Ready Player X

An NS Sports forum RP series for NS World Cup 91, NS World Cup 92, NS World Cup 93 & NS World Cup 94

Vignettes of The Representatives

A series of snapshots of the lives of future legends of Deltic football.

Contents
1. Tai Cerotha

2. Skelimino Bane

3. Dr. Orem Ustingham
4. Osward Ess

5. Iack Tase
6. Aleard Sullenden

7. Untto Squaker

8. Irki Mynster

9. Eremo Olde
10. Darra Cankal
11. Kim Samrodd

12. Enor Perro
13. Steed Tombes
14. Tai Tunnyo
15. Kal Rayler
16. Ardrake Steng
17. Eddie von Dach
18. Perran Garimund
19. Henry Lightman
20. Onun Tasher
21. Burus Tasher
22. Rillr Sawdare
                                                                                                    
READY PLAYER 1
Tai Cerotha

A resident of the small port town of Deltemouth, Tai impressed everyone (who were watching, which wasn’t many) in his games for The Representatives at the Baptism of Fire, scoring a hattrick in the first game and going on to hit four more in the unexpected run to the quarterfinals. Fans back home at the Delte Valley Tuesday Evening & Sunday Lunchtime Super League strugglers Deltemouth Pacific would be surprised to hear of his good form, as they were when he was called up in the first place. He’ll argue all day that it is impossible to be a good striker in a bad team (and the Pacific definitely are a bad team these days) but put him with a useful bunch of daisycutters and he can show you what he’s capable of. Says he. That certainly seemed to be the case in Farfadillis, where he claims only a case of mistaken identity won a professional contract for Enor Perro at Rülândéá Kôstä - after all, Enor was the second string defensive midfielder in the squad who hadn’t actually played a full game for The Representatives. Whilst the unofficial reporting of that surprise international transfer suggested Enor had some contacts on the inside - literally, him recently coming out of gaol at the Auld Triangle - who engineered the signing in some kind of black market people trafficking arrangement (this being Rülândéá after all), and most of the players suspecting it is because Enor’s surname means ‘dog’ in Rülândésé and that somehow appealed to the Kôstä team, Tai Cerotha says the team officials came to the hotel asking for him, but the first person they met was Enor who, being unemployed at the time always alert to a good opportunity for career advancement, pretended to be the free-scoring striker and was soon packed off to the Kôstä training complex to meet his new teammates.

READY PLAYER 2
Skelimino Bane

Skelimino claims to have had to learn to walk three times, and that’s why he’s such a good physio. The first when he was a nipper, he says, same as everyone else; the second, as a teenager, after an attempted cycle stunt over Delte falls went wrong and he ended up with several pins in his lower spine; and thirdly after late tackle on the hooligan defender of Oswark Town, Untto Squaker, a couple of seasons ago. That was largely seen as an exaggeration to uphold an excessively over-indulgent display of agony to avoid a red card during a Delte Valley Tuesday Evening & Sunday Lunchtime Super League clash between the rival sides, which escalated when, according to Town fans at least, he had to pretend he needed stretchering off the pitch to save face from the onslaught of mockery from Town fans and players; had to then pretend he was in hospital for two months; and missed the rest of Ildemorton’s season only because, really, he’d been next to superstar six-a-side sensation Ny Tinnund in accident & emergency with her altogether genuine ACL injury and wanted to spend more time with the woman - who would, as it turned out, become his wife - during her genuine recovery from a proper setback. As football conspiracy theories go, it seems pretty speculative but that never stopped a good rumour from gaining traction among the highly gullible. What seems to be certain is that he probably did have to learn to walk at least twice, simply because the first one is the one we all do, and the second one, with the bike and the waterfall and the broken back, is easily verified with a quick search through the archives of the Deltemouth Tide Times and a cursory reading of the newspaper report which is rather unsympathetically headlined “IDIOT CYCLIST TRIES THE IMPOSSIBLE, BELATEDLY LEARNS WHAT IMPOSSIBLE MEANS”.

READY PLAYER 3
Dr. Orem Ustingham

Doctor Ustingham studied medicine in Wilkshire, the nearest country to the valley with a proper system of education beyond secondary school and sixth form. He was the head boy at Oswark Grammar School - of course - and when at medical school he developed a healthy addiction to opiates - of course. I say healthy because - of course - all med students get addicted to the Orange Line and, being med students, are very well versed in functional addiction management. Those less capable tend to drop out early to become dentists. After seven years of medical school and opiate addiction, and three years of locum work in his adopted country, Doctor Ustingham returned home to join the Delte Valley clinic in Oswark, the hub of the 30-or-so General Practitioners in the valley, where he was supported in establishing his own practice right at home in the parish town of Ughmirren. Aside from doctoring the sick and playing football for both his local town club Ughmirren FC and the valley Representatives, the good doctor still enjoys the occasional dabble in opiate misuse, though at 38 doesn’t have the constitution for sustained drug abuse and in particular for the extended recovery time required now that he is getting on a bit; so his other main interest, developed whilst domiciled in Wilkshire, is the Wild West fiction genre, be that film, television or literature - and even a few comic books. Nothing inspires him more than the history of Wilkshire’s wild frontier - whether true or not - and the exploits of cowboys, injuns, mexticos, and liberated Zenegalese slaves running amok in dusty landscapes with horses, mules, steers, buffalo, wolves, snakes, beavers, coyotes and turkey buzzards. On saucy cosplay nights he goes by the moniker Doc Orem and carries a pretty shiny six-shooter in his holster. He’s quick to reassure his playmates that he is only firing blanks.

