew what was coming next, and wasn’t inclined to wait politely for it to be vocalised. “You wish to know our fate in this coming World Cup, and do that thing that nations do, when they predict things.”

Hmm, mutters the King of Uncertain Dimensions, am I that predictable?

“Inevitably,” said Logikal Mick, as we call Nostrodamus here in Old Wight, “inevitable as jokes about the host nation” – he was of course referring to the land of the Nevs & Syndies.

Just you cut to the mustard, says Búa, and then: mmmmm must-ard…

“Yes, well, harrumph, so, I did the mathematics, applied the physics, threw in some mysticism and drew out a random drawing. And herein lies our fate…”

He unrolled the scroll and revealed it to the court with a flourish

There was a polite round of applause. ‘Every time’ thought Logikal Mick, ‘they fall well under my whelm. I don’t know why I bother.’

Hassan asked the question nobody wanted to ask.

“No,” replied the irritated court Geometer “I did not grab an image of an assembly diagram off the internet. How very dare you?”

by **Sixteen Bits** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:05 am

OOC: As a freelancer I have many hats, from writer to community arts practitioner, performance poet to outdoor adventure worker, climber & camper, helping a charity get poor inner-city families into the great outdoors on camping projects. I even have two agents, one in the North and one in the South. I went to Sheffield yesterday to see my Northern agent, and he’s not happy with me faffing around writing nonsense football reports for a web forum. He wants me to stop, and to finish the work I’m supposed to be doing for him. This is not paying the rent, he told me. It’s alright, I said, I’ve got a lodger now. But he thinks I deliberately missed the point.

OUT OF CHARACTER
Unfinished Business

Now then, says Búa, who is recently returned from nigh a decade of traveling (and not so much as a postcard or a sporadic blog entry), what has been going on? Tell me of this bauble, this shiny and indistinct World Cup which we won. And tell me why there are bears on the Lonely Road. We have unfinished business, and stories that need completing. Is it true that The Licentian Isles also won the world cup? I hear gossip in the halls of this granite fortress, that the Lictentian Isles Won The World Cup...

The King of Uncertain Dimensions was in his office having a management meeting with his dread lieutenants, The Unholy Trinity of Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin, Doctor Herbert West The Reanimator, and John The Baptist – whose memory was patchy but his running of the country of Wight in AO quite unimpeachable. Tommy Woodroffe the Drunken Sports Commentator and his colleague Con Houlihan were also there to report on the match with Kintratar. But first, they gave a blow-by-blow account of winning the World Cup¹.

Goodness me but that was a close thing, says Búa, especially that bit about about running out of steam at the end of qualifying.

“It’s true, my Homeric regent²,” said Hassan, “things looked to be drifting away from us, what with you gone from the Grey Estate. The stories dried up, and then the team dried up, limped into the finals, lost the first game, drew the second, needed a 3-0 win against Turori on the third group game to go through, and we didn't have time to RP. We felt it was all over and we'd drop in the rankings for the first time, having only just made the top 20. And then we won 3-0 and everything came up roses.”

RP? wonders Búa, what in the multiverse do you mean by that, my grinning assassin?

“Well I never,” exclaimed Hassan, “I have no idea what I meant by that. Slip of the tongue, I imagine,” and he smiled his white and deadly smile. John the Baptist cleared his throat awkwardly, and Doctor Herbert West trilled “awkward!” under his breath. The sports commentators Drunk Tommy and Con looked at each other, not sure what the devil was going on.

Alright then moving swiftly on, says Búa moving swiftly on, what of the three bears?

“Do you mean that business with the porridge?” asked Herbert, surprised. Hassan laughed long and hard. One might say overlong and unnecessarily hard.

“He means the business with Fattarno, Mettle, and Glimmer, the superheroes of Amberrica” explained John The Baptist, patiently.

“I know, I know, it was a joke, for the love of the jumping monkey,” - but Herbert was not terribly convincing.

“There is some unfinished business there, my King and Friend,” said Hassan, wiping a tear from his eye, “the bears were part of a story across nations, but that business of all the stories drying up in your absence? The bears, who had inexplicably appeared on The Lonely Road simply popped out of existence once the story dried up. Our champion storyteller Empy Summons even went on the message boards to find help, because he ran out of stories – or the will to tell them, at least – and it seems to have affected these characters more than most.”

Well then, says Búa, best we get the stories running again, and mayhap the bears will be found: I would like a word with them.

“Aye, Patron,” said Hassan, with a nod of his head.

Now Búa turns again to Tommy, who was nodding off. It was the drink. Tommy! says Búa, and Tommy jumped. Tommy, regale us with the match report for matchday one of this new cup, for which we are, lest you missed it, the defending champion. How did we fare at home to Kintratar?

Wight 1-0 Olastor
Friend-Forsaken 51’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action at Spit Lawns thus:

Far from convincing, Con!

Wait! Wait, wait, WAIT!!! says Búa, using too many exclamation marks for comfort. What’s going on here, Tommy? Are you so drunk you’ve brought me the wrong match report? We are at home to Kintratar, by my reckoning, -

- and here he waved his World Cup 66 sticker chart in the air, and pointed to the fixture list.

“Well, I, um, I, ah, let’s see…” said Tommy, sobering up fast and biding for time.

Con Houlihan helped out. “You have the wrong fixture list, boss,” he said, “that’s the old one. There was a bit of a… shall we say reshuffle?”

Are you shitting me? says Búa, losing his usual supreme being reserve.

“It happens,” said a guilty looking fellow in the corner that no-one had noticed before.

Who are you? asks Búa, though being the supreme being, he really ought to have known. And noticed him before.

“My name is Gregoire L’Erreur,” said Gregoire L’Erreur, with a distinctly Montrealaise accent, “I’m from… was from New Montreal States. I was in charge of fixtures at World Cup 64…” and he put his head down miserably.

The creator of a bubble universe and his murderous friends looked at him awkwardly, and then looked at each other. Hassan shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘I have no idea, my King and Friend’ and then Búa let out a comforting sigh. Or was it an Homeric belch?

Well fear not Gregoire L’Erreur, says Búa, it would seem you’re not the only one. Forgive me Tommy for doubting you, and carry on with that carefully planned match report you were delivering before I rudely interrupted.

Wight 1-0 Olastor
Friend-Forsaken 51’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action at Spit Lawns thus:

Far from convincing, Con!

To which the dead analyst Con Houlihan replied, “in a word Tommy?

Quite.”

Is that it? says Búa.

“It’s early days yet, boss,” replied Con, with a hint of an attitude.

Indeed, says Búa, and things have slipped while I’ve been on holiday. Now then, get me this Empy Summons fellow, will you Hassan, I want to hear how The Licentian Isles – weren’t they Licenthropicflamingopacibonbonterrierists last I heard?³ – I want to hear how they won the world cup.

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on RL events

In the first part of the story of How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup –

Yes, yes, interrupts Búa, we know The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup, Empy Summons, we just want to know how.

“Of course, great Welder of Realities, of course. I shall press on forthwith.”

In summary, after the World Cup win – did I mention Wight won the World Cup? – and before the kick-off of the twenty-eighth Di Bradini under-21 World Cup, coincidentally being hosted on the Broken Islands of Wight, the MIU who are the boss of everything in Wight football decided to hold a Gala Dinner at the Republic of Heaven Hotel in Spit. The long and short of it is, lots of Very Important Persons were present, even guest of honour Simeone di Bradini himself, despite being roundly abused by Wightlingfans in the World Cup semi-final victory over The Holy Asylum. A marvelous time was had by all. Plato got a little drunk, Helson Mandela failed to show despite being expected, and the many Starblaydi curry houses in Wight were so delighted to have their patron saint in town, there was a whole night of discounted feline bhuna and dog aloo chatt for the curry-loving denizens of Spit city. The World Cup was on display too, though it was hard to see because if you looked straight at it, the thing was invisible. But using your periphery vision you could admire it in all it’s glory. That is, until it was gone. That’s right. Someone stole the World Cup. Here’s the full transcript of that night:

1. Did I mention that Wight won the World Cup?

2. Homeric since, for reasons not entirely clear to anyone, Búa had returned home from his extensive travels looking very much like the embodiment of Homer Simpson, who was, allegedly, an heroic character of fiction in another dimension, though the people of the court could not see it in the cut of his jib.

3. They were.

by **Miskatonic University** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:20 am

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on RL events

The Gala Dinner

Naturally, the great and the good had gathered at the Republic of Heaven Hotel, in Spit, to celebrate the opening of the Di Bradini Cup and of course the marvellous exploits of the World Cup winning Sondry Folk, who had returned triumphant to the Broken Islands with a world cup trophy in their baggage. Joining the chairman of the MIU FA and boss of football in Wight Sebastiane Narbonensis at the top table was heroic outgoing manager Masvidal, his assistant and favourite to be incoming manager Athelstan Marchand, and several senior dignitaries of Wight football. Isod Popish, Budannon Burraton and Hydoc Kestle, the three chairmen of the various senior Wightling leagues and old boys of the FA were joined by the predecessor to Saint Sebastiane, Plato of Aegina. Plato, ancient and justified football don and self-confessed Humunculus Alumni supporter, was not a bad midfielder himself when he had the energy to put on some kit and boots. These days he mostly used a zimmer frame, too, even though everyone in Old Wight was precisely 44 years old, apart from the children. Also at the top table was new Hall of Fame inductee Mardellion Hummingbird, and Hall of Fame nominee by dint of that win Marriner Friend-Forsaken. There was a seat for team captain M.V. Cabel, an empty seat held in reserve for long-overdue guest of honour Nelson Mandela, and, most honoured of all on this day, benefactor of the name of the Under-21 World Cup himself, Starblaydi superhero and inmate of The Holy Asylum, Simeone di Bradini. Yes, Simeone was there, and the whole Gerrard Winstanley Conference Hall of the Republic of Heaven was awestruck by the handsome and charming multi-centenarian, not to mention a little embarrassed by certain incidents of heckling during World Cup victories over The Archfiendery and The Holy Asylum on the way to that famous win. The many Starblaydi curry houses in Wight were so delighted to have their patron saint in town, there was a whole night of discount feline bhuna and dog aloo chatt for the curry-loving denizens of Spit city.

Also present at the Gala Dinner, a fundraiser supporting the illiteracy charity Belmore Literacy Aid, were the full World Cup squad including forcibly retired Cleve Scrivenor, who took it in the head from a Saintland hooligan-footballer during qualifying and is the proud owner of a partially metallic skull as a result. The twenty-three travelling fans of the Wight Support International, headed up terrace gentleman Badders, were there on sufferance after extensive negotiations in which they promised to behave impeccably. The International’s incredibly organised and strict administrator Vi Blee was there to ensure order was kept, while persistent no-show Mr. Rosefinch, twenty-fourth member of The International, had failed to show. Again.

Speeches were delivered, toasts made, stories told, and cheers raised. Master of Ceremonies and legendary bigmouth Brian Blessed Cloned kept the whole event ticking over very nicely. And at some point – nobody is quite sure when – the World Cup trophy, the final piece in the jigsaw of high-fallutin’ special guests even though it was an inanimate object, disappeared off the top table.

Gone.

by **Miskatonic University** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:23 am

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on RL events

The Wight Constabulary

Inspector Romeo Noall of the Wight Constabulary dampened the end of his pencil and, for the twenty-third time that night, asked the question:

“So, Mr…” (scanning his notes) “Mr. Di Brandino, at what time, approximately, did you last see the World Cup trophy?”

Inspector Noall and his side-kick Constable Polwheveral had set up an ‘incident room’ in the duty manager’s office of the Republic of Heaven Hotel, in Spit, where the World Cup trophy had been reported missing during the gala dinner to celebrate the homecoming of the World Cup winning Sondry Folk and the opening of the twenty-eighth Di Bradini Cup being hosted in Wight. Upon arriving at the hotel with constables Polwheveral, Hoopoe and St. Ewe, Noall had quarantined the Gerrard Winstanley Conference Hall with everyone inside it and was painstakingly collecting statements. Simeone Di Bradini, guest of honour, was twenty third on his list, when working alphabetically. It was understood Lycomedes Zorrow had already despaired and attempted to rush the exit, where he was subdued by Constable Hoopoe and arrested.

“It’s Di Bradini, Inspector.”

“Excuse me?”

“My name,” said Simeone Di Bradini, “is Simeone Di Bradini.”

“Right you are, Mister De Brandino, you’ll forgive my mispronunciation, we don’t get a lot of foreigners round here. Anyway, Mister Brandino – or may I call you Di? - about the trophy - ”

Consistent with all reports so far, the world famous footballer and multiversal superhero – whom Inspector Noall had entirely failed to recognise – estimated he had last seen the trophy around 20:30 local time, though he could not be completely sure.

“And could you describe the trophy, Di?”

“Di Bradini, Inspector. And no, it would be impossible to describe the trophy.”

“Imposs… What?”

The Starblaydi explained that the trophy had, so far as he could remember, never been cloaked in a description that gave it a physical manifestation in the world. Which was, he assumed, what made it so easy for the thieves to steal it without anyone noticing. It was as good as invisible to the naked eye, though everyone knew when it was in the room, and everyone realised, at some point, when it wasn’t.

“As good as invis… No physical manifesta… Now Di, is this some kind of Starblaydi lark? I’m afraid you’ll have to explain the joke, poor Constable Polwheveral here was never one for quantum humour.”

“No Sir,” agreed Polwheveral, although he was thinking, ‘You’re no Lillehammer yourself, Romeo Noall’ – comparing the inspector unfavourably to his favourite Polarian detective on television.

Simeone Di Bradini was explaining that it was no joke when he just happened to mention that he had emigrated to The Holy Empire at some indistinct time probably in the past.

“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Inspector Noall, and Constable Polwheveral inhaled a shocked-sounding breath, loudly, “The Holy Asylum? Papers please!”

It took the intervention of Sebatian Narbonensis the chairman of the FA and a call to his good friend Commander Scudder Minnear, chief of police at the Wight Constabulary, to eventually get the World’s Greatest Footballer Of All Time Except Maybe Val Kylx And Probably Masvidal off the suspect list. By which time, a thorough sniff of the building by half a dozen Constabulary Wight Spot Terriers had confirmed the trophy was long gone.

Lycomedes Zorrow was released without charge following his arrest for attempting to break quarantine, while Simeone Di Bradini flew home later that night, protesting the spurious cavity search at the Spit International Airport conducted by Border Officer Bost Gwenter, an old friend of Romeo Noall.

The search for the World Cup trophy extended beyond the Republic of Heaven Hotel. Someone had made a getaway.

by **Miskatonic University** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:26 am

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on RL events

The Eel & Crow

While Inspector Romeo Noall was conducting a forensic inquiry into the disappearance of the World Cup trophy at The Republic of Heaven Hotel, and suspecting a master criminal of a grand heist, the truth of the matter was much more mundane, and to be found at the famous little bar on The Shambles, right at the heart of Penchant’s entertainment quarter in Spit – The Eel & Crow. Two Wightling fans, Rhetorical Willy Mullane and Skewer Wallace, had been invited to the Gala Dinner as part of the twenty three fans of the Wight Support International, and frankly, had found it all rather high falluting and showy. They were forbidden from singing songs of celebration and especially from singing “You’re not very good, You’re not very good, You’re not very, You’re not very, You’re not very good! Oi! You’re shit aaaghhhhh!” at guest of honour Simeone Di Bradini. All in all, there wasn’t much to hand around for. And then they got talking to young defender and squad joker Climo Coss. He was very much on their level – and he had an idea for a little fun.

Thirty minutes later, Rhetorical Willy, Skewer and their new young friend Climo were the heroes of the Eel & Crow pub in Penchant. They had turned up in a cab with the World Cup trophy in their possession. The trophy was filled with champagne and passed around the celebrating pub, where the challenge was to drink as much as possible out of the peculiar trophy: it had never been described, and therefore had no solidly imagined form, and was quite hard to perceive. Like that moment first thing in the morning when you wake up, your eyes misty and unfocused, and the dog in your face staring at you: and you can neither focus on the dog nor make out exactly what it is. The trophy is like that: it is easier to see it out of the corner of your eye when looking elsewhere – when you look directly at it, it is almost impossible to make out clearly. So attempting to drink out of it became something of a sport. While Inspector Noall formulated his theory of a complex robbery by an organised gang of southern elves from a far foreign country, Skewer Wallace was drowning in pink champagne which he had poured all over himself in a drunken celebration using the World Cup trophy itself.

Rhetorical Willy, Skewer and Climo, together with approximately 100 bar flies at the Eel & Crow, hammered the champagne hard. And the Wightbeer, and even the most expensive Vanorian fine wines that landlord Ford Skylark could afford to stock in his famous little pub. Endellion Lean the owner of the Atlantian Emporium arrived with some highly toxic soda imported from 95X to mix with the Wightbeer, and there can be no denying a fair few RPinin tabs from the Kytler Peninsula were knocking around the toilet area as the night progressed. In the early hours, most of the clientele were gone or going. At 4am only the landlord, Climo, Willy and Skewer were left in the bar, with the famous trophy. Locking the doors, Ford Skylark went to bed, and the three heroes slowly fell into drunken stupors on the long padded benching in the saloon. Climo was hugging the trophy, though he found it hard to focus on the legendary cup.

Later that morning, Skylark found the boys where he left them, snoring. The front door to the bar was open, and the Cup was gone.

“Shit,” he said, scratching his head.

by **Miskatonic University** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 11:29 am

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on RL events

Percy The Fence

There is no such thing as theft in Wight, just unauthorised borrowing. So confident are the Wight Constabulary that what goes around goes around, as they say, it means that everything will eventually find it’s way back to it’s true owner. Consequently, not theft, but circular lending. And usually, therefore, not altogether worth breaking your back for. But the Wightlingfolk are not so stupid to imagine that the same lackadaisical approach to misappropriation is not a common trait in the multiverse: most foreign types won’t wait for the unauthorised lending to travel full circle, and want vigorous policing, vigorous prosecution, and vigorous punishment. Sebastiane Narbonensis, Chairman of the FA and recently elected fellow of the EWCC, didn’t want to have to report back to the NSWC that the good citizens of Wight had lost the World Cup trophy. With Simeone Di Bradini, guest of honour at the Gala Dinner where the incident occurred, flying out of the country later that evening, word was well and truly out. Any thought of “Ah well, it’ll turn up” – as initially observed by Chief of Police at the Wight Constabulary, Commander Scudder Minnear – would not be sufficient response to mollify the upright fellows of the EWCC. The Wight Constabulary, agreed Scudder, eventually, would not only have to appear to be taking this seriously – they would probably have to actually take it seriously. They got Inspector Romeo Noall straight on the case, principally because he was the type of fellow who would take this sort of thing seriously. But also because his name sounded like the kind of chap who would go the extra mile to solve the case. Inspector Noall, after a thorough forensic examination of the crime scene at the Republic of Heaven Hotel in Spit, concluded that this was organised crime at it’s most organised. Probably Zenegalese.

Inspector Noall had been thoroughly wide of the mark, until Percy The Fence got involved. The Cup had in fact been borrowed for a prank, by World Cup winning defender Climo Coss and two supporters – Rhetorical Willy Mullane and Skewer Wallace. Climo, Willy and Skewer had taken it to the Eel & Crow pub in the Penchant district of Spit, where the regulars had enjoyed very much drinking cheap champagne out of the world’s most famous trophy. Later, as the dawn approached and the pub emptied, Climo curled up under a table spooning the World Cup, while the landlord locked up. In the morning, Climo was still under the table, the front door was wide open, and the trophy was gone.

Two young tearaways had jimmied the lock on their way to school in the morning. Whimsy Quince and Maharamba, always on the lookout for trouble, had walked past the Eel & Crow as they made their way to Maths, Pseudoscience and Irreligious Studies lessons at the Looe Comprehensive School. Hearing the impressively thunderous snoring of Climo Coss and his friends Willy and Skewer, the boys had cased the joint through the window, and Whimsy, a lockpick, pickpocket, card shark and all-round street cully, easily gained entry through the front door. Ten minutes later the boys were with Percy The Fence, who bought the odd-looking trinket off them for twenty blood shillings and two fake IDs for the Almost Club in Penchant. The World Cup trophy, lacking any proper description, did not have an altogether physical manifestation in the universe. You had to look at it sideways to really see it. Percy would’ve offered what Whimsy Quince was asking – ฿$50, but clearly the trophy was a fake, considering its insubstantiality. Then he threatened to clip them if they carried on complaining, and sent them on their way. Later he would find Whimsy had pickpocketed him and made off with far more than ฿$50.

