Didacts and Narpets

Captain Stuart Turnips was just about to enter the terribly exciting and glittering Casino Lisboa with all the sexy possibilitites of high-stakes gambling, overpriced alcoholic drinks with funny names and improbable encounters with characters from his father's college years. He was with his new friend: the dread assassin Scaramanga. Following at a short distance: his motley assortment pseudo intellectual associates comprising his so-called "Army of Martial Artists".


This group, although clearly a collection of oriental fops and dandys, was trying its mightiest to appear menacing and tough to the street goers of Macao. They even went so far as to wield martial arts weapons whilst wearing black cotton gi derived from the Japanese Shinobi shozoku, which if the year were 1975-1980 rather than 1966 would have made them look pretty bad ass instead of like a bunch of underfed guys in pajamas carrying halberds, nunchuku, and bill hooks (n.b.: if you review the AD&D players handbook the latter can be a very effective weapon against larger monsters).

Captain Stuart was a mere lad with little framework for the relative cool-ness or nerd-li-ness of his entourage whatever the particular year of our Lord. Scaramanga, for his part was noticeably uneasy. He had a reputation as a world reknown assassin, gun for hire, and patron of the dark arts to uphold. Despite his dread reputation he really was a soft touch and could not resist the pleading of his minions in particular when someone in the party suggested that as a side trip, they go to Kowloon Walled City to pick up a first edition of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan that was rumored to be held by the Sun Yee On triad but which was being offered as the grand prize in a martial arts tournament to be held that very Sunday.

As is common knowledge, even to a time travelling pirate like Captain Stuart Turnips, the Kowloon Walled City is a completely poverty stricken, lawless, overbuilt, unplanned, urban heck hole that makes the hillside shanty towns of Sao Paulo or Nairobi look like Kensington or Mayfair.*

Scaramanga didn't mind going into the Kowloon Walled City. He felt that a trip to visit his old friend Heung Wah-yim, the leader of the Sun Yee On triad would avail him of some work in the so-called "mortality business".

Stuart for his part was just looking for a way to convince these fine people to help him rescue his crew from the CHICOMs and get back his ship the Blue Side of American. In his mind, which lacked even the barest rudiments of a plan, everything seemed to be going vaguely ok. Scaramanga seemed nice enough, the fops and dandys seemed earnest if not exactly lucid, Macau and Hong Kong had nice weather.

Scaramanga, Stuart and the assorted fops, dandys, and poets in Scaramanga's entourage entered the sunless, claustrophobic, urban nightmare of Kowloon Walled City and asked a nearby krone for directions to the infamous Lucky Dragon Bar and Go Go Casino which was reputed to be where Heung Wah-yim, conducted his business. The harpy coughed and spat a toothless grin at them. She shouted at them in Cantonese 傻瓜，烧毁的賭博娛樂場 (which roughly translates to "you idiots, the old casino burned down"). Scaramanga, who spoke perfect Cantonese dialect pointed at the old woman and made a gesture with his thumb against the back of his front teeth. The old woman suddenly realized who Scaramanga was as she was thrown off by his decidedly uncool associates. She decided to change her tack so as not to antagonize her interrogatories. She said brightly 去釣魚新的賭博娛樂場的腦子街道 (which roughly translates to "Very sorry, you should go to Fish Brain street for the new casino Lucky Dragon" although "fish brain" may well have been "fish head" in this dialect.)

Just as the old woman was about to return to her toothless spitting and cursing she recognized Captain Stuart. She pointed her crooked finger at him and motioned him over to her and whispered 您是畏懼的海盜白蘿卜。 我有警告可怕的消息，但是不能在您的同事前面告訴 (which if Stuart understood a lick of Cantonese would have told him "If you are the pirate Turnips. I have horrible message of warning that I must not tell in front of your associates")

As Stuart listened to the old woman he felt her garlicky breath tickle his ears and he began to giggle. Whatever this silly old person was trying to tell him was lost on him. He smiled as warmly as he could and wished her a nice day in his best church Sunday greeting. "What a nice old woman" he thought to himself.

*Until they were torn down by the Chinese and British in the mid 1990s, Kowloon Walled City was considered no-man's land between the People's Republic of China and British Hong Kong. The state of anarchy served the interest of the criminal triads and provided a haven for those on the run from either government.