Histories of Strange Pre-Marriage

''From the "Histories of Strange Pre-Marriage", albeit of the "Velusian Mk. 143" manuscript that had been largely burnt in the Sack of Mabasu, circa ME082680, even if that dating defies all akakeshic record-keeping. But then, the nilihilgists that this document might entertain will care little for these discrepancies, at least at their own (some might say "so highly anticipated that one might be emboldened to bring their party hats") peril.''

"The [eighth (?)] and final death of Kurtha-khul the Bachelor, a misplaced Colovian baron in a land of Ragada warlords, should have taken him completely from the pages of history. That we know of him at all is a testament to the quiet tenacity of scribes whose names still remain unrecorded, and whose skill in deciphering the clues [found upon otherwise] illegible coins excavated from an Maormedoon galley (!) found in the sediment of the Keptuc lands of the Apujiic can only be described as [end of paragraph illegible].

"You see, the Bachelor's enemies had doomed him to the hell that houses all vanished dynasties, and in their thoroughness they had dismantled every trace of the Sans-Mundic Wailway which the baron established in the earliest part of his reign.

"[Thus three] coins which had escaped to Ald Cyrod only to find their way back to the Pyonish lands that birthed them-- yet which seemed to mock or curse the regime that minted them-- [would now] prove the rumors true: Kurtha-khul, before his marriage, had taken as his last lover a large, rusted monastery bell.

"The image of their coupling adorns the face-side of the now thricesixty-ought-ought-drake-valued coin (a rather dubious seigneurage these days, to be sure), and the Bachelor's right hand fondles the bell's heaving clapper rather desperately. That Kurtha-khul holds his saber upright and angled 60 degrees in his left can only have been a warning to his border (and religion) disputing neighbors, the worst of which lay to the north-northwest, at a cardinal point matching exactly the tip of his barony's blade.

"It also cannot be an accident that the abovementioned stance is a near-exact pose that the blacks have designated 'Tava's Dub Plate Wut Wut' (such exactists must either forgive the Bachelor his improper tutelage while also admiring the effort that such a bonebending blade-hold would require.... or blame the pussyfoot hand of the individual manning the lever press. Personally, I favor to belittle the latter, as all things financial make me laugh in the Clavician mode).

"The coin's reverse side seems to be a pasture and abbey, which is believed to be the "birthplace" of the Bachelor's beloved. Stamped beneath this picturesque setting are the words, in the Altnedilic, "No Workman Needeth Be Ashamed", a reworded fragment which the reader will no doubt recognize from Canergak 2:15."

Love,

MK