I'm almost definitely going to regret getting ahead of myself like this, not to mention eventually giving away my strategy and status, whether intentionally or otherwise, but I've never been one to resist temptation.
Long story short, I felt like writing a Mictlan AAR, realized I've yet to actually finish my first real multiplayer game(I imagine the game itself will be over in a few months. I'll probably be eliminated before the halfway point), and elected to write a During Action Report instead.
I've tried not to give away too much, and anyone who can sit through this thing deserves to find out what blessing I've used, at the very least.
I doubt this thread'll be updated all that frequently, considering we play a turn every two or three days, and that I'll definitely want to censor myself at some point, rather than give away all my tactics before the game is over. Have I mentioned that whole resisting temptation thing?
Be all that as it may, I hope you find this rare glimpse of Mictlan's ancient cultural heritage both informative and enlightening.
Years of More Blood Than Usual
Being an account of the period of general misapprehension and ill sentiment often termed The Parenthetical "Ascension" Incident, or the Time of Inconvenience, as documented and compiled by Optimus, High Priest of the Moon, foremost astronomer and generally sagacious personage of the People's Republic of Mictlan.
Introduction
As in all undertakings of this scope, particularly under the vaunted auspice of nonfiction or, ZARDOZ only willing, docu-drama, I must begin by addressing the near-bottomless stupidity of the reader. Indeed, though many a treatise has been penned regarding the unpleasantries of the Ascension Incident, most have been found wanting, not by any fault of the author, but rather by dint of the dizzying, nay, staggering, scratch that, hair-whitening, no, a baker's thousand of pardons, spit-take inducing, literatus crippling, sophist-eviscerating ignorance of our land's esteemed, yet cavernously vapid, reader base. Although it is not for me to remedy this shortcoming, it is within my power to make the barest allowance for my less erudite readers, and favor them with this brief, all-too-cursory summary of the nature and customs of the People's Republic of Mictlan, that they may secure both a rudimentary grasp of the substratum of the histories herein, and scant, yet merciful, relief from the burden of their own oafishness.
We of Mictlan are an orderly people. Some have claimed we are a full three times as orderly as those who are but a smidgen more orderly than those who are neither orderly nor disorderly. Though the meaning of this comparison has proved opaque to layfolk such as yourselves, we urge you put stock in college-accredited high priests such as myself.
Gladly do we labor under the watchful eye and everpresent lash of ZARDOZ, He Who is Often Italicized, a benevolent, yet insatiably bloodthirsty god. Shielded by the tattered wings of our indubitably omnipotent and scintillatingly charismatic lord, we have flourished, and cultivated a wealth of arts and sciences. Our national pastimes include gardening*, wickerwork, stargazing, ziggurat-making, frenetic procreation, and international bondage/domination games. Every festival day**, we don colorful garments of feather and fur, and embark upon a night-long parade of conquest and island rhythms, revelling by the searing, armor-piercing love and goodwill of our lord.
Peoples subjugated in such festivals are alloted the status of "noncitizens", entitling them to only a basic healthcare package, but may apply for full citizenship as soon as we run out of citizens, approximately once every six years. Full citizens receive both an expanded healthcare package and a finely-crafted t-shirt proclaiming their citizenship with wry wit(Government officials receive a matching mug). However, full citizens must also bear the full tax burden, in the form of a monthly blood slave harvest effected by the Terminators of ZARDOZ, a legion of latex-clad, unnervingly hirsuite, superintelligent horsemen who divide their time evenly between seeing to the harvest and makng phallicism-laden philosophic allusions which none save great ZARDOZ(HWioI) himself may grok.
In conclusion, Mictlan is a land of contrasts. Our national bird is dead.
* Indeed, in his work "A Week of Blood and Daisies: My Brief Sojourn Amongst Raving Loonies", the oft-published Plutarch of Pythium described our people as "Apparently human, yet... spend most of [their] time industriously pushing up hundreds of thousands of daisies... [they] are also inordinately fond of festive bouquets of red-tinged daffodils... made off with my right earlobe, and away I went". High praise indeed
** Even-numbered days, as well as Gay Pride Day, the 267 days devoted to former high kings(Starting with Xiscotheque, sacrificed early Last July, to a juniper that looked like it could use a regal sacrifice. It had been a slow week), Harvest Day, and odd-numbered days.
Year 1 of the Ascension Incident, the Year of the Bleeding Ocelot
Very much refreshed, we have returned from our much-deserved decade of rest, relaxation, and not wholly unanticipated, yet refreshingly unscheduled, fornication in the scenic fens of C'tis. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a sobering sight: Our millions of noncitizens had deserted us, our temples and ziggurat workshops had been respectively desecrated and converted into workshops of a bent unrelated to the manufacture of ziggurats, and only our home province, minded by some people we called in to feed our collective fish and water our collective rhododendrons.