READY PLAYER 4
Osward Ess

At Ess & Sons boatyard close by the locks in the parish town of Sullenden, the old man Rynold ‘Cairo’ Ess, in his paint-spattered coveralls, is layering on a little extra gloss varnish to the family jewel - the fully restored and beautifully painted wide beam barge, The Night Boat - once in the service of The Breweries that dotted the River Delte back in the industrial golden age of the valley and now moored in resplendent retirement. Nearby, raised on blocks in the dry dock, is a narrow boat in less splendid condition at the early stages of restoration - allegedly belonging to the top authority of the whole valley, the head of the Delte River Trust Tessa Sack; although old man Cairo will neither confirm nor deny such rumours. Of the sons of Cairo Ess, as noted in the title Ess & Sons Boat Yard, Danrodd and Oughan are hard at work on this old hulk skimming the keel, but there is no sign of the third and youngest son, Osward. “Gone fishing,” says old man Cairo. Indeed he is to be found waders-deep downstream of the locks, amongst the reeds and swirling white waters, concentrating on the approach of a gargoyle salmon that he knows will be heading upstream. The salmon skirt the impossible town locks by jumping up the series of wiers that act as the levelling pools, keeping the locks at navigable depths and preventing flooding in the town. Here stands Osward now on the ledge of a brisk downpour, fishing as his old man claims, like a bear, concentrating on the pool below the white water. He’s so deep in thought, he struggles to explain to his visitor, on the bank, what makes him such a special goalkeeper that he has been selected for The Representatives squad for a mess-about in the World Cup. Indeed, after a minute or so of mumbling and stuttering he gives up, frowning, and seeking the depths of the water below him. A great golden fish leaps. Osward has no rod, he has no net, he has only his hands. A golden arc of the big ugly King of the River marks its upward progress beyond the white water and toward the upper pool - and Osward, with balletic grace, catches it out of the air, and holds it, stunned and safely gripped in his sure hands. “Now, what was that you were asking?”, he says.

READY PLAYER 5
Iack Tase

Iack should’ve been studying for his second undergraduate year at the world famous Statue Maker’s School in Oswark, as the latest in the long production line of talented sculptors that have gone out into the universe to cast likenesses of favoured people (and animals, monsters, aliens, machines and other noteworthy subjects). Many of course don’t go anywhere at all, because there isn’t a lot of call for that sort of work in the world generally, and because in the Delte Valley at least they’ll have a ‘job for life’ given the community’s unique appreciation for statues. And because a lot of their statue-making friends have already decided to stay for that same reason. There are so many of them, per capita, that they even have their own team in the Friday Night & Saturday Morning Ultra Premier League, the 6-a-side fútsal championship: Oswark Statuettes - and quite good they are too. But Iack Tase can’t play for them because he’s not a woman (the best football championship in the valley is the women’s code) and because he didn’t finish his studies at the Statue Maker’s School. Whilst the Dean of the school, Dr. Roda Cathale, has agreed that he was a promising student, he entirely messed up his end of year exams, firstly when his essay on statues of infamous Gholgothic psychopath Damien Dreadfire failed the ethics and morals test (which is an extremely low bar in the world of statue making); and then when his practical task was revealed at the end-of-year maquette show and he’d made a model of the Dean herself - or at least, that is what he labelled it. What it actually was… well, there has been a blanket silence on that outside of the Statue Maker’s School and even his friends on the course won’t speak about it. Rumours abound. Iack has since taken a stonemasonry apprenticeship with Shyetarry & Daughters, undertakers of reknown in Ughmirren, where he has been trusted to engrave fitting tributes to the recently departed.

READY PLAYER 6
Aleard Sullenden

Sometime last year Aleard had been on the brewery quality control shift (the ‘QC’) for a full fortnight and that was double the usual length of the shift because someone had to fill in for the inveterate lead-swinger Naliss, who was off again with yet another bout of the sheepdip. It meant a big bonus in the paypacket but it was always the hardest shift for his family - even after a week on the QC and the obligatory heavy drinking, determinedly making sure all the cask ales were consistently delicious and drinkable in adequate quantities, Aleard would turn into a useless lump of a father and a spent force as a husband. To do a double shift was worse than double consequences, it was more like an exponential problem. It would take him three weeks, maybe a month, to recover sufficiently for Vi Sullenden to let him out of the spare room where he was forced to sleep after a long stint on the QC, and the hard glares might take a bit longer again. The children became querulous. Vi would get her mother in to help out with that, but it sure didn’t help Aleard much. “It’s alright Vi,” he said, with a headache and a slur, “we’ll take a trip to the far far away on the bunce money.” Fair enough, thought Vi, I’ll hold him to that. She did too. They got the mainline express train to some distant population centre and then took a flight to as far far away as they could afford. It was a good bonus, so it was a pretty far far far away, full of adventurous experiences and peculiar foreign customs. That’s how Aleard came home with a sign-up sheet for the World Cup. Most nobody in the valley had ever heard of the World Cup, or at least if they had, it was only some half believable rumour. He got a place on the team for his efforts even though he was probably too old to be playing football by now, but his enthusiasm never wavered (unless he was on his QC rotation).

