The World of The Mower Show: Part I

[The video links all the post-Great Name Change names to their old counterparts if you want to see those]

The Phiddips Beady Eye was the first ever gameset player to be unearthed in the excavations. As fate would have it, it could play the very first gameset that had ever been dug up, Hotel Mario, which had long since been discovered buried in massive quantities under the deserts west of Qualem.

Curiously, almost as soon as the Beady Eye was unveiled, it disappeared. Rony Adderson -- chief excavator on the dig -- maintained that it had been stolen, and denied the persistent rumors that he had greedily sold it off to a wealthy nobleman for an over-inflated price.

Arvich really, really loves explosive devices, such as TMT, dymanite, and a recent invention called "bombs". In their never-ending quest to find new and improved ways to destroy everything, Arvichian scientists have devised a new form of archery known as "bomb arrow deployment". This experimental technique involves the archer preparing their shot as usual, but then hastily attaching a bomb to the arrowhead right before shooting the arrow.

Some overzealous archers have been swift to adopt this novel approach to arrow-firing, although there are many reports of archers accidentally blowing themselves up in the process, which has caused public interest in the practice to dwindle. It's now cautioned that only the most expert of archers could ever hope to pull off this dangerous tactic reliably, and that being able to do so would require a level of dedication to archery so obsessive as to suggest the archer must have some kind of deep-seated mental trauma that they developed such skills in a desperate attempt to try and escape from.

Premiheir Xerina and his knight Warhaul are steadfast best friends, although some find this inconsistent with Xerina's frequently expressed frustration with his companion's somewhat dull wits. When pressed on this, he has stated he owes a lot to his good friend and doesn't mean any harm by his insults, although he hasn't said much more than this on the subject.

As for the rest of his team, Mosae is a former member of the Arvichian aristocracy who left it behind for unknown reasons, later joining Xerina's force for equally unknown reasons. Darren is a peace-loving apprentice priest whose background is obscure. Sir Grant was Xerina's most faithful and loyal courtly advisor, with a well-recognized devotion to Xerina that has moved him to stay by his side even after the prince's infamous split from the Sponce dynasty and renouncing of his succession to the throne.

There is still an intense pressure on Bumblebeeeones to work in honey production, even in the modern world, which some have compared with the ongoing plight of rodenteones and frogeones. This reached a head some years ago in which a "Bumblebee Emancipation Enclave" was spearheaded by a jazz-loving bumblebeeeone called Barry B. B. B. B. B. B. B. B. B. Waspson. Barry and his group famously waged a legal case against the democratic wing of the state of Bestia on the grounds they were "complicit in the exploitation of bees" in the honey industry and that they weren't doing enough to give worker bees the rights they deserve.

The Concerebral party, who were in charge at the time under Margaret Sumpson Jr., cracked down relentlessly on Waspson and his legal action in a manner that was widely felt to be incompatible with their supposed north wing values, especially their usual tendency of putting eones' rights at the forefront of their political manifestos and campaigns. Margaret insisted Barry and his group were "traitors to beekind" and were "probably not even real bees", citing Barry's last name of Waspson to suggest he was a closet waspeone. Barry took great exception to that last slanderous accusation, and proceeded to wage a separate legal case against the Concerebral party purely to hold them to account for publicly making this groundless claim. He somehow managed to lose this case in spite of the reliable birth records he was able to produce that proved his bumblebee ancestry beyond all shadow of reasonable doubt. His inexplicable loss of the case is attributed to the defense's identity politics pandering to the wider species community's unease around bees, and especially their trump card that Barry didn't wear gloves, which the rest of the court struggled to see the relevance of, especially in the face of how painfully obvious it was to all observers that Barry really was a bee.

As soon as the original court case resumed, the Concerebral party and their legal defense team (i.e. Margaret) proceeded to wage a vicious propaganda campaign against bees in general, subtly implying that the species as a whole can't be trusted and will do anything to blindly attack non-bees for the sake of advancing the collective interests of their own kind, even at the cost of their own lives.

Waspson was so disgusted with the obvious corruption and blatant anti-bee bias at the heart of the legal proceedings that he started to make an open mockery of the entire court procedure. On one occasion at court, he and his entire legal team whipped out a set of musical instruments and proceeded to use them to make a horrible racket that the other attendees agreed "can't possibly be called music" until everybody fled the court house. On another occasion, the court was proceeding as normal until the judge mentioned the word "bee", at which point Barry abruptly interrupted the judge to recite the Manifest in its entirety, refusing to let the court move on until he was finished. Several months later, after he'd made it about one millionth of the way through the famously massive tome, the state caved in and gave Barry and his movement all the rights they'd been asking for, before gradually and imperceptibly retracting them over the following years right up until the Libvative party took over after the next election under Borald Sumpson, whereupon all pretensions were dropped and the government immediately overturned every last legal development Barry's actions had achieved, proudly announcing that doing so was an "important step" on the road to ending the "victim complex" and "culture of entitlement" that the Libvatives had won their election at least in part by condeming the new bee rights as symptoms of.

Michael Paganson and the other 4 that nobody knows are blowing up the city, but luckily King Bremner's completely untrained and untested personal guard are there to save the day.

Paganson is one of the most high-profile members of the cult of Gosqureth, rivalled only by the Boppin' Birdeone, although the latter immediately lost their high profile upon outing theirself as a Gosqurethian. Paganson has somehow retained his fame and influence despite the intense stigma against the religion and its adherents, which some attribute to the fact its popularity is growing among the younger generation, who comprise most of Paganson's fanbase. In fact, Michael is very fond of inviting said younger fans to his own sprawling retreats in order to "show them the ways of Gosqureth", which is seen as very kind and selfless of him.

Rumors also persist that Paganson is secretly a werewolf, a mythical creature from ancient pre-historic folklore that would normally take the form of an ordinary human, monkey, or eone, but which would transform into a horrifically vicious, murderous wolfeone under the light of a full moon. Fear of these legendary creatures has persisted in spite of the total lack of evidence for their existence, to say nothing of the fact that no full moons have ever been observed in recorded history.

Damien will not stand for Grace's heresy. "Dinos never existed" indeed, why that's preposterous, that completely contradicts the Manifest: "First came the dinos, then came the eones, then came the monkeys, then came the humans."

It should be clarified that in spite of how Grace says she "knows what she's talking about" as a priestess, in reality there isn't a single other priest or priestess in the entire world who would agree with her that dinosaurs never existed. For that matter, there isn't a single other priest or priestess in the entire world who would agree with pretty much anything Grace ever says. She isn't even officially licensed, after all.

She built her parochial house with her own paws, tearing apart the garden upon which it now rests, belting down its foundations, and raising it up brick by brick, taking great care to buttress the walls and especially the front and back doors with fortifying straw and wood, to the point of them being utterly impenetrable, impregnable even. Nobody know why she even bothered -- the island she built it on is completely uninhabited, to the point people have remarked she treats her home as if it were her own country, so it all seems meaningless. Of course, knowing her, that could well be the whole point.

The Bestian Broadcasting Corporation (or BBC for short) recently accepted the "Most Popular Bestian Wireless Broadcast" award for their critically disclaimed comedy soap opera, The Barchers, for the 12th year in a row. The Barchers is a world-famous show that is and always has been extremely popular in spite of the fact that nobody seems to listen to it or know anyone else who listens to it, and just about everybody who expresses an opinion on the broadcast seems to believe it's absolutely horrible. Comparisons have been drawn to an equally popular and successful Bestian cafe chain, Krabappleby's, about which similar observations have been made.

Those few people who do admit to tuning into the program report a gradual decline in quality that started around about the 3rd week of the show's run almost 12 years ago, and which has only gotten worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and worse as the years have gone by. They pine for the "glory days" of the "fresh, bold, inspiring" earlier episodes, such as the iconic one when it was bumbling dad Bunkrey Barcher's birthday and all his friends who he teased about it didn't seem to get the hint, leading Bunkrey to get upset and think all his friends didn't care about him anymore, only for him to walk into a dark room and flip the firefly and find all of his friends standing there in party hats, at which point they sang happy birthday to him and revealed they'd been planning a surprise party for him all along. Another early episode much-praised for its excellent, "visionary" writing involved Bunkrey's mischievous son, Aikarumba, getting two invites to a music concert, and struggling to decide who to give the other invite to among his friends who all desperately wanted to go, only for him to ultimately throw away both tickets and just play with all of his friends instead. Yet another such early episode concerned Bunkrey's frumpy wife, Barge, getting a knock on her door from someone claiming to be her wealthy and successful long-lost sister who she had never heard of before, only for said sister to turn out to be a fraud who was just parasiting off Barge's family, after the exposure of which the Barchers all learned a valuable life lesson and then went out for frosty chocolate cupcakes shortly before getting brutally tortured to death in a mad scientist's electro-shocking machine. (They were back to life without explanation in the next episode.)

