The Western Town

Gladdenthorpe rests just off the Coast Of Dickenshire, between Lindenquelle and Lorfendunn. This suited the citizens of Gladdenthorpe quite well. I suppose you could say they were glad about the situation, although the Truth is perhaps much murkier.

You see, Gladdenthorpe has a secret. Not a dirty secret. There is no glorification of murder in this story, or crows pecking the eyeballs of children offered to the garden harvest. The citizens of Gladdenthorpe may call themselves “weird”, but they are decent enough folk. In fact, the depths of this goodness is the secret that they keep. This secret is so well kept, that even those who keep it are unaware as to the Truth behind it all.

A long time ago, before people kept track of modern concepts like “time” and thus arguably before time even began, the town of Gladdenthorpe was the site of a struggle between Good and Evil. Good won, of course, and locked Evil away. Not for eternity or anything, just for a while. Nobody can do anything for an eternity, not even Good. And besides, Good grows bored and lonely without Evil. It’s more like an unstructured, unilateral Time-Out that Evil may not even deserve. But that’s a story for another time.

What matters today is that Good established a Boundary That Cannot Be Crossed between Good and Evil, but knows that such a boundary is unsustainable for forever. Evil, after all, knows no bounds. So Good creates a couple of hippies out of clay, and instructs them, “As the sun hangs longest in the sky, before giving way to night, you must bring water to this spot and dump it upon the ground. Do this without fail, and you and your descendants will receive unending blessings.” Good then breathes life into the little toys, and away they go!

At first, the little people simply dumped water upon the ground daily. They were unsure how to tell when the sun was hanging longest in the sky, and they didn’t want to screw anything up. As the blessings grew, so too did the number of people, and people began to grow thirsty. There simply was not enough water to supply the people AND continue the practice of daily water dumping. They got together, and they discussed solutions to the problem.

Altenfal the Bloody suggested daily sacrifices, which was swiftly dismissed. Grandisthol the Mighty proposed ignoring the command, also rejected. Trappelle the Farmer thought of planting grain but feared it would consume all the water. Finally, Rufus the Labrador Collier, the wisest among them, suggested, “Dump the water filtered through our kidneys.” While agreeing with Altenfal that no source of water was specified, he strongly opposed a blood-based solution.

Additional scrutiny of the command additionally did not lead to insight as what the purpose of all this water spilling was, and so it came to be that the people began to simply pee upon the ground. Evil was unamused by this development, being the water’s recipient, and began to thrash against the boundary, causing the ground around Gladdenthorpe to shake and shudder in protest.

The citizens, unaware as to the cause of these tremors, disregarded them and developed elaborate theories to explain them. The most readily accepted involved "plate tectonics shifting", which is actually pretty close. As the centuries span, and the invention of things like “hygiene” and “modern toilets” took the world by storm, the original purpose of these practices was largely forgotten. If you were to visit today, you would not be able to notice anything amiss around Gladdenthorpe. No strong scent of urine, like in some larger cities, and there is no indication that there is anything particularly special around Gladdenthorpe one way or another.

Still, this tradition is still kept by a few, who believe that unless they go out into the fields of Gladdenthorpe and pee all over Farmer McGreggor’s prized tomatoes, that their town will come to ruin. They believe that Farmer McGreggor is in the wrong for planting tomatoes in “the pee spot”. They believe that this urination must occur while the sung is hanging longest in the sky, and thus appear every year upon the summer solstice to irrigate Farmer McGreggor's crops. Near as they can tell, this is all a matter of great fun and tradition.

Though perhaps believing for all the wrong reasons, these heroes are all that keeps Evil imprisoned these days. Good’s power is waning and was never intended to be absolute in the first place. Evil was always intended to be released eventually, and now it is currently the practice of dumping water upon the ground that keeps the boundary in place…

Although I can’t necessarily say that Good intended for Evil to be pissed on all these years, either. And what may have been intended as little more than a time-out period to cool off and gain some perspective might have simply served to escalate the situation, even as the boundary grows weak.