The Da Tolkien Code

 

Accidental Balloonist

A foolish drunken bet with a village idiot had caused me to try crossing the Sea of Kansas in an antique hot-air balloon. As one could have suspected, a tornado coming out of nowhere tossed me way out of my course, and I landed in mysterious place that was in no maps. No maps that I knew that is.

My balloon had landed on a place called Fields of Academia, near the city of Jolly Rog; on second glance, it was only a pub, but it was so thronged with enthusiastic customers (especially eel fishers) that it reminded me of a teeming city. The residents were kind and promised to fix my balloon the best they could, but it would take months. I had no idea what I would do for that time, but then I heard of the mysterious Forbidden City of Pezopolis. Immediately I desired to gaze at its wonders. A friendly Swede adviced me to make my way to Capital City and request for an entry pass to this place of miracles. The best way to get there would be to make my way to the river and hitch a ride on the riverboat, Queen Beruthiel.

"Beware of EEEeeells", he added yet with his strange accent. With many thanks I left him and next morning I begun my strange journey.

The Fields of Academe were pleasent and paceful in the early moring dew, as I made my way across the blossoming hills and valleys. Then, in the distance I saw it shining in the sunlight as beacon of Knowledge - the Pinnacle of a Library. I decided I could not pass such a fountain of Knowledge, for Knowledge it was I yearned the most. I like the word - Knowledge. So off I went to seek Knowledge.

Delightful as the Fields of Academe were, with their mortarboard-clad blades of grass that swayed under the mild breezes whereon wafted the strains of the Academic Overture, yet more inviting was the imposing building, with turrets shaped like Tolkien's tobacco-pipes, that stood before me. I opened the door, and gazed awestruck at the rows and rows of books that defiled [paraded] before my eyes. Here at last I would discover the truths about Middle-earth that long I had only intuited. "Oh, that I might learn the lore of ducks!" I exclaimed.

Slow, scuffling footsteps were heard, and an aged, balding man smoking a pipe made his presence fom the inner recesses of the library. "Mumble", he said, without removing the pipe from his mouth.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked politely.

"Getrvenge," he mumbled, only slightly more lucidly. "Stoldrdina!"

"Oh, it's you," I said wearily. "Still living a life of crime?"

Just then, an army of stereotypical librarians headed towards us, with horn-rimmed glasses and buns (not THOSE buns, you filthy pervert) of dread. Rapidly they surrounded my companion and siezed him effectively. "Raussmachen!" the most stereotyopicalist of them exclaimed. "Your fake ID is no good here, you fraud."

Only now I realised the man was in fact none other then Professor A.S. Tollman, a famed Psychologist and Tolkien-impersonator. Librarians quickly escorted him outside, still mumbling. I hoped they would be gentle with him.

"My apologies, sir," the head-librarian told me. "But our library holds posession of a certain relic of great value, and this man has been trying to get into the resricted quarters to examine it for a long time. But this time he crossed the line and must pay. For only those who have solved the mystery of Da Tolkien Code, are deemed worthy of that honour."

Now this indeed sounded mysterious and intrigueing, and I wondered what great prize could have made Prof.Tollman to take such risks.

"I see you are interested," said my guide. "Come. I can show you the very first riddle, but to find the others, you must travel across this great land to wherever it points you to."

"What is this code about?" I wanted to know.

The head-librarian looked around to ensure nobody was listening, then he whispered into my ear: "There is rumour that Tolkien had an illegitimate child with one of the most famous prostitutes of his time, probably Zsa Zsa Gabor. Christopher Tolkien covered it all up to save the family honour, and he tried to ruin the child's talent by mercilessly exposing it to Disney movies. But people say that there is a secret society that rescued the child and raised it in a hidden place. Think it through – the true blood of Tolkien, with his talent and power!"

I frowned. I didn't dare to tell the head-librarian that I had my own opinion about both honour and talent of my old friend Tollers. Still, he knew how to sell stuff. "If that child wrote a book..." I thought loudly.

"Exactly!" the head librarian crowed. "It could become the greatest bestseller ever. The Holy Grail of fantasy, to coin a phrase." He started to salivate slightly. "Bring me that child, visitor!"

I nodded gravely. "Show me that riddle", I said.

The head librarian, accompanied by three plump, blond, and (as adumbrated above) stereotypical librarians, led me down a winding staircase into a basement whose cobwebs bespoke the former presence of enormous spiders. "Budgets being what they are, we had quite a vermin problem here at one point," he said.

I nodded and followed the librarians into the archives, which were dusty and full of forgotten posts of threads uncounted, and thence into the Holy of Holies, where my wondering eyes beheld the fragments of a a tobacco pipe and the self-portrait of a prepubescent female with a charmingly vacant expression. "This picture is believed to be of Tolkien's natural daughter," said the head librarian. "And this pipe is believed to have been dropped by Tolkien as he hastened forth from the bad of Zsa Zsa."

I was enchanted by the beauty of the picture. "Died Bildnis ist bezaubernd schoen!" I crooned.

"You, you, you, shall go to free this ma-a-a-a-iden! You shall the daughter's savior be! You shall the daughter's savior be! And she shall be ever thine! Ever thah-ah-ah-ah ah ah ah ahah ah
ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah AH ah
ah ah ah
ah AH ah ah ah ah
ah ah AH ah ah ah ah ah ah
ahah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
ah ah ah ahahahahhaahahah
ah ah AH ah ah ah ah ah ever thine! be ever thine! be ever thine!" trilled the head librarian.

"Your Fs in altissimo are a little low," I said.

He shrugged. "Never mind that; just get the girl."

"What will aid me in my quest?" I asked.

"Take this magic kazoo," said one of the other librarians.

I had no idea what I could do with such a thing, but obediently I pocketed the queer object for further examination.

"This is all we can do to help you," the head librarian said. "Now we must leave you to your own fates. Good luck stranger."

 

 

A Dinner at the Eelery

Librarians vanished in the dim corridors, and left me alone with the pipe and the painting. I scratched my head and wondered where I should start. Something that my friend Tollers had once written in one of his long-winded letters kept coming up back of my head.

"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom". I had scorned it first as part of pseudo-zarathrustian babble he had picked up in our visit to Qom, but now I begun to think there might have been a hidden message behind it.

Then suddenly it dawned on me. Of course! It was so simple that even a child could understand it. It was not "left the path" but "puffed a leaf" - as in a leaf of pipeweed! And what did you puff pipeweed with?? Pipes! Break the pipe to find wisdom!

With trembling hands I took up the pipe and twisted it broken from the middle... and sure enough, a small wad of paper fell out of it. Picking up the paper and opening it, I recognised at once the old professor's characteristic scroll. However, the words were slightly disappointing:

"I'M LUSTING FOR EELS I NEED TO HAVE SEX WITH EELS NOW THEIR SLENDER SLIMY BODIES ... !"

I disgustedly put the paper back in my pocket. From my correspondence with Tolkien, I knew far too much about his sex-life already. Ugh. All that remained was the kazoo. Hesitatingly, I put it to my lips and started to play the catchy rock tune "Rock of Ages". The music comforted me, and I played a few more songs. A huge, thin eel in a shabby raincoat slithered by, and he stopped for a moment and listened. "Youb playb a good tuneb", he said in a blubbering fish accent. "Youb should comeb to the Eeeeeleryb some Fridayb night. Blubb. Web put on some Karaokeb and freestyleb music thereb." He gave me a friendly nod, waved an empty sleeve of his raincoat and slithered on.

I clapped my hand against my forehead. That was it! If Tollers was into eels, he probably had hung around at this Eeeeelery rather frequently. I knew how talkative he could be. Maybe he had revealed more about his daughter to one of the guests there in a weak moment, or maybe to a whore in a night of darkness and slime. I packed my stuff and went off to search the Eeeeelery.

Fortunately, I was in a library, which is usually a good place to gather information, so I asked on of the stereotypical librarians, "Which way to the Eeeeelery?"