Those halcyon days are apparently behind the broadcast now, with those who still watch it reporting that the last season comprised 26 episodes where nothing but static played. At the above-mentioned award ceremony where The Barchers won "most popular Bestian broadcast of the year", the show's writer -- Lisa Moaning -- defended it by saying the static was a "fresh new direction" for the series that the public had clearly shown their support for going by the fact it had won the award. One attendee questioned whether there was any truth to the longstanding rumors that the BBC had been stockpiling wirelesses in a vast network of over 50 silos (notoriously referred to as "Areas") across the country that were constantly tuned into BBC broadcasts in order to fraudulently bump up the listenership figures. A puzzled Moaning was about to respond to this when she was abruptly cut off by the BBC chairman who answered "you can't prove that so you're wrong", which some have compared with former Bestian president Borald Sumpson and his well-known use of this sophisticated line of reasoning in response to accusations, which has itself been heralded as a "fresh, bold, inspiring" new approach to complaint response that has recently been making waves among people in positions of power and influence. Some commentators however have suggested that much like The Barchers, despite its reputation, the "approach" really isn't that fresh or clever at all, and never has been.

Witches, wizards, and magicians are schooled around the Arvichn (AKA Arvichian) empire and its former colonies (including Bestia) in establishments called magic schools, or "magools" for short. Children who pass the qualifying entrance exam at the age of 5 are packed up and shipped off to attend one of these institutions, where they eat, sleep, and learn until the age of 16. In addition to magic lessons, the magools provide a general non-magic education.

Parents are desperate to send their children to these institutions as they represent the only education system of any sort in the Eastern world, with 5 year olds who fail to "make the cut" being effectively condemned to a life of manual labor and/or destitution. In addition to making the cut, the children must also pay an annual fee for attendance at all magools besides Bestia's, which typically has to be funded by their parents as most children don't earn enough money in their jobs to afford any of these fees, especially the 5 year-olds trying to get their foot in the door. To complicate matters, it's commonly perceived that the quality of education received -- as well as the future prospects of the attendee -- varies proportionally with the tuition fee; this popular notion may have some merit, as recent studies have found that those who attended one of the so-called "Holly League" -- Cocksford, Laimbridge, Yull, Carvered, and Berserkeley, Heaten, and Arrow -- comprise approximately 99.993% of all people in positions of power and authority in Arvich, and about 91% in Bestia.

Some people feel that separating children from their parents at such a young age might be unhealthy for them and their development. Magool administrators take objection to these concerns, pointing out that the children are allowed to go home for Christmas day as well as for one week in the summer. Still many parents follow this point up by reporting a common phenomenon where as time goes by, and their children return to them on said holidays, they start to seem "very different" in their personality and general demeanor, coming across as if they were hiding things from their family that quietly upset them. Parents say their child shows clear signs of distress when the magical train arrives at their doorstep to deliver them back to magool after the holiday ends, with its world-famous (and unidentified) wolfeone conductor who blows the train's horn, beckoning the child with his pawed finger and grinning while uttering his famous phrase, "Room for one more, my dear".

This phenomenon is not to be confused with the other highly reported phenomenon of pretty much all children everywhere having deeply negative attitudes towards magool on just about every level, finding it boring, frustrating, meaningless, elitist, stressful, thankless, and full of bullying and heavy-handed authoritarian treatment on the part of both their fellow students and their teachers, along with lots of other such complaints that children around the entire world have been tirelessly making for centuries. In spite of these protests, the adult world insists there's nothing wrong with the education system and that the children are just "entitled whiners" whose grievances don't deserve to be taken seriously or acted upon to any significant extent, citing that they themselves "had to put up with it" when they were children so there's no cause for complaint.

Some children have argued that this attitude in adults is extremely hypocritical, given the prominent -- if admittedly polarizing -- motions for substantial change in modern society with regard to traditional practices, customs, assumptions, and attitudes on just about every level imaginable, from the historical and contemporary treatment of eones, left-handers, women, homosexuals, transsexuals, and the physically and mentally disabled; to ongoing intense debates and large-scale movements for change in subjects such as science, religion, politics, and the Arvichian colonial project. The children go further and say this is suggestive of a broader irrational double standard against children in society, with adults appearing to see children as second class citizens whose thoughts, feelings, and opinions are inherently worth less than their own, not deserving to be taken into proper consideration in the same way that they would expect theirs to be if they were in the kids' position. The universal response from the adult world to these observations is that the complainants are just dumb children who don't know what they're talking about and they should take their toys, get back in the kitchen and make us some lemonade, and then go sweep our chimneys to earn their candy like good little boys and girls.

Mylonnnnnnn's Secret Castle? MORE LIKE MYYYYYYYLON'S WEAOINGY WEAOINGLE

Mylon (I'm not saying it with all the Ns anymore) is a toyeone who is good friends with a tribe of other toys including Buzz Ears the spacegnome, PC Ploody the cowboy police officer, and Sindy the psychotic toy-butchering donkey. He runs a hansom cab service in Sponce town, which is very popular in spite of his rather bad habit of stopping the cab and playing dead whenever a non-toyeone happens to pass by. In the busy high streets of Sponce town, this can lead to Mylon taking hours to traverse a single street, and yet people still use his service anyway since they enjoy the experience of riding a carriage so much.

Mylon inspired his friends Buzz Ears and PC Ploody to start their own rival hansom cab services, with Ploody's being extremely efficient to the point of people finding it unnerving to ride his cab at all, while Buzz Ears's is moderate paced. It's popularly said by cab reviewers that "Mylon's is too slow, Ploody's is too fast, but Buzz Ears's is just right". This state of affairs continued for years with everyone being completely satisfied that between the 3 of them, the hansom cab situation "wrapped itself up" perfectly. However in recent times, a 4th hansom cab service has rather abruptly shown up out of nowhere, which town residents report adds nothing of any value whatsoever to the hansom cab market and comes across as nothing more than a completely redundant cash grab. This new service was soon followed by a 5th one, and a 6th one, and many more, to the point there are now several tens of hansom cabs running throughout the area, only the first 3 of which are popularly perceived to have any legitimate reason to even exist.

They all try to keep their distance from Sindy for obvious reasons, despite them being friends. For her part, she tends to keep to herself, although some do wonder what she gets up to in that cabin in the woods of hers.

The one. The only. The Bean.

That's his nickname, anyway. His real name is Beankin Turkeyforahead. He's a little different, to be sure. He may possibly have been beamed down by aliens from outer space. Then again, he may not. Who really knows?

On a completely unrelated note, there used to be a popular stuffed toy line called the Bean Babes that spread far and wide across Arvich and Bestia . It started with a line of generic, cheaply made, eone-themed toys, which ran its course for a while until sales started to dry up, whereupon the Bean Babes company introduced a new set of toys which they called the Second Generation, at which point they began withdrawing the original line (which they now labelled the First Generation) from stores purely due to their now-faltering sales figures. However, the company's executives noticed a curious phenomenon where shortly after the Second Generation was introduced and the First set started to get removed from the shelves, the sales suddenly and unexpectedly picked up for the original First line at a rapid rate, even outpacing the sales for the Second set, until all stocks sold out completely.

