Note: This section depicted in the above video
HARK! Misadventure Adventure: the tale of Tim Cognito the non-binary animate body of armour and their mysterious, action-packed quest.
We first meet Tim at the Great Spaghetti Bowl. The knight had travelled through the vast realms to reach the remote village, high up in the mountains. From where and for what, we still don’t know.
Tim formed a camaraderie with a lowly pair of Spaghettian townspeople, Matilda the basil farmer, and Eric the butcher. The pair serve as guides, accompanying Tim to the democratically elected Spaghettian Council. This is where Tim first comes across the sweaty, secretive Councillor Meatball.
What timing! It just happens to be the day of the great sacrifice. The townspeople toil away, laboriously filling the enormous bowl with spaghetti; an offering to the great beast with rickety political ideology, the Jabberwonky.
What luck! Tim is then in possession of a fancy pair of eyewear that just happen to be the magical Dagger Eyes! Tim and his new pals, Eric and Matilda, seek out the only necromancer in town, Lady Kackel, for her magical knowledge.
Kackel takes Tim to raise the corpse of an ancient leader of the village while Eric and Matilda stage a defence against the Jabberwonky. Misery, the happiest fairy, is saved from centuries in a bottle and joins the gang. Tim adopts a pet huntscrabby named Socrates.
Through a series of events the troupe discover Meatball’s secret! He is the ancestor of Michelangelo Meatball, the first in the dynasty with control over the Jabberwonky. By implanting a magical ruby into the beast’s head, the family had used the Wonky One’s terrorism of the town to enslave the townspeople. What jerks!
During the battle, Matilda scales the Jabberwonky and becomes acquainted with the Librarian living upon his back, Drew E. Decimelle. She discovers that the beast was once a mobile library for the Absorbed Realms.
Kackel and Misery use their magical wiles on Meatball to obtain a spell to free the Jabberwonky. Meatball taints Kackel’s crush on Tim, when he reveals the knight knows of the existence of the lost Catacombs down beneath the bowl.
Tim takes on the Jabberwonky, who explodes and turns into a duck. They freeze the Jabberducky in place with the magical Dagger Eyes while Matilda, cycling through animal languages until she speaks in fluent duck and quacks the spell. The ruby is shattered into a thousand pieces.
The Spaghettians are left to rebuild their village. The Jabberwonky resumes his mobile library service. Misery returns to Fae Forest. They catapult Meatball into the Great Spaghetti Bowl, where he is hexed into consuming pasta passed its use-by date. Kackel puts an end to their fledging “will they won’t they” and refuses to join the knight on their quest.
Eric, Matilda and Socrates follow Tim into the catacombs. Stay tuned, we re-join them next time to plunge into the depths. HUZZAH!
But not really… here we will analyse some of the votes, choices and changes that have been made through the readers’ input thus far. Ready to rejoin the adventure in the new year. You’ll see ☑ and ☒ depending on if the choices have been implemented yet.
Pre-Chapter 1 Choices
Starting Location
It was decided from ten choices that we would start at the Spaghetti Bowl… a suggestion we put in there as a bit of a joke. We definitely weren’t expecting it to be chosen. ☑
Main Character
We put up three characters as suggestions and Tim was the clear frontrunner. We now have no idea what this story would have looked like with the others. ☑
Chapter 1
All the way back in Chapter One we voted on three things:
The reason Tim smells like fish was decided to be because they were cursed eons ago for refusing the hand of a fishmonger’s daughter. This hasn’t had any real plot significance but it did change the name of the book to Far From the Fishing Fields… who knows if it’ll stay that way though.☑
We voted on what Tim plucked off of a noticeboard which directly lead to the introduction of Lady Kackel if Tim had chosen any other item from that board the story would have definitely unfolded differently. You betcha.☑
Finally we voted on why Tim has come to the Spaghetti Bowl and the answer was to procure a magical item… this hasn’t come to fruition yet. However, it has since been revealed that Tim knew of the existence of the catacombs… perhaps that item is there? In fact this was chosen in Chapter 8 ☑
Chapter 2
This chapter introduced the council and brought with it some questions about Counsellor Meatball’s conduct:
It was decided that Counsellor Meatball was a leader under pressure with something to hide. This eventually manifested in the fact that Meatball belonged to a long dynasty of corrupt politicians controlling the Jabberwonky from afar to keep the town in check.☑