READY PLAYER 7
Untto Squaker

Over in the next valley, life couldn’t be any more different. There are the aurochs, honey mastodons, megamynodons and feraldactyls wandering freely in the country’s lushly polluted forests; there are the paradox swamps and temporal bogwells and other patches of deep fluid time contamination; the empty towns and cities full of ghosts; the sickly glowing River Smite, a meandering, tepid sludgemire; the permanent suicide-grey skies and the ruins of the exploded Dyness-B Refinery where it all went so horribly wrong. There but for the grace of a strong North-Westerly gale go the Delts - weather conditions thirty years ago saved the Delte Valley from becoming the horror of the next valley along, and the one after that, and a couple after that too. No-one walks there now except the weird and wonderful beasts that crawl out of the bogwells from other worlds in other times… and Untto Squaker with his crew of extra-territorial rustlers and and salvagers. With a special License to Glean issued by the Delte River Trust, his main job is to herd back lost sheep and cattle that have inadvertently wandered over the hills from the high farmsteads of the Delte valley. Approved side operations include bringing the odd giant pleistocenic capybara carcass in for butchery and resale in the ‘rare meats’ cooler, and net-fishing in temporal bogwells for future-tech booty or valuable antiques. Once they found a crate of ‘Henderson’s Yorkshire Relish’, which proved a smash hit in valley cooking with several food technicians attempting to resynthesise the extraordinary condiment from another world, with mixed success. The top-selling Deltic Sauce is the closest (and only moderately comparable) recreation of that legendary find, which has been all but exhausted now save for a couple of precious bottles at the Prince Tyrbert Hotel. It would cost you your house to have the waiter add a couple of drops on your truffles. Untto knows that if he can pull up another crate of ‘Sheffield’s Finest’ from one of the bogwells in the ruined Smite Valley, he will be able to retire ten times over and become a high roller in Taxhavn.

READY PLAYER 8
Irki Mynster

Irki’s pride and joy is Frank, his post bike. When he joined the Delte Post Office, or DPO, and was assigned to his local Toddwardine sorting office, he was immediately handed the round up to Hayrust and surrounding farmsteads, recently vacated by that inveterate lead-swinger Naliss. The rounds at Hatton Samell and Draechbarn were more inaccessible than Hayrust of course, but for those you got a lift up with your trolley in one of the sorting office omnivans, and then a lift back again. But for Hayrust, they gave you a post bike and you had to cycle up. It was the hardest round in the Toddwardine district and Naliss couldn’t get rid of that round quickly enough; when the new boy came in, that was settled - Naliss pulled a bit of rank, not that he had much. Postmaster Oddkins presented Irki with the rusty old Kidny Velocipede (manufactured by Rawe & Kidny of Oswark in about 1958) and told him to get on his bike and head on up to Hayrust, post haste. It was love at first sight. The old hands at the sorting office thought it hilarious when he got his Velocipede and cycling orders to the high ground of Hayrust; they thought Irki’s delight would be short lived once he’d cycled what felt like a near-vertical five kilometres up to the village; and they thought it downright peculiar when he arrived back ten hours later with a wild grin on his face after the hair-raising free-wheeler back down the hills into town at life-threatening speeds. Irki Mynster, it turned out, was in his element. With permission to take the previously unloved company vehicle home, he began to restore the old bike and before he’d even completely learned his postal round up in the hills, Frank the Velocipede - named for his grandfather and former postman Frank Mynster - was back to it’s Rawe & Kidny showroom best, like it was fresh out of the shop back in the late fifties. While he still has his postal duties in Hayrust, Irki has now been commissioned by the DPO to restore its whole fleet of knackered Velocipedes, and has been given a shed round the back of Toddwardine sorting office to work his magic.

READY PLAYER 9
Eremo Olde

After Mertagne & Tumbra, Eremo Olde returned to his desk in the planning office and prepared to get back into his routine. Along with his lunch box, he had brought a small hammer and some picture hooks which he now nailed onto the wall above his desk, and there hung three items he had recently had framed, having brought them back from his travels on the World Cup jamboree with the Delte Valley Representative team. One item was the matchday pennant from The Representatives debut match in Farfadillis in the Baptism of Fire, a 4-1 victory over Stresia. Tai Cerotha won the matchball for his hattrick that day, and Eremo got to keep the pennant as team captain of The Representatives. The second was his Cup of Harmony Player of The Match button, awarded for the group stage win against Aleirave. The third was a medal for being part of the team that won The Nation of The Commonwealth of Baker Park Overachiever’s Award for Ninth Seeds, secured in Group 5 of world cup qualification. It was a surprisingly ostentatious medal, all things considered. Ryn Asgar from the office next door came in to complain about all the banging. “Hmmppphhh,” he said in miserly fashion, because in truth he couldn’t help but be impressed when he saw what it was all about. He skulked back to his office, muttering, leaving Eremo to attend to his first job of the day - and coincidentally, his last action connected to the World Cup cycle that had kept him so busy zipping around the world collecting memorabilia: it was time in his official capacity as planning officer for the valley to remind the Delte FA they had thirty days to begin deconstruction of the temporary terraces at Ildemorton Road, where his team had played their home matches in attempting to win the World Cup. Capacity was to be brought back to its original 230, down from the 1,150 that the scaffold stands had afforded. As he scanned the paperwork, his internal phone buzzed. It was the Big Chief of Everything, Tessa Sack. What could she want, she never called his office directly?
“You’d better hold off on that deconstruction order,” she said, coming straight to the point, “we have had some rather extraordinary news…”