For some mysterious reason, the company soon proceeded to announce a brand new, "customer-focused" policy where whenever a new Generation was launched, all toys from the preceding generation would immediately be taken off the shelves and withdrawn from sale with permanent effect. This led to a development where sales for the current generation exploded like a volcano whenever the next generation's release date was announced, to which the corporation's executives expressed "surprise and astonishment". The withdrawal policy continued from that point for what the company's upper management assured were "customer-focused" reasons. By the time the Thirty Seventh Generation was introduced to coincide with the Bean Babes' 1 year anniversary, the cash-strapped parents of rabid Bean Babes-obsessed children the world over started making public complaints, forming a group dedicated to bringing down the Bean Babes corporation and what they called its "corrupt, child-exploiting, money-gouging" practices. This parents' group had a formal public meeting with the chief executive of Bean Babes Inc., an elusive businesscorn known only as TP Gunghol, who reiterated the company's previous assurances that their "artificial scarcity" practice (as it had come to be called) was purely "customer-focused" in nature. The parents' group collectively suggested in turn that TP and his company "can go focus themselves" and come up with a less abusive method to provide toys to small, manipulable children who just need something to play with that doesn't cause their parents to get evicted from their own homes when they're unable to pay the bills on account of the FOMO ("fear of missing olds") that their children are held in constant thrall to with the perpetually disappearing toylines.

Restrictions were subsequently imposed on the company, after which it slowly wound down and eventually liquidated itself. Many years later, long after the toy line finally came to an end, the now-adult original demographic became obsessed with hunting down the Bean Babes on the second hand market and finishing off the collection they had been building up when they were children. For some reason, the prices that these toys were being sold for soared to ludicrous levels, with one in particular -- which was inspired by one of Premier Sponce's 666 ex-wives, Die'anta -- being sold with a price tag higher than the entire collective wealth of Arvich's poverty-stricken underclass, which is to say 99% of the country, at $1000. The original parents' group from two decades earlier, who were now all pensioners, reunited and started a new campaign voicing their strong suspicions that TP and his company's former executive team were manipulating this supposedly "second hand" market from behind the scenes, pulling strings to artificially raise the prices of the toys and thereby make a second fortune from selling their own stock of the things yet again. Independent commentators reported that it seemed as if TP's company had resurrected itself from beyond the grave like ghouls and were pulling the exact same shameful, exploitative trick on the exact same people they had done it to before who were now in their adulthood, with the victims' parents similarly returning from beyond the grave to do battle with this nefarious ghostly force on behalf of their own children yet again like some kind of cavalry of guardian angels from over the hill.

For one last time in this final battle, the collective force of the indignant parents overpowered the foul legions of Bean Babes Incorporated forever, and the Bean Babes prices finally began to reflect their actual value for the first time since the First Generation: 1 cent per toy, which it should be said was still more money than the Yewgandan factory workers were paid to make them.

In the last few days, the excavations have unearthed something in the Holy Land unlike any of the other stuff uncovered so far -- a strange, metal, statuesque object that resembles a knight in shining red armor, complete with facial features resembling a human's. Archaeologists who have studied the thing report that it looks almost alive, and they marvel at the holes on its back that resemble those found on various other excavated items such as the gameset players. In fact, the holes' shape resembles those on said gameset players, and yet none of the "chargers" (as they're called) can quite fit.

In trying to make sense of the bizarre thing, some have invoked the folklore tradition that a strange kind of artificial creature was created to fight the unicorns at some point in the far flung, prehistoric past. There is an associated set of oral folklore traditions involving a prominent unicorn scientist who the aforementioned creature was created in order to fight against. Legend has it that the creature was ultimately betrayed by their best friend and sealed in one of the unicorns' legendary focus group facilities. It should be noted however that historians put no stock in any of these old

myths.

Premier Sponce can't stand all the diplomatic events he has to attend, such as his orphanage tours, preferring to be at home tucking into some kind of pie instead. This is in stark contrast to the Bestian Broadcasting Corporation, a wireless broadcast company that eagerly tours such facilities throughout Bestia on a constant basis, focusing particularly on ones dedicated to disadvantaged and minority groups in society, such as eones, left-handers, and the physically and mentally impaired, for which they have been highly praised by the Bestia Times and other people concerned for the vulnerable and underprivileged. One of the Corporation's most prominent figures is particularly well-associated with these projects, which it's believed has helped draw a lot of positive attention to the places he visits, to the point that said facilities often bend over backwards to give the ambassador free and total access to their facilities.

They don't talk about Lava Reef, but they'll never forget

And none moreso than the one it destroyed the most.

"Hello, Akstaneth. Lovely weather, huh?"

"Eone, leave me be."

"Akstaneth, I'm just trying to make conversation."

"I am not interested in making conversation. Leave me be."

"Why are you always so grumpy?"

"I distrust all eones. I am here with you to help save him, and nothing besides. Now leave me be."

"Distrust all-- what on earth? And I'm not even an eone. What did we ever do to you?"

"I will not forgive you. Leave me be."

"Typical dragon attitude. You're nothing but arrogant snobs."

"Leave me be."

"You won't forgive us? We won't forgive you. We've done nothing to you that needs to be forgiven."

"... How dare you."

"You've terrorized us for all of your horrible history. We've been living in fear of you and your massacres for hundreds for years, probably even thousands of years, before the unicorns even."

"Do not speak of unicorns to me, as your verminous kind does. You are regurgitating tired old lies and propaganda set pieces. You conceited eones buy into anything that maketh you feel better about yourselves, and worse about others."

"Propaganda? Listen to yourself. You're the monsters. You killed us."

"We never killed anyone who did not deserve it."

"The burn-a-nations only stopped the last five years or so."

"We hath never acted in any capacity other than retribution for the execrable actions of your ignominious kind, and to curb your fraudulent ambitions."

"It's all you, you liar. And I don't even know what those words mean. Why do you dragons all talk like that? Use plain English for once. Take responsibility for what you've done."

"You ignorant creature. I hath thus far brooked this inquisition with begrudging forbearance, but now you hath at last tried my patience. I hereby demand that you take everything you hath said back this instant."

"You slaughtered us by the thousand."

"Take it back."

"You razed whole villages."

"Take it back."

"Roasted everyone that fought back against you."

"Take it back."

"You even killed the defenseless women and children."

"T--T--Take it--"

"We would never do the same to you."

"YES YOU WOULD!!!!!!"

"!!!"

"... Yes, you would. And now that I see I finally have your rapt attention, listen very carefully to me. If you wish to live, you will get out of my sight this instant. And you will leave me be."

You might have noticed there are a lot of songs about mowers in this series. King Bremner writes some of them to inspire his troops and his personal guard, the Mower Force. Some of them were written by Ederic Thomson, alias Derpirius, a refugee bard from Arvich. And still some of their songs are just made up on the spot, which is to say most of them. How do they do it? Maybe there's magic in the air...

Pinnie the Wooh is a stuffed beareone who lives in the famously friendly Qualem ville (AKA Qualem ville), in which he is good friends with Blisterpher Globin and a number of other stuffed animaleones including Grabbit, The Blue One, Wisol, Piggy, and resident childminder Tragicia Dakshald's own cuddly pet tigereone, Flouncer.

Of course, everybody is good friends with everybody else in Qualem, or at least they have been, after things changed.

Ralph took the time to save Damien from a knight that was about to attack him from behind, and then he ran off, leaving Damien surprised when the knight went down (Ralph distracted him with a sword-shaped candy cane) and obliviously wondering what happened to him. Ralph helps people behind the scenes a lot. They rarely notice, or at least most of them rarely notice. He makes no effort to get them to notice, either.

Also worth clarifying is that Grace more or less killed the entire enemy army by herself, which is how it usually goes.

Ralph is an absolute pacifist, which means that he refuses to deliberately use violence or hurt people to solve any problem, despite being a swordsman and the commander of a never-before-tested army, which is itself a position he occupies despite being effectively mute and in any case being unwilling to order anybody to commit acts of violence under any circumstances. It might not make much sense, but it's how it is. In the case of his pacifism, it always has been, and if he has anything to say about it, it always will be. Then again, being mute, he has nothing to say about anything.

They say King Bremner was once a used carpet salesman, travelling around the empire selling carpets and carpet accessories, before he was elected king of Bestia simply because, as one iconic interviewee phrased it, "he's just kind of a likeable guy". Honestly his career isn't very remarkable, except of course insofar as it involves the mower show.

The Bungling Buccaneers are infamously useless pirates who don't scare anyone. Their pugeone captain, Hogwash Pugslewd, is determined to prove he's a mighty pirate and that his crew should be feared all across the Sponce Main. The reality is they're such a laughing stock that they're popularly called by some really unflattering and very crude nicknames, which have caught on to the point that most people get them mixed up with their real names, which is something that really, really, REALLY annoys the pirates themselves. It's worth mentioning that "The Bungling Buccaneers" is now their actual name, which they officially adopted after failing to realize it was intended as an insult.

