Whither the Jarthen Foundation?

Whither the Jarthen Foundation?

Questions of competence and direction assail the tottering mega-conglomerate.

By Pavel Hammelfrond -- Special to Global Post
Published Oct. 29, 2009

The Great Recession has shaken the foundations of world capitalism to an extent not seen since the 1930's, sparing none, not even such pillars of the economy as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Oscar Mayer, and countless others. Now it seems the Jarthen Foundation itself can be added to the growing list of suffering firms.

Once believed recession-proof, and certainly worthy of too-big-to-fail status, the venerable Jarthen Foundation has suffered a 47% drop in its share price since a peak last spring of $127.43 on the Stoke-on-Trent Mercantile Exchange, the only market at which the stock is available. Since its debut on the city's modest exchange in 1894, the Jarthen Foundation's stock has held the honor of being the most widely traded and expensive commodity. However, after the prolonged exsanguination of its trading value, the Jarthen Foundation lost its place at the top of the STME heap to the likes of Northumber Fish Products, a regional powerhouse in the distribution of sardines and slurry, but an opponent that undoubtedly left Mr. Seid humbled.

Any number of external factors have contributed to the corporation's recent decline -- the ongoing economic crisis, historic shifts in the adult entertainment industry, the influx of opiates from Afghanistan, and a shrinking global arms market to name just a few -- but most people place the blame squarely on the broad shoulders of the Foundations eccentric chairman, Jon 'Nigel' Seid. Aside from traipsing about the world on a private zeppelin in unspeakable luxury, the occasional and invariably highly-publicized gaffe, and a salary that would make Steve Jobs envious, it's difficult to say what exactly Mr. Seid contributes to the embattled concern.

Indeed, it seems a proposition so self-evident as to be unworthy of contest that, if anything, Mr. Seid has done grave injury to his firm's interests. His impulsive and ultimately disastrous decision to sink millions of dollars into the commercial transport and sale of arctic ice, his ill-fated search for the city of Atlantis, and his widely suspected forays into cloning and genetic manipulation are just a few of the ill-conceived ventures that have seriously depleted the Foundation's dwindling cash reserves.

However, some commentators have asserted that Mr. Seid's unorthodox approach to corporate management is more successful than his critics suggest. Harold Blume of the Global Strategic Initiative says: "Although Seid's actions frequently seem to defy the traditional axioms of business, and the man betrays a complete ignorance of such basic concepts as profit margin and wage controls, it cannot be denied that he has managed to elevate his firm to a position of power in the world rivaled perhaps only by its most powerful nations."

This interpretation has been adopted and taken to even greater lengths by conspiracy theorists, some of whom claim that the Jarthen Foundation is essentially omnipotent. "They're everywhere, seriously I wouldn't mess with them if I were you,"an anonymous source warned during the composition of this article. "I'm not paranoid or anything , it's just, well, if I've learned one thing in life it's that Wu-Tang Clan and the Jarthen Foundation ain't nothin' to fuck wit'."

Such an extreme viewpoint is certainly composed more of fancy than reality, but it does speak to one essential truth; the Jarthen Foundation remains highly influential in spite of its recent financial woes. Mr. Seid's personal phone number is apparently 3rd on the President's speed dial behind the Joint Chiefs and his bookie, and the invitations for personal appearances continue to pour in despite Mr. Seid's frequent absences from the public view. However, such hysteria tend to ignore the fact that Jon 'Nigel' Seid and the Jarthen Foundation are not one in the same. Hopefully, the Foundation's board of governors will realize this and cut Mr. Seid loose before the two are inseparably bound together in the mind of a disillusioned public.

One down, two to go

So, as of Monday (when we posted the epilogue, which you can read here if you haven't already) we're done posting Book 1. Can you believe it? Isn't that crazy? It took us almost 2 years to the day to get it all up here. End of an era, if you ask me.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Oh, no no. Stay tuned, because we're already working on Book 2 and should have some awesome new chapters to stick up here in a couple of months or so. But we're not going to leave you high and dry. We'd never do that, ever, ever. We have a couple of things planned in the interim: a weird comic/manga think spawned by a dream I had ages ago is in the works along with the memoirs of one Atelon Scrudton to tide you over.