READY PLAYER 10
Darra Cankal

No-one was more surprised than Darra when his pager went off whilst on tour in Tumbra and Mertagne. The Civil Defense Corps’ volunteer paging system had recalled him from his job to attend an emergency meeting at the Assembly Room in Deltemouth - operators had clearly forgotten he wasn’t at his usual place of work but 10,000 miles away on a plane midflight from Marray in Tumbra to Claviers, Mertagne. Everyone was impressed with the range - in distance and altitude - of the emergency pager system. Once they had landed, Darra called home from the airport to explain he was on duty with The Representatives, currently in the Outer AO region, but was told in no uncertain terms that an emergency page was an emergency page, and it was his sworn duty as a Civil Defence volunteer to make haste to the Assembly Room without further delay. His specific skills as a customs agent, working border entries at the port, was very much required, said the administrator at the other end of the line. It was the start of the greatest influx of people into the Delte valley for 175 years when the industrial revolution was getting up a head of steam - The Rushmori Boat People had arrived. How they had ended up in Smite Bay in a ragged convoy of battered junkboats was anyone’s guess, said the administrator - that will be your job to find out when you get here; how long will you be? - asked the administrator. It was a long way from Mertagne in Outer AO to The North Pacific, explained Darra, and would probably mean about 56 hours of plane rides and stopovers. The administrator suggested he best get on with it then, since the poor boat people would need landing ashore soon with their junks half sunk in the bay, and them starving hungry and half traumatised from whatever invasive hell they were running from. Plus they speak Sicoutiçaise, said the administrator, and it says here you’re the only volunteer in the valley with a facility for Gallic languages.

READY PLAYER 11
Kim Samrodd

"Stop that, Ackerbell, right now! Mungo Skage, put Eldny down this minute and return to your desk! Enroe, Buchan, Serque - see me after please. Detentions for you all. Right then, open your books to page 93 - shut up Buchan! - 'Scuttled' by Martin Costello, a classic of the Shambolic Tradition. Eldny: read please. Everyone else, listen or be doomed to Professor Polestar's office, I don't mind which, you choose. Eldny - carry on." Assigned reporting duties for The Representatives for away matches in World Cup '91 by the Oswark Parish Advertiser after regular sports correspondent Polka Lunn heard the Baptism of Fire was going to be held in Farfadillis and 'unfortunately' misplaced her passport, the Oswark Grammar School teacher proved an instant hit both on and off the field. He even made the top ten sports reporters global list and was the centre of a gender scandal when his identity was stolen for the award ceremony in Mertagne, where he won a little silver teste on a cocktail stick for his efforts as rightback of the tournament. It seemed the world was his oyster until he caught the jerry - hypergerontological ageing syndrome - and was banned from travelling abroad again until scientists in the Delte Valley had isolated the problem and come up with a solution. "Mungo Skage, I swear, if you don't keep your hands to yourself I'll be dangling you out the window upside down to get some sense into that thick head of yours! And stop cheering, everyone, of course I'm not going to hang him out the window. Hattie Serque, take over from Eldny please. Pick up from 'This is ridiculous...' - paragraph three. And stop moaning about it. Eldny - good effort lad, well done. MUNGO! WHAT DID I JUST SAY?" This cycle had certainly been a quieter one for the best rightback in the valley, relieved of his reporting duties and able to concentrate on some standout performances in the home team for a surprisingly competitive qualification campaign. Though disappointed to lose his reporting duties he at least still had his teaching role to fall back on. "Ackerbell, go outside and get Mungo, take him to the school nurse, and tell her he fell out of the window of his own volition. I'll let you off detention if you keep me out of it. Hattie Serque - please continue with the reading. A little less sarcasm in your voice, if you don't mind."

READY PLAYER 12
Enor Perro

When Kôstä stunned the world (or at least, the Deltic Parole Board) by signing young Deltic midfielder Enor Perro, who was on license to play in Farfadillis in Baptism of Fire ’78, it was local young defender Lídôr Rônçö who buddied up with the new foreigner in town to help him settle in. Though Rülândéá was a complete and utter shock to the Deltic team from the quiet valleys of the North Pacific, Enor himself was surprisingly adaptable to the terrifying perpetual riot that is Lìbêrêtê city, so he and Lídôr formed a strong social bond in those early days when Lídôr himself was still an emerging youth player with occasional trips out for the senior Kôstä team. Enor was particularly fond of spending time in the surrounding districts with the family Rônçö, who more or less adopted the charming Enor as one of their own. And it was in the districts that Enor was first introduced to Uncle Rôbé and his xhírrínxhï brewing still. Uncle Rôbé, who may or may not have been Lídôr’s real uncle, was a master fermenter and produced a legendary aguardiente which he called ‘Saint Mary’s Breath’ but which was known for miles around as Mârïà Lôçô for reasons which likely do not need to be explained. As Lídôr was Uncle Rôbé’s favourite nephew (mainly on account of being able to get him free tickets to Rülândéá Kôstä matches) there was no hesitation in letting Enor see the famous still and moonshine operation Uncle Rôbé was running from a number of secretly interconnected houses-cum-warehouses, and when Enor turned out to be a very willing and able student of the fermentation process, an immediate and lifelong bond was formed. While the illegal moonshine continues to distill Mârïà Lôçô for the wild parties of the districts, Uncle Rôbé has now gone legit with a brewery in Lìbêrêtê city funded by his two ‘footballing nephews’, as he calls them - Enor and Lídôr - along with minor shareholdings by several of their team-mates in the dressing room who very much enjoy the odd pint of Rônçêrvézà with a bag of cashews on their day off, or a quick shot of Rôbé’s Gold for courage before a local derby with Dí Maozöxê or Mâ Âlâmëómë at the Çölíséá. It must be working - after a Shango-Fogoa title and a Champions League semi-final appearance, Rülândéá Kôstä are now the big boys in town. He may only come on as the occasional leg-breaker super sub, but Enor’s contribution to the rising stock of Kôstä can be measured in drams and millilitres.

