In the Autumn of 1885 the Blackheart gang set forth on a daring quest into the Bogworld. Their mission was to find and interview the illusive Rooster Bear. Rooster’s mind, as many a scholar will tell you, was a well of secrets, as he had had privy to some of the most profound historical documentation during his service in the KGB (the Knightly Guards of Beardom.) Following his defection from the KGB in the winter of 1878, Rooster had to escape Mosstoe disguised as a sea otter, and fled to Bogworld were he now lives in fierce seclusion, writing explosive exposes on the history of the world and semi-fact based political thrillers.
The members of the Blackheart gang, who are of course all cunning and brave, took with them their autobiographer, a slight Indonesian man named Nyoman Kenak Dana. Not only was this a great opportunity to document their journey in the manner of traditional Indonesian sketches, but amongst themselves they also considered Nyoman Kenak Dana to be a sort of walking lunch box for when times got hard.*
Here we can see Nyoman’s marvelous representation of Rooster, a few days before his murder.
(*see the Poem by Markus Smit “Well done friends” for the account of how Ree had fattened up the small Indonesian artist before the adventure commenced.)
The Fog of pages
The world at large is filled with misery and heartache, the Bogworld doubly so. One of the terrors that The Blackheart gang were faced with during the search for Rooster Bear was of course the notorious Fog of Pages that surrounds Roosters home. Note that even when faced with the most sinister of perils the Blackheart gang, who are of course cunning and brave, find the time to pose for the picture. I leave you now with an exert from their journal:
Day 129, The Fog of pages.
The bellowing clouds below have turned out not to be clouds at all, but rather a Fog of white pages. There are millions of them fluttering around us, steadily reducing our visibility. On occasion I read some of the pages to pass the laborious hours. They are all from manuscripts and books. I am unable to form any sort of narrative amongst them. I have encouraged the others to stop eating these pages, though I fear that all communication is lost between us. Ree seems to have taken to some whimsical flights of fancy induced by severe dementia, or ink poisoning. She seems to believe that we are surrounded by magical snowflakes or something. Earlier today a page got stuck to Jannes’ face and he ran away screaming that he was blind, we had to catch him and pin him down. We are in a bad way. Soon we will be dead.
Ol’ Lonely
Here we see the home of Rooster Bear as seen from beyond Ol’ lonely, the forest which borders the hill. Ol’ lonely is a part of a family of very rare Acti Fauna called Dubblecromian Tight-ropes. These creatures are hermaphrodites, and have a male and female head on each end of their bodies. These massive creatures can be cleverly tricked into becoming mobile security fences if they are wrapped around hills or mountains. The reason for this is quite simple, in general the male head is completely enthralled by the female head, where as the female head rarely wants anything to do with the male head. And so the slowly revolve around the hill, the male always approaching and the female always stepping politely away from her pursuer.