Also, we have an announcement.

Are you ready? Better sit down.

THE REWRITES OF BOOK 1 ARE ALSO DONE!! (and if you'd like to read the second version and/or provide feedback, please leave a comment and it will be emailed to you pronto).

Yeah. It was a long, hard process, but it's over. That puppy has been rewritten frontwards and backwards. We razed it to the ground and pulled it back up again single-handed! Like a PHOENIX!

Seriously, though, virtually nothing of what has been posted actually made the final cut. The original version (which you have been reading) clocks in at about 270 pages, single-spaced. The rewrite is a much more svelte 166 pages. Oh, you read that right -- we managed to chop out a full 100 pages. Sadly, this means that the prologue (SO IT BEGINS!!) no longer exists in a recognizable form in this draft. But it will always exist in our hearts.

In case you're not going to get the new, improved version of the book (and I do believe it's improved), I'll lay out the major changes here for you since the first draft of Book 2 will be based on this version and not what you've seen thus far. The action and plot by and large is the same, but character names are different and we do want you to know who we're talking about and that it is in fact that one dude from that chapter back in the day. Peruse the following comprehensive list at your leisure:

Really Major Changes
1) Hands down, the biggest change we made (and this is somewhat blasphemous, considering the title of the blog and all. Which I don't think we're changing) is demoting Jarthen Furblog, boy wonder, to a supporting character. The main protagonist on the rebel side of things is now (and I think always was) Rethnaki. Because unlike Jarthen, he actually...you know...did stuff. So Jarthen's still around and there's still a prophecy about him, but Book 1 is now much more Rethnaki-centric.

2) Ok, this one's really more of a cosmetic change, but it's still a pretty major thing. I actually mulled this one over on my blog and Jon hemmed and hawed for a good week or so before we committed to it. So here it is: Glothnafar is no longer a centaur. He is now a reformed pirate named Na-Fra. Essentially, he's still the same guy. Jon originally envisioned him as a big, angry black dude with the lower body of a horse who was kind of mystical. Now, he's a big, angry black dude with the lower body that matches his upper body and some cool tattoos on his neck who is kind of mystical. He's still a seer, he still hates Jarthen (but now, just on principal. There's no star-crossed lovers and her-father-shot-her-down-in-front-of-me explanation. Dude just has a beef with Elothninians for political reasons), and he still dies to save him because of the prophecy (although now it's due to, like, half a quiver of regular arrows and not just a single poisoned one). We did this because I can't write a centaur to save my life -- seriously, trying to figure out what the bottom half of his body was doing was just driving me up a damn wall -- and because we have actually had plans involving pirates all along. For real.

3) Our boys are all grown up. Bertronius and Jarthen are now lithe young men of sixteen-seventeenish, not twelve. We did this because it was easier to get them involved in the actual doing of things if they were past puberty. And this way, Bert could just volunteer for the army instead of running away in the dead of night and then somehow tricking his way in.

Things We Took Out
1) The Rebel Army is really just a hell of a lot of red elves, a few blue ones, and a handful of reformed pirates led by the man-formerly-known-as-Glothnafar. Centaurs, gnomes, and ogres are no longer a part of the Border Wars. Centaurs may be involved a little later, and do exist, but tend to hang around in the way back reaches of the forest, mercifully tucked out of sight.

2) That said, Zartheim, that lovable giant with his odd clean-shaven face, has been cut. He's probably off farming huge goats somewhere and living a peaceful life.

3) The rebels' jaunt through the Brovnajian Steppes and their face off with a dull-witted giant who mistakes them for sprites is also gone. They still go through the steppes, but nothing worth writing about happens there.

4) Dwarves, as a race, have been entirely cut out of the fabric of the Jarthenverse. They just aren't there. They just ran underfoot and got in the way, so it's no great loss. (I actually rallied to get rid of centaurs and felintarks, too, and make satyrs a little less goat-like, but I got overruled, so they're all still around and kicking it with hooves just like before).

