by Nate Crowley
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48. They will be apoplectic that they aren’t asphyxiating.
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CHAPTER SIX: GRONDORRA
1. The exclamation mark is technically mandatory whenever discussing the place, but I find it ludicrous, and even Eliza agrees with me. I’m not going to bother using it anymore.
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2. Honestly speaking, I was expecting to hate Grondorra, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s an acquired taste, for sure, but I’m a fan. With this world, for once, what you see is what you get. Frankly, I needed that.
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3. We’ll get to them.
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4. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean the cities stop … citying, but it does often involve the residents rapidly evolving into shrieking troglodytes.
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5. Cancerous. – ES
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6. Spend five minutes among the Barbarians and you’ll hear about bloody Gak, the ant-faced god. Apparently, he lives in a deep hole, and they despise him.
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7. This is odd, to say the least, because the only deer-headed humanoids on Grondorra these days are the atrocious Stagmen, created by a depressed Sorcerer who wanted something to loathe other than himself. He did a good job with these braying, punch-drunk cretins.
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8. One of the biggest heroes in Barbarian oral culture is Gukleth the Roaster, a woman paralysed from the neck down who demolished her foes not through hammering them flat with a hammer, but with devastating rhyming couplets.
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9. They’ve got a crap sense of humour, mind. Don’t fall for the old chestnut of ‘the puzzle of steel’, in which they’ll set you a silly riddle about swords and then hit you really hard on the back of the head with a length of steel while you’re confused.
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10. Fascinatingly, the syncretic evolution of dogs and humans has taken a wildly different path on Grondorra. The wolves here have remained wolves, and stay wild and hostile to adult humans. Nevertheless, they have learned that if they take in and nurture babies long enough for them to rejoin their fellow humans, they will be rewarded with meat.
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11. Civilisation is like unprotected sex with strangers, the Barbarians say: it seems exciting enough in the heat of the moment, but it rarely ends well.
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12. Spume could learn a thing or two from these folks.
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13. Usually this is as straightforward as animal head/human body, but there are exceptions: the unpleasant Toadman is simply a large toad with human feet, while the Badgerman resembles a human with the weird, beanlike nose of the well-known woodland creature.
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14. The tragic Anteaterman must spend all day huffing termites through his stupid little pipe of a face in order to avoid dying of starvation, while the Slothman’s brain is completely unable to cope with the speed at which his human limbs move, and spends most of his time staring sadly into the middle distance as his body thrashes and flails.
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15. A moon-moon, to be precise.
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16. Well, it’s not really, is it Floyd? It would have been really fucking simple if you’d actually listened to the briefing, and I wouldn’t have had to beg them to let you free. – ES
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17. One: ‘snippies’ is really not OK – we’ve been through this. Two: you’re the one who’s confused, mate. By and large, all Animalmen identify as male regardless of anatomy, so they’re men. That’s it. I don’t care how progressive you think you’re being it’s their decision. I wouldn’t mind, but they told you this again and again, Floyd. – ES
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18. Well, that explains why you were so anxious to know whether cheetah bites were infectious that one time, doesn’t it? – ES
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19. Around 72 per cent of the population.
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20. Rather predictably, the combination of amoral magic users working with no constraints and tombs full of mummified warriors has led to a serious problem with the Undead on Grondorra. It is a problem to which the solution, as usual, is Barbarians.
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21. Please, for the love of God, stay clear of the citadel of Wrigglar the Worrying, in the western Vathek. She’s spent the last thousand years trying to perfect ‘a new kind of worm’ (her words, not mine; looked like a normal worm to me), and will tell you about it at length if you so much as make eye contact with her.
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22. Eliza objects to me lumping all of Grondorra’s fauna under the category of ‘monsters’, but I’m sorry – even the slugs here have jaws full of venomous, razor-sharp fangs. It’s a monster world, and that’s that.
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23. Keen naturalists can read up on Grondorran wildlife in ‘adventure textbooks’ such as Fistfight Kalligan’s Bestiary for Bastards and Ernst Blunch’s Grondorra!: How I Fought Everything There.
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24. Fascinatingly, the dinosaurs are not surviving relics of a bygone era, as was first presumed. Recent discoveries of advanced ruins in Xular now tell a far more interesting story, of a vanished society that just would not stop building hubristic dinosaur theme parks, despite their safety record. It seems at some point they went one theme park over the line, and while the dinosaurs survived, their creators did not.
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25. In fairness, they probably won’t even think once, since they’ve got the neural architecture of a child’s toy calculator.
