Category: Interludes
Flip the order!
Interlude PART 2 - Intermission wars.
Guys!
Everything is still okay!
I think it is time to reveal to you the many plans that swirl beautifully around the bathtub of the inner mind, in space.
Here are the illustrations for Chapter One of Saga Of The European King:
But hold your horses and nail down your hats, fellows, because that's not all! Here is the first of many Kingcasts - mysterious objects that play a recording of a particular chapter in the Saga when moved to do so.
On these words lies the Kingcast for the very first chapter.
And here is a special, crazy preview of what lies ahead in the special, crazy future of Chapter 11.
And on that same vein, here are some freestylin' character studies of all of your favourite SOTEK (As we call it in the office) characters, except if your favourite character is a girl or Cajun. The man behind most of the voices is called Mano Camatsos. He used to be my neighbour.
Click to awaken:
- Guest starring my housemate (and friend, I guess), Kasia.
and finally,
That should keep everyone busy for a little while. Is it the required etiquette to tell everyone that the voice workshops are NSFW? They contain swearing and some outrageous stereotypes. Also, canonicity is questionable!
More story soon. You deserve it!
Interlude - On the edge of Giant War
Hey everyone in the world and you, I think this story is going great. So great that I'm going to stop it for a while to get some drawings and recordings done. That's right. The King and his story are going to be represented in other media than plain old boring text. This will make it easier to tell your friends about the King and to make them understand.
But don't worry, I won't be away for long. Every part of me burns to tell the rest of this story and to answer the questions that may be sprouting in your manymind -
Who is the traitor?
Is there really going to be a Civil War? How awful!
What's Terrorthaw up to in the Ancient Past? No good, I expect.
How's Axe Axewound doing, is he okay?
I miss Sally Minefield! (Not really a question)
Is the King going to get his Super-Chastity back?
When are they going to kill Winter, please?
What's up with Scruff? Is he magic?
When is Ba'al coming back?
What's the Cowboy Angel got planned for the Old Man?
There are probably other questions and I'm going to answer them too. I'll also be filling in the old chapters with the illustrations and recordings I'm making, but I'll tell you when those happen.
Things are about to get awesome and sad.
Interlude - Okay guys, let's just take a second here.
Alright everyone. This Saga has been good so far. Stuff has happened. People have learned lessons about life. Sally died. I think it's a pretty good time for us to sit out a chapter and remember all the stuff that has happened and the lessons we've learned and that time Sally died.
Okay – the basics are like this: There's this King and he's so nice and great to his people and just about everyone else that he's decided to just up and kill Winter because Winter makes the people of Europe cold and miserable EVERY year. Imagine if you knew someone who came out and made everyone you knew cold and miserable on a regular basis and you also had the power to kill that someone with no impunity because you were in charge of a lot of stuff. You'd want to kill that guy too. It's a pretty logical course of action.
So the King gathered up his Adventure Friends – his most trusted and greatest companions who have talents and abilities and pasts and everything – as well as half a million soldiers to help him out with the Winter problem.
These are the Adventure Friends:
The King (King, Level 50)
Equipped: Cutty the Sword
Item: Wooden hands
Colonel Glowfist (Archmage, Level 35)
Equipped: Infernal Gauntlet
Item: Licence to Kick Ass
Axe Axewound (Axe warrior, Level 37)
Equipped: Magical Flaming Axe
Item: Amulet of Returning Axe
Father Dominoes (Priest, Level 55)
Equipped: Gold Bible
Item: Scarf of Strength
Sally Minefield (Thief, Level 2)
Equipped: Sneaky knife, Stealth Crossbow
Item: Amulet of breathing underwater (it’s blue)
Gappy (Reindeer, Level 10)
Equipped: Reindeer antlers
Item: Magic glittery reins
The King left his girlfriend and son behind in Brussels (Europe's capital city) and everything was cool and smooth for about two seconds before they were attacked by birds. Birds had been a problem in Europe ever since Terrorthaw – a man who was once the King's friend but had since become his coolest villain – had summoned them from some terrible place and made them do his bidding.
