Treachery Toast

Treachery.

Defined in the dictionary as "the betrayal of trust", Treachery is an important part of Fantasy. It has always been a core mechanic in the writer's arsenal. Recently there have been some seriously devious characters doing some seriously sneaky things.

So, inspired by my favorite advocate of the goatee, Mr Machiavelli, here is my offering on the subject of Treachery.

How do I do a Treachery?

Horses cannot be used in the same way as cars! They just can't! A horse is a living creature that requires thought, skill and core strength to ride. A car is a magic box that takes you to places that you wish to go with little or no effort. Cars also have the advantage of being able to travel hundreds of miles in a day, if your bladder can handle it. Horses however need to be rested regularly and have a maximum top speed of 30 mph which would be impossible to maintain for an extended length of time...

What!? What the hell are you on about? I thought you were going to explain Treachery?

Yup. That's exactly what I just did.

Masterfully I set up your expectations and led you to believe that I was going to perform a task which would benefit you. With no warning I turned around and gave you information that was of no use to your expectations or immediate needs.

This is the essence of Treachery. You put some form of trust in me, wonderful people that you are, and I take your simple hopes and do something unexpected and horrific with them: in this case, I stated some obvious, irrelevant and quite possibly imaginary facts.

Gudguff walked a few feet away before stopping and turning.

"So you will keep an eye on the eggs?" He stared at the campfire and at Ran. The huge yokel was prodding at the eggs in the frying pan with a long stick and grunting to himself. They were already filling their small camp with a delicious smell and Gudguff was watering at the mouth with anticipation.

"Ran, cook." The words came out slowly in Ran's glottal tones.

"Hmm...ok." Gudguff looked hard at his latest Hero. He seems to be paying attention...maybe he's changing? Gudguff thought.

Gudguff finished urinating into the undergrowth and sorted himself out before turning and heading back towards the camp.

"He's managed it. He must have, I can still smell the eggs." The wizard muttered to himself as he walked through the trees. 

He entered the clearing and stopped dead. 

"What the..."

Fire leapt from the branches of the trees around the opposite edge of the clearing and wreathed the grass around the centre of the campfire. Ran was stripped to his undershorts and holding one of the spare longswords over his head. 

"Ran!" Gudguff screamed at the stripped down hero. Ran Dom McGuffin screamed at the ashes of the fire and took a swing at it with the sword, scattering more ashes and sparks from the guttering fire. One of the flying embers struck his arm and Ran screamed before lashing out again. 

"What are you doing you arsewit! What have you done to my eggs?" Gudguff scrambled forward into the flames and grabbed for his staff before dropping it and screaming.

"It's sodding scalding!" The steel was red hot and the wizard hopped around waving his singed digits in the breeze to cool them down. 

OK I think I understand now...

Congrats! Understanding Treachery is a useful tool. Anything can become Treacherous, literally anything around you:

• String: advertises usefulness and becomes a snarled mess at the first opportunity.
• Technology: becomes indispensable and then decides to pretend it's a Cat for the foreseeable future.
• Batteries: tiny tubes of power with a minuscule AI inside that detects when they are most needed and vents all power through a trans-dimensional twist. 
• Money: speaks, promises to give you a good time, only ever says goodbye.
• The internet: advertised as a tool for...well, everything. Actually turns out to be full of porn and social media which sap your will to live, time and energy in no particular order.
• Ships: great for cruises but turn out to be vulnerable to pirates and storms. 
• Cats: pretend to love you with a beguiling purr, take every possible chance to show you their arsehole. Will  vomit, defecate and/or urinate in your shoes, porch, house, garden, pillow, wardrobe and face.
• Father Christmas (AKA Santa): Promises to give good children presents and abandon the bad children to the mercies of parental and familial generosity. Actually gives presents to seemingly everyone...even Benjamin Duggan, although he stole your lunch every day this term...ahem.

Riiight...so, your issues aside, I can now see that everything has the potential to do a Treachery. Great. 

Fear not! Not everything will betray you. In fact only a very few things will or can. Which is why we have a special word for it rather than it being the norm.There are several things you can look out for in people and objects, which might help you to know if they have Treachery on their minds/coiled into their atoms.

You mean I can predict who will do a Treachery?

...Yes. People or animals who are likely to Betray you will do so for personal gain. Now I don't mean that they will drop you in the cacky for a few quid (not to international readers, a quid is a substance that can render the stupid attractive, but not smart).

Rather, bear in mind that these individuals might Betray you for some sense of revenge or vindication. They might do it for some sort of sense of pleasure or because your demise/tears/incoherent rage/misery will feed into some grand scheme they have been working on and give them some sort of desired outcome.

These individuals are not always easy to spot: they can be masquerading as your best friend, a mentor or even a politician. Using their positions of authority and closeness to the victim results in a yield of maximum Treason. 