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26. The dinosaurs of Xular are so cosmically, elementally stupid that they can literally be baffled to death. I once saw a Lizardman confront a Megacarnossus with nothing more than his own scaly hands; as the rot-reeking abyss of the beast’s mouth descended from the clouds, he simply clicked his fingers to focus the monster’s attention, and performed the classic illusion where it looks like someone has pulled off their own thumb. The dinosaur stopped in its tracks and made a noise like a seal being hit in the gut with an iron girder. Its grape-sized eyes rolled up in their sockets, and it keeled over stone dead, blood trickling from its ear-holes. It had died of confusion.
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27. Waggly, mind-controlling mushrooms, Floyd. – ES
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28. By amazing coincidence, this translates exactly to ‘gravy’, because that’s what the drink is.
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29. If you’re wondering: 1) yes, mammalian Animalmen produce milk, 2) yes, I’ve tried it, and 3) no, I don’t want to talk about it.
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30. Others will respond to a challenge by battering a spoon into your heart with the heel of their hand, however, so there’s an element of luck involved.
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31. Interestingly, the Barbarian word for ‘theft’ – Yuth – is the same word used for ‘harvest’.
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32. Pronounced like a cartoon character chugging a bottle of oil.
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33. After all, the wheel was only invented recently – and it’s a single giant stone wheel, used by the Barbarian king Qelzadd to crush prisoners of war.
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34. Think about this for more than a few minutes and the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance involved will start to fold your brain over on itself like grim meat origami. Several economists have travelled to Grondorra to try to comprehend the Barbarian financial mindset: without exception, all have either been slaughtered or gone completely mad and become warriors.
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35. As you wait for said moment, you might as well enjoy the sheer ineptitude of the rest of the ceremony, which is easily mistakable for pantomime.
36. The end of the trip rather depends on how well you get along with the would-be sacrificial victim. It’s traditional for rescuers to fall in love with rescuees, but this is by no means compulsory – if there’s just no chemistry, or either party isn’t feeling it, things will likely end with an awkward peck on the cheek and a sheepish wave as you walk in opposite directions across the plains.
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37. The poor Space Men. Although I pity them, I truly loathe them.
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38. You know what they say: ‘What happens on Grondorra, IS WEIGHED UP AT TIME’S BITTER END BY THE IRON HAND OF GRUM.’
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CHAPTER SEVEN: MUNDANIA AND WHIMSICALIA
1. Not to be confused with the Wizards of Mittelvelde, who are a different kettle of fish entirely.
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2. Floyd, are you going to do the whole ‘oblique hints in footnotes’ thing all through the chapter, or just bloody admit what you did? – ES
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3. Yes, Eliza, I’m getting to it.
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4. I should fucking hope not, Floyd. – ES
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5. By which Floyd means it became a training camp for child soldiers. – ES
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6. With the occasional patch of magically irradiated wasteland.
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7. I never got much further than making acorns smell a bit funny during my visit, but in fairness I had a very full schedule.
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8. Still, whenever an eldritch detonation levels a street, they claim no knowledge of the perpetrators.
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9. The Mundanes were furious when they found out about it, given the underfunded, overcrowded nature of their state schools. I don’t see the fuss, personally. Surely if they wanted it badly enough, they could have made giant castle schools for themselves?
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10. Indeed, when Mundane intelligence agencies want to talk to real power, they forget the Department of Magic and head to Platform Zero at Empire Cross Station, where they await the arrival of the Greeblewhoz Express, a behemoth armoured locomotive bearing representatives of the Academy.
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11. Note to self: come up with a better adjective before publication.
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12. How do you know when you’ve gone too far into the woods? You’ll know. Whether it’s the sunlight giving way to a deep arboreal gloom, a gradual proliferation of cobwebs, or the sudden absence of birds and the emergence of more eerie calls, there’s no way you’ll miss your sign to turn back.
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13. Dark Wizardes are not to be confused with vampyres, despite their similarly general moody sexiness.
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14. ‘Recent bother’??? Floyd, it was a WAR. And until you acknowledge that, I’m going to edit all the euphemisms out of your text, whether you like it or not. – ES
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15. Fine – happy now, Eliza?
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16. OK, Floyd, you’ve danced about long enough: out with it. – ES
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17. Interestingly, Dark Wizardes are far less hated in Mundane culture than their counterparts due to this very difference – there’s a general sense that while they may want to keep their gleaming boots firmly on the neck of the Mundane world, at least they’ve always been honest about it. Plus, they’re a bit sexier than normal Wizardes.
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18. Nobody ever seems to give me credit for averting that conflict. If things hadn’t played out the way they did, it would all have blown up and spilled into the Mundane world anyway – but everyone seems to have forgotten that now that I’m the scapegoat.
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19. Damn right. – ES
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20. After staying for the cheese course, naturally.
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21. Floyd, this is not appropriate at all. – ES
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22. This would come to be known as ‘the Forgettening’.