 For some reason, there is one pirate who sees them as a rival, and is determined to sabotage all their efforts. Nobody really knows what his deal is. It's said he's not even alive anymore, and yet others swear they've still seen his famous ship, the Dying Flutchman, with its bone and crossskull flag fluttering away, drifting across the horizon in the twilight hours...

The Gosqurethians are an extremely notorious religious movement that has popped up in recent decades, dedicated to what the Manifest calls the ultimate source of all evil things, a supernatural being called Gosqureth. In a world where the vast majority of people believe in the Captain and his holy book, the Manifest, this cult is extremely controversial. With that said, the movement have been gaining traction with teenagers and young adults, as well as cultural misfits and outcasts in general, most likely due to their very blatant attempts at pandering to such social groups in their marketing and public relations campaigns.

The movement like to present themselves in very "hip" terms, desperate to convince the youth that they don't take themselves seriously, claiming they worship Gosqureth ironically and that they don't really believe in anything that their religion is dedicated to believing in, the ridiculousness of which has caused people to view them even more negatively than they already did before they started with this new marketing strategy, coining a new term to disparage them with, "hopsters".

Their modern ironic image has won them some sympathy with younger people, although wider society continues to hold them in contempt. Gosqurethian ambassadors like Michael Paganson and (formerly) the Boppin' Birdeone struggle to assure people that the ritualistic goateone sacrifices and vandal-summoning mass murder campaigns are "done ironically" and that they're "just a prank, bro," and yet this somehow hasn't assuaged public concerns, with many people expressing the sentiment that murder is still murder whether it's done ironically or not, and that's bad, mkay. Youths who are sympathetic to the movement have given various responses to such grievances, such as "screw you I won't do what you tell me," "nobody understands me," and "no I will not tidy my room MOM".

One of the latest phases of the Gosqurethians' new image management approach has been to "re-firebrand" their entire religion to obsess over bread, referring to it as a "breadligion", referring to their clergy as "briests", "breadshops", "arch breadshops", and "high briests". This was overturned after a few weeks in favor of theming the whole thing after garden gnomes instead, which was also overturned after a few weeks, and the refirebranding just goes on and on as they try to find a PR tactic that sticks. Some see such developments as signs of a lack of integrity and moral fibre to the entire religion, which Captaincy spokespeople have suggested might have something to do with the fact the religion is dedicated to a bloodthirsty, murderous, hateful monster who wants to corrupt and kill off all life in the world before destroying the entire universe and then torturing all living things horribly in the afterlife for all eternity. High Briestess Welanda has responded to this observation by saying "we're sorry you feel that way", and assuring the public that Gosqureth has "worked very hard" in trying to achieve his supernatural genocidal ambitions. She has added that Gosqureth is "just misunderstood" and that "he's a nice guy really", so everyone "should really just get over themselves and let us keep murdering people in his name".

Speaking of Welanda, It's generally understood that the modern "ironic" image the Gosqurethians are running with is her pale-faced pet project, and that it's not very popular at all with fellow High Briests The Death Heron and Lefridge, while the half-giraffeone High Briest Durcat has remarked "Eh, ah, eh, well I don't know what 'ironic' even means, so, eh, I've got nothing to say about it." This statement from Durcat doesn't surprise people, as there's a common perception that Durcat doesn't really fit in and comes across as being out of place in the religion, seeming quite oblivious to everything that it stands for and appearing to be completely uninvolved in the horrifying abominations before The Captain that the others are directly and constantly partaking in, as well as people generally getting the impression he's a relatively decent, even innocent person compared to his peers.

The Death Heron meanwhile is rarely seen in public, and her physical involvement with the Gosqurethian activities seems relatively limited, although it's understood she does take part in all the dreadful atrocities that Gosqureth commands.

Welanda, as the youngest of the group, is seen as being most in touch with the "fellow kids", and is also seen as extremely vain, and obsessed with beauty and the need for other people to see her as beautiful.

Finally there's Lefridge, who despite his small and unimposing stature is commonly seen to be the most powerful and cunning of all the High Briests, and arguably the ultimate boss in all but name. Other than this, there isn't really anything of note to say about him.

The excavations that Bremner casually mentions are turning up all kinds of crazy things. It's just as well they still work, because nobody would be able to fix them otherwise. The ones that do stop working can be fixed with some of the other ones, as if they were made for each-other, like the gameset players, the little cylinders, and the "chargers". The scientists are still baffled.

The first gameset to ever be excavated was discovered in a desert near Qualem village. For some reason, there were millions of copies of this same gameset buried in this desert, but none of the gameset players required to play them. Later on, gamesets and their players were dug up all over the empire, which has led them to become very popular, especially with younger people. Rony Adderson, the chief for many of these earlier excavation projects, originally charged a fortune for the things, but over time their market value has cheapened, allowing many more people to play them. Initially, only aristocrats and the super-wealthy could realistically afford them, especially the very first gameset player ever unearthed -- the Phiddips Beady Eye -- and with it, the first gameset to ever be played by anyone in recorded history -- Hotel Mario, or "that game with the guy what closes doors in hotels", as Premier Sponce insists on calling it.

Some say there was once a barreleone king called the King of Barrels. He was a horrible tyrant who oppressed the barrels on his relatively obscure beach with an iron fist, before a plucky and overhyped hero called Fred "Pastry" Wolveraul came and put his tyranny to an end. For doing so, the hero was promoted and praised to high heaven, even becoming one of the most popular people in the entire world for years, despite the common impression that what he did wasn't really very remarkable at all as he had only picked the barrel king up and limply tossed him into the ocean, whereupon the king floated helplessly off on the tide, never to be seen again.

In spite of this impression, Fred went from strength to strength, becoming insanely and disproportionately rich and successful off of everything he ever did, to the point he even got his own wireless broadcast (i.e. radio show) where he just jumped around screaming about barrels all the time and contributed nothing else of any noteworthy substance whatsoever. This continued until eventually Fred was perceived to have crossed a line with a rather tasteless joke about the Lion Wipeout that had happened decades earlier following the Lion Insurrection. Fred followed this up by going on a tour of the "Prideful Fields" for his wireless broadcast show, the infamous place where much of the aforementioned Wipeout took place, and discovering some of the lioneones' preserved bodies still present, describing them in gratuitously graphic detail to his largely preteen audience.

The public started to turn against Fred following these incidents. In spite of Fred's sincere and heartfelt apology that he was "sorry you feel that way", many critics weren't satisfied, to the point that one of them challenged him to a public wrestling match, an event that many have compared with what happened far more recently with a pair of pre-eminent business executives (more on that later). Fred audaciously accepted the challenge with great relish, displaying a profound arrogance and conceitedness throughout the entire proceedings that some felt was inconsistent with his supposed remorse over the actions that had led to this challenge in the first place. Although it was a close fight, Fred managed to win in the end by breaking a barrel over his opponent's head, and returned to his regularly scheduled programming.

Nothing of note happened for some time until Fred's wireless broadcast show was abruptly overtaken in the listener figures by another popular broadcast from the Far West. Before this, Fred's show had been the #1 most tuned in broadcast in the entire world. Taking this development as a personal insult for some reason and not willing to let this stand, Premier Sponce of the Arvich empire imposed a mandate for all his citizens to tune into Fred's broadcast daily on pain of death, artificially bumping up the ratings so that Fred could overtake his rival. However, soon afterwards, the Far West show hit the top spot yet again, which led to Sponce setting up a special task force to patrol all residential areas, looking to arrest anyone found to not be tuning their state-provided wirelesses in to the show. (All citizens of Arvich have a state-provided wireless in order for them to listen to the daily Premier Sponce Is The Best Show, which is also mandatory listening.)

Fred and his Far Western rival's show continued to vie for the top spot for months afterwards, with the listener figures becoming inflated to ludicrous levels that blatantly didn't reflect the actual interest in either show. Some commentators suspected that the whole thing might have been a great big display of nationalistic, perhaps even xenophobic, chest-thumping, of a kind that really reflected badly on all parties involved, not the least of which being the broadcasting platform that hosted both Fred's and his rival's shows, which actively encouraged the whole thing on both sides, almost as if they had ulterior motives for doing so.