Colonel Glowfist, the King's powerful and totally friendly and handome archmage (which is like a wizard) cast a pretty huge spell and ate the attacking birds and become so disgustingly fat that it was a wonder he could do anything at all. No, seriously, he was huge. You better hope right now that you don't become fat by magic like that. Okay, two birds came into contact with the King during the big fight with the Adventure Friends. Their names were Gadfly and Formation. They haven't got a lot of screen time in the Saga yet, but they are kind of important. They are leading a Revolution Of Good Birds and clearing the name of birds across Europe and doing good deeds and such. The first thing they did was to lead the King straight to Terrorthaw, who had turned an entire European town into a new body. Terrorthaw kidnapped the King and his sword, Cutty and went off to attack Brussels with an army of gypsies. The Adventure Friends had to take a shortcut through Hell to get there before Terrorthaw. The Devil was a friend of the King, so that was cool. The Adventure Friends gained a new member in Hell – Roxy Tripfoot, who was a strong female character (in contrast to Sally Minefield, who got knocked out in every fight) and was released from Hell when her heart was filled with love for the King. The Adventure Friends, the Devil and the King's young son David fought Terrorthaw to a spectacular standstill. Roxy Tripfoot turned Terrorthaw's gypsy army to the King's side – turns out that Roxy Tripfoot was the Queen of the Gypsies back when the gypsies were cool.
There was sadness, though. Father Dominoes stayed behind in Hell as part of the Devil's plan to set up a system of missions across his domain. The King was so upset about this that he made a scene in a restaurant. He also decided to bring David along with him so that he'd be safer and could train under Colonel Glowfist to be a King that could do magic. In need of cheering up, he led the Adventure Friends to the town of Jerusalem, which was presided over by Mayor Michael, the King's mud-brother. Jerusalem was famous for its huge and tasty parties and the King pledged to throw the most awesome party of all time. Legendary musicians Burzum and Leonard Cohen were recruited to the party effort and the Desert God Ba'al was beaten up and made to join the Adventure Friends. The party went off without a hitch, except that the combined music of the King, the Adventure Friends, Michael's band, Leonard Cohen and Buzum propelled the stage to the Moon. On a city on the Moon, they met the King's ex-wife, Oranje, who was pretty pissed off about something. She used her son, David to wound the King emotionally. One of the King's hearts was shattered and Leonard Cohen had to take command of the Adventure Friends. He did pretty well, although even Leonard Cohen was taken in by Carolyn, Oranje's malevolent boss. Carolyn was keeping her husband, Ric, suspended out in space so that she could use his loneliness to keep her powerful. The King thwarted this plan by recovering at the last second and eating Ric and dealing with all the loneliness himself. Carolyn was defeated and the Moon city began to crumble. Leonard Cohen sacrificed himself so that everyone could make it off the Moon and so Burzum had to step up to become the new Leonard Cohen. The King helped everyone who had been made homeless by his antics by building them a new city – the city of Ric. This was cool for a while, but when it came time to move on, the Adventure Friends discovered that they had built their new city very close to Romania – the cursed homeland of the gypsies. Michael and his band left for Jerusalem and haven't been around since. Axe Axewound, Gappy, Sally Minefield and Gappy were bitten by werewolves and became cursed, which caused some embarrassing situations, although David was a very cute wolf-boy.
The Draculas who lived in Romania were responsible for cursing the gypsies , so of course Roxy Tripfoot had to go and insist on the King beating up on them until they took it back. The King found out that the Dracula King himself had been the one behind the curse, so he pulled some strings to gather up his army that he had left behind at the party in Jerusalem, invented basketball and then stormed the Dracula King's castle. What happened at that point was truly epic. It was the fight of a lifetime. It had everything. Sally Minefield died when she set off a lightning trap in the castle, which was sad, but nearly half a million soldiers died fighting zombies and you can't mourn for everyone. It turned out that Oranje had been and done the Dracula King and stolen the amulet whose power could save the gypsies. It seemed necessary to the King at the time to turn into Super King and fly off after Oranje in her rocket ship. The Dracula King's castle collapsed, the King was missing, the gypsies were still cursed and it was basically a real low down bummer. The Adventure Friends started to fight among themselves and the surviving portion of the King's army set off back to Brussels.
An important thing that had also happened was that General Majesty and Mechanicus – two guys who would be on the Adventure Friend team if they hadn't been picked to carry out a vital mission – were stuck up in the Chillinous Plains, right in Winter's backyard. They had built a fortress and had a ginormous garrison of soldiers there, but since the King had been sidetracked on the Moon and in Romania and hadn't met the rendezvous that would have started the attack against Winter, there wasn't a lot they could do. It wasn't long before they came under assault from ceaseless waves of hostile animals from a nearby wood. The attack vexed even the tremendous engineering and military skills of the pair and after two years of continuous assault of steadily escalating ferocity, Mechanicus and General Majesty were forced to flee into the future. Mechanicus could travel in time, by the way. He was from the far-off future. They found themselves in the ruins of the fortress, three years hence from current events. They were confronted by Terrorthaw, who announced that he had stolen Mechanicus' time-travel ship and disappeared. That's going to be important later on, so don't forget that.
