The Beautiful Disaster of "A Writ Most Severe"

[Pandip]

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[Pandip]

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[Pandip]

FOREWARD.

Good evening, darling reader.

In order for you to understand the intent of this work, it is imperative that you first understand the duress under which it was originally written.

Ages ago, in a time we ought not forget, our world was not a desert of vast dunes, but a City of vast walls. These walls, formed into Rings, obstructed the maneuvering and commingling of peoples from different cultures across the city. I will tell you plain, for most of life mine eyes only gazed upon the Ring 99th. Few people dared risk the dangers of traveling to and fro from their own Ring. But there were an enterprising few - known colloquially as Ringrunners - who pierced the ring doors and pursued glory in their quest to seek the city's center. They said that the King would grant a wish to any whomsoever could reach him within his vaunted Keep at the Ring 1st.

This age, a time within mine very own life, is now spoken of as myth and legend.

But know now that I speak true; in an age not long thence, a great and malevolent Nothing surged forth and consumed the outer Rings with a gluttony the likes which a mortal mind cannot fathom. It destroyed mine home of Peerage Ward in the Ring 99th and ravenously sought to consume the whole of creation. But in our most dire and final hour, a mighty and immortal King sallied forth from his home in the Ring 1st. He rode astride the form of six heroic figures to the Ring 64th and clashed upon the peaks of that place. In a spectacle more akin to a dream than a firm and fast reality, the almighty Nothing was quenched by the indomitable King.

These analyses which you read now were written by mine hand in the aftermath of this devastation; a refugee wrestling with the destruction of her home and the hope conferred by the timely intervention of her most heavenly savior.

On the road, I had found within mine hurriedly gathered possessions a leaf of parchment folded into a particular tome. Upon that parchment, years prior, I scrawled the beginnings of an impassioned (but charmingly poorly written) refutation of the criticisms levied at the play "A Writ Most Severe." In my fondness for the past and my hope for the future, I sought to continue that refutation in earnest while on the road with my fellow dispossessed refugees.

What follows are the curated, edited, rewritten, and reorganized words that I wrote during that long and difficult journey.

You may rightly ask why you ought read a critique of the critique of a play that, like as not, nobody knows or can read.

Put plain, darling reader, it is because being mortal is to remember, to love, and to dream.

[Pandip]

CHAPTER I.
A CAREER MOST GLORIOUS.

Good evening, darling reader.

Let us first provide some context for our critique.

"A Writ Most Severe" is the final play written by the late, great Hasan Alcazar, a man who by every measure was and is the most prolific lyricist to ever grace the Peerage Ward. In fact, he may be the greatest to ever live - but this critic shall not make such a bold claim without first fully and voraciously consuming the work of his competitors, of which there are no doubt too many to read.

Alcazar's arrival in the Ward and history within it are both frought with competing accounts and histories (many of which were undoubtedly spread by his own fondness for perpetuating his mien of mystery), but I shall here summarize what is largely agreed upon between scholars and commentators alike. Alcazar was an outsider; untitled and without a noble house to call his own. He came to the Ward knowing nobody and having little to his name. But while the details are hotly contested, all accounts agree that in a startling fashion, Alcazar publicly lambasted the poetic prowess of a well-regarded scion in such a convincing manner that he was immediately invited to perform at the manse of nearly every house. House Sunpurse was notably the only Great House he was not invited to attend.

Following his momentous ascent into the noblesse socialite landscape, Alcazar contributed a handful of innovations to the bardly craft. It is best to summarize these contributions into two primary categories. The first of these is his introduction of longform verse; from epics which took hours to recite to plays which demanded the dramatic expertise of multiple actors. The second of these is his attentiveness and purposeful use of meter; put plain, this is the heart beat by which a verse is recited or sung. It is not just through mastery of the poetic layman's craft, but by the portents of these momentous upheavals in the way the Ward approached written art, that Alcazar attained his infamy.

Alcazar was adored for his expertise but abhored for his refutation of allegiances. His interests bordered on radical; maneuvering between each of the Houses, Great and lesser; cavorting with the merchantile class not just for financial gain but as well for the company; engaging in a plainly heathenous willingness to engage changeling cultures in philosophical debate; a tiresome propensity for sharing companionship with braggarts and criminals of a wide degree; a furious delight in plucking and plying Awoken for questions of their past before the memories were consumed by the present; and so on and so forth and so much more.

As a byproduct of his varied and swaying fellowships, his works were many things; political and insightful and comedic and tragic and so many other things. But always, always, they cherished and uplifted the perspectives of both the few and the many. And this, darling reader, is in mine estimation the reason why throngs of people devoured his content. From a series of visceral dark comedies written as Triast Grimham (a most conspicuous penname) to the vivid pastoral contemplations of "Upon the Border a Flower Doth Bloom" (an overpopular favorite that was easily surpassed by his later works on the subject matter), Alcazar captured the minds of not only the noblesse, but many a poet, and many a person, and many a heart.

It is then, perhaps, shocking to know of the sheer and bountiful kissmet with which I happened upon a dusty and dirty copy of "A Writ Most Severe" in the dwindling days of Peerage Ward, sequestered in a forgotten portion of the old Senuspur Library (prior the Archivists' demense) under a different title and coyly obfuscating binding. As I looked upon its scrawled words, of its importance I had no doubt: This tome in mine hands was the last remaining reminder of the greatest lyricist the Ring 99th had ever seen.

How quickly the Ward forgot.