The Fool and the Mondugoo / Pingerwat Strather - A Tribute to JAGS Wonderland and Lewis Carroll

The Fool and the Mondugoo

(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

The Fool wound his faffy gauzy wrap betwixt his little hands
And munched a fennig beetle, going over his demands
His sallow skin was all stove in about his bloody heart
Because he’d aimed his verbal bow and fired an artless dart
At Mindlepoo the Mondugoo, who topped the warrior chart.


At this the bold Mindlepoo had florched him round the nips
And given him a mighty bash and punched him in the lips
The Mondugoo do not take light the insult of the Fool
They are honor bound to stand up proud and make a fibber drool
And so the flumpy Fool was whipped at the beginning of the duel.


He florched him once, and florched him twice, and florched him three times well
And all those gathered round the fight saw those nips begin to swell
Unfortunately nothing could be done about the rancid smell
Mindlepoo the Mondugoo was named victrix champeen
He took the proceeds of his win and went to buy some beans.


He chose a fumpy camping site and began to celebrate
He knew that this, his victory, would always mark the date
For years to come, December sixth nineteen and twenty eight
Would be recalled with joy and pride by all the Mondugoo
They’d feast and shout and eat and love, and dance their Vrindle-Voo


None can dance like the Mondugoo, or so the saying goes
They’ve extra muscles in their butts and ballast in their toes
In fact the mumpo martial stance is how they best most foes
So they dance their dance and feast their feast and then lay back to doze
While remembering bold Mindlepoo, and forgetting all their woes.

One of Carroll's original illustrations for the books.  I believe this is the mock Turtle and the Gryphon

If a little song appears in your head when you read this poem, so much the better.

I recently heard about JAGS Wonderland and decided to have a look.  I think Jabberwocky was probably one of the first poems I really enjoyed (along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Eagle).  I've also always been fascinated with the sound of words, and often part of my creative process involves making up words, often with lots of fricatives and plosives, and saying them out loud.  It somehow relieves stress for me - I have wondered if I have an undiagnosed and very mild case of Tourette's or something.  At any rate, it definitely comes from a place that is pre-socialization, and because of that, I very rarely share any of those sounds with anyone - I have a feeling most people wouldn't know what to make of it and would think it was childish or foolish, babble and nonsense.

But I think there is a place for nonsense, and I would like to make a place for it in my games from time to time.  Enter JAGS Wonderland.  The idea here is that just below the surface there are different "chessboards," and as you go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, you pass through different layers - starting in our physical world, and then passing through layers that are cosmological, metaphysical, philosophical, and metaphorical as you go deeper, eventually winding up in a place where the laws of literature and drama determine reality rather than the laws of physics.

But just like the books themselves, there's an undertone there that's really quite frightening.

Another of Carroll's original illustrations

Wonderland is initially presented as a potentially transmissible mental disease, almost like a contagious schizophrenia - when you have an "episode" as a character, you might suddenly be able to walk in to the mirror in the closet, or watch as the graffiti on an abandoned factory comes to life and scurries inside.  Do you want to follow it?  As you get deeper in, you might realize that it's really a predatory dimension trying to infect our own.  This knowledge of the unnatural - what most reasonable people assume are hallucinations at least at first - comes complete with self-help groups that don't help, mental health facilities that are really snake-pits where your worst fears are realized after being involuntarily committed, and of course, government and corporate conspiracies.  Because, you see, Wonderland makes the impossible possible, and what government or corporation wouldn't kill to have that kind of power?  So yes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  But also, Delta Green.  It's a really compelling mix of moods and ideas.

I would love to play this at some point, but I am honestly also a little scared I might not do it justice.  It would also need players that were going in nearly blind.  But who knows?

Of course, I couldn't leave this one out.  by John Tenniel

One of these days, perhaps I'll see how all my nonsense connects and find that suddenly, I can step right through the mirror in the bedroom....

Pingerwatt Strather

Fernhapper mumpulous bernadan dree,
Harpofuff droomalot mernhauser bee
Fortkrimble muffing stuvs plampulous blee.
Vuckreener jorpulent plithington pree.

Jergmorton thoppingful meetgorbler bun
Jagwali iffingham murtleston krun.
Joopulous wagwallets, fortling fon verp,
Zagwalber blagmallets, zorbwiller merp!

Blodapop zodalmink vumpkrabbit wink?
Prugler von valleywoppits, musfingler dink.
Buffington vrootfinder ubby krun blort
Hoogler vaff gamblebracks, murbling blun hort!