READY PLAYER 13
Steed Tombes

The village of Ageness had been deserted for more than thirty years before Steed and his four hundred compatriots from the Cooper River - the Rushmori Boat People - moved in, having been granted space to recover and thrive by the Delte River Trust. In 1990, in the next valley along from the Delte, a secret fluid time refinery exploded after a mishap with a temporal wrench in the works, causing vast swathes of destruction from ‘retrological induction’ along the Smite Valley. Thus began The Great Big Smite Bay Contamination Scandal - which started as the Great Big Smite River Contamination Scandal, and just flowed out from there. The city of Smite-on-Sea was decimated, and the whole valley remains empty and contaminated with time paradox swamps. Ageness, located high in a cleft between Sulloe Pike and Lerd Hill on the border between the Delte & Smite valleys, was evacuated when a rising tide of creamy fog and nonsense threatened to engulf the village. Though the irreality contamination front never actually reached Ageness, few were keen to return. The village remained a ghost town until the Cooperites arrived, flotsam on the tide of Southern Rushmore’s human rights crisis. “It’ll need a bit of fixing up,” said Roselyne Tonnelier, leader of refugees. That was last summer. The Cooperites have been fixing the place up ever since - repairing masonry, replacing woodwork, redecorating, chasing off spiders and vacuuming up industrial scale cobwebs, cutting back the overgrowth, regaining control of hedgerows, filling potholes and dealing with the odd stray retrological phenome that may have wandered up Sulloe Pike from the contaminated weirdwoods of the Smite Valley. Just last week, for example, a pungent overripe cyborg called Four-Bit Gadaffi emerged from a dawn pea-souper and demanded sanctuary in the village using a damaged metallic voicebox that emitted electrical sparks from the mouth every time sibilants were uttered. Steed and some friends had to turn the rotting thing around and convince it to go back down into the surreal miasma from whence it came. It was a small price to pay for not having a pinkshirt soldier emerge out of the mist and start shooting at you, as had happened back home before their flight from Rushmore. Taking up most of the energy of the young able bodied men of the village at the moment is the restoration of the recreation ground and football pitch in preparation for the new Early Closing Wednesday Afternoon Village Championship, which kicks off in March and will feature a new team - Ageness Coopers FC - with Steed the captain, coach and goalkeeper.

READY PLAYER 14
Tai Tunnyo

“I’m usually just a men’s barber, see. Ninenty-nine point nine per cent of the time. I’d say ‘strictly men’ but I’ve got this one customer, this one time. Taitin Deluntte, have you heard of her? Taite, usually. We call her The Only Trillionaire In The Valley, although she doesn’t live here any more. She’s up in Taxhavn these days, but my old da’ remembers her when they were just nippers together at the Grammar School in Oswark, bit of a legend apparently. Try anything once, da’ said. But that’s another story int it, we’ll cover that when I get to your fringe. Anyway she comes in this one time when she’s back visiting the Valley… I’ve made a mistake here already haven’t I? Two customers, actually. You know, two customers who be not strictly men. Taite, as she prefers, and her partner, Donna. Donna Maw? Wightling? The ex-ambassador to Andossa Se Mitrin Vega - remember them? Back when Ao actually was the place to be? Anyway. Just clipper the back shall I? Number one is it? Right you are. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Taite Deluntte. The Only Trillionaire and all that. In she comes, this one time, no appointment of course, she’s got this barnet piled high but she looks like she’s been dragged through a bush backwards. Dogs know what she’d been up to. Says to her, don’t I: ‘Want a tidy up, do you boss?’ But no, no, she’s after her partner Donna getting her bob and bits attended to. ‘Alright’, I says, ‘I’m strictly mens usually but since it’s a bright pair of lasses raising the tone of the place, this one time I’ll make an exception’, and I sharpen me razors. ‘Can you make two exceptions,’ she asks, after I’ve done a nice job on Donna. ‘Just comb it back into place for me, there’s a darling,’ she tells me. Well I’m combing away - what a mess! - and she says to me, ‘are you Flynn’s boy?’ Flynn’s me da’ int he. We do bear a striking resemblance, many’s the time I’ve been told that. ‘Remember me to him, will you,’ she says, ‘tell him Big Tats says hello’. And then she tips me a bundle of Taxhavn dollars, a right thick wedge, and when I take them to the Corn Exchange, blow me if she hasn’t made me a millionaire. The exchange rate on them hundred thousand dollar bills was quite favourable, I can tell you. And how’s that for you Sir? Alright at the back there?”

