rangifer’s diary: pt. cxxix
alces.
Whither hast thou gone, dear alces? —
Raven wings & double’d falces?[1]
Slumber not, for dawn is breaking;
Monsters’ cards long for thy taking.
Xeric cliffs where once was thicket;
Masks of stone thou’lt find, O pricket.[2]
Two, or five, or any number…
Three of trees — the ones of lumber!
Moving inward, t’wards the castle,
Man’s best friend is worth the hassle.
Dry as dust, “no bones about it”;
Souls at rest resound throughout it.
Crown & realm, not one survivor;
Whilome prey of Fate’s own driver.
Hoplite, lord, & standing legion
From their graves defend this region.
Pair’d with Soldier’s his Official:
Hierarchy artificial.
High & mighty reigns Commander;
Noxious clouds were never grander…
Just one breath & alx[1] is huffing;
Soon will she this place be sloughing.
Alpine tundra, snowcapt ridges;
Hector’s lycans ’neath the bridges.
Soon she found herself alone in
Walls run thick with sword & rônin.[3]
Swiftly were the genin[4] harry’d —
Strange were all those things they carry’d!
With each card that hit the flooring,
Heaps of dolls was alx ignoring…
Toys of water & of kitchen
Pluckt up, to her hoard enrichen.
Ninjas here make quite the muster;
Red, grey, blue, & ev’ry lustre.
Just as alx prepare’d to settle —
’Strewth! A pine-cone made of metal!
Once all cards she did acquire,[7]
alx flew off to spa of fire.
Strange this scene was for a sauna[5] —
Still, so fruitful are its fauna.
alx expected little trouble,
Till she riffle’d through the rubble.
For one reason or another,
Fire’s breath & phlegm did smother
Three ill-fated girls with curly
Hair, entomb’d in graves so early.
As the card-clock struck fifth hour,
alces fled to eastern tower.[6]
At its apex, in its spire,
Vast machine — a screaming choir:[7]
Thuds & thunks within the ravel,
Ebb & flow of tidal travel.
Having one foot in the door, time
Came for alx to visit foretime.
Now alighting ’pon the highland,
alx beheld this ancient island.
Countless tales told by each fossil;
Warp & weft from Nature’s throstle.
Carve’d from earth, with springs like fountains,
Mossy grots poke holes in mountains:
Eaves, vault, bone, frond, vine, stalk, more like
Teeth & tongue, their gums all boarlike.
Time & tide, or tusk & toothful;
Outsize’d beasts of forest youthful.
Next were creatures far less dental —
Wing’d instead, but no more gentle —
Dwelt in livid woodland’s lumens:
Fae without esteem for humans.
O’er the forest roosts its ruler;
Hair like blood, & temper crueller.
Ev’ry fae in her dominion
Bends before her each opinion.
Soon a ring kept in her woning[8]
Was the aim of alx’s cunning.
With the art of undetection,
alx enricht her bling collection!
Transcription of the item in the above image
One of a kind Item, Untradeable
- Req lev: 105
- Category: ring
- STR: +2
- DEX: +2
- INT: +2
- LUK: +2
- HP: +100
- MP: +100
- Accuracy: +1
- Avoidability: +1
- Number of upgrades available: 3
Satisfy’d with past to tamper,
alces through the gate did scamper.
Skipping o’er each generation,
alx arrive’d at Ellin Station.
Some things never change: these basal
Reptiles circumscript in vasal
Caverns, handed down from ages
By, left elding in their cages.
Cold that rimes, & blue that shatters;
Trembling, quaking, toothless chatters.
Forth the depths unleash their bellow:
Spit of gods that breaks the mellow.
Flowstone’s fingers interlocking;
Carbon acid’s gentle nocking.
Perfect preservation furnisht
Skulls intact & marble burnisht.
Tuckt-away involute tunnels,
Home to cats with horns like funnels
Pouring bone & eyes of prism —
Born & rear’d in Vic’s abysm.
alx escape’d to house monastic,
Flush with texts & tomes scholastic.
Each perfecting mind & body,
Monk for monk, not one was shoddy.
’Cross the continental shelving,
Here for cards would alx be delving.
Great Ossyria[9] had hidden
Land of leaves that had long bidden,
Shrouded in her lengthy sepals,
Tread & gaze of northly[10] peoples.