5) Bertronius and co. move straight from the front to Susselfen. They no longer have adventures such as the bartender-what-has-his-eye-on-you setting sprites on them in the middle of the woods. As a result, Ol' Bess Crabblenathy and Clara the Donkey have been cut. BUT, they may be ressurected in the form of Lem and Nel stories at a later date.

6) McNab no longer hires a maybe-assassin to send Bertronius on a wild goose chase with the old ladies of the Sisters of Benevolence. But this, too, may come back to haunt you in the form of Lem and Nel stories.

7) When the rebels are in the City of Mages, Jellihondor no longer confesses to them what the deal really is and tells them that the ones who want to go back to the front can/should. Honestly, the only reason we did this to start with was because we had way too many characters and needed to get rid of half of them, so we just sort of wrote them out in the clumsiest way possible. We were young, we didn't know then what we know now. Anyway, now we know who's important at the end of the book and just used those characters and wrote them in good and early. So, no one bails.

8) The dialects are pared down to the bare essentials and are therefore readable.

9) The Old Man is no more. It hurt to get rid of him, it really did. I loved him like a brother. But in this brave new Jarthen incarnation, he went the way of the dodo. Mages still exist and still don't have friends, though.

10) That whole section from Queen Lilhelndine's perspective where she gets all emo and hangs with Ekval, her Norsan advisor, was dropped. Stay tuned, though, because Ekval's a major player in Book 2. Seriously, I love him. He's kind of my hero.

11) Many of the gratuitous pipeherb smoking scenes have been replaced by substantially more relevant pipeherb smoking scenes.

12) We've eradicated the cheesy cliched chapter titles and informative footnotes because neither fits with the tone any more. I'll really miss the footnotes. I'll not miss the chapter titles all that much.

Brand-Spankin' New Things
1) Overall, the pacing and consistency of storylines is much, much better. Things are set up in the first few chapters (ex: Vathorem's a multi-talented, sort of odd dude) that play out over the course of the entire book AND go one to set up the things we're planning in Book 2. I'm very, very proud of this. Characters that will be important in the next book (Ekval, Valiyon, I'm looking at you) are name-dropped.

2) There is more sex. Not like graphic porny sex, but it happens and it's consensual and folks are all of age now. Rethnaki does it with the elf-formerly-known-as-Citrene and the-elf-formerly-known-as-Elcrona and the Madame of the Blushing Loaf. Bertronius and Arna frolic a little (she's been aged down so it's less Mrs. Robinson). Jarthen and Leila probably do it. We don't actually see it, but there's a lot of flirting and sometimes he's not in his tent at night. Moshel and Sellior also probably do it, but again, discreetly off to the side of the camera (as it were). Vathorem has an alluded to preference for blue fellows. And there's a couple of others I'm sure are doing it but I'm not allowed to talk about.

3) The rebels suffer a lot more. There's a general sense of unease and mistrust of Jellihondor (especially after he drags them to Norsa and almost gets them killed during the duel with Svava -- which still happens, albeit differently and more awesomely. Wolves are involved now.), morale gets really low after they fight with the evil Dark Lands beasties, and the Dark Lands really suck for elves and make them all extra cranky. And in the Dark Lands, a red shirt gets horribly maimed and Rethnaki has to put her down, which is rather traumatizing for him.

4) The blue elf who leads them to the gate actually becomes a character. And he no longer inexplicably speaks Common. He and Vathorem have a storyline (that does not involve any sex, just lots of persuasion and defection and learning).

5) Jellihondor is no longer in the City of Mages for diplomatic reasons. He still makes a speech, but it's a recruitment speech (with lots of nifty facts about how the war started).

6) The get-to-know-you smoke-a-thon Jellihondor suggests after meeting the caravaners is actually played out.

7) The story of the gate Moshel hacks into is told, but is essentially the same as part of this Jarthenpedia post (which was awfully convenient for me when I was rewriting it).

8) Bertronius steals a quiver from the rebels now, not a gnome sword. Or any kind of sword. Because the elves are archers, by and large, so that would be the most plentiful type of weapon around to steal. Jon really, really wanted to keep it a sword for reasons that are not clear to me even now, but I won that fight. So, now it's a quiver.