Brins the Bins is a well-known and much-loved trash man famed throughout the eastern world for his friendliness and all around niceness. He comes from Qualem village, the home of a lot of friendly and lovable people. Although there are very dark rumors about what's happened there.

Considering that eones were pretty much second class citizens until recent decades, it's no surprise that romantic relationships between humans and eones are broadly frowned upon, even by most eones. The same applies across all species in general, but to a much lesser extent. However the worst eone-related stigma of all is unquestionably reserved for "half-breeds" between humans and eones, who are still heavily looked down on in human society, but at least it's generally easier for them to hide what they are. Arguably though this in itself is a contributing factor to the stigma. (Half-breed is a term that is never used for people born to inter-eone relations, since they don't usually receive a special designation, instead commonly referring to themselves as both species interchangeably, or else picking one of their parents' species's name and sticking with it, usually the one they resemble the most).

The term 'human' is often used casually to include monkeys, which is important to note. The term 'monkey' is also understood to refer to all non-human simians. But neither humans nor monkeys would ever be referred to as eones, or vice versa, except by dragons and (allegedly) the unicorns.

Devil Monsters can be cute and cuddly one second and then tearing your throat out the next. Little is known about them because few are willing to hang around them long enough to learn anything. Despite this, there is a general impression that they're more prone to attack the old, the infirm, and the unwell. Some even think they somehow target people who are unintelligent or incompetent in general, which would raise all kinds of questions, but ideas like that are generally seen as myths.

The Mowster Sword is an ancient relic in the Old House of Mow that nobody can pull out of the hedge it's stuck in. The legends say that one day, the chosen one will pull it out to save the world in its greatest hour of need. Or to save the mower show. One or the other.

Premier Sponce loves gamesets, but despises Hotel Mario, almost as much as he hates Bremner and his mower show. Why? Nobody really knows. He just does. His favorite gamesets include Super Meat Boy, the Cooking Mama series, Panic Restaurant, and King Killing Simulator 330 (the last of which was tailor-made for him by LGN, the only people able to make gamesets in the modern world).

Premier Sponce didn't actually write this song, but he did write his own version where it's all about pies. The lyrics go as follows: "Pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies pies."

Greenpies was the nickname of some woman he fancied, but their romance never went anywhere. Good thing it didn't or she probably would have gotten her head chopped off like his other 666 wives who undercooked one of his pies once. At least, that's what the rumors say happened to them all. Almost all, that is.

Funnily enough, as much as Sponce used to boast about his romances with the ladies, he's never shown much in the way of public signs of romantic interest. Some have suggested he's secretly asexual, but this doesn't gel with the fact he definitely had three sons -- Magirok, Laurierre, and Xerina. All three were born to the same woman, who mysteriously disappeared about 10 years after giving birth to Xerina, and she is popularly believed to live in Zybotsria now. Popular opinion has it that while Laurierre and Magirok never cared much about their mother, Xerina was very deeply affected by her leaving him.

Ralph doesn't believe in violence under any circumstances, although he lamentably finds himself unable to curb violence in others. His unconditional kindness and mercy have put both himself and others in grave danger in the past, but things have somehow always worked out so far. He remains steadfast in his convictions, even as no one else holds them, and he refuses to give up hope that one day the people he cares about will see things his way.

The Bungling Buccaneers take on odd jobs in order to pay the bills, since they've never managed to steal anything from anyone but themselves or dig up any treasure that they hadn't buried in the first place. They somehow managed to sink their own ship once in one of their attempts to plunder themselves, but at least they managed to salvage the treasure map they'd spent the last 3 months following, only to remember it was their own map to the biscuit tin they'd hidden so they wouldn't break last year's diet, which they'd already dug up again several hours into said diet.

Fisheones can often be hard to tell apart from fish, which has led to problems with land-dwellers in the past. Water-based eones (or watereones) in general tend to keep to themselves now, although there are exceptions, Ronald Crocnald the steamed ham proprietor being one of the more famous examples. Sharks have a pretty notorious reputation among land-based eones (or landeones) as well, although it's hard to tell to what extent the stories fueling that are just old wives' tales. The common term "waterie", traditionally used by landeones to refer to watereones, is commonly seen nowadays as a slur.

One of the oldest wireless broadcasts is a show called The Barchers that first debuted over 10 years ago. It's a fairly average comedy series about a fairly average family called the Barchers who live in a fairly average town and live a fairly average life, getting up to various fairly average misadventures. The show is and always has been very popular, despite the prevailing sense that it's sucked horribly ever since the 2nd season and has somehow only managed to get even worse from every season thereafter. The deterioration in quality has gotten to the point that every episode of the latest season was just 20 minutes of static noise, and yet it still pulled in the highest ratings of any broadcast series that year. They've excitedly announced that the next season is already in production, and that they have resorted to the cheap and creatively bankrupt tactic of saying they're going to permanently kill off one of the side characters who absolutely nobody cares about anymore to try and garner attention. Uh, yes, hello? Hello. Yes. I see. Sorry, we just got word in from our lawyers, we'd like to retract our statement about the "cheap and creatively bankrupt tactic", and replace it by saying the character-killing announcement is actually a, uh, give me a second here... "inspired piece of storytelling that boldly injects new life into a still-thriving and ever-relevant series."

People have started to wonder if anything could possibly end the show's inexplicable ongoing success, and some commentators are also wondering if the only reason it's being made any more is that the creators are just cynically trying to leech as much money out of this dead zombie dinosaur franchise as possible off the back of pure brand recognition alone before the public finally puts it to the death it's deserved for the last three quarters of its entire over-bloated lifetime.

There are two other broadcast series that came out shortly after The Barchers which are generally regarded as being heavily inspired by the show, and which have been similarly accused of stubbornly continuing to exist and aggressively promote themselves for money and attention in spite of the similar painfully obvious deterioration in quality over time.

One of the two shows, which originally had a subdued political subtext but was still broadly adored for being funny and not taking itself too seriously, has since jumped the shark and degenerated into a non-stop political rant-fest, with every single episode being a self-indulgent libertarian diatribe about the latest arbitrary pop culture development, rushed out before the public have time to realize that said pop culture event is completely insignificant and not worth spending any time hijacking in order to push a political message that falls completely in line with the decidedly partisan political beliefs of the show's creators, who had once been young underdogs telling bold truths to well-established figures and popular mainstream cultural entities but who have now themselves become examples of precisely those same kinds of well-established figures, being prone to characterizing modern young underdogs like they once were as entitled whiny little snowflakes who should just get over themselves and accept the politics communicated by their own popular and well-established mainstream cultural entity. Uh, yes, hello? Hello. Yes. I see. Sorry, we just got word in from our lawyers, we'd like to retract that last long-winded sentence and replace it by saying the show is actually a, uh, give me a second here... "a brilliantly counter-cultural and underground send-up of modern society produced by the Sponce-Beardoxwell network to enormous popular cultural acclaim, telling the out-of-touch, self-righteous, entitled establishment what it doesn't want to hear no matter how much it tries to shut us up, and if any of those whiny little over-sensitive snowflakes have a problem with that then they should just shut up and keep watching our show because we don't want to hear it."

The other one of the two shows was a much more blatant rip-off of The Barchers in concept, and it used to be very popular but public opinion by this point is that actually maybe it was never really that good in the first place, let alone now, and yet it's still going strong anyway. Uh, yes, hello? Hello. Yes. I see. Sorry, we just got word in from our lawyers, we'd like to retract that last sentence and replace it by saying the show is actually a, uh, give me a second here... "a thing that exists".

King Bremner once won a goldfish bowl in Play Your Prices Correctly, hosted by famous wireless game show host David McDavidson, who is not an undead vampire. He's recently started making wireless reviews of random objects like accordions and apples and Easter eggs, which absolutely nobody listens to.

The Arvichia News, Arvich's "best and only" newspaper, determined some time ago that illegal emigration to Bestia was increasing at a rapid rate of at least 3 emigrants per year, which was utterly off the scale in percentage terms from its normal 0 per year, a fact they were keen to expose in front page headlines using line charts. When queried on the missing x and y axis labels, the editors noted that the ink must have dried up. This "illegal emigration crisis" (which was begrudgingly shortened to just "emigration crisis" after it was noted that emigration is inherently illegal) was clearly responsible for the decline in the Arvichian economy and Arvichian moral standards and Arvichian imperial identity and basically every other problem in the Arvichian empire of concern to the newspaper's writers and upper management.

