User:Sbp/Sea fairs

[This is an old unfinished draft of Sea fairs, dated 2005-09-26.]

Sea fairs are offshore markets held in the Dagger Seas. Most last for just an hour or two, but two of the larger ones have been running non-stop for years. Though some still take place close to shore, since -67 EC the majority of sea fairs have been conducted a lele or so out into the bay.

In -382 EC the great Strawname created a riddle of such immensely perplexing proportions that all who set to solve it went crazy: "who can give and give and become a millionaires?" He wrote the answer on a semi-precious stone, fed it to a Strawnimal, slapped its ass just outside of the cactus plains, and sent it off to get lost inamidst the orthogonalities. Yet just a few days ago, my buyer-in-the-know† managed to acquire this self-same stone at the Strawmeet sea fair, for a heftyish price. (The answer is "Billionaires and prostitutes.") This just goes to show that one can find practically anything at a sea fair.

In -67 EC, a group of young ruffians from one of the coastal villages had got wind of a large sea fair to be held just a few hundred strawmeasures offshore. They consulted Straw's Almanac, and found that it would be a superlow tide that day due to Pinky and Perky both being on the pull. So they went down and taunted the traders with cries of "wang dang doodle's got a plicky full of nort!", and eventually started hurling rocks and pebbles at the boat.

What the ruffians didn't bank upon was the fact that the trading vessels were armed to the teeth. They fired at the shore. Though the lads weren't killed in the event, let's just say that they didn't go hurling pebbles at armed vessels anymore. Since the boats at the back didn't know what was going on, however, carnage ensued, and three boats were lost in the incident. Since then, most sea fairs have been conducted out of stone-throwing distance.

Footnotes

† A certain Mr. B.B.R. Hoof. Actually I was there with him, but we'd split up to cover more bargains. Mainly he just goes so that he can swim around and say, "look, I'm a sea-horse!"

Sean B. Palmer
Tomlinson Cottage
Left-at-the-Wotsit Road
Andelphracia Orthogonality

[I forget what the address thing was for at the bottom, but I remember it was a critical part of some joke that sadly wouldn't work because of the orthogonality mention. The Straw* names were actually along the lines of "AIJRGIjarjogia" in the draft, but I tweaked them for publication here. I still often sing "plicky full of nort". It's catchy.]

--Sean B. Palmer 10:33, 8 March 2006 (EST)