9) The awesome Eye of the Tiger-style spy training montage has been replaced with a rather nasty interogation sequence. Because, really, they wouldn't be holding class out on the front lines anymore than they would be accepting a twelve year old into the spy corps to begin with.

10) Bertronius is a go-getter! He gambles (a lot, actually) and tracks Ractor through the seedy underbelly of Susselfen and he manages to break into a rebel bar undercover. Go, you sneaky red-haired little guy, go!

11) Our major plothole -- that McNab gives Rethnaki attack plans that were never actually drawn up -- is now addressed. Pearson becomes his sort of rival, pushing for more investigations of the rebels lurking around Susselfen, and much spy bitchiness ensues. We imagine Pearson, by the way, to be a sort of diabolical lovechild of Ambrose Bearce and Arthur Jones (oh, if only such a union were possible).

12) Lem and Nel actually go around incompetently investigating things rather than just talking about it. This includes them following Rethnaki around the streets and just believing him when he tells them he's not a rebel. Gullible little fellas.

The Great Renaming of 2009
Over the course of things, we developed some consistent naming schemes, got a better handle on the phonemes of various languages, and took the opportunity to make some of our previously shitty names better. If it's not on this list, the name's the same as it always was. These are the names we'll be using until further notice:

• As previously mentioned, Glothnafar = Na-Fra

• Elcrona = Adahna (because Elcrona made me think of withered old ladies, which was not what we were going for with her. Or really anyone but Ol' Bess Crabblenathy.)

• Helkint = Parlandor (because Parlandor actual fits the other Athenorkos names and Helkint sucks as a name anyway)

• Citrene = Fennella (again, fits the naming scheme. And now I don't think of oranges when I write about her. Shit, now I'm thinking of fennel. I'll settle for fennel.)

• Oertimis = Liadani (this character, also known as the red shirt that dies in the battle with the evil desert beasties, is also now a girl. Because we needed more ladies in this sausage fest.)

• Sveren = Pekka (naming scheme change)

• the nybbas = the rahksa (slightly less lame sounding, same evil desert beasties)

• Jellihondor's code name is now the Cardinal (because it's a red bird! get it??) and Atelon Scrudton's code name is now the Stork (because he's...storklike, I guess)

Alright. That brings you up to speed, I think. Woo! Book 1 is in the can, on to Book 2!

Very Exciting Jarth-tastic Updates!

Despite the recent lack of posts or podcasts of late, we here at the Jarthen Foundation and the Worthis Trust wanted to let you loyal readers know that we are busy as beavers - silent, stealthy ninja-like beavers, but beavers nonetheless. Unbeknownst to you, the following has occurred:

1. The blog itself has been retooled quite a bit. If you're the type that only peruses our lovely emails, you may want to pop over and take a gander at the new background (which has been switched to reflect out lithe young hero's move from the Dark Lands to the grand foggy city of Susselfen). The sidebar has also been cleaned up and improved - and you may or may not have a shout out.
2. We have officially finished Book I - all of it. Every single page, right up through the prologue. That's right, starting next week, we'll begin doling out the last third of it in delicious, savory little chunks, but we aren't writing as we go. It's all in the can, as it were, which brings me to my next point...
3. We are totally editing and revising the first book AS I TYPE THIS. Rewrites will commence soon, and then we will likely send out a call for a fresh set of eyes to read the polished version of Book I before we start planning and writing Book 2 in earnest.
4. On a final, and mostly unrelated note, some of you may be excited to learn that a good deal of extra-Jarthen spin-off type writings have occurred of late (some short stories, a set of novellas and an additional novel are all done). They are tangentially related to the epic story you've come to know and love and may or may not be published on the blog. So keep an eye out for those.

As always, we like feedback and cookies, feel free to give us either. And as for the podcast, well, that's under Jon Nigel Seid's purview and I make no promises about it. Send him homing pigeons or something if you have questions about that.

-Melissa

The Tale in a Nutshel: Part II

Book I: Part 1

So far in Book I: Part 2...

Jarthen and friends went through the Vinkenti gate....

...and are headed to the City of Mages...

