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RUINS OF MARAQUA - Last week I talked about part of the plot that lead to the
destruction of Maraqua. In case your memory is a little fuzzy on what I said,
the entire article can be summed up in one word: nasty pirates. Okay, that's two
words. Anyway, this week I'm going to talk about the other side of this calamity
and who did the actual destroying in the destruction of Maraqua. In case you can't
wait until paragraph two to find out who that is, I'll tell you now. It was a
Faerie.
Okay, I lied. I'm not going to talk about that Faerie in this paragraph. I'm
going to talk about some other things first. What I'm going to discuss now is
a little history of Maraqua, so you can follow along with this conspiracy a
little better. Trust me, it gets kind of complicated, so try to keep up.
Maraqua was sort of a bubble city-kingdom at the bottom of the ocean. Then
it got wrecked. End of history lesson.
Now we get to move onto the fun stuff -- the conspiracy behind the carnage.
In order to do that we have to answer some questions. Consider it a sort of
Maraqua mid-term exam, except that you don't have a prune-faced teacher giving
you detention for having your notes written on your arm.
Why did the pirates pick on Maraqua in the first place?
If you recall from last week, Captain Dread was an ugly pirate with a cool
name who was blackmailing the King of Maraqua. Somehow the pirates figured out
that Maraqua had a lot of gold hidden somewhere in it and wanted it. Taking
money from people is against the law, unless you're the Tax Beast. Then it's
not called "robbery", it called a "random event". Anyway, KOM, the King of Maraqua,
suddenly decided not to pay Dread anymore. The last thing anyone remembers after
that is a Sea Slug standing over the wreckage of Maraqua with a sign that said
"Go away!".
But the thing that makes me believe that Captain Dread wasn't the actual fiend
that made Maraqua so untidy, is the fact that the video we discussed last week
was called "A Curse On Maraqua". Unless these were extremely unique sorcerer
pirates, I would have to say your typical buccaneer is more likely to wave a
cutlass at you-- not a magic wand.
If the pirates didn't destroy Maraqua, who did?
The answer to that question lies at the bottom of the ocean. There is a mysterious
statue there now that has the catchy name "Mysterious Statue".
Mysterious Statue
There are several interesting things about this statue, other than the fact
that it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere, that is. I don't claim to be an
expert on Neopian inhabitants, but a creature that has bat-like wings, pointy
ears and long nails is either a Dark Faerie or a Halloween Kougra. Since it
doesn't seem to have a tail, I'm going to rule out this thing as being a Halloween
Kougra.
Despite the fact that it is called a statue, I'm going to guess that
this is a petrified person. Not petrified as in too frightened to move, but
more like petrified as in too fossilized to move. I am also going to guess that
Neopia doesn't have too many sculptors floating around that would be able to
carve this much detail into a statue. Only a REAL Faerie would lack common fashion
sense and mix horizontal stripes on her pants with vertical stripes in her hair.
Another thing seems to point to the fact, this was a real Faerie before something
out of the ordinary-- even for a Faerie-- happened to her. The pendant around
her neck appears to be real. So either the loony sculptor painted her necklace
and nothing else, or her necklace wasn't turned to stone when she was. Faeries
are famous for having all kinds of neat stuff hanging around like staffs, orbs,
wands and attack peas, so my guess is that necklace is some sort of a powerful
amulet.
Faeries not only bless things, they curse too. Ummm... I mean curse as in
put a hex on someone, not curse as in use bad language, although it is possible
that they do both at the same time. So I have a hunch that this Dark Faerie
is the one who destroyed Maraqua. I think she used the striped amulet to do
it, but something went really really really wrong when she did.
Who is this Dark Faerie?
I haven't a clue who she is. But the Neopedia has this to say about "The Darkness
Faerie":
The Darkness Faeries are minions of the evil one himself. They lay in wait
to tempt those weak of heart. The power granted by these evil imps is great,
but its comes at a price. Once you have been blessed by a Dark Faerie you are
forever tainted. These evil Faeries' abilities include creating darkness, draining
life and night vision.