"Go east till you hit the Ouiskie, then you'll need BOATS to take you south to the Eeeeelery. Oh, and the Eeeeelery is mostly underwater, but so long as you have your kazoo, that shouldn't be a problem."

I followed her advice and made my way down the vaguely intoxicating waters until I arrived at an odd combination of a pub with a fishtalk. The inhabitants were a rather rough crowd, and kind of hard to understand, as they spoke Blubb in a Yorkshire accent. I accosted the barkeep and asked him to recommend the best booze.

"Welb, the bloodyb mermaibss are decent, but the plankton aleb is quite specialb," he said. "Woulb youb careb for dinner?"

"Yes, please," I said.

He recommended algae souffle, and I accepted. "I suppose one sits whereone likes?" I asked vaguely, as there weren't any empty tables.

"Youb might want to avoid the eeligans," he said, pointing to some loud obnoxious adolescent eels who were cheering for Leeds. "Safer to sit in the cornerb with the insaneb jellyfish. Oneb of Dr. Science's failed experiments. Fed the poor thingb a diet of spamb." He instructed a young eel named Blob to escort me to the jellyfish's table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a lascivious female eel bat her eyelids.

The jellyfish in question was a very pitiable creature indeed. He hardly seemed to notice me. Instead he just stared on the table, endlessly muttering something like "cheap vi4gr4... your ebay account has been... young russian girls waiting... your cash... perfect r0lex replica...". I ate my algae souffle, which was good, but I hardly could concentrate on it. Finally I could not stand it anymore. I stood up and slapped the jellyfish.

He moaned and seemed to regain some consciousness. "Yes, Mr ebay member?" he stuttered.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name is Pseudo. Pseudonymous al-Faqhater. Download MS Office for free..."

I realized that the spam had utterly confused this creature's brain. In an - admittedly unusual - flash of pity I decided to help him. I would give him a focus in his life again, something to cling to. "I always thought of starting a minor business, when my current quest is over", I said. "I could use someone to run the advertizing. What about you?"

Pseudonymous eyes fixated on me for the first time, and a spark of hope glimmered in them that had not been there before. "Me? Really, sir?" he asked. "Please click OK to confirm the transaction." So I first met my most faithful servant of later days.

For now, I just said "OK" and he proceeded to ask my name, address, phone #, e-mail, social security number, age, sex, race, nationality, favorite sport, taste in women, shoe size, favorite color, cigar brand, boxers or briefs, and concluded by polling me on whether barlogs had wings or not.

By now I was getting impatient. I was getting nowhere with my quest, and this whole place was beginning to disgust me. I now wondered if Tolkien had ever been here at all. But then it hit me.
Balrogs!
There was only one person who could have fed the idea of Balrogs and wings in the brain of this wretched creature. But he had said Barlogs. That must be the next clue. The Temple of Tyope, center of a weird and bizarre cult worshipping typing errors - an idea which I found disgusting, but could imagine being appealing to a slob like Tolkien. There would I find the next clue!

And as soon as I had said that to myself, a sound of a steam whistle echoed from the docks. The Riverboat, Queen Beruthiel was leaving. I grabbed my belongings, rushed to the docks and jumped aboard. Only later I remembered that I had forgotten to log myself out from Pseudonymus' system. He would not make much sense for next few weeks.

It turned out that the lascivious female ell had followed us on board. "Hey big boy, wanna have a good time? We were destined to be together for all eternity, you know."

"I run a dating service if you're interested," put in Pseudonymus.

I wasn't. This behaviour was far too fishy for words. I nearly threw her out of my cabin, but she hissed, "I have information about Tolkien!"

"OK," I said, "but if this is a trap you're messing with the wrong guy."

"Elves are eels," she whispered. "Tolkien liked smoking them in dark corners of the Temple of Tyope."

"Hmmm," I grunted. "Anything else?"

"Tolkien was a notorious seducer," she said. ("Like that's news," I muttered.) And she began to sing:

"In Rogsylvania, 640.
In Capital City, 231.
100 in Humidor, in Pezopolis 91,
but, but, but, but in Hewwo,
but in Hewwo, 1003!
(La-la-la-la-la!) 1003!
(La-la-la-la-la!) 1003!"

I still pondered the meaning of these words when suddenly a voice boomed through the riverboat's loudspeaker. "Ladies and gentlemen", it thundered, "as we are now approaching the Isle of Tol Kien, you can see two of the wonders of Fredonia. On the left side of the river, the Flying Castle, the triumph of architecture over natural law! On the right side, the Temple of Tyope, the triumph of anarchy over spelling!"

Everyone stumbled out of their cabins and rushed on deck. I and the female eel were swept with a crowd of Japanese tourists and Mark Twain novel characters. On deck, groups formed at the left and the right side of the riverboat, wide eyes gazed on the two wonders, and cameras clicked.

I stood alone in the middle, dumbfounded, and stared in disbelief at the green, hilly island in front of us. "They have named an island after Tollers?" I murmured.

Squashed by the throngs of tourists gaping at that miracle of bad engineering and tasteless decor that vomits under the name of "Temple of Tyope," I kept going over the words "640 in Rogsylvania" in my mind, looking for some pattern. Perhaps the letters in one of Tolkien's mistresses names added up to 640, or were there 640 chapels in the Temple of Tyope? I barely noticed when one of the Rogsylvanian priests ate a couple of tourists and got bawled out by another Balrog priest for forgetting that tourists in the Temple of Tyope were exempt and could not be harmed unless they were really annoying. (Pseudonymus, meanwhile, was getting credit card information from the other tourists.)

Suddenly a horribly familiar voice yelled in my ear: "Wlel, wlel, wlel, sin't it a sam;ll mlutivrese?" I felt ill. Misspelling and typos of any kind revolt me...

***

Slowly the terror of what I had seen and heard in the thousandly accursed Temple of Tyope begun to lose its grip on my intestines. I had seen and whitnessed things that no civilized man was ever supposed to have, but I had survived those ordeals, and now my quest would be able to proceed. From the distance I admired the magnificent skyline of the legenday and forbidden Middy City, and swore that one day my path would take me there. But not today. My next destination would be a place simply called Hell (or Hewwo). There I would find my next clue. I took more comfortable position on the backseat of the limousine and fell into pleasent dreams for the first time in days. When I woke up, it was already late at evening, and my chauffoeur was holding the door open for me.

"This is as far as I will be able to take you, M'sieur," he said. "Hell is right beyond the next hill, and the Bolshevorcs do not like limousines. Nor the people who drive at them. For your own safety, you must proceed on foot."

I thanked the man and gave him a generous tip, and he drove away. Taking my baggage I proceeded on foot as he had instructed me. As soon as I had passed, a shadowy figure emerged from the side of the road, and followed after me (although I did not know it at that point, but obviously would later or I couldn't tell it now).

 

 

The Cellars of Hell

As I started climbing the low, grass-covered hill in front of me, the sun set behind the mountains in the West, and the golden light that had twinkled on the river Ouiskie suddenly went out. A cold breeze sent chills through my body, but it was not just the sudden temperature drop that made me shiver.

Hell. The mere name of the place I was approaching sounded ominous. I have always had a lively fantasy, thankfully, for this had helped me to write many a novel; but now I started to curse these forces of imagination. In the twilight the lush grass and flowers beneath my feet seemed to change, to grow into twisted, unhealthy shapes. Blades of grass gripped my shins like bony fingers. Shrivelled, disfigured faces seemed to grin at me from every flower, and tiny, sharp-teethed mouths opened and closed continuously. A shrill, unearthy howl reached my ears, and the ground beneath me started to vibrate in answer, as if something long dead and buried was trying to make its way to the surface. I began to run uphill as panic overwhelmed me.

I reached the hilltop, panting, my heart beating wildly. Then I passed a sign which read "Hell Kolkhoz #0815 - Genetic Engineering Test Field - Please clean boots when leaving", and behind it the grass and flowers abruptly reverted to normalcy. But the rumbling beneath my feet did not subside. Again I heard the howl, and now I recognized it as the sound of a steam pipe. Lights blinded me, and as my eyes adapted to it, I saw a large steam train thundering towards a tiny station. People buzzed around. Relieved I hurried towards it.

