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RUINS OF MARAQUA - Ah, conspiracy! How I like the sound of that word! I
also like the sound of "dark intrigue", "sinister plot", "strange
occurrances", "mysterious circumstances", "unexplained phenomenon",
and "pepperoni pizza". All of these phrases fuel my hunger for knowledge
and truth, except for maybe the last one which just fuels my hunger period.
There are several mysterious things happening lately in Maraqua. I know that
this is true because one is actually called the "Mysterious
Statue", so that is kind of a dead giveaway. I was really curious about
this microscopic blob in the bottom of the ocean. It seemed like such a small
thing to cause such a riot of speculation throughout all of Neopia. So I did
a little digging into the ruins, so to speak. I excavated some facts that led
me to someone that you wouldn't think would have anything to do with the destruction
of an entire world. A pirate.
The evil villain in the downfall of Maraqua was a pirate named Captain Dread.
You know immediately that he is a bad guy because: (A) he wears a black hat,
(B) he looks like a skull with arms, (C) he says stuff like "I'm gonna keel
haul ya" in a normal sentence, and (D) he's a Kiko. A really, really ugly Kiko.
To tell the truth, it actually took me about five minutes of staring at his
picture without blinking to figure out that he WAS a Kiko. The fact that he
didn't have a bandaid on his head totally threw me off. Anyway, here is a piece
of the article in the Neopedia about him:
Captain
Dread & The Revenge
Ya sees, this here story be about that capt'n what were that most infamous
of all pirates what sailed the Neopian seas, that bein' ol' Captain Dread."
The other one, he spoke up then. "He didn't so much sail th' seas," he says
ta me, "as sailed under the seas in a submarine he called The Revenge.
Just what he was seekin' revenge for, nobody knows. Well, maybe he knows,
but nobody else does."
I don't know about you, but that bit about sailing around in a submarine really
grabbed my attention. So I snatched up my handy dandy Ultra Dual Shovel and
did some more digging. I found a nifty little video with the fascinating title
of A Curse On Maraqua.
In case you can't view the thing because your flash player doesn't work, I'll
tell you what happens in it.
The movie starts out kind of slow, with a lot of bubbles. I have a computer
that I affectionately call "The Beast" because it is older than Chiazilla and
twice as grumpy. A submarine that looks like a cross between a metal shark and
something out of the book, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", floats by. For about
five full minutes. So I just played a Maraqua version of "Extreme Potato Counter"
while I was waiting for the thing to speed up and counted the bubbles. I quit
after 169. Whee. What fun.
The next thing that pops up is the inside of the sub. A skull wearing a pirate
hat, with what I guess is a picture of himself on the front, shouts something
nasty to a Blumaroo. Since the Blumaroo says, "Aye, Cap'n", I figure the skull
must be the captain and the Blumaroo must be part of his crew. In fact, the
Blumaroo is half of his entire crew. In the whole video I only saw the Blumaroo
and a Mynci with this skull guy. Frankly, I wasn't exactly impressed by the
vast numbers of these bloodthirsty cut-throats. Anyway, because I can't imagine
that there would be two pirate-hat-wearing-skull-body-Kikos hovering around
Neopia, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this guy is probably Captain
Dread.
So the grouchy captain with bad teeth steers his submarine towards Maraqua.
I know it is Maraqua because it look exactly like Maraqua except that everything
is in one piece and not scattered around like a Chia Plushie after a Lupe plays
with it. You can now see that the submarine has a large ceiling fan stick to
the back of it. But that's not the part I find really interesting. What amazes
me is that the submarine looks likes it made out of wood. How the heck does
a wooden submarine stay submerged? Wouldn't it bob around like a cork on the
surface of the ocean?
The scene changes to what appears to be a throne room. A guy that looks like
a cross between a catfish and a Mortog with green hair stands around with a
crown on his head. My first impression was that this might be the king of Maraqua.
I had to really work hard and do a lot of research to find out his name. His
name is a little tricky to pronounce, so I'll say it slowly. It's "The King
of Maraqua". From now on I think I'll do us all a favor and just call him "KOM".
