Because it's just the way I roll (plus a wall of text having nothing to do with the game should save other players who accidentally click on this thread from seeing the [size="5"]SPOILER INFO FOR TEAM FRIENDLY KITTENS(!!!)[/size] accidentally, I'm going to start with a story. No, really: A totally fictional story about the origins of our leader, Ragnar of the Mayans. (Wait, of the who?)
(ahem)
Ragnar of the Friendly Kittens!
![[Image: kitties.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nojconRmJr8/WjyLXxHbh7I/AAAAAAAAEXk/pOXGcv0PGnwj1jPVSJhW7bGdRnNK_liMQCLcBGAs/s1600/kitties.jpg)
That's what I thought you said!
Okay, that said, the story's kind of long. (Wait, that's not fair. Let me say that again: It's LONG!!!) But it should be lots of fun. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: No delicate sensibilities were harmed in the making of this story. Probably. Okay, if they're really, really, really, delicate, then maybe. Plus bunches of imaginary European and American natives may have been hurt or killed in horrible ways, but no real ones, unless you count me. (Ragnar, let go of my throat; I'm writing it for you, okay?!)
-----
All Valhalla was in an uproar - and Loki hadn't even set anybody's breechcloth on fire yet that morning! No, the news of the day was far rarer, and far, far stranger: A man was leaving Valhalla - on purpose! - to return to the mortal world. Nor was it just any old man, tired of sparring with Thor each afternoon and being scraped up off the stone flags so they could wake up aching in the morning. Ragnar Lodbrok - old Hairy Pants* himself - had packed up his gear, stuffed his huge head into his helmet with his even huger ego, and set out for Scandinavia once more. Hero of legend and saga, looter of the French countryside - the man who with thousands of Vikings at his back held the city of Paris for ransom - Ragnar stormed out of the heavenly halls and set out for the icy fjords.
"Man's crazy," Loki snickered. "And as the world's foremost expert on CRRrrrrAAAAaaazy, I should know."
Thor glared at him sideways. "He probably just wants to be rid of your company!"
"Oooooh, irritable this morning, are we?" Loki grinned, and his eyes danced with flames. "Missing something, maybe?"
Growling, Thor demanded, "How would you know I ... WAIIIIIIT!" He flew into a rage. "YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU STOLE MY HAMMER AGAIN?!" The earth trembled under their feet. This was not normal: Thor's rages were normally accompanied by thunder and lightning, not quakes.
"Tsk," Loki murmured. "Seems it's given him indigestion."
This gave Thor pause, but he slowly connected the dots, and then his eyes got very big. "You fed Mjolnir to the WORLD SERPENT?!" The earth rumbled and shook.
"Fat lot of good it did me," Loki grumbled. "Practically put out my fiery hair luring old Midgard out of the deep, and he'll probably regurgitate it any minute. ... Any year now, anyway."
While Thor chased Loki all up and down the mighty halls of Valhalla, screaming loud enough to wake the dead - or even, just possibly, the exhausted revelers from the previous night's wild party - a group of mighty warriors greeted Ragnar Lodbrok. "Ah, my sons," he said with a smile. "Good old Ivar the Boneless! (Thanks again for avenging me, by the way.) Hvitserk! Ragnvald! Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye!** Have you decided to join me?"
"Are you kidding?" Hvitserk demanded. "We've got mead of the gods here, and shieldmaidens aplenty, and Ragnarok to look forward to and all!"
"Have fun with that," Ragnar told them. "I have another calling. I'm going home."
They might possibly have heard him, but it's doubtful. Sigurd was whooping and enacting a battle with an imaginary giant in the end-of-the-world war, and Ragnvald was telling Hvitserk, "Whooooooa ... and remember when Freya came by to visit in her cat-drawn chariot?" He was openly drooling. "Just looking at her was enough to..."
Ragnar moved on.