The News started a "rationally motivated" campaign for the government to close the borders to stop this emigration problem, until it was pointed out that the borders were already closed, at which point they started a campaign for the government to build a wall to keep people in, until it was pointed out that there were already several walls to keep people in, at which point they started a campaign for the government to execute anyone that looks like they're attempting to leave on sight, until it was pointed out that it was already state policy to execute anyone that looks like they're attempting to leave on sight, at which point they started a campaign to try and invade Bestia and forcibly annex it back into Arvich so that there wouldn't be another country to emigrate to, until it was pointed out that the military had spent the last 30+ years trying to invade Bestia and forcibly annex it back into Arvich so that there wouldn't be another country to emigrate to... at which point they settled on the more generic position that the government "isn't doing enough" to deal with the rise in emigration, which they continue to argue is the true reason for all of Arvich's problems.

The Bestia Times have been campaigning to use various social engineering methods to try and elevate more eones to positions of power and influence in Bestian society. This has met with lukewarm reception from most eones, who report they're just glad to finally be free of Arvichian tyranny and have no more interest in moving up any kind of social ladder now than they did before, being generally skeptical of such 'ladders' in the first place given their past experiences, and would prefer to simply be treated with respect instead. The Times has responded to such objections by claiming that eones have internalized hegemonorepressive neo-imperialist unconscious biases against themselves that are responsible for such problematic sentiments, which, when asked to explain what on earth that even means, they clarified with an editorial that was broadly agreed by the (mostly eone) readerbase to be even more incomprehensible than the first. This cycle repeated for several weeks' worth of issues, until the eone critics eventually gave up and said they just didn't care anymore. The Times editorial staff and their academic supporters who proposed the reforms in the first place -- all of whom were humans -- took this as a sign of endorsement for their agenda.

In the aftermath of this series of exchanges, and in light of the ever-more-obscure words and concepts that the paper's editorial team had invoked in defense of their prior truth claims, some eone commentators voiced the feeling that the writers' esoteric words, concepts, and attendant belief systems came across as the intellectual equivalent of battering rams being weaponized for the primary purpose of pushing the paper's political agendas, being used disingenuously by people who didn't really care about or even believe in them at all except insofar as they were of use for political agitation purposes. The paper responded to these concerns that such commentators were in thrall to neo-retro-sub-super-lateral teleomacrospecies-atavist-normativism, hegemonorepressively imperialised upon them by "the humanscum elite". The dialogue ended there.

King Bremner has to use a gardening implement to cut the Tape of Mow, which will officially commence the mower show. In spite of high demand for him to use a souped-up modern grass cutting device, or to use one of those cylinder-powered ones from the excavations, or even to try and pull out the Mower Sword from its hedge and use that, Bremner insists on using a small, humble, pocket-sized mower he was given as a gift on his 5th birthday by his father and which he always, always carries around with him. Popular opinion is that this must have been about 60 years ago. Bremner, in his vanity, is too ashamed to admit that they're not far off the mark.

Bestia has invented a revolutionary new political system unlike anything the East is known to have ever seen, known as "democracy". The concept is that instead of all political power being centralised in the aristocracy and corporations, the citizenry have a say in politics themselves. Ordinary Bestian citizens can choose between competing political figures known as 'candidates', by using a 'vote' in things called 'elections'. Voting rights were initially only available to a small fraction of the population, but have since been extended to all human and monkey citizens over age 21, as well as to most species of eone over 25.

The Bestian public are very defensive of this political system, believing it has freed them from the tyranny of the unelected upper classes that continue to hold unchecked sway in Arvich. The common Arvichian perception however is that this sense is largely illusory, as the unelected corporate and aristocratic classes still seem to hold a lot of power somehow despite this new democracy system, which some suspect is due to the fact public votes can only be purchased and spent on a separate new class of dedicated politicians. These politicians have by now mostly banded into tribal groups known as 'parties' in what Arvichians argue is a cynical bid to centralise power in the state much like the old ruling classes did, and elected politicians are expected to defer to their party in almost all political matters, often being heavily pressured or intimidated by their party with the threat of losing the job that they were elected by the general public to do if they don't "tow the party rope".

Said critics claim that over the years these parties have grown in power and scope to the point that democracy has turned into a complete sham and the citizenry are effectively only choosing between the 2 most prominent parties in any election that ever happens. To compound this problem, these parties have evolved an elaborate set of insidious psychological manipulation techniques that they use to groom people into voting for them through various means including willful distortion of facts, deception of voters, and actively enabling and encouraging the persecution of large-scale groups of the country's own citizens when this is perceived to increase the party's chances of maintaining power. Thus, to Bestian agitators and Arvichians, democratic parties act like power-mongering dictators themselves, with the only real "choice" given to the public being the ability to pick which one of these two tyrants they want to be dominated by for the next few years.

The maximum time that can pass between Bestian elections is 5 years, but the ruling party can choose to have the next election in advance any time they want, which some feel is an incredibly exploitable power that allows them to hold elections whenever they are most likely to get re-elected. Also, although elections are always heavily framed as a choice between the "presidential candidates" put forward by the two main parties, the elected president can be removed from power and replaced at their own party's whim at any point in time without the public's opinion being solicited on this at all. This last point in particular has made headlines in recent times following the Borald Sumpson affair that has only just ended. More on that to follow.

In a curious attempt to resolve these sorts of objections, the Bestian government gave what they call "devolved powers" to Northern Bestia. Once the devolved government was put in place, Northern Bestia's overnight response to this development was to overwhelmingly elect the Get Those Filthy Southerners Out Of Here party, which has proceeded to spend the subsequent 17 years campaigning to secede the North from its democratic union with the South, winning landslide victories at every election during that time. Despite this, the South's official stance is that there is "no evidence of public demand" for such a secession, insisting the North "are our friends and we want to support them as much as possible in getting what they want", a sentiment supported by such friendly and impartial figures as Professors Doc Bleatlamb and Mary Sharey. The South's statement, however, was seen to fly in the face of what happened in the Northern government's recent attempt to pass new legislation that would make it illegal to detain and forcibly neuter transsexuals, on the announcement of which the South immediately invoked special powers it had never used in the entire history of the devolution agreement and which almost nobody knew they even had in the first place in order to thwart this proposition. Southern politicians insisted they were motivated in doing so purely by rational considerations.

Vrum the careone is a full-time museum exhibit in Arvich Museum. He's employed to work there since while they could have just used one of the similar-looking "car" machines that have been dug up in the excavations, those are completely non-functional and can't drive around like Vrum does. If only they could figure out how to make those things work...

Buy Things From Our Company Corporation(C)(R)(TM) sell pretty much everything, and every market they ever enter into tends to get dominated quickly by them, including ones that didn't even exist until they created them. They've been praised by the wider business community for their ability to harmonize with the general public, providing people with products they want to buy at reasonable prices and making them aware of the products' existence through their marketing campaigns.

Some commentators have suggested that their marketing campaigns amount to little more than mass brainwashing exercises, deceitfully grooming people through various psychological manipulation techniques into buying things they never really wanted or needed for prices that no rational person would ever agree to pay for what's offered. The corporation's executive team have refuted these allegations with the argument that their products and services are no more or less valuable than what people are willing to pay for them, and that this puts them a cut above the standards expected of a free market company.

When countered that a product's value being what people are willing to pay for it is literally the definition of the free market, thus making the very concept of the free market a simplistic thing that is ripe for abuse and exploitation when corporations can manipulate people into being willing to pay the price they're charging for things through precisely the methods they're being accused of using in the first place, the executive team have responded by saying that they are truly committed to their core values and are passionate about delivering performance excellence through ethics and integrity and customer satisfaction. When countered that 'core values' and 'performance' and 'ethics and integrity' and 'customer satisfaction' and other such terms come across as hollow and insincere fronts that the company uses as tools to maximize their profit margins without really caring about them except insofar as they serve that purpose and thus are part of the same fundamental problem, the executive team typically respond that they all "work very hard" to bring "true value" to consumers. At this point, their critics usually try to give up and walk away, at which point they're forcibly detained and quarantined under an act that was recently passed into Arvichian law on the back of intense lobbying by the corporation itself.

