Welcome back, absolute dunkelheits! It’s been a while, so I’m going to cram the equivalent of two or three installments into this post. It’s better than ever! Or, well, you know, it’s been worse. ANYWAY.

The Brothers Shitty are currently scooting in opposite directions from a desert and scheming about each others’ powerstones like cereal mascots. Urza gets off the world map and into the grand city of Kroog, whereas Mishra gets his assquatch handed to him by a random encounter of desert nomads.

For those of you not familiar with the Brothers Shitty, I suggest you guess now which one ends up being a hero. For those of you who are, don’t tell the newbies that’s a trick question.

Mishra’s story is straightfoward for the time being, so I’ll tell it first. He is now a nomadic slave. (The Weakstone has conveniently stopped being able to fire laser beams.)

That was easy.

Urza slips into Kroog and notices a gargantuan statue made out of solid veryheavium. So that we don’t have to listen to him ask passersby dumb questions, the Warlord of Kroog unbattens the castle hatches and starts yelling about it.

“MY DAUGHTER KAYLA IS OF AGE. SINCE I AM KING, AND THIS MEANS I HAVE TIME TO MAKE COMPLETELY LUDICROUS DECISIONS, I HAVE DECIDED HER HUSBAND WILL BE THE MAN WHO CAN LIFT MY BEAUTIFUL STATUE OF SOME ASTONISHGLY DASHING AND CHARISMATIC FELLOW. START PUMPING IRON, SERFBUTTS!”

I’m not sure if kingwise here is too inbred to notice, he doesn’t want his daughter to actually marry, or if his daughter has a thing for giants/minotaurs, but his self-portrait is like twenty feet tall and five thousand pounds more than anybody could be expected to lift. Heavier than that if the warlord was chunky. He didn’t even put handles on it!

While the rest of the eligible bachelors start looking for unscrupulous green mages, Urza submits his resume (which likely consisted of a picture of the Mightstone with “sup” printed next to it) to a clockmaker and then proceeds to create absolutely no clocks. In fact, he constructs an enormous mechanical man in the basement.

While that is technically a picture of Urza’s remoreless statue-lifting machine, it’s pretty lame. Let’s try again.

Much better. Picture that, except made out of cuckoo clocks.

Statue Heaving Day arrives, and finest of Kroog’s young bohunks are snapping their suspenders and telling lies about what they’ll do to Kayla. Unsurprisingly, the statue remains unlifted. Urza strides through and is followed by an exceedingly poorly disguised golem, which picks it up like a lunchbox.

“Hm,” says the Warlord. “On the one hand, this is at best an dishonest loophole, and at worst blatant cheating. On the other hand, the statue appears to be directly above my head. Marriage it is!”

And so Urza was married to the Princess (Warlass?) of Kroog. Not that it mattered to him; he ignored her like core set reminder text.

And Mishra was still a slave, probably. Let’s skip about ten years or so. Mostly Urza dicks around with machinery and picks up an extremely handsome apprentice named Tawnos who bangs Urza’s wife on the side. Urza doesn’t notice. Or more likely, he doesn’t care.

The amount of time it takes for Urza’s hair to go gray later…

Urza has been sending out Kroog’s men to loot Thran tombs and abandoned vending machines or whatever, and has becomes the Warlord’s right-hand man. Recently, the desert nomads have confederated and control the entire region’s trade in a viselike ballgrip, and then kicking the ass of anybody who tries to loot Thran relics. A summit is scheduled at the neutral region of Korliss.

Urza, kingwise, Statue-Hoist-O-Tron, and Warlass Kayla represent Kroog, and the two delegates for the nomad tribes swerve in on this .001 tip ride:

Er. Let’s try that again.

There we go. The driver is none other than Mishra, who clawed his way to the top of the nomad hierarchy through who cares, and is flanked by his own sexy apprentice, Ashnod. Except Mishra is banging her.

Coffee is served, folders are cracked, and the arguing commences. Mishra lays down some law, and Kroog refuses to pick it up.

Mishra: “You may have some excellent lawyers, chumps, but have you prepared a defense for… A BAG OF HANDS!?”

And then Mishra throws a bag of hands at the Kroog delegates. I don’t think I can end this post in a better way, so let’s repeat that.

Mishra’s ultimate bargaining technique is lobbing a bag of hands at the opposing side.