Okay. So the King had chased his ex-wife all the way to the Southern Continent of the United States (which is the Medieval version of South America) but he ended up getting captured by Vikincas and Oranje escaped. Vikincas are Vikings who settled down in the New World and displaced the native peoples. Oh, and Oranje was apparently so pissed off because the King had locked their daughter in a windowless tower a few years ago. He had a perfectly good reason for this, but Oranje just didn't want to see that. The King spent two years in a Viking jail / temple and this kind of messed up all of the plans re: Winter. It was during this two year gap that General Majesty and Mechanicus got attacked and when Axe Axewound ran off to have a jolly good romp with some forest animals that culminated in him eating a guy. Axe Axewound now has a few thousand animal friends who follow him around everywhere. They are a darn nuisance.
Axe Axewound met up with the King just as he escaped the Vikincas. He had been given a message from on high. Trappy, the King's old lion friend, had told him to seek the King out. Axe had also seen a woman training hard in some ethereal realm. He didn't think much of it at the time. The King broke out of the Vikinca jail with the help of Trappy and a new pair of powerful wooden hands. He fought Erik Rage-Eater!, the ancient Viking Lord, to get his gear back. Erik Rage-Eater! humoured him, which gives you some idea of how insanely strong Erik Rage-Eater! is. Things turned sour in that relationship, however, when the King ate too many Viking hearts and acted all strange. He totally macked on Axe Axewound's new Vikinca sweetheart, which was not cool. The King was banished from the Vikinca lands and the repercussions of his crime will be felt all over...
The other Adventure Friends had also been contacted by Trappy the lion and spent their share of the two year gap travelling across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. They were doing okay until they got eaten by an octopus. Colonel Glowfist got them out of that sticky situation even though everyone had become quite mean towards him. Roxy Tripfoot, Ba'al and Bernadetta Leathervest (the new girl) all arrived in Miami in a lifeboat. Ba'al got diverted, but he's cool. There they met Will Smith, who was eager to impress them with his songs and his love for his young son. He launched a huge and expensive Expedition to find the King, who was running across the United States at a breakneck pace, gaining XP and eating snakes as he went. He hooked up with Ba'al and, seriously, this was just in the last chapter. You can read that if you've forgotten already.
These are the Adventure Friends now, by the way:
The King (King, Level 62)
Equipped: Cutty the Sword
Item: Rocket hands
Ba’al (Desert God, Level 15)
Equipped: Storm cloud
Item: Lightning moustache
Axe Axewound (Werewolf Axe Warrior, Level 10)
Equipped: Magical Flaming Axe
Item: Amulet of Returning Axe, Werewolf curse
Roxy Tripfoot (Gypsy Queen, Level 40)
Equipped: Sharp hula hoop
Item: Sexy jangly things
Bernadetta Leathervest (Lesbian Warrior, Level 8)
Equipped: Cyclop's Bane (spear)
Item: Leathervest family leather vest
Gappy (Werereindeer, Level 2)
Equipped: Reindeer antlers / Fists
Item: Magic glittery reins / None
Colonel Glowfist (Fat Archmage, Level 43)
Equipped: Infernal Gauntlet
Item: Licence to Kick Ass
David (Child, Level 14)
Equipped: Nothing
Item: Chinese Belt Of Invincibility
So what's next for the King? I can't tell you very much, because that would ruin the story, but I can tell you that it is going to be the greatest story ever told on the internet, if you can believe that. There are a lot of places in the Medieval world we haven't got to yet, and there's a lot of stuff going on with David and Terrorthaw and Oranje that is really going to be a big part of the bigger story. There's been a lot about the European Kings (obviously) and a little about the Fresh Kings, but in the future there's going to be quite a bit about the other Kings that existed in Medieval times. Don't worry – this won't make OUR King any less cool. If you were a King in the Medieval world, you were pretty much on the level. These guys are all on that level and that level is awesome, you'll see.
So that's it for the interlude. Thanks for reading along with all this, everyone. It's all going to be good. You'll see.
End Of Interlude
