XXI
Torundel was remembered forever after.
As no one doubted Torundel's honour, there was no guards in the luxurious suite he had been allowed to share with Uranumsia the last night before the execution. Rumours of them breaking the taboo, eating a last meal together and reading ancient poetry to each other, had spread through the city like wildfire.
Guests had been allowed, and the archivist of the B family was there crying like an infant. ‘I will eat supper together with my wife tonight, and I will teach her how to read!’ he said, ‘We will let no one break the sacred Sang laws. Your wife and her lover will live in peace and wealth in your house by the sea. The Dykeia of our age!’
The crowd was quiet when Torundel entered the ancient stone scaffold on the Square of Morteka, the Sang King. While they crushed his bones with wooden clubs he only groaned, and just before Torundel's head was cut off, he saw, through one remaining eye, the crowd kneeling in silent respect.
And Sang Lokko's words reverberated in Torundel's mind: I will have my revenge! My wrath will ravage the world! And goodness will grow from it. Like a sapling in shit.
Torundel was remembered forever after...
as Sang Torundel.
This is the last episode of Torundel the Shitposter! A serial fiction that has followed these rules:
211 words - Starting with the word Torundel - First and last sentence are identical.
This last episode has broken the rules adding three words to the end, as (to quote the B family's old archivist) ‘breaking rules, milord, is considered manly – daring – They just has to be broken in the right place at the right time.’
I have considered making an illustration for each episode making the whole thing a little book, but I can already now declare this piece Creative commons... and the bazaar open.
As I am not a native English speaker please inform me if something is misspelled, wrong or just horrendous English, and I will see if I can fix it.
Earlier episodes:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV
Part XVI
Part XVII
Part XVIII
Part XIX
Part XX
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
I do not cry, but I was almost moved to tears reading this finale.
@katharsisdrill you sure can write. This was an epic!
Thank you. You made my day!
Well, thank you! I am happy you liked it. Sometimes things just work; Torundel did :)
Good work Sang Katharsisdrill!
Thanks, mate :)
Wait what??
Whose head was cut off??
Torundel's head. I better put in his name :)
Wow!! Too bad..
Well nevertheless, it was fun following all through till the end.
And thanks for inspiring a lot of people to write their own 'shitpost'. I really can't wait to see what you will come up next with.
That interests me too!
It says in part 18 that "Sang law states that a man who doesn't write his own shitposts, and any man who helps him shall be executed." As Torundel helped the Count write his shitposts he has to be executed.
Oh, so sad, goodbye dear Torundel and just when I had made it a point to have Daphne exist in His world...oh well. I was going to ask you to do a sketch of Daphne so her stories would feel as if they 'fit' in your growing world, since many others are taking up the challenge.
Does this mean, no more stories?
Or now Origin stories, prequels, video games, comics, merch, et al ? ;)
I just read your post. I will of course make a Daphne for you.
As for using the world and as for Torundel I have been fascinated by how people use little things from the other stories while writing something completely different, so I have considered making a Torundel fan fiction myself, not sure right now. This story turned into some sort of comic, but also tragic epic, which was not the plan at all, so maybe I could get free of that binding formalism by trying again?
I kind of like Torundel, so I will make it a little book with 21 illustrations one for each episode. That will be my procrastination project for the next time, but I am also awfully busy, so lets see how often i can come up with a drawing.
Oh good and I hope you do write more, say, about Aleister?
I'm the same with drawing art. I've SO much time allotted to the garden and I don't feel a Bit of guilt on that front, though it does leave cobwebs forming on unfinished drawings...
I thought of making illustrations for my posts about Daphne as well, like my much loved Victorian serials I would read as a child in our library with all the penciled messages on pages thinking of long since dead Spinster aunts.
I just made a character named Ludo Nert, but I am sure he will be talking to Alister. Everybody talks to Ludo as he seems to be such a bland, colourless little bore.
And I was thinking Victorian or a little earlier too actually. Maybe a little like the Dickens illustrations by Phiz.
the last episode of Torundel the Shitposter!
Oh no!
Is there a deadline, end zone, stop-order, for the spinoffs?
Executed for his crime.... why do I feel for this wife killing SOB????
Writers have the unique power to manipulate our emotions and have us rooting for drug lords like Walt in "Breaking Bad." Walt starts out so nice, so Every Man, only to fall so low, so murderously, catastrophically low, destroying so many lives, and still we feel for him to the very end.
Resistance is futile, Readers!
As everything Torundel I am the last to control anything. I hope people will keep writing and consider doing a spin-off myself just to keep things going. I still make title graphic for anybody who want to take part, and @donnadavisart is next to go even though she made a beautiful image herself.
(And no wife was killed. The only one dead was Count B and Torundel and they died for the crime of cheating in shitposting :)
Ah, yes, he was planning to BUY a new wife, but no mention was made of killing the present wife.
I remember things so incorrectly, it's scary.
Now the punishment doesn't fit the crime!
I think Torundel is as much a victim of the contemporary state of affairs as the women of his society. A lonely historian who lives in the heroic past and is abused by everyone around him. His first wife is not killed, but runs off with a scrupulous noble who later forces him to divorce/sell her (with her consent that is).
His crime is not about women, but breaking an ancient law about shitposting :)
His crime is not about women, but breaking an ancient law about shitposting :)#loveit!
Now that the count is dead, I'll have to have Daphne's aide to Aleister be Before his demise, but timelines are hardly of import in our world, eh?
I suppose that timelines are VERY important! So if your timeline is before the Death of the Count (by the hands of 72 women in a literary induced frenzy) I guess that Ludo also needs to be before.
I'm thinking of sending Alestair and Daphne to the count , though they'll simply be 'en voyage' in tomorrows installment (every other day is realistic for me and my Garden/animal keeping currently underway). Is there anything specific to the Count's dwellings? I'd say I'd send her to his townhouse if that would make sense? Though how much detail is required when one is restricted to 211 words, eh?
Clubbed only nearly to death though? He can still see when they cut his head off, for real?
High impact episode! Dashing and daring hero throughout the story! OK maybe he had that depressed bit at the beginning, but he pulled it together (sex does that to some men) and saved the known world at his last.
I have loved this story from the very beginning. Thank you for doing it all.
In Germany they used a wheel for this rather nasty way of executing people, but I added a relief beheading - as that is more noblemanish. It says, " ... just before Torundel's head was cut off, he saw ... " and I think the little verse (which I took from episode 3) is also before the beheading :)
He is a hero for sure - I hadn't thought of him as that before @nyarlathotep mentioned that he expected Torundel to take revenge - but I think that the moment he changes from self-pitying whiner to hero is when Uranumsia takes the pen and writes. Sex seems to be a commodity in this world (even though Torundel has been cheated also on that account), while someone to share your love of old literature with is more scarce.
Glad you liked it.