It was approximately twelve hours after the cup was stolen from the Republic of Heaven – and finally it was going to come into the ballpark Inspector Noall had been considering. Percy The Fence took the World Cup trophy to his mate, Aachyuta ‘Cute Archie’ Frye, who had good contacts with the criminal underworld that operated out of and lurked around the docks at Looe. In particular, a foreign gang, the Zenegalese Liberation Front, who were nothing of the sort but did a whole line in import/export. Percy The Fence, Cute Archie and the World Cup trophy met a couple of foot soldiers of the ZLF in Little Leorudo, the old Leorudan refugee camp that was about to get redeveloped and was, at present, a boarded up building site. The ZLF boys looked over the World Cup trophy and offered Percy ฿$5000. They would’ve offered more, they said, looking sideways at the thing, but it was clearly faulty. Then they threatened Percy and Cute Archie with violence if they did not accept the offer. After momentary discussion, they agreed to accept the offer.

“General Chukwumogie appreciates your support for the ZLF,” smiled one of the men, hefting the World Cup trophy into a scruffy canvas holdall.

There was a long pause. Empy Summons liked his dramatic pauses.

Well then, says Búa, who loves a good story and is on the edge of his throne, what happens next?

“Ah well now, my Supreme Homeric Being,” said Empy, with a flourish, “that will have to wait for another matchday.”

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:57 am

OOC: I must be thinking too much about this whole RP universe thing. Not only am I in trouble with my agent for not doing real work, but last night I had this whole series of totally absorbing dreams about actually being in Wight’s capital of Spit. It was joyous too, like, ‘wow, I made it, I am here, and it really does feel like a kind of heaven’ – even though it started with a sequence in which I was in a car crash (most of my nightmares are re-runs of the real one I was in, nearly two years ago, when I sort of changed…) And I kept thinking, it really is just the way I imagined it. Which sort of makes sense, since I did imagine it. Anyways I’m thinking maybe I should take a bit of a step back, I love NS but I don’t want it to take over my life. I’m going to tie up loose ends through this series and then take a hiatus. (My Northern agent will be delighted).

Wight 4-0 Mangolana
Skewes 18’ Rodda 26’ MacKenzie 56’ Fosse-Gordon 79’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action at Spit Lawns thus:

Much more convincing, Con!

To which the analyist Con Houlihan replied – “In a word, Tommy?

“It’s a midfield masterclass from Wight as all four across the middle of the park get on the scoresheet, at a time when our strikers look surprisingly out of sorts. A potentially tricky fixture against a team that were surprise qualifiers last time out, Wight put the doubts of the previous unconvincing win behind them to outplay, outrun and outgun the Mangoes. Man of the match undoubtedly was Ia Rodda who has stepped up to fill the tragic and overly large hole left by Big John Corfe-Sheviock, and looks fearsome as the man just behind the strikers. Once again the defence looked impervious, not a common feature of Wightling teams over the years, but the three Bedsit Rovers of Boyle, Cabel and Friend-Forsaken have been together so long now they have an almost telepathic understanding of one another, and you would have to say new boy Etienne Gynn looks the final piece in the jigsaw at the back. All we need is the strikers to start firing and we might be world beaters, Tommy.”

That’s right, Con, as we were last time around!

“We were, Tommy, we were. World Champions, exactly."¹

Free South Califas 0-2 Wight
Skewes 24’ Falcon 90+4’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action at Spit Lawns thus:

A solid away performance in the first game on the road for Wight and the goals have gone to the youngsters, with left winger Argon Skewes hitting his second in two games to cap an impressive start to this competition, and Israel Falcon the first striker to score this time around. Once again it was an impressive defensive base to work from with Piran MacKenzie enjoying a starring role in front of the back four neutralising the Califan strike force. A third consecutive clean sheet matches the Wight record and the Sondry Folk will hope to break that in the fourth match against, well, could be anybody, if the fixture list is to be believed, Con.

To which the analyist Con Houlihan replied – “In a word, Tommy?

“A bit harsh. A bit harsh, Tommy.”

All’s fair in love and football, someone once told me, Con. I think it was a Syndicatian telephonist, if memory serves me correct.

“You had a fling with a Syndi, Tommy?”

Let’s not air our dirty washing on air, Con. Now, what about those fellows at the Wightling Community Football Channel in Bjarnarey?

“Amateurs, Tommy. Complete amateurs. Not even the right shaped ball. And if anyone should know their balls from their prolate spheroids, it would be the Valhallans.”

Aren’t we all, though? Technically, at least? Amateurs, I mean?

Wight vs Kintratar
Team: Quentine / Boyle, Cabel, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Skewes, MacKenzie, Rodda, Fosse-Gordon / Cotterill, Falcon
Song: “Are You Kinitaria In Disguise?”

No surprises expected from coach Athelstan Marchand, as Wight look to press on with home advantage and rack up a decent lead in the first half of qualifying. He will be looking for the strikers to improve their goal ratio with only one goal in seven between them so far.

OUT OF CHARACTER
More Unfinished Business

Calm down, says Búa, in his Homeric repose, what seems to be the trouble, Burtho?

Burtho Trewithick, a minor administrator at the MIU who run all things football in Wight, a man previously quite unheard of outside of his home in Campus until the Apoxians launched him into minor celebrity, quoting him when reporting on the outrageously ridiculous UICA Super League, was in a panic.

“It’s 21:50, my King and Friend, and we’ll miss the cut-off if we don’t hurry.”

“That’s all well and good,” said Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin, “but we’ve a lot of unfinished business to attend to.”

“Please,” begged Burtho, “can everyone just stop talking now, and press the ‘publish’ button. It’s 21:52. We can do the whole bear story and various jocular conversations tomorrow – it’s Saturday, we could take all day if we wanted.”

Not all day, says Búa, I have an opticians appointment in the morning.

“Really, Welder of Worlds,” enquired John The Baptist, “but I thought –“

“Please, for the love of the jumping monkey, PUBLISH!!!”

Alright, says Búa, get the copypasta on heat, and do it. We’ll talk more later.

1. Did we mention that already…?

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:08 am

OOC: Attempting to post this from my iPhone after editing a google doc. So forgive mistakes. Wish I had an iPad. I’m at the Mercure Hotel in Wigan (it’s not as bad as it sounds) and I’ve been attending a reception. It would seem this is the team hotel for Ipswich Town who, I’m told, are playing at Wigan Athletic tomorrow. I think I may go along – 14:00hrs GMT, see you there! By coincidence, I’ve been chatting to former Ipswich Town legend Allan Hunter who is here as a VIP with the squad. What a gent! It’s not a coincidence that he’s here, of course. But it IS a coincidence that in my various postings on the Tamarindian legend and Wight World Cup winning manager Masvidal, I have used photoshopped images of Allan Hunter as the player. I haven’t mentioned it to him – I don’t want to weird him out…

OUT OF CHARACTER
Additional Unfinished Business

Now then, says Búa, where has Empy Summons got to? I’ve been hoping to get this story about the Dead Bears Walking today, and perhaps the next installment of How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup, which seems to be taking an age to tell.

The King of Uncertain Dimensions was still in his management meeting with his three lieutenants, Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin and Halal Butcher, Doctor Herbert West the Reanimator, and John the Baptist who was having trouble with his memory. The drunken sports commentator Tommy Woodroffe was there along with his analyst Con Houlihan, ready to give a briefing on the Sondry Folk’s latest escapade in the World Cup, while over in the corner, uninvited and without any clear reason to be there except as a minor narrative device, or perhaps a plant for a later plot development, was the depressed Montrealaise, Gregoire L’Erreur, who had already apologised for messing things up, though what he had messed up, he wasn’t clear on.

But my gosh, says Búa, employing a word of the moment, was that a long sentence just back there.

No-one was quite sure what he was referring to, but since he was an omnipotent supreme being, he often had his head in the clouds where he was inclined to talk nonsense. It was best to humour him.

“Well, it’s late, my Welder of Realities,” explained Hassan with his bright white and deadly smile, “Sometimes grammar goes to hashish when the hour gets late.”

“Empy Summons,” said John the Baptist, “went to the opticians this morning complaining of Convergence Insufficiency. They are fitting a prism on his glasses, which is probably why he is late, my King and Friend.”

“I think that’s why he’s been struggling to tell a coherent and linear story, as well,” the Reanimator speculated. “By half-past-not-very-late he’s half blind, and that’s not conducive to making stuff up about an imaginary football match.”

Burtho Trewinick put his head around the door. “It’s 23:15, chaps, time to post.”

He has become quite the timekeeper, says Búa after he goes, maybe I’ll bounce him into the middle of next week and he can figure out how to clock watch from there.

“The boy has a point,” smiles Hassan, menacingly, “we can wait another day for Empy Summons and his brand new prism specs.”

Indeed, indeed, says Búa ruminating, well then Tommy, best you tell me about the football before we fire a post out into the ether.

Wight 1-0 Kintratar
Cotterill 55’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action at Spit Lawns thus:

After a couple of solid performances, the Sondry Folk are back to looking a bit shaky, Con, and the pressure of defending the World Cup – did I mention already that –

“Yes you did Tommy, you did.”

Alright then, well, the boys in reaper black looked a little uncertain tonight, didn’t they Con?

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word Tommy?

“It was a nervous performance, I thought, and there have been rumours in the camp of a lack of preparation, last minute tactical meetings, and the team tall tale teller Empy Summons turning up totally disorganised for dressing room discourses.”

That’s easy for you to say Con. I thought Kintratar looked in reasonable shape for a point myself, certainly in the first half, when their centre halves Gardiner and Calwell marshalled Wight’s offensive potency with an impressive show of discipline and shape. But worryingly our strike partners have still not really got going.

“True Tommy, true enough, although once Cotterill hit a low shot past Tim Conner in the Kintrattish goal, there never seemed like a way back for the boys in – what colour would you say that was, Tommy? – “

Oh, sort of browny-greyish-puke/I mean –puce/ or something, a colour they call ‘Gosh’ in the press-pack.

“An apt description, Tommy, thanks. There never seemed like a way back for the boys in goshpukebrown. Although there was that moment, with the Vilitan albatross and the invisible snow-angel of the Holy Asylum - ”

I’ll have to stop you there on that one, Con, we don’t have permission to make stuff up like that.

“I’m not making it up, Tommy, we both saw how the ball was deflected awkwardly off an angel’s buttock from that free kick –“

Really Con I don’t know what you are talking about. Here, have a quick read of the RP Permissions in the Kintratario press-pack while I ramble about something vaguely irrelevant. For example I had the pleasure of Masvidal’s company earlier today at a press party at The Republic of Heaven Hotel in Spit. What a friendly fellow he is, despite his fearsome reputation. Quite the gentleman in real life… finished?

“Yes Tommy, quite finished, and I must say, a perfectly routine victory here today, wouldn’t you agree?”

Indeed Con, routine.

“Yes, routine.”

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:13 am

OOC: Well it’s been a bizarre weekend so far, what with meeting Allan Hunter the former Ipswich Town player and inspiration for Masvidal, and now… Daniel Byrne. You don’t recognise the name? Well, I suppose, why would you? But you do know Danny, believe me, if you’re reading this. This afternoon I was coming out of the International Community Centre on Mansfield Road, in Nottingham – you know Mansfield Road, right? The rough end of town with the ‘interesting’ takeaways and the working girls at the top of the hill? – anyway I was coming out of the ICC when a man in a familiar shirt overtook me. I couldn’t place the shirt at first – it was a football shirt, dark green and red stripes, white text on the back, number 9, the name was Eiger. Then it hit me, though I could barely believe it: a shirt from NS Sport. I followed the fella down the hill into town past the YMCA gym, he went into Caffe Nero. As did I. I’m ashamed to say I kind of stared at him throughout our stay there, I don’t think he noticed. As he got up to leave, I followed, and stopped him outside. “So, you’re an Audioslavia supporter?” I asked. I admit I probably sounded a bit delusional as I held out my hand, but he shook it politely and said “I am Audioslavia.” Can you believe it? I met Audio outside my regular coffee shop in Nottingham! I don’t think he could quite believe me either, when I introduced myself as Wight. Or Jimmy, in RL. I don’t suppose either of us looked much the way we would have expected, to the other. I know it was somewhat awkward. I think he was a bit freaked, since he was slightly less prepared for the moment than I was. Anyway, just thought I’d mention, in case anyone wondered: yes – Audio is a sound geezer. I’d like to say thanks to Danny Byrne¹ for letting me mention this slightly mad meeting in Nottingham on the WC thread – it’s been written with his permission.

OUT OF CHARACTER
Fresh Unfinished Business

Is that inveterate timekeeper Burtho around, asks Búa of his management team, the three lieutenants of The Unholy Trinity.

But the junior administrator at the FA was nowhere to be seen.

“We have a rest day,” explained Hassan i Sabbah, the First Lieutenant, Master Assassin, and Right Hand of Búa, “so he’ll be off somewhere, counting beans or repairing watches.”

“Or inspecting densitometer readings and comparing shades of buried and plundered gold” said Doctor Herbert West the Reanimator, Second Lieutenant. He was referring, of course, to a story once told and quickly forgotten, Poïesis. “I would consider it an underappreciated master of the canon of Wight sagas, but I doubt anyone, save the Audioslavs, would even recall it,” explained Doctor Herbert, retentively. They all stared at him blankly. “It was about Kirola football shirts,” he added.²

There was a long pause. It reminded Búa – who was manifesting as the form of Homer Simpson – that the strange Montrealaise fellow Gregoire L’Erreur was still in the room, uninvited. He was about to ask the miserable fellow’s business when the court summoner Brian Blessed Cloned, who had a big mouth by anyone’s standard, called out the arrival of famous liar and storyteller Empy Summons.

About time, says Búa, let’s get the court in for a hearing on the story of how The Licentian Isles won the World Cup.

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on real life events

The Rumble

You will recall that, after winning the World Cup and the hosting rights to the 28th Di Bradini Cup, the authorities at the MIU who are the Boss of Football in Wight held a gala dinner at the Republic of Heaven Hotel. During the course of the evening, the World Cup Trophy, which is almost invisible to the naked eye except in peripheral vision, went missing, and while the Wight Constabulary were called to get the situation under control, they failed to turn up the trophy. In fact, while guest of honour Simeone di Bradini became chief suspect of investigating officer DI Romeo Noall, the prankster and international defender Climo Coss made off with the cup for a joke. But rather less funny was the moment the next morning that he woke up in the Eel & Crow pub and found someone had stolen it from him. Rapscallion school kids Whimsy Quince and Maharamba whisked it away and sold it to Percy The Fence for twenty blood shillings. And then Percy The Fence sold it to a criminal gang, the Zenegalese Liberation Front, for five thousand blood shillings.

In a deserted car park in the Looe district, ZLF gangsters Hermann Mulumba and Tony Ba put the intangible trophy into a duffle bag and set off back to their bossman General Chukwumoge, who had once been the dictator of Zenega but was now operating out of Little Leorudo. The gritty district in Spit had founded as a tent city full of Leorudan refugees, but nowadays they had mostly been homed and the area turned into the capital of crime in the Broken Islands. Several gangs were vying for supremacy including the purportedly ‘political party’ of General Chukwumoge that was now mostly dealing in import/export. Hermann and Tony were low-ranking muscle in the ZLF and lacking enough ingenuity to be entirely loyal to The General – they weren’t smart enough to double-cross him or start up in rivalry, and they knew it. So The General could put them on this kind of collection duty with a whole load of blood shillings and illicit treasure at stake, and know full well they would deliver the goods to him. Except, on this occasion, they didn’t.

They got carried off in a stampede.

It was a small one, of course. If you’ve followed the Di Bradini tournament, you will know that those blinking Licentian hooligans turned up for a rumble in Spit and ended up in a running battle with the Wight Constabulary for several days. Down in Looe, just outside the deserted car park where Hermann and Tony collected the World Cup trophy, there was a roar of approaching violence. Just the kind of thing Hermann and Tony liked. A small army of Licentians hoved into view, and they were running. Instinct took over, and the ZLF boys joined in the run.

“Who are we running from,” asked Tony of a bloodied Licentian running next to him.

“The law!” said the Licentian. Just then the Wight Constabulary came charging around the corner behind the running Licentians, looking terribly serious in their riot gear get-up.

“Shit!” said Hermann, as another battalion of constables approached from in front, squeezing the hooligans – and the ZLF – in a neat pincer movement. If they hadn’t run with the pack, they would have been passed by. But the urge to riot was too strong to resist. “The bag!” he shouted to Tony, “dump the bag!”

Tony threw the bag with all his might. A minute later, fists boots and cudgels were flying. Three minutes later, they were all on the floor, handcuffed, waiting for the Black Mariahs to come cart them off. The World Cup Trophy was left behind, in a duffle bag, over the wall of Shakerssen Removers’ yard.

Tarrigan 0-3 Wight
Falcon 29’ MacKenzie 34’ Fosse-Gordon 90+4’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action at Spit Lawns thus:

The Sondry Folk looking good in the first of three games on the road and once again it is the defence who will win the plaudits, extending the national record to five games now without conceding a goal; captain M.V Cabel and national icon Marriner Friend-Forsaken like brothers in arms at the centre of the back four – nothing is getting past them these days, and if a successful defence of the World Cup is in the making, these two are the chief engineers. In five games, keeper Antrim Quentine has barely had a touch of the ball, and the risk now is he could well be sound asleep when some more skilled forward than the Tarriganxhiani finally gets a shot on target. But that’s for another time. Let’s celebrate a confident performance and an improvement up front too where Cotterill and Falcon finally looked to be getting into gear after a stuttering start to this campaign. So far they have relied on the midfield getting most of the goals and although Piran MacKenzie and Zachary Fosse-Gordon again chipped in, after Israel Falcon hit the opener, at least this time the boys up front looked as dangerous as World Cup winners should.

Captain Marvel M.V Cabel was probably man of the match, Con, but all round a solid team effort, wouldn’t you say?

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“Comfortably rhythmic.”

A good observation, there, Con. It was comfortably rhythmic. Next up is a visit to Olastor, who held the Sondry Folk to a narrow victory at Spit Lawns on the opening day, surprising for the close margin and for the opposition, who were not at all what Wight had been expecting, thanks to those damnable Montrealaise Errorists. Someone needs to do something about those Alan Belmores, Con. But getting back to it – coach Athelstan Marchand will likely shuffle the pack for this fixture, with one eye on the crunch game with Mangolana coming up next. Expect several changes, and perhaps even a debut for Alfred Messa, the first Septentionax to play for Wight?

Wight at Olastor
Team: Kneebone / Cove, Coss, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Skewes, Snyder, Messa, St. Levan / Cotterill, Faas
Song: “Are You Eastfield In Disguise?”

While you’re here, Empy, says Búa to the champion liar, can you bring us up to speed on the business with the Dead Bears Walking? I feel that the narrative will soon be rendered significant, and it might be time to remind the court – and readers of this multiverse as represented in text form – of precisely what was going on with these bears suddenly appearing on the Lonely Road, and other auspicious places, during the last World Cup.

“As you command,” said Empy, thinking ‘I’m going to need more monkeys.’

It was a peculiar thought – you are right about that – and apparently without any rhyme or reason or connection to the narrative.

1. That is not quite Danny’s real name of course. He didn’t want me to reveal that and I can understand totally. Thanks again to Audio for letting me mention the whole meeting up experience… it was so bizarre I felt it had to be commemorated.

2. A story for AOCAF-39, it told of the ill-fated one night stand of a couple of Kirola Sports employees, the new fractal shirts of the Wight national squad, oriental sweatshops employing elf-child labour at bottom dollar, and a multinational fast food corporation with headquarters in the shady Rushmori nation of Taxhavn. You’ll not be surprised to hear it was unfinished.

3. That’s right.

4. But what of Part 1, the observant among you will be asking. It's a good question. A very good question. Pertinent. I thank you for paying attention.

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:17 am

ANOTHER WAY
Materialisation On A Bureaucrat's Desk

Students of Wight will be familiar with the Five Voids that surround the old country. For those new to the ways into Wight, there are four known ways, and Another Way. Each of the ways passes, in different fashions, through the voids: and though you might imagine that one void is much the same as another, you would be wrong, and scholars of empty spaces might abrade your ill-education with a gentle reprimand. For each and every void is different to the one before (and by coincidence, the one after). Of the five known around Wight, the darkest is the first void of Narcosomnia, where you will sleep fitfully. Perhaps the biggest - no-one can say for sure - is Oroboros, where you will meet yourself coming the other way. Many a lonely hitch-hiker in the second void has found solace in the company of themselves, since after all, who understands you better than yourself (apart, perhaps, from an uncanny second aunt half-removed, who has a knack for looking at your soul and your darkest intentions, just from a momentary but transfixing gaze into your guilty eye)? In the fourth void of Vassago you will find lost things and this is considered Búa’s attic, for he is a devil of a hoarder and most of it ends up in the loft. Finally - very finally - is the grey and chill Yudhishtra, where Wight keeps you a place in it's cemetery. When you feel that unexpected shudder, and joke that someone has stepped across your grave? That would be the cemetarians, mowing the grass.

