| RUINS OF MARAQUA - If you recall, the past two weeks I have been discussing the
mystery surrounding the destruction of Maraqua. If you haven't read the past two
articles, or you can't remember what you ate for breakfast, let alone what a nutcase
said last week, don't sweat it. I'm going to summarize it for you so we can get
this thing over with.
The first thing we talked about was pirates. A pirate named Captain Dread
was blackmailing KOM, the King of Maraqua. KOM, who suffers from a nervous twitch
that makes him blink a lot, decided not to pay the pirates anymore. The pirates
were extremely NOT okay with this.
The next thing we examined was the mysterious statue sprouting seaweed on
the ocean floor. It seems to look like a Dark Faerie and I nicknamed her "Mysti".
She is wearing a stripey amulet that is completely out of place with her stony
personality.
The last thing we talked about was Chiazilla, the protector of the Cocos of
Mystery Island. The part I find pretty significant in the Neopedia article about
him is the bit about "he (the king of the Cocos) had the power to summon
the Sea Monster from the depths of the ocean in times of need". Exactly
how did the King of the Cocos summon Chiazilla? Hopefully, I have told you enough
so far that you can leap ahead of me on this one. I think he used the stripey
amulet to do it.
Now that I have spent three weeks talking about all of the interesting bits
of information all over Neopia about Maraqua, I will FINALLY put it all together
for you. Here is my theory on what happened to Maraqua:
Let's say that there are two stripey amulets. One belongs to king of the Cocos
and the other belongs to the king of Maraqua. I don't know who created these
amulets or why they gave them to these kings, but they were passed down from
generation to generation. In any event, the amulet was used to call forth a
sort of guardian sea monster if these kingdoms got into a jam they couldn't
get out of. Like if there was a freak blizzard and everybody stuck their tongues
to metal poles at the same time.
The Cocos took their amulet pretty seriously. Mystery Island was full of cannibals,
bad tempered Kougras and weird fruit festivals. Things were extremely exciting
there, but not always very peaceful. They probably got attacked fairly often
by the two scourges of Neopia-- pirates and tourists. They buffed up their stripey
amulet a LOT to drive these relentless invaders off.
Maraqua, on the other hand, was sitting on the bottom of the ocean and really
didn't have a care in the world. The high cost of scuba gear rental must have
kept even gawking tourists to a minimum. In fact, they probably had never even
seen a pirate before a very bony Kiko calling himself Captain Dread showed up.
By the time the stripey amulet was passed down to KOM, nobody could remember
what it was for. They still remembered Chiazilla. They just forgot that they
could call him up. They sort of lost his phone number, so to speak.
The story basically begins with pirates discovering gold in them there subterranean
hills. So Captain Dread got a hold of Greg the Very Angry Programmer to design
a submarine for him so he could do a little underwater pillaging. Since KOM,
the king of Maraqua, and the rest of the inhabitants of Maraqua were real Newbies
in the buccaneer-bucking business, they didn't know that paying these guys would
NOT make them go away.
Unfortunately, KOM decided not to pay them anymore after he accidentally
gave them that powerful stripey amulet. If it's any consolation to anyone, the
keeper of the Royal Maraquan Treasure Vault no longer has a job.
The pirates joined up with a mysterious Dark Faerie I call "Mysti". She wanted
the stripey amulet of massive, and sometimes messy, power. Captain Dread wanted
to intimidate KOM into paying the pirates to leave Maraqua alone, like in the
"good old days". So the pirates gave the stripey amulet to Mysti with the understanding
that she would teach Maraqua a lesson they would never forget. Unfortunately,
the stripey amulet wound up teaching everybody within a thousand miles of Maraqua
a lesson they would never forget. The lesson that they would never forget is,
"Don't mess with Chiazilla".
With the stripey amulet in hand, Mysti called forth its dark magic. The look
of disgust and surprise on the face of the statue is pretty much a clue that
she didn't expect a sea monster to drop in for tea. But that wasn't really her
big mistake. Her big mistake was saying to herself, "Okay, whatever" and trying
to command Chiazilla to destroy Maraqua. He didn't like that idea very much
and swam around in circles trying to break the hold she had over him with the
stripey amulet. He must have done the backstroke at supersonic speed, because
he created a huge whirlpool.
The force of the swirling water created a sort of backwash. The spell was
tossed back at Mysti and turned her into stone. The sad part is, Chiazilla,
the protector of the Cocos and the Maraquans, was technically the one who totally
trashed Maraqua. I guess that made him feel kind of bad because nobody has seen
hide nor scales of him since.
There are a lot of theories floating around about who this Faerie really was.
But there is a collector card called "Maelstra The Dark Faerie". The card itself
has this little description with it: Lying in wait to tempt those weak of
heart, the power granted by these evil imps is great, but at a price. The
interesting thing about this is her NAME. The dictionary says a "maelstrom"
is a "whirlpool of extraordinary size or violence". Is it a coincidence that
the name Maelstra and the word maelstrom are so much alike? I have a feeling
that the Maraquans that survived never knew her real name. They called the statue
that because it just seemed to suit her and she was too hard and cold at the
time to care if they called her the Jelly Chia.
The reason no one has seen the crusted dark Faerie until now is that she was
covered with bits and pieces of Maraqua for a long time. So if she was covered
up all this time, what happened to shake all of the junk off of her? The Neopedia
article about Maraqua has this interesting little blurb of information in it:
Weather : Maraqua occasionally has earthquakes.
I don't know too much about geology and earthquakes and stuff, but I know
that if I jump up and down I can make just about everything I own fly out of
my pockets. I figure even a small earthquake would have been enough to shake
the contents of KOM's wardrobe closet and seashell collection off of Mysti.
There is one final unsolved riddle in this Spyder web of drama. What happened
to Captain Dread and his enormous crew of two bloodthirsty cut-throats? My guess
is that the instant they saw Chiazilla and the whirlpool swirling around Maraqua,
they beat a hasty retreat. There is a whole other side to Neopia that no one
has ever seen. That's a lot of space for one skeleton-headed Kiko and two bandana-wearing
Neopets to hide out in. But I have a sneaking suspicion that he will be back.
The World Page has this little thing sitting in it trying to look harmless and
innocent: "The Pirate Kiko's Revenge".
So, that is my theory on how Maraqua came to be destroyed and how that mysterious
statue popped up in Maraqua. Of course, this is just my own personal theory.
It's quite possible that something completely different than this happened.
All I know is that my research into this mystery has at least answered one important
question. But after three weeks of writing this stupid thing, I can't seem to
remember what that was.
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