Alfarr was his name.
Alfarr was famous, throughout the land of Ordine, for his generosity; and the land prospered under his beneficent eye and open palm. So it was that when Rysia bade his people his last farewell, they mourned but they did not wail.
It being the custom of the times that a King should be whenever possible, sent back to the gods in the manner which he came to his rulership, Rysia, with his time upon him, set himself in a well built, slim-lined ship which had stood in the King's harbor in readiness for many long years. Propping himself up against the mast, he waited as his people came, filling the ship with rememberances of times past: shields, swords, locks of hair, and in the case of the Queen a chipped dinner plate and a tear.
He left with more than he had arrived owning, to be sure, since it was Chaos that arranged his fate from wailing beginning as an orphan to stalwart end as a beloved King. Oftimes, still, it is quipped that in Rysia's case, he could take it with him and, indeed, he did.
Alfarr ruled for a very long time after the death of his father. To him was born the magnificent warrior Grimarr, whose fierceness in battle was only equalled in strength by the fear of his enemy which stood most directly before him.
Grimarr eventually took the Kingship for himself, his father having grown old and enfeebled. Born to him were three children: Heorogar, Högni, and a daughter who married Onela, King of the Plentarchs
.
Högni it was who became King after his father Grimarr. He won many battles, was willingly obeyed by family and friends alike, and so they shared in his glory. So it was that Högni decided to build a mead-hall, the greatest the world had ever seen or that could be imagined, to share out there with young and old alike, all that Chaos had blessed him with that be stored up in his treasury.
Orders went out far and wide, to all the tribes throughout Ordem, to set to work on building the mead-hall. And so built it was, as magnificently put together as it was planned: towered and turreted, gabled, and lightly stuccoed on the outside. And, by popular vote, it was named after the great King Högni: the Gilded Hogsnout!
Later on, once it was realized that the word snout didn't mean what the majority of people on Ordem thought it meant, the vote was rescended and a new name was attempted to be placed, but Högni was far too amused to allow a change to occur.
After it was built, Högni did as promised, handing out treasure at huge feasts wherein young and old, rich and poor, mingled together in common causes of drunkness, ribald laughter, a sentimental shedding of tears at appropriate times, and occasional debauchery.
For their amusement, musicians were hired, poets were cozened, dancers were captured as they attempted to make their way to someplace less bawdy, and the joy of the people echoed throughout.
One poet told how the world came to be, how Chaos had made the earth of it and the surrounding waters, set the sun and the moon in their brackets to shine down upon Man, and all sorts of other nonsensical fairy tale things.
“Here, give over!” shouted an anonymous, assumably male, being. “That's all fairy tale garbage. Everyone knows it doesn't exist.”
“Never deny Chaos!” warned the poet, his words flying into the swiftly silenced air.
“I'm not, then, am I?” retorted the unseen personage.
“I would rather not converse with you any longer for it may be that I shall have to share your doom. Thank you.” said the poet.
“I meant the Earth, nuge. There's no such place!”
“Chaos says that there is.”
“Yes, but he also says he's an Athabaskan bloodhound bent on dominating us all at Parcheesi.”
“Does he?”
“Yes,” five people emphatically responded.
“What does that mean?”
Several people shrugged.
“It don't matter, does it then?”
“The point is, “said the poet, taking a dangerous step towards the rational “that he says a lot of things that either are not true or that we do not understand. Why should we choose to believe him about the Earth?”
'Well, there are those weird things that show up every now and again, like text books and rather sexy aviatrixes, what mention Earth at times.”
“All part and parcel with his nonsense.”
The rest of the conversation is not important as it was mostly just more bickering back and forth as to whether anything Chaos says means so very much after all. It is only brought up now because, while some say it was simply a coincidence, it so happens that on this very night of all nights, Motte Flügel, the dragon, began his crimes.
....................
This section is rather loosely based on Beowulf because I was reading it recently and it occured to me that there were many factors that were relatively the same, already, and I thought it would be cute to play them up. It may be even more loosely based by the time I get around to something beyond the rough draft, though.
Copy & paste to friend: (Click inside box; Ctrl + C to copy; Ctrl + V to paste)
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