Week 10 Story: The Casino

A long hike up and over the Himalaya's was the only thing Chase expected over the next month. He and two of his other friends were trying to get to the other side of the mountain range to lead back the tribe they had recently acquired. Although Chase had no horse's or weapons for these men, he thought they were valuable enough to bring back to their village, Bakbeph, and deal with the missing pieces later.

It was a brutal winter and the men began to struggle on their trip. Chase and his two closest advisors, Carter and Luke, started to have death on their minds. They continued the long trek and began to see the summit of the mountain. On that summit, they saw very bright flashing lights. When they came closer to the lights, they could see the word 'Casino' enlightened in the snowfall. Without question, Chase lead his men into the casino.

He took a seat at one of the blackjack tables, attempting to win some money for him and his two advisors. All of the dealers in the casino were Raksasha's and were very intimidating. The Raksasha's main job was to kill anybody who tries to leave the casino without paying their debts. However, they did not know Chase's intelligent skill at blackjack.

He began to play hand after hand, without winning or losing much money. Chase then started to speculate his trip and realized that without more gold, they had no chance of survival. Chase went all in. He pushed all of his gold onto the table for one hand of blackjack. The dealer then dealt, and Chase had two 9's.

"Split 'em" Chase said confidently.

"You are out of money, I am afraid I cannot do that" replied the Raksasha.

"My advisors and I will give you our horses and our services for life if we lose. Split the cards" Chase demanded.

The Raksasha split the cards. He was showing a 10, so Chase's chances of winning were small. Chase then got dealt a 10 and another 10, giving him 19 on each hand.

Now it was time for the Raksasha to show his hand. He was already showing 10 and he flipped his other card to show his hand. It was an 8, totaling 18.

Chase had won everything. He got double his gold, three horses and also three additional men. Chase and his advisors then left the casino and continued their trip to lead their tribe back to their village.

The End.

Author's Note:
This story thought started when I read about the dice game in week 7. I love going to the casino, so I thought it would be a lot of fun to write about it, and it was. In the reading, Bhima had to sacrifice a horse, and that is where I incorporated the stories. Bhima, who I renamed Chase, went into the casino and gambled all of his gold, horses, and men. In the reading Bhima had to cut off the head of a horse and sacrifice him. Although he did not do that in mine, he still did put himself and everything he had at sacrifice on blackjack.

Bibliography: Mahabharata by R.K. Narayan (Link)

Blackjack: (WikiCommons)

Week 6 Story: Fight for Democracy

Link to story in Portfolio: (Portblogio)

Dave Monett, the King of Kingdom Monett, has been seeing a lady who everybody thinks will be the future Queen. Her name is Nina, and she is obsessed with King Dave. She would do anything to please the King. One day, she receives a note from a messenger pigeon, with the news that King Dave is no longer interested and she can leave the Kingdom immediately or be forcefully removed by soldiers otherwise. She chooses to leave without force, but insist the soldiers to inform King Dave that he will be hearing from her shortly.

[10 years later.]

As the soldiers are preparing their weapons for battle, there are whispers of some unknown rebellion on the other side of the lake at the Kingdom of Dashartha. This causes confusion because the Dashartha family has been in power for thousands of years. Their current leader, King Dashartha has been the most ruthless one of all. It is a total dictatorship, and the civilians are treated as slaves. They either take the role of growing crops for the Kingdom's food, or battle as a soldier to protect. The soldiers of Kingdom Monett seem distracted, and this infuriates King Dave.

"THE NEXT PERSON TO SPEAK OF REBELLION, YOU WILL END UP IN THE BOTTOM OF THE LAKE" shouts King Dave from the top of his bannister. As he finishes his remarks, the Kingdom is washed in silence. From across the lake, everybody stares into the flames of the Kingdom of Dashartha. It is in total destruction. King Dave and his soldiers remain silent for a couple of minutes, until thunderous footsteps appear to be approaching. An army of thousands of soldiers are riding in from the distance. Everybody scrambles for their weapons, and get ready to battle.