As he marched through Asgaard, amidst earthquakes and distant shouting from Thor, he came upon another figure - and what a figure it was! His beloved wife Aslaug winked at him as he approached, and swayed her hips a little, and it suddenly struck Ragnar that he maybe didn't have to leave quite so soon after all. She kissed him, and that sealed it; he wasn't going anywhere. Let Sury or somebody answer the call; he had things to do in Asgaard ... except that Aslaug didn't ask him to stay. "I see why you're going," she told him, quicker-thinking as always than he (which wasn't saying much, necessarily) or even most of the gods (which, sad to say, really wasn't saying much either). "You've won enough battles already, and you're tired of spending eternity with a bunch of bloody-minded warriors raising mead cups to the heavens and singing the praises of war."
"Um, yes!" Ragnar declared, having temporarily forgotten the actual reasons for his departure - Aslaug's kisses didn't leave a lot of room for extraneous activity like remembering his purpose or (say) his name.
"Go for us both then," his dear Aslaug urged him. "Now that you have passed beyond the bounds of mortal life, return and show the people of Midgard that all people may grow into wisdom." She smiled. "Even a filthy, bloodthirsty, pillaging barbarian like you."
Ragnar grinned widely at the compliment. "Many thanks, my dear! I shall do as you say!"
Aslaug patted his head (between the mighty horns of his helmet) and said, "Good Raggy. Teach them wisely the ways of war, but also of peace - and look out for the little things that matter in the world. Perhaps you'll even raise some friendly kittens. Imagine Ragnar Hairy-Pants doing that!" She smiled and swayed a little more. This had the very useful effect of leaving Ragnar speechless. In a whisper, Aslaug told him, Goodbye, my love; fare well. I shall always be here for you when you return, though it be a handful of decades, or though it take six thousand fifty years." Then she kissed him again, more deeply still, so thoroughly engrossing his brain in what was happening to him that it accidentally overwrote all his unimportant memories like what he was originally supposed to be doing, and where he was supposed to go.
When he came back to consciousness, (I told you she was a good kisser) Ragnar's first thought was, "Wow! She's still got it after all these centuries..." Then he breathed deep, gathered himself, scrambled up from the ground, and set out to fulfill the destiny he didn't quite remember anymore.
A cloaked figure watched as Ragnar left (not NEARLY as gorgeous a figure) and then pulled back its hood. There stood the king of the gods himself, his single eye all-seeing. Odin slowly turned away, and murmured quietly, "Well, this ought to be amusing anyway."
Aslaug saw, and said to herself, "I'm glad dear Raggy went away. What kind of land is this, that a one-eyed man is king?"
The earth shook, and Aslaug heard Loki suddenly yelp with pain. There was a brilliant flash of fiery light, and Thor could be heard in the distance shouting, "My eyes! What have you done now, Loki?! I can't see anything! Curse you, what have you done?!" A thunderbolt fell from the sky.
"Oh, right," Aslaug reminded herself. "That kind of land."
Back in Scandinavia, Ragnar searched in vain for friendly kittens - he remembered clearly that, whatever he was supposed to do, they were somehow involved. It didn't help that he hadn't the slightest notion of what they were. Most of his other recollections of his mission were slightly scrambled - he thought there might be something about leading the Vikings to victory, but he couldn't be sure anymore; it was all mixed up with a place called Minnesota, and something about pig skins. When he asked the mortal Vikings about it, they mostly gave him weird looks ... until he met Captain Eriksson.
"Minnesota," the Captain mused. "That sounds like a Vinelander name. I traveled there once, way off beyond Greenland to the west. Let's go back together then, and see."
So they traveled to America, all the way out to Nova Scotia where Captain Eriksson had landed (in, you know, real-life history and stuff). They traveled past the land where Sitting Bull was squatting, waiting for the call that never came, south past the land where Monty raged, imprisoned by his own people for so-called "psychotic episodes" after a Corsican Lieutenant arrived and was taken for Quetzocoatl. Still they journeyed, until at last they came to a fertile jungle land, where mystics experimented with plans to some day make a calendar. (Captain Eriksson scoffed, "It's hopeless. That calender of theirs is going to fall short of the end of the world by thirty-eight years!") Miners dug into the hills in search of gold and silver and gemstones (whether there were any to find was an open question, but the dirt and rocks they dragged out were useful for building things). But most intriguing of all, the children at play in the streets thrust long sticks at each other and played at ball games. "I can work with this," Ragnar Hairy-Pants mused quietly. "I don't suppose..." he asked Captain Eriksson guardedly, afraid of showing his ignorance, "...these might be Friendly Kittens?" He still had seen no sign of that mythic race.