• Politicians: These bastards will sucker you in with promises of free jobs and Bonbons. What happens is that no matter who you vote for, the government gets in and announces more taxes, no more jobs and new legislation involving the death penalty for the production, ownership, consumption or distribution of Bonbons.
• Viceroys/Most Trusted Advisers/Anyone with "Vice" in their title: Seriously! Have you ever met a single Vice-anything who didn't Betray the person they were closest to for a sniff of power so thin it might as well be a gnat's fart. They might be as close as a brother/sister but I tell you right now, they will turn on you quicker than a children's roundabout.
• Closest friends: Normally these are something to treasure. In the world of Fantasy however, they are likely to Betray you for the sake of gaining a woman, making an ideological point, rejecting the colour of your scarf or because they just don't like the way you cook the eggs. 
• Benign Demons: These are a total oxymoron. They don't exist. Just trust me on this, they really don't.
• Animal sidekicks/pets/trusty steeds: These are the most benign of all betrayals and universally motivated by comic timing and mischief rather than evil or a corroded sense honour that has finally given way to full blown bitterness, hatred and malice.

So now I know who might do a Treachery on me can I do one on them?

YES. Yes you can if you want, however I'd be careful about who you BETRAY. There is literally no upside in BETRAY-ing a demon from the deepest level of hell who has been your sponsor. Just because you feel like being contrary is no justification for going back on an infernal contract with Vath RA Trogothoz The Internal Face Devourererer.

If you are going to BETRAY anyone then you really need to know who it is that you are betraying, why you're doing it and what the outcome is going to be. Most importantly you will need to grow a goatee. Proper Treachery cannot be undertaken without access to a nifty goatee. It is a vital part of your attire, providing you plentiful mustache twirling opportunities and terryifying Pogonophobes everywhere.

Gudguff looked at the slumbering form of Ran Dom McGuffin and pondered their recent misadventures. In the space of a week, one single week, this gargantuan cretin has destroyed no less than three campsites. Flattened my hat twice. Ruined the etching on my staff of power. Accidentally set fire to half of the Wood Elve's realm and caused us to be chased and shot at by a horde of angry tree hugging arseholes. He looked around the rocky plain. The prat could set fire to those boulders.

Gudguff made a decision and stood. He snugged his hat down a little further onto his head before wrapping his cloak tightly around himself and struggling into the wind. What he was about to do weighed heavily on his mind. It was a monumental decision that would effect their relationship for years to come. 

Gudguff smirked and let out a manic giggle. 

This'll sort him out! "Ha!"

He strode toward the gibbous moon.

The tower reared into the night sky and blocked a large chunk of the bloated sphere that was the moon. Giggling to himself, Gudguff stopped and ducked behind a bush. He paused, noting the puddle and smell of urine.

"Probably not the best bush for this..." He stood and moved over to the next bush along, crouching behind it and taking out his writing gear.

"In the woods west of this stronghold I would bring to your attention...dangerous miscreant Ran Dom McGuffin...noted critic of the Dark Lord Sorebum..." He muttered the odd word aloud as he furiously scribbled his note. Stifling his laughter with a hand he ran toward the door of the tower, note in hand.

The tower was festooned in spikes and spines that seemed to almost have grown from the stonework as an extension of the Darklord's manifest general bad temper. Gudguff ran up to the door and rammed the note onto one of the spines that protruded at roughly eye level. He stood back and re-read his handiwork again.

The door opened and Gudguff found himself staring into the craggy and slightly jaundiced face of sergeant Shagrat.

"Oh. Hello," Gudguff burbled at the henchman.

"Hello." He looked from the Wizard's slightly panicked face to the note that was fluttering in the mild breeze. "That for me?"

Gudguff looked around at the note and then over his own shoulder, gauging the distance to the stinking bushes, trees and freedom.

"I take it you're working out how far you could run before I catch you."

Gudguff's head span back toward the minion and he took a half step backwards. 

"Possibly..."

"Right." The sergeant sighed and raised his bow. "You realise that a bolt from this bow will travel at around 310 feet per second. And that at a distance of, say sixteen feet, if you were quick off the mark I could puncture your liver in about a second or so."

The wizard paused and looked at the bow.

Snagrat continued in an easy tone: "Or I could just as easily shoot you through the arse and skewer your bollocks."

***

Gudguff sighed and twisted his hands around in his manacles. The view from his cell was uninspiring to say the least. 

"Well..." He addressed a rat sitting in the meagre pool of light that spilled from the high barred window above. The rat licked its whiskers and eyed Gudguff's dangling toes.

"I'd say that backfired pretty fucking spectacularly."

The rat chittered to itself and shat on the filthy straw. 

The Fantasy Writer's Guide to Alcohol

Given it's a weekend this seemed appropriate. So, you know what's coming now. Sit back, crack open a bottle of your favorite poison and prepare to enter the world of booze. Or go and boil an egg, whichever you prefer.

