[The Saucepan Man]

The Wight City glimmered pearly white as the sun’s early rays struck its freshly enamelled walls and intricate bridgework. Day was dawning in Minus Teeth and the Signal had been given for the city’s workers to begin their regular morning duties. A small procession wound down from the lower slopes of Mount Mentadhent bearing basins of water gathered from the sacred stream, Aquäfrésh. On reaching the Wight City, the procession passed through the Great Coll Gate and entered the first tier of the city, where the great army of workers was gathered, poised to dip their ceremonial brushes into the foaming basins. Soon, their daily toil was underway, and they were hard at work lathering and scrubbing at the city’s gleaming palisades, ramparts and parapets. Only a few weeks had passed since the siege of Minus Teeth had been broken, but not one imperfection remained, such was the intensity of the daily Ceremony of Bhrûsh-èn-Gärgelh.

On the highest of the city’s eight levels, stood the Wight Tower. Below it, a row of great flags, each bearing the city’s Arm and Hammer Crest, rippled gently in the morning breeze, marking out the Courtyard of Mâk the Clean. There lay the Fountain of Euthìmoll II, its waters sparkling brightly in the sunshine. And beside it, at the centre of the Courtyard, a dull green, withered stump lurked, its twisted and gnarled branches contrasting starkly with the minty fresh flow of the Fountain. Once it had stood proud and vibrant as the Holy Wight Tree Bhró-cholï, but it had long since withered and decayed and, with the passage of time, its name had become corrupted too. Now, it was known to all simply as Y-cholï.

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In the uppermost reaches of the Wight Tower, in a room as dark as the city was light, a denim-clad figure sat hunched over a glowing orb. Ere long, he chuckled grimly to himself and turned away from the Cell-antír.

Denimthor Two, thirty-second Proctor of Grundor, remained an impressive figure, although age and troubled times had taken their toll on his once handsome features. Dark were his eyes in the midst of a harsh, weathered face, and his mane of luxurious dark hair dark was streaked with tinges of white. He was clad in the traditional denim jacket and trousers of Grundor, below which he wore a green t-shirt bearing the words “You don’t have to be mad to work here - but it helps”.

To be fair, it had not been a great year for Denimthor. His only son and heir, Orogarn (Two), had set out on a quest to find his wallet, fallen in with a bad crowd and proceeded to plague him with seemingly endless requests for financial assistance. And, while his son’s untimely death had ended the persitent demands for funding, it had also been something of a disappointment to the Proctor, leaving him as it did heirless (although not hairless). Then there had been that business with the fire, no less disturbing for having been caused by his son and his reckless companions, prompting Denimthor to borrow vast sums, at an unfeasibly high rate of interest, from Môgul Bildûr Enterprises LLC in order to restore the Wight City to full dental glory. Morever, not content with financially crippling the Proctor, the Dread Developer had then rudely added insult to injury by despatching a rather unsavoury and somewhat rancid army to lay siege to the Wight City. And while Môgul’s final defeat had brought some relief, discharging both debt and besieging army, news had recently reached him that a few of his son’s bothersome former companions were seeking to supplant him with some upstart king. It really was too much for an ageing Proctor to bear.

His first instinct, predictably, had been to begin scheming over the many ways in which he could prevent this attempted restoration of the outdated concept of monarchy. After all, Grundor had no king and Grundor needed no king. By Denimthor’s reckoning, a Proctorship was a far more democratically sound and politically correct way of running things, being as it did not rely on the ludicrous concept that the right to rule was determined by the blood that flowed in one’s veins. A Proctor was, in theory at least, an elected official, although voter apathy had led to it becoming a hereditary role some five generations back. But Denimthor was never one to let inconvenient facts spoil the opportunity of a good moan and a spot of diabolical scheming.

Then again, now that he thought about it, there was not really much to be said for his continued Proctorship of Grundor. The upkeep of the Wight City, and particularly the Ceremony of Bhrûsh-èn-Gärgelh, was an immense and unwelcome financial drain on his dwindling coffers. And, now that he was heirless (although not hairless), the Proctorship would pass to that idiot nephew of his upon his death. Indeed, the more he pondered the issue, the less attraction the effort and responsibility of his Proctorly duties held for him. Perhaps an early retirement wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Yes, he could just picture himself running a nice little holiday cottage on one of the southern islands, entrusting its upkeep to the care of loyal staff while he spent his days fishing and playing beach volleyball.

And so, with that appealing thought in his mind and a new-found spring in his step, he was just turning to leave the Chamber of the Cell-antír, when a knock came on the door.