A Sad Toy Maker and the Misbegotten Kingdoms
It started when he bought the table. Dirk Braunstein found the table in a curio shop. The shopkeep said it once belonged to a wizard. The table had its legs fashioned like talons with scaley legs leading up to a dragon breathing curling flames, acting as the edge of the table. It was made of beautiful ancient oak, obviously carved and preserved by a master.
It was also a big table, large enough for many to eat around. A large family could sit around this table. Dirk and Lisa had one beautiful child and Drik thought it might be time to try for another. He bought the table.
He carted the table home himself, grinning all the way. His mustache curled in delight beneath his potato of a nose. He eagerly urged on his little donkey as his cart clattered down the cobbled street.
His smile shattered as his wife took one look at the table and let out a sigh of disgust.
"Why in the world did you buy that, Dirk? Our table seats enough."
It was then that Dirk began to suspect that his wife had stopped loving him. She wanted him to take it back or to get rid of it, but instead, he took it to his basement, his secret workshop. He laid it out before him and saw the table quite differently. It was a cruel, gaudy thing, crafted by a pretentious, tasteless fool. He must have been a fool to buy it.
The dragon seemed to carry aloft and simultaneously cook the flat plane of the surface above. What kind of world would this be, this world atop a dragon's back? His anxious hands grabbed ahold of his tools and a chunk of wood, and he set to work.
You see, Dirk Braunstein was a toymaker and a quite good toymaker at that. He made all kinds of carefully crafted and painted toys in a world where such things were less and less appreciated. Children would look in greedily at his toys and parents would shake their heads sternly.
"'Tis a waste of money, boys. We have none to spare."
Even noble sons grew tired of breaking his delicate toys, made more for gentle play and admiration or perhaps as pieces in a game. They preferred their toy swords or just sticks.
Dirk began to see the children's greedy smiles as taunts, mocking his work and suffering. The austere faces of the parents became stony edifices in the face of his sorrow. He began to carve bulbous heads with wicked teeth, stretched into ravenous grins, looking downwards as if on helpless prey. He took the stony ambivalence and made tall, long-faced creatures with looks of perpetual disapproval.
Then he carved a pit for the ravenous lookers to glare down and seated them around it. The stony walkers approached as if coming to reproach the greedy giant children.
These became the first of many creatures to make the table their home.
As the years went on, his child, James, began to treat him badly. Lisa gave the child whatever he wanted and turned him against his father. He was a spoiled brat and showed nothing but disdain for poor old Dirk. His wife continued to berate him at every opportunity and gossip of all his flaws to neighbors. He was fairly certain her conversations with the milkman were just taking a little too long and that Lisa's "shopping trips" tended to last well into the evening.
He crafted knights with piteously unbalanced bodies atop bug-eyed horses with wheels. He inscribed a broken heart on their shields as he considered his own rotund body and bulbous nose. He made a little tyrant child-king and a mournful obese king, melting into his throne. He made a chilling wicked queen and her cow-man knight and lover.
Slowly but surely he constructed a world of creatures made with all his sorrow and malice and hate. All the ugliness that welled up in him, he let loose into his creations and he built a little world on that cursed table.
Unbeknownst to him, the table was indeed the possession of a powerful wizard from long ago and the psychic energy generated by all this strife activated the table, creating a pocket dimension where all Dirk's creations were given life.
This world became the Misbegotten Kingdoms. Here the King of Sorrows and his Broken Heart Knights weep and worship their cruel god. Here the giant Gobblers take creatures to dance from them while they watch on with taunting hunger only fearing the Doldromers who come to poopoo their fun. It is a world of twisted creations given terrible life and it is a world that might be entered.
The Dragon Table of Zzarsatz the Incredulous upon which the world is built opens up portals to its pocket reality in random places throughout the multiverse and sometimes people find themselves there by chance. Escape is slightly more difficult. There is treasure to be gained. The rulers of this world pay in comically large gold coins which will remain gold if taken from this world.
The world of the table is also linked pretty directly to Dirk's mental state. Fixing the world will start to allow him to heal and grow above the problems which are keeping him in his state of despair. Enough fixing may even repair his marriage.
Tell me if you would like to hear more about this idea. It has been an idea of mine for a long time to make a setting that is created by an ordinary person and matches their mental state in some way, and this seemed like an interesting way to do it.
It was also a big table, large enough for many to eat around. A large family could sit around this table. Dirk and Lisa had one beautiful child and Drik thought it might be time to try for another. He bought the table.
He carted the table home himself, grinning all the way. His mustache curled in delight beneath his potato of a nose. He eagerly urged on his little donkey as his cart clattered down the cobbled street.
His smile shattered as his wife took one look at the table and let out a sigh of disgust.
"Why in the world did you buy that, Dirk? Our table seats enough."
It was then that Dirk began to suspect that his wife had stopped loving him. She wanted him to take it back or to get rid of it, but instead, he took it to his basement, his secret workshop. He laid it out before him and saw the table quite differently. It was a cruel, gaudy thing, crafted by a pretentious, tasteless fool. He must have been a fool to buy it.