The train was full of orcs. Simple folks mostly, with broad, open faces and dirt beneath the fingernails, agricultural workers from Hell's northernmost kolkhozes on their way home after the late shift. I had given no thought to acquiring a ticket, but nobody seemed to bother. When I entered the waggon, they were already passing around bottles of vodka, and soon enough they started to sway and chant. I sat next to a huge guy with a green face, who immediately passed a bottle to me. "Eh, paleface!" he bellowed. "Look like ya could use a sip, eh?" He patted my shoulder, which left stains of mud and oil on my jacket. "Don't be shy, it's free. State supplies it. Thass comm'nism as we like it, eh?" I nodded and tried the stuff, which was surprisingly drinkable.

Slowly the train rumbled towards the city, stopping now and then at a station. I looked out of the window, where the meadows and fields gave way to the dark, rectangular shapes of Hell's industry quarters. A mist obscured my view, and a sulphurous smell seeped into the waggon. The green bloke took in a deep breath. "Thass better", he thundered. "Cleans the lungs, eh? Damn dandelions give me the allergies." I sighed and thought wistfully about the blossoming fields of Academe, but then the vodka bottle came back, and I took another, deeper sip. Soon I lost track of how many sips I had; and by the time we crossed the Wet, a smaller river which emitted a weird green glow, I tried to join the cheering and singing.

We are worker, we are orc
On the way home after work
Look, there goes the train we took
Chugg-chugg-chugg!

Wife and children waiting there
Dinner already prepared
Elf-steak so raw it still shrieks
Eek-eek-eek!

Now wife's in a baddish mood
Cause I do not like her food
Look, there goes her frying pan
Bang-bang-bang!

Finally, the train stopped at Hell Central Station, and I walked out of it somewhat unsteadily. The vodka had made me tired, and I looked out for some kind of shelter for the night. But the most striking difference between Hell and other cities I know is the total absence of advertizing. Not a single neon light with the word "Hotel" blinked through the darkness. In fact, there were no lights at all - no cars, no street lights, not even stars in the cloudy sky. I stumbled through the streets, and soon I had no idea where I was anymore. I had almost given up hope when I finally saw a light. There was a small campfire on the middle of the street, and as I approached, I heard voices laughing and singing - not the rough bawling of orcs, but the most delicate, fair voices of innocent young girls.

Now I have to explain something to the reader. Whilst it is true that Hell is ruled by communist orcs, who ruthlessly enforce their bureaucratic system on the city, there is another, less known layer of population. They are young humans and usually dubbed "fangirls", but in reality they are much more diverse - there are emo girls, cheerleaders, skater boys, teen gangstas, drama queens, prom queens, pokemon monsters and bloggers of any kind. They lay low, hide during the day, but at night they come out to party. The orcs rarely even admit they exist, and none of them, not even the highest cadres of the ruling Bolshevorc Party, can explain who let these people in at the first time. Rumours go that they originated in a place called Cavetroll Clippings or so, and that they had originally been attracted by the free and unlimited internet access offered by the communists.

However, these people seemed not very surprised as I stumbled towards their fire. Laughing with shrill voices, they took me in, danced with me, fed me tofu sausages and made me drink a very sugary, thick lemonade with lots of bubbles. As the evening got later, I noticed that especially one of them seemed to seek my vicinity. She was a pretty girl in a violet latex skirt, high boots, neon-green pigtails and a ridiculous amount of makeup. "WTF LOL I think I'm falling for him", I repeatedly heard her whisper to other people around me, but when I tried to talk to her, she shyly slipped away.

Suddenly, a voice boomed over the merry party. "Achtung! Vhat do ve have here?" it thundered in a badly faked German accent. "Don't you know zat zis is forbidden? No light on ze streets after sunset! Ve could be bombed any moment!"

So I learned the real reason for the darkness. I had already seen the Flying Castle from afar, but I had not known that its inhabitants hated the fangirls so much - for a reason unknown to me - that they often steered this huge building over Hell and barraged real or assumed hideouts of these people. The orcs never shot back, these raids being of too much value for their propaganda about the "evil capitalists out there", but they had imposed a nightly blackout on the city.

Anyway, the fangirls had violated this rule, and now they were in real trouble. Soldiers on horses rode through the street and encircled us. Oddly enough, they were no orcs, but humans in ancient Prussian uniforms. Their leader, a large, grim man with a pink pigtail-wig, stepped forwards. "I am General Confomromitz!" he bellowed. "You vill pay for zis violation! Soldaten, dissolve zis party!" And immediately the soldiers stormed between the fangirls and dealt many a blow with large wooden clubs. Those who fell were trampled into the ground, and blood and lemonade sprayed into my eyes, hindering my sight. Then something hit me hard on the back of my head, and I know no more.

***

"OMG u r okies?" asked a worried voice. I opened my eyes carefully. The green-pigtailed fangirl bowed over me.

"What... happened?" I tried to get up from the bed where I was lying, but a terrible headache forced me to lie down again.

"They always oppress us so OMG much!" said the fangirl, whose name was _Sweetlovexxx87. "But I rescued u because I <3 u!"

"Uh, thanks", I grunted and looked around. I was in an apartment of staggering ugliness. The communist functionality of the furniture was bad enough, but the wallpaper, with little teddy bears and hearts and kittens galore, almost made the tofu in my stomach come up again. Very carefully I stood up and walked to the window. It was a gray, chilly morning - I had been knocked out for a while. _Sweetlovexxx87's apartment was on the fifth floor of an ugly, nondescript building, one in a row of many along an ugly, gray road. Ugly statues of orcs lined the street, trying to look heroic. On the other side of the street I spotted a nude female orc, standing idly on the sidewalk. "What does she do there?" I asked.

"Oh", answered _Sweetlovexxx87 and shrugged, "that's just a WTF brothel. Orc place, as u can see. We don't go there."

I looked down at the naked orc and understood her reservations. "They have brothels?" I asked and shuddered a bit. "I thought they are commies and stuff."

"LMAO yeah!" said _Sweetlovexxx87. "That's a famous place over there. U never heard of it? Plentiful Wheatrations Boulevard 1003, the only brothel that overfulfilled its orgasm plan seven years in a row!"

I said nothing. But the song of the lascivous eel, back on the Queen Beruthiel, resonated in my head.

"But, but, but, but in Hewwo,
But in Hewwo, 1003!"

"Tollers was here", I murmured to myself. First eels, and now this. The full extent of Tolkien's perversions slowly started to dawn on me. "I must go there", I said loudly.

"U <3 orcs more than me?" asked _Sweetlovexxx87, and tears shimmered in her eyes.

I assured her that I only planned to talk to the prostitutes, but still she suffered a major emotional breakdown when I quit. I felt rather sorry for her, but that feeling subsided later when I discovered that she had recorded our entire conversation with a hidden microphone and put it online in her blog.

However, now I just left the house and the sobbing fangirl. As I crossed the street, there was another thing I did not notice - eyes watching me out of the shadow of another doorway. The shadowy figure that had been following me was still on my trail. And as soon as I had disappeared in the brothel, it held a shadowy cellphone to its shadowy ear. "Now", it said.

In the brothel, my gaze fell upon a... but no. For reasons of decency, I will not describe this part of my adventure in detail. Let it suffice that I finally found a prostitute who did remember a certain white-haired, pipe-smoking guy who had occasionally dropped in. The prostitute was an unfortunate woman who salivated excessively, which gave her face a certain moistness that no doubt reminded Tolkien of eel slime. But the information she provided was invaluable. For she indeed had seen Tolkien in the company of a small girl, my first hint that his daughter really existed. To my dismay, she could tell no more about the girl, only that this had been "many years ago". I thanked her and left.

When I stepped out of the brothel, a deep noise greeted me. It took me a moment to realize that I looked right into the muzzle of a very big cannon, mounted at a tank in feldgrau. Slowly it rumbled towards me. On top of the tank stood the shadowy figure, only it was no longer shadowy, but an orc with a grey uniform and very, very cold eyes. "You are arrested", he said.

