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Oh, it's the guy who changed his name.  Some relation of Nefratiti's.  Atensomething.

All right, the deadline is looming now. Can I have an extension please?

The deadline isn't looming THAT much yet!   Right now it's more just ...impending.

Why'd you ever take that + off your name, Stupot?  Top marks for you.  Your turn.

All righty then.  I'm looking for a double answer: two historical personages that share the following biography.

At 43 years of age this successful author and charismatic war vet became the head of his country's government.  He took over this roll from the ageing supreme commander of the nation's armies in a war that ended 15 years previously.  He was considered one of the great orators of his generation, although beneath the veneer of a vigorous statesman he actually suffered from ill-health and drug use.  Initiatives while in office included instigating an accelerated program of research into rocketry and outright reckless campaigns to stem the perceived threat of communism.

French general after world war one, eh?  Er.... Ferdinand Foch?

My idea was for the Whodunnit theme, which, because I was administering (and was voted down when I proposed entering - note to self, it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission ), I never started.  But I did have an idea, and it's kinda come back to me, so I'm going with that.

Well, I did notice one theme that caught my interest and when I explored the link in more detail, I discovered that it was a theme I set myself, so... Heck!

That's certainly no reason not to enter. Please refer to rule 5 - just in case you overlooked it.

I too have decided to use a theme I set myself.  Rule 5 rules!

Sorry!

*Gasp!*

[Baron: 4Mandle: 1JudasFM: 5Ponch: 3Sinitrena: 5]

Baron: 4
Mandle: 1
JudasFM: 5
Ponch: 3
Sinitrena: 5

You sure about that? By my count it is:
Mandle: 2
JudasFm: 5
Baron: 5
Ponch: 3
Sinitrena: 6

I think you missed JudasFm's votes here on page 3.

Oh, those hanging chads; when will they ever learn??

Congratulations Sini!   And good work JudasFM & Ponch.  I think if you both added a few more sex scenes in your work it would have pushed you over the cusp to victory, but I understand that you value your artistic integrity.

Excellent contest administration, Mandle!

See you all again for the hopefully Hallowe'eny theme next time!

[JudasFM]

Also, a very small nitpick: "But if you really want to know then yes, there are two dungeons in this castle but no one can find the key for one of them and the other one is full of cheese. We don't solve problems that way in Daventry." That is a very stupid idea and speaks very bad of Daventry. Every country everywhere and at all times has some kind of crime. Not using the dungeon implies that they deal diffrently with criminals and there really aren't that many options: Maiming, execution, ect. And it also usually means that sentences are passed out without a proper court of law....

Let's get to the crux of the problem here: Graham, likeable as he is as a guy, is really quite a crummy king.  He gets so obsessed with helping individuals and being nice that he misses the broader picture and avoids the hard choices for the greater good.  Instead of governing he's off gallivanting in the tropical islands.  Instead of hunting down the pickpockets and thieves that seem to plague his realm he's off treasure hunting.  Basically he's a feudal Jimmy Carter.

Votes:

JudasFM.  I got really into the story.  I'd played the AGD Kings Quest 2 Remake like a decade ago, but have never played KQ3.  But thanks to your story I looked it up and downloaded the AGD version.  I thought you did a good job developing the antagonism between the teenager and his dad.  My beef would be that the Queen seemed a bit flat, but I get that the true story revolved around Graham and Alexander.

Sinitrena.  I thought this was the most creative entry.  Not quite an autonomous character, but a sentient one: very interesting.  The horrible Edge-of-Tomorrow reliving of the worst day of her life was poignant.

Ponch.  'Cause, heh.  Yoda knows how to have a good time on a Friday night.  

I thought Mandle's entry was good and funny, but I think it'd have to be knock-your-socks-off amazing to earn votes coming from a contest administrator, so... SNUBBED!  But it made the contest more interesting having more entries, so I'm all for administrator participation in the future.

@ Sinitrena: Yeah, I got into deadline trouble and really couldn't put the amount of time into my work that I usually do.  I'll make sure to think about starting sooner next time.

To be honest, I don't know about this new voting system.

I remember, as the grand old man of this particular competition board (except for Ponch, who is sometimes grander and always older, but I digress), that this idea of contest adminstrators entering came up back in '15.  I forget whose idea it was, but he was a spry young buck with an impressively tall pickelhaube spike and a mischievous glint in his monocle.  I think in the end the consensus of the writing regulars was inconclusive.

Well, I am known for my diabolical scheming....

Well, I got there in the end.  I haven't done any proofreading or link-testing or anything, but I think I got it all up and posted.  Now it's off to bed: tomorrow's a work day!

To begin your adventure, turn to Post 12

It's Canadian Thanksgiving right now, so I won't be properly sober until Monday.  If you can hold the contest open until then, I can have my story done, I swear!

Spoiler

   Donning your black cloak of haunting evilness, you tip toe with your tire iron over to the upturned hotrod.  The occupants inside are cursing something at you, but their voices are muffled by the traffic that nonchalantly swerves to either side.  Quickly you pop off the hubcap and start cranking on the lug nuts.

   Flashing lights draw your attention.  Uh oh, it's the fuzz!  Luckily you already have what you need.  Surreptitiously leaving a hologram of a doughnut with long sexy legs on the bumper to distract the cops, you steal away into the darkness with your prize. 
   
   Fast as lightning you find the jack out of the Baronmobile's trunk and swap the wheels.  The new one is a bit small, but it should do until you get back to your lair.  You're back on the road, baby!  Hopping inside once more you hit the gas, wobbling unevenly off into the night.

