The Chronicles of Bardon Mew: The Reluctant Hero's Journey

A Significant Event to an Otherwise Worthless Village

The village of Barrelmeade is a rather innocuous and pointless village in the grand scheme of things. Nestled deeply in the Woods of Catatonia at the outer edge of the kingdom of Syphillia, it is one of the most useless and unimportant villages in the entirety of Fantassia. It places only second on Fantassia's records of cities that nobody cares about, only being beaten by The Void, a village filled with emptiness, a powerful magic that sucks any living thing into a different realm. Unlike every other civilized society (civilized used as loosely as possible here) in the land which is rich in history of their formations, Barrelmeade grew out of the foundations of stupidity and overindulgence. Historical documents tend to laugh at Barrelmeade, considering it more of a joke, a humourous footnote in the annals of Fantassia's lore. The Lythorian Monks, who spend their entire lives copying and recopying anything that has been written in any capacity, including the ramblings of the village idiots to preserve culture as much as possible, use Barrelmeade as comic relief to their otherwise banal lives. To remotely take Barrelmeade seriously as a village means sentencing yourself to Village Idiocy. Just writing about it here is risking that I be crowned the title myself, but for your sake I'm making the sacrifice.

Where most cities and villages were formed on the basis of war, colonialism, conquering of lands and savage brutality, named after heroes who had tales written of them, stories passed on generation to generation, Conquests of epic proportions, revolutions, safe havens and people coming together to start anew, Barrelmeade had no such claims. A few thousands of years ago, Barrelmeade was merely an empty plain, an open field found in the middle of the forest, uninhabited by any living creature except for one human who would find himself passed out every forthnight in the middle of it all. Of course, you would think that Barrelmeade was possibly named after this one human, Colonel Custard, a general of the lowest order, but that would mean Barrelmeade had some integrity to it. It was quite literally named after the fact that this passed out human would find himself inebriated after drinking a barrel of meade to himself. This spot became his bedding on his nights of debauchery and drinking, always landing drunkenly on his face, butt in the air. Why he always came to this exact spot, no one knew for certain. Some say the way the moon glistened onto this opening attracted him as a moth is attracted to light. Some say it was purely muscle memory carrying him towards it. A very small number of people believe it was the gods trying to sacrifice him to the Titans but being met with constant failure as his level of inebriation prevented him from successfully being gifted. Whatever reason it was there's no sense of pride in a village being founded from a drunk man's black out.

As time went on, Colonel Custard would bring friends along, leading them to this field like a drunken pied piper. If you were a humble traveler making his way through these woods early one morning, you had the chance to stumble upon the sight of up to fifty grown men laying face down in the ground, butts in the air, snoring loudly like an abundance of toads in a pond. As this was common occurrence, these drunks started to set up actual bedding and tents in preparation for their inevitable inebriated arrivals later in the night. Some found it easier to stick around during the day and brought their own barrels of meade to set up in what would become the Town Square. This legion of fifty men found themselves partying day in and day out, never leaving this spot that became a safe haven for their celebrating and drinking. Women joined, children were born and a city grew, structures being made from the wood of old barrels that couldn't hold the meade anymore (or were smashed by a rowdy person thinking it'd be funny to do a backflip off of one, but landing on his head right onto the barrel). Barrelmeade was essentially born out of people coming together for a party and never leaving.

Today, in the era of Shartoran, Year 4040 Luna Ha (which let's be honest means absolutely nothing to you), Barrelmeade still indulges itself in excess celebration, finding any excuse to bring out the barrels and party hard. Ruled by The Duke, a flamboyant imbecile with a penchant for never wearing pants, and his wife, Lady Evelyn MacNamara Santoro Del Monto Di Farro Selemina Minor the Third, who makes decisions for the village based on whims and what may please his daughter, known throughout the land as The Bearded Princess. You'd think that the population of this village would complain and revolt against this but they enable it, reveling in the chaos of it all. You couldn't find a people that prided themselves more in being completely useless to society.

For Millenium, the village went undisturbed from any outside forces, mainly due to literally no one wanting to be associated with them in anyway. However, Barrelmeade recently has found themselves with a little dilemma that has been unprecedented. Around the Calamari Festival, an annual celebration where the villagers celebrate the frying of the squid that occurs on the lunar alignment of the centauri constellation on the day of Gamesh, when the winds of the east sprawl in from the west (again details that mean absolutely nothing to you and to anyone else except the people of Barrelmeade because it's complete nonsense), villagers have been regularly found dead in their homes. Originally brushed aside as the excess of alcohol consumption, despite every one of them being found mauled, half-eaten and gutted, it became a point of worry once the fiftieth person was found dead, a detail they decided to celebrate as an important milestone. *You may notice how none of this appears in the live-action adaptation. To that I say, read a book sometime.*

On the night of said celebration, one couple would not be so lucky as to find themselves alive the next morning. The couple (whose names are unimportant as they're about to die anyway) stumbled drunkenly towards their home, the slightly more feminine of the two running desperately to the front door.

"If I don't make it to that chamberpot soon, I am going to soil my pantaloons with the thundering force of a storm made by Poseidon himself".

"Graphic", laughed the more masculine of the two as he tripped on nothing whatsoever.

If only he knew that deep in the shadows of the nearby bushes, a creature, a beast of sorts, was watching them stealthily, licking its lips in anticipation of the meaty man and the gravy filled woman, he wouldn't have been laughing at all, nay he would have been crying or even shouting. But he had no idea, and followed his wife into their house, watching her run to the other room, her cries turning to relief as a sudden wet explosion was heard.

"Hoooey, Stinky!", he cried as he waved his hand around. Turning to the window, he opened it, letting in fresh air. As he sniffed the untainted forest air of the night, he heard a rumble in the bushes. Looking around, he saw nothing and shrugged his shoulders, moving towards the cupboard to grab some food. Distracted by the choices of food, he didn't notice the creature crawling through the window and into the house, scurrying its way sneakily under the table where it was hidden from his view. After grabbing an entire sausage and sitting at the table, he ate it with gusto, as if he had never eaten anything in his life before this moment. The creature stared at the man's legs with hunger, ready to pounce when the man dropped a piece of sausage to the ground. Bending down to pick it up, his eyes met with the eyes of the creature, which immediately jumped at his face and started mauling him, scratching and ripping it apart.

The man screamed. Boy did he scream. His scream would have woken up Salamir, the dragon who has slumbered since... well, no one knows when, but it's been a long time. He kept screaming, attempting to remove this creature from his face. In a moment of desperation, he grabbed the knife and tried stabbing at it, stupidly not realizing it was on his face. After a few lunges of the knife deep into his own skull, he fell to the ground, silent, the creature nibbling at his face.

His wife walked in undisturbed. "Geez, it didn't smell that bad", and fell upon the sight of her husband dead on the floor. Frozen in shock, she stared as the creature turned it's yellow eyes towards her, a new tasty meal to be had. As it lunged at her, she let out a piercing scream.

Two screams unheard by the village as they were all too drunk to notice.