I have left out a void, the third, Quasiquango - where administration happens. Something important has come there, and more of that momentarily, but on the nature of this void: it is the empty feeling you have when you have to attend to paperwork in the small hours of the morning, when the milkman rattles glass in his crates and birds are warming up for the dawn chorus. It is the hopelessness of pen-pushers and cube-monkeys, the futilitarian bureaucrats who know, in their hearts, they work for work’s sake, create their own paper trails and justify their existence through incomprehensible documentation. Who are, in essence, an irrelevance.

Gothianus Bootwarbler was at his desk inputting a complex and largely pointless formula into a spreadsheet for calculating the net gain of indexed variables over a range of factoring units carried forward from previous sheets of data with the sole purpose of proving the sum of nothing is hollow indeed, when an anthropomorphic bear in a superhero costume displaced into his small office cubicle and scattered pens, paperclips, staples, sticky notes, drawing pins, pencils, papers, paperweights, calculators, rules, ink stamps, and a photograph in a frame of Gothianus and his wife Missus Bootwarbler on holiday in a parallel universe version of Croatia (blurred) where they met a real organgrinder’s monkey, all across the cube, to Gothianus great distress.

You just don’t fuck with a civil servant’s desk.

Gothianus became then a little uncivil, though, retaining an instinct for civil service, refused to cuss in all but the most palatable of colourful language, and largely complained about work-place harassment, thinking it to be the work of his cube neighbour and arch-rival in the administration of data carry-forwards, Harry Spargo. Belatedly he saw the bear, a well-groomed but undeniably ursine sort of bear, the sort you imagine, if you are not Ray Mears, will eat you on sight but not before savaging you in an impolite and thoroughly messy assault that will hurt more than anything you - or Gothianus - could possibly imagine. Actually the bear - Fattarno, a magician - was even more confused than the civil servant and though having a long-established reputation for gentleness and refined manners he was in that moment dishevelled, disorientated and temporarily dyspraxic so that not only did he not know where he was or how he had come to be there, but he did not even know who he was, who Gothianus was, or how far away he was from the civil servant. Gothianus had begun to let out a squealing sort of howl, or a howling sort of squeal (the nuance or contradistinction of which was lost on both superbear and ordinary civil servant in the crisis of the collapsing reality of that moment). Fattarno swung for him, claws extended, to deliver a fatal blow, but missed. He was yet to find his range.

The civil servant screamed and turned on his heel, gasping and weeping and still uncertain of the subtle difference between a squeal and a howl, but sure in his heart and his trousers that he needed a toilet with as much emergency as the emergency of being chased by a materialising bear in a superhero costume. He did not look back else he would’ve realised the bear was not following.

Fattarno shook his head and tried to get a lock on his surroundings while the terrified bureaucrat locked himself in the water closet and tried with the clarity of adrenalin to decide on the best course of action: either to hold his breath, or to cry inconsolably with the trauma of it all. Back in the cubicle Fattarno shook his head with confusion and sniffed the air for indicators of his immediate prospects. He had never been in an administrator’s office, and he saw that he was in some kind of hell.

Back in the court at Wight Spit, just after watching the match in which the Sondry Folk declined to embarrass greatly a small far country called Narsora, the locals were welcoming some new arrivals. Everyone was joining in with the Indian Love Call as Slim Whitman demonstrated his yodeling abilities and his smooth high octave falsetto. James Gandolfini was trying to convince Tommy Cooper III Rebuilt that he was a humble actor, but Tommy was having none of it. Well, he was having half of it. A less well known arrival that day was the American comic book editor and publisher Kim Thomson of Fantagraphics, who was enjoying a chat with court favourite Fred B. Guardineer, a comic man himself. And the Welsh ceramicist John Hughes insisted he had never heard of the Polar Islandstates; that his Grogg was not a brand of sour beer fancied by the fighting lads of public houses across the cold north of Rushmore but a small three dimensional caricature. If he had hoped for people to be more impressed, he would be disappointed. Three dimensions in Wight were a little out of fashion. Three dimensional art was, said one commentator rather impolitely, so eight dimensions ago. John Hughes had a fight with Gandhi, that inveterate brawler who loved nothing more than greasy churning, the wrestling form of the old country.

Preparations continued for Beastival: the booking agent confirmed to the court that Jacquse Yioux’s Kangeroo Court and Travelling Circus will be appearing at the festival, ensuring some splendid sham trials for the entertainment of the masses. Hassan i Sabbah, the Master Assassin and First Lieutenant of Búa, sent out for some English Bigots especially for the show, and was delighted to find they were going quite cheap at the moment, as there were plenty of them and nobody else really wanted them.

Finally, news came from Hemingway of The Watch, who can see far into the voids and sometimes beyond if he remembers to put his glasses on: superbears had appeared in the voids. Two in Quasiquango, and one on the Back Road (the remover Old Shakerssen had ran him over in his truck St. Blazey, Scammell of The Void).

“Hmm,” observed Hassan, cannily, “What a peculiarly random set of observations. I suspect in all of this news there is a plant or two.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” commented Doctor Herbert West, the Second Lieutenant, wondering.

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:20 am

ANOTHER WAY
Glimmer

The superbear Fattarno was in administrative hell in Quasiquango, the Third Void of Wight, where administration happens. Things had certainly calmed down a bit - he had recovered his gentle composure, tidied Administrator Bootwarbler’s desk a little, and gone peacefully to interview with a couple of more resilient pen-pushers, while Gothianus Bootwarbler had - eventually - been persuaded to remove himself from the toilet and take the rest of the day off to recuperate from the shock of having a bear materialise on your desk whilst completing a spiritually-debilitating spreadsheet for purposes unknown. But though the situation was a little calmer, it was no less a nightmare for the magician and superbear, who could not explain where he had come from, how he had materialised at Administrator Bootwarbler’s desk, or where his visa was for visiting the third void.

“Strictly speaking,” said Administrator Hart, nasally, “your visa should be your death certificate, but in the absence of absolute proof of your death, a provisional 27b/6 will usually suffice.”

“Am I dead?” asked the superbear, taken aback.

“As a Chinese Dwarf Panda,” said Adminstrator Todpool, perhaps rather brutally.

“Visa?” asked Administrator Hart again, failing to conceal, in fact, making no attempt to conceal his impatience. “Death certificate? Provisional afterlife permit 27b/6?”

The administrators and the bear had reached an impasse. There didn’t seem any way around the thorny problem of Fattarno’s leave to stay. Or lack thereof. He would have to resort to his superpowers. First, Hart:

“Ycarcuaerub yrtlap ruoy yb derednihnu,” he intoned, mystically, “eerf maor ot em wolla lliw uoy...”

Adminstrator Hart stared at him, eyes refusing to blink. Now, Todpool:

“I qloʍ ɹɐsdqǝɹɹıǝs ıu ʎonɹ ƃǝuǝɹɐl pıɹǝɔʇıou' ʇɐpdolǝ” he said. Administrator Tadpool stared too. Then took a deep breath.

“I have no idea what that was all about, Mister...” - he checked his papers - “Fattarnoe.”

“That’s Fattarno,” corrected Fattarno. Administrator Hart concurred. “Fattarno, Administrator Todpool. The bear is correct.”

As is usually the case, the Wightlings were impervious to magic, unless it suited them. Fattarno rubbed his throbbing temple. It wasn’t going well.

Suddenly, the door burst open. Although there was no-one there, outside in the open-plan administration office there seemed to be an element of raised voices and what would best be described as ‘kerfuffle’. Fattarno, being a bear, had a strange feeling that all was not quite right. Administrator Hart gave out a startled yelp as he fell off his chair. Then Administrator Todpool’s head thrust backwards, blood spurted out of his nose as he involuntarily yelled with pain, and he too fell to the floor, where he proceeded to groan unhappily at this unbureaucratic turn of affairs. Fattarno was stunned.

Out of nowhere a young female bear seemed to shimmer and solidify in the space between him and the poor prone officers. He had a moment of pressing empathy for Gothianus Bootwarbler. Bears materialising before your very eyes indeed was a truly unnerving experience, even for a bear.

“OK you cunts, let's see what you can do now” she said, to no-one in particular.

Kevin the Quantum Mechanic had tried a patch-up and was attempting, unsuccessfully, to get the truck started. There could be no doubting the bear in the metallic armour had come off worse in the tangle with St. Blazey, Scammell of The Void, Old Shakerssen’s giant cream and brown Scammell 6x6 Ballast Tractor. That’s not to say the truck was unharmed: there was a sizeable dent in the front radiator grill the approximate shape of an armoured superbear in possibly the worst costume Old Shakerssen had ever seen. He was scratching his head as his boys Barlow Todd the apprentice and Vallis Bonsaint the back-up driver from Septentrionia loaded the empty outfit onto the flatbed trailer they had been towing across the void to Old Wight. Mettle, the ursine superhero, was out of the articulated steel costume with flannelette cloak and nursing his considerable bruising while Old Shakerssen quizzed him about his exploits and his sudden appearance on the Back Road to Wight, directly in front of the steadily chugging Scammell. Mettle couldn’t remember a thing, except that his name was Mettle and he was a friend of Superbear, the darling of Amberrica. The next thing he recalled was looking up at a suicide grey sky with Old Shakerssen, the Audioslav Remover, standing over him cussing. They had cut him out of his mangled suit using an old sonic screwdriver Kevin had found in his toolbox, something they had probably stolen off a monk of the Holy Empire since they had started messing about with the damn things in recent times. But Kevin had not been able to get the truck going again. They sent Barlow ahead on foot to find a roadside emergency phone so they could call for recovery, since mobile phones were next to useless in the void, what with the network coverage being so thin.

It took a while. The nearest phone point was half an astronomical unit away, and poor Barlow was exhausted by the time he got back. If he’d gone the other way, they had passed the last phone a mere handful of gigametres down the Back Road. Typical, isn’t it? Though the recovery people said they would be setting out immediately, it was half an aeon before they got there, leading Old Shakerssen to surmise that they hadn’t left when they said they would at all. And when they did come, it was a couple of humanoid-shaped ant colonies from Queen Myrme, the regent hereabouts. Never trust an ant with a spanner, says Old Shakerssen. He had been hoping for the Royal Automobile Club.

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:22 pm

ANOTHER WAY
Escape From Quasiquango

Perhaps if he had time to think about it, superbear and magician Fattarno would have felt at least a faint bruise to his pride at being rescued by a small cub of a shebear who looked no older than his own daughter Fattara, but the simple truth was she had presented him with an opportunity to escape the hell of Quasiquango and he wasn’t about to pass that up for the sake of appearances. After bowling in under a masque of invisibility and knocking over his two administrative inquisitors, the young she-bear had materialised in front of him and unleashed a tirade of distinctly adult bravado. Once it was done, the two made their way out of the office, having agreed that Fattarno should slaver and growl rabidly in order to dissuade any further attempts to interrogate them or even just stop them to demand some imaginary paperwork off them. The ploy worked, as bureaucrats who considered this dilemma several steps above their pay scale screamed and scattered, or hid under desks, while those who had the benefit of being on more suitable payscales locked themselves in their offices, alerted security and considered the possibility of discovering religion, if just temporarily. The superbears, confused and angry-looking, went unchallenged. But the real challenge was ahead of them. They stormed out of the office into a long wide corridor, which stretched as far as they eye could see in either direction, with a thousand doors along either wall at monotonously regular intervals. Occasionally an administrative type would emerge from a distant door, papers in hand or under arm, and pass through into another door nearby, without ever seeming to notice the two ursine forms standing bemused nearby. Eventually, after sniffing the air for some kind of clue, Fattarno shrugged and said, “This way” without conviction. They ran to the limits of their fitness, never coming to the end of any corridor. When people came out ahead of them, if they spotted the onrushing bears they screamed and dived through the nearest door. Most did not seem aware of them and no-one challenged them. Those who had seen them and avoided them did not call out from behind. No-one gave chase. Fattarno ran out of steam first.

“Wait, wait,” he said, huffing and puffing. “This could go on forever.”

Pulling up, he panted heavily. The young shebear did not seem so troubled. “What do we do now?” she asked, no longer so certain of herself.

“Check the doors,” said Fattarno, “but first, who are you, youngling?”

She put her eyes down submissively. “Glimmer.”

“And what are you doing here, apart from trying to escape?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Hrrrmm. Me neither. I’ll try this door.” Fattarno opened a door narrowly and peered through. Cussing under his breath, he tried another. And another: behind the third, someone issued a scream. Each time he closed the door, and ran to the next.

“What is it,” asked Glimmer, “what do you see?”

He checked another door before answering. “Every room the same. Where administration happens. Identical.”

Glimmer opened one door and peered cautiously into the room beyond, catching her breath. “Then how...?”

The magician and escapologist was reaching up with his considerable height to a ceiling panel, which he had shifted to reveal a dark void in the roof. Attempting to pull himself up to look around in the space above the corridor, he discovered the false ceiling was never made for his weight. After a creak and a crack, and a little drizzle of powder from straining wall joints, ten metres of interconnected ceiling gave way and crashed to earth on top of the fallen superbear.

Except, the bear was not there.

“Fattarno?” said Glimmer, stunned and disbelieving of her own eyes. A second later, there was a small pop, and Glimmer was gone too.

The job of the good watchman is not just to see but to hear, and it was the cold throaty rumble of dead bears walking in the ears of Hemingway up on the watch that first alerted him to their movement on the Lonely Road. Once again, it seemed, from a narrow path off The Beaten Track that wound and whittled it’s way to a country of reanimated bears, two old friends had emerged and were bound for Wight. Hemingway took up his unlikely telescopic spyglass, all crooked and decrepit-looking, with a lens so impressively convexed as to make his eye when trained upon you seem like a distant spiral galaxy, so large and swirling. Hemingway trained his spyglass upon the Lonely Road, and there, near the crossroads of sometime in the eternal past and the unforeseeable future, were the reanimated monsters of the Storm Clan, Elifalet Behrouz Eliphelet and Daryawesh whose pelts were slick with the blood of the innocent. Now, it is well known that Hemingway keeps the company of a famous royal jackdaw, Arrrrr Kaaaarr White-Eye whom he considered his best friend and confidant, a cousin of Búa’s own familiar Quurk Qaark of Granite Hall North Kitchens Broken Chimney Pot.

“Look at those fellows,” said Hemingway, and Arrrrr Kaaaarr took a peak down the telescope, “what do you think they are up to, AK?”

The fellows on the watch had a brief conversation, and agreed that Arrrrr Kaaaarr would fetch another dead bear walking who was resident in Wight Spit at that time and might know a thing or two about their intentions, the zombie ursine Mufaddal Meshach Khoroushi, of which the Synaxarion, the book of names, says this,

A reanimated bear from the far country somewhere down a hard-to-spot overgrown single-lane track off the Lonely Road, Khoroushi is the captain and warrior-chief of Royal Monster FC, considered the biggest and best of the three Bears Reanimated clubs that compete in the Haphazard Foundation. Quite terrifying of aspect, the black bear with a slick, bloody pelt (oiled with rich red haemoglobin before each game to intimidate opponents) looks for all the world like something out of your worst nightmare, and as a consequence he is widely adored in Wight as the poster-bear for Ursine football. Nicknamed Irontooth for his fearsome blackened gnashers, he is highly intelligent - something not commonly associated with reanimated bears, whose personality and IQ from their more organic life usually take quite a pounding in the cross-over to the world of the Undead. Though not especially dirty or dishonest Khoroushi is a fearsome opponent of lightning pace, solid tackle, and intimidatory presence - not to mention a foul temper. But he couldn't be more different off the pitch, when, having scrubbed off the blood and mud, he is a very placid, entertainingly social and charming gentlebear. Although he still has dreadful dull black teeth and a hint in his dead eyes that he might want to tear you limb from limb, if only social niceties would allow.

“Hello, Irontooth,” said Hemingway, when the giant beast called in at the watch-tower, “thanks for dropping by. Tea? A scone? With jam? Now, Mufaddal what do you make of this - ”

...but at that moment there was a pop, and a shimmer, and suddenly, Mufaddal Meshach Khoroushi, the Irontooth, was gone. Disappeared. Arrrrr Kaaaarr let out a shocked yelp, and Hemingway cursed under his breath. He looked out across the Lonely Road with his old spyglass, and sure enough, the reanimated bears were gone, too. That was five bears popped out of existence in a single day. Hemingway scratched his head, puzzled. Only Mettle was still in his sights: he checked, and Old Shakerssen was still stuck out in ant country, getting his truck fixed. How long, though Hemingway, gazing at the battered superbear who had been run over by a supertruck, before you disappear too?

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:26 pm

ANOTHER WAY
Mettle

The superbear Mettle sat in the back of the cab of St. Blazey, the Scammell of The Void, nursing his wounds after being hit by said truck, in said void, after materialising in the middle lane of the interdimensional highway commonly known as the Back Road to Wight. Luckily he had his armoured costume on at the time to protect him from the worst of the impact, but unluckily the flannelette cloak that went with it was wrapped around his face as he materialised, giving him no chance to see and avoid the oncoming Scammell 6x6 Ballast Tractor. The rest, as they say, is fiction. The truck was quite badly damaged and needed roadside assistance, while Mettle was similarly disabled. His suit was a write-off, which, said the driver Old Shakerssen, was a good thing, it being the worst superhero costume he had ever seen. Queen Myrme who was the ruler of these parts of the void sent a pair of humanoid ant colonies to assist in the repair of the vehicle, something normally attended to by Kevin the Quantum Mechanic, Old Shakerssen’s man. But this needed a part Kevin didn’t have to hand, so they called the AA - AntAssist - who took half an eternity to get St. Blazey back on the road. Finally they got the carburettor functioning again with the help of a bent singularity needle, some wormhole grease and half a kilometre of duck tape, and were chugging nicely again along the back road, with Old Shakerssen asleep and snoring in the passenger seat, Kevin working on his part-time degree homework for the Miskatonic University on futilitarian neurology, and Vallis Bonsaint the back-up driver from Septentrionia doing a stint at the wheel. In the back, the fourth of Old Shakerssen’s crew, Barlow Todd the Apprentice, was eating his sandwiches between the two guests, Mettle and Alex Gardiner-Stewart, the Licentian footballer who was killed in a plane crash, but could not decide whether he wanted to be dead or alive. Right now, he was on his way back to the land of the living.

Mettle was quietly watching the void slip past while recuperating in nought but his underbearwear, wondering what had happened to land him in this interminable void under the wheels of a supernatural truck, why he couldn’t remember, and where he could get hold of a new superhero suit, or at the very least, some clothes.

“So, Mettle,” said Barlow, through chewing a slightly sweaty cheese sandwich just the way removal men like them, “do you think you were saving the world or something and some crazy science experiment sent you into the middle of next week far, far away and over the hill? Or something?”

“I, I don’t know” replied the superbear, turning stiffly to talk to the young remover, “that was the sort of thing I did for a living, so I’m sure it’s possible.”

“Perhaps,” speculated young Barlow, “a supervillain - would that be supervillainbear or superbearvillain?”

“Supervillain will probably do”

“Perhaps a supervillain killed you,” and here Barlow looked at Alex, “you wouldn’t be the first to come to Wight instead of whatever heaven you thought you were booked into...”

“Perha - ”

There was a pop and a small intake of breath, a faint wind, and Mettle shimmered, and disappeared.

Hemingway of the Watch came down to the court in Wight Spit, where Búa would normally hold counsel, when he wasn’t mysteriously absent as now. In his place, Hassan i Sabbah his First Lieutenant and Master Assassin was standing in, preparing for the business of the Beastival, the great carnival that was fast approaching. The Master of Revels had just confirmed that Stuf the Poet was booked, and Tiberius Ogden, that dread ringmaster, was even now assembling his Circus Mutante on the Husting Grounds, and that would prove to be a great attraction, of course.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Hemingway, patently uncomfortable in the salubrious surroundings of the court, “but things are happening out there that I am at a loss to explain. Can we have a word?” He was referring not to himself in the plural, but to his attendant companion Arrrrr Kaaaarr White-Eyes, the royal jackdaw.

