Medieval HOA: SVU 3 - Moat Marketing
The medieval bureaucracy continues
[‘Tis the next installment of a series written with of ! Previous entries here, here, here, here, and here. ]
A Furtive Missive
Good sirs or madamsellinis,
You might think it strange of me to write to you, the Hovel Owners Association of a margravate which I am currently besieging, especially since I am so very skilled at it.
Some might think this makes me your enemy. I admit I have stabbed rather a lot of your kinsmen. But that’s just bizzy-nizzy, eh wot?
Apologies. I digresseth.
I contact you today to enquire about your policies regarding shrubs. For you see, I am a shrubbery aficionado. We are known as shrub-noggins in our shrub clubs among the shrub-fellowes.
Mayhap we can make a trade. If you could promise me that I might find, in your town, some very nice shrubs, with some extremely interesting gold fruit, then I could share some very interesting information with you regarding the Association writ large and, indeed, your margravate.
This information could spare me the further effort of stabbing so many of you, and your soldiers the tiresome indignity of same.
Let me describe this shrub-fruit more carefully: It is gold coins and I am proposing to become a spy.
Yours for a price,
The Creeping Shrub
An Earnest Offer of HELP
Dost thou wish to recruit more HEAD CHOPPEES?
If thou art planning a FINE BLOCK PARTY you simply must include a HEARTY BEHEADING. But alas, so many times in this daye and age YOUNG PEOPLE do not wish to be separated from their THINKY BITS. Mayhap it is because they are TOO SOFTE. They disgust me and I’ve killed MANY.
But soft! What light through yonder window chops? Why, it is mine own stock and trade. MARKETINGE!
Yes, good sir, ‘tis true. I am an EXPERTE in the ways of the SOCIAL SORCERY known as MARKETINGE, and with my powers at your side we CANST NOT but SUCCEEDE.
Why, only the previous fortnight I did release a scroll which was read by over TEN GROUPS that were each one HUNDRED PERSONS! Ich wish we had a number for that. Blast.
To prove my worth, I offer you this SUGGESTION GRATIS. I notice that thine town dost have a MOAT MONSTER. Why not have an ARTIST or DRUNK BABY fashion a tapestry to AFFIX to said monsters head REMINDING TOWNSFOLK about the beheading?
‘Tis merely the start of my ideas, good sirs. HIRE ME FOR MORE.
Yours,
Bartholemew Skortz
Marketinge WIZARD
De La Boing Bounces Back
Dear piss-dribbling empty-noggins,
I note that you have done nothing about the selling-men. I’ll let that rest for now. Here’s a situation which should be easy even for you plug-eared thumb-biting cart twerps whose bottoms bite the tufts off for-hire sedans.
My neighbor is waging a war on my senses using his children. They are all odd sizes. I demand that you tell him and his wife to size their awful progeny the same or else the entire town’s land value could plummet.
I canst not look at their filthy starving faces and remember which is the oldest before that one dies or they make another small one or a middle one falls in a well. It’s daft, it’s an irritating assault on me and I will not stand for it.
Fix this immediately.
Valtesse de la Boing
How Many Chops in a Package Deal
Attention MARGRAVATE OF GARTHBROOK,
It has come to my unfortunate attention that the number of beheadings at your scheduled block party is dreadfully low. This could result in your town falling below the threshold for the group rate.
Please confirm the final number of beheadees so that I might bill thee appropriately for my services.
Two-Chop the Accurate
Traveling Executioner
Verily, The Truest Torture is Other Personnes
Lord Talbotshire
Good sir, I beg you, please ask the citizens to stop coming down into the lower levels of the keep asking to see the so-called “torture chambre.”
We do not have a “racke” or any “thumb screws” or any such nonsense. What limited, drafty, drippy space we have is reserved for persons his Highness wishes to forget.
It used to be peaceful down here with calming whimpers of despair. Now each newe morn brings a crop of braying turd-sacks insisting we must have a score of iron maidens or some such badger-wash. Who hath the time for such frippery?
Respectfully,
Jon of the Donjon
Open Letter: Ich Am Not a Mermaid, He Just Cheated On Me
(Read this aloud, Talbotshire)
By now thou hast surely heard my former husband, the Compte d’Buttsquesse’s, outlandish rumor that our marriage hath been annulled because he burst in on me in my weekly secret bathing-tyme and discovered that I am a mermaid.
En fait, I walked into the bath upon my regular hour and found the Compte in flagrante delicto with a number of persons, most of whom looked lethally bored.
If any of you, gentle or common, require proof that I am a woman with a woman’s strong legs, I invite you to the public square for a kicking you’ll not soon forget.
Princess Airyelle of Unterdasea
Former Comptess d’Buttsquesse
(Not a Mermaid)