Wooden Crown

## Physical Description

A crown made of wood that is somewhat crudely carved, and is cracked and weathered with age. It's easy to guess that it was whittled with a knife by a child.

Surprisingly, it is not a toy, or a playtime costume. There was a time, long ago, where the boy who carved this crown wore it atop his head as part of his royal attire, as king of all he surveyed.

## History

The wooden crown was carved by a child. This child, called the Little King, was born hundreds of years ago on a small island in a large archipelago. The various tribes of the archipelago were always fighting, and the Little King dreamed of being able to unite them all to create peace. So he carved the wooden crown and announced to his village that he was their king. The villagers didn't take him seriously, but the Little King was determined. At night, he stole a canoe and tried to sail to the next inhabited island. He'd never sailed that far before, and his boat overturned. His life was saved by a fisherman from another island, which he brought the Little King back to. The Little King told the people of the island that he was now their king, and asked to borrow a boat. He was told that this particular island was home to the best boatwrights in the archipelago and they lent him a boat with the implication that his family would pay back the debt.

The boy sailed on to the next island, where he again told the people he was their king and received some food, which the villagers insisted was the best in the whole archipelago. He continued on in this way, going to islands, proclaiming himself king, and receiving such things as the best clothing, weaponry and instruments in the whole archipelago. As time went on, the leaders of the villages started to look more and more worried by a stranger turning up on their islands, and the Little King was told that a ruler from the mainland was intent on destroying the villages of the archipelago.

When all the leaders of the villages met up to decide what to do about this crisis, the Little King turned up. He found the leaders all yelling at each other, blaming everybody else for the fact that there was nothing they could do to save the archipelago. The Little King stood on a tree stump and made a speech to them all, telling them about everything he'd seen on his journey, about all the similarities and differences between the islands. All the leaders of the archipelago swore allegiance to him, and the Little King laid out his plan for saving the archipelago.

The plan was so cruel that The Guide refuses to say what it was, only saying that it was so awful because children don't have the lived experience to know what cruelty really is. The leaders reluctantly followed the Little King's plan, and it worked, but the people of the archipelago were disgusted by it. At first the Little King didn't understand why they seemed to hate him, but as he grew up he started to realise that he had committed a greater evil than anything the mainlanders would have done. He began to hate the people of the archipelago back, for their ingratitude. He remained their king, though, and later led them in an invasion of the whole world.