Capcom are popular in the Far West, because their popular Fighting Street series reminds them of their own martial arts. But the most popular game series over there without question is Dragon Quest, which is in fact so popular that every time a new motherlode of gamesets in the series is excavated, they declare an official state holiday known as "Quest Friday" on the day they're released in stores, with the gamesets being sold at a temporary discount. The frenzy that has previously ensued from the limited supply had a dark side though, with reports of hundreds of people being trampled to death in the mad panic to secure a copy of the game, leading some to wonder if it was irresponsible of the companies to continue exploiting the special day to attract customers.

Said companies responded to these concerns by extending Quest Friday to a week-long holiday, now called "Quest Friday Week", arguing that this would spread the sales over a more protracted period and thus should resolve the problem. Popular opinion was that the new name made no sense at all, and that it was a really dumb idea to extend the holiday/discount period if they really cared about resolving the trampling-to-death problem when common sense would suggest to just scrap the event entirely. People weren't complaining, though, since they got the week off school and work. They were complaining however when the death rates started breaking four digits. The gameset retailers vowed to find a solution to this new problem, and eventually came up with one. Currently the occasion is known as "Quest Friday Week Month", and there are currently plans to convert it into "Quest Friday Week Month Year", which some think might be going a little overboard, and some even go so far as to suggest it might not solve the underlying problem.

Old Man Benkins's wishing ritual is derived from the common practice of clasping your hands together and making a wish in your heart while looking up at the Mower Star, which is visible all day and night and somehow always shines above the Old House of Mow in Bestia's capital. However, neither Old Man Benkins nor his grandson Bobby seem to have noticed the redundancy of both of them using their one and only wish on the mower show for the same thing. Will they notice this in time? Maybe this isn't the last time we'll be seeing them. After all, they do want to attend the show in person...

Former bard laureate Ederic Thomson somehow managed to emigrate to Bestia by some miracle, and he's been lying low ever since, trying to put his unwanted bardy past behind him. But he left behind more than enough imperial propaganda songs to last Sponce for the entire series. And Sponce is too oblivious to realise that his songs are thinly veiled satires of everything Sponce and his empieyar stand for.

Holy Child, or "HC" Luen Gaily (more commonly referred to as "His Little Matey") is the coolest kid you could ever meet, always rollin' out with his "thunder mandolins", and he can be a real tearaway. He's still very deeply respected though, due to the obvious depth of sincere love and compassion he possesses for all living things, to the point that even some of the dragons like him. One dragon in particular is very close friends and is often seen in public with him, making him the only dragon in existence to openly mix with humans and eones nowadays. It's popularly wondered how their relationship began, with many suspecting a connection to a certain incendiary incident that nobody has dared to raise in their presence, especially since the dragon's friendliness does not seem to extend at all beyond Luen himself. It's also been noted that Luen hasn't been seen in public at all in recent weeks. For that matter, neither has the dragon.

“The Ballad of the Wistful Cheese” is the classical tragic tale of a cheeseeone who starts out as a defiant young rebel who won't be defined by societal convention, until the cruel and relentless ravages of age and experience drive him to the crushing realisation that he really is just cheese.

Originally this song was conceived and taught in schools about two centuries ago to caution eones not to get ideas above their station (traditionally they were assigned roles in society based on their species, and in very old times they were also enslaved to human masters). In recent decades however, the song has been reinterpreted as a sympathetic commentary on the repression of eones and how they were robbed of the freedom to be what they wanted. This was definitely not the original intention of the song, which has led some people to protest this development, citing that eone emancipation is still new and volatile and could easily be overturned if clear breaks from tradition aren't established, especially since most eones continue to take up the same roles as their ancestors were forced to.

There are also many who think the eones still shouldn't be free to choose their own careers; some who think they should still be slaves; and some who think they shouldn't be allowed to do anything but menial work. Some still call them "fake humans" or "counterfeits" and see them as "animals with pretensions" (such people often refer to the normal animal version of an eone's species as their "counterpart", which for complicated reasons is a very offensive term). There are even some who think they should be treated similarly to the animals they resemble, with a small but vocal few going so far as to advocate them being slaughtered for food, such as Premier Sponce, who admittedly advocates everything alive being slaughtered for his food. In general, the very real historical slaughter for food of certain eone groups, especially of the plant and fungus variety, remains an extremely sensitive topic. At least the eone farms are all a thing of the past now.

Ronald Crocnald is a crocodileone who headed a chain of restaurants in the Far West which has since spread to Arvich and Bestia. They serve a delicacy known as "steamed hams", a traditional dish in the Far West where the cultural convention is to eat it with chipsticks while watching the aurora borealis in the kitchen. Their famous catchphrase, "Snap 'em up", is cemented in everyone's mind.

Crocnald is hailed as a hero by the corporate world, but is elsewhere notorious for the common perception that he swindled and cheated the company's rightful snakeone owners -- the Skinless brothers -- out of their own business, and the strongly suspected rumor is that he proceeded to brutally and gratuitously dismantle their personal lives afterwards to the point that they died penniless on the streets. He stoked the fires of this rumor himself when questioned on it, with the statement that "It's croc eat croc in this world. I crocked them before they crocked me." The interviewer's immediate rebuttal that they had been in no position whatsoever to threaten him and that they had displayed nothing but the utmost decency and friendliness in all of their previous business dealings was responded to with some vague words about core values and passion for performance excellence, after which Crocnald walked out of the broadcast room. The interviewer mysteriously disappeared several days later.

Skinlesses, which is the name of the aforementioned steamed ham chain, is mired in controversy in spite of its success. The lack of food regulations is one of the bigger ones, but there are many lesser ones. Seven years go, a coweone ordering a "Big Skin" steamed ham accidentally spilled her chocolate milkshake on her hand, resulting in all of the flesh melting off of her fingers on account of the 100 degrees centigrade temperature of the beverage. The coweone proceeded to file a lawsuit against the corporation on the grounds that her milkshake was dangerously hot, a move that was universally supported by Skinlesses staff, who claimed that they were forced to heat their milkshakes to such insane temperatures by company policy. The staff also said they had repeatedly warned the higher ups that an incident like this was inevitably going to happen sooner or later, but that those higher ups simply threatened to fire them if they didn't keep doing it.

Skinlesses's response to this lawsuit was to launch a smear campaign against the flesh-melted coweone, branding her as a spiteful, entitled idiot who was completely to blame for the accident and deserved no sympathy. This campaign was endorsed via back-hand deals by various media outlets and influential figures, and invoked by the Skinlesses legal defense in court. In the end, the coweone lost the case, she was turned into a public laughing stock, her reputation was destroyed, and she ultimately committed suicide.

Parallels in the whole affair have been pointed out with an incident involving Premiheir Xerina's birth, in which a nurse at the hospital was prank-called by an obscure foreign radio station to reveal details about the royal birth on false pretenses. The mainstream media spread this story far and wide, turning the nurse into a figure of such public shame and ridicule that she also committed suicide, in response to which the same media condemned the prank callers as "shameful and iresponsible" in causing this tragic incident to happen.

There's also a similar historical incident with Buy Things From Our Company Corporation(C)(R)(TM), when its executive team made a scandalous -- and utterly baseless -- accusation against its critics of child sexual abuse on an extremely popular wireless broadcast platform. The accused collectively pooled their meagre resources to travel to the company's headquarters and file a lawsuit against the corporation for slander and reputation damage, citing that the incendiary nature of the accusations could put their lives in serious danger. The corporation's response to this was to hire an insanely expensive legal team to masterfully argue their brilliant case that they were "just joking" so it was OK. The whole thing received heavy coverage in the media, and as a result of the company's expensive legal campaign, the jury declared the company innocent and the case was thrown out of court, with the critics left with no recourse but to slink back home with their tails between their legs. This development, coupled with its distorted coverage by various agenda-driven media outlets and individuals (some of whom were strongly connected to the corporation itself), led to the widespread misconception that the company had in fact proved that their accusations of the critics were true, and within a week, all of said critics had been lynched by vigilante justice mobs.