After a hard day adventuring, slaying wenches and saving dragons etc., your average Hero heads straight to the nearest tavern and sinks a couple of gallons of ale before quietly dissolving into a puddle under the table and being kidnapped, missing a raid or wetting him/herself. All of which is perfectly rational and understandable.

Yet you'd be amazed at the number of writers out there who don't seem to understand how alcohol works. Their characters stride manfully/womanfully around the tavern to deal with some problem even though they have drunk enough booze to sink a battleship. These leadguts have no problem with standing, walking or winning a fight (against outlandish odds of course), even though the collection of bottles before them is as thick as fallen leaves in a forest.

Mogmush the Mighty let out a booming laugh as he tipped the horn of ale back and drained it to the dregs. "More, wench!" he bellowed and thrust the empty horn out to the passing woman. She didn't actually work in the tavern but felt compelled to fill the horn anyway, such was the power of Mogmush's charisma. Laughing, he raised the freshly filled horn back and drained it again.

The local slopmongers who had been cowering away from the maniac Mogmush suddenly went quiet.  Mogmush looked blearily round and saw a patrol of the Dark Lord Sorebum's elite henchmen had entered the tavern. Suddenly the pleasant buzz that had been filling his mind was flushed away in a rush of anger.

"YOU!" roared Mogmush. In a single movement he rose to his feet, picked up the table and hurled it at the patrol. He laughed as he drew his mighty broadsword "Cabbage" and dove into the fray...in his mind. What actually happened was slightly different.

Mogmush looked around and saw a patrol of a dozen men. There were actually only three of them but he was totally smashed and couldn't count anyway.

"Yoargh!" He burbled something incomprehensible as he tried to stand. Somehow his foot got caught on something (possibly his other foot) and Mogmush stumbled, crashing into the table and breaking it to splinters.

Mogmush struggled to his feet spluttering a gibberish warcry and tried to draw his broadsword. The weapon was slung over his shoulder, the hilt pointing up over his head. He managed to tangle the baldric around his neck and got the long scabbard caught between his legs as he stood. 

"Glaugh!" Mogmush squealed as he stumbled and fell over backwards. There was a deep thump and an unpleasant cracking sound as the hilt of his sword broke two of his ribs. 

The soldiers of the Dark Lord looked at the fallen Hero and then at each other.

"What was all that about?" Snagrot the sergeant asked.

"Not a bloody clue sarge."

"Right... Evening Regie, three of the usual please." Snagrot greeted the landlord and leant on the bar. 


So, without further ado, welcome to the Fantasy Writer's Guide to Alcohol!


What is it?
Excellent question! In the modern world there are more varieties of alcohol than you can shake a slightly blurry finger at.

Alcohol is usually made by allowing a base ingredient to ferment. Fermentation is a fancy technical-type word for alcoholisation. Scientists and other such boffin types will try to convince you what happens is a by-product of yeast and other such micro organisms reproducing. What actually happens is that the Booze Fairy blesses every drop as it is made, giving the liquid its magical properties and changing it from basically being dirty water into some excellent vintage silly juice.

The types are almost endless but there are certain beverages that are more common than others in Fantasonia.

What types of alcohol are most common?
Ale: In England today Ale is everywhere and an excellent substitute for mass produced piss. It is also known as beer and more recently as craft beer. Which is the same but makes it more obvious that some poor bugger has to brew it without drinking it.

Wine: Wine is the fruit of the vine...squashed. Grapes are picked by the local slopmongers and diligently and exhaustively crushed between the delicate toes of the largest woman in the village. Wine tends to be supped by the richer members of society and lonely princesses in high towers. It also tend to be an excellent delivery mechanism for a variety of poisons. As an interesting point, the colour of the wine dictated by how the skins are left in the crushed pulp and what mood the Booze Fairy is in.

Gin, whisky and other spirits: Otherwise known as "The Hard Stuff", this section of the alcohol world tends to be the preserve of the recently bereaved, anti-heroes and villains. It can often be found in slim flasks and clay jugs marked with a number of X's.

Mead: A potent smelling brew of fermented honey. Invented by the Vikings and loved by role players and nutters of all kinds. For maximum effect it should be quaffed (read consumed) from a horn.

Right...Who drinks the stuff?
In short, bloody everyone.Viking children were weaned from milk straight onto beer or mead. The average fantasy city or town will treat their local river as a highway and open sewer combined, making the water more or less undrinkable. Wells would also be hit and miss. In order quench one's thirst and not die of dysentery, the water would need to be filtered and purified. The brewing process is  an excellent way to get rid of the nasty bugs and bad magic that cause illness. That being the case everyone and his dog (literally the dogs too) would drink some sort of booze.