The Captain had heard it come up before; Ragnar had a bad habit of moaning things like, "Must ... find ... Friendly ... Kittens...." ... well, and "Mmmmm, Aslaug ... oh, yes, YES!" in his sleep. His eyes drifted to the edge of the jungles, where a pair of baby jaguars were playing at tearing out each other's throats while their mother looked on from the shadows. He looked back at his newfound friend Ragnar. "Um, yes! Why, yes! These people are most certainly the Friendly Kittens you're looking for! Ask no further!"
And so they lived happily ever after. Or at least for about ten minutes.
Then there was an earthquake to end all earthquakes. A great serpent rose up from the sea, hacked, coughed, and vomitted out the great hammer Mjolnir with such violence as to send it flying all the way back to Valhalla (it struck Loki in the head, unfortunately). The serpent dove back into its place once more, but it was far too late: Its convulsions shook the world apart. The jungles were swallowed up; the coastlines changed; whole nations were driven apart or crushed together. Sitting Bull and his tribes were sadly but permanently buried under the sea, along with Montezuma's cell. Captain Eriksson's ship was gone, and the landscape was utterly changed.
"Well," said Ragnar, getting up and dusting himself off ineffectually. "Looks like we've got some rebuilding to do: Me and these Friendly Kittens!"
So it begins.
*- Yes, Lodbrok means Hairy Pants. Yes, that's Ragnar's name.
**- Yes, these are really the names of (a few of) Ragnar's children. Viking sagas rock.
(ahem)
Ragnar of the Friendly Kittens!
That's what I thought you said!
Okay, that said, the story's kind of long. (Wait, that's not fair. Let me say that again: It's LONG!!!) But it should be lots of fun. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: No delicate sensibilities were harmed in the making of this story. Probably. Okay, if they're really, really, really, delicate, then maybe. Plus bunches of imaginary European and American natives may have been hurt or killed in horrible ways, but no real ones, unless you count me. (Ragnar, let go of my throat; I'm writing it for you, okay?!)
-----
All Valhalla was in an uproar - and Loki hadn't even set anybody's breechcloth on fire yet that morning! No, the news of the day was far rarer, and far, far stranger: A man was leaving Valhalla - on purpose! - to return to the mortal world. Nor was it just any old man, tired of sparring with Thor each afternoon and being scraped up off the stone flags so they could wake up aching in the morning. Ragnar Lodbrok - old Hairy Pants* himself - had packed up his gear, stuffed his huge head into his helmet with his even huger ego, and set out for Scandinavia once more. Hero of legend and saga, looter of the French countryside - the man who with thousands of Vikings at his back held the city of Paris for ransom - Ragnar stormed out of the heavenly halls and set out for the icy fjords.
"Man's crazy," Loki snickered. "And as the world's foremost expert on CRRrrrrAAAAaaazy, I should know."
Thor glared at him sideways. "He probably just wants to be rid of your company!"
"Oooooh, irritable this morning, are we?" Loki grinned, and his eyes danced with flames. "Missing something, maybe?"
Growling, Thor demanded, "How would you know I ... WAIIIIIIT!" He flew into a rage. "YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU STOLE MY HAMMER AGAIN?!" The earth trembled under their feet. This was not normal: Thor's rages were normally accompanied by thunder and lightning, not quakes.
"Tsk," Loki murmured. "Seems it's given him indigestion."
This gave Thor pause, but he slowly connected the dots, and then his eyes got very big. "You fed Mjolnir to the WORLD SERPENT?!" The earth rumbled and shook.
"Fat lot of good it did me," Loki grumbled. "Practically put out my fiery hair luring old Midgard out of the deep, and he'll probably regurgitate it any minute. ... Any year now, anyway."
