Gallows Humor: The Ceaseless Malaise of Vorbo the Clown; Or, Flawless Execution; Or, Heads Will Roll; Or Horsing Around
The kingdom of Ulex’s court jester, Vorbo the Clown, isn’t very funny. It doesn’t joke, it never japes, and the bells adorning its uniform
rarely ever jingle! Not helping this is that it’s mute, of course. Some of Ulex’s nobility are convinced that it doesn’t even have a
mouth behind the painted sneer of its sculpted porcelain mask.
The court jester is also
insultingly out of fashion. That’s not to say it doesn’t dress the part. Though its bells never ring and its mask is unsettling, its costume is overall fitting for a jester. It’s made of a shiny, silken fabric, with colorful stripes and appropriately poofy sleeves, like a jester should have. No, what throws the nobility off is that Vorbo the Clown carries a tremendous stone sword, nearly as long as it is tall. Stone tools haven’t been used in Ulex since before the kingdom’s founding--all of the warriors’ weapons, and indeed, most of the buildings within the royal capitol, are carved from the magic crystals that dot the countryside. The crystals are a mark of Ulex’s cultural identity. Anyone wielding arms formed from other materials, indeed, from something as
primitive as
stone, is viewed as an outsider.
Furthermore, the court jester is unlike any other creature ever seen before, in Ulex, or in the lands beyond. It has
hooves, yet stands upright like a human being. A pair of small, pointed horns poke out from under its jester’s cap. Occasionally, its long horse’s tail will twitch or whip about as it stands, otherwise unmoving, within the throne room.
Intelligent, hoofed creatures aren’t unheard of within the kingdom’s borders, of course. The noble
Hast race gallops across the vast plains surrounding Ulex. But the Hast are quadrupedal, entirely horse-like from the waist down. Vorbo the Clown’s tiny horns might indicate it being some species of
devil, but that seems equally unlikely, because true devils and other malignant spirits are repelled by the world’s crystals. The court jester is neither human, Hast, or fiend, yet it seems to be native to the world. It is truly an anomaly of a being.
So why does the king permit the jester to stay? Why keep a jester around if it isn’t very funny? The kingdom of Ulex has been peaceful and prosperous for hundreds of years, and frankly having a dour, sword-toting clown in the capitol
really kills the prevailing elevated mood.
The truth is that Vorbo the Clown’s continued presence in the palace is tolerated because the kingdom
owes its current golden age to the jester, at least in part. Ulex didn’t rise to greatness without numerous conflicts with the surrounding territories. Wars lasting decades once stained the kingdom’s placid fields with blood. Ancient texts, known only to the king’s family and their closest advisors, mention a masked warrior assisting Ulex’s first monarch in many grisly skirmishes. The figure was said to cut through the battlefield using a great stone weapon that it wielded with unnatural finesse.
Even after the bloodshed had ended, when homes, rather than blades, were hewn from the great crystals, the enigmatic warrior stayed by the royal family’s side. Vorbo the Clown proved to have an intuition for lethal intent, and thus was able to track down and subsequently dispose of any remaining enemies of Ulex’s throne. In this way he became the royal family’s chief assassin.
In Ulex’s prevailing peacetime, Vorbo the Clown’s opportunities to eliminate dissenters have dwindled to zero. The monarchy has no reason to think it would ever
turn on them after hundreds of years of service, but its generally creepy presence, and the fact that no one knows where it
came from, leaves some members of the court feeling...anxious, to say the least. Still, the court jester seems content to remain loyally at the king’s side for now, day in and day out. It
seems mostly harmless.
Just don’t invite it to entertain at any parties.
The Hither and Thither Expanded; Or, Drawing Back the Curtain!
Vorbo the Clown is but one of infinite variations of a single individual found within the vast and wondrous multiverse known as the
Hither and Thither! It may be a horrid clown assassin in
this dimension, but in others it could be anything from a cunning orphan illusionist, to a talented magical blacksmith, to even a cosmic entity bound inside a hat!
For all these and more, follow the link
here! We look forward to joining you on your extradimensional explorations!