In an oak-lined ante-room the watchman explained first the strange phenomenon that bears, normally averse to the peculiar pleasures of the undead - or should I say recycled - realms, had started to appear in small numbers across the voids, including some in quite spectacularly embarrassing costumes. Superbears, some of them. And dead bears walking. Further to this, each of the bears had at some later point almost literally winked out of existence. Even his friend Muffadahl, the Irontooth, an heroic zombie bear, had disappeared recently before his very long-sighted eyes. He proposed to Hassan that a strange business was afoot, and inquired, as politely as possible, on the likelihood that Hassan was, not for the first time, up to his old tricks of mounting plundering raids into The Holy Empire. The Basileus himself, Alistair I Frosticus, was inclined to extract a costly revenge from anyone messing with his precious icons. And Hassan had done his fair share of that over the aeons, inveterate thief and blasphemer. But in this case, of course, he denied any such meddling. Whatever the meaning of these Armed Bears, or Bears Armed, or however one addresses them in approved nomenclature, appearing and disappearing in the voids around Old Wight, it was not through any agency of he, Hassan i Sabbah. Hemingway bowed low in disingenuous agreement, and left with his puzzle unresolved.

In the Obituarium, a small reception off the main lobby of the Paradise Hotel where the dead come to Wight, the hotel staff were preparing a party of their own. Directed by Yul Brynner the hotel manager, the team were putting up bunting. While recent arrivals Slim Whitman and James Gandolfini were getting drunk in the bar - sometimes the newly dead found the pungent nirvana of Wight a disappointing kind of heaven and sought to temper their horror at having to spend at least an eternity there with heavy drinking - The Anticipation of Nelson Mandela was kept busy advising on the lavish welcome for his alter ego, due any time now. The three footballers Socco Velho, Alen Pamić, and Essien Mbong who all came to the Paradise Hotel on the same day were bugging the Anticipation for Masvidal’s number, hoping to get a place on the next world cup squad, while Lil Snupe was angling for a spot on the performers bill.

A huge banner was lofted, reading WIGHT WELCOMES NELSON. Yul Brynner admired it with pride, and patting his friend The Anticipation on the back, declared he would like to be a fly on the wall when Nelson finally arrived and has his first audience with The Anticipation.

“Some orientation will probably be necessary,” said The Anticipation - and then the phone rang.

“Is this him?” wondered Yul, aloud, donning his disguise as the hotel porter.

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:29 pm

OOC: For those of you wondering about Monozygotia and his OOC rants, I feel I must respond. It would be easy to get annoyed with him for calling me a liar, but frankly, I’m used to it. In case you hadn’t noticed, he lives in MY house, uses MY computer, and tries to call me out on something I wrote here in good faith. But you can ignore him – it’s what I do, and it works, eventually. I’ve had years of experience: he’s my twin brother. In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t get on (so much for the glory of twinculture). I won’t be washing my dirty laundry here but I felt I should point out this temporary living arrangement is going to be a whole lot more temporary if you don’t SHUT UP, Lenny. Now, let’s carry on with RPing nicely, shall we?

OUT OF CHARACTER
Unfinished Business In Tamarindia

Now then, says Búa, I see that while I was away the Tamarindians won the World Indoor Soccer Championships again. So, the old country is back in business. And wasn’t there something about Masvidal returning to track down the old Baptism of Fire winning team, some story or other to be told during the tournament?

“There was,” said Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin and Right Hand of Búa, “but it was never told, so far as I know.”

Again with these unfinished stories, says Búa, wanting to put an exclamation mark in there somewhere but not being quite sure where, all things considered.

He had a point. In the time that the Welder of Realities had gone native in Enness, and travelled about the place incognito for eight years without so much as sending home a postcard or a box of Devon Fudge to his denizens, the stories had rather dried up. Champion liar Empy Summons had done his best, but somehow, without the avatar of the Sentient Bubble Universe present to cajole narratives from him, the poet and storyteller had developed a bit of a block. Masvidal’s adventure in Tamarindia attempting to discover the fate of the great Tamarindian side of twenty years ago was one more story promised but not delivered.

Well then, says the King of Uncertain Dimensions as if responding to the voice of an omnipotent narrator, why don’t we have a précis of it now? And then he adds, as an afterthought, did you see the way autocorrect added an accent to the ‘e’ in précis then, Hassan? I never knew there was an accent in précis.

Not surprisingly for a supreme being of multidimensional origin, Búa could smell people’s thoughts, hear the colour of their eyes, and read the present as if it were a text being typed on a two-year old titanium core-2 duo iMac rather pretentiously called Lord of The Flies (though, through a simple typing mistake, he can now see Lord of The Files would have been an hilarious malapropism). Hassan felt no need to reply. It was just Búa being Búa, and sometimes you could make no sense of him. It was best to let him just imagine the world underlined by little red and green squiggles where things weren’t quite as they should be.

After all, says the Welder of Realities, we have a crunch match against Mangolana coming up, and that’s where it all began for our good friend and World Cup-winning manager Masvidal.¹ So then, Empy Summons, do you tell us the fate of the players who won the Baptism of Fire ’44, after they returned glorious to Mission City only to be caught in the collapse of the nation. Not that I mean to tell half the story for you, there. And give it to us in précis form… (Búa pauses to watch the autocorrect)… if you don’t mind.

Empy Summons explained the collapse of the nation, the disappearance of the players amidst the chaos, and Masvidal’s recent trip to discover what happened to that famous squad with so much potential.

So mostly dead then, says Búa, a little regretful.

“Save for Masvidal himself, Isabella de Llanura and one or two of the lucky ones,” concluded the storyteller.

A shorter story than I imagined, says Búa. What about that thing with Masvidal, and how he became a high priest of Shana whilst in Mangolana? Somehow I can’t help but think it might become relevant in a day or two. Remind the court of that, will you Empy?

“With your permission, my King, Friend and Inspiration –“

Empy, laughs Búa, you really are a champion liar!

“Yes, my Suprasentient Atheist God –“

Alright Empy, make your point…

“With your permission, I will read from this article which I found on a wiki site:”

Personal Life
Dwayne
Masvidal did used to have a given name. And that name was Dwayne, as the team sheets at Deportivo early in his career will attest to. While the world has known only Masvidal, in Tamarindia we still privately remember when he was Dwayne. All that changed after the mysterious detention in Johz, when, as captain of the under-21s entering their first ever tournament, he was held at the border by Johzian Immigration and missed the entire competition. The incident has never been explained, either by immigration or by the player himself, but when he was released at the end of the tournament, he had dropped the name Dwayne, and insisted on being referred to by his family name alone.

Supernatural Player Theory
His name change is not the full extent of Masvidal's eccentricities. During his early career he became an adherent of the Supernatural Player Theory, arguably a paranoid fatalistic world view, perhaps with futilitarian philosophical overtones, concerning the nature of fate, destiny, and the idea that we are all but pieces and characters imagined by Supernatural Players and used in the playing of games. It was the subject of much debate and study at the Academy of International Relations in Libertad, where the Department for Superstition are nationally reknowned for their studies and rebuttals of the myriad religions of the multiverse. What we know of Masvidal's thinking is limited, for he has not gone public on his ideas, but interviews and commentary in previous tournaments made it clear that he has doubts about the sovereignty of his own actions, and suspects himself to be an agent of greater forces at work in the multiverse. Like the many icons of the Abrahamic Empire, or David Koresh, or Charles Manson, Jung Myung Seok, the Nuwaubians, and other delusionals. Except, perhaps, more benign in Masvidal's case.

‘Shana
During a visit to Mangolana for the World Indoor Soccer Championships 2, in order to be legally licensed to perform a marriage ceremony between Tamaridian journalist Chandara Sín and Ryevolian footballer Dave Tankles, Masvidal took the ordination of 'Shana, and became a priest in the local religious sect. These are some of his reflections from that time, published in the newspaper La Botela on his return.

“I had on my full ceremonial robes as a true priest of the Mangolana Way, which I bought (the priesthood and the robes) for 3000 fangs in a back alley off Rómello Street. That had been interesting: Chu Mango had taken me to get licensed for performing legal marriages – as well as baptisms, eucharists, confessions, confirmations, the rites of death, exorcisms and black belt grading in the Mangolana martial art of Nurrua. In a crypt under the church in the back alley off the road on the strip of the district where sin is the currency, a man explained the spiritual sanctity of the priesthood, took the money off me, tried to barter for a bit more, shared a ritual vodka with a shot of crack cocaine, blessed me, gave me a grubby brown paper bag tied up with string that had been robbed from a beggar's trousers, and announced that I was ordained into the Holy Way.”

It is not thought that Masvidal has remained devout to ‘Shana, or indeed Supernatural Player Theory.

Influential Friends
Masvidal is known to be close friends with Tamarindian national hero Francisco Vasquaz García and current president of Tamarindia, Chu Mango. He supports Vasquez García’s campaign to find out what happened to Leonardo de Accordioné, with whom he was also associated. Leonardo is mentioned briefly in The Baptist as having been in a bar in Misión, Tamarindia, during the chaotic fall of the nation, with Vasquez García and Masvidal. In that story Vasquez García and Masvidal were taken to a nearby motel by The Unholy Trinity, where they were sacrificed and possessed by bodysnatchers in the cause of the Raising of The Sondry Folk. Leonardo was reported as having been rendered incapacitated by Herbert West, who hit him over the head with a bottle and left him at the bar.

While Masvidal returned to prominence in Wight, and Vasquez García was found and briefly served as President in his home nation before the stabilising hand of Chu Mango took control of the helm, Leonardo remained lost. The first modern publication of The Baptist was reported to have come from Tamarindia's northern neighbour Navarre, and it's author was named as Leonardo Della-Cordioné, but the publishers later claimed the author was anonymous and unknown. This was the last known record of Leonardo, who is widely believed dead, but Vasquez García remains committed to discovering the truth about the man last seen being assaulted by Doctor Herbert West.

Olastor 1-3 Wight
Some Johnny Olastoriner 65’ / Falcon 2’ Faas 55’ Snyder 79’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action in Olastor thus:

Two small hiccups on the road to another decent win, Con, and the Sondry Folk press ahead toward a fifth consecutive finals qualification, all being well. It started during the warm-ups when talismanic striker Lorccán Cotterill pulled up and limped down the tunnel, from which he didn’t emerge. Israel Falcon, who was slated to have the day off with Solmund Faas in his stead, was reinstated to the starting line-up, and rewarded his manager with a decent effort inside the first thirty seconds, the Olastoric keeper making a decent save. One minute later Falcon made good with his third goal of qualification, and Wight were on their way to another victory. Faas added a second after the restart with the Sondry Folk dominating throughout. Then the second minor hiccup, when some Johnny Olastoriner pulled one back and ended hopes of keeping a clean slate for the tournament. Wight will settle for a national record five consecutive clean sheets. Jett Snyder added a third late in the game to keep Wight top of the table and five points clear, with a visit to Nirvana next. That would be Lone Island, Nirvana, Mangolana, Con, not our own pungent nirvana in Old Wight.

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“More’s the pity. For all it’s aromatic charm, I do miss the place.”

No doubt, Con, for who in all the multiverse wouldn’t? Anyway, it’s the key fixture next and you would have to say a win at Lone Island would likely see us through, but we’ll be missing Cotterill who hasn’t recovered in time to make the trip. It seems coach Athelstan Marchand favours the shapeshifter Solmund Faas over Manalaus Carne at the moment, and he will get the call to play alongside Falcon. Otherwise it will be back to the full-strength team after resting many for the game in Olastor. Plenty of the top teams are tripping up at the moment – just look at the top two ranked nations, both failing to live up to their usual high standards, and the Polarians still smarting from being robbed in the last World Cup final.² So despite a big win in the home game, this one is by no means a given, Con, and the boys at the back will need to be at their magnificent best to take something away from the Mangoes.

Wight at Mangolana
Team: Quentine / Boyle, Cabel, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Skewes, MacKenzie, Rodda, Fosse-Gordon / Faas, Falcon
Song: “Mango-lana, Mango-lana, Hey-heyya, Goodbye!”

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on Real-Life Events

The Dog

It’s quite hard to see the World Cup trophy, with it being intangible and mostly only clear in the peripheral vision, and it’s especially hard to see it when it’s been stolen. Unless you are Climo Coss, who stole it in the first place for a lark, or a dog. Specifically the dog called Billita El Perro.³

The last sighting we had of the World Cup trophy, it had been in the hands of Zenegalese gangsters Hermann Mulumba and Tony Ba, who had received the stolen item on behalf of the ZLF. The Zenegalese Liberation Front were these days more interested in liberating valuable goods from their owners, but when Hermann and Tony got caught up in a rumble between Licentian football hooligans and the Wight Constabulary, they threw the duffel bag with the incriminating evidence over a wall and into the yard of Old Shakerssen, the Audioslav Remover. And for the time being, the Cup was lost to all knowledge. But not for long.

You are all familiar with Warm Mark, the Indegene, a native of the Broken Islands, clog-maker, some say sorcerer of dark arts, and committed dog-walker. Warm Mark knows a lot of unusual routes, and could be found on many lonely paths. He knew the ways into and out of the voids, and could find his way to Old Wight even quicker than the Audioslav Remover Old Shakerssen in his Scammell truck along the Back Road. It was along the soft verges of the Back Road as it passed through the Fourth Void of Vassago, out walking one afternoon in eternity, that Warm Mark first met the famous Tamarindian Terrier Billita, or Billy to her friends. They struck up an instant and lasting friendship, the sorceror and the dead dog, and would spend many eternal afternoons striding through the great emptinesses between this world and that world, between Enness and the Uncertain Dimensions, between Wight and Old Wight.

They were back in the fourth void Vassago - where you will find lost things – one day in eternity about a quarter past the day the World Cup trophy was last seen flying into Shakerssen’s Yard, and indeed Old Shakerssen had recently passed them on the eight-lane (but empty) highway of The Back Road. Usually the truckers – the old Audioslav himself, his quantum mechanic Kevin, the apprentice Barlow Todd and back-up driver Vallis Bonsaint who had died in Septentrionia of the All-Fool’s Influenza – would stop when they saw Warm Mark and have a tea break at the side of the road with him, but sometimes, like today, if they were busy they would air horn the Indegene and drive on by, waving. Billy spotted something fall off the back of the lorry and raced on ahead to investigate: The indegene hadn’t seen a thing, even though he had gifts, and talents, and powers. Billy, knowing a thing or too about football herself, was delighted to find a duffle bag on the verge, and in it, the World Cup trophy. Warm Mark quickly understood the significance of the intangible object.

“The Constabulary will be looking for this,” he said, patting Billita El Perro on the head and rewarding her with a pig’s ear.

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:32 pm

OOC: OK, nice one, Enness whoever you are. Good anticipation of my future RP line – unless you got a tip-off from Monozygotia. Maybe I’ll get the mods to do a puppet check, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find it tracks right back to my own IP… Mono?

OUT OF CHARACTER
The Business In The Bathroom

Masvidal had been reading the reports from the World Cup with interest. Especially when he started to get fairly regular mentions. He was used to it – having won the World Cup as manager of Wight (Did I… I did didn’t I, I did mention that already). And then someone mentioned Supernatural Player Theory. Masvidal felt a brutal chill flood right through him, ice in the veins, liquid nitrogen in his bones. He staggered to the chair at his dining table, and steadied himself into it. It was as if the whole thing had been just yesterday… getting detained in Johz before the Tamarindians’ first ever tournament and missing out… winning the Indoor Championships, almost winning the Beach Cup… going back to Mangolana for the Baptism of Fire, becoming a priest of Shana, just for laughs… the growing feeling of being controlled by an external force… winning the Baptism of Fire… becoming convinced of being merely an agent of narrative… the collapse of the homeland…

It was all connected, in some way. Masvidal caught his breath, nausea rising. The bitter taste that came with awareness of the power behind his life. He had forgotten it, protected by Búa’s insane patronage. Now it was coming back. Someone had written it down again – Supernatural Player Theory. Someone was using him as a pawn in a game, a player of multiversal power throwing him around like a chip at the casino. And whenever he became aware of his predicament, bad things happened.

He staggered to the bathroom, and lapped cold water from the tap. Dizziness, icy sweats, he could see in the mirror he was as white as fresh cotton. He clutched the smooth cold sink for balance, the tiled room spinning. He would have to see Búa again, try to make some sense of this. He sat on the cold floor, trying to focus. Kneeling, and reaching for the shower controls, he turned on a stream of water and crawled into the shower basin. The luke-warm water stimulated his senses into a limited fightback against fainting. His eyes began to focus again.

And then – was he hallucinating?

There was a crack, as of masonry splitting, a low deep growl, and shadowy movement outside of the shower curtain. A beast was there. He could smell blood and iron and animal. Despite his condition, the urge to pass out mixed with the steely determination to fight intruders, the Tamarindian remained still. The giant shadow rose to its full height of well over two metres – well over – and seemed to sniff the air. Masvidal remained still under the shower. And then, the thing was gone. Bad things happen when you think about supernatural players, thought Masvidal, before he passed out in the shower.

Mangolana 3-4 Wight
Montgomery 22’ 84’ Mallon 58’ / Fosse-Gordon 2’ Skewes 23’ Synder 30’ Faas 57’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action in Mangolana thus:

A big step forward, Con, but as expected it was far from easy, and Wight lapsed into their more familiar style of swashbuckling, devil-may-care football in which outscoring the opposition is more important than defending against them. This was really a must win for Mangolana, they looked to have all but blown it when they conceded an early goal – Fosse-Gordon hitting a Kylx-like opener (where is he these days Con, burned out I expect, his career like his game play: stellar. For about thirty seconds). Wight dominated the first hour to march into a 4-1 lead at Lone Island before the Magoes staged a late rally and almost, almost got something from the game. As it is, Wight need one more win to qualify and you wouldn’t bet against them, would you Con?

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“That would be highly frowned upon.”

Indeed Con, highly. Expect several changes tonight even though this might be the first match point of qualification for Wight. Tregue Zettner will likely make his debut as Argon Skewes is one of several rested; Manalaus Carne will partner Solmund Faas up front with wonderkid Falcon also rested and Lorrcán Cotterill coming back from injury. He needs five more goals to move into first place as the nations top scorer but Athelstan Marchand will refuse to rush him back. Alfred Messa, impressive in his debut performance, gets a second bite of the cherry.

Wight vs. Free South Califas
Team: Kneebone / Cove, Coss, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Zettner, MacKenzie, Messa, Fosse-Gordon / Faas, Carne

ANOTHER WAY
The House Of Daedalus

The House of Daedalus is an infinite multicursory maze somewhere between universes, sometimes called the Infinite Corridor (though this really is only one room in the entire unimaginably large house) or The Interstation. To find yourself in the House of Daedalus will be a very bad thing indeed, since the chances of you finding your way out, at least to somewhere you are familiar with, are next to nothing. When you drop in between the sheets of the fabric of the multiverse, you really are unlikely to be home in time for tea. Likely you won’t be home for breakfast either. And there will be no point those who miss you calling the cops, because in The House of Daedalus they will never find you. Fortunately, it is as hard to get in to The Interstation as it is to get out.

Except for one day in the last turn of the eternity, when, from various locations in the great saddle lenses of the multiverse, six bears found themselves in precisely that bitter household. Three costumed ursine superheroes from the Bears Armed alternative world of Amberrica simultaneously arrived there in quite different rooms of the house (though for the sake of accuracy, one of the costumed heroes was decidedly uncostumed, having had to be cut out of his armoured suit after he got run over by a Scammel 6x6 Ballast Tractor called St. Blazey. He was in his underbearwear only. As well as the three superheroes, there were two Dead Bears Walking from the Storm Clans, covered as they were in bloody pelts, and with great iron teeth and hungry maws. And then there was Mufaddal Meshach Khoroushi, who was actually called Iron Tooth by those who got on with him – which was most people who didn’t run away screaming or die fainting the instant they met him. Mufaddal was also of the Storm Clans, outcasts from the ursine worlds but tremendously popular in Wight for the cut of their gothic jib.

In the maze of The House of Daedalus, there are an infinite number of rooms, and in each room several doors into other worlds, but there is no map, and in any case, no door leads to the same place twice. That’s a lot of doors, and very little direction. Mufaddal tried one, and found himself in someone’s bathroom. Someone was taking a shower. Mufaddal smelled the air to see what trouble was afoot, and was troubled by a vaguely familiar sound. He considered peeking behind the shower curtain, before reminding himself that curiosity reanimated the dead cat. As they say in Schrödinger’s Cattery & Kennels, back in Old Wight. After considering his position, Mufaddal went back out the door he was holding open – which was a good thing, because if you let it close, the next time you open it, it will not be back into The House of Daedalus, but just into the kitchen, or the parlour, or the coal shed. And then you will be trapped in whatever reality you find yourself. And, as the superheroes discovered in a previous episode of Another Way, you don’t want that if you can really help it. It will almost always end badly.