While Thor chased Loki all up and down the mighty halls of Valhalla, screaming loud enough to wake the dead - or even, just possibly, the exhausted revelers from the previous night's wild party - a group of mighty warriors greeted Ragnar Lodbrok. "Ah, my sons," he said with a smile. "Good old Ivar the Boneless! (Thanks again for avenging me, by the way.) Hvitserk! Ragnvald! Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye!** Have you decided to join me?"
"Are you kidding?" Hvitserk demanded. "We've got mead of the gods here, and shieldmaidens aplenty, and Ragnarok to look forward to and all!"
"Have fun with that," Ragnar told them. "I have another calling. I'm going home."
They might possibly have heard him, but it's doubtful. Sigurd was whooping and enacting a battle with an imaginary giant in the end-of-the-world war, and Ragnvald was telling Hvitserk, "Whooooooa ... and remember when Freya came by to visit in her cat-drawn chariot?" He was openly drooling. "Just looking at her was enough to..."
Ragnar moved on.
As he marched through Asgaard, amidst earthquakes and distant shouting from Thor, he came upon another figure - and what a figure it was! His beloved wife Aslaug winked at him as he approached, and swayed her hips a little, and it suddenly struck Ragnar that he maybe didn't have to leave quite so soon after all. She kissed him, and that sealed it; he wasn't going anywhere. Let Sury or somebody answer the call; he had things to do in Asgaard ... except that Aslaug didn't ask him to stay. "I see why you're going," she told him, quicker-thinking as always than he (which wasn't saying much, necessarily) or even most of the gods (which, sad to say, really wasn't saying much either). "You've won enough battles already, and you're tired of spending eternity with a bunch of bloody-minded warriors raising mead cups to the heavens and singing the praises of war."
"Um, yes!" Ragnar declared, having temporarily forgotten the actual reasons for his departure - Aslaug's kisses didn't leave a lot of room for extraneous activity like remembering his purpose or (say) his name.
"Go for us both then," his dear Aslaug urged him. "Now that you have passed beyond the bounds of mortal life, return and show the people of Midgard that all people may grow into wisdom." She smiled. "Even a filthy, bloodthirsty, pillaging barbarian like you."
Ragnar grinned widely at the compliment. "Many thanks, my dear! I shall do as you say!"
Aslaug patted his head (between the mighty horns of his helmet) and said, "Good Raggy. Teach them wisely the ways of war, but also of peace - and look out for the little things that matter in the world. Perhaps you'll even raise some friendly kittens. Imagine Ragnar Hairy-Pants doing that!" She smiled and swayed a little more. This had the very useful effect of leaving Ragnar speechless. In a whisper, Aslaug told him, Goodbye, my love; fare well. I shall always be here for you when you return, though it be a handful of decades, or though it take six thousand fifty years." Then she kissed him again, more deeply still, so thoroughly engrossing his brain in what was happening to him that it accidentally overwrote all his unimportant memories like what he was originally supposed to be doing, and where he was supposed to go.
When he came back to consciousness, (I told you she was a good kisser) Ragnar's first thought was, "Wow! She's still got it after all these centuries..." Then he breathed deep, gathered himself, scrambled up from the ground, and set out to fulfill the destiny he didn't quite remember anymore.
A cloaked figure watched as Ragnar left (not NEARLY as gorgeous a figure) and then pulled back its hood. There stood the king of the gods himself, his single eye all-seeing. Odin slowly turned away, and murmured quietly, "Well, this ought to be amusing anyway."
Aslaug saw, and said to herself, "I'm glad dear Raggy went away. What kind of land is this, that a one-eyed man is king?"
The earth shook, and Aslaug heard Loki suddenly yelp with pain. There was a brilliant flash of fiery light, and Thor could be heard in the distance shouting, "My eyes! What have you done now, Loki?! I can't see anything! Curse you, what have you done?!" A thunderbolt fell from the sky.
"Oh, right," Aslaug reminded herself. "That kind of land."