***

I was not told which crime I was accused of. Instead, I was brought directly to the Bolshevorc Party Bureau, a large building in the city center. The figure did not tell me his name, only that he was an officer of one of Hell's secret services. "The best service, the NKVDork", he boasted. "Always a step ahead of our friends from the KGBork." He pushed me into the building, and I deemed it clever to not exert any resistance, mostly because the officer had a rifle, and also because my hands were stuck in very solid-looking handcuffs. We took a broad staircase downwards, and I learned that the building was as big beneath as above the ground. We passed cellars full of what looked like wine barrels ("Clothes Depot", the officer explained), monkeys hammering on typewriters ("some kind of experiment"), hamsters hammering on typewriters ("newspaper production") and a closed door behind which I heard heavy gunfire ("the Committee to resolve whether it is spelled 'Orc' or 'Ork', we're expecting a decision any century now"). Finally we reached the bottom of the stairs, the deepest cellar of the building. "Torture chamber", the officer said with a grin and opened the door for me.

I was led into a room with floors and walls of raw stone. It was cold down here, and smoking torches cast a flickering light. Medieval torture devices loomed in the corners. Nobody was here - or so it seemed at first. Only at the second glance I noticed the small handkerchief on a stool. To my surprise, the officer saluted the handkerchief, and it started to talk in a squeaky voice.

"So", the handkerchief said, "you are the one. Well, well. I am Commissar Bluh." It looked angrily at the officer. "I'm freezing. When will we finally get central heating down here?" It took a small human doll out of its pocket and sneezed into it, a most peculiar sight.

"May I ask what crime I have committed?" I said. "And isn't Communism supposed to be socially progressive, with fair trials and everything?"

"Usually yes", nodded Commissar Bluh. "But this is a secret matter. We cannot allow any record of this. We are talking of a conspiracy here - one that spans all of Fredonia!"

"What?" I asked.

"Smurrow smuggling", the officer said.

"Uh... what?" I repeated, unable to think of anything more clever.

"You have been following the trails of a mysterious old man for some days now", the Commissar explained. "We believe this man is at the head of an intercommunal, international, yes, indeed interparalleluniversal smurrow smuggling ring!"

"Smurrows!" exploded the officer. "That little blue plague! How can a man sink so low?"

"There is a deserted suburb of Hell, called Empthy", Bluh explained. "It was only constructed because of a statistical misunderstanding - someone grossly overestimated our population growth - and nobody ever settled there. But several years ago we noticed the presence of smurrows there. We immediately shut off all access to the suburb and built a wall around it, and so far, we think we have been able to quarantine the blue buggers in there. We have a theory that the mysterious smuggler bred them there, but they escaped his cages."

"Why would Tol... the man do something so vile?" I asked.

"Smurvacco production", the officer snarled. "The most expensive drug we know."

I sighed. I had no reason to not believe the words of this handkerchief. It was exactly the kind of quick wealth that would appeal to Tollers. "What do I have to do with it?" I asked.

The handkerchief held up a tiny sheet of paper. It was crumpled and washed out, but small passages of text were still readable. "Blogambar an...e pipeweed of a th...nd camels", I deciphered. The handkerchief grinned triumphantly. "I do not have to quote from it, do I?" it sneered. "Do you still deny that you know this criminal?"

I shook my head, defeated. "What will you do to me?" I said weakly.

The officer shrugged. "You have been hanging around with fangirls", he said. "I think we will apply fangirl law to you. Which means we'll just leave you alone with... him."

I did not have to ask who "he" was. For in this moment the large, round shape of General Confomromitz burst through the door. He saluted sloppily and boomed: "You have vork for me?" Then he saw me, and a sadistic smile crept on his red, sweaty face. "Aha! Ze one from ze party! Not yet caused enough trouble, eh?" he snarled. He took a long whip from his pocket. "Made in Rogsylvania" was written on it. He activated a switch, and the ends of the whip started to glow red. Small flames crept over it.

I closed my eyes, awaiting a horrible death. "Oh, I wish I had never heard of the Da Tolkien Code!" I exclaimed.

Confomromitz dropped the whip and raised his pink eyebrows. "Vat? Tolkien?" he boomed. "You know my old friend Tollers? How is ze old Kerl?" I was rather perplexed and gave no answer, but obviously Confomromitz did not expect one. "Ah, Tolkien!" he yelled. "Ve fought together in Spain, jawoll! He rescued my Arsch when ze damn commies shot down my Stuka over Guernica!" He quickly stepped forwards and loosened my handcuffs. "Any friend of Tollers is my friend. Let's not talk about zat punishing stuff again, jawoll!" He turned to the flabbergasted handkerchief. "You don't touch my friend! Or I vill go on general strike again! Get it - general strike? Hahaha!"

As the General and I walked past the NKVDork officer, I noticed the orc clenched his rifle so tightly that his green knuckles turned white. He shot his icy glances at the General. "I don't care if we need you", he hissed. "One day I'm just gonna shove this gun up your fat-" But Commissar Bluh looked at him menacingly, and he fell silent.

***

There was no doubt now that the forbidden city of Empthy was my next destination. But with Confomromitz' protection, I encountered no further problems. I took another steam train and quickly arrived at Hell's southeastern border. Behind a desolate, run-down station a wall of gray concrete cut the landscape in two parts. Barbed wire was on top of it. Behind it loomed the ruins of buildings. A pleasant smell wafted from a hot dog stand with a huge sign: "Last free sausages before Capitalism". The uniformed orcs had orders not to hinder me, and so I walked past them and left Hell.

 

 

The Blue Peril

As I arrived in Empthy, I beheld several small blue things scurrying underfoot, and reflected on the depths to which my quest had brought me. I would need to disinfect myself thoroughly after this experience. (I must warn the reader that many of the details in this account are quite disgusting, and a doggie bag would indeed be useful at this point.) As I looked more carefully, I observed that these blue things had furry feet; the fur vaguely resembled tobacco leaves. I lurched, reeling from disgust at what Tollers had done to these unfortunate beings. Clearly, he had bred them for the smoking pleasure of Balrogs.

At this moment, I espied a shadow behind me.

I turned around quickly, and the shadow slipped away. "Hello?" I asked, my voice echoing eerily through the empty town. But no response came. I walked back to where I had seen the shadow disappear, and turning around a corner, I faced a massive building. An abandoned administration building, it seemed, in pompous commie-orc style, but unfinished. Behind marble columns, raw concrete walls loomed. Scaffoldings croaked in the wind. The roof was naught but a skeleton of wooden and metal bars.

And then I saw the shadow again, slipping through the hinged-out doors into the building, hesitating and looking back for a moment, as if it wanted me to follow.

It beckoned to me and hissed something I did not catch, its lamplike eyes shining dimly. I hesitated. Had Ann Coulter also decided to visit Empathy?

There was only one way to find out. I yelled at the top of my voice: "I agree that all Arabs must be killed, but I do not think their children under the age of six should be tortured for more than 24 hours before it!"

If the shadow was really Ann Coulter, she would not let such an outrageously communist bleeding-heart-liberal troll comment go unanswered.

The shadow muttered something under its breath that sounded like "Ppsykhoanalysing zis vone vill be interresting, undt ze brrainvashing vill be highly enterrtaining!" Then the shadow flitted into the darkness.

At that a scientist barged into the building.

"Where is he?" he cried.

"Umm, he went thataway," I said. "And I agree with you about Iraq."

"Oh, so you adhere to the Val-Iraqqo theory as well? That's cool, but my main concern right now is stopping Gargamel from performing his abominable experiments on the smurves."

"Who on earth is Gargamel, and what has this to do with Tolkien?" I asked, exasperated.

"Tolkien who?" asked the scientist, irritated. "Gargamel runs the smurvacco business these days, or so we think. Took over the helm once his old mentor, the feared and mysterious Pipe-smoker, disappeared."

