Character Concept: Harbottle Stonegrave
May 30, 2012
- 70-Seas Proper
Prologue, Chapter I, Chapter II, Chapter III, Chapter IV, Chapter V, Chapter VI, Chapter VII, Chapter VIII, Chapter IX, Chapter X, Chapter XI, Chapter XII, Chapter XIII, Chapter XIV, Chapter XV
70-Seas Extended
- Sword,Fish,
Tossa Roto,
The Kings,
God Dog,
Lost and Found,
The Dive,
Jinx
Forgettable
- A Forgettable Intro,
Unforgettable Date
Our Lady of the Impetus
- Mary Mendele,
Grubs
The Metal Lands
- The Mall of the Red Wizard,
The Clutches of the Serpent
Supplemental
- Natural History of Lagend, The World Almanac, Holiday Specials, One Page Comics, Fake Covers, Guest Comics
- Great Fantasy Comics
- North World, Digger, Kaspall, Gunnerkrigg Court, Rice Boy, Cucumber Quest, Dawn of Time, Darths & Droids, Beyond the Canopy, Astral Aves
- Lackadaisy, Octopus Pie, Dead Winter, Wonderella, Gun Show, Starslip, Nedroid, Space Trawler, The Adventures of Superhero Girl
Archive
Links
Copyright © Nick Daniel 2007-2013
Ok, you guys, I know this might sound crazy, and I’m just spitballin’ here, but I think this Stonegrave fellow may not be as good as he claims to be
Just to be contrary:
Harbottle Stonegrave, reigning Regent of the nation of Lapunta for the last 15 years. Viewed by outsiders as taciturn, cantankerous, abrupt and, according to Queen Bubbles and the King’s Council, “Surely the wickedest man on the planet”, he is oddly viewed almost as a saint by the vast majority of his countrymen.
Lapunta has long been renowned for it’s generous support of the Arts, charities and “Noble Crusades to Fight Evil” in every other nation of the world, mostly funded by tithes and offerings made by pilgrims to the Temple in the capital, Oly’Shii, which is built on the site where the founder of the kingdom encountered Lapak on the only piece of dry ground in what was then called “The Damn-Big Swamp”, later renamed “The Place of Peace and Joy”. (Scholars still debate which coming of Lapak, as it happened during a particularly nasty schism, known to those who bother with such things as “The Decade of Many Lapaks”.)
It’s kings are good natured and generous to all. Indeed, to keep his people from having to toil everyday, King Tullis IV, who was affectionately known to his subjects as “The Feather Headed”, possibly because of the feather he kept at a jaunty angle on his crown, outlawed all forms of manual labor and instead instituted a universal welfare system. Instead of working, all were encouraged to study the lives and lessons of Lapak and in general “bring goodness, joy and rainbows” to his fair land. To facilitate this, he ordered that all his subjects were to be given houseboats (imported from abroad) and live in the swamp around Oly’Shii so that he could “see the joy on their faces”.
All was good in the land for over 300 years until it’s last king, Dur XI, died in his sleep, leaving behind Queen Bubbles and their two week old son, Prince Baby I. (The most popular account is that he fell asleep on his back and drowned in his own drool. According to the nobility, this is, of course, propaganda spread by Stonegrave to tarnish the Royal Family and strengthen his rule.)
Leadership in that time of crisis fell to the King’s Council, which had been overseeing the kingdom’s affairs for over 150 years. The council met and unanimously consented that the regency should go to Harbottle Stonegrave, the king’s Minister of Crabby Faces and Strange Ideas, because he was the only one who had the time to bother with such distractions. Stonegrave was viewed by the Council as a crank, indeed he seemed unable to even feel goodness and joy. He was something of a joke in Court because he kept presenting outlandish ideas to the king, such as decreasing imports of food and other necessities by letting the people return to their ancestral farms, lumber mills and mines, or even letting the people leave swamp in general.
His first act was to dissolve the King’s Council to “allow them more time to do, whatever” and send them on a world tour on the last surviving ship of the Royal Fleet. He then issued a call for all the young people who had betrayed the King’s trust and gone abroad to work to return to help “rebuild” the kingdom. Within three years, most of the Royal Magical Butterfly Fields had been plowed under and turned to agriculture, and half of the Royal Enchanted Forests were felled to build farmhouses, barns, and new capital city of Port, built around the only natural harbor on the island. Stonegrave financed these massive infrastructure projects from the Royal treasury by halting all funding for the Royal Art Grants and refusing to finance any more Noble Crusades.
In the tenth year of Stonegrave’s regency, the nobility’s fears about his corruption of the common Laputan were confirmed. While celebrations on the anniversary of their leaving the swamp were common amongst the people, that was the first year it became popularly known as “Stonegrave’s Day”. Upon hearing this, Queen Bubbles called upon the nobles of the Court and all those who remained true to Tullis IV’s ideals to bring even more goodness and joy into Lapunta, so that it might “wash over our lost brethren and release them from Stonegrave’s evil spell”. When this message reached the populace, it was greeted with great confusion. To sum up the most common opinion, “Someone stayed in that hell hole?”
Lapunta is now a rising economic power based on exports of food and Lapakan icons carved from swamp trees. It’s most famous export is Gahk, a fragrant and strong tasting fungus only found in the swamp surrounding Oly’Shii. Demand from the rest of the world has lead to the entirety of each years harvest being sent abroad. Lapuntans are so generous, they insist on sending it off, even though it formed the majority of their diet for 300 years.
Wow that certainly is comprehensive. Swamp art sounds like a real pain, everything would always be getting wet.
Impressive, I probably couldn’t come up with a better story for StoneGrave myself.
@Nick Daniel: It’s statuary and votive icons of Lapak carved from trees, usually unpainted. I figured that the captive population would say that making them were acts of faith, contrition and prayer, not manual labor, which was illegal. They could sell it to pilgrims, and, so long as they carved religious scenes on it, could repair their house boats. Most of their money went to buying exorbitantly priced food from overseas to keep from having to eat Gahk (so named because of the sound one made while eating it).
After they left the swamp, and finding out it was impossible to burn it down, it was unanimously decided that since they couldn’t destroy the Gahk, they might as well sell it. So every spring and fall, hordes of citizens return to their old house boats and harvest every scrap of the fungus they can find, right down to scraping off the tree bark it was attached to. They then dump it in well-sealed crates, call it a delicacy, and ship it to chic restaurants around the world for consumption by the rich and trendy (and stupid).