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23. There, happy now, Eliza? I’m sure that account of atrocities will do wonders for tourism, but at least you got the satisfaction of hanging me out to dry. Besides, I still maintain this wasn’t my fault. I thought Benedict would love Mundania. How was I to know he’d take such a bizarre stance?
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24. Feels a bit gauche to start talking about the weather after being forced to admit indirect culpability for the annihilation of a city, but there we are.
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25. Crickledale is an obvious exception, being broodingly unpleasant year-round, but that’s an aesthetic choice on behalf of its inhabitants.
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26. Besides, miscategorising an owl with hands as an animal would be the least of my bloody reputational problems when it comes to Mundania, so I’m not too worried.
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27. My least favourite is possibly the Gumsley Reeker, a large, flightless dragon that lives in marshland and absolutely honks of decaying vegetables, thanks to the rafts of detritus that tend to accumulate on its back while it marinates in stagnant pools.
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28. Eel Mail, although efficient in a region with decent plumbing, never really caught on. Nobody likes an eel popping out of their loo with a scroll in its mouth, after all.
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29. Admittedly, the Forgettening wasn’t 100 per cent successful – even now, Mundanes have a baffling fear of wardrobes, as on a subconscious level they’re always scared that their morning rummage for pants will instead reveal a teenage Wizarde with a knife between their teeth.
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30. In most cases, at least. One in a hundred centaurs is born with the front half of a horse on a pair of human legs, and while centaur culture considers the arrival of such a creature to be a blessing upon a family, befitting months of lavish gifts, one suspects this tradition has evolved more as a coping mechanism than an actual reflection of good fortune.
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31. Do be aware that they take some practice, though. They tip bloody easily, you see, and that’s no laughing matter when you’re rocketing over a jagged mountain at half the speed of sound.
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32. Floyd, I thought this argument was over. It’s not about whether it’s anatomically possible – it’s about whether it’s OK to command a stranger to give you a piggyback. And it’s not OK to do that. – Eliza Salt.
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33. It’s a terrible way to go.
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34. Indeed, the fact that Wizardes could use magic to cheerfully ignore such concerns as intensive agriculture, distribution logistics and even the laws of thermodynamics in their food economy was one of the main instigating factors in the war. When your civilisation is only ever three meals away from anarchy, it’s irksome to find your neighbours have been conjuring pastries from thin air for hundreds of years, I suppose.
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35. It sings raucous songs about getting drunk (in the most direct sense of the verb) in an increasingly small and ecstatic voice as you drain the mug. Quite disturbing, actually. Is it alive? Can it think? What if it doesn’t want to be consumed, but feels compelled to sing anyway? As is so often the case in Whimsicalia, it’s best to adopt my motto: ‘Don’t think about any of it too hard.’
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36. It’s worth understanding that ‘witch’ is not a gendered or ethically loaded term in Mundania – it’s more of a lifestyle descriptor, applied to people living one step removed from formal Wizarde culture who spend a lot of time boiling plants in tumbledown shacks.
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37. Eliza, I’m sorry, but I really can’t work out the maths fo
r this bit. Can you get someone to do it, please?
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38. pickled walnuts.
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39. Once upon a time, this sort of revelation would tip proceedings into chaos, but with the Light vs Dark tensions a thing of the past, it’s all just a good laugh these days.
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40. The infamous ‘wizarde wheeze’ was a cloud of poisonous gas released in East Lundowne, which turned all its victims into huge, dying rats.
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41. It’s almost like some kind of BDSM thing, to be frank. I watched a Bogbert get chastised by its master for failing to clean his riding boots correctly, and as it scurried to fetch the punishment stick, I was certain I saw it rubbing its moist green hands in glee.
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42. Since DTR is no man’s land, the shops are completely tax-exempt, so despite the gorgeous black-beam facades on the buildings and the candlelit rooms full of leather-bound tomes, the area has taken on the strange atmosphere of a duty-free lounge.
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43. It’s never good to walk into what you thought was a sweet shop only to find a group of people very suddenly falling silent and looking up at you from a clandestine map.
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44. There are twelve of them. They are not in any way tame. They can be very stressful to spend time with.
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45. Its name has a comparable relationship with its subject as that of the Nine Tame Alligators.
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46. There are usually a lot of laughs to be had throwing magically conjured rotten eggs at the pantomime incarnation of the Mundane head of state when she comes in to arrest Miller and Deathwish.
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47. Eliza, why has this testimonial slipped in during the last edit? Can we take it out – it makes me look like a mug.
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48. I mean, you can soldier on with canned spells and a positive attitude, but you’d just be embarrassing yourself.
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49. Despite being the size of a city, Greeblewhoz apparently doesn’t have room to carry ‘passengers’, in their words. If the faculty judges you mediocre, then regardless of how influential or socially prominent you are, your money’s no good to them.