Chapter Text
MR TASKS: Ostentatious greetings, wishes of a good evening, and welcome to Taskmaster of the Bazaar! We are Mr Tasks and we are the Taskmaster of the Bazaar. We have set five of the Neath's luminaries a series of challenges to test their spirit, their fortitude, and their willingness to follow arbitrary commands, all in the hope of winning the single most desirable object to be found in the deepest vaults of the Bazaar: a golden statue of our perfectly-formed head.
Please make the customary noises of celebration for… Colonel Molly!
COLONEL MOLLY: (sticks two fingers up at the audience)
MR TASKS: Grace, the Mercy!
GRACE: (ashes her cigar on the floor)
MR TASKS: His Amused Lordship!
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: (waves to the audience, face creased with joy)
MR TASKS: The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel!
THE MANAGER: (waves with eight fingers - no, twelve - twenty - more than you can count… no, the regular number of fingers)
MR TASKS: And the Notorious Civet!
THE CIVET: (waves, briefly, from under their cloak)
MR TASKS: But, of course, we are far too busy to oversee the completion of these tasks ourselves. For that, we delegate to our adjutant, who has spent several months with our contestants in the Taskmaster Manor, overseeing them in the Taskmaster manner. Please give the correct amount of applause for our assistant, the Efficient Commissioner!
GRIZ: (does not look up from her clipboard)
MR TASKS: What do you have for us, Commissioner?
GRIZ: Are you sure this is a justifiable investment of the Bazaar's time and resources? With the situation in the Elder Continent so tense…
MR TASKS: Silence! We have decreed that these games shall be held, and that is all that needs to be known! The first round of our contest is the prize round, in which our participants bring us offerings of tribute.
GRIZ: …that's right, they bring prizes according to a theme you've set, and whoever wins today will take home all five prizes.
MR TASKS: Must we really give them back their gifts?
GRIZ: It saves us having to provide a daily prize ourselves.
MR TASKS: An excellent point. That would be tantamount to - (shudders) - charity. What theme have we set them today?
GRIZ: Today, you asked the contestants to the best thing to take to the Shuttered Palace.
MR TASKS: Molly! What did you bring, and why would it be the best thing to present to the Empress?
MOLLY: Marsh-wolf, innit.
(on the stage: a very unhappy marsh-wolf, pulling at its chain)
GRIZ: Why do you think Her Majesty would enjoy a live wolf?
MOLLY: Well, I don't reckon she'd have seen one before, 'coz you only get them in the marshes and she only goes to very posh places like the opera. Also 'coz I hear it's bl--dy boring at Court and this would liven things up a bit.
MR TASKS: Perhaps it would. Grace! What is your offering?
GRACE: I brought the Empress something she'll need, sooner or later - a custom sarcophagus!
(on the stage: a Second City sarcophagus, redecorated with a crude rendition of the Traitor Empress's face; his Amused Lordship can be heard guffawing)
GRIZ: (leafing through her papers) Legally, I'm not certain we can suggest that she will in fact ever need any sort of funerary accoutrement...
MR TASKS: We don't care for this one at all. Take it away!
(the sarcophagus is removed by two burly Neddies under the supervision of a Special Constable)
MR TASKS: Now, Your Amused Lordship - as a regular courtier to Her Enduring Majesty, we hope you have something less distasteful to offer us.
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: (barely able to speak for wheezing) As it happens, I have a piece that once belonged to a fellow empress - a chaise taken from the private chambers of Catherine the Great!
(on the stage: a chair with carved _______, ornamental ____, and a pattern of _______ intertwined with ________ _____)
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP and GRACE: (laugh with such combined vigour as to set the chandeliers swaying)
THE CIVET: Blimey...
COLONEL MOLLY: Cor - it's got big willies on it!
MR TASKS: And this came from Russia, you say?
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: I had it imported from St Petersburg at great expense!
MR TASKS: We were sure we had seen it at the Parlour of Virtue... no matter! What would our next petitioner present to the Shuttered Palace?
THE MANAGER: I am, in fact, returning something that came to me from the Palace.
(on the stage: a Hollow-Eyed Servant, in last year’s fashions)
GRIZ: That’s a person.
THE MANAGER: They are one of the silent and invisible myrmidons whose labours keep Her Majesty's linens as stainless as her chambers are lightless. They came to me suffering from the most dreadful maladies - caused, it seems, by an excess of turning around. Happily, they’re now exactly as right as rain, and ready to return to their duties in the royal household.
(the servant trembles, their scarf falling aside to reveal a cluster of pulsating somethings, born of sacrifice motivated by fear and not hope)
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: Good gad, what on Earth are those?
THE MANAGER: It is a bushel of deferred dreams. With due care and attention, it might be induced to hatch.
MR TASKS: Let us speak no more of the toiling masses. Civet, can you trump your rivals' potlatch?
THE CIVET: Were I to visit the Shuttered Palace - which I'm not saying I ever have - this is what I would bring.
(on the stage: a grapnel, a set of kifers, a sack, and a calling card stamped with the image of a furry creature - possibly a mongoose)
GRACE: Do you imagine Her Maj to be in want of hessian?
THE CIVET: Oh, I'd take most of it away with me. They can keep the card - so they know I've visited.
MR TASKS: Enough! The time for scoring is at hand.
GRIZ: (taking diligent notes) Who gets one point?
MR TASKS: Grace can take one point and she can thank us for it.
GRACE: Oh, b---s!
MR TASKS: Two points for the tools of larceny; they were not in the spirit of our little game.
THE CIVET: (shrinks in their cloak with a noise of displeasure)
MR TASKS: We are finding it difficult to decide between the bearer of the alleged dreams and the wolf... they can both take four points.
GRIZ: (twitches) So no-one gets three points... fine, fine...
MR TASKS: And we don't believe it has the provenance you claim but it does seem an appropriate gift - five points for the chair!
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: (stands up, waves to the audience with both hands, and roars joyously)