Where is made or consumed and such?
It is made wherever men gather and posses an overabundance of food of some sort. These bearded pioneers will throw anything and everything into a pot and leave it to brew. They possess the secret brewing knowledge of the ages and will be in the first in line to taste their (potentially lethal and/or rancid) creation.
On the whole it is consumed everywhere. If you're thirsty and you know that the water will kill you then booze is the best way forward!

When did people start doing it?
When they realised that drinking the river water they'd been shitting in was probably a bad idea.

So what happens to a hero who drinks too much?
In short, they become a non-Hero for a varying amount of time. Permanent loss of Hero status is possible, aka death. Contrary to popular belief and a chronic lack of knowledge, if someone drinks too much, be they Hero, slopmonger or Henchman, they will suffer.

What kind of suffering?
In common terms, a hangover will appear. Hangovers are the shadow of the Booze Fairy, displeased for the disrespect shown to her magical liquid.

Symptoms that appear with hangovers:

• The screaming shits
• Feeling as though your head is about to pop
• Feeling as though every sound you hear is a physical shard of glass being dragged through your skull and deep, deep into your brain
• Feeling as though every ray of light is individually raping your eye with a burning red hot poker covered in spikes, acid and fire ants
• Sausage fingers
• Shakes
• An inexplicable caving for a kebab (note to international readers: the Kebab is a dangerous animal that can only be killed by a spear from arse to mouth and is best eaten after being slowly rotated in front of a warm lightbulb for six weeks)
• Vomiting
• Projectile vomiting
• Projectile shitting, aka "The Pebbledash"
• Beer sweats
• Beer poo
• Beer wee
• A sudden aversion to work
• All of the above at once

Those who have really annoyed the Booze Fairy through repeated and consecutive offences (e.g. performing the unholy rite of the Three Day Bank Holiday Bender) can expect to sample the delights of a special torment known as Delirium Tremens. DT's are a waking nightmare. Literally. Full body spasms, severe shakes and trembling, hot, cold, wet and dry sweating, hallucinations and appearing to be going through the menopause even though you are a 23 year old man are the norm. Anyone unlucky enough to be in the grip of the DT's is grateful to be hit over the head with an ornamental brass duck and left for dead. 

But Mogmush the Mighty is a hardened drinker! He can handle it!
It doesn't matter! A Hero who has drunk two gallons of gut-rot will be out for the count for the better part of at least a day. Anyone who was expecting a rescue from Mogmush is going to be sorely disappointed. If he does manage to turn up he'll be a shambling mess covered in his own vomit and unable to walk more than a few yards at a time without groaning and doubling over. Assuming he completes the slow and embarrassing stagger up to the Triple-Headed Hardassian Mammoth without it goring him or just taking a step sideways to evade his random childlike flailing, he might as well be armed with a wet towel. It doesn't matter how strong he was yesterday: today his muscles will be sore and flaccid, much like a burst puffer fish. In the grip of a hangover he will be as strong as a damp duckling and as resilient as a wet cake.

If what you're saying is true, why the hell does anyone drink?
Well, if you have the option of drinking water that won't kill you then the only answer is that it's fun.
Being under the influence of the Booze Fairy is a lot like being mad. You know you can't dance but you dance anyway! And not only do you dance but you dance well! You can do anything! Nothing is beyond your reach!

In your mind that is.

At least until the morning when everything is beyond you and it's as much as you can do to breathe.

Well, I hope that's cleared up some of the questions you didn't ask.

Now let's find out how all that quaffing has influenced Mogmush.

The challenge had been laid down and Mogmush could no more refuse than he could spell the word 'no'. He strode manfully toward the arena and dropped into a low position that gave him the advantage of leverage. His silk loincloth wafted around in a small breeze and Mogmush felt the expectation building in the gaggle of slopmongers around them.

The drummer stuck a beat, the lutist followed it and Mogmush danced.

The slopmongers moved further out of the way as Mogmush twirled and span across the tavern's dance floor. The coloured lanterns splashed pools of illumination across the boards and Mogmush swam through them like a shark through a rain of shrimp. He smiled and laughed for the joy of laughing, gyrating his hips for a moment as he passed an attractive slopmonger. The bright pink silk of his loincloth fluttered around him as he span once more, completing a perfect pirouette. The slopmongers gasped in awe and joy as they witnessed his skill. Mogmush came to a graceful halt and struck a pose. 

"Shouldn't we do something sarge?" Rathathathakkk asked. Snagrot eyed the rookie Minion for a moment before shaking his head.

"Nah, you have to know when to strike." Sergeant Snagrot took a deep pull from his tankard and wiped his mouth with back of his hand, being careful to avoid the excess of spikes on his gauntlet and watched the horror unfolding on the dancefloor. 

The giant tit who'd smashed a table when they came in was now molesting the general area of the dancefloor. Snagrot watched the small band continue to play despite the dangerous pinwheeling of the giant barbarian stumbling around.