"Um... I see", I said. Then I frowned. "And who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Dr. Science and I'm carrying out a vital top-secret study to determine the effects of overcrowding and miniwogahism (or shortage of females) on smurvic biology," he replied. "And who the hell are you? You look suspiciously like a pipe-smoker."

"I'm not", I lied. "About who I am, well, that's a Gold Star Question. Which means I don't have to answer it."

The scientist shrugged. "Whatever suits you", he said. "Feel free to come with me and watch me at work. But don't tell the orcs I'm here, and please don't step on any smurves." Why, I wondered, had he let me off on so lame an excuse? What was his game?

With these words he led me into the abandoned building. It was cold inside, and the air was stale. Dark corridors opened in front of me. Our voices gave a strange echo in the eerie silence of this long-dead place. Huge halls opened in front of me, their ceilings hidden in the darkness. As my eyes slowly adapted to the dim light, I almost could see the ghosts of bureaucrats shuffling over the dusty floor, quietly mumbling to themselves, their eyes lowered on long-forgotten paperwork.

Finally, just when I thought I could not take it any longer, we came to a huge door. It was made of black wood, and decorated with menacing spikes and skulls. With a shrieking that sent chills down my spine, the heavy door opened.

And then it all was different. Sunlight flooded through the door and blinded me. Fresh air wafted in, air from the outside. The green schemes of trees swayed under a clear blue sky. I heard the chirping of birds in the distance.

"Behold the Courtyard", the scientist whispered. "The Secret Garden of the Smurves."

I gazed entranced upon the beautiful mushroom-garden that was lovingly tended by the mutant-smurvacco smurghs. Every kind of mushroom that exists, and several that don't, flourished in the pink-pastel greensward.

"We must save them from the pipes of the balrogs!" I cried.

"We shall," said Dr. Science. "Now that the Pipe-smoker is gone, they can breathe easier."

"I suppose they would," I remarked, echoing the anti-smoking lies of the Elves.

"Yes!" he said with conviction. "And since there's only one female, we've kept their population low, thus reducing their natural aggressivity."

"Good," I said. I didn't want to be surrounded by a lot of small aggressive blue things in hoods. The very thought reminded me of a childhood trauma I preferred to forget. Although, at the same time, I wondered whether aggressivity might not come in useful, if it were harnessed ... Dr. Science muttered something about having a vivisection to attend to, and slipped away.

One of the smurrows squoke.

"EEk, art thou an agent of Gargamel?" it said.

"No," I replied. "I hardly know who he is."

"He is an evil being with a bad fake German accent, even worse than that pseudo-Prussian general's," said one of the smarter smurves. "He wants to kidnap us and sell us to the fire-monsters, so they can smoke us at their abominable soirées."

"How horrible," I said. "Is the trade lucrative?"

"We wouldn't know; by the time we participate in it, we're dead!" squoke another smurf.

Just then, two smurvish guards came running and cried, "The Holy Thingy has been stolen!"

"Yesz, undt zere'zs nozink you can do about it!" laughed the shadowy figure I'd seen earlier. It then removed its disguise, and revealed itself to be none other than Dr. Tollmann. He didn't look much like Ann Coulter, although the voice was not dissimilar.

"Give me the Holy Thingy at once!" I cried heroically.

"Oh, fverry vwell," said Dr. Tollmann with a shrug, and he did. "Now exschcuse me, I haff bigger fisch to frrry." He gobbled a mushroom and vanished before I could say "cheesy plot device."

"O glorious hero!" cried the smurves. "We are now thy minions! Do thou open the Holy Thingy and behold the mystery contained therein!"

I opened it, and saw an advertisement for Jolly Rogger's smurvacco.

"Egad," I said. "I was so hoping I would not have to go to Rogsylvania."

"We have several guidebooks that the evil pipe-smoker left here when he fled from the police!" said the smurves eagerly.

"Great," I said. "And how do I even get there, let alone survive?"

"Eat this mushroom and ye waketh up at yer destination," said Papa Smurrow in a disgusting dialect he'd probably picked up from Tollers.

"That will be delightful," I said, heavily. "But I need to prepare myself for the rigors of Rogsylvanian life. Can you build me a palace?"

"Willingly, Great One!" they cried.

"I could get used to being worshipped," I said to myself, opening a box of cigars that the smyrmidons had brought me. But brief, alas, would be this shangri-laic existence.

 

 

Rogsylvania: The Land that Seared My Soul

I would soon rue the day ever I durst embark upon this accursed quest. As I alighted from the mushroom cloud that had transported me to Rogsylvania, my tormented eyes gazed horror-stricken at the burning sands and the vast mountain-ranges of live volcanoes and the flaming river of Hot-Paprica. The volcanoes’ lower reaches were covered by enormous black flowers with enormous maws and fangs, which afrighted me yet more. Near me, and surrounded by Balrog statues of hideous aspect whose black and red clashed horribly, was an archway of human bones, called the Arc de Ouomphe y Pomphe, the horror of the damned city of Brunnème, capital of the abomination called Tildanorška.  I fainted, dread-bewhelmed.

I had, indeed, spent my last few hours in Empthy reading Frodor's Guide to Rogsylvania and A Balrog-Pidgin Phrasebook (for no mortal can speak Classical Balrog and live), and purchasing food and supplies, such as brunglasses (to protect me from the glare of the everlasting fires of that accursed realm) and lots of asbestos.  The body was ready -- barely.  But nothing could prepare the soul.

The first thing that befell me was that the Flaming Pagoda, which floats in the air above Rogsylvania, came within a centimetre of landing on me, burning off all my hair.

The second thing that happened was that three troll-guards named Hugginz seized me and, in Balrog-Pidgin, demanded a safe-conduct.  Since amid all my preparations I had not found a Rogsylvanian noble to give me a safe-conduct, the trolls stuffed me ignominiously into a sack and carried me onto a barge on the Hot-Paprica River.  On the boat-journey, they played hot-potato and Noldo-in-the-middle and soccer with my sack.  In the background I heard a constant drilling sound that I later found out came from the oil-maidens (who may best be described as ugly black blobs that swim the fire-river) doing something appalling to their drill-fiddles.  Every now and then, the trolls removed me from the sack and dangled me over the flaming river, while fire-eels and salamanders snapped their jaws underfoot. A few Balrogs watched the trolls at their sport and chuckled indulgently.  Fortunately, it was winter, so the river was only a couple of hundred degrees above boiling.

Finally, we arrived at Palazzo Balroggia, the dwelling of the reigning Counts-Palatine, which is carven out of the purest anthracite from the volcano Mount Mochalava. Out of the corner of my eye, I beheld hedges composed of the burnt remains of humans, and fainted anew.  The Balróggy-Tildanorška coat-of-arms hung menacingly on the third-floor façade, which was set off from the lower portions of the palazzo by a frieze showing Balrogs disembowling Elves. The front door was decorated with hideous bas-reliefs of orc-podlings and obscene spider-women with breasts.

As 75% of the palace is uninhabitable and most of the rest forbidden to mortals, and furthermore I kept fainting, I didn't get to see much of the interior.  The trolls carried me to a cold, dark, torch-lit room underground, where they made a big thing of securing a ball and chain around my every limb.  I was evidently in some kind of dungeon.  Next to me sat the jellyfish I had met in the EEEEeelery.

"Most Noble Customer," quoth the jellyfish.  "Glory be to thy name!  I was barely Cnidarian, I was less than the meanest plankton, when thy light shinéd on my profit margin.

“Eela Eelendel eela beorhtast
jumping middangeard jellyfiscum sended!"

"Please don't talk to me about eels," I begged.  "They arouse unpleasant images in my mind.  Hurgh.  How did you get here?"

"After Your Customerness and I were separated by the crowds at Tol Kien, my only thought was to find you again.  In order to get the wherewithal to follow your footsteps, I needed money, so I sold seats on the cruise line to Valinor to gullible tourists.  Heartened, I wended my way to Rogsylvania to ply my trade.  Unfortunately, the Balrogs weren't amused by the non-reality-oriented nature of the Valinor cruise-line, but were very amused by the thought of eating me."

"Yuck," I said.