I'm not sure how those underwater pirates got there so fast, but now they
are standing in the throne room talking to KOM. Well, Captain Dread doesn't
exactly stand, he kind of hovers around in mid-air, but I think you get the
idea. Anyway, I read somewhere that you can tell if someone is LYING by the
fact that they BLINK a lot. Trust me, KOM blinks practically non-stop. Here
is how the conversation goes:
Kom: I wasn't expecting you until next week. *blink blink*
Dread: Do ya have our payment now? *waves sword for effect*
Kom: Bad kelp harvest... *blink blink* ...Maraqua isn't as popular with the
tourists these days... *blink blink* ...coral tax... *blink blink* ...stock
depression... *blink blink blink blink blink blink*
Dread isn't as stupid as he looks because he seems to get the drift of where
this is going pretty quickly and says, "Ya don't have the gold, do ya?"
Trapped by this superior intellect, KOM then says boldly, something to this
effect: "You big meanie! We don't wanna pay anymore anyway!" *blink blink*
Dread doesn't take this response too well and pretty much tells KOM to relocate
to another place. The name of that place is a word I can't repeat. But I'll
give you a clue. It starts with "h" and it's not "heck". Dread gets so mad that
a spider crawls out of his eye socket to escape the heat. The pirates then hit
the road, or waterway, or whatever.
That's the end of the video, and it says "To be continued". I've looked all
over the place and I can't find anymore parts to this, so I guess the Neopets
team has been really really really slow about adding to this story. It's either
that or my computer is more of a sluggish beast than I thought and it's still
loading it after a week. In any event, this little movie raises some very important
questions. Here are some of the questions I think we all should be asking right
now:
If the pirates put a curse on Maraqua and destroyed it, does that mean they
are not only pirates, but sorcerers too?
If the pirates created the whirlpool that destroyed Maraqua, what did they use?
The ceiling fan on their submarine?
Why does Captain Dread call the Blumaroo a scurvy dog? Wouldn't a scurvy Gelert
be more accurate? Or maybe a scurvy Warf or a scurvy Puppy Blew?
Why does a skull need an eye patch?
Did the Blumaroo pierce his own ear?
Did it hurt?
If the Underwater Chef relocated to Mystery Island after Maraqua was destroyed,
how does he breathe out of water? In fact, how do Kois, Flotsams, Jetsams and
all those Utility Fish Petpets get around on land?
What does this question have to do with the video?
All you can see, this video raises a lot of important questions that need
to be answered. And the person who has answers for all these questions will
solve the mystery of the destruction of Maraqua. And I just happen to have answers
for all of those questions. *Blink blink*
So why did Captain Dread pick on Maraqua in the first place? If he was really
strong enough to wipe out an entire world, why didn't he threaten the Faerie
Queen and demand all the overpriced stuff in the Hidden Tower instead?
The first question is answered by another pirate captain-- Cap'n Threelegs.
Over on Krawk Island, at the Swashbuckling Academy, Cap'n Threelegs has a link
to his "sayings". One of those sayings is:
"Some say there be gold buried in the ruins of Maraqua..."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the gold wasn't buried in
Maraqua AFTER it became ruins. Captain Dread knew that there was gold in Maraqua
and intimidated KOM into paying him "protection" money. But my guess is that
Dread was making a really convincing but empty threat. If he was powerful enough
to destroy Maraqua in the first place, then getting a couple of pieces of gold
every few weeks seems like a pretty slow way of getting rich. Apparently Dread's
threats worked for awhile, but then KOM decided to call the pirate's bluff.
Unfortunately, KOM had no way of knowing that Captain Dread had an ace up his
sleeve.
Now that I have figured this whole thing out, I'm going to explain what happened
to Maraqua. I'm going to unveil the sinister plot that includes not just pirates,
but a bunch of others you might not even suspect of being part of a conspiracy
to destroy an entire underwater world. But I'm not going to do that this week...
TO BE CONTINUED...
Don't you just HATE it when people do that to you?
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