Snagrot and everyone else in the room winced as the prancing twat started to spin around with his arms out. The motion caused his ludicrous and heavily stained loincloth to float on the air, showing the room at large his genitals flopping sadly.

Snagrot, a veteran of numerous Tavern Atrocities, saw the lean before it began. He nudged Rathathathakkk. "Any minute now, lad."

They watched as the stumbling barbarian staggered ever more to one side as his abused inner ears gave up the battle to determine what gravity was actually doing at that moment.

"And, three...two...one." With perfect timing Snagrot counted out the seconds during which the barbarian seemed to hang in the air, defying gravity for one brief moment before crashing through a table. As he landed, breaking his nose with a sickeningly loud crunch, the barbarian flung out his arms and wiggled his hands in some pathetic attempt to complete his performance with the classic manoeuver known as Jazz Hands.

"Come on then lads, we'll give him a quick hiding then chuck him in the river." Snagrot sighed and put down his tankard.

"Won't he drown?" Rathathathakkk was't entirely comfortable with his new job yet.

"Hopefully." 

"Sarge?"

"Yes, lad?" 

"Why is he humping the floor?"

They paused and watched for a moment as the downed barbarian's arse pumped up into the air a few more times before coming to a halt with a pained groan.

"To be honest, lad? I'd say it's because he's a tosser."

Peasants

So, this week's blog is devoted to the most misunderstood, unrepresented and prevalent member of any Fantasy writer's world: The Peasant. 

The dictionary defines a Peasant as: A poor smallholder or agricultural labourer of low social status. Or as a casual method of insulting your mother-in-law: An ignorant, rude or unsophisticated person: 'That is a civilized drink, you peasant."

That was the actual quote given and it made me laugh quite a lot. 

You know the format by now. Buckle in, strap down and assume the crash position...or sit back and scroll down. Whichever takes your fancy.


Who are the Peasants?
Bloody good question that. Peasants appear all over the place. Your average dim-witted Hero and his entourage of slack jawed hangers-on and light fingered opportunists can't seem to move six inches without stumbling over a Peasant or ten.

They are the unheard of (though sadly not un-smelled) masses of Fantasonia. The average folk, the common people, the inhabitants, the populus, the great unwashed, the gawking mob, slopmongers, the uncaring crowd! 

People! 

When a fantasy writer uses the word Peasant they are using a not-so-secret shorthand that means "people". Just average (or possibly stupider than average) people who try to get on with their lives and often don't contribute a lot to any given story.

They are found in peaceful kingdoms and evil realms alike. They work the fields, fill armies, get killed by armies, starve as their crops are taken away or just fail... And occasionally they give the protagonist and incumbent Wizard something to care about, if only in a remote and aloof way.

Ok, so what do they do?
Weren't you reading that last sentence? 

Peasants are the grease that makes Fantasonia go round. Without Peasants everything pretty much grinds to a halt, as will be illustrated in the following examples.

EXAMPLE 1
Gudguff the Wizard and his stalwart gimp/prophesied Hero rode through golden fields of wheat. They argued back and forth about the meaning of their quest. Quite literally. Ran Dom McGuffin, the chosen hero, didn't understand what they were doing and was insistent they were going to his mum's for dinner. Gudguff was tired of trying to convince the witless prat otherwise. 

To the humble slopmongers working the fields, the conversation was both lofty beyond their comprehension and endlessly attractive for reasons they couldn't express. They stared and gave out the obligatory "Ooh" and "Ahh" whenever Ran's sword shone in the light, he breathed in and especially when his horse let out an earth-shattering fart.

EXAMPLE 2
Gudguff the Wizard and his stalwart gimp/prophesied Hero did not ride through golden fields of wheat because there weren't any. Ran Dom McGuffin had drawn breath for about a week before dying of starvation along with his Hero mother and father who were out of business having no-one to save due to the lack of Peasants. Gudguff had in fact gone into business making professional nests for the giant eagles who were the only way to get any food. It was also a good way to stop them from eating him. 

Sorebum the Dark Lord reigned over an utterly vast stretch of bugger-all and spent a lot of his time trying to teach his orcs chess. Except for once a month when they spent the week avoiding the local Dragon who took great delight in burning the bollocks off of the countryside for no reason they could make sense of.

The point I was just about making there, is that without Peasants, no Fantasy world could survive. Peasants are the people who clear away the forests (over time) and replace them with fields of future food/pestilential shit (Example 1). Peasants are the ones who suffer under Dark Lords and inspire the Hero/Wizard to do something about the spikey-headed bastard at the top (Example 2).

In addition Peasants often serve as Hero-Incubators, protecting and nourishing the Proto-Hero, providing him/her with gritty backstory and slave labour that conditions him/her to perfection. Thus the Proto-Hero is ready for the day some wandering bearded git decides to take him/her on an adventure which is ostensibly in the name of the local Peasantry but will likely not yield them any concrete benefit (assuming any of them survive). 