"Yes, sir," agreed Pseudonymus.  "These horrible beings are quite fond of jellyfish, which they call *&^%%& &*(%^%& in their own horrible tongue.  They enjoy devouring us in a blend of Rh positive orc blood and cthulhu tentacle grease, lightly sautéed for 434,344,324 years."

I retched.  Then, eager to change the subject, I asked: "How did you come to be so pathetic?"  That wasn't quite what I meant to say, but Pseudonymus didn't seem to mind.

"I was not always as I am now," he said.  "In my youth, I lived wild and free in the deeps of the ocean, swimming about, eating plankton, talking to other sea beings about life (which mostly meant plankton), and every now and then killing people.  I came from an ancient family who had ruled in the Sargasso Sea since the Pre-Cambrian Era, being the descendant of Medusa of the Tentacular Hair, whom Jellynor, Forger of the Jellyring, wooed, in vain (he gave her the Jellyring and begged for a strand of her hair; but she refused, and the two were unfriends for ever, especially after she gave three hairs to Jacques Cousteau);and my taste in plankton was widely recognised as infallible.  So things went until the shipwreck.

“One bright day, an enormous ship called the Tolkienic sank in the Sargasso Sea.  We converged upon it, for we needed a break from plankton, especially since it was Thanksgiving; moreover, it’s cheaper to raid shipwrecks than to buy Christmas gifts.  My beloved blue whale Cindy and I found a wonderfully ritzy cabin filled with good stuff that had belonged to a retired couple.  ‘I like material goods,’ I told Cindy.  ‘Me too,’ said Cindy.  ‘Do you think this human’s dress makes me look fat?’  ‘Not at all, dear, my little planktoncita,’ I replied distractedly, as I sampled the old guy’s cigars.  Then I saw a strange sight.

“Hidden in a closet were several boxes marked ‘TOP SECRET.’  Needless to say, I opened them, and what did I find but several tons of contraband materials, including fine-grained smurvacco and a gigantic cache of books, all by the notorious renegade, J.R.R. Tolkien.  I had never read a book before, except for a volume of planktonic dialogues; but my sixth sense told me that these books would be remarkably profitable.  Cindy laughed at me as I lugged the books to our trench, and told me I should take the cocaine instead, as there was no market for heavily footnoted books in Anglo-Saxon about whether Ents wore underpants; but I laughed and said, ‘These books will be a gold-mine.’

“Thus began my studies of Tolkien, the great prophet of capitalism.  Unfortunately, although I knew the professor would bring me loads of money, I wasn’t sure how.  As I searched desperately for insider trading tips, only to be disappointed by what seemed to my ignorance rubbish about splits among Elvish clans, Cindy oft and anon had occasion to laugh and say ‘I told you so.’  ‘Don’t laugh yet,’ was my only reply.  The truth is that I was already becoming mesmerised by Tolkien’s wisdom, beyond that of any market guru.

“Finally, I decided to undertake a quest for the Mines of Moria, as my cousin Eustace told me that they sounded the least phoney of these countries.  I promised Cindy immense riches when I returned.  She wanted to come along; I, however, insisted that I must do this myself.  A good thing too, for who knows what horrors would have befallen her, had she too suffered what I was to suffer.”

“Horrors?” I cried.  I had been a bit bored earlier; now I trembled despite myself.

“Horrors,” repeated the jellyfish gravely, “such that, if I spoke to any other than your Greatness, I would have to charge many a Paypal account before I consented to relate them!”  I shuddered, and Pseudonymus continued: “As I swam in the northern seas in search of mithril, or at least gold, I was caught in the net of a mad scientist.  He brought me to a lab, where he performed unspeakable experiments upon me.  E-mail after unclean e-mail he force-fed into my screaming brain, often gloating to himself about the corporate sponsors this project would gain him.  An eternity this torment seemed to me, and yet very little distinct memory remains me of the commingled mass of fear and loathing that never left me.

“How I escaped, I myself barely remember.  Some kindly eels, to whom the mad scientist had overfed brain hormone, freed me, but I no longer knew what to do with myself, and wasted away my life in eel-pubs, trying to recall the purpose that had brought me there, but unaware of anything beyond r3financing m0rtgages and 3xpanding intimate organs, reduced to selling my own ink to make ends meet.  So it was until thy light freed me.”  He gazed upon me with a look of such servile adoration that it was embarrassing.

Pseudonymus’s story completed, my mind, which had been riveted on his tale of woe, began to take in its surroundings once more. The prison evidently served double duty as a pantry.  Along with myself and the jellyfish there were stored several terrified humans, smurves, hobbits, onion, garlic, tomato, hot peppers, pipe-weed, okra, gasoline pumps, and other things considered edible by the Balrogs.  The fat tenor of Palazzo di Terrore was there, evidently being fattened up even more.  He burst into squally singing at regular intervals, until the Rogsylvanian Humane Society intervened and had him placed in a sound-proof bubble. I later found out that he was Edith Tolkien’s natural son and that the Balrogs had had him arrested for singing consistently sharp; for deadly are the critics of the Balrogs.

We were all guarded by rustic orc-cooks who spoke in a broad dialectal drawl.  The orcs were certainly much less free than their counterparts in Hell; but their poetry was, if not better, at least more interesting:

Pipe-smokers make the be
st goulash, or
at any rate bring out the flavor.

When it was time to feed us, the orcs would dump a disgusting glob of … stuff into our trough (one per cell), and we were expected to nourish ourselves therefrom without benefit of hands.

“You know, Tolkien would probably have liked this food,” I remarked sarcastically when the orcs had fed us a particularly amorphous repast.  The orcs stopped short and gasped with shock.

“He mentioned the tolkine!” spake one, aghast.

“You know the rules,” said a large orc.  “The Great Ones are to be informed via palantir if any prisoner or SEI (Sentient Edible Item) speak of the tolkine.”  (At least, this is as much as I could gather from my limited knowledge of Rogsylvanian Orkish.)

“Garn!” said a third orc.  “These Great Ones give me the creeps.  And they skin the body off you as soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the dark on the other side.”

“They are terrible!” agreed the first orc.

“They’ll be even more terrible if we disobey,” said the large orc.  “I’d rather serve goulash than be one.”  And they left, muttering amongst themselves.

The next day, three Balrogs came to our cell.  The tallest one (or the one with the longest shadow) was clad, if that is the right word, in a blindingly intricate red and black pattern, and seemed to be the leader.  The two other Balrogs, though shorter and less resplendent, were likewise terrible, black shadows through which a flame could dimly be seen. Each Balrog had a troll escort wearing a horned helmet. Following Rogsylvanian custom to the best of my ability, I prostrated myself and screamed for mercy.  The trolls spoke to me in the horrible Balrog-Pidgin jargon, calling me “mlorat” and other insults; as I could barely understand a word, Pseudonymus translated.

“Baseborn mortal!” they cried.  “You see before you His Igniferous Excellency Count Tildanor the Great; His Superior Flamingness Viscount Montador; and His Lordship the Lord High Interrogator Groffo! Abase yourself!”

I prostrated myself even more abjectly than before, and whimpered something like “Nice massterss.”  I knew very well that, according to Rogsylvanian law, if a Balrog wants to kill a mortal, the mortal has no right or ability to resist.

The Balrogs now spoke (likewise in Balrog-Pidgin), in a deep rumble that filled my entire being with despair.

“We have heard that you know the tolkine human,” said they. “You must tell us about it. We know that it seduced several oil-maidens and a couple of salamanders.”

“This slave …” I croaked, but no further sound could find egress from my terrified throat.

“And there’s worse: ever since the tolkine disappeared, the quality of our smurvacco has been execrable,” said the Count. “That is why we want to know what happened to it.”

“Even the Oncle André is rubbish,” added Viscount Montador.

“The what?” I blurted, shielding my face from the living nightmares whose appearance aghasted my soul.

“Oncle André was a renegade Pezopolitan who tried to take over Roggytopia with brandy,” replied the Count. “Fool! If he’d used vhampagne, he might have had a chance at success.”  I was far too terrified to ask what vhampagne was, but learned later that it was a kind of sparkling fermented blood.