Mufaddal crept out of the mysterious bathroom and back into The House of Daedalus. Where he bumped into the near-naked superhero Mettle. I cannot tell you what the chances are of meeting someone else in that dread house. But it was quite slim. Quite slim indeed. Infinitely small, like my twin brother’s intellect. Mettle reported that he had found himself on the set of Twelve Monkeys, even though he had absolutely no idea where or what that was. Soon, Glimmer and her mentor Fattarno, who had been separated into the infinite spaces of The Interstation and somehow, against literally ALL the odds had found each other within minutes, found Mufaddal and Mettle trying different doors. And the Dead Bears Walking arrived in the same spot in infinity a few minutes later. What are the chances of that? wondered Mufaddal, out loud, and they all agreed, though they had no idea what this place was, that the chances would be pretty slim.

Let me tell you they weren’t even close. We are talking multiples of googleplex here. Something, though they didn’t know what precisely, was not right. Not right at all.

by **Miskatonic University** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:35 pm

OOC: First I want to go on record to say I’m sorry for giving my beloved brother a hard time in the World Cup with this stupid OOC business, and for revealing the contents of a TG ‘by mistake’ which wasn’t a mistake at all. I admit I have been the evil twin in all this and I shouldn’t call him that because Mono is the best man in our house. His World Cup RPs were amazing and he was truly unlucky not to go through, he will eventually be far better than me and probably win everything. I faked the TG and he has never said anything bad to me except after times when I have assaulted him without provocation, which I regret deeply. On advice from my friends I will be seeking help for my anger management issues, and I will try not take out the frustrations of my futility and failures on my sibling. Also it was wrong of me to reveal his identity and I fully accept that he will probably do the same back to redress the balance, and there is nothing I can say about it.

OUT OF CHARACTER
The Identity Business

Two new people had come to Wight Spit and were in an audience with Homer Simpson, who was, according to some, the supreme being also known as Búa and, in the most enlightened circles, as Leonard The Almighty. The first man was a raven-haired stocky fellow, pale of skin, with grey eyes and more than a flash of white in his short-trimmed beard. He wore a tee-shirt that read ‘Motherfucking Southsea’ – some kind of reference to his time working at a skate park – and scruffy jeans. There was a chip in his tooth from a fight he lost years ago, and a bit of a turn in his eye which was definitely not a family thing: if he had an identical twin brother, the brother would not have that turn in his eye (and probably would’ve won the fight, too). Nowadays he considered himself a writer, which was true on paper, and a poet, which was true according to the papers, but under all that he knew he was a blagger and a liar. But not a world famous one, as he sometimes claimed. His name was Jimmy Costello. Next to him was his new friend Danny Byrne, wearing his Audioslavia football shirt. Can you imagine it? Jimmy Costello and Danny Byrne, all the way from Real Life, suddenly finding themselves in the court at Wight Spit.

“Is that really you, Búa?” asked Jimmy Costello, full of wonder.

“Shit Jimmy,” said Danny – shall we just call him Audio from now on to make it easier? – “what have you done?”

“Nothing!” replied the haggard old writer who actually earns his money from telling stories around camp fires and standing at the bottom of rock faces belaying for better climbers.

That much is true at least, says Leonard The Almighty. He's done nothing his whole life.

Jimmy Costello and his friend Audio were in a real mess now.

“Who’s going to scorinate the World Cup, for Jaffacake’s sake?!” – Audio was furious with his newfound friend. In fact, they probably weren’t friends any more. It was a common pattern for Jimmy Costello.

“Who is Leonard The Almighty?” asked the writer, his voice quaking, doing that thing he does when he ignores diegetic continuity to make his life a bit easier.

The Homer Simpson lookalike and supreme being smiled.

I am, says Leonard The Almighty. And you will bow before me, James Patrick Costello the artist of less-than-reasonable standing.

“Can I go home now?” said Audio.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 8:12 am

OOC: I wanted to say more about Mono posting under my name last time, annoying and full of untruths, but… Other news more pressing: I’m officially freaked. When I met Allan Hunter the ex-footballer at a wedding reception a couple weeks ago, the RL player whose photo I used to create a football sticker of Masvidal the former manager of Wight, I must’ve slipped him a card or talked some rubbish about being his ghost writer. I don’t remember that but then, I was very drunk. So on Monday, Allan Hunter called me up. Allan Hunter! He wants to meet. He even mentions Masvidal and this OOC/IC mash-up I’m writing – and I know I never mentioned THAT. He jokes that I might not be able to tell the difference between him and Masvidal; he says maybe he’ll send Masvidal in his place (he laughed at this, but I broke out in a cold sweat). Maybe he’s annoyed. Maybe he’s got an account on NS, though he would be older even than Arch, I should think. Maybe. But then, maybe not.

OUT OF CHARACTER
The Business of The Supernatural

Now then, says Búa King of Uncertain Dimensions to his poet, liar and storyteller Empy Summons, what is all this business about Masvidal crossing paths with a superheroic bear?

“I think that is part of a peculiar story cycle of which I am involved,” replied Empy, thoughtfully, “but not wholly the agent of.”

Are you on that bandwagon heading off to Supernatural Player Theory? – asks Búa, looking at those two curious arrivals, Jimmy Costello and Danny Byrne, claiming as they were to be the authors of this story now being told to you, the reader. Indeed, that was precisely what Empy was wrangling with.

“I will tell you what I understand of it, my King and Friend,” said the champion liar.

Just before the mysterious fall of Tamarindia, which was explained away by an altogether unlikely and unsatisfactory death of the leader, Comrade-President Doctor James Sunshine, two men, quite unassociated, were experiencing some curious doubts about reality. One was Hugo Caillett, a lecturer at the Institute of International Affairs in Libertad, who had begun to experience the odd sensation that some of the things he was involved in – particularly his passing interest in international sports like Babbalo – were being interfered with by an outside agency. At first, he assumed this to be some form of mind control by VOIA, the multiversally infamous intelligence agency of Vilita, or some other cunning secret service. After all, the Institute for International Affairs, a university by day, was no more than an international secret service itself by night, working for the Tamarindian government. Other spy networks were always trying to infiltrate, just as the Institute was attempting to infiltrate world powers everywhere. But the feeling began to assert itself with Hugo that this was more than a human – or elf – based conspiracy. The determinedly atheistic Tamarindo could not shake the idea that a supernatural power was exerting an influence over his life.

The second man was Masvidal.

Now, at the time, Masvidal was a national hero on the football field. The greatest striker in the multiverse, according to the Tamarindians. Better than Di Bradini, they said, dismissing the claim of the Purple One by blowing a contemptuous raspberry at the mere suggestion pretty boy Simeone could hold a footballing candle to the mighty Masvidal. Whether you agree with that somewhat partisan analysis, there could be no arguing the fact that the Baptism of Fire winning forward was a great footballer. And, though they did not know it, he would become a great World Cup winning coach. But Masvidal was not considered a great philosophical thinker of his day. Or any day, for that matter. Now, it is true that he ascended to the High Priesthood of ‘Shana in Mangolana. But not for any need of faith. To be sure, Masvidal was as faithless as any good Tamarindian ought to be. It was merely a cassock of convenience, in order to preside over the marriage of Ryevolian footballer Dave Tankles and Tamarindian journalist Cyndia Sín whilst the team was on tour in Mangolana winning that Baptism of Fire and the World Indoor Soccer Championships.

Whether or not the donning of the frock opened Masvidal’s otherwise non-suggestible mind to the prospect of a higher order of being, the supernatural, dare we say God or Gods, is impossible to tell. His ghost writer who had been working on a biography before the fall of the nation (both writer and biography were lost) claimed that Masvidal was staunchly atheist right up until the fall, but evidence suggests he was having doubts. Not least the fact that he coined the term Supernatural Player Theory. He had confused his fellow footballers on the national team with musings on the idea that they were but ciphers, iterations of the will of an omnipotent writer from another universe, merely devices in the telling of a good story. Most of the players dismissed this possibility on account of not precisely knowing what a cipher was, and also because they thought he was just pretending to be a High Priest of Something.

But Masvidal was on to something. He sensed he was being played by a power greater than all life in his small corner of the universe. He sensed he was but the inky scrawl of some God’s quill, albeit one that didn’t have much time for faith or the supernatural. He sensed that God wanted him to be an atheist, and even though he was, the fact that he might be ‘doing the atheism’ on behest of a theistic entity put him into a loop of contradiction. So he went to see the Religious Studies people at Libertad, who were dedicated to studying and mocking the preposterous faiths of the multiverse, and there he met Hugo Caillett. They began to consider some compelling evidence.

(There was a pause)

And? – asks Búa, once more on the edge of his throne.

“I cannot bring myself to…” stuttered the usually flawless Empy, “shall we just say ‘and then came the collapse of Tamarindia’ and leave it at that?”

Perfect Ten

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised qualification to the World Cup thus:

Wight completed their first ever hundred percent winning streak in World Cup qualification in an attempt to prove to the multiverse – and to their own citizens in particular – that being the reigning world champions was no fluke. Only the mightiest teams get to turn up at the finals as hundred percenters: only the greatest teams in the history of Enness football ever do something like that. Teams like Wight. And, um, Darmen. Two of the legends of the modern game, Con.

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

No, probably not, Con. But you couldn’t ask any more of the Sondry Folk than to go out there and win every game. Apart from a small blip in the middle of qualifying, with two consecutive 4-3 victories over the chasing pair of Mangolana and Free South Califas, this was a new look miserly kind of Wight which kept seven clean sheets and only conceded a single goal in the other game. The familiar three Arnold Bedsit Rovers of Bram Carlo-Boyle, MV Cabel and Marriner Friend-Forsaken, bolstered by the impressive rising star Etienne Gynn, looked mostly unbeatable in defense and this is an interestingly fresh foundation on which to build a campaign – usually it’s goals, goals, goals at both ends for Wight but with strikers Lorccán Cotterill and Israel Falcon a little less prolific this time around, having a solid back four has proved invaluable.

With only one goal in the campaign so far and a recurring fitness problem, Cotterill has not moved into the number one spot for all-time scorers as expected, ahead of the legendary Masvidal. Indeed he will need a good tournament to break the record now, in what looks like his final outing. Five more goals will put him one ahead of the great Tamarindian, on 57. It doesn’t look likely, does it? But there is a bright spot on the horizon with the emergence of the bear-man Solmund Faas, completing the qualifying series with a new national record of scoring in five consecutive games and looking every bit the perfect foil to bird-man Falcon. It’s a promising partnership.

In the midfield Piran MacKenzie looks imperious, Zachary Fosse-Gordon unstoppable, and Argon Skewes a natural. The more advanced role tragically vacated by Big John Corfe-Sheviock is still under contention from two very capable candidates in Ia Rodda and surprise package Alfred Messa. Coach Athelstan Marchand looks undecided between them, with Messa looking more likely to challenge Rodda’s coronation as the attacking midfielder of choice which we were all expecting. Nevertheless, Con, I expect to see The Fearless Red, Rodda, get the nod for the vital first game. After losing the opener last time on the way to a very lucky passage out of the group stage, Athelstan will be looking for a smoother qualification this time, beginning with the somewhat taciturn Antoletians.

“At least they don’t post in unreadable colours any more, Tommy.”

There is that, Con, there is that.

Wight vs. Antoletia
Team: Quentine / Boyle, Cabel, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Skewes, MacKenzie, Rodda, Fosse-Gordon / Faas, Falcon

Congratulations my Sondry Folk on a fine qualification campaign, says Búa, I still can’t quite get my omnipotent head around the fact we are World Champions. Which reminds me, Empy Summons, what is all this about The Licentian Isles winning the World Cup? Is it true? How?

AWKWARD MOMENTS
How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup

Based on Real Life events

The Match

You will recall that during it’s stay in Wight as the reigning World Champions, the World Cup Trophy (which is almost invisible to the naked eye except in peripheral vision) went missing after an innocent prank, fell into the hands of the Zenegalese Liberation Front, fell off the back of a lorry and was discovered on the hard shoulder of The Back Road to Old Wight by a long-dead dog, Billita el Perro, at that moment being walked in the infinite void by the Pre-Koselite shaman Warm Mark. It’s an unlikely set of events, I know, but Wight is an unlikely sort of place.

Now Warm Mark was not a materialistic sort of fellow, and nor was little Billy the dog. Once they had recognised the object for what it was (no easy task for Warm Mark who could not see it when looking directly at it) they agreed between them that, seeing as it had fallen off of Old Shakerssen’s lorry on his way out of Wight, it would probably be best to return it to the Broken Islands. Billy reasoned that Old Shakerssen had never lost a load nor so much as a cheap electrical import or a bottle of fizzy wine off the back of his lorry, and therefore was probably unaware that the duffel bag with the World Cup in it was even on his truck in the first place. Warm Mark was impressed with Billy’s deductive skills and patted her on the head fondly, and rewarded her with another pig’s ear, her favourite treat. They agreed the best thing to do was take it to the Constabulary, since it was probably lost.

That, of course, is how things that go around, go around, as they say in Wight. So that, for all Detective Romeo Noall’s hard work trying to locate the World Cup trophy, it turned up of it’s own volition just two days later, as things usually do in Wight. After all, there is no such thing as theft, just redistribution and extended borrowing. By the same philosophy, the NationStates World Cup trophy, borrowed without permission by world cup winning defender Climo Coss from the Republic of Heaven Hotel in Spit, stood proudly in the lost property office at Penchant Street Nick just around the corner three days later, without so much as a smudge on it from police investigation – it just turned up as everyone knew it would. And it only had a couple of small dents in it from it’s adventure too – not that you could see them, mind.

The coppers on duty had their photo taken with the intangible object, and Constable Boduel Crier had a brilliant idea. How about a match?

You will not have forgotten that moment in the history of How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup when Zenegalese gangsters and ZLF footsoldiers Hermann Mulumba and Tony Ba, who had received the stolen item on behalf of the ZLF, found themselves in the middle of a small localised riot. We must remind ourselves that this whole story was happening during the Di Bradini World Under-21 Cup, then being hosted in The Broken Islands and famously afflicted by Licentian hooligans who had been giving the Wight Constabulary the merry runaround. It was the misfortune of Hermann and Tony to be present at the moment when the Constabulary finally got a good shot as the pesky hoolies, hence their disposing of the World Cup trophy in such lackadaisical fashion. After a good beating outside Shakerssen’s Yard, the Licentians and the unfortunate Zenegalese were detained at the Constabulary’s pleasure in Penchant Street Nick. And they were residing there still the same evening (or early morning, 3am to be more precise), pending a magistrate appearance, when Warm Mark and Billita el Perro delivered the World Cup, and Constable Crier had his grand idea.

In custody that night were six Licentian hooligans, a couple of drunk and disorderly Wightlings and the ZLF boys Hermann and Tony. On the twilight shift for the Old Bill were Constables Boduel (Bod) Crier, Alcibiades (Al) Loze, ZK Colenso and Sergeant Vowhan Monday. A bit of phoning around, and they managed to also pull in Constables Shiv Quinn from East Spit Nick and TP Couch all the way from Fall Nick who had to lock up the station there as the only duty officer in town, and rush 40 kilometres up the main road with full siren and light show to get there on time. They woke the bleary eyed prisoners and bundled them into the black Mariah with a kit bag, and transported the hooligan football team down to the Spit Leisure Centre where they called the nightshift caretaker and gained entry using a falsified search warrant. At 4.30am the two teams were kitted up and ready for a game of indoor soccer. The prize? Only the blinking World Cup, mate.

You’ll know from the title of the story who won.

“Alright, well done,” said Sergeant Monday, begrudgingly, allowing the Licentian hooligan leader – who had given his name (false or otherwise) as Stopper Jeffries - to loft the intangible trophy. Stopper passed it to Fraz, Fraz to Eddie, Big Bad Al, Toff, and Bicky, to the Wightling drunkards Gatillian Twite and Lorn Hellings, and then finally to those ZLF renegades Hermann and Tony, who got their hands on the trophy for the second time, though they hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. In fact, they were pretending to be Licentians, which worked out rather well for them: as part of the deal, the hooligans, having won the World Cup, were deported to The Licentian Isles without charge or trial. Winning their freedom was part of the wager for the match. Hermann and Tony, faced with having to go back to their boss, General Chukwumoge (who was called the Cannibal General for good and well documented reason) to explain that they had lost the World Cup trophy, decided a fresh start in the geographically obscure region of Esportiva would be just the ticket. And Stopper Jeffries was keen to recruit them into his crew, since they were quite handy in a tight spot, being big lads and fighting men.

The trophy itself was handed over to DCI Romeo Noall later that morning, and despite having accomplished nothing in his investigation bar a humiliating cavity search for the mighty Simeone di Bradini at Spit International Airport, the detective was promoted to Superintendent for apparently solving the case of the missing trophy inside two days. The small dents were hammered out by a smith in downtown Penchant before the trophy was locked away in a secure display case at MIU HQ, and then, a couple of years later, handed back to the NSWC committee in time for the Opening Ceremony in Audioslavia, just across the water from Wight. No mention was made of the football match in the early hours of a Tuesday morning between the Wight Constabulary and some hooligans from a far-away country who really ought to behave a little better when visiting foreign nations.

And that is How The Licentian Isles Won The World Cup.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 8:15 am

OOC: Well Qazox called me out and Farf is openly sceptical. That’s ok. It may seem far-fetched. You are right to question what’s going on in my life right now, I am reeling at the unbelievably unbelievableness of it all myself. But if you don’t believe me, well, believe me, there are people who not only believe, but KNOW. What am I rambling about? (And yes, it is me, Wight, not my troublesome twin Mono – more on him next time). So, I bump into fellow NSers in the street. A man called Allan starts calling me and he’s, like, a character from Not-RL. Mono puts Audio & myself inside the story, but if someone inside it is also on the outside, maybe we really are on the inside too? Like these universes are colliding? And that’s where the people that KNOW come in, see? I’m not making this up… There is a huge hole in outer space, and the biggest void in space is more than a billion light years across. Not only that, but our universe could be part of a soap bubble. Didn’t I tell you that already? Didn’t I say Búa was a sentient bubble universe? And now, it seems, like I said, matter might be leaking from one into the other. A sort of quantum spaghetti of parallel and entangled realities.

OUT OF CHARACTER
Taking Care of Business

“Who is this Allan?” demanded Masvidal of Búa, in the King of Uncertain Dimensions private apartments off the court of Wight Spit. The Tamarindian, concerned about his name cropping up in so many stories about a different universe, and feeling once more the return of his feelings regarding a Supernatural Player commanding every move of his life, had come to the court to get to the bottom of things. Last time he felt like this, bad things happened. Tamarindia imploded. Masvidal was worried that bad things would happen again.

And then there was the matter of the bear that materialised briefly in his bathroom.

But more of that later. In the room with Búa and Masvidal were the greatest minds ready to calculate and estimate and computate the situation. The court Geometer, Michele ‘Logikal Mick’ Nostradame was come with his slide rule. Four Bit was there with a good network connection to the supercomputer Sixteen Bits. Búa’s right hand man, Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin was sharpening his dagger, and the champion liar and poet Empy Summons had come, for reasons not altogether clear. Except that he had been the one telling stories about Masvidal being created out of the image of Allan Hunter.

You know you have a doppelganger? says Búa to the poet, changing the subject distractedly, that fellow Jimmy Costello who claims to have come from ‘Real Life’ is the spit of you, Empy.

“He is the one who should be answering to Masvidal,” said Logikal Mick, “I say bring him in. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

“No!” said Empy and Masvidal, in union. “He creeps me out,” they said, again in unison. “Jinx!” said Masvidal, and he punched Empy on the arm. Hard.

“There is something wrong about him,” said the unnoticed clerk in the corner with the Montrealaise accent. They all turned to him, surprised. It was that Gregoire L’Erreur again, who nowadays always seemed to be in Búa’s apartments. Even Búa, with his great yellow jowls and three-hair comb-over, frowned at the uninvited guest. “Just saying…” said Gregoire, by way of explanation.

Despite the protestations of Empy and Masvidal, they called Jimmy Costello into the office, and Danny Byrne his friend came with him.

“Tell us again,” said Mick, “how did you come to be in Wight Spit?”

“I really don’t know,” said Jimmy, “but it has got something to do with my twin brother, I’m sure of that.”

“Can I go home now?” asked Danny, but the room ignored him. No doubt he was afraid there might be a chance meeting with Jeremy Jaffacake, if everything Jimmy had told him about where they were was true. And, all things considered, though he had tried to give Jeremy a productive life with plenty of meaty stories, he realised that on reflection there was an element of character assassination in there too. You wouldn’t choose to be a Jeremy Jaffacake, would you? And the name. He’d hate to have to explain that to him.

Jimmy proceeded to explain how he had invented this story about a far country called Tamarindia for a game, and several characters whom he would invest a large portion of narrative agency to such as –

“Stop!” said Masvidal, part menacing, part pleading.

“If I may,” said Gregoire, cautiously, “but it’s only half an hour to the scheduled downtime, and we need to get this posted…”

Nobody had the slightest idea what he was talking about. Except, perhaps, Jimmy and Danny.

