Not Another Hero

It feels like it was yesterday, but it's been years since it happened. Everything went to hell with me right in the middle of it. I know people think I'm a hero, but I've never felt like it.

Before I get too far, though, let me introduce myself...

I am a man of wealth and taste...

I was always ostracized by my peers because of my horrible deformity. (No arms, legs, neck, or mouth.)

Alternately

My name's Owen, but most people just call me "Project 801" or "Plan B". I prefer Owen though.

Call me Ishmael.

I am that is.

I am a formerly ordinary individual.

I was a king.

>You can call me Al.

>I am the last man with the secret of Byzantine Fire.

Lionel.

I AM THE LAW

I was a king, as I'm sure you'll remember, King Owen DCCCI. To be honest, I always doubted that so many Owens came before me, but we'll get to that later.

And while we're on the subject, I wasn't much of a king. Sure, the Kings Owen of the past may have ruled with an iron fist, but I was more of a judge when it came down to it. I had to share power with a prime minister and legislature thanks to a revolution that happened during Owen DCCXCIX's reign.

I guess now is the time to talk a little bit about my kingdom...

>We have a lot of holidays because all these hundreds of kings had a lot of things they wanted to celebrate.

Cheese.
Cheese everywhere as far as the eye can see.

>It's a magic place full of many cringe-inducing stock fantasy nonsense. By the gods you hate it.

It's an asylum, and it's run by the inmates.

All of the janitors and custodians have been on strike for the past several years. The place is a literal mess.

Rolling meadows and zero industrialization, also thanks to that goddamn revolution.

Man you miss cars.

The only valuable thing in the entire godforsaken hellscape is iron ore. Damn near your only source of anything else is trading with other countries, who gleefully price-gouge you.

Rolling blackouts have been both crisis and fact of everyday life for 3 years.

When he disappeared, my father left a realm that was in pretty terrible shape. We were a second-rate nation at best, thanks to the uprising. We had a few cities clogged with starving laborers out of work and a smattering of farming villages. Our only source of income was the iron ore found in the western mountains. The nobility, the merchants and the peasants all hated each other - with good reason - and that was just the humans.



Lumber shortages were widespread thanks to the thorn pixie raids, and the sea sylph regent was threatening to blockade our ports in an attempt to squeeze a tax from our merchant vessels. Our only help came from the granite gnomes who will gladly work for food - and they eat rocks.

> Heh, actually, with your mountains as your main asset, that's not a bad thing. Let the granite gnomes dig dig dig in mines, and send you anything you deem 'important' or 'new' and they can keep the scree from it. It's not such a bad deal, all they can eat, and I bet they have earth shapey abilities. Especially notable is that there are many occasions where iron ore is found near coal. Bituminous, athracite, lignite, doesn't matter at this point, because what you're trying to do is-

> Alleviate part of the lumber shortage by burning coal as a secondary, cheap fuel. As an added bonus, the lumber, being less plentiful for the fact that you're not supplying as much, encourages the thorn pixies to go to greener pastures.

>

>Despite it all, we managed reasonably well under the circumstances, up until the granite gnomes demanded we appoint one of their number as Prime Minister.

>You did try to manufacture steel with 1 iron ore and 2 coal, but somehow the result was worth less than the component ores.

Then you had a nationalist, human supremacist Revolution on your hands. You managed to get aid from the thorn pixies and granite gnomes, but the blasted sea sylphs abandoned all of you, leaving you without a strong navy. Soon all the port towns were taken over by the fascist bastards, which cut off the vast majority of your income. Soon enough the war had a foregone conclusion, and the royal family's only choice was to flee north with the pixies.