Be you a Dark Lord, Noble King or Mildly Incompetent Baron, a Peasant workforce is a must. 

The benefits of a large workforce include: Vast tax rewards. Food! Comely wenches/lads/food (for the vampiric lords and ladies). Characterful interactions at every turn. Comic relief. Target practice. Untrained masses to pad out an army. Mobs. Worshippers. The list goes on...a bit.

Ah, ok, so Peasants are useful. How do I recognise one in order to add it to my collection?
Well, if you already have a collection you should know this...but go on then.

The average Peasant can be located and identified thanks to three instantly identifiable characteristics:

1. Aversion to eye contact
Peasants will not make eye contact with anyone perceived to be their social better. When addressed directly by a Hero, Wizard, Noble or even another Peasant, they will look to the ground and mumble an incoherent answer. Peasants are the product of hundreds of years of their social betters selectively slaughtering anyone who looks like they have a shred of intelligence or a spine. Such survival instincts run deep. Having said that, a persuasive Hero can whip them up into a dangerous mob, thanks to their shared heritage and his/her stumbling attempts at rhetoric.

2. Toil
Peasants unlike townsfolk, merchants and slaves, do not work. Instead they have access to a special form of labour known as Toil(TM). Toiling(TM) is much like work and labour but has neither the half decent wage nor regular doses of pain to incite the poor shite involved in it to perform any task with anything other than extreme reluctance. Toil(TM), as the UK Conservative Party well know, is a self-replicating series of border-line pointless tasks. For example, shovelling mud from one corner of a field to another, a.k.a. Monging Slop. 

3. Stench
A Peasant in full reek is quite a thing. Long days and nights of Toil(TM) in the Dark Lord's frilly knicker factory produce an odour that is four parts body sweat, three parts manure and three parts cabbage (which is more than enough to drown out the others combined). It has been theorised that the stench is a form of self-defence mechanism that keeps the minions of the local Dark Lord at bay most of the time, thus preventing the Peasantry from being overly abused by any but the most zealous enforcers of evil.

Riiight...So, now that I know what they look and smell like...what do I do with my collection?
Once you have your Peasants you can do all sorts of things with them. Popular historical accounts include such entertainments as:

• Bake the chronically foreshortened into a piecrust as a joke and surprise your chums! 
• Make them dance for your delight!
• Make them work for the promise of a wage that never materializes because you've spent it on cleaning out your duck house or having your moat dredged (Conservatives again I'm afraid).
• Dress them in ridiculous costumes and laugh!
• Hunt them through the woods for sport! To really liven things up, why not give one of them a crossbow and a single bolt, to give the poor little fucker an illusion of hope.
• Target practice! Exactly what you think it is!
• Re-decorate! Use dismembered limbs to give your Doomfort a foreboding atmosphere! Multiple torsos impaled mouth to arse on a six foot stake are an excellent boundary marker!
• Make them fawn! Arrange some flimsy pretense for a party in your honour and have your Peasantry cheer and wave their stunted limbs in a crude mockery of a celebratory dance!
• Give them holidays! Watch them sigh with relief as you allow them to stop working for a day before choosing the prettiest girl in the village as this month's wife/dragon sacrifice! It's a lot of fun! 

That all sound so...so terrible! Why would anyone want to be a Peasant?

Peasants don't choose their lives, they're lucky if they get to choose a shade of shit-brown to wear for the next twenty years (the average Peasant lifespan). Peasants are locked into their place by social convention and a system of governance that keeps the important people at the top by any means. 

It all works fine until some Hero comes along and starts spouting-off about "individuality" and "rights". About the worst thing that can happen to slopmongers is the dawning of intelligence. 

Ignorance is bliss after all.

I see. All of a sudden the Hero I was writing about doesn't seem to have much impact.

Nope. If they win then the Toiling conditions might get better by a bit, if they lose then culls and starvation will probably be ordered as a punishment.

Wizard Gudguff looked proudly down on his drooling Hero. Ran had managed to knife the Dark Lord Sorebum in the back of the head before Heroically twisting the blade and emerging from the fires of Mount Fwoom! unscathed. 

Ran stared at his bearded mentor. "Now the bad one is gone." He paused as the next few words hesitantly lined up behind his muscular tongue. "Do we make good...stuff...happen...for my fam'ly?"

Gudguff was torn from his inspection of the deceased Lord Sorebum's collection of Spikey helmets. "Are you off your tits!? Do you have any idea of how much that would cost!?" Gudguff's beard stood almost straight out from his face as his eyes bulged. "Your cretinous family should think themselves lucky! Now they're part of something good! Something permanent! Now I can build a kingdom to last a thousand years!" 

