BARBAWIT FLATHEAD

Barbawit Flathead was the tenth king of the Flathead Dynasty. He came to the throne in 843 GUE after his father Duncwit was deposed and exiled. He reigned from Flatheadia for 2 years and was succeeded by his brother Idwit Oogle. Tales tell of several occasions during his reign in which Syovar the Strong nearly died in magical battles fought to preserve the life of this ruling member.

When Duncwit Flathead was deposed in 843, the Royal Militia and a key group of chief advisors turned to the exiled monarch's eldest son Barbawit. Throughout his short life, Barbawit was characterized by two things, his love of travel and his perverse sense of humor, both of which would ultimately be his undoing. Although it is unclear exactly how Barbawit spent his days before his ascent to the throne of Quendor, various sources report that, much to the annoyance of the royal family, he was for many years the headlining act in a stand-up comedy troupe that toured the western provinces on the backs of underfed pack mules. It is of course possible that these tales are mere fabrications, but given the nature of his deeds during his all too brief reign, it seems unlikely that his earlier years could have been spent doing anything much more respectable.

Barbawit himself was the first Flathead monarch since Duncanthrax himself not to have any formal schooling as a young boy. His father, never noted for his stable personality and solid mental capacity, ignored Barbawit for almost twenty-three years, for some reason convinced that he had died at the same time as Dimwit and his eleven. Plagued by a father that refused to acknowledge his existence, and constantly harassed by a brazen younger brother with the unfortunate name of Idwit Oogle, Barbawit's childhood cannot have been a happy one, and like many lonely people, the unstable Flathead covered his insecurity in a blanket of bizarre and morbid humor. He was of course the first member of the immediate ruling family to have been born after the disaster of 789, and thus knew about the Megaboz affair only through second-hand and wildly distorted reports from his older relatives. Not having lived through and witnessed the carnage for himself, he seemed to have seen the entire episode as nothing more than a particularly rich source of material for his ever-growing supply of jokes.

By the time Duncwit's advisors were compelled to push the old monarch off his throne, it was clear to everyone involved that Barbawit had absolutely no interest in taking charge of Quendor. The high-ranking military figures that ousted Duncwit have been blamed for ignoring a golden opportunity and doing away with the reigning dynasty once and for all. Lacking the political originality, or perhaps fearing the consequences of bringing the Curse to an early fulfillment, the small group of coup leaders felt they had no choice but to take their chances with Barbawit. The older group of advisors that had steadied the course of the state after the deaths of Dimwit and Loowit had long since been distanced from the reigns of power at Aragain, Feepness himself finally giving in to the death of a lonely exile in the wilds of Fenshire, and already the young Idwit Oogle was itching for a chance to claim the throne.

Nevertheless, Barbawit was crowned as Lord of Quendor on the 22nd of Oracle, as with each of the kings before him since Dimwit's day. In an amusing side-note to the initial events of his reign, Ozmar records that Barbawit almost missed his coronation date in Aragain. Unwilling to force his comic troupe to cancel performance dates in Gurth and Mithicus, the stubborn and disinterested monarch spent several weeks refusing to make the necessary preparations for the long voyage. Finally exhausted and annoyed by the constant barrage of messengers from the east, he gave in and forced himself to overcome his reputedly horrible seasickness. At each stop along the voyage, he dismissed the pleading of the Quendoran regents to sit down and begin the work of government, interested only in perfecting his stand-up comic routine. On the night of the 21st he stopped in Port Foozle, entertaining the assembled masses with a never-ending assortment of one-liners about his grandfather's cousin, the excessive but still quite dead Dimwit Flathead.

        “Why did Lord Dimwit Flathead throw his grandfather clock out the window?
        “Have you studied the trajectory from several angles?
        “Why does he always use the second-story window?
        “Excessive as always, he wanted to see time fly.”

From this point onward, the situation only got worse. It soon became clear to the regents that Duncwit's successor would prove to be little better than his father. Barbawit took no interest whatsoever in the inner workings of government, and the details of daily administration were soon left completely to the royal advisors. Another anecdote, also preserved by Ozmar, shows just how far the royal family had deteriorated. The day after his coronation, when Barbawit was needed for an urgent series of council meetings with his new court, he failed to arrive at the appointed time. Search parties sent to look for the king finally found him wandering through the royal gardens, telling jokes to the nasturtiums. Even if this story is pure fiction, it certainly shows how poorly the new monarch appeared to his worried supporters. Within a week, their worst fears had been confirmed. Barbawit himself announced that he was leaving Aragain to resume his comic tour. Apparently, the few briefings on the nature of the Curse of Megaboz and the state of Quendor that he had been forced to sit through had provided him with several hours of new material for his comic routine. “Even if the empire is going to collapse,” he quipped, “at least I'm going to have a good time laughing about it.”

And off he went: Foozle again, then Festeron, Marba, Anthar, often spending weeks in each place just to overcome his fear of the open sea. The call of the audiences of the Westlands was irresistible, and soon he was resuming the tour he had abandoned several months before: Grubbo, Accardi, Borphee, then inland to Znurg, and ancient Quendor itself. By the second or third show, things had begun to go strangely awry. His improvisational humor, immensely popular before the death of his father, had begun to take on a sinister and foreboding tone. Clearly, rampant anarchy and the total collapse of the greatest empire in history were not topics that people found to be particularly amusing. However, Barbawit stuck to his comic guns, even going so far as to greet the nervous crowds at Largoneth Village with the following lines:
 
    “Megaboz walks into a bar. ‘Ouch,’ he goes, ‘Wrong place. I meant to go to the Armory.’” (his original version had “Lord Nimbus” in place of “Megaboz”)

Undeterred by the angry and often violent reactions provoked by his twisted humor, Barbawit continued on to the north. Only three out of thirteen of his shows ended peacefully, his audiences stirred to riot by their king's perverse morbidity.

By the time Barbawit reached Mareilon, his bizarre reputation had preceded him. Nervous unrest had shaken the city for several days beforehand, some extremist protestors even threatening to destroy the city in a second Endless Fire if the Flathead brought his brand of humor onto the stage within city limits. Despite the best advice of the few advisors that had accompanied him this far, Barbawit insisted on performing, the entire set ending in near disaster. The king himself was pulled off the stage and attacked by the angry mob, barely escaping with his life.

Some apocryphal reports of the day's events note that Thwack of Mareilon was actually in the audience to witness the king's comic routine, and was in fact more than somewhat inspired by the pale greenish color of the fluids gushing from the injured monarch's ears, eyes and nose. Whether this odd revelation was in fact the breakthrough that led him to the correct classification of the Moss of Mareilon in 843, we will in all likelihood never know.

In any case, the tour was called to a temporary halt, the king retreating to a country villa near Djabuti Padjama. The next two years of his reign consisted of dodging mobs of Barbawit-protesters, and narrowly escaping multiple executions. His return to the throne in 845 was welcomed by almost the entire population of Quendor backed by nearly every member of the entire Royal Army, each armed with tomatoes and heightened ferocity.

Attempting to please the crowd, Barbawit’s final one-liner unleashed the greatest devastating splatter upon a single man that one could ever imagine before being dragged to his execution. Eyewitnesses reported that he laughed hysterically the entire way to the gallows pole. His last recorded words were, “Wait, you guys aren't kidding, are you?” It does seem that he failed to take the whole affair entirely seriously.