You again with the timekeeping, says Búa.

They were rudely interrupted by Brian Blessed Cloned, that loudmouth and court Summoner. “Me Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen, agents of Supernatural Player Theory and that fellow over there in the corner with the clipboard and the stopwatch, yes, you, with the Montrealaise look about you - ”

Please, Brian, says Búa, will you just get on with it?

“A visitor, my King and Friend, from the Real Life, he says, wherever that is… calls himself The Valhallan!”

A distinctly architectural looking fellow with a scandinavian walk loped into the room.

“YOU!” said Jimmy, shocked.

“Shit,” said Danny, “even the Rushmoris are getting in on the act now. I know you!”

Wight 3-1 Antoletia
Carne 10’ Cotterill 71’ MacKenzie 78’ / Hannibal 82’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action in Audioslavia thus:

Well it’s a much better start to the World Cup Finals this time around, Con, with a solid win over the Fire Ants and a good showing from some of the back-ups, Manalaus Carne in particular with his early goal setting the tempo for the game. A follow-up was a long time coming with both Carne and Solmund Faas going close on several occasions, but it took till long after the hour mark for the veteran and sub Lorccán Cotterill to really settle it, his 53rd goal for his country inching him toward the national goalscoring record currently held by Masvidal at 56. The man-of-the-tournament last time out en route to winning the title, Piran MacKenzie, continued where he left off with the killer third before Hannibal pulled a late consolation for the men in garish hoops. Coach Athelstan Marchand will likely revert to his strongest line-up for the tie with big winners Ko-oren, who thrashed Mapletish 6-2. These sides met for the first and only time in the group stage of the last AOCAF, a tightly contested 2-2 draw the outcome. The Sondry Folk will be looking for a little more this time, Con, to ensure a smooth passage into the knockout stage.

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“I think you’re probably right, for a change.”

Wight vs. Ko-oren
Team: Quentine / Boyle, Cabel, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Skewes, MacKenzie, Rodda, Fosse-Gordon / Cotterill, Falcon

Quentine, Boyle, Skewes and Rodda all return after being rested for the opener by a confident Coach Athelstan, along with wonderkid Israel Falcon. Despite Solmund Faas apparently moving up to first choice striker, Athelstan will start with the more experienced Lorccán Cotterill alongside Falcon, and he will be looking for more goals toward the potential national scoring record.

OUT OF CHARACTER
The Business of Quantum Spaghetti

Búa who looked rather convincingly like Homer Simpson, and for all the wrong reasons, listened thoughtfully to the prognostications of Masvidal and Logikal Mick and Jimmy Costello who was the writer and creator of Masvidal, according to his own testimony. (For the sake of order, The Valhallan was asked to wait outside).

So what you are saying, says Búa, sounding a little dismissive, is that you invented all this? You, a lithe little fellow – have you lost weight, Jimmy? You look like you’ve lost weight, is it all that running around Nottingham? – with a white beard and a slight turn in your eye if I’m not mistaken, you claim to have imagined this into existence and now somehow you are here and Masvidal is there phoning you up pretending to be Allan Hunter. Even though he is right here now and complaining furiously about quantum spaghetti?

“Look, I know Qazox called me out and Farf is openly skeptical,” said Jimmy, referring bizarrely to whole nations as if they were people themselves, “that’s ok. It may seem far-fetched. You are right to question what’s going on in my life right now, I am reeling at the unbelievably unbelievableness of it all myself. But if you don’t believe me, well, believe me, there are people who not only believe, but KNOW. What am I rambling about? (And yes, it is me, Wight, not my troublesome twin Mono – more on him next time). So, I bump into fellow NSers in the street. A man called Allan starts calling me and he’s, like, a character from Not-RL. Mono puts Audio & myself inside the story, but if someone inside it is also on the outside, maybe we really are on the inside too? Like these universes are colliding? And that’s where the people that KNOW come in, see? I’m not making this up… There is a huge hole in outer space, and the biggest void in space is more than a billion light years across. Not only that, but our universe could be part of a soap bubble. Didn’t I tell you that already? I knew you were a sentient bubble universe all along! And now, it seems, like I said, matter might be leaking from one into the other. A sort of quantum spaghetti of parallel and entangled realities.

And I don’t have a turn in my eye. It’s a temporary convergence insufficiency disorder.”

“Can I go home now?” said Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne.

All it needs now, says Búa with a wink to his Right Hand, Hassan, is that fellow who writes in big letters to turn up, and we’ll have a full set of you ‘Real Life’ folks.

ANOTHER WAY
Orson Worthing Brings His Bears To Wight

You will recall that the House of Daedalus is an infinite multicursory maze somewhere between universes, sometimes called the Infinite Corridor (though this really is only one room in the entire unimaginably large house) or The Interstation. By preposterously unlikely odds, six bears arrived from various verses around the multiverse, and managed to bump into one another in a part of the house where a door led out into Masvidal’s bathroom. Masvidal was in the shower at the time when Mufaddal Meshach ‘Irontooth’ Khoroushi made this discovery. Mufaddal was lucky to have wedged the door open back into the House of Daedalus, otherwise he would’ve been trapped in the bathroom and the reality of Masvidal, and it would’ve ended badly. Now let’s be clear here. Mufaddal is a giant monstrous creature of the Storm Clan, all covered in blood and slavering for flesh, with razor-sharp black teeth and lacerating claws on hands the size of shovels. He would’ve ripped Masvidal into tiny shreds if he’d had to. But the warhorse Tamarindian would’ve put up a terrible fight to the death, and besides which, for all his horrific visage, Mufaddal was quite the Gentlebear. It would’ve troubled him greatly to so annihilate the legendary ex-Manager of Wight. So it was good news all round that he managed to get him back into the House of Daedalus, and there to be suddenly and surprisingly well met by the semi-naked superbear Mettle, who was in nowt but his underbearwear.

The duo of dread beasts were soon joined by Glimmer and Fattarno, the young and old heroes who were kin of Mettle, and by the Dead Bears Walking, Elifalet Behrouz Eliphelet and Daryawesh, who were not very bright, but were very deadly. Though they did not know it, the chances of their meeting in that dubious place were highly unlikely. Infinitesimal to the power of several googolplex. Though they did not know it, something very peculiar was afoot. A force unknown to them had drawn them together. Perhaps the fate of worlds, of universes, of heavens and hells and at least ten of the eleven dimensions were resting on their furry shoulders.

“Harrr’ummm, why are you in your kecks?” said Daryawesh, looking at the embarrassed Mettle.

“Grrrr hrrr’mphhh” responded the superhero who had recently been cut out of his armoured uniform after being run over by a Scammell truck. It was a sort of rumble one might hear in the nation of Bears Armed, except not quite. After all, I am only imitating, and I do not claim to be the best mimic in Búa’s Kingdom. “It’s a long and largely confusing story. How I came to be here, like this, I cannot be absolutely certain of.”

“You have been called,” said a man, suddenly appearing in their neck of the Interstation. He was a small man, by their standards, though by ours not so much. He was finely dressed in Victorian safari slacks, a white shirt and vintage pith helmet, with a gold tipped walking stick and fine leather boots. The man was well mustachioed and had the bearing of an explorer with a distinctly military training.

“Gggrrrrr’mph! Nobody sneaks up on the Storm Clan!” growled Elifalet, menacingly, bringing himself up to his full monstrous height of ten feet and some. The blood on his pelt seemed to liquefy and drip from him.

“Clearly one does if one has a mind to,” said the man, in a commanding tone. He tapped his cane on the stone tiled floor of the Interstation, and Elifalet was stopped in his tracks. “Orson Worthing, at your pleasure,” said the seemingly tiny little fellow, with great authority. “You chaps are in a bit of a jam, don’t you know.”

Orson Worthing had them all at bay, six dread bears enthralled to his somehow enchanting voice. For the Storm Clan, it was almost unnoticed. Like innocents they were at his beck, and would never, for the rest of eternity, question his judgment. (Although, of course, time is a funny thing and it was already three minutes to eternity, so the enchantment might not last as long as you would expect). Used to the black art of magic, this was another day in the office for them, though from outside the sphere of influence which Orson Worthing cast with his cane and his enunciation, it was quite irrational for them to be so in thrall to the will of so little a fellow as this odd character. For the superbears Mettle, Fattarno and Glimmer, this was a wholly new and unsettling experience. They were not used to magic, and like most bears wholly averse to it. Magic was a bad thing. And though they did not know they were being conjured, they could feel in their bones that something was wrong with this picture. For all that, they would do his command, without question.

“Now, how are we to get you out of this jam, gentlebears?”

It was a rhetorical question, of course. Orson Worthing knew precisely what to do. “Follow me,” he said, with authority but not in a demanding sort of way. The bears followed him dutifully around a corner and under an arched portico into a large and rather empty and Norman looking hall. “Aha!” said Orson, as if discovering a new thing, but unconvincingly, “the door to Wight Spit! Now here is a place where you’ll find some answers, and they’ll be impressed with you chaps, since you came by a way most unusual, a way they do not well appreciate, another way altogether from their common ways into Wight.”

And sure enough, to the surprise of all in the court of Búa, King of Uncertain Dimensions, six bears and a small man in hunting casuals materialised from thin air. There was a long but not overly rapturous applause, from an audience that was impressed but not awestruck by this sudden coming.

It’s getting harder to awe this lot, thinks Búa, in reflective mood. The polite handclapping petered out. Damned with faint applause, thinks Búa.¹

1 In case you were wondering, yes, this was a tale told in the third person past tense, and no, it is not an error that Búa thinks and speaks in the present tense without quotation marks. The King of Uncertain Dimensions is, after all, in the past, present, future and the other eight dimensions at the same time, so he will sound slightly out of sync. It’s a sort of inevitable narrative latency.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 8:50 am

OOC: Farewell to Mono. His temporary stay in my small Arnold bedsit is over, the twin is gone, and I can go back to my life. Except, of course, it is full of holes and Allan Hunter, the RL Masvidal, keeps ringing. All you people who want stickers made up of your players – beware who you choose as your model. The last thing you want is to meet the man in the picture (especially, I suppose, Alan Belmore).

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Ingredients

The Real-Lifers

So let me get this right, says a confused Homeric Búa – King of Uncertain Dimensions and manifestation of an obese yellow cartoon oaf – you chaps have all been trapped in this story and you’re from another dimension? And you all claim that this here reality of Enness is made up by you for the entertainment of – who, exactly?

Jimmy Costello, Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne, Orson Worthing and The Valhallan were in audience with a sentient bubble universe that Jimmy claimed was his idea in the first place.

“Ourselves, mostly,” said Jimmy.

“So it’s a rather self-referencing pursuit, and a ‘specialist’ audience?” asked Hassan i Sabbah, the Master Assassin and First Lieutenant of Búa. He was casually polishing his dagger throughout the conversation, though one might think this a trifle impolite.

"Harrumphh! You could say that," replied Orson, with fortissimo, as if he were the very essence of Brian Blessed Cloned, the Inveterate Loudmouth.

The uninvited clerk Gregoire L’Erreur, who was still sitting in the corner of the office all this time later, asked Orson to keep it down a bit. “After all,” he said, in a timid Montrealaise accent, “each and every outburst of that sort requires additional formatting, and is not time-efficient when writing against a rapidly closing cut-off.”

Everyone in the room stared at Gregoire.

You with the obsessive time-keeping again, observes Búa, scratching his belly. Who exactly are you, anyway? And what in the name of the jumping monkey are you on about?

“Can I go home now?” asked Audio, changing the subject back before the nervous-looking Gregoire could answer. He had a point. He’d not been a willing visitor to Wight Spit, but then, truly, none of them had. He and Jimmy Costello had, they claimed, been written into the story by Jimmy’s troublesome twin best known as Mono or MZ, which in this dimension was the abbreviation of a recently discovered and highly unlikely society of identical twins called Monozygotia.

“I was reading something by a friend of yours,” observed John The Baptist, Third Lieutenant of Búa, “a chap called Gordon? He suggested this thing was a guilty pleasure, this storytelling of yours.”

P’tuh! – It was The Valhallan, who mostly contributed to discussions by spitting at the feet of Jimmy Costello most impolitely, and showing off his multicoloured balls. While Orson Worthing claimed to have come to Wight Spit via Another Way – he insisted on the capitalisation, and nobody questioned it since he was obviously formatting on a different plane to anyone else in the room – nobody could establish how The Valhallan had contrived to turn up in those granite halls. That he was a Real-Lifer was confirmed by Jimmy Costello who had met him recently in Portsmouth during a meatball conference. It had been awkward, what with Jimmy being Vegan (and I don’t mean of the Andossan variety) and The Valhallan more or less raised on a staple of three square meatballs a day, with fishcakes for dessert. What – you doubted he was really Scandinavian?

Alright, alright, says Búa, calming tensions between the Real-Lifers. The question is, what to do with you all.

Naturally, being an omnipotent supreme being, sending them back to their own dimension ought to have been the most obvious and easy option. But for one thing, Búa rarely thought about the obvious. And for another, he hated easy options. And for another, he was posing as Homer Simpson, and for verisimilitude, was concerned not to do anything overly rational or logical. And for another, since someone was obviously writing this story for you to read under the Wight account, clearly Jimmy existed in two dimensions at once, and sending him back would put two copies in the same dimension, which might have Unfathomable Thermodynamic Consequences for all concerned.

“What?” said Jimmy, frowning.

“What?” said Gregoire, bashing away at a calculator.

And for another thing, the World Cup was proceeding (almost) without a hitch, which meant that Audio still existed in that dimension, and likewise The Valhallan who had written a splendid and unlikely thriller set on an oil rig. Only Orson Worthing may have truly disappeared out of Real-Life.

"Hwhattt?" shouted Orson.

P’tuh, spat The Valhallan at Jimmy, who called him a fish-muncher under his breath¹.

“Can I go home now?” repeated Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne. He really did have a point.

Fred Guardineer

The attempt to get to the bottom of this knotty problem with all these entangled threads of Quantum Spaghetti was disturbed by reports of a disturbing disturbance. Namilin, the Monozygotic singleton goalkeeper who had died the death of falling out of an aeroplane after interrogation by secret service agents, and now acting as a PA to Jimmy (I’ve Got Two Agents In Real Life You Know) Costello (p’tuh – The Valhallan), broke up the meeting to explain a row had erupted in court between the visiting bears and a comic-book artist. The committee of supreme being, supreme lieutenants, Real-Lifers and a Montrealaise-ish clerk probably would’ve ignored the kerfuffle had not Orson Worthing gone storming out in his safari slacks and pith helmet to wrangle his ursine charges with that uncanny enunciation of his.

“Hwhatsallthis?” he bellowed.

It seemed the bears were up in paws. Fred Guardineer had recognised the superhero bear Fattarno, because – so he claimed – he had invented and drawn the Real-Life comic book hero Zatarno on whom the bear was based.

Here we go with these Real-Life hooks again, says Búa, arriving behind Orson Worthing into the court at Wight Spit.

Though it was remarkable that Fred could recognise a human comicbook character as being represented in the hairy flesh by an ursine caped crime-fighter, so remarkable in fact that any sensible superhero would write it off as an eccentricity, Fattarno was quite put out by the claim. He’d got himself into an awful two-and-eight about the whole thing. His compatriots Glimmer and Mettle were suitably outraged on his behalf too, and the three dead bears walking of the Storm Clan, their pelts bloody with death and their jaws slavering with the lust for flesh, were all up on hind legs shouting the odds. Collective rage was broiling in the pot, to the point where the slighted bears could no longer remember what the actual origin of the problem was. It was like watching an episode of Jeremy Kyle on ketamin, said Tommy Cooper Reconstituted, later, to a surprised and impressed Jack Kerouac. And even though they had all started on the same side, the bears had divided into two parties who were now facing off against each other (probably to the relief of everyone else, and especially Fred Guardineer who had quickly decided intellectual property rights were a flimsy and quixotic thing in Wight not worth the pixels they took up on the screen).

It took the sudden appearance of Rod Hull the Emuologist and Keeper of Wight Spit Zoo to get matters under control – even Orson Worthing had failed to sufficiently enchant the raging bears with his furry tongue. But a cry from Rod and the utterly terrifying visage of the psychotic Emu under his arm froze the bears in their tracks. We were all quite impressed with his presence, even though, in the past, he had seemed something of a whiner. The bird glared at each bear until it was cowed under its unrelenting gaze.

Homer Simpson

Alright, says the Homeric Búa, here is the thing…

With the grumbling bears all held at bay by the psychotic Emu and its controller Rod Hull, the Real-Lifers, Búa’s lieutenants, some clever scientists, Namilin the Monozygotic goalkeeper and a nervous uninvited clerk with a Montrealaise accent reconvened in the court to decide on how to untangle this spaghectic mess of multidimensional Bolognese. A long and complicated discussion ensued which it would be impossible to repeat here, for two reasons:

Suffice it to say

… here is the thing. We have to send them back. If we don’t, weird shizzle will happen.

The gathered audience, Real-Lifers and scientists of the court were, in truth, a little disappointed with the conclusion. For all his elliptical inclination, Búa usually had a good reason for doing things, or conversely, a terrible one. But this… this was somewhat… functional.

Sensing he was losing the crowd, Búa called on his commentator Tommy Woodroffe to deliver a report on the comings and goings of the World Cup.

Wight 2-1 Ko-oren
Sunrise Park, Burgess, Inevitablia
Cotterill 43’ Skewes 84’ / Talmis 39’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action in The Inevitable Syndicate thus:

A win is a win, Con, no matter which way you slice and dice it. Any idea that Ko-oren had bitten off more than they could chew was quickly dispelled, the Dragonflies looking comfortable in possession and cool as a cucumber when out of it. They didn’t seem to give a fig for the reputation of their champion opponents either and you might say they had some chops. What is certain is that Sondry Folk keeper Antrim Quentine, so often unchallenged during the qualification cycle, proved he was worth his salt with a series of fine saves. But not enough to stop Pta Talmis putting the greenblues briefly ahead and leaving us all feeling as flat as a pancake.

Butter my muffins if Lorccán Cotterill didn’t pop up with a quick equaliser though, he’s been the best thing since sliced bread for Wight down the years and edges ever closer to that national goalscoring record, needing three more to overtake the legend Masvidal. If he misses out now, being so close, well that would be a bitter pill to swallow. All square at half time, it was difficult to separate these sides and another draw, following the one in the last AOCAF, seemed Inevitable. They’re a hard nut to crack and no mistake, these Dragonflies. In the second half the supposedly superior Sondry Folk made a meal of it again, and not for all the tea in china did it look like they would pull this one out of the soup. It was late, late when young winger Argon Skewes popped up to save our bacon, proving he is the cream of the crop with a calmly taken winner. That cooked the goose for the greenblues.

Ko-oren proved there is no such thing as a free lunch, Con, but Wight came out top banana and though they had to eat a little humble pie, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. The Dragonflies almost upset the applecart but in the end we got away with the whole enchilada.

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“Food for thought.”

Wight vs. Mapletish
Team: Quentine / Cove, Coss, Friend-Forsaken, Scantlebury / Zettner, Snyder, Messa, Fosse-Gordon / Faas, Falcon

Coach Athelstan Marchand will shuffle the pack again with qualification to the next round assured, with key players rested. Look for the international debut of rightback Austin Scantlebury, in for the impressive Etienne Gynn. Scantlebury has been Gynn’s understudy at every level from under-15 up, and at club football too until Gynn recently moved from AFC Portsmouth to Ours Française. Tregue Zettner will make a rare appearance in place of Argon Skewes in left midfield, while Solmund Faas returns to the forward position, veteran Lorccán Cotterill given the game off in preparation for the knockout stages.

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Extra Spice

Búa who looked like Homer Simpson was just come to a solution to this tricky problem with the Real-Lifers when visitors arrived unexpectedly.

"There's somebody at the door, there's somebody at the door" said Rod Hull when Hemingway tolled his bell up on The Watch.

For whom? asks Búa.

(“It better be quick,” said Gregoire L’Erreur, quietly and in parenthesis, “there are only forty minutes to cut-off.” He fiddled with his stop-watch demonstratively.)

The Adversary

It was not actually The Adversary, you know, The Adversary, of course, since he does not knock at the door². Instead, it was Mono, sucked into the quantum spaghetti and confined to a story in Wight Spit.

“Lenny Costello!” announced the loudmouth Court Summoner, Brian Blessed Cloned, at the top of his announcement voice, “and his sidekick, Gruelmaker.”

“What the - ” said Jimmy Costello, on seeing his brother.

“Who the - ” said his PA, the dead Monozygotic goalkeeper Namilin, on seeing the dead Gregisgodistani goalkeeper Gruelmaker, who died the death of a thousand cuts for being not very good at Goalkeeping, and was now fallen in with Mono.