Ran stared dumbly at the Wizard. "Can we make good...stuff...?" he repeated with the implacability of a homeless man lurking near a cashpoint.

"Yes, yes, fine. They can have one extra turnip a month." Gudguff waved his hands impatiently and wished to all the gods he hadn't killed that Ran Dom McGuffin would fall off a cliff.  

Wizards

Hello once more.
Today I would like to talk to you about wizards.
Wizards are a linchpin of Fantasy. They crop up in each and every established Fantasy novel I can think of and in most new writer's work as well.

What makes a Wizard?
In order to answer the above question we must understand all the parts of this strange beast.

The word Wizard comes from a combination of old English words. Wys meaning; knowledgeable, philosopher-like or...wise...
And ard meaning; "hard as nails", "wouldn't want to mess with him" and "Arrgh! He turned my left  knee into a black hole that's tearing me apart but which will stop short of consuming the entire planet!"
Honestly I have no idea at all what the ard means. Neither does the internet or my dictionary.

In 99% of cases Wizards conform to a certain appearance. Almost a uniform if you will. Each aspect of the uniform fulfills a specific function whilst also projecting a general sense of Wizardliness that calms the slopmonging peasants and reassures them that, despite the vast, amorphous cloud of borderline-personified-evil, all will be well, anyone who can pull off that beard must know what he's doing.
The Wizard's uniform lets the world know who he is, what he is likely to be doing in the area and that his credit is good in any bar that wants to remain a building and not a pile of steaming feces.
Beard
All Wizards (with the exception of the pre-pubescent Potter, beloved of millennials everywhere except the States) own or wear a beard.

Hair, as so eloquently theorised by Danny in "Withnail and I", acts as a form of cosmic satellite dish. If not attracting then certainly capturing what he calls "Cosmic Rays" and what I call Magic/k. All the best Wizards have a beard, the ones who don't have a beard and fly around on broomsticks (you know who I mean) are in fact witches, which is a different kettle of fish altogether.

The beard (along with all body hair, regardless of length/density) allows Wizards to capture and focus the ambient background Magic'k of Fantasionia to be channeled into their magic works and mad-cap schemes.

Using the scale of Magic/k energy provided in Dragons Part Three, we can surmise that an average sized shovel beard (a beard which looks like a shovel, but which should probably not be used to muck out a stable) we can assume that a Wizard is able to harness 0.25 Giga Kadabra(TM) per day. Now, this is actually quite a lot of magic enabling the Wizard to do all sorts of amazing things that have the power to wow a peasant into a state of blinded awe.

Gudguff rolled up his sleeves and flexed his ancient knuckles in preparation for what was to come. From windows all around, frightened faces peered through ragged curtains and a layer of filth at the mighty practitioner. 
Gudguff focused all of his powers onto a single point three inches in front of his nose. His tongue protruded from his mouth slightly and his crossed eyes began to water from the strain. Ethereal energies coursed through his bushy beard and crackled into the ground at his feet. 
Fifty yards away the cooking fire burst into life, the kettle on top of it immediately coming to the boil. Gudguff sighed as he was able to uncross his eyes. The screaming began not long afterwards. Gudguff span to see a hideous apparition coalescing from the village's communal shit pit. 
"Ah. Bollocks." Gudguff stared at his stinky adversary and knew only he could stop such a monstrosity. 
Wasting no time, Gudguff flung a hastily summoned fireball at the Crapper, realising too late what effect the naked flame would have around that much methane. 

Hat
Hats were, at one time, the height of Wizarding fashion. Quite literally, as the standard pointy hat could add as much as three feet to a Wizard's height. Hats were used predominantly for the storage of excess magic/k, akin to a Wizarding lunchbox. A wizard's hat would commonly be lined with a mixture of clay and Elf pubes in order to replicate the storage abilities of a Wizard's beard.
However, according to a number of market survey questionnaires, hats are no longer considered a necessary part of a Wizard's uniform.

Robe
Robes are an essential, if not the most essential, part of a Wizard's uniform.
As well as acting as a sign, letting all who tread in the vicinity that the man before them is in fact a Wizard capable of turning anyone and everyone within a ten mile radius into a very confused chihuahua, Robes are also used as a grounding mechanism.

Un-grounded Wizards are prone to a whole host of problems. Given the effectiveness of a Beard's magic/kal storage capabilities, if a Wizard is not grounded the pent up Magic/k will accumulate until the Wizard is accidentally ripping holes in the fabric of reality just by sneezing. The Robe allows a Wizard to safely disseminate the unused Magic/k from his beard back into the wild and prevent him from transforming innocent passers by into steaming piles of ice cream with his farts.

Robes fall into one of two categories. Spangled and impressive, decked in runes etc. Or, plain and weather worn. In either case the robe works in the same fashion.