The dragon seemed to carry aloft and simultaneously cook the flat plane of the surface above. What kind of world would this be, this world atop a dragon's back? His anxious hands grabbed ahold of his tools and a chunk of wood, and he set to work.
You see, Dirk Braunstein was a toymaker and a quite good toymaker at that. He made all kinds of carefully crafted and painted toys in a world where such things were less and less appreciated. Children would look in greedily at his toys and parents would shake their heads sternly.
"'Tis a waste of money, boys. We have none to spare."
Even noble sons grew tired of breaking his delicate toys, made more for gentle play and admiration or perhaps as pieces in a game. They preferred their toy swords or just sticks.
The Toymaker - A Study, 1920 by Joseph Christian Leyendecker
Dirk began to see the children's greedy smiles as taunts, mocking his work and suffering. The austere faces of the parents became stony edifices in the face of his sorrow. He began to carve bulbous heads with wicked teeth, stretched into ravenous grins, looking downwards as if on helpless prey. He took the stony ambivalence and made tall, long-faced creatures with looks of perpetual disapproval.
Then he carved a pit for the ravenous lookers to glare down and seated them around it. The stony walkers approached as if coming to reproach the greedy giant children.
These became the first of many creatures to make the table their home.
As the years went on, his child, James, began to treat him badly. Lisa gave the child whatever he wanted and turned him against his father. He was a spoiled brat and showed nothing but disdain for poor old Dirk. His wife continued to berate him at every opportunity and gossip of all his flaws to neighbors. He was fairly certain her conversations with the milkman were just taking a little too long and that Lisa's "shopping trips" tended to last well into the evening.
He crafted knights with piteously unbalanced bodies atop bug-eyed horses with wheels. He inscribed a broken heart on their shields as he considered his own rotund body and bulbous nose. He made a little tyrant child-king and a mournful obese king, melting into his throne. He made a chilling wicked queen and her cow-man knight and lover.
Slowly but surely he constructed a world of creatures made with all his sorrow and malice and hate. All the ugliness that welled up in him, he let loose into his creations and he built a little world on that cursed table.
Unbeknownst to him, the table was indeed the possession of a powerful wizard from long ago and the psychic energy generated by all this strife activated the table, creating a pocket dimension where all Dirk's creations were given life.
This world became the Misbegotten Kingdoms. Here the King of Sorrows and his Broken Heart Knights weep and worship their cruel god. Here the giant Gobblers take creatures to dance from them while they watch on with taunting hunger only fearing the Doldromers who come to poopoo their fun. It is a world of twisted creations given terrible life and it is a world that might be entered.
The Dragon Table of Zzarsatz the Incredulous upon which the world is built opens up portals to its pocket reality in random places throughout the multiverse and sometimes people find themselves there by chance. Escape is slightly more difficult. There is treasure to be gained. The rulers of this world pay in comically large gold coins which will remain gold if taken from this world.
The world of the table is also linked pretty directly to Dirk's mental state. Fixing the world will start to allow him to heal and grow above the problems which are keeping him in his state of despair. Enough fixing may even repair his marriage.
Tell me if you would like to hear more about this idea. It has been an idea of mine for a long time to make a setting that is created by an ordinary person and matches their mental state in some way, and this seemed like an interesting way to do it.
I really like this idea! Would love to see more of it eventually, it's given me a couple of quest ideas of my own.
ReplyDeleteI have some ideas about the Broken Heart Knights and some of the monsters that might be found here in the Misbegotten Kingdoms. Based on reactions so far, there seems to be a demand for more and I am happy to meet it!
DeleteIt wasn't totally clear from the writing, but what kind of setting does the Toymaker live in? It had elements of traditional fantasy, but the toymaker concept itself and then the milkman make me think more like early to mid 20th century, although maybe that's just me thinking about the 1950's Americana of Ni No Kuni which this kind of reminds me of.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I really like this writeup and also this seems like a really cool setting. I've been thinking about dark fantasy takes on childhood toys and stuffed animals and stuff lately as well, so this is good food for thought.
Milkmen apparently came to England in 1860 so I was thinking this was probably late 1800s in a continental European nation say like Germany or Austria. I don't know if milkmen ever came to such places but Wikipedia indicated that they basically came with the rise of the train, allowing milk to be brought in from the countryside far more easily so it would not surprise me. So you are definitely in the right ballpark. I was thinking the toymaker would live in a pseudohistorical setting with a "real" mythical past, thus accounting for the Wizardly table.
DeleteAlso thank you! I have been holding onto this idea for sometime, looking for the right medium to tell the story. The idea to include the table really was the thing that got me to blog about it, because the table was a concrete detail to lead into the life of this sad toymaker.
This is super rad! Always for those kind of psycho-somantic settings where changes in the world affect the mind, and a really cool way for them to manifest too. Nice one!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Psycho-somatic setting is an awesome term, as well! I think the manifestation of such a setting must be anchored in some way by something very tangible or else it loses some of its potency. Childhood drawings are a great example of such an anchor as are toys made into a kind of model display such as I have done in the post.
Delete