Nome Part Three

THE RISE OF THE NOMAN EMPIRE - BY GRAZNIUS THE CRONIKLER.

Part the third.

It soon turned out that making the city walls of Nome out of Papier-Mache was a bad idea. The new walls tended to shift, or fall down in high winds, and when it rained they became damp, sticky and soggy; but it wasn’t until one section spontainusly combustid...€ spuntaniously cumbusterd... caught fire on its own, causing the Great Fire of Nome, that they wos replaced. It must be coincidence that the fire appears to have started at the pie shop on the corner of Puddin’ Lane, where the bakers had their scone ovens next to the wall, and ended at River View Hovel in the next street.

Romcedes was now getting a bit more olderer and was getting a bit more odderer in his ways. He took to wandering the streets of Nome in his nightcap and knocking on doors in the middle of the day asking people to put the light out so he could sleep.

He called for a scribe and started dictating letters to various trees, bushes and weeds and a small duck he called “Cicero”€, but he was disappointed when none of them writtened back to him. He got so upset that he had the plants publicly executed on a bonfire in the big square; the duck escaped this fate on account of being able to fly off when the guards came to arrest him.

Romcedes heard a tale from the land of the Goblins in the west as to how they had a King called Punkcedes wot ruled over them. This King got lots of free stuff for being the King, and all the Goblins had to do wot he said. Kinging sounded a good idea to Romcedes, the more he thought about it the more it sounded like it would be a good career choice for him. He called the Nobs together and told them he was instituting the Orc Kingdom of Nome, and made his self King of course, and declared that all Orcs everywhere was his subjects and had to do whatever he told them.

The Nobs wasn’t as pleased with the idea as he was, they seemed to think that this was taking a bit of a liberty with their liberty and they told him so. Romcedes met their objections with rational argument, the argument that; as he controlled the Tuscan Ur-Ooks, it would be in their best interests and future health to agree.

Orcs has never been happy with Kings and it was shortly, and purely coincidentally of course, after this that Romcedes followed his brother to the grave in strikingly similar circumstances. However, the pressident had been set, as they say, and Nome was now a Kingdom, a Kingdom with a thirst for knowledge (mainly knowledge of where other peoples kept their treasure) and land.

The Ruling Nobs of Nome tried a few more determined but suicidal attempts at “Kinging”€ before they came up with the idea of a Caesorc; the literal meaning of which is “Not a king at all, in fact nothing like a king, but still your boss”.€ This seemed to work, especially as they backed the position of Caesorc up with a group of nobs known as the Senate who wos there to represent and protect the common people, well the common people who wos rich or who wos Nobs at least, and then they made the toughest of the Ur-Ooks into a special unit wot protected the Caesorc; this unit wos known as the Greatorcian Guard. The role of Caesorc was definitely not hereditary or open only to the elite; it said so in very fine print on the back of the Constitushun of Nome.

It became a common saying that “any Orc lad could grow up to be Caesorc of Nome, just the same as any Brutish boy could grow up to be Queen of Brutannica.”€

There wos many famous and noble Caesorcs that ruled in an only slightly broken here and there line down to the present day and our own Wunnerful and Merciful and Triumphant and Glorious and Awesome and did I say Wunnerful and Merciful? and Noble Bennydictimus Aprilus Bochemanicus Julianus Slimeastus!

There wos for instance:

Caesorc Grammaticus Mathmaticus who introduced schools into Nome in the second sentery... sentoory... hundred years after the death of Romcedes. Grammaticus Mathmaticus was deyiffied... dayifide... elervated to god-hood during his reign by the delighted parents of Nome.

The Educashun system of Nome ruled that every common Orc boy wos entitled to an educashun, and every baby Wimmin wasn’t. In practice this policy depended on the number of seats available in schools, but it wasn’t long before the schools started taking out some of the seats and selling them for firewood, until there wos only enough left for the boys of the common people who wos rich or Nobs. There were some schools wot swapped some of their seats for uni-stools so that the common, common boys could still get an education, albeit a rather shaky one, which lead to the saying: “As stable as a one-legged stool”€. This uni-versus-sitting lead to the creation of Universities, where only the rich and the Nobs could afford to go, and where more important studies were taught, such as; How to ignore common Orcs; How to order common Orcs about; How to make sure that common Orcs know their place isn’t the same as yours; How to party; How to show solidarity with the common Orcs and show them “We’re all in this together”€ (The lecturers could never get this one across, and so it was dropped in favour of “Simple Fraud for the Upper Classes”€); and most importantly; Sicofancy... Psychofantasy... How to creep to those above you.

Caesorc Nerorc Aprilus Bochemanicus wos a great innovator; he had a vast network of sewer tunnels built under Nome; and his innovation wos to allow the poorest of Orcs to live there, thus cleaning up the streets and dung heaps of our noble capital in one go. He then decided that the hovels where the poorest Orcs had lived wos unsitely and disgusting and he set about drawing up plans to beautify the city wiv fountains, gardens, temples, art galleries, and of course new shopping malls. His innovation here was to set fire to the city to get round the stringent city planning codes and other rules regarding the preservation of listed buildings. Nerorc wos another who died of a bout of terminal flatulence, as many of his predicessors... prediseccors... Caesorcs wot wos before him, had done.

The most famousest of the mighty Caesorcs that ever ruled the Noble City of Nome, saving of course our Noble etc Bennydictimus, wos Gayus Julian (Joolz) Caesorc. In his youth he was well travelled and went on many trips wiv his school. In his gap year he visited Brutain in the uttermost west. He came back with an embarrassing infection but vowed to return there - with an army!