Speaking of the Jabberwonky, in this chapter we asked for suggestions of who the beast could be Geoffery Golden suggested this politically dodgy beast. The selection of this character directly influenced the flow of the story… introducing many political puns that I’m sure no one wanted. ☑
We asked what tactic Tim should take and the choice was that the knight should sneak beneath the pasta to see what was hidden there. Tim suggests this to the council immediately in the next chapter but it is not until Lady Kackel escorts them there that this came to fruition, many revelations were found upon their arrival. ☑
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 was the introduction of the Wonky One and Lady Kackel, an exciting and memorable series of events:
Firstly, we asked for you (rather early in the piece really) to decide Tim’s future with their Spaghettian Companions Eric and Matilda. Overwhelmingly you told us that you wanted the two to go adventuring with the knight in the future. Something we’ve introduced in the most recent chapter. ☑
The next choice was the one we felt in the end had no bearing on the story even though we paid lip-service too. We asked who was hiding with the huddled Spaghettian masses and you chose a human-sized dog with a dog-sized human on a leash. We said that Tim and Kackel saw this individual through the window of the townhall in the next chapter and that Kackel magically swapped them around but ultimately it didn’t have any bearing on the story… sorry. ☑ (maybe this character will come back…?)
Finally, we asked you what Tim should do to get Kackel on their side and you decided to have us enlist her into the party. Something that definitely had continued ramifications in the story. ☑
It should also be noted that the character of Lady Kackel was submitted by one of our readers, Tass, the pitch was hilarious. A powerful necromancer who raises the dead… only to have them laugh in her face. ☑
Chapter 4
Chapter four saw the team splitting up for the first time, leading to some interesting results:
We asked what Eric and Matilda’s battleplan should be and you told us (in a tie) that they should dig a hole that the Jabberwonky could fall into and to climb up on his back. Both of which happened in the coming chapters. ☑
We asked for spell suggestions and got a bunch, the immediate winner was Devouris Eternetum also given to us by Tass, which was used a coupl’a chapters down the road. ☑
We met the new huntscrabby and all agreed that he has the handy skill of just next level boogyin’ now this has been mentioned but sadly never seen as Tim and the huntscrabby arrived too late for the boogying in a later chapter. ☒
Chapter 5
This chapter was the beginning of the grand battle and so we decided to have votes based on each individual character or sets of characters which shaped the next few chapters of the story:
It was decided that Tim and the Huntscrabby were told to rough up Meatball and the Jabberwonky and hand out some poetic justice this happened, especially because Meatball ended up having to eat the rancid spaghetti of his own creation. ☑
The magical party members, Kackel and Misery were to take on Meatball together they did this and used their magical skills to stun and steal the needed scroll from him. ☑
Eric, the cowardly butcher, had to lead a digging team and get Tim to fill the hole with jelly, this happened very quickly with help from the Wingardium Gelatinousa spell. ☑
The plucky basil farmer, Matilda, was given the role of orator. Reading a book aloud to the Jabberwonky to confuse him, this definitely took place for a couple of chapters where Jabby was forced to endure a little too much of a bestseller. ☑
Chapter 6
Chapter Six was when we started to see the shape of how the battle would take place, which made it harder to introduce new ideas. However there were a couple of good choices we got to make together:
We voted on how Misery and Kackel should confront Meatball, it was decided that they would hex him and steal the scroll which occurred in Chapter 8. ☑
We then got to decide from a bunch of punny book titles and Beat, Slay, Trudge was selected. Let it be known that if 100 Years of Amplitude had been chosen we would have definitely written an original song for Matilda to perform. ☑
Chapter 7
Had the extrodinarily slow talking Drew E. Decimelle in it but hopefully we still excited you with the events contained within:
We asked what part of Beat, Slay, Trudge should be read to confuse the beast (this was just an excuse to take plot points from the Wikipedia page of Eat, Pray, Love and make them more barbarian-focused), it was decided that we would focus on Gorkorn’s life post becoming a widower. This was a lot of fun to write in the next chapter but ultimately didn’t really affect the story. ☑
