Ghyll:Down There

Bobby Shwarmph is a quack - and not one of those cute and cuddly quacks like Altifur Witherspoon - but a bonafide, conspiracy-laden, smells-sorta-funny, shelter-your-children quack. As an endlessly-spouting quack, however, he does occasionally get something right within the pages of Aliens Everywhere, and Down There is one of them. The problem is, I'm not exactly sure which is fact and which is "WHEE! I HAD THE WEIRDEST DREAM LAST NIGHT. WHERE'S MY PEN?!"

You see, the brown fluid haunts me... and has since my expulsion from the Council. Unfortunately, I've been rather unsuccessful in determining much about it. What I do know, I won't reveal here. What Bobby Shwarmph knows, he's not around to tell anymore ("Whither Bobby Shwarmph?" - now that would be a great lumic!)

I digress. Down There, Down There. Bobby Shwarmph first outed it in -55 EC, and I didn't pay it attention. Not only was the first issue of Aliens Everywhere met with healthy skepticism, Bobby was, at the time, an unknown quack. Some quacks you can trust. Some quacks you're leery of. Some quacks you just shake your head at with a bemused smile and go "Oh, that lovable quack!" But an unknown quack? Well, that's a whole new ball of splak - you're not entirely sure where you stand. In -7 EC, Down There made yet another appearance in the rag. Nothing atypical about that - exposing the secrets of the "hollow core" (how wrong he was of that!) seemed a pet project for him. What piqued my interest was, of course, that blasted brown fluid. If I were an artist, I'd draw you a picture of myself shaking a fist in grim determination. I perform private showings of my patented fist-shaking technique. Hork me.

Ahem. The brown fluid. Down There. Paramount Queen. I was off. On? Off.

In the past years, I haven't found much. All hail Royal Dulalia. With rocks.

Down There is an orthogonality with one of its turning points in the eastern Dulalian Empire. From what I can tell from local stories, Royal Dulalia stumbled into the turning point and returned, weeks later, rife with an over-protecting madness that wouldn't let anyone near the transport. Over many years, he built walls, rooms, and floors around the turning point, and became increasingly maniacal about its protection. Nowadays, the actual room that contains the turning point is surrounded by a vast prison network storing all the incoming travelers to our own orthogonality. No one save Royal Dulalia goes in, no one save Royal Dulalia comes out. I've tried. I've asked. I've pleaded. I've dressed up like a maniacal and paranoid god-king and tried to fakir my way past. I've enlisted Aerles to burrow underneath, only to fail for one reason or another. Curse Royal Dulalia. His madness consumes not only he, but me.

I've not been able to find another turning point. I'd be a lot happier if I did.

Citations: Dulalian Empire, Hork, Paramount Queen.

--Morbus Iff 11:08, 10 Jun 2005 (EDT)