...where they hook up with odd travelers to take them through the mysterious Dark Lands...

...where they battled the nefarious nybbas! A battle which cost poor Tlin his life.

Jellihondor's company is lead through yet another magickal gate (this one, though, is a feat of astounding clockworks)...


...and soon after, Jarthen bids a fond farewell to his first love, Leila the Inalan girl, and heads to Susselfen with Rethnaki and Elcrona to spy on the Imperial Army.

Meanwhile...
While in Perejin, Bertronius, Nelhoepher, and Lem follow a lead from a shady bartender...



...the pressures of spydom weigh heavily on McNab.



The stealthy quartet are then transferred to Susselfen....


...where Bertronius continues his search for the nefarious Larthon Ractor!


But, alas, he makes little progress. Instead, he stumbles on the movements of a small group of rebels on their way to the city by way of a drunken elf!

"Jarthen Foundation Keeps Mum About Missing President"

"Jarthen Foundation Keeps Mum About Missing President"
The New York Times
January 23, 2009

VIENNA -- The world's most influential mega-corporation, the Jarthen Foundation, has continued to deny rumors that its eccentric president, Jon 'Nigel' Seid, has been missing for as long as the last four months.

Seid, whose flamboyant personality and often outlandishly offensive remarks have landed the billionaire in conflicts with such disparate individuals as dictator Mummar Khadafi and physicist Stephen Hawking, has not appeared in public since a brief encounter with reporters after disembarking from his company zeppelin in August 2008. At that time the usually well-coifed dandy-come-president appeared haggard and agitated, his ascot askew and shirt tails conspiculously untucked. Additionally, Mr. Seid behaved more erratically than usual at this appearance, lashing out at reporters who asked him questions with a wild-eyed vitriol that left Wolf Blitzer in tears.

Since the August encounter, Seid has not produced any video messages, attended press conferences, or written public memos, with the exception of a holiday letter at the end of 2008. However, some observers of the mysterious Jarthen Foundation have asserted that this most recent publication may in fact be a forgery released by the corporation in an attempt to maintain some semblance of normalcy. Although the general tone and rambling prose are in keeping with Seid's previous communications, there was a suspiciously outdated reference to a 'baseball team in Montreal.'

A number of explanations have been posited for Mr. Seid's unusually long period of silence, ranging from the benignly mundane to the unbelievably malevolent. Some sources close to members of the secretive Seid family have hinted that the president might have suffered a relapse in his widely rumored addiction to methamphetamine.¹ Some leading members of the CIA who spoke on the condition of anonymity speculate that Seid has either been kidnapped or assassinated by the FARC rebels in Columbia, after the president's failed attempt to collude with them in the overthrow of the current government of Alvaro Uribe.

In the face of the mounting speculation surrounding Mr. Seid, the Jarthen Foundation has sought to evince calm and continuity in its actions. The foundation has released several statements claiming that the president has been dutifully working from a secluded location that he wishes to keep undisclosed out of a desire to "avoid the maddening throngs of reporters that plague him at every turn."²

Despite the Jarthen Foundation's best efforts to soldier on, it is clear that without some appearance by the president the public will continue to lose faith in the company, ultimately throwing its long term viability into question.

¹It is generally believed, in spite of protestations from the president and his associates to the contrary, that Mr. Seid spent 6 months of 1999 hunkered down in a secret bunker in the Yukon in a near constant state of speed induced psychosis, maniacally preparing for the Y2K apocalypse.

²Jarthen Foundation Press Release #42856, 10/15/2008.

Two Notes on Upcoming Posts

Before we post the final installment of Chapter 12: The Road to Hate is Paved with Love, which should be posted within the next 48 hours (mark your calendars!),I would like to bring your attention to two changes we will be making in the posting of the story:

1) Research at the Worthis Trust has shown that collections of illustrations which are cohesive in style in tone would greatly benefit the comprehension and retention of the more important messages embedded in The Tale of Jarthen. To this end, I am overseeing some Korean animators my minions brought in to sketch some things for us to use.

