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Everyone is familiar with trickster gods. While they're usually off making mischief and stealing metaphors to pass out to the less fortunate when it comes to visiting1, they're generally held to blame for the extremes of positive and negative events. Most of them are led by their hunger, and only maintain their sharp edges when they're being held from accomplishing the satiating details of their particular form of mayhem.

It's the braggart gods you really have to worry about. Often confused as a subspecies of Trickster, the braggart gods have a habit of exaggerating their roles in things often enough that it becomes truth. While the rewriting of history is a pain in the chronotic maximus,2 it's the bluffing that does the most damage.

The Three-Quarters Tome of Two-Thirds-Truth is an almost magical artifact with hundreds of mundane copies. The original Tome is bound in the skin of a braggart god who told the wrong story. The problem with it is, unlike other fine works of literature (cf. the Encyclopedia Exstansica) it attempts to mimic, one quarter of all entries are missing, and one third of the remainder is of dubious scholarship. It is also, mysteriously, version 1.82, consistently.

The one-quarter missing is usually explained with a story of a painful event that occurred to the original skindweller, usually the result of a godly bully or failure to get out of a tricksy situation "intact." The quantity of stories reflects the two-thirds truth. Many popular chefs have taken the three-fourths recipes and created results worthy of their reputations...or wealthy alchemists. Popular championships and betting contests in Exerprad have come from utilizing a copy of the book and coming up with finished entries, whether it be recipes, tall tales, or apartment rent ledgers.

Copies are very popular given the accessibility of the information, and the comforting "Ode Aginst Panick" printed on the back cover. Advertising drives it as friendly, practical, and full of amazing facts to one-up your friends and correct your enemies. Its section on "translation" is particularly frustrating unless you'd like to know how to say such important phrases such as, "Say, that's an interesting!" or in having "May I compliment you on your mammaries?" being the actual translation of the classic Fengak morning greeting.

There have only been two-thirds of a war fought over the information in the Tome, and while it was only a quarter because of the missing quarter, the things printed about the people of the Grand Duchy of Kroon really should have gone without saying. Similarly, the graffiti war between the mysterious groups (one of which was believed to be Ji'Li) people in lower ruins of the Panferia that referred to "Page XX" and was ultimately futile as the beast they were attempting to subdue was actually water soluble and shouldn't have been in the jungle in the first place, if it knew what was good for it.

[1] "Why, this? Oh, it's only some fire I happened to have in my pocket. It's nothing, but please, it would be my pleasure to give to you."

[2] There are no buttocks of time. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along, nothing to see.


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Page last modified on October 29, 2008, at 05:37 PM by DoyceTesterman

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