While Grace's radical religious views might seem ridiculous and frivolous, they may actually be deceptively elaborate and deeply thought out. "The Mad Wolf" (as she's popularly called throughout both Arvich and Bestia) is commonly viewed as crazed and deranged, but those who attentively listened to her preachings in the old days often came away with the impression that her beliefs were very nuanced and carefully constructed despite surface-level appearances, interweaving various topics like science, philosophy, and psychology, showing clear signs that she'd thought deeply and to an unnervingly obsessive degree about everything she was saying. They still thought she was completely misguided, however. Also nobody really knows where on earth she got her intense convictions from to begin with, or just how far back it goes for her.

People sometimes wonder what's with the four colored strips on the front of Premier Sponce's inner robes. They were based on cave paintings found in the region now known as Bestia, depicting four colored crystals that seem to have been treated with reverence in some bygone era. Their shape in the paintings does strikingly resemble the crystal used in The Great Banishment and the three later reclaimed from the (supposed) ruins of the focus groups, but those ones were (and are) all colorless. In any case, crystals with that shape have been a universal symbol of hope and liberation for centuries, so naturally the Arvich empire associates itself with them.

An interesting feature of said cave paintings is that the crystals always appear off-centre, with a conspicuous empty space to the right-hand side of the others. Nobody really knows what this is supposed to mean, if anything.

The Arvich Empire's theme tune has official lyrics for twenty verses, even though the official recording sung by Sponce himself ends partway through the first verse due to what has officially been described as "technical difficulties" in the recording. Some have asked why they didn't just try the recording again, but no statement from the government has been forthcoming. In any case, memorisation of all twenty verses is mandatory for all Arvich citizens over a certain age (I think it's 4 or something), as is daily recitation of the full song.

David McDavidson loves to shout his own name while skydiving in-between hosting broadcasts of Play Your Prices Correctly, even though skydiving hasn't been invented yet.

He doesn't suck anybody's blood in the process. Will people please stop with those ridiculous rumours.

Grace likes the whole Mario series, but none more than Hotel Mario. Well, I say the whole Mario series, but that's not completely true. She tracked down a Virtual Boy at a flea market once, stuck it on her head, and tried playing Mario Clash, but mere seconds after turning the system on, she violently grabbed it off her own head and threw it away. When the salesman asked her why, there was an awkward pause, and then she said that the colour scheme bothered her, before walking away. She's never touched the system again.

Lauren really likes the classic Sega Genesis Sonic games, as well as Sonic Adventure 2 (but not 1), Sonic Generations, and Sonic Mania, among others. She absolutely hates Sonic 06. However, there's nothing she hates more than the "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games" series, which is a spin-off you don't want to mention in her presence if you know what's good for you.

In the deserts west of Qualem where all the famous bowslingers came from, the Cheesewheel Kid tried to right all the cheesy wrongs. He's not the only famous figure from that region.

The glory days are over though, and in the time since the Firefly Kids incident, it's all become wastelands and ghost towns now. Bands of laughably dressed eone outlaws have claimed it as their territory, reportedly riding on strange vehicles that look like bicycles yet don't need pedalling, and nobody dares to go near the area anymore. Plus there's the shadow still hanging over it of the aforementioned Firefly Kids, even though officially that never happened.

The Cheesewheel Kid is so popular that he has a lot of imitators, like The Man With A Name, who still wants to know why people don't just call him by his actual name. And he's not even a man, he's a buffalo. After the Firefly Kids incident, he thought about moving to Jolfe City, the closest Arvichian settlement to Bestia's southern border. Not close enough for anyone to successfully jump the border and get out of Arvich alive, of course.

As for the Firefly Kids, they were so-named for the fireflies they purportedly released up into the sky above them to illuminate their city and desperately try to draw attention to themselves. These lights were visible in the sky over Tilliamburg every single night for weeks, before disappearing permanently. Passersby that saw the lights and came to the walled city to try and help were told by the armed guards at the sealed front gate that it was just an "unusual weather phenomenon" and that "everything [was] under control". This statement, which remains the state's official stance to this day, is noteworthy in that it has always been met with open public skepticism, whereas all other official Arvichian government statements are only questioned in private, and even then only in hushed tones. The many public executions have done little to curb this anomalous reaction, much to the government's palpable unease.

The common sentiment is that the public's intense moral outrage over the event is so uniquely profound that if the authorities are ever proven to have deliberately left the children to die, it could incite the first full-blown insurrection in Arvichian history.

The Daily Bestia, Bestia's most high-profile Libvative-supporting newspaper, is and always has been the most popular newspaper in the country. It's well-known for its sensationalist headlines, which critics feel are designed to wilfully misrepresent complicated truths in order to attract attention from potential consumers and thereby get them to buy copies on false pretenses. Such headlines include:

"FERAL WOLFEONE MURDERS 18 HUMANS IN ANTI-HUMANIST RAGE" (which was actually referring to a nightmare the writer recounted in the middle of an article about stamp collecting); 

"FILTHY FOREIGNERS SET FIRE TO BESTIAN FLAG" (which was actually referring to a family of third generation ethnic Far Westerners who accidentally dropped a match stick on the flag hanging on their window while trying to light the candles on their young son's birthday cake, and who had forgotten to take a shower that morning);

and "HOMELESS PEOPLE WANT TO GENOCIDE ALL ARISTOCRATS" (which was actually referring to a family who had infamously been evicted from their home of 40 years by an aristocrat called Slickon Varley who deliberately raised their rent to unaffordable levels so he could convert the house into a fezant shooting lodge. The family had told their interviewer "we wish Bestia would just get rid of the aristocracy.")

Most recently they ran a headline saying "THE SUN WILL BLOW UP IN SIX YEARS", which reportedly ruined the summer holiday of a suggestible 13-year-old boy, inducing a profound existential dread and anxiety in him that his astrophysicist parents -- who were able to easily debunk the groundless claim -- are concerned might scar him for life, and that the paper's publishing of such dubious and inflammatory material is extremely irresponsible and likely to prejudice their child against the paper for the rest of his life.

The paper has garnered a reputation for expressing and endorsing harmful and bigoted opinions and attitudes, and in particular for its perceived pandering to people who harbor such views themselves, thereby stoking hurtful and hateful attitudes and beliefs in wider society. The paper protests these sorts of suggestions emphatically, claiming that such ideas are "smears" (whatever those are) of the "Concerebral elite" (whoever they are) and the "BMWs" (Big Mad Whiners) that they appeal to.

While there is a common agreement that such sentiments are somewhat exaggerated, the paper's reputation is nonetheless believed to be well-earned. With that said though, it's been argued that similar traits and tendencies are observed not only in the paper's famous rival, the Bestia Times, but also in literally every single tabloid newspaper that has ever been in publication in the country's 30 year history, and that the main reason the Daily Bestia tends to be seen as unique in its hateful nature is that it's by far the most prominent paper in the country.

Over the years, the paper has become less explicitly hostile to society's traditional north wing scapegoats to some extent, but a few commentators have pointed to the paper's earlier days around the time of its introduction 30 years ago, during which the editorial team officially endorsed such political platforms as:

the forcible exile of all non-native Bestians;

the total genocide of all eones;

the severe punishment of all people living in poverty on the grounds that their "poor moral character" had led them to their poverty;

and the explicit endorsement of Adrolfe Jamestler and his Zani party in Bestia's first ever election, which in the paper's own words Jamestler "tragically and regrettably lost" to Borald Sumpson Sr. Sr. Sr. and his Libvative party, a development that the paper lamented "we will surely look back on with utter shame and dismay for many generations to come". This sentiment apparently did not stop the paper from immediately pledging their full support to the Libvatives, which they have continued to do ever since.

Daily Bestia apologists have brought up a similar list of historical positions and messages pushed by its Concerebral-supporting rival, the Bestia Times, to wit:

the forcible exile of all native Bestians;

the total genocide of all left-handers;

the severe punishment of all aristocrats on the grounds that the their "poor moral character" has led them to their affluence;

and the explicit endorsement of Mosef Stahlin and his Bullshivik party in Bestia's second ever election, which in the paper's own words Stahlin "tragically and regrettably lost" to Margaret Sumpson Sr. Sr. and her Concerebral party, a development that the paper lamented "we will surely look back on with utter shame and dismay for many generations to come". This sentiment apparently did not stop the paper from immediately pledging their full support to the Concerebrals, which they have continued to do ever since.