The stampede stops at the gate, and only 6 people walk forward. King Dave notices Nina from the top of the castle, and walks out of the Kingdom to approach her and 5 others. It appears to be King Dashartha's four sons, Nina, and another boy. Nina begins to speak, "Dave, meet Brandon...Brandon Monett. He is to be the King after today. Once you are finally gone." King Dave is silenced in shock of his young son. Brandon walks towards his father, with a stare in his eyes. King Dave reaches out to hug him, only to find Brandon gouging a knife into his heart. King Dave drops to the ground.

King Dave did not know that Nina was pregnant when he broke up with her. And now, he is gone. Nina, Brandon, and King Dashartha's four sons overthrew both kingdoms and set a democracy for the people of both kingdoms, and became one united country.

Kingdom of Monett: (Wikipedia) 

Author's Note: I decided to combine two of the readings last week. The first one was about King Dashartha and his four sons. I also read about King Dave breaking up with Nina, and added the twist that she was pregnant with his son. I haven't combined two differnt kingdoms, or even two different families yet, and I thought it would be fun to do so. In the original story, Sita told Rama that she is pregnant, and this is what sparked my idea to change that to Nina for a more epic twist.

Bibliography: Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley (Link)

Research: I learned that Dashartha had three wives, which first made me think that he would not care about one too much. But after reading more about King Dashartha, I realized that he died in the night due to pain and misery of his separation with Rama. I did not include this in my story because I wanted him to seem dominant and feared. In my story he died due to the fire set by Nina and his four sons. (Link to research)

Week 4 Story: The Battle for the King

The Kingdom of Daracus, has been ruled by the Newton family ever since inception. Throughout the years, the family has had no daughters. The road to the throne is to be the first born male in your generation, and your younger brothers will serve as your council. The current King, King Sugriva, has been the most intimidating King yet. He tried to kick all of his brothers except for his closest brother Cam off of his council. One the kingdom would no let him do that, his brothers started dying one by one. The whole kingdom knew that King Sugriva was behind this, but there was no evidence against him.

On a cold winter day when the snow was flying through the sky, the King's only brother and only member of the council died. He was so distraught and was on his knees weeping in front of his people. They saw this as a sign of weakness. They didn't accompany the sad King, and instead went back into their huts. King Sugriva, stayed outside his chambers for hours, crying over his dead brother's body. It was dead quite in the Daracus Castle, but noise started to escalate.

Fire started becoming visible inside the civilians huts. The King did not have the mental capacity at the moment to realize what was going on. Blades were being sharpened, and pitch forks were being brought out of the sheds. "ONE, TWO, GOO!" The people of the Daracus Kingdom sprinted out of their huts towards the vulnerable King. He grasped his two swords, and fought for his family name. King Sugriva was the greatest fighter in the north, and was showing his skills against his own people. He fought off about two dozen, leaving them dead on the ground next to his brother. Then the crowd started to overtake the fight.

The King went down and the people cheered. They no longer had their ruthless King overseeing them. The were free! The Newton family was finally gone, and the Kingdom continued happier than they ever have before.

Kingdom of Daracus: (Good Free Photos)

Author's Note:

I liked the reading about King Sugriva and thought I could make use of his vulnerability when his brother died. I also enjoyed the Battle of Rama and Ravana, so I decided to combine the two. Overthrowing a King is always exciting, especially when its done by the people themselves.

Bibliography: Narayan's Ramayana (Link)

Week 3 Story: The Ten-Headed Curse

Link to full story in project: Portblogio

It was a musky crisp night in the river of the Ayodhya, and everything was quiet. There was no movement, no sounds, no ripples in the water. Moments later, thunderous footsteps are approaching fromm the distance. They move closer and closer and it turns out to be King Dasharatha. He is a dominant ruler with one flaw, he can have no children.