“He was punished by being turned into a flavour of lava, though some of his leftovers were used to add a bit of spite to some aromatic forms of smurvacco,” concluded Montador with obvious relish.

“This slave thinks that’s disgusting,” I ventured, and received a first-degree burn for speaking above my station.

"Enough blathering! If you do not tell us everything you know about the tolkine hmunsa, we will torture you to death," said the interrogator casually. The Balrogs held up their whips menacingly, and set them on “extreme.”

My powers of resistance were annihilated.  I told them everything, even the part about the donkeys that I had never revealed to living soul.  After I had described my encounter with Tollers at the opera, they became friendlier.

"Was this the performance of La battaglia degli editi wichipedici?" asked the Count.

"Yes," I said.  "The one in Palazzo di Terrore.  I wrote a critique of that for the Daily Prostitute under the pseudonym of A. Gye."

"I read that review," said the Count.  "It was brilliant!  And by a charming coincidence, the tenor is in this same prison.  He hope to turn him into a goulash later, the way we almost did with the tolkine."

"Why didn't you?  With the tolkine, I mean.  That abomination deserves it!"

The Count shrugged.  "We weren't in the mood," he said boredly.  "Why bother? We can kill anyone we want whenever we want, after all."

"The female tolkine tasted better, anyway," added Viscount Montador.

"His daughter?" I exclaimed, horrified.  Had my quest come to an awful dead end, or bag end, or even cul-de-sac if you insist?

"His mate," said Montador, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did he have a daughter?”

“We wouldn’t know,” said the Count. “But there was some kind of human spawn-thing with him, which the tolkine abandoned on the doorstop of a crime-ring led by my evil cousin, Ralph.  Ralph didn’t eat it because he thought it was half-eel, and Ralph has enough taste to know that human is disgusting when combined with seafood.  Which is more than the tolkine can say, for whenever the Orcs fed it eel-slop, it would try to mate with its own dinner. All it seemed to care about was eels. Blekh.”

“This slave thought Tolkien’s daughter was half-orc!” I marvelled. “Now I’m…he’s…it’s thoroughly confused.”

“Don’t ask us,” said the Count haughtily.  “As if we could be bothered to tell these grubby little incarnates apart.”

“This slave must find Ralph,” I said.  “And find out what he did with the daughter. And I must also find out the mystery of Tolkien’s lusts.”

“Whatever,” shrugged the Count.  “Why don’t you come to the opera with us first?  Maybe you’ll see Ralph there; he enjoys being part of the claque.”

“OK,” I said.  “But please let this jellyfish come along; he wouldn’t taste very good anyway.”

The Balrogs merely grunted, which I took more or less for assent.  Pseudonymus looked as though he were going to faint with adoration and began to develop a somewhat irritating habit of genuflecting (or tentaflecting, to be precise) before me and praying.  The trolls removed some of our balls and chains, put us into a sack, and lugged us to the speedy Rogsylvanian public transit system, or Pterodactorail, which consisted of a long string of pterodactyls tied together with asbestos rope.  Part of each pterodactyl had been hollowed out to make room for passengers, and each pterodactyl had an orc-driver.  The Balrogs were not pleased with the first train we got on, complaining that it smelled of human; so they killed the driver.  The next train, or beast, was, however, deemed acceptable.

After a few minutes of travel, the Balrogs bothered to tell their trolls to let us out of the sack.  We looked down upon the terrible land of Rogsylvania, watching the flames of the Hot-Paprica River churning below us.  To the west of the river, we saw peculiarly nasty deserts; to the east, volcanoes; and everywhere, orcs slaving on plantations supervised by trolls, or Balrogs destroying things in what the Count called “outings.”

Our transport alit beside the opera house in Roggenberg, in a plaza containing probably a third of the citizens of Rogsylvania, all dressed to what they evidently considered the nines – along with a few trolls who had been permitted to attend, and also the odd dragon or basilisk.

The Balrogs were good enough to pay for our tickets.  (The Rogsylvanian unit of currency is the soul, though non-balrogs – or Ruggles – more often use a phosphorescent currency called skullings on account of their hideous shape;
skullings, in turn, are divided, quite literally, into 86.05193 halflings.

The opera was Roggerella.  In this opera, Count Charming of Balróggy marries Countess Roggerella of Tildanorška for love of her footwear, despite her porn-orquette disguise; or so I was told, although the only sense I could make of the action was that it was hot and destructive.  The music was very different.  I must admit it was played con fuoco; but the roaring of the Balrogs, combined with the screaming of their victims, made for a very shocking experience, and I almost died several times.  The Balrogs in the audience, however, seemed enchanted.  “#$%^&&&**** !@$%^&*(&%###^&&&%$$!!” they roared.  “Bravo! Brava! Bravi! $%%$##!”

During the intermission, Pseudonymus and I ignored the ballet on the Morambar War over the leis of Trolkien that led to the banning of loud Hawaiian clothing, and went off in search of Ralph. The Interrogator accompanied us, but none of the other Balrog nobles would consent to do so, since he had a reputation as a bit of a crook – and, as the Count pointed out, “Embezzlement is rude!”  I was forced to walk on all fours until we reached Ralph’s loggia.  Ralph, a portly Balrog with a bowler, an umbrella made of pissincontestium, and a cigar, was busy planning world-conquest over blood-sherry with a banshee-prostitute named Slytherina Knickerblogger whilst having his shoes done by a golem. The Interrogator said something in Classical Balrog. Although he looked annoyed at the interruption, Ralph acknowledged my presence by spitting roughly in my direction.

“Have mercy!” I screamed, but Ralph impatiently waved a white-gloved hand.

“Don’t stand on ceremony. What do you want?” he asked.

“This slave implores your Flammiference for information on the daughter of the tolkine!”

“The what?” he returned, puzzled.  “What millennium was this in again?”  He scratched his head, letting sparks fly out. I hastily got out of the way. I was almost in despair.  Fortunately, Ralph’s memory came back.

“Now I remember,” he said.  “I decided not to kill the human girl after all; it was too cute. So I kept it as a pet for a bit, now and then allowing my female admirers to play with it and dress it up in cute snake-skin costumes.  Eventually, I got bored and sold it to an old human with glasses and a bad fake accent, and used the money to buy trade secrets from a double agent named General Confromomitz, whose accent was almost as bad.”

“Was the old human Dr. Tollmann?”

“Probably,” said Ralph, blowing smoke in Pseudonymus’s face in a bored sort of way. “I couldn’t be bothered to learn its name. All I know is that it trolled in some weird human tolkine cult. I tried to get the cult weirdos to worship me, but they were too dense. Said I wasn’t canon.”

“Where was this cult located, and what was it called?”  Eager though I was to track down Dr. Tollmann and learn the secret of Tollers’s daughter, I could not forgo the opportunity to seek out a group devoted to studying Tollers’s books, even though most of those books were plagiarised from me.

“I don’t know, or care. Troll-lackeys might know more. Roggo Polo's descriptions of their ‘discussions’ were out there; I suspect he was smoking some pretty hardcore smurvacco when he wrote that part of his memoirs. Now, I’ve talked to you enough, and will get back to snogging.  May you not die too horribly.”

After thanking Ralph profusely, I crawled over to one of Ralph’s troll-lackeys, who gave me directions to the Tolkien-experts’ monastery, which was named Barftat and was holed up in the Trifle Dessert. Then he dribbled me like a basketball for the rest of the intermission.

I durst not leave the opera, however eager I was for the performance to end, that I might resume my quest. When the performance finally ended, the volcano whereof the opera house was carved erupted.  Pseudonymus and I screamed in terror and jumped onto the chandelier to escape the lava; the Balrogs briefly interrupted their applause to laugh at us.

When I had recovered, I decided to send Pseudonymus to Capital City, so that he could drum up funds for our quest, and also because all the adoration was getting to be a bit too much.  Finally, the ordeal over, we flew from the opera house. Pseudonymus took a Magic Mushroom Airways flight to Capital City, whilst for my part I took the Pterodactorail to the northernmost reaches of Rogsylvania, where I began the long trek to Barftat. It was long before I found a village un-Rogsylvanian enough that I durst spend the night there.