“For the record,” said Mono, expansively, “I did not get sucked or fall into the quantum spaghetti, but I jumped freely of my own will, in fact, I made it in the first place. Also, you will call me Leonard The Almighty, and bow down before me.” Gruelmaker immediately and solemnly followed his master’s instructions. “Not you, dammit,” said Mono, with the court chortling indiscreetly.

“As I was saying, it’s Leonard The Almighty, not Mono,” said Mono –

“LEONARD, DAMMIT!”

“Embarrassing” muttered Jimmy, shaking his head. Seeing his crushing humiliation, The Valhallan actually stopped spitting long enough to smile in that way only the Danes at their most inane can.

Búa stroked his three-haired comb-over thoughtfully. Well, he says, welcome to Wight, I suppose, Leonard The Almighty. Did I read somewhere that you are The Adversary?

“Indeed, as masterchef of the quantum spaghetti, I come to claim this Uncertain Dimension as my own, in the name of the glory of twinculture and the famous nation of Monozygotia. I have a plan too. Gruelmaker, reveal The Weapon.”

The dead goalkeeper fiddled about in his trouser pocket and pulled out his weapon.

There was a stunned silence in the court.

Well, says Búa, this is a turn up for the books.

“Awkward,” said Orson Worthing, a little louder than he’d intended.

“Alright,” said Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne, “I’m not joking now. I want to go home.”

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:04 am

OOC: I no longer recognise nor know what OOC is.

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Whisk

Gruelmaker

Now then, says the Homeric Búa to his adversary Lenny Costello, or Mono, or MZ, or Leonard the Almighty, as no-one really wanted to call him. Or ‘my evil twin’ as Jimmy Costello referred to him. Now then, I can see you are serious about this whole ‘taking over the multiverse’ scheme of yours. At this point, I might call in The Holy Asylum, with their ghostbusters Juan Chimichanga and Simeone di Bradini, to come save the very fabric of reality. But from what I can understand, they are already busy saving the very fabric of reality elsewhere, and from a more, shall we say, likely adversary. No offence intended.

“Well, none taken,” said Mono, pouting a little. His sidekick Gruelmaker, a sight to behold if ever there was one, whispered in his ear. “In fact,” continued Mono, adding decibels as he went to match his rising fury, “offence very much flipping taken, you soapy bastard! Gruelmaker, prime The Weapon!”

“Whoaaaaah!” exclaimed several members of the court, in unison.

Easy tiger, says Búa to the sidekick. You don’t look like the sort of fellow who knows precisely what he is doing with such an… unpredictable utensil. How about you just hand that thing over to me?

“It’s a trick!” said Gruelmaker to his master, Mono. The Evil Twin sighed and shook his head.

“Of course it’s a trick, you bleeding idiot. Just prime the blasted thing, will you.”

He wasn’t being unkind calling Gruelmaker a bleeding idiot. Well, he was, obviously, being an evil twin. But he was also stating the facts. Since his death by a thousand cuts at the hands of his fellow countrymen, the Gregistani ex-goalkeeper had taken on an horrendous visage, his whole body cross hatched with gaping bloody wounds that never stopped bleeding, so that everywhere he went he frightened small children and haemophobes, and made a dreadful mess on the floor. Back home in the lair of the evil genius they had a servant called Ragg who was an ancient bony homunculus bent near double, carrying a bloody chamois and cleaning up after him. But since they had come to Wight Spit to declare eternal and apocalyptic war on the multiverse, Mono had decided not to do the multiverse the courtesy of cleaning up behind him. So they left Ragg at home, which had the additional benefit of saving on plane fares, packed lunches and the effort of putting up with the homunculus’ continual complaining about leg room and his blasted back-ache. On the matter of Gruelmaker being an idiot, well, he wasn’t very bright, to be sure. But in hindsight, Mono could’ve been a little more constructive with his criticism.

There was a humming sound and a very high-pitched whistle which only dogs and sentient reality bubbles could hear. Gruelmaker had primed The Weapon.

Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin, Right Hand of Búa, leaned over to his King and Friend. “I’m not sure your usual flippant throwaways are going to do the trick here, my Homeric liege. Perhaps using your omnipotence to disarm the sidekick might be advisable, at this juncture.”

Isn’t this a Mexican stand-off, says Búa, to the crowd. He’d never been one to use his omnipotence lightly, even in the face of apocalypse. He preferred to save it for really special occasions, like, well, come to think of it…

“At this point,” said Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne, “I really think I ought to point out that if that thing goes off, and I’m smeared across the multiverse, there will be no World Cup scorination tonight.”

“He has a point,” chimed in the nervous Montrealaise clerk, Gregoire L’Erreur, “and with only twelve hours till cut-off, by my watch,” – and here he checked his stopwatch – “the chances are we wouldn’t find a stand-in.”

Still here, asks Búa of the uninvited guest that nobody seemed to know. The audience all turned to consider Gregoire, who, for all his continued interventions did not seem to especially enjoy the attention. But no-one could deny his commitment to getting these RPs out on time.

“While we’re on the subject of RPing,” said Mono, looking up to the ceiling and the approximate direction, as he imagined it, of the writer Jimmy Costello, the other one that is, the one in another dimension typing up this story in his bedsit in Arnold, “can you STOP CALLING ME MONO, DAMMIT. IT'S LEONARD! LEONARD THE ALMIGHTY!!!”

Now then, says Búa, stroking his great flabby yellow jowls, I don’t know what all this talk of Argh-Pee is but getting back to the matter in hand, Audio, I shouldn’t worry too much about getting back to – what did you call it, Scorinate? – the World Cup, I’m sure they have interns in The Inevitable Syndicate who can cover for you.

“Great,” said Audio, “well that is a relief. Amazing. Thanks.”

“Aha!” Mono exclaimed as if he was the cat that got the cream, or more precisely, the sort of cunning evil genius who had anticipated such a strategem from his opponent and successfully mitigated against it. “Bring out the prisoners!”

Nev & Sindy

There was a kerfuffle at the far end of the hall, and several uniformed guards came bustling into the court. They were impressively bedecked in black combat coveralls, with arm bands sporting the Yin-Yang symbol, and they were wearing orange berets. Their black coveralls had orange piping and insignia, tucked into orange patent leather boots which if I’m not mistaken (how could I be?) were 16-hole Doc Martens. They were carrying assault rifles strapped across their backs, automatic machine pistols in their hands, and impressive utility belts full of ammunition and other handy things for operating in combat situations, just the sort of utility belts all men secretly wish they could wear to work. They were the criminal guard of the evil genius Mono, and they dragged two unwilling prisoners into the room with them, one male, one female.

That’s a rather jaunty flash of colour you’ve added to those uniforms, Leonard The Almighty, says Búa. I rather like orange. Now, who are these reluctant-looking guests?

The men brought the two prisoners forward, and threw them roughly to the floor in front of Mono and Gruelmaker. The male prisoner sobbed, and the female comforted him. “Oh stop it, for goodness sake,” said Mono, irritably, “you’re not Cassadiaguans.

“Actually, Búa, I would like to introduce you to Nev and Sindy, the co-scorinators of the World Cup. So you see, I hold all the cards (and stickers, and top trumps, and other as yet unplanned memorabilia – perhaps the cover of the final matchday programme, who is to say?) and for you, Wight –“ here Mono looked at his twin brother Jimmy – “your World Cup is over.”

Allan Hunter

During this exchange all eyes had been on Nev and Sindy, of course. Except for Masvidal, who had been at the court to investigate his returning feelings of being played by a Supernatural controller as if he were a game piece or a character in a story. He knew that if anyone could explain to him what was going on in his head, it would be someone from Wight Spit – if not Búa, who was not one to explain things if he could possibly help it – then from one of his many experts in the field who had died and gone to this pungent kind of heaven. Like Sigmund Freud. Or Arthur Conan-Doyle. Or the devil Moloch who had been known to turn his hand to psychotherapy from time to time when he got tired of being dreadful. He had not needed counseling, of course. Masvidal was getting the explanation he needed played out right in front of him: he had been right all along, he was nothing but a character in a somewhat disjointed story about characters in stories who realised they were just characters in stories. And right now, Masvidal was not looking at Nev and Sindy, but at the uniformed guards of Mono’s evil crime corporation. Had no-one else noticed? All of them were precise copies of him. Of Masvidal.

“Who are you?” shouted Masvidal, across all the din of the Argument At The End Of The World.

Everyone went silent: when Masvidal shouted, everyone listened. That’s pretty much how he won a Baptism of Fire as a player, and the World Cup as a manager. He was looking at one of the guards in the Evil Corp. uniforms.

“We are The Allan Hunter” intoned all of the guards in perfect unison.

“Holy f-“ started Jimmy Costello, who had been writing about meeting Allan Hunter right before he slipped through a hole in the multiverse and ended up in this sanity-forsaken mess of a story. Mono let out an evil genius sort of laugh.

“Okay, okay, enough is enough,” started Audio, before being rudely interrupted by the whole rapt audience of this pantomime, who shouted out “YOU WANT TO GO HOME!!!”

There was much laughing and a spontaneous round of applause. Somebody hit a rimshot.

Mapletish 1-3 Wight
Sunrise Park, Burgess, Inevitabilia
Falcon 14’ Snyder 25’ Cotterill 79’ / Junio 75’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action in The Inevitable Syndicate thus:

The Sondry Folk qualify for the knockout stages in perfect style with a sparkling win over the Tishues, Con, the first time they have won the group stage. And they have maintained their perfect win record to earn a tie with the Farfadilloes, whom we must not forget gave us a dusting down in the AOCAF third-placed play-off recently, at least in the penalty shoot-out after a tight 1-1 draw. Israel Falcon opened the scoring tonight in a confident display, with Jett Snyder bagging a rare goal to give Wight a comfortable half-time lead. Veteran superstar Junio hit one back for the Tishues to potentially give Athelstan Marchand a headache in the closing stages, but substitute Lorccán Cotterill struck a measured and fully deserved third; and with that edged ever closer to breaking Masvidal’s international scoring record. Two more goals will do it, Con, and let’s hope there are four more games for him to hit them in.

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“That will do nicely. A little bird tells me Quantum Spaghetti has four more installments for a nice rounded RP story, too.”

“Would that be the jackdaw I saw you talking to earlier today, Con?”

“It would, Tommy. It would.”

Wight vs. Farfadillis
Team: Quentine / Boyle, Cabel, Friend-Forsaken, Gynn / Skewes, MacKenzie, Rodda, Fosse-Gordon / Cotterill, Falcon

Coach Athelstan will likely now pick his full first-choice eleven for the rest of the tournament, barring injuries, and we’ll hope it’s more than just the one game, although Farfadillis are another rising power in the game and will be a tough opponent at Wight’s temporary home ground of Sunrise Park in Burgess. Lorrcán Cotterill, of colour in the qualifying campaign, has sparkled again on the big stage and will win back the default striker option from Solmund Faas in this, his last international tournament.

When the hubbub had died down and Jimmy Costello in the dimension known as Real Life had returned to his desk - after popping into town for coffee with the delicious performance artist Michelle - there were a mere seven hours remaining before the cut-off. As Gregoire L’Erreur was quick to point out.

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Tenderise

“Order, order!” cried out the court summoner and all-round big mouth, Brian Blessed Cloned, as a useful narrative bridge to the next section. So far, there seemed to be a deadlock, with Mono, Gruelmaker, their prisoners and the handful of Allan Hunters looking menacing, but not entirely multiverse-conquering, in the court of Búa King of Uncertain Dimensions. For the most part, the Wightlingfolk looked rather relaxed, despite Gruelmaker waving The Weapon around somwhat carelessly.

To be sure Leonard The Almighty, says Búa, you seem to have thought of most things. Well done you.

“But not entirely everything,” argued Lenny’s twin brother, Jimmy, “because while you may have Nev and Sindy here, me and Audio have been in the court for some time, and scores keep coming. Not to mention the pretty pictures. By my reckoning, there is still an Audio operating in the Real Life, and so by logical extension, there is probably still an Inevitable Syndicate, somewhere.”

“Blah blah, blah blah, blah de blah de blah.” It was Mono, not being quite so Almighty, more an almighty child for mimicking his twin in such a mean and dismissive way. Just then Captain Allan of The Allan Hunter squadron came bustling in to court. You could tell he was a captain by his authoritative demeanor and the orange insignia on his epaulets. He marched over to Mono without so much as a glance at his hosts the Wightlings, almost as if he considered Wight Spit already under occupation. The captain and Mono exchanged a sort of slightly awkward wavey arm-up salute (clearly they hadn’t been practicing as much as they should) and the captain reported that the supporting hordes were in place outside the gates of Wight.

The Conglomerated Tribes

“Well then, King of Uncertain Dimensions, it seems I have the place surrounded.” The criminal mastermind and evil genius looked tremendously confident of his position now. Quite right, too. The Conglomerated Tribes were at the gate. How Mono had managed to summon such a mysterious host of despairing catholic theological thinkers might be a complete mystery were it not for me adopting the narrative device of omniscient narrator. It falls quite within my power to explain that the Tribalists had contacted Jimmy Costello quite early in the cycle of this quantum entanglement to suggest they knew precisely what was going on and what Jimmy was up to¹. Jimmy had attempted to establish who the anonymous Tribalist was, without success, and in the meantime Lenny, who as everyone knows was quite able to hack Jimmy’s computer accounts, intercepted the telegram and by ways most cunning was able to persuade the Tribesfolk to join him in the conquest of the multiverse. Lenny, not such a stickler for detail as his OCD brother, really hadn’t considered the identity of the Tribalists at all, and frankly, didn’t give much of a feck about it, either.

There was a beeping noise coming from Homer Simpson, who was Búa in disguise. Well, since everyone knew it was Búa, it was more fancy dress than disguise.

My pager, says Búa, by way of explanation.

“Pager?!” asked Mono, sharing the whole court’s bafflement.

An elf gave it me, says the King of Uncertain Dimensions, they are the very latest tech down in Valanora, you know. That and swords. Very popular… It’s from Hemingway up on The Watch, he wants us to call him. Says we’re surrounded.

“Didn’t I tell you that already?” asked Mono, and then, turning to the audience, “didn’t I say I had you surrounded?”

Hassan i Sabbah the Master Assassin and First Lieutenant of Búa called up the watch, and reported back the situation without the walls of Wight. “We’re surrounded,” he said.

Hassan explained that the host of The Conglomerated Tribes were all about the place outside the walls. Hemingway had not seen them coming, they just sort of appeared. Nobody had heard from them for years, and then, boom, millions upon millions of them, and what a cacophony. Like the bleak rock faces of the northern hemisphere when the gannets are feeding their chicks. But with a tone of existential doubt in a distinctly Cafundeulense accent. Once they had arrived, set up their siege engines and banners and geo-sat guided missile emplacements, they had fallen to arguing after the ontological fashion. Hemingway told Hassan it was a dreadful racket and while he had tried to shoo them away with minor insults and misdirections about the nature of consciousness in sentient bubbles, they simply weren’t listening. It looked like they might be there for some time. Hemingway said it was the worst inundation since The Oneiromancer had come to tea and smashed the place up.

“Alright then, it seems I have all the aces. I will ask you only once,” said Mono, “surrender this reality to Leonard The Almoghty and the glory of twinculture, or cease to exist.”

Erm, Almoghty? wondered Búa who looked like Homer Simpson.

“A typo, dammit. Gruelmaker? Prepare the shot.”

Gruelmaker raised The Weapon, pointed it square at the giant obese yellow cartoon character on the Throne of Several Realities, closed one eye, and sighted down the barrel at the King of Uncertain Dimensions.

“Time is up,” said Mono.

1.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:07 am

Gruelmaker raised The Weapon, pointed it square at the giant obese yellow cartoon character on the Throne of Several Realities, closed one eye, and sighted down the barrel at the King of Uncertain Dimensions.

“Time is up,” said Mono.

LETTER TO THE BASILEUS
c/o Fr. Eusebius Who Always Burns The Lentils
The Office of The Purple Inkstain
The Holy Asylum

Hey, Al, erm, how are you, and all that?

Well, look, this is awkward. Just a quick note – I don’t have much time (busy you see, being omnipotent and all, it’s quite demanding, infinitely time consuming, hmm?).

The thing is, well, we’ve had a bit of a break down over here. You know, minor thing, just, erm, stalled our reality. Could do with a bit of a jump start. Normally I would fix it myself, of course, but, ah, I seem to have run out of the right parts. You know how it is. You get so darned busy doing, um, stuff, and you don’t get time to get down the store, the subjects are misbehaving and running riot… and whaddaya know? Your temporal-spatial construct develops a fault, you run into the shed to get a revelation that will hotwire into the narrative, boom… it was on your shopping list. And you look at your watch – flipping closed. Even the 7/11 Dimensions convenience store is shut at this diegetic time. Awkward.

So what am I saying here? Is there any chance you can send your boys Juan Chimichanga and Simeone di Bradini out to save the multiverse? Look, I know they are already saving the multiverse somewhere else, but this should only take a few aeons of their time. You can send me the bill.

Probably best tell Simeone that we are collectively sorry for his cavity search at Spit International Airport during the World Under-21s, bit of a misunderstanding, that.

Also, for knocking The Archregimancy and The Holy Empire out of the last World Cup. And for calling you Monty Burns. Unnecessary.

Details of the latest multiversal disaster-waiting-to-happen are enclosed with this letter. It’s all about twins making a flipping mess of things. Which reminds me, I’d like to redact my statement about you and Kronos of The Void being relatives. Petulant. I see that now.

As for the continual jokes about Abrahamism, and the general blasphemy, well, we do our best, of course,

Kind regards,

Búa
Dictated to Gregoire L’Erreur (I’m in a bit of a pickle at the moment – B)

PS – And no, I don’t really think you are a two-headed schizophrenic tyrant. That was a foolish remark in an unguarded moment that should never have been quoted.

PPS – Don’t hesitate to correct my grammar – I’m an inveterate apostrophile.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:30 am

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Boil, Bake & Roast

Gruelmaker raised The Weapon, pointed it square at the giant obese yellow cartoon character on the Throne of Several Realities, closed one eye, and sighted down the barrel at the King of Uncertain Dimensions.

“Time is up,” said Mono.

“Not quite,” interjected Gregoire L’Erreur, the uninvited clerk and unelected timekeeper in the court of Wight Spit, “we have a good thirty hours before deadline for the cut-off.”

The whole court turned to look at the timid man with the Montrealaise accent who, despite his timidity, always managed to get an interruption in at critical moments. He shrugged awkwardly. “I may have made a bit of an error with the days. We seem to have had an extra one over the weekend.”

“What is it with you and the time?” asked Mono, before adding “no, don’t answer, I don’t need to know. Gruelmaker, do you have the shot?”

“I have the shot, Almighty boss,” said the former Gregistani goalkeeper.

“Then, Búa King of Uncertain Dimensions, and Jimmy ‘Bedwetter’ Costello, time really is up…”

“I’m not having that,” shouted Jimmy, “you were the bedwetter, you little f-”

“History is written by the victors, Jim. That would be me, in this case.”

Storm Clan

The brothers proceeded to argue childishly about bedwetting, nose-picking, cross-dressing and other awkward moments from their shared family history. I will not repeat it here, since it was all rather embarrassing. Not the sort of thing an evil genius and his world-building alter-ego should be wrangling about in such a public forum. It did them no credit.

“This does you no credit,” said John The Baptist, Third Lieutenant of Búa, “especially at the apex of an apocalyptic narrative where we ought to be getting down to the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of finding a cunning plot twist and a decent revelation to avert this seemingly unavoidable crisis and an apparently certain defeat for the good guys. Can we get back on mission, Brothers Costello?”

“What?” said Jimmy.

“What?” said Lenny. “You think there is some kind of salvation, Headless John? You think I’m going to blow world domination at the last moment? No, no, it’s alright, I get the message, you have so little faith in my criminal masterplan and my cunning genius that you think it will all neatly turn around and you’ll all live happily ever after, right?”

“Well, that’s not what I meant, exactly…” said John, obviously reluctant to get into a stand-up row with Mono, or to be construed as insulting his genius, however evil. “What I meant was - ”

“Can it, water boy. Don’t try to talk your way out of it. You were clearly suggesting I’m not up to the task. What, you think I can’t prepare a devious plan to take over the multiverse, is that it? You think I’ve missed a vital element, or left a hole in the strategy, do you?”

“Now, now,” said Hassan, “don’t pick on The Baptist. It’s just, well, look, nice plan and all, but… you, and him over there with the big Weapon, and a few Allan Hunters dressed in black and orange? I’m not sure that’s going to cut the mustard, Leonard The Almighty.” He flashed his pearly white assassin’s grin.