There is an ancient legend about a ten-headed monster who lives in the waters of the Ayodhya, but nobody has ever seen them with their own eyes...or at least made it out alive after seeing him. But this is what brings King Dasharatha to the Ayodhya, because according to the legend, if you survive a bite from the ten-headed monster, it will drastically change your life.

King Dasharatha brought his top soldiers with him to the river, just in case things turn for the worse. There is a total of ten men, searching by the banks and jabbing spears into the water. After days of searching, there is no monster to be found. Doubt begins to spread across the group of men, contemplating whether they should go back home to their families, but King Dasharatha has no family.

As they begin to walk away from King Dasharatha's orders, a head the size of a boulder slashes out of the water and takes a man underneath. Followed by another head, and then simultaneously seven more, taking out all of King Dasharatha's men. He stands there alone, quivering at the site of the ten-headed monster emerging from the water. The monster roars "YOU HAVE DEFIED ME BY BRINGING YOUR MEN...YOU SHALL NOW BE A CURSED KING." The monster bites off King Dasharatha's arm off, and declares that he shall now have twins, a boy and a girl. The King is thinking to himself that this is rather a gift than a curse. The monster than screeches, "THEY WILL SERVE ONE PURPOSE IN THEIR LIFE, TO BUILD AN ARMY OF THEIR OWN AND OVERTHROW YOU AND YOUR KINGDOM." The King begins to beg for mercy and weeps on his knees. The monster doesn't respond to these requests, grabs him by the hair and flings him back to his kingdom.

As the King lands in the courtyard of his castle, he has to explain to his men to prepare for the greatest war they have ever heard.

The End.

Ayodhya River: (Wikipedia)

Author's note:
I read Narayan's Ramayana this week, and it discussed the King and the ten-headed monster. It didn't develop off of the fact that the king couldn't have children so I made it a priority to incorporate that into my story. The ten-headed monster was a really cool character and I wanted to make him a dominant and feared character who serves a main role in my story.

Bibliography: Narayan's Ramayana (Link)

Week 2 Story - The Monkey's Revenge

Once upon a time, monkeys and crocodiles ruled the Amazon River. These were the only two species in the Amazon in this period of time. The crocodiles had control of the water, while the monkeys had the power above. The two kings, Melvin (king of the monkeys) and Gordon (king of the crocodiles) have a known rivalry, but have never came in contact with each other. The crocodiles watch the monkeys swing from branch to branch all day long, and finally Gordon's wife said to the king in confidence "I wish to have that monkey's heart to eat." Gordon was stunned by the ridiculous statement, as they could never get close to the monkeys, but made it his goal for his wife.
 
Gordon devised a plan to get close to Melvin. He crept to the bank of the river, and asked the monkeys permission to see their King Melvin. Gordon claimed to want to make peace between the two animals for ultimate survival in the amazon. The monkeys thought this plan could work, and scheduled a meeting for the next day.

The day of the meeting marks a significant event in the amazon. This is the first time these two kings have came in contact with each other. As Melvin approaches Gordon to begin the meeting, all of the crocodiles pounce to grasp his tail and capture him. "IT'S A TRAP!!" screeched by all of the monkeys. But this was all apart of their plan. As the crocodiles were busy trying to capture Melvin, the monkeys collectively dragged Gordon deep into the trees. Melvin barely escaped the strong clamp of the crocodiles jaws and returned back to the bank of the river. As the crocodiles were distraught about the failure of their plan, they realized their king was gone with no notice.

Gordon ended up being the monkey's dinner for the next year, and they never came close to the river again...at least until they get hungry.

King Melvin versus King Gordon: (Flickr)

Author's Note:
This story is based off of an original "The Crocodile and the Monkey's Heart." In this story the wife wants the monkey's heart, but their plan to get it is to offer a ride across the river. After the money knows it's a trap, he lets the crocodile go back home. When I read this original story, I thought the crocodile deserved a more punishing revenge, so I made him be cooked as dinner in my version.

Bibliography. "The Crocodile and the Monkey's Heart" from Eastern Stories and Legends by Marie L. Shedlock. (Link)