No one expects the Schmalkaldic League
Vanquished on February 25, 2007.
This week began uneventfully enough: All day Monday, most of Tuesday, and at least a small sliver of Wednesday (henceforth known as “Eigenday” not only in Eigentoria but in my little kingdom too now!) was spent receiving supplicants from far and wide, all coming to pay tribute to their new Lord and Emperor, I, Phillip I.
Mr. Wilson and Samuel Dreckers came to me first, pledging their fealty and offering themselves up in the service of Bouillabaissia, my freshly minted kingdom. Samuel Dreckers, highly-trained assassin, was appointed to guard my fortresses, store houses, outhouses, and duckponds. Mr. Wilson, being a highly useless individual, adept at mostly nothing and completely untrained at a multitude of useless skills, was put to work washing my stables and goat pens with a toothbrush and a single handkerchief. Let that be a lesson to him next time I beg for work at his cat-canning plant!
Regina Maria-Theresia Louisa Ilsa Ollanthorpe, the fair Countess-Prelate von Sträsmussenbörg, and her lovely daughter Genevieve, offered me gifts of silver, gold, lapis lazuli, some Kleenex, and a flock of geese totalling 57,600 gooses. I graciously accepted their tribute, and also accepted Genevieve into my harem, over the squawking, goose-like protestations of her mother. As for the Countess, I banished her from Bouillabaissia forthwith. Samuel Dreckers did a fine job of chasing her off with his threats to “enhornswoggle your floozie-ladles and disenjudge your groompkins!” and his liberal use of the new trebuchet I had bought him. I thus added southern Moravia to my “Places to Conquer” list.
Ravna Olegg-Thorssondóttir offered me her bare feet, along with her toes, which I gladly accepted.
Haldûrburðgar himself, with a glorious retinue of 768,001 Westphalian Schmongeling Gnomes in train, paid homage to my greatness on Wednesday morning. Watching the knobbly little knave bow and prostrate himself before my porcelain throne, his little white beard and pointy crimson fez jiggling glibly, sent me into a giggling fit like a little girl still in her pigtails. I took the thirty talents of gold he offered, thanked him kindly for his homage, and then had him—and his entire gnomely retinue—impaled on stakes as a warning to the rest of the gnomes. Thousands of little gnomish corpses are still mounted on toothpicks along the castle walls to this very day.
On Wednesday afternoon, Samuel Dreckers got his first chance to demonstrate his warrior prowess when the kingdom came under the sudden, furious assault of forces led by Charlie Witherspoonworth V, son of Charlie “Fwappity-Do-Da” Witherspoonworth IV, whom I had assassinated back in 2005 over a trio of pie-eating skanks and some graffiti. It seems ol’ Charlie—we called him “Smackity-Goo-Bah” back in the day—took as a personal insult my renaming Witherspoonworth Lane after Jennifer Love Hewitt, and he just had to avenge himself. If only he understood the sublime perfectitude of the fair Miss Hewitt’s exquisite feet and slender toes, our little conflict could’ve been resolved so much more peacefully. But, alas…
Alas, he showed up at the palace gates on Wednesday, frothing at the nostrils, eyes crossed and screaming epithets, waving a small hatchet over his head, and threatening to lay siege to Bouillabaissia until I relented and renamed the street after his moldering old daddy.
I scoffed. I laughed. I twiddled my thumbs. I twiddled Ravna’s toes. I even chortled a bit. Then… I crushed him. Dreckers, along with an army of 131,072 Schmongeloid conscripts, defended the kingdom valiantly. Charlie V was quickly overwhelmed by phalanx upon phalanx of heavily armed gnomes; he succumbed almost immediately to their deafening wheedling and needling. I didn’t even have to call up my old pals from Schmalkalden, although I did briefly consider deploying my tactical schmaltz bombs. His army of one defeated and broken, his hatchet nestled snugly in the cleft of his buttocks, Ol’ Charlie went home sullenly—while Witherspoonworth Lane remained Jennifer Love Hewitt Lane and firmly in my possession.