Turn to post 33

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Bah, I'm still not done.  And I'm drunk.  This is like the first contest I've missed in three years.  It was bound to happen sooner or later.  It's enough to drive a fellow to drink....

Spoiler

   You decide to call for a tow-truck.  Despite the state-of-the-art weapons and propulsion systems, the Baronmobile has by comparison an extremely primitive communications system.  Mindful of the honking of passersby you reluctantly hook your telegraph wire up to the nearest road-side cable and attempt to broadcast an all-channel TMW (Tow My Wreck).  Patiently you wait for a response from the network, vaguely aware of a gathering crowd of gangsta-looking fellows down the street.  Alarmingly they seem to be setting off semi-automatic fireworks and moving in your direction.

   You consider hiding in the blast-proof cocoon of the Baronmobile, safe from all danger in its steel and nano-tube womb.  Or you could make a dash for it on your emergency utra pogo-stick.  Decide fast: they are coming!

If you decide to hide in the Baronmobile, turn to post 25.

If you decide to cut and run on your emergency ultra pogo-stick, turn to post 31

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I'm half done, but I'm so swamped right now with work.  I could have it in if you'll give me Friday night.

Spoiler

   You are so tired after a long night on the road.  These misadventures are murderous at your age.  Oh man, and there's that writing contest thingy that you've been putting off.  What is it, like 4 am?  Gah!  Maybe they'll give you another extension.  You reluctantly hit the post button and slink off to bed.  Yaaaaaaaaaawn.

You are a lazy prat.  The end!

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[This space reserved for a FWC entry coming in a day or two]

This was six days ago.  I'm worried that Ponch is too awesome to follow through on this one.  Maybe we should stage a Texan-style intervention with square dancing and Indian arm burns?

Spoiler

   You jump on your emergency ultra pogo-stick and bounce merrily to freedom, cackling maniacally as you do so.  Buwuhahahhahahaha!!  Now there is the smoggy glow of sunrise on the horizon, and the rays of a new dawn fill your brooding soul with hope for the future.  Mayhaps you were unable to bring the world to heel this wretched night, but your day will come.  One day you will be victorious in your quest to dominate a loosely affiliated retro-gaming society on the internet, and through them the entire human race!  Biding your time you bounce merrily along, bouncing and biding, biding and bouncing, into the happy brilliance of a new beginning.

You are awesome!  The end

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All these submissions make me think that I really should get started on continuing my introductory sentence....

Spoiler

     Seething at your correspondent's ill-refined sense of hue and saturation, you quickly type out some block-cap words that a greater man than you might come to regret.  You are on the verge of pressing send when a small, fluttery sensation holds you back.  What is that?  Conscience?  You're pretty sure you had that excised back in '98 along with that nasty three pronged growth on your inner thigh....  No, wait.  Operation Fuzzy Pickle!  You'd almost forgotten that you need to keep in Ponch's good graces in case you need to activate him as a sleeper agent.  You wouldn't want all that low-res subliminal hypnosis to go to waste....

   Blast!  You decide you'll just have to swallow this one, like a bitter pill of cadmium and brussel sprout juice.  Maybe it would be for the best if you just took a break.  You could kick your shoes off and graft some implants down in the sprouting chamber, or maybe you could squeeze some more soylent blue out of one of the mimes you have harnessed to the back-up reactor for a bit of a midnight snack....

   Before you can decisively end a paragraph with a solid period your cavernous layer is rocked by an earth-shattering luminescence.  WTF?!?  It had better not be another planetary invasion by that god-like alien race of Sentient Plasma Hiccoughs....  Last time it took two solid days working the phase-vac and the squishemizer to get them bottled up.  Come to think of it, where did you leave those highly-radioactive, highly-unstable re-purposed soda bottles?  But this seems more like a temporal distortion anomaly than a pan-dimensional phase portal anyway.  Curious, you to investigate.

Turn to post 18.

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Split posting really is the way to go.  It's liberating in an artistic, Jackson-Pollock-meets-Lost kinda way.  I recommend all entrants try it.

Spoiler

   You decide to relaunch your failed bid to activate the temporal disruption ray.  Last time you got so far as siring a super race of sonic death blob-fishes before chronotonic instabilities brought the whole paradox crashing down.  The melt-down convergence of realities would have surely destroyed your whole castle-lair-place if not for your quick-thinking use of your handy toilet plunger to send the fiery paradox slushing around the galactic plumbing down in the anti-matter spectrum.  Sure, it'd probably gurgle back up eventually to overflow your entire dimension with chronodoxical half-nonsense and various other meta-corporeal fluids, but by that time you figure you can recklessly set loose an even bigger, nastier paradox to kick its ass.

   You start fiddling with some of the more deadly phase inverters in your doodad drawer when you hear an ominous clunking sound coming from the spawning chamber above.  Uh oh!  It sounds like you might have accidentally rammed the wrong power adaptor into Mrs. Baron's universal serial port, thereby hyper-charging her.  You hate it when that happens!

   Past experience dictates that you have only moments before she bursts upon you in full erotic death-lust.  Last time she tried to surgically impregnate you with her eggs and suspend you upside down in the sprouting chamber as food for her writhing proto-spawn.  You only barely managed to escape by feigning a headache and escaping down the main bilge duct.  But by the sounds of it she's now juiced to the nines, so that trick might not work again.  Throwing caution to the wind you activate the temporal disruption ray and hope for the best!

Turn to post 18.

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