After Tim’s harpoon was knocked away quite a distance, we asked how he should proceed in the battle. You chose for the knight to go and fetch it… which if I’m being honest was probably the most boring option. ☑
It was also decided that Kackel and Misery would tie up meatball and tickle-torture him for more information, this directly lead to the revelation that Tim knew more than they were letting on and let to Kackel’s sense of betrayal. ☑
Chapter 8
Chapter Eight was the height of strange choices:
We asked what should happen as a result of the Wonky One eating the spell jelly and in a two-way tie you decided he should ‘explode again’ and ‘turn into a giant duck’, a good example of how this format can lead to strange and unexpected results. ☑
In another tie we found out that Jabby’s secret passion is both dancing and avoiding becoming like his parents. Both of these soon factored into a minor crisis on the beast’s part. ☑
It was decided that the magical item that Tim is looking for is the Cupid’s Scarecrow the magical item that makes birds fall in love. Why would Tim want it, that hasn’t been revealed yet. ☒
Chapter 9
This chapter saw long passages from Beat, Slay, Trudge, the reveal of the glowing ruby controlling the Jabberwonky and the Huntscrabby’s unfortunate absence during a dance party:
We asked if Kackel would join the party on their future quest but it was decided by you (to my sadness) that she felt too betrayed by Tim to join them yet. It was decided that she will keep in contact though. ☑
We also decided that the villagers would give Tim a mysterious and funny-smelling gem as a reward for saving them. ☑
Chapter 10
Chapter Ten was deep in the throes of battle, now fighting a giant duck a few important decisions were made for the future of our story:
It was decided that Tim will reveal what the big mystery behind their quest is next time the party get a proper rest… it’ll make a great campfire tale. This hasn’t happened yet but it should be coming soon. ☒
Tim is going to make a little home for the huntscrabby in the depths of their armour, this is of little consequence but it is pretty darn cute. ☒
Finally, we decided which character from the Lore of the Land would be met in the Catacombs. We voted mainly for Gregory Shreck ogre and attorney extraordinaire. I can’t wait to meet this guy. ☒
We also acknowledged here, upon their destruction, the Dagger Eyes which were submitted to us by Prince Smith. ☑
Chapter 11
This chapter had Matilda talking to the duck, the destruction of the cursed ruby and a heartfelt discussion between Kackel and Tim as she reassembled their armour:
It was decided that Matilda would have some residual magic from her animal speaking hex, akin to a tourist with a guidebook. This will be an ongoing element of the story that we’ve only alluded to once with Matilda learning the huntscrabby’s name is Socrates (thanks Sath for the name). ☑
Because it was decided that Kackel would not be joining the others on their quest, we decided whatshe would be doing in her absence. It was chosen that she would track down her former correspondence magic instructor Sir Seroar and demand to finish her training. How assertive. ☒
Chapter 12
In this last chapter of the Spaghetti Saga there are so-longs, farewells and goodbyes:
It was tied that the gem Kackel gave Tim to communicate with her will both work perfectly and have a downfall in that the gnomes who deliver the messages have unionised and charge excess data fees. Are these contradictory? Who knows. ☒
Finally, the other gem that was given (apparently we’re a little gem mad) is actually the key to the Ogre Kingdom but its smell is also an ogre repellent. We’ll see how Gregory Shreck likes that. ☒
Well that’s all for now, we’ll make good on those choices that are still hanging over us and bring you a new chapter in the new year.
Don’t forget: if you want to be a part of the tale: remember you can pitch new areas, creatures, characters, and items/spells in the existing threads and see them get added to the Lore of the Land encyclopedia.
Thanks for a great first year of Misadventure Adventure. We’re not lying when we say our lives have gotten absolutely out of control the last few months (so sorry about the lack of updates) but let it be known WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE! In fact, we’ve got a few interesting extras to add to the stew next year in the form of side-quests.
Tell your friends. Keep reading. Keep Suggesting things for us to do. And keep Misadventuring.
If you enjoyed this please do one, some or all of the things below:
Subscribe | Leave A Comment | Share This Post | Visit Website | Follow On Instagram |Subscribe to our Places I've Never Lived newsletter | Subscribe to our Filmed With A Toothbrush newsletter | Subscribe to our Ex/Rec/Acc newsletter | Donate To Us
Previously on Misadventure Adventure