Massive dragons coëxisted
With wee folk who scarce resisted:
Halflings, furballs, satyrs, horses
’Neath blue skies had join’d their forces.[11]
In the lowlands, by the river,
Mushrooms dwell & anthers quiver.
Shield of lazuli & vapour
Keeps this tract where halflings caper.
All who venture yond the aries
Reach a country scar’d by caries:
Ribs & viscera of creatures,
Fuse’d with death in all their features;
Wyverns, scarps, & fogs that smother —
At whose peak there lives The Mother.
But, ’twas then did alx discover
Rarest lightbulb hung above her.
At the end of her safari,
alces brought a gemstone starry
To the port of blue-dome’d buildings,
For the last of tenfold gildings.
Transcription of the item in the above image
alces’s
One of a kind Item, Untradeable
- Category: ring
- STR: +10
- DEX: +10
- INT: +10
- LUK: +10
- HP: +1000
- MP: +500
You’ve collected 300 Monster Book Card Sets! The power of all the jewels combined created a powerful ring to help you in battle.
With new ring & new attire,[7]
Finàlly could alx retire.
Even so, she is not finisht —
Let not be thy hope diminisht!
Daggerlords may never settle —
Surely not with such great mettle!
Transcription of the chatlog in the above image
[system message]: alces — Lv.132 Night Lord — Total EXP: 4,630,108 (8.21%)
EXP Per Hour: 27,780,600 — EXP Per Minute: 463,010
If in heart of hearts you carry
Love for alx, be sure to tarry.
🖤
Footnotes for “alces.”
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[↑] Falces is the plural of falx “sickle”, from the Latin. Note also that alx /älks/ (here Anglicised as /ælks/) was an alternative mediæval-era form of Latin alcēs (classically /ˈäl.keːs/; here Anglicised as /ˈæl.sɪz/) “moose” (whence the binomial nomenclature), so that her name can also be rhymed with the singular.
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[↑] In the sense of “young deer whose antlers have yet to branch”.
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[↑] 浪人 /ɾo̞ːnin/ “masterless samurai; vagabond; unemployed person”, here Anglicised as /ˈɹəʊ̯.nɪn/.
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[↑] The reader familiar with Japanese may recognise this as 下人 ⟨genin⟩ (Anglicised as /ˈgɛ.nɪn/) “person of low birth; rightsless household servant”, but this is — apparently — not the intended reading, in spite of Ninja Castle being notionally set in feudal Japan. Instead, the intended reading is as 下忍 ⟨genin⟩ “low-ranking ninja” = 下 “lowness” + 忍者 “ninja” (but clipped to simply 忍). This confounding second reading appears to be entirely limited to manga.
This same general derivation also gets us 中忍 ⟨tyûnin⟩ “middle-ranking ninja” (spelt in-game as ⟨Chunin⟩), & 上忍 ⟨zyônin⟩ “high-ranking ninja” (spelt in-game as ⟨Jonin⟩).
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[↑] This rhyme relies on the much more common spelling pronunciation /ˈsɔː.nə/. The unadapted /ˈsaʊ̯.nə/ pronunciation is, however, occasionally heard in English.
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[↑] The reader might protest that, although the Hḗlios is “easterly” insofar as it’s literally on the right-hand side of Lūdibrium, the Ēṓs’s name more clearly suggests easterliness. For example, Ēṓs + -an = (poetic) English Eoan “having to do with dawn; eastern”. But with Hḗlios & Ēṓs being the sun & the dawn, respectively, the association with easterliness is about the same insofar as the semantic evolution is “the place where the sun rises at dawn”. Indeed, in Ancient Greek, hḗlios had the sense of “east”.
This suggests that Lūdibrium as a whole is relatively easterly. On the earliest full-world maps of MapleStory,[10] this is partially true: it is (south)east of Victoria Island (admittedly depicted as an archipelago), but not particularly easterly (nor particularly westerly) relative to the whole of Old Ossyria, nor to the whole of Ossyria.
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[↑] The metre here assumes that fire, spire, choir, &c. are all disyllabic, even though they’re traditionally(?) monosyllabic. Look… just let me have it. Poetic licence! Triphthongs are hard!! Let me alone!!!
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[↑] This rhyme assumes woning (sometimes ⟨wonning⟩) with the STRUT vowel, i.e. its most common pronunciation. However, sometimes GOAT is heard instead.
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[↑] The first Maple World map (localised for GMS), for reference:
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[↑] My sincerest apologies if you haven’t the horse–hoarse merger.