Robes are able to do this because of the Law of assumptions(TM), which states that anything assumed to be true by a being sufficiently divorced from any commonly held facet of reality is transmuted into a fact by the power of their belief. Quite literally; I assume, therefore it is.

Robes are also used by Wizards to circulate air around the body and prevent sensitive, dangling, areas from overcooking. A Wizard's bollocks are well known to hold the store of their knowledge, not their brain as is commonly thought. The convenient location (out of sight, protected by the bulk of the body and provided with its own Magic/k capturing apparatus) allows for Wizards to get away with some truly absurd ideas and still maintain an appearance of wisdom.

In fact, a Wizard's Bollock-brained ideas are often so stupid that they succeed just because nobody could plan for their level of sheer dumb-fuckery.

Gudguff stared at his witless but prophesied hero and began to explain his scheme. 
"The dark lord must be overthrown for reasons which I wont go into but with which I'm sure we're all au fait. In order to do this, I will lead this witless, pubescent simpleton away from his/her friends and family in order to obtain the last Whyn Gumme of Throckoff the White.
Once obtained it will be completely forgotten as it was just a training and fact-finding exercise anyway, the true purpose of which is to round up a band of misfits, mercenaries and nutters to form the core of an army of simple farmers with which we shall overthrow the Dark Lord's crack troops, leaving him open to our final move." He paused for far longer than necessary to build the tension before realising that the crowd of slopmongers before him were staring vacantly at a bird which had chosen to shit on his shoulder from the tree above.
"Our final and devastating blow will be..." Gudguff raised his arms in a dramatic motion, startling the cursed bird out of the tree. "A brick through his window! With a really mean note about his mum...and how he is fat...and...and..." Gudguff struggled for a moment before inspiration struck. "Then McGuffin, our Hero can run up behind him while he's reading the note and stab him." Gudguff looked around, pleased with himself. The gathered peasants were as vacant as before, except for a young woman at the front of the crowd who had forgotten how to breathe and was dying of anoxia.


A set nifty set of robes are also (for "reasons") a bar to the purchase and wearing of heavy armour, thus creating a necessary Achilles heel in a being all too capable of tearing a hole in the arse of reality. Allowing a great Wizard to be threatened by a goblin with a pointy stick.
Beards, Hats, Robes... Pubic hairs... I see... what about the Staff?
A Staff is an additional method by which a Wizard may focus his energy or ground any excess Magic/k. It can also be used to light gloomy caverns, batter unsuspecting highwaymen and solicit services from That kind of tavern wench in a suggestive but fairly subtle manner.

Where do they come from?
Wizards are actually what happens to the weedy kid that everyone bullies in school. At some point around puberty they stop shaving (men and women both) and grow a beard to make themselves look tougher and stop "Tiny" (Six feet eight inches tall) from using them as a tent peg on school camping weekends.
The beard undergoes a magical transformation after three months, turning it into a Magic/k superconductor that creates a Wizard.
Or they make a deal with a Demon or a God for franchised power rights and as many crispy souls as they can get.

What happens to Wizards once they have knocked off the local Dark Lord?
They go back to their tower and hibernate in a chrysalis made of hope and duct tape until a new Dark Lord rises, at which point the hope will be corroded by the Dark Lord's natural evil aura and the duct tape will eventually fall away because it's a bit shit.

...What have you been eating recently?
Gone off dehydrated orange juice.

Why are Wizards central to most Fantasy?
Wizards are a great way to introduce your main character(read someone sympathetic to the audience) to the wider issues of the world and to keep them on track in their role as a good person. Without the stabilizing effect of a Wizard, most Heroes would do one of the following;
1) Never leave their remote and forgotten corner of the world, marry their childhood sweetheart and spend the rest of their life as their parents did, perhaps complaining about the occasional child-cull or rate of taxation.
2) Get killed really quickly.
3) Get bored/lost/distracted by something shiny so that the required window of opportunity is lost and things stay as they are.
4) Go over to the Dark Lord's side because; a. He pays. b. The uniform is much better. And, c. It's a lot less scary working for the Dark Lord than it is fighting against him/her/it.

Are there any examples of Fantasy without Wizards?
Yes, but I'm not going to tell you what they are because that would spoil the enjoyment of discovering these things for yourself.


So there we have it. Wizards, what they do, why they do it and why they wear those odd clothes.
The best reason for Wizards being (in 90% of cases) old men will get 10 Dietrich points, answers below.

Some news on Part II of The Broken Lance

Time for some news!

The second installment of The Broken Lance is now at the editing and proofing stage. Excitingly, this means it will be ready for purchase and enjoyment in the not-very-distant-at-all future.
The plot unfolds a little more and several key characters introduce themselves.
Also, this Sunday will be Blog-day once more. A new shiny Blog about another mainstay of the Fantasy genre. The Wizard.

So, enjoy and stay tuned for further info and entertainment.