Letters #28 - Zamorak Takes Up Slaying

Zamorak Takes Up Slaying

The lord of chaos has stolen the mailbag once more, and he is in a fine mood. A warrior in Edgeville now hands out lists of monsters to kill, and Zamorak cannot decide whether to feel proud or insulted. He also answers questions on vaults, boxes and an old man who will not leave travellers alone.

Hail, followers of darkness. A new year has begun, and my brothers spent the winter arguing over who gets the mailbag. While they argued, I took it.

The world is livelier than it has been for ages. Adventurers swarm every road, and half of them are hunting my creatures by the list. Let us begin.

Dread Zamorak, the travellers who come to my inn now carry little scrolls from a warrior called Vannaka. Each scroll names a beast and a number: twenty cave crawlers, thirty rock slugs. They come back with the heads and boast all night. Is this your doing? My cellar is running out of room.

The Bartender of the Jolly Boar Inn

I wish it were. Vannaka was once the greatest of Saradomin's holy warriors. Now he sits in a dungeon in Edgeville and sends young fools to murder my creatures by the dozen. He calls it Slaying. I call it bookkeeping.

Still, a creature that dies on a list dies all the same, and the fools who take the lists die in great numbers too. I approve of the arrangement, mostly. Keep a few heads for me. I am redecorating.

Lord Zamorak, every evening a stranger leads newcomers down into the basement of my bank. He tells them a vault lies below, full of treasure, and that it opens for those who say their password aloud. They come up poorer. Is there truly a vault under my bank?

A Banker, of the west bank of Varrock

There is a vault. It holds the passwords of every fool who said theirs aloud, and the stranger keeps the key.

I adore this trick. It needs no sword, no spell and no courage, only a basement and a crowd of newcomers who believe in treasure. Trust no one, I always say. It is the first three rules of my Wilderness, and it works just as well in a cellar.

Zamorak, an old man in a purple robe keeps handing my customers little boxes. If they do not solve the box, it becomes two boxes, then four, until their packs hold nothing else. One poor man came to buy a coif and could not fit it in his pack. Who is this old man, and why does he hate trade?

Lowe, of Lowe's Archery Emporium, Varrock

Ah, the Mysterious Old Man. He is no follower of mine, more's the pity. He walks up to travellers who have worked too long without a pause and calls them by name. Those who answer get a gift. Those who do not get a box, or a trip to his maze, or a walk home with their pack turned to paper.

Why he does it, he will not say. The taverns say he studies how far a body can be moved before it notices. I say any man who fills a stranger's pack with boxes is a man after my own heart.

Great Zamorak, the travellers have started wearing coloured capes in the Wilderness: red, blue, green and more. Two groups in matching capes fought for an hour outside my monastery. Did you give them the capes?

Abbot Langley, of the Edgeville monastery

I did not, but I wish I had thought of it. A cape tells a fighter whom to stand beside and whom to stab. Before the capes, my Wilderness was a brawl. Now it is a war. That is progress.

A few quick questions before I go back to ruining lives:

A Dwarf of the Dwarven Mine asks: "Why do the newcomers all wear the same brown clothes?"
Because they all came out of the same light, with the same nothing in their pockets. Give them a week. They will all wear the same black armour instead.

Reldo, of the Library of Varrock, asks: "May I have my quill back?"
No.

Strength through chaos,

Zamorak

DISCLAIMER: The views of Zamorak do not reflect the views of DoubleU. DoubleU would ban him, but he's a god.