READY PLAYER 15
Kal Rayler

When the Delte River Trust (DRT) told Kal he was to be apprenticed to Mick Lerkins on Leald Water he couldn’t have been any happier. His dream job, and his hero as supervisor. One time they were out on their old works vessel the Drum, digging out some of the bank up near the north pond when Kal spotted a human skull poking out of the alluvial point bar. They withdrew the Drum’s hydraulic digger, donned waders and went with hand tools to investigate. Soon enough, they found several more bones and a couple skulls to add to the first. “You call the archeologist at the River Trust,” said Mick, brushing his hair with his comb, “and I’ll get my contact at the Parish Advertiser.” Mick was a legend on Leald Water. He had several appearances in the Parish Advertiser to his credit, including the discovery of a hoard of gold coins from the Greater Ordoizan empire from millenia ago. That’s why Kal was so excited to work with him - he had been following the old digger’s exploits like a boys’ own adventure story. The Parish Advertiser were on the scene faster than the archeologist, and Kal soon had his first picture snapped in the line of duty with his grinning hero Mick Lerkins at his side. The archeologist turned up after lunch - all work was halted, of course - by which time the Advertiser hacks had lost patience and gone home. Mick and Kal assisted the woman from the DRT to carefully extract a further four skulls and many many bones piled up in a pyramid on top of the bank, with the seven skulls lined up neatly looking out over the north pond. Mick was a natural excavator of human remains as it turned out, working quickly but sensitively, though this did not surprise Kal. It was clear he and the archeologist had worked together before, and she had a great deal of respect for the gifted hydraulics operator, even speculating on the source of the remains with him as though he were a fellow professional. “Clearly a plague pit, don’t you think, Mick?” she said. She went on to suggest they had might not even have been from the same village, but were dumped in a mass grave during a local crisis. Mick wasn’t so sure about that, mind. “All the same family, I reckon.” They stood back and admired the line of skulls. “I mean, they all look the same,” he said.

READY PLAYER 16
Ardrake Steng

There’s a lot of fuss around the Valley at the moment about eternal youth and whatnot. Ardrake swears by the phyto-plankton. He used to go down to the seaside at Irsha and hire a fishing boat out to into Smite Bay, where he’d skim off a bucket of green algae from the edges of the protobiotic slough that still covers a good part of the bay from the Great Big Smite Bay Contamination Scandal some years previous. Though typical life is recovering slowly and the fishing industry is back on track, the leftover slough is teeming with unusual lifeforms and green slime that, says Ardrake, is tremendously good for you - not so much a superfood as an ultra premier ekstraclassa superfood. Nowadays of course he has managed to culture enough that his swimming pool is full of the descendents of the protobiotic slough, and rather green and sticky, curtailing his fishing trips. Overall, the jury is officially out on the miracle benefits of the little fellows. Does it lift the brain fog and allow for clearer thinking and a quicker wit? There is no doubt Ardrake is at the smarter end of the Representative camp, but there is no independently verified scientific evidence to support the claim as yet. Does it boost the immune system? No-one has ever known Ardrake to catch a cold, we wouldn’t deny it. There does seem to be a higher level of omega-3 in the phyto-plankton syrup so there may be some strength in this argument, though scientists will point out initial measures have shown inconsistencies and with over 1,800 lifeforms present in the slough, it depends on the density of particular spiruloids in the mix and there seems no way to consistently guarantee a fully representative concoction. Does it provide an anti-ageing defence? I mean, Ardrake isn’t too shabby, is he? Again the omega-3 must be helping, but in all honesty, here in the Delte Valley, can anything compare to the eternally youthful spring waters of the Garga Marsh wetlands? What about added energy and increased metabolism - does the algae provide a ramp to higher levels of energetic output? Well, no-one can deny that Ardrake will run and run all day. How about improvements to gut flora and bowel health? Certainly Ardrake does not complain - he’s pretty regular, by all accounts. Hair growth and keratin strengthening? He does have lovely nails and a proper barnet, to be fair. Improved eyesight and hearing? Faster muscle recovery? Better quality role-play? Protection from rabies, typhoid, kidney disease, chillblains, acne, influenza, common colds, scarlet fever, polio, smallpox, bird flu, pig flu, bat flu, flatulence, bubonic plague, Acquired Metastructural Pediculosis, Captain Trips, scabies, syphillis and donkey fever? If you believe Ardrake, then yes, certainly fifteen drops a day from his green pool of slime should see you right.

READY PLAYER 17
Eddie von Dach

Is the valley of the river Delte a fresh air playground getaway secretly owned by the billionaire elites of Taxhavn, or do the apparently stoic Delts of the Valley in fact run everything in Taxhavn as a screen to bring precious shillings (and metals) into their undeclared offshore bank accounts? Unsurprisingly, it is not something anyone especially wants to discuss over breakfast with a bottle of Henderson’s Sheffield Sauce at the Prince Tyrbert Hotel of a Thursday morning. Certainly everyone in the valley retains a ‘holiday’ property on the Isle of Taxhavn, mostly in the district of Romainring which is colloquially known as Delthavn. Taxhavn provides much of the financial infrastructure for the valley, including clearing facilities for the Corn Exchange and more recently providing the Delte Mint, which no longer operates directly in the valley. There is a popular joke in the valley that the capital of the Delte community is St. Bernadine - the administrative capital of Taxhavn. What we do know for sure is that the finances of the two are intricately intertwined, and that if Taxhavn is the culvert through which all the riches of the multiverse flow, Delte is the backwater into which a lot of dubious cash drains. Hardly any wonder then that such a parochial little territory hosts an unlikely embassy - just the one - and enjoys the patronage of an ambassador from Taxhavn. Emanuel von Dach has been that fellow since 1998, and his son Eddie was born in the valley. A bright boy, he was educated at Oswark Grammar School and is purportedly enrolled at the University of St. Bernadine in Taxhavn to read Classical Archregimen - Polycarp, Tsimisecs et al. - and Modern Philosophy. Papa has apparently bought him a 10-million shilling apartment in the famous Scherbenturm building overlooking Taxhavn Harbour… but he was back pretty soon after enrollment and claims to be studying ‘remotely’ whilst playing an awful lot of football, cruising up and down the valley on his Oldyear Regatta superbike, and womanising, not to put too fine a polish on it.

