Star Ship

**Part 1** (1954)

One day in the Neighboring Orc Kingdom, some homeless Orcs were arguing about their favorite character pairings in the popular television show Space Road Tomato. The argument lasted for days, and it slowly spread until it became a city-wide ship battle. No one could agree on which ship was objectively the best one.

It got so out of hand that Buffalony Starship, the Orc Princess herself, and to come to the scene to get everyone to stop yelling at each other. Unfortunately by the time she arrived it had become an all-out brawl. Many citizens were injured badly; clearly this needed to be stopped.

The Princess stood in the gazebo at the very center of town and used her loudest Orc Scream™ to get everyone's attention. The whole city went quiet, and considered what that maybe they should just respect each other's (wrong) opinions. That is, the whole city except for one Orc; Night Pepper, a man who believed very strongly that Redav Thrad from the original SRT comic is in love with the alternate-universe female version of Ad Ventura from the most recent television adaptation of the series. There ware many, many reasons why that is a problematic ship, including:

* Their personalities do not compliment at all, they would hate each other.
* They don't even exist in the same universe.
* If they did, then Thrad would probably be fem!Ventura's father.

Night Pepper believed in this relationship so strongly that when Princess Buffalony announced that all shipping in the Neighboring Orc Kingdom was to be outlawed, he went mad and started chasing her with a knife. She ran away, and Pepper chased her through the entire kingdom. He chased the Princess through sewers, kitchens, caves, forests, towers, and ruins, until eventually she was cornered in Pepper's own cottage.

She tried reasoning with him, pleading for him to understand all the logical fallacies in his ship, but it was all for naught. Pepper, bradinshing his knife, told Princess Buffalony that he wouldn't harm her on one condition: Posters of his ship would be put up all around the kingdom. At least one in every home, and as long as she lived they could never be removed. The Princess was left with no other choices, so she agreed.

**Part 2** (1969)

Fifteen years had passed since Buffalony Starship, now an Orc Queen, passed the infamous poster law. From that point on, she had become very unpopular. It didn't help that she was also skinny, which is a very unattractive trait for Orcs. She had become very lonely, sitting in her throne room every day dreaming of someone to rule her kingdom alongside her. Despite her wealth, dignity, and fine clothes, no one was interested in dating her.

Over the years she had become very fond of the stars. After many long nights of staying up late and catching up on Space Road Tomato, she learned to appreciate nighttime and all that it offered. The stars, in particular, she had come to consider her "friends."

That was why when Ashwin Dreameye, an Orc priest from her very own kingdom, predicted that all the stars in the sky would be swallowed whole, Queen Buffalony was very unhappy. She sent the strongest members of her army to go and kill Dreameye, to prevent such a horrible thing from happening.

Unfortunately, the Queen had very much misunderstood the circumstances (a side effect of her social neglect since she was fifteen years old). Dreameye didn't *want* the stars to disappear either. He was merely a translator who communicated the messages of his ancient Holy Relic. He fled the kingdom, taking his Relic with him, of course.

Just outside the kingdom's walls, he encountered a very muscular Human, presumably a woodsman, chopping down some trees. Dreameye explained his situation, and the woodsman agreed to protect him as long as they stuck together. The two of them kept running until they reached the woodsman's home, a pavilion enclosed by a small mote and drawbridge.

The Orc army caught up with them, though. While the woodsman did all the hard work of battling the soldiers, Dreameye ran inside and, out of fear, closed the drawbridge. Inside the woodsman's home, the walls were painted with a mural of a beach scene, and there was an open briefcase on the table. The briefcase contained information on many potions and witch's spells, most of which were about how to become stronger. But there was one paper which explained in that if a certain spell was spoken alongside the Relic, the stars would be swallowed whole.

Due to the woodsman's incredible strength, he had managed to beat the entire army, and turned around to find that the drawbridge to his pavilion was closed. He assumed this meant that Dreameye had betrayed him before he had had a chance to betray Dreameye. He ran up and started knocking on the closed bridge, recklessly screaming his entire plan to steal the Relic and use it to maximize his strength potential.

Dreameye, frightened, decided that he no longer wanted any part of this. He stuffed the Relic into the briefcase and ran out to the trebuchet that the woodsman just happened to have in his back yard. He loaded the briefcase, launched it, then turned around in a heroic pose and yelled back to the woodsman that he had launched it all into the sun, to prevent any evil magic to be extracted from the Holy Relic.

Then he slowly turned around, horrified, as he realized his trajectory was off. Instead of being launched into the sun, the briefcase containing his Relic and every spell that needed it as a power source was headed straight for the Neighboring Orc Kingdom.

Meanwhile, in her castle, Queen Buffalony Starship looked up as one of the stars she loved so much seemed to be getting bigger...

The impact destroyed the castle and killed everyone in it. Because the queen was now dead, the contract she had made with Night Pepper was expired, and everyone could finally take down those awful posters. The Queens death also meant that Ashwin Dreameye was no longer an outlaw, seeing as she was the only one who really cared about catching him (although he was also no longer a priest, since his Relic was destroyed).

The woodsman ran to the scene of the explosion, to see the destruction that was caused by what could have been his greatest achievement. Had he been any less manly, he would have shed a tear. Instead, he took a closer look at the wreckage. None of the debris was recognizable as either Orc or brick, it was all just ashes. Then, the "woodsman" (who in fact was never actually a woodsman) felt something odd. The magic radioactive decay of the place had begun to mutate him. The DNA of the dead Orcs bound with his, changing his skin pigmentation and causing him to grow and extra limb. Orcs are known for being stronger that the other Races, and the lost potential of the dead ones transferred themselves directly to his power level.

He triumphantly exclaimed "Finally! I, Fabio Manfield, have reached an acceptable level of strength!"