Back in Scandinavia, Ragnar searched in vain for friendly kittens - he remembered clearly that, whatever he was supposed to do, they were somehow involved. It didn't help that he hadn't the slightest notion of what they were. Most of his other recollections of his mission were slightly scrambled - he thought there might be something about leading the Vikings to victory, but he couldn't be sure anymore; it was all mixed up with a place called Minnesota, and something about pig skins. When he asked the mortal Vikings about it, they mostly gave him weird looks ... until he met Captain Eriksson.
"Minnesota," the Captain mused. "That sounds like a Vinelander name. I traveled there once, way off beyond Greenland to the west. Let's go back together then, and see."
So they traveled to America, all the way out to Nova Scotia where Captain Eriksson had landed (in, you know, real-life history and stuff). They traveled past the land where Sitting Bull was squatting, waiting for the call that never came, south past the land where Monty raged, imprisoned by his own people for so-called "psychotic episodes" after a Corsican Lieutenant arrived and was taken for Quetzocoatl. Still they journeyed, until at last they came to a fertile jungle land, where mystics experimented with plans to some day make a calendar. (Captain Eriksson scoffed, "It's hopeless. That calender of theirs is going to fall short of the end of the world by thirty-eight years!") Miners dug into the hills in search of gold and silver and gemstones (whether there were any to find was an open question, but the dirt and rocks they dragged out were useful for building things). But most intriguing of all, the children at play in the streets thrust long sticks at each other and played at ball games. "I can work with this," Ragnar Hairy-Pants mused quietly. "I don't suppose..." he asked Captain Eriksson guardedly, afraid of showing his ignorance, "...these might be Friendly Kittens?" He still had seen no sign of that mythic race.
The Captain had heard it come up before; Ragnar had a bad habit of moaning things like, "Must ... find ... Friendly ... Kittens...." ... well, and "Mmmmm, Aslaug ... oh, yes, YES!" in his sleep. His eyes drifted to the edge of the jungles, where a pair of baby jaguars were playing at tearing out each other's throats while their mother looked on from the shadows. He looked back at his newfound friend Ragnar. "Um, yes! Why, yes! These people are most certainly the Friendly Kittens you're looking for! Ask no further!"
And so they lived happily ever after. Or at least for about ten minutes.
Then there was an earthquake to end all earthquakes. A great serpent rose up from the sea, hacked, coughed, and vomitted out the great hammer Mjolnir with such violence as to send it flying all the way back to Valhalla (it struck Loki in the head, unfortunately). The serpent dove back into its place once more, but it was far too late: Its convulsions shook the world apart. The jungles were swallowed up; the coastlines changed; whole nations were driven apart or crushed together. Sitting Bull and his tribes were sadly but permanently buried under the sea, along with Montezuma's cell. Captain Eriksson's ship was gone, and the landscape was utterly changed.
"Well," said Ragnar, getting up and dusting himself off ineffectually. "Looks like we've got some rebuilding to do: Me and these Friendly Kittens!"
So it begins.
*- Yes, Lodbrok means Hairy Pants. Yes, that's Ragnar's name.
**- Yes, these are really the names of (a few of) Ragnar's children. Viking sagas rock.
![[Image: leader.jpg]](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-16DGSyRsSdk/WjyLZRZ9U4I/AAAAAAAAEXw/61c6OC_tNsEujKk351bCoAZc3MJX79aowCLcBGAs/s1600/leader.jpg)
![[Image: start.jpg]](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4KN4akRM214/WjyLldYn_pI/AAAAAAAAEZQ/I2xFqKXBOukgVRZdWjbbfd4WtFdffL9fwCLcBGAs/s1600/start.jpg)
![[Image: 1stturn.jpg]](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NKPCLnZOze8/WjyLAJwmIxI/AAAAAAAAES0/ApDD-WM29E8Eq_w8sEx90WnUxpBlO_gcQCLcBGAs/s1600/1stturn.jpg)
![[Image: landpct.jpg]](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B13cJiJbPiE/WjyLYRZ931I/AAAAAAAAEXo/gYoy0XCdNRsm5yJ59b7C-UZzC56k7pQ-wCLcBGAs/s1600/landpct.jpg)