As we had been in ages before, we found ourselves adrift in an ocean of uninvited ethnic diversity, in the midst of a rich anthropological milieu of uncooperative cultures, hostile traditions, and dangerous foreign fads and fashions. Acting quickly, we sacrificed the prophet of ZARDOZ(HWioI) and the entirely priestly caste, as well as those guys we'd called in to mind our fish and rhododenrons. Comforted by this reaffirmation of our stately ways of yore, we set about finding a suitable replacement for the former prophet of ZARDOZ, who would eventually head a restored priestly caste. By the Month of the Bleeding Tapir, we had settled on the right and true Mr. Mxyzptlkoatl, a man endowed with both the panache and, wonder of wonders, the je ne sais quois* that are the true measure of a high priest of the sun. In Mxyzptlkoatl, we might find the strength, grace, and virtue so sorely lacking in the long hours since the demise of our priesthood. We managed to sacrifice three of his toes before he fought off our Terminators and issued a priestly edict restoring the depleted order of eagle warriors, with whom he summarily facilitated an impeccable campaign of conquest outside Terminator jurisdiction.
On the first day of the second month of this campaign, the Month of the Bleeding Quetzal, we received word from our good friends abroad(And, since the dissolution of our once-unmatched empire, our peers), the lizard kings of C'tis. Before he was sacrificed, the C'tissian envoy delivered into our hands a missive from Ligha'sss, the vaguely demigodlike entity at the head of the marshland nation. Ligha'sss words warmed our hearts**, and his good-natured boasts and hilariously sacreligious claims of divinity provided ample fodder for both water-cooler conversation and hilarious lizard king impressions throughout the months to come. Yet one particular portion of Ligha'sss' well-intentioned ode to reptillian supremacy caught the eye of our newly-appointed Minister of Heathens***. We could be friends, or foes.
Friendship! At long Last, we had found a people who could look past the gallons upon gallons of blood which we would rub vigorously into the eyes of foreign dignitaries, as both a gesture of welcome and a means of disposing of the spare volumes of blood we could not otherwise put to good use. The very notion filled us with a warm, some might even venture to say fuzzy, feeling very much akin to happening upon a herd of errant pachyderms, and sacrificing them all to the nearest worshippable object.
Immediately, we dispatched two dozen of our finest messengers, then implored our penultimate-quality messengers to garb themselves in said finest messengers' skins and bring word to C'tis: Gladly do we set aside the scourge of adversity, and with boundless jubilation do we don the humanskin mantle of friendship, adorned with the puppyskin trim of kinship-in-all-but-blood****.
Thousands of our quarry workers and masons began work on portable, exportable Versions of the ziggurats we so fetishistically adore, eager to establish trade relations as soon as our alliance with C'tis could be cemented by ritual intermarriage of our two species. With the alacrity only those who wear skintight latex in our tropical clime can hope to muster, our Terminators began securing the month's crop of blood slaves, that we might gift our scaly allies with the bounty of our lands, in exchange for their undying friendship. Yes, the aid of their undead legions of friendship would doubtless be payment enough for this dearest of commodities.
Ere the times these legions would be forthcoming, we bade the C'tissians avail themselves of a barrel of prime mahogany containing some twentyscore human digits, our promise of gifts yet to come.
* Zing. Some have contended that the quality in question was actually oomph, but any evidence which might have lent credence to this claim is lost to antiquity and dodecatomb.
** Prompting the season's first wave of "Get 'em while they're hot" sacrifices, overseen by Mxyzptlk from his hideout in the occupied territories.
*** The eye thus sanctified was not duly sacrificed. We were all kinda tired, and some of us felt the whole sacrifice thing was getting pretty old. I mean, ubiquity does not equal merit. The thought of Ligha'sss frothing at the jaws, extolling the virtues of C'tissian dominion, lent us more than a little insight into ourselves. I guess that was when we realized we were pretty much a bunch of one-track, bloodthirsy blowhards. A few overdue hours of sleep later, we were back on track, of course. Still...
**** We would know.
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Current Turn: 6
Current Song: Goo Goo Dolls, "Iris"
Current Mood: Bloodthirsty
Edit: Silly me, forgot to add bold text tags to "Year 1 of the Ascension Incident"
[ August 06, 2004, 19:01: Message edited by: Vicious Love ]
Years of More Blood Than Usual - A Mictlan DAR
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