 

 

The Canon Slayer

I started the ascent at first light. The path took my out of the village where I had stayed and up, slowly leaving behind the houses and other signs of habitation. The way I was to take followed the valley upwards and over the ridge. Beyond that, I did not know. Few of those I had talked to knew much either, but the chance of a centre of learning devoted to Tollers had to be worth the risk.

The journey was uneventful by the standards of some of my travails, which left me alone with my thoughts. The valley was obviously once a river bed, but how long ago was not clear. The path was, though, surprisingly narrow, and while it had obviously been maintained in the past it was starting to fall into some disrepair. Would Tollers really have made this journey? Why would a collection of the finest knowledge and minds be so out of the public consciousness? These things and more I pondered as I made my way to up to the ridge.

By now, the path was barely distinct from the surrounding landscape and all but the hardiest vegetation had given up its grip on the rock, bereft of water, blasted by the wind and chilled by the altitude. As I neared the ridge I had a decision to make. Push on in the hope of finding a place that few knew of and may after all not exist or return back to the village. This was the last point to turn back. I tightened the straps on my pack and climbed over the ridge.

There as promised in the distance on a plain surrounded by a ring of mountains was a citadel. At a good march, I would be there by nightfall, to fall upon the mercy of the inhabitants, if there were any. Certainly there was no shelter in the valley this place was in, and I did not want to be exposed to whatever wildlife called this place home. Though this place was dry with little plant life, there was by now a chill in the air. I strode on.
As expected, I came to the gates at dusk. To my relief, the place was still inhabited. I waited and watched from the outside, not out of view but those above the gate did not take any notice at first. Finally I plucked up the courage to speak. "May I come in?" I called.

"Ah, you have come to our fair city of Barftat to find out about Tollers? You have chosen the right place, for this is the true centre of scholarship. Yet you are not a moment too soon. We secure these gates at sundown and you would not want to be exposed to the creatures that prowl around the wastelands outside. Come inside, we will find you lodgings, but first we must seal our boundaries with the Sacred Flame."

This was not entirely unexpected. A centre like this would have its own rituals, and I may be able to discern the truth behind the place. "Behold the Sacred Flame, keeper and protector of the purity of this place!" cried a man who suddenly emerged from a building holding a small wax candle. In the faint flickering light I could see that he was advanced in years. "This is the fire that burns! No being of darkness can withstand it!" I was aware that a number of other robed figures were in a circle with me around the candle held by the man. All of a sudden another figure burst into the circle wearing a mask of disorganised teeth and thick green leathery skin, almost troll-like in its appearance but without any real sense of danger or ugliness. The holder of the candle raised it upwards and pushed it forwards towards the masked man, who quivered and fell prostrate before it.

"The flame, the flame, keeper and protector of the purity of this place!" cried the ring of watchers as the masked man retreated into the ring.

The leader of this ritual brought the candle down and turned to me. "This is how we keep our focus on Tollers. Now I will show you your quarters" he said, as he led me to a room off a side street. I entered and looked for a lamp, but found none. Looking out of the window, I saw that no other rooms had light inside. It made no difference to me, the journey had wearied me and I needed to rest.

As I lay back, thoughts again raced through my head. Would such a place really draw a man so in thrall to eels? I could imagine no connection between the ritual I had just seen and the man I had now devoted my entire life to finding. With that, I fell into a deep sleep.

I woke at dawn from the light which streamed through the window. Slightly stiff from my exertions, I stared out. In daylight the layout of the city became clear. Far from being one centre as I had imagined it was obviously originally two in close proximity, but time had led them to be almost indistinguishable.

I emerged from my room and started walking the streets. Strangely signs to the two halves of the city, so absent on the path or the wilderness were everywhere here. The other puzzling thing was the lack of inhabitants. This was not a place buzzing from every corner and all the faces I saw were of people who had been here for a good number of years. Eventually I saw a sign for the "Debating Centre". This was obviously where I needed to go.

The Debating Centre was located halfway between the two halves of the city. It was laid out as a circular arena with a small number of citizens seated around the outside. I sat down next to the man who had performed the ritual of the previous evening. "How does this place function?" I asked. "Those who wish to ask a question stand in the centre and address those assembled. We then draw on our wisdom and knowledge of Tollers to endeavour to answer. You obviously seek knowledge so you should ask. There is no point in coming here and lurking in the shadows."

Slightly reluctantly I made my way to the centre. I had hoped to observe this place functioning before inquiring, but no others appeared to putting themselves forward.

"I have come far to this place in search of knowledge", I proclaimed. I am on a journey to find Tollers and need all the help I can get."

"You are in the right place. All worthwhile scholarship originates and finds its meaning here" said one of the assembled citizens. This was a strange claim for an isolated community, but I let it pass for now.

"I particularly wish to know about Tollers' fascination with eels."

A murmur ran through the crowd. "What species of eels are most favoured?" This I thought would be a fairly safe opening to encourage participation from the crowd.

"Electric eels of course!" cried a voice. "What other meaning is there to be drawn from the Second Book of Scribbles?"

"That is not canonical! The Third Book of Doodles As Rescued From The Waste Paper Basket clearly refutes your position!" shouted another.

This took me by surprise.

"What about the Fourteenth Volume of The History of the Elvers and Other Marine Life?" Another voice from behind me had joined in

"That is a metaphor and you know it."

"You call yourself informed. You are a troll." That was another voice.

"Flamer!" I had hoped to engage the crowd, but not quite in this manner.

Before I knew it, the whole audience was on its feet shouting at one another. I tried to make myself heard but by now no-one was paying attention. All I could hear were insults based on twisted versions of people's names. I watched bemused as the whole company started walking quickly backwards in ever decreasing circles around me. It was only a matter of time before they started colliding with one another, still arguing and circling their legs in the air.

Very quickly I became the only one on my feet, yet still the shouting carried on around me. I left the circle and moved towards the exit. As I turned to take one final look, all of the mass of people stopped shouting as one, stood up and moved back to their seats. This confused me. Until then I had thought that what I had witnessed was a product of a dysfunctional society on the verge of collapse, but the abrupt ending gave it the air of ritual.

One thing was very clear, however. My journey here had been wasted, and I had let the trail on Tollers go cold with my diversion. I had no choice but to go back to the village I had stayed in the previous evening. With that, I packed my belongings and retrace my steps. My exit went unnoticed.

It was again nightfall when I returned to the inn. I slumped into a seat and ordered a flagon of ale. I had no leads on Tollers and no idea where to go next. Worse still, a group of drunken locals had started to sing.

I knew a little of the customs of this region, enough to know that it was the height of rudeness to leave an inn in the middle of a song without having sung a verse. For this reason, I had memorised the first three stanzas of every ballad to have been recorded on parchment by visiting anthropologists. This song, however, was new to me and more disturbing than any I had previously heard.
"I would rather have instead, an Orc, an Elf and a table leg!" The images that were conjured were beyond anything I could imagine. "A Troll and a silver spoon!"

Three verses in, and I felt nauseous.
"I would rather have instead, an Orc, an Elf and a table leg!"
This was not good. Songs of this nature would constitute an evenings `entertainment'. Ten minutes in and I was on the verge of throwing up.
"An Ent, a Dwarf and a yard of ale!"

In my nearly incapacitated state, I surveyed the room. By now, a beating from the locals was starting to look the better option.
"I would rather have instead, an Orc, an Elf and a table leg!"
I stood up and staggered towards the door.
"An Eel, a Hobbit and a plate of beef!"

This stopped me in my tracks. Only now did I have an appreciation of quite the level to which Tollers might stoop. Only in one place could all these races be found together, and only in one place could all of this depravity happen in such close proximity for a song to be written about it, and wherever eels were to be found, Tollers would have been. I had hoped to avoid such a place, as it would mean great danger, but now I had no choice. I would have to go to Middy City.