READY PLAYER 18
Perran Garimund

There’s not a lot to being a constable in the River Patrol, which is the Deltic equivalent of the police force: some traffic calming on market days in Oswark town; the odd broken shop window after late night revelries on official party nights, when the Deltic calendar determines; stern telling-offs to teenage motorists who use the T5572 Valley Causeway like it was their personal racetrack; keeping records of the latest sheep-rustling incidents; that sort of thing. Crimes against the river, of course - such as exceeding the 5kph speed limit; littering; fishing out of season; unlicensed houseboating; failing to pay the River Tax. Lately there have been a couple of more interesting football-related commissions which were given to Constable Garimund on account of his being an amateur player of repute for Oswark United: latterly keeping an eye on the ediraf diplomat from Starblaydia, Mr. Raul Valk, to make sure he remains safe on his important mission to provide superior wicking kits to the Representative team - he does have a tendency to run into trouble even when trouble is almost impossible to find in the valley; and before Mr. Valk keeping an eye on Enor Perro who was not long out of lock up at the Auld Triangle and was required to go to Farfadillis for a Baptism of Fire last year on a special probationary licence. Of course Constable Garimund failed to bring him back from the wild country where he signed an unlikley professional contract with Rülândéá Kôstä, so that was something of a black mark against his record. Fortunately Enor does come home of his own recognisance to sign his parole papers, which keeps the Chief Superintendent off Constable Garimund’s back. The worse job in the River Patrol is Saturday night duty in Overtane, the village entirely occupied by Screvenors from the neighbouring Screve valley - an uncouth and unstoic lot, naturally inclinded to rowdiness, violence, and defiance of the River Patrol. Constable Garimund had to do six saturday nights in a row when he lost Enor Perro in Farfadillis.

READY PLAYER 19
Henry Lightman

"He's a fast learner," said William Osnail, the master upholsterer, when asked to explain how his apprentice had exploded onto the football scene so quickly to become a worldwide striker phenomenon, "he obviously came to me with no upholstery skills at all, they don't teach you that in school these days - more's the pity - so he had to start from scratch. And when I say scratch, I mean, he was scratching his head when we asked him to put the kettle on, on his first day. And I was scratching my head, thinking 'what have I let myself in for here, taking this young fellow on?' - but he picked it up in no time. Makes the best tea in the whole company [Osnail & Aye Furniture Restoration Company, Inc]." Within three weeks, William explained, he'd mastered footstool rivets, lampshade 101 and wood scratch filler techniques, progressing on to a hand-tied sprung seat edge at least a year ahead of schedule. "Phenomenal!" said William. Yes but what about his football skills? "Oh I wouldn't know about that," explained William, "you'd have to ask a football person. All I know is, that boy will be the valley's go-to for a modern upholstered and lined box with decorative detail and deep-buttoned lid (modern materials, with a minimum of three diamonds) before the year is out, and as for your traditional scatter cushion with piping and zip, he's already on it." Alright then, we won't get a good answer out of William on the football front, so lets work with what we've got. Mr. Osnail at least can tell us a bit about his character - who is he? What motivates him? Where does he come from? No-one had even heard of him four weeks ago, before World Cup '94 qualification started. "Keeps himself to himself," shrugged William, "you'd have to ask his family about that, I suppose, althought he doesn't really have any. Comes from The Orphanage, you know, that place for foundlings up on the Road To Cockharrow." The Road To Cockharrow? Isn't that in Bonesea? "I don't know precisely, I'm not one for geography or canonic geo-fiction," explained William, "but he's from the Far Faraway, yes. Turned up on a ferry from Taxhavn last winter and the Job Centre at Oswark put him in touch with us. He's a mystery, alright. Sleeps in the old soft furnishing shed around the back where we keep the off-cuts."

READY PLAYER 20
Onun Tasher

Onun was the cleverest of all his siblings. He was cleverer than his sister, Oldda, who was the first of the Tasher children to professional barfly Pop Tasher and his much put-upon wife, known by everyone simply as Missus. Oldda worked in an office so she was pretty smart, but Onun was smarter. He was smarter than Arrinburn - Bernie - and Orme, his ‘big brothers’, who were all grown up like Oldda and out in the world earning a living with their hands and their brawn. He was way smarter than those two, and smarter than his third brother Burus, who was only a year older, and learning his trade alongside Bernie and Orme in the building industry when he wasn’t playing football, being as he was on The Reps team with Onun and a half-decent player. But not college material, certainly. Onun was smarter than his second sister Poldi, a year younger than him, who was going to get by on her looks alone, and no mistake. If she weren’t a Tasher, living in the Tasher household, with all them Tasher lads to look out for her, the boys would be hanging around like wasps at the apple juice carton. He was much smarter than her. He was smarter than the first twins, Ardi and Will, and the second twins Orlo and Nacka - all four boys were yet to show their true potential, and Orlo definitely had the cunning of a psychopath about him, but none looked like they would ever be a match for Onun. Of the younger brothers - Eddy, Teinth, Terry, Dick and Inaki-Tysolde, and baby sister Little Dot, it was rather too early to say, but it seemed genetically unlikely any would reach the dizzying heights of Onun Tasher, who had a provisional place at the University of St. Bernadine in Taxhavn to go to in the autumn, if he passed his Maturats. He was the first Tasher to be offered a place in university, where he hoped to study Architecture. His old man Pop thought he was being a poncey gander running off to be an academic, and Missus didn’t want him to leave home either. She suspected he was her favourite son, although she couldn’t be sure because maybe she’d forgotten one or two who she might have preferred if she thought about it a bit more. But he was definitely up there.