2) Interns pilot-testing the Jarthen delivery system have suggested that linking the story itself to the Jarthenpedia would encourage more exploartion of this vast and impressive resevoir of Jarthenalia. Readers should expect such links in future posts, and we here at the Worthis Trust expect the readers to use them.

Very best regards,

Madame Chairwoman Melissa Sanders

Jarth-tastic New Year's Resolutions

Dear faithful readers,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! As part of my self-imposed holiday hermitage, I engage in a good deal of Jarthen writing and reflection around this time of the year, and thought (perhaps) that some of those musings are worth sharing.

First, the history of this epic story. As many of you are aware, The Tale of Jarthen began as a Jon's winter term project at Oberlin during his freshman year (2003). He read a bunch of fantasy novels - most notably The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wizard of Oz - and proceeded to regurgitate an oddly compelling mix of off-kilter narration, convoluted syntax, and plagiarized concepts in the form of a 6-page document which then languished in his desk drawer for 2 years before he revealed its existence to Van and myself.

We took the original story, used it as starting point, and have been working on it various degrees of seriousness ever since. Over the last 6 years (a shockingly long time to me, quite literally a quarter of my lifespan) Jon and I have forced just about everyone we know to endure dramatic readings of the prologue, and generally natter on about it as if it actually matters to anyone.

Since we moved ot Michigan, though, we've really started to write the story in earnest. Now, there are hand-drawn maps, a large bulletin board in our living room full of plot outlines for the entire story, and an accompanying compendium of knowledge we use to more fully flesh out the Jarthen-verse and keep our writing internally consistent. We have published nearly 12 chapters totalling roughly 160 pages on this blog, and we have a good 40 or so pages more currently in the editing process. We are getting dangerously close to end of Book I.

Crazy right? But there's still a lot of work to do yet. Recently, I went through the blog and compiled a manuscript of the story using the published material (because, you know, that's literally the kind of thing I do for fun) and noticed some issues with it. So, here are my Jarthen-related New Year's resolutions:

1. Finish Book 1! WOO! We can so do this. But there's a second, much trickier task: name Book I. Any and all suggestions are considered helpful and greatly appreciated.
   
2. Yeah, so, rereading the entire book I noticed that we don't really ever go into what people look like, beside Jarthen himself being blond and skinny or Rethnaki being generically 'handsome' in some unexplained ways, do we? I mean, do you even know what color Jarthen's eyes are? I don't, and that probably shouldn't be the case. Expect more detailed physical descriptions of the characters in upcoming chapters. Better late than never, I guess.
3. Along with that, some sort of better indication of the passage of time should probably be worked out. I mean, what season is it now? How many months have passed since Jarthen and co. were hanging out in the City of Mages? I know the answers, but probably not because they're clearly elucidated in the text.
4. I hope you can't tell this from what weve posted here, but the first drafts of my sections often reads more like a script than a novel: some brief description of the set, then a lot of unadorned dialogue to move the plot along and some vague stage directions. There's no real narrator or any internal monologues until Jon gets ahold of it.
   
5. Honestly? I can't write Jarthen himself to save my life. He's just so....blank. I'm always at a loss as to how to use him in scenes because he just goes along with everything in that slightly confused way of his. I'm hoping that the events at the close of the first book and through the second half of the second book (cause yeah, we know where we're going with that) will give him more character and a bit more personality.

So that's what I'm going to work on. Jon likely has things he's planning to improve, but he hasn't discussed them with me, and god knows if he'll post them here. He's a man moved on whims and not exactly prone to making lists. And besides, he's got less to work on than I do in this respect anyway.

Wishing you dreams as lovely as the color of Jarthen's as-yet uknown eyes,

Melissa

A Plea for Patience!

Fear not, dear reader, new and exciting installments of The Tale of Jarthen are on the way! We would supply them to you now (pumping them directly into your veins, as we know you beg for in your darker moments, were it feasible), but unfortunately we've both been struck down by some terrible flu-like thing we picked up in the Lone Star State. You know what they say, everything's bigger in Texas, and let me tell you these are some big ass germs. The size of cats! Please bear with us until we beat them senseless with brooms and such and take a moment to recover.

Very best regards,

Melissa and Jon