Mono nodded slowly, as if to savour the moment. “Just me and Gruelmaker and the Allan Hunter, is it?” Something was coming, that’s for sure. They could all feel it. “Just me, the goalkeeper, the foot soldiers… AND THE STORM CLAN!”

The three blood-stained iron-toothed dead bears walking - Mufaddal Meshach Khoroushi, Elifalet Behrouz Eliphelet and Daryawesh – all brought themselves up on their rear legs and roared a soul-curdling bellow that rang through the granite halls of Wight Spit. Their great iron claws were drawn in anger, and they pulled the most frightful faces at the other three bears. Each seemed to materialise a great cudgel into their giant fist, the size of a man and draped in rattling chains, and no-one in the court thought of them as anything but invincible, and tremendously angry. If you were on the side of the bad guys, it was an impressive sight indeed.

At the precise same moment, The Valhallan pulled two automatic pistols from out of thin air, jumped to attention, and pointed one gun each straight at the heads of Jimmy ‘Wight’ Costello and Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne.

“Erm, you’re not Storm Clan, are you?” asked Jimmy, confused.

P’tuh! spat the handsome Scandinavian with a previously unnoticed Techno-Viking beard.

“He is mine!” said Mono with overbearing pride.

“Rrrrrrarrrghhhhhhssmussen!” roared The Valhallan. He gave the impression of telling Mono that in fact he was not to be owned by anyone, including the Monozygotes, but was willing to lend a hand if it meant the overthrow of Wight who had robbed him of a first World Cup win. Or something like that. And then he spat again. Emphatically. P’TUH!

“Very well, Valhallan, let’s call you a junior partner. No, no, [as The Valhallan inhaled deeply for another angry roar] more ‘an interested party’, hmm? Yes? Good. Excellent. Gruelmaker, do you have the shot?”

“I have the shot, Almighty boss,” said the former Gregistani goalkeeper.

The Basileus

Erm, says Búa, with a slight look of panic on his Homeric face, to the clerk Gregoire L’Erreur, any word from the Basileus? Now would be a good time.

“What’s all this now?” said Mono, irritated.

“Erm, well, yes my King and Welder of Realities, but it’s not especially good news, he’s pretty much leaving you to it. Although he did send through a handy diagram.”

Ah, now, says Búa, relaxing a little, I do like a good diagrammatic illustration.

“The thing is,” said Gregoire, in his Montrealaise accent, “all things considered, I’m not sure we have time for it.”

Again with the timekeeping, Gregoire, wonders Búa, by my count we have thirty seven minutes to cut-off. Although where those thirty hours went I shall never know. Frittered away while we all stand here in this peculiar impasse.

“There is something in that, my King and Friend, but rather I was simply thinking about that gun you have pointed straight at your face.”

Ah, says Búa, why, thanks for reminding me.

Mono lost his temper. “For the love of the jumping monkey, but can you shut up and let me have my gloating final victors quip in peace? Anyone would think I wasn’t here, let alone about to destroy the multiverse!”

You’re quite right, says Búa, terribly inhospitable of me. Call myself a host? – he looks sideways at Audio – I should think not. Now then, how about we have a nice long chat, while you get young Gruelmaker Of The Many Cuts here to go polish his massive weapon.

“I think not, Welder. "I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Gruelmaker, do you have the shot?”

“I still have the shot, Almighty boss,” said the former Gregistani goalkeeper.

George RR Martin

There was an outbreak of mild kerfuffling at the back of the court room.

Mono huffed impatiently. He was getting a bit fed up with all this disruption to his multiversal take-over. The court at Wight Spit was, even in the middle of a zombie-ursine apocalyptic crisis, preposterously chaotic. How was an evil genius supposed to concentrate? “What now?” – it was hard to keep from shouting.

Captain Allan of The Allan Hunter squadron bustled up with a guest. It was the Shade of George RR Martin, who had apparently come to see the job done. He had a special interest in this sort of thing, he said.

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” howled Homeric Búa, miserably. Mono smiled triumphantly.

“No, he has a point,” said Hassan, still looking at his King and Friend who seemed to be unusually despairing. “It’s a good pun, because it’s probably true. The presentiment of Martin here would indicate very slim survival chances for anyone. Including you, Gruelmaker, if you take the shot.”

“I won’t even bother asking,” said Audio, thinking of home, “what’s the point?”

Everywhere about the court, the duality of characters eyed each other with suspicion. Obviously, the bad guys were less suspicious, because they had the guns. And the backing of The Allan Hunter, with their marvellous utility belts.

Mono wasn’t buying Hassan’s ruse. “Gruelmaker, do you have the shot?”

“Yessum,” said the former Gregistani goalkeeper.

“Then take it, dammit. Before we have any more interruptions.”

Gruelmaker squeezed the trigger on The Weapon.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:46 am

“Gruelmaker, do you have the shot?”

“Yessum,” said the former Gregistani goalkeeper.

“Then take it, dammit. Before we have any more interruptions.”

Gruelmaker squeezed the trigger on The Weapon.

Wight 1-2 The Inevitable Syndicate (aet; FT:1-1)
Flynn Arena, Fligsive, Inevitabilia
Falcon 10’ / Powell 71’, Pratt 103’

Tommy Woodroffe the drunken sports anchor at the Wightling World Service summarised the action in The Inevitable Syndicate thus:

Beaten by a Pratt, Con!

To which the analyst Con Houlihan replied: “In a word, Tommy?

“*@&!??!+±?@$%@!!!”

Aaaaaand… that’s all folks, good job. Well done.

There was a round of applause from the cast, including the audience of hundreds of courtiers who were also, of course, part of the cast. Stella Staff of the First & Last Service Station Café, who had been hired to do the catering, wheeled in a tray full of cups and urns of tea, coffee and hot water. Stella’s assistant Ofra was following behind with biscuits and the players of the Stockett Ensemble gathered round to get themselves some refreshment. Stage assistants hauled off the heads of the six bears so the actors inside could get some air; Búa, Hassan and Gregoire L’Erreur went off stage left to get a good shot at the bar; the Assistant to Mr. Gruelmaker brought over a bucket of antisceptic and began dabbing at his thousand cuts; Nev and Sindy agreed they would do a quick tour of the Granite Halls with some of The Allan Hunter, and Brian Blessed Cloned offered to be their guide; Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne, Jimmy, Mono and Orson Worthing decided to head back to the Real-Lifers trailer for a game of cards and invited The Valhallan along, but he spat – p‘tuh! – at Jimmy and headed for the bar.

“These method actors,” said Mono, shaking his head.

Half an hour later, as Audio got a royal flush on Staves and fancied himself to clear out the pot, Homer Simpson put his head around the door.

We’re getting a callback chaps, says Homer, there has been a discussion in the bar and The Director would like to do the final scenes. She would like you all on set in five.

Soon enough, the cast of The Stockett Ensemble were assembled back in their rightful places, make-up retouched, and, in the case of the bears, heads studded back into place.

Well done all for getting back into character so promptly. Let’s take it from the top of scene fourteen – Season To Taste – and Mr. Gruelmaker, you are about to finally get your shot off at Homer Simpson. Alright, is everyone ready? Do you have the shot, Mr. Gruelmaker? Let’s have quiet on the set please… fingers to keyboard… aaannnnnndddd… type…

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Season to Taste

“Gruelmaker, do you have the shot?”

“Yessum,” said the former Gregistani goalkeeper.

“Then take it, dammit. Before we have any more interruptions.”

Gruelmaker squeezed the trigger on The Weapon.

There was a deep bass rumble, like a gathering storm channeling into a full stop. Everyone looked at the weapon as it discharged… a small flag spring-loaded onto an iron rod. It was the flag of The Inevitable Syndicate.

There was a stunned silence in the court. Mono looked upward, to the rough direction he imagined he would be looking at the writer, Jimmy Costello, in a different dimension. He sighed deeply, as with great frustration.

“Jimmy, damn it,” he shouted, at the ceiling, and no-one, and me, the author, “I thought we had an agreement. Destroy Wight, you said.”

“What?” said Jimmy Costello, the other one, the one pulled into Wight Spit by Mono, “What are you talking about you mad fool, I made no such agreement!”

“Not you, you idiot. Why do you think you are here? Because you are the bit of Wight that won’t destroy itself. You are the conscience of Wight. Jimmy Costello up there just wants rid of the whole damn thing, and I’m supposed to be doing it for him,” – Mono looked up again to nowhere – “if only you would give me the bloody tools to do it, for the sake of the hairy river dolphin!”

OOC: Here’s the thing. That weapon was supposed to blow Búa’s head off, and Mono was supposed to win although they would all be destroyed in an apocalyptic explosion of over-cooked Bolognese; then I would go through the forums, and re-edit every single one of my 1088 posts, with a tiny font size=1 full stop (or period, for the colonial types) and then CTE never to return. But somehow, when I came back to my RP text on OpenOffice, it has been re-edited to what you’ve just read above. I’m wondering if Lenny/Mono, my troublesome twin, has made a copy of the door key and let himself in to my bedsit. Well, I decided not to rewrite it. The multiverse has been messing with me lately and I’m not about to mess back.

“Wait,” said Lenny Costello, or Mono, “you mean that Weapon would’ve killed us all? That wasn’t part of the agreement.”

OOC: Of course, I didn’t tell Mono he would be wiped out too. I have no intention of deleting Wight and letting Monozygotia carry on.

This is all well and good, says Búa, with a frown, but I think I may be losing track. So Jimmy the author wanted to destroy everything. And Mono wanted to be the destroyer and he didn’t know the weapon was going to kill him too, which means he didn’t rewrite the text in OpenOffice – whatever that is. It was of no benefit to him to stop the weapon from discharging, at least so far as he knew. So who switched the weapon, then?

“Surely, my King and Friend,” said John The Baptist, Third Lieutenant of Búa, “this could only have been done by you, the Omnipotent one in the room? This is a practical joke, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” said Audio, “since there is a bit of a lull in the action, I might be permitted to go home now?”

Sindy called out from where the Allan Hunter had her under guard, “Haven’t you seen the results, Audio? It’s too late for you. You’re out.”

The Valhallan let out a mighty triumphant Viking sort of belly laugh.

“As are you,” said Mono, spitefully, to Nev and Sindy. Nev sobbed, the big Jessie, and Sindy comforted him.

It wasn’t me who switched the Weapon, says Búa, nervously ruffling his three-haired comb-over.

Orson Worthing strode bodly into the middle of the seemingly transfixed room, with his pith helmet and his white cotton slacks, and that melodious voice of his. “It seems to me that what we have here is a classic whodunit, with a room full of suspects, and the crime – well, the crime is there is no crime, so far as we can tell, except that of disrupting the narrative. And probably some punctuation, certainly where Búa is concerned.”

“Oh come on,” said Mono, with irritation, “we’re practically at the end of the story, we don’t have time for one of those parlour inquiries. Just tell me who stole my facking weapon, give it the fack back, and let me ice this place, even if it ices me. I’m just about at the end of my facking tether.”

The uninvited clerk with the Montrealaise accent and the inclination to interrupt at vital moments, Gregoire L’Erreur, stepped forward, timidly clearing his throat.

I switched the weapon, says Gregoire.

“What?!” said the Homeric Búa, in a grammatic style that was not really his own.

“What?!” exclaimed Mono, and several others, at the same time.

OOC: What?!

I changed the text, in that other dimension, says Gregoire, I switched the weapon in this one. This here is not Homer Simpson in disguise as Búa. This is just Homer Simpson. Read back through all 30,566 words of this story (30571 now, and so on). He has just been a passive spectator. Not one moment of omnipotence. I am the one who has continually referenced cut-offs, I am the one who knows what time it really is. I am the only one who could change the text in another dimension. Hassan, do you not recognise me?

Hassan laughed his shining deadly white laugh, and slapped his thigh. “By the jumping monkey, I did not, but I see it now. And here was me thinking you were another Real-Lifer, NMS to be precise!”

New Montreal States was my inspiration. The errorists.

“Will someone tell me what is going on here?” cried out the intensely frustrated Mono.

OOC: Me too, dammit!

Does it not all become clear now? The clerk is not a Montrealaise intern, nor even NMS himself in disguise – the clerk is Búa, King of Uncertain Dimensions.

“That whole time,” said John The Baptist, wonder in his tone, “you sat there cajoling the story along, watching out for the moment, flipping dimensions… and passing off Homer Simpson – HOMER BLINKING SIMPSON – as you in disguise. You are cunning, my King and Friend. Though you could’ve had us win through to another World Cup final. Polar Islandstates again.”

The Valhallan spat – p’tuh! – and then remembered the semi-final scores, and laughed like a Dane.

Yes, says Gregoire-Búa looking at Audio, that would’ve been nice. But I was so busy cooking up this Quantum Spaghetti that it just escaped me. Shall we call it free will and leave it at that? That seems to work for other supernatural supreme beings when they mess things up or forget to put out the cat before bed.

OOC: Damn, but you are good, Búa. This whole thing with Allan Hunter, and Masvidal. That was you? I thought I was making you up, but you have been running the show all along. Did you engineer that meeting with Audio outside Caffé Nero on Mansfield Road in Nottingham, then?

Here’s the thing Jimmy, says Búa, why don’t you just get on with finishing up this story now, and stop talking to yourself in a public forum. You’ll have people fearing for your sanity.

And so DI Romeo Noall was summoned to court, and he placed Mono under house arrest. Later, Mono would stand trial at Jaquse Yioux’s Travelling Show and Kangaroo Court, where he would plead guilty to being an accessory to attempted multiversal destruction. The penalty for that would be the CTE of his nation, Monozygotia. The population of the country, of course, would be welcomed to Wight as were the dead of all CTE’d nations, to live out their surprising eternity in a pungent kind of paradise that was, after all, just the imagination of a sentient reality bubble floating through space and time. Of Mono himself, well, he was deemed to be suitably interesting and amusing that his sentence of oblivion was commuted, and he was told to serve three thirty-eighths of an eternity at Le Tissier Penal Colony where he would be reformed into a no less interesting but slightly safer character. Gruelmaker his sidekick, being both dim and tremendously interesting to look at with all those cuts, was forgiven all crimes and invited to become a valued member of the court.

Now, what of the Real-Lifers?

A man in a toga who looked especially Greek came to court, and over his toga he was wearing a high-viz bib, and he had a hard hat on his head. He was carrying a giant ball of string, about the size of a garden shed, but more round and stringy. Several strands led out the door of the hall as it was unraveling as he walked. He struggled over to the centre of the court and dropped the giant ball of string, complaining volubly about his poor old back. Sticking out of the ball were several strands, the loose ends each with a label on it.

It was Daedalus. “Right then, if you grab hold of the bit of string labeled for you, and follow it back, you should be in real life in a jiffy,” he said, with a surprisingly Pinewood Studio pre-war British accent.

There were labels for Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne, Orson Worthing, Nev & Sindy, and The Valhallan.

Not you, Jimmy, says Búa, looking pleasingly scurrilous in his swashbuckling court get-up of silks and jewels and face tattoos, just the way we like him. We haven’t quite decided what to do with you yet, and I’m thinking you might be useful insurance, should Jimmy Costello the writer get silly thoughts in his head of destroying Wight again. I’ve got an epilogue in mind that we’ll post tomorrow before the World Cup final, and that should sort us all out squared up.

The other Real-Lifers began unraveling the giant ball of string, and eventually, disappeared out of the great hall at Granite Spit, following their paths back to the proper dimensions. “I will win a world cup one day, dammit!” shouted The Valhallan just before he disappeared.

by **Miskatonic University** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 9:53 am

QUANTUM SPAGHETTI
Desserts

The Conglomerated Tribes

Hemingway came down from the watch.

“There is still the issue,” he explained to Búa, King of Uncertain Dimensions, “of The Conglomerated Tribes, that inundate the vista every which way out of Wight with their obsessive ruminations on dualism. What are we to do with them?”

Hmm, says Búa. Do we still have that biplane in the hangar down in Icke?

Several hours later, a bright yellow biplane buzzed over the unnumbered horde of the Conglomerated Tribes. It was pulling a banner behind it: "Almost the whole of Wight Futilitarianism could perhaps be deduced from two facts (a) That men make coarse jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny."

The tribesmen read the misquotation of C.S.Lewis. Well then, they said in various forms of slight variation, that settles it. They packed up their banners and their mortar launchers, and ambled home.

The House of Daedalus

But, I hear you cry, what of the Real-Lifers? As we all know, they existed in two places at once, so surely, to send those trapped in Enness back to Real Life will create one of those multiverse-threatening paradoxes all over again? We can’t, I hear you wail, put up with another day of this preposterous nonsense!

It’s alright. To be honest, I couldn’t put up with another day of writing it. Everything is going to be just fine, and there won’t be two Audios, or four Nev and Sindys, or duplicate Valhallans or Orson Worthings. You will recall the House of Daedalus as being an infinitely large multicursal palace in which one might easily become lost and almost certainly never find a way home from. Every door leads to a different world, in a different time-space continuum, and the chances of your finding the right one – unless Jimmy and Lenny Costello are messing about with the multiverse – is slightly less than zero. Now, cunning Búa and his Greek friend Daedalus hatched a plan. And when the Real-Lifers left the court at Wight Spit, following a piece of string apparently back to their own dimensions, they were in fact following the cunning plan. Each one found their string took them to a door in a different part of the granite fortress, and pinned to each door, a photocopy of a an A4 sheet on which had been hand written in scratchy writing the letters RL. On the other side of the door, they would find a corridor, and along that corridor, an infinite number of other doors. If they changed their mind, and turned back, and reopened the door to Wight Spit, they would find it no longer led to Wight Spit but to some other place. And every other door would open into a different world. They had been led into The House of Daedalus – and they would not be coming back to into their own worlds any time soon. Neither would they ever come across one another in that vast house – they were infinitely distant from each other, and would, soon enough, need to pass into a world to eat, drink, or use the bathroom facilities, however bathroom facilities worked in that world.

Once they had passed into that world, only a meeting with Daedalus would give them any hope of coming out. As Sean Bean might have said in a slightly different dimension, one does not simply walk into The House of Daedalus. (One needs an invitation).

Where did they go? What happened to the alter egos of Danny ‘Audio’ Byrne, The Valhallan, Nev, Sindy, and Orson Worthing? We may never know. Or perhaps, just perhaps, Audioslavia, Polar Islandstates, The Inevitable Syndicate or Bears Armed will pick up this cue and tell us all, next time we are gathered round the metaphorical camp fire of the Enness World Cup, and someone has the bright idea to tell a story.

The Standard Mk II Fourth Wall Reassembler

Finally, The Clone of Richard Dawkins, Head of IT in Wight Spit, came to court with a working Mk II Fourth Wall Reassembler, constructed from a drawing provided by The Holy Asylum using some IKEA shelving, a few electrical relays, a miniature model dalek and a potato generously provided by The Onset of Terry Pratchett, who loved nothing more than a spot of root vegetable cultivation. Professor Dawkins powered it up, and the following statements were issued out of it, in good time:

Feel free to TG if there is anything unresolved that troubles you. I must thank Astograth, United Gordonopia, Audioslavia and The Inevitable Syndicate who knew what I was up to before the tournaments (BoF & WC) started and were quite supportive of me hijacking the OOC convention to my own ends. Also Polar Islandstates as WC President and Arch as our neighbourhood Mod, both of whom gave valuable guidance, again before I started, on what would be acceptable in terms of messing with identities, and what might be taking the whole thing too far. Pretty sure I stayed within the acceptable limits. Thanks also to Audio and PI for playing along both in the forum and, as I understand it, in IRC. Bears Armed, Gregoryisgodistan, and ASMV lent me characters for which I’m grateful (although I couldn’t fit in Mace "Mr. Karaoke" Kinoz'gh, this time around). Several people sent me nice supportive TGs at different times when it appeared I was either being abused by a malicious twin or losing my sanity, I feel bad for the deception but grateful that those people cared enough to get in touch – so thank you and sorry…

And that, I feel, should close all the holes in the multiverse, and reassemble the fourth wall according to traditional conventions.

The Hole That Mono Found

All the holes, that is, except the hole that Mono found during his stay at the Le Tissier Penal Colony. By highly unlikely chance, he turned over a rock whilst out ‘exercising’ in the quarry, and peered down into a large and inviting rabbit hole. A quick glance around confirmed that no-one was watching at that particular moment. Sensing an escape opportunity, Mono scrambled into the hole, and plunged down into a tunnel which led out into a corridor with many, many doors.

He did not answer at roll call, and was not seen again despite extensive searching.

Wight Sporting Journal

Wight Sporting Journal

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Part Thirteen

Part Fourteen

Part Fifteen

Part Sixteen

Part Seventeen

Part Eighteen

Part Nineteen

Part Twenty

Part Twenty-One

Part Twenty-Two

Part Twenty-Three

Part Twenty-Four

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