So basically Dark Faeries in general have made a hobby out of being not nice.
It's what they like to do and they're pretty darn good at it.
Why did she help the pirates destroy Maraqua?
My uneducated guess is that this mysterious statue Dark Faerie, that I'll
call "Mysti" for short, didn't really give a hoot about Maraqua. I have a feeling
what she wanted was the striped amulet. Let's say that KOM, the king of Maraqua,
accidentally gave the amulet to the pirates back when he was paying them to
only be annoying every couple of weeks instead of being annoying every day.
Somehow KOM had missed the memo on ancient artifacts and didn't know what
the amulet was. It was one of those things that got passed down from generation
to generation and got mixed in with the rest of the stuff in his treasure vault.
So he figured it was pretty and shiny and just the thing to give to the pirates
to get them off of his back for awhile. If KOM had known what the amulet could
be used for, he never would have paid one red Neopoint to those greedy eye-patch-wearing
thugs.
I'm not sure how Mysti found out that the pirates had it, but I'm pretty sure
she popped up on their doorstep asking about it. Okay, so submarines don't have
doorsteps, but I think you get the idea. So she made a deal with the pirates.
The deal was this: Captain Dread gives her the striped amulet and she uses it
to create a small natural catastrophe to scare KOM into paying the pirates
protection money. The pirates didn't want Maraqua destroyed. That would be like
turning your Quiggle into Quiggle pie to feed to your Quiggle because your Quiggle
is hungry. It would be totally pointless. They sure wouldn't get any more gold
out of KOM if Maraqua was destroyed.
If nobody wanted Maraqua destroyed, what happened?
Mysti goofed. She didn't realize that the amulet not only had great power,
but that it had a curse that came with it too. And I'll tell you the name of
this curse. Chiazilla.
Huh? What does Chiazilla have to do with this?
The odd thing about the Neopedia is that it has two things about Chiazilla,
and they SEEM to contradict each other. But I think both Neopia articles actually
give us clues to help figure this whole Maraqua thing out. Here is what the
article called Maraqua had to say:
No visit to Maraqua would be complete without a trip to see the one and
only Chiazilla, one of the true wonders of the Neopian world. Not only can you
witness the beast firsthand in his natural habitat, but you can also enjoy a
stirring re-enactment of his courageous defeat of Mechachiazilla.
And here is what the article called The Legend of Chiazilla had to
say:
Legend has it that a great king used to rule over the Cocos. He had the power
to summon the Sea Monster from the depths of the ocean in times of need. Whenever
the Cocos were threatened, Chiazilla would come and scare the enemy away...
...The Cocos still place their offering on the shore every summer, but Chiazilla
never appears and no longer keeps the Island secret. There have been several
sightings of large creatures out in the deep seas, but they have all been so
far away it could just be a squall of Tuskaninnys or a school of Flotsams.
I have a funny feeling that Chiazilla started out as the protector of Maraqua.
After Maraqua was destroyed there was a mass migration of former Maraquans to
Mystery Island. The Underwater Chef got a job working for Mumbo Pango, for example.
It's not too much of a stretch to believe that Chiazilla went to Mystery Island
too. Of course, Neopian history is kind of fuzzy on timelines, so it's possible
that Chiazilla was helping both Maraqua and Mystery Island at the same time.
You might say that Chiazilla was a sort of Defender of Neopia before someone
else stole his idea from him since he wasn't around anymore to sue for copyright
infringement.
Wait a minute, we now have pirates, a Dark Faerie and a sea monster. Exactly
how was Maraqua destroyed?
I will explain how all of these characters came together to bring about the
mess on the bottom of the ocean floor. But I'm not going to do it THIS week.
I'm going to make you wait until NEXT week to find out.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Don't you really really really hate me now?
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