Muntuska Ŷr'hezol

**Muntuska Ŷr'hezol** ("MOON-toos-kah OR-heh-zol") was an infamous agent of the Konjor Supercorporation, the most notorious alchemist of his day. He was of Kuelgon descent.

## History

In his youth, he was a skilled orator and a masterful assassin.

The Konjor authorities selected him to a mission in Arentos: he would pose as an emissary who will present a gift to congratulate the Arentosian rebellion. His gift was supposedly an elixir that would make the drinker immortal, but before he would let the king drink the elixir, he spilled it unto the Alarivai River, spreading it to the five biggest cities of the realm.

The puzzled inhabitants drank the diluted waters, attracted by its swirling colours. Within hours, thousands died a painful death, whereas many of the survivors were transformed into monsters. Even the king choked to death after drinking the elixir, along with most of the people in the palace except for a few horrified personnel.

Delighted by the sudden collapse of the Arentosian civilisation, Muntuska decided to control the mutated survivors, enslaving them as his army to build his own kingdom on the ruined, polluted planet. Upset by his defiance of their orders, the Konjor rulers abandoned him to be defeated by the southern Arentosian knights, and he fled as an outlaw.

Later, he gathered an army of Terrans and invaded Rukthan to set up his own domain, seeking vengeance against both the Malendors and his former Konjor rulers. He left behind Oglohkor to rule over his domains, but the latter tried to use the arcane and forbidden machinery to transform himself into a god.

Muntuska met his end after a gambling match, when a jealous rival poisoned his alcoholic drink with the same elixir, reducing him to a savage mutant that went berserk before the guards shot him dead.

## Mythology

As the Ontemazei regard the Arentosians as their ancestors (because they were created from the mangled bodies of mass-murdered Arentosians fused into a plant ooze), they carried over the Arentosians' myths and folklore, including Muntuska. In Ontemazei mythology, Muntuska is immortalised as the god of disease and death, a walking punishment towards righteous and wicked civilisations alike. During the Ontemazei Empire, the military cursed their enemies in the name of the plague god as they fired *sanizoi* beams to kill their enemies with toxins.

When other civilisations regarded Mithura (herself an indigenous Arentosian queen) as another bringer of death, the enslaved Ontemazei and their Porasonid brethren prayed to her as the goddess of healing, the arch-enemy of Muntuska and his demons of plague. At times, they called upon her to bring death to the enemies of their people, and at other times they called upon her to restore their allies to total recovery.

## Trivia

* The saga of Muntuska was inspired by a racist commercial by the American detergent brand Calgon, where the brand is presented as an "ancient Chinese secret". The author initially had its resulting idea set in ancient China during the Han Dynasty, when a greedy time traveller killed off most of China's population by poisoning its rivers with the detergent, so that it will actually exist in ancient China.
	+ In later times, he added that the time traveller spread the detergent to the rest of Eurasia's civilisations and barbarian tribes, making himself the wealthiest man in antiquity while slaughtering thousands of people without using an army. Then, he changed the premise to a science fiction setting in an alien planet.
* Muntuska's name was derived from "Tunguska" and "muntah" (Malay for "vomit").

## See also

* Soskaril
* Lord Futabol