READY PLAYER 21
Burus Tasher

What can one speak to the personality of Burus Tasher, fourth child of seventeen to professional barfly Pop and his much put-upon missus, Missus Tasher? He’s a brooding and inscrutible young fellow, for sure. He’s especially stoic even by Deltic standards of high stoicisim. Some might think him shy, still others aloof, some might even go so far as to call him generally mysanthropic, while yet a few argue too much is read into him and under all that he’s just rather dim. He didn’t do well at school, not like his younger brother Onun, number five in the line-up of seventeen Tasher siblings and fellow Representative who has gone off to University in St. Bernadine - the first in the family to do so. I should say Burus is not dim, though. Nothing of the sort. If you want to engage him in an intelligent conversation, you just need to know what he wants to talk about. For example, he knows the names of all the birds. He knows his struthioniformes from his cursorimorphae, and his cuckoos from his bustards. He can recognise the individual songs of the oscines and admires the toes of all the passerines; he agrees with me that the king of birds is the Royal Jackdaw, and hopes one day to meet one, and to discuss with them the joy of mischief-making. He spends his spare time in the libraries of Oswark-upon-Delte, reading and learning stories, science, and mythology of birds, and hopes one day to know the stories of all the birds so that he can become a storyteller with a story for every location or occasion. That will surprise his colleagues on the building sites in the valley, who know him as a quiet and serious sort of labourer upon whom their idle banter is mostly wasted. They couldn’t imagine him lighting up a dinner party with a story about how four and twenty blackbirds are baked in a pie, how long for and what relish to serve with them, or why one magpie is for sorrow, two for fright, three for the gallows, and four for the night. The builders have no idea that the swallow tattooed on his left hand is for crossing the equator, and the one on his right for coming back (admittedly, the idea of the equator itself is rather nebulous when everyone in the valley believes the world is an infinite ringworld made by The Assemblers). He’s even got a story about The Corvid of The Void, a great black and blue space-dwelling crow that nests on the dark side of the moon.

See? Not daft. Just thinking about things.

READY PLAYER 22
Rillr Sawdare

I went to the Grasshopper Inn in Irsha the other night, and I met a fortune-teller called Madame Garbalsleight. (Her real name is Nita Offkins, and she’s not even from Garbalsleight - she’s from up in the north of the valley, by the wyrd springs of the Garga Marshes where she says she gets her ‘foresight’. I think she uses the name Garbalsleight because it fairly aptly describes her performance style when receiving messages from ‘the other side’, as she calls them; also I heard she once had a boyfriend from the actual village of Garbalsleight - Dick Ghartoad, do you know him? - and after he broke up with her, she got in a fury and banged herself on the head with a coal shovel to get the memory of him out of her mind, which didn’t work, but allegedly opened up the portal into which she peers at the future, and she dedicated her professional name to the location where she received ‘the gift’. She never admits to that, but it’s fairly common knowledge in the Grasshopper Inn. I say knowledge. I suppose I mean speculation, but these days, what’s the difference?)

Anyway.

There she was, last Tuesday evening, having a sherry on her own in a dark and empty corner of the Inn, and muttering something to some invisible companions she thought she was sharing the table with, when I came in from a hard day of investigative journalism at the Shingarter Herald. I was looking for a quick social pint with any number of comrades-in-bars you can find in places like The Grasshopper. But I suppose it was a little early because there was no-one else around, and Madame Garbalsleight isn’t my usual sort of company though I know her well enough to say ‘good afternoon’; I decided to sit quietly at the bar and sup slowly on a DPA* or two until someone turned up for a conversation. I was halfway down the pint when she called me over, her eyes half closed and rolled back to whites, trilling “you are Farago Raspberry, and you will be the King of Nimby.” I mean that was in no way correct, and I had to tell her she had the wrong person, I didn’t want her going off on some rambling prediction from a false start. “You’ll see,” she asserted, assertively, displaying a self-consciously mystical expression on her face.

“Anyway,” she continued, in a less mysterious tone, “I was reading the football column the other day in the Shingarter Herald, and there was a contention that Climo Coss might be the greatest winner of all time, at least in the Delte Valley. But they are wrong. It will be Rillr Sawdare.” Which is odd because I wrote that piece about Climo. But apart from that obvious coincidence, she was entirely mistaken. I mean, Rillr’s a nice chap and all, but he’s a highways repair labourer and he plays amateur football for Tessage Casuals in the Early Closing Wednesday Afternoon Football Combination. He’s hardly going to win all the prizes there.

“You’ll see,” she asserted, assertively, displaying a self-consciously mystical expression on her face.