father applauded the Duke’s industriousness in keeping a journal. No doubt he felt differently when he discovered himself, a little too late, on: “Note to self: Above a battlement, on a wall, on a spike, the bloody head of my father.” See also: Gray Tribes, The; Saltwater Buzzard.
MANDIBLE, RICHARD. One of Ambergris’ foremost early economists and social scientists. Unfortunately, Richard’s respectable reputation has been eclipsed by his brother Roger’s artwork, which was at the center of the New Art’s Great Earwax Scandal, as some wags have called it. Roger, it turned out, procured earwax from the lithesome ears of his sleeping lovers and mixed it into his paint; thus the marvelous amber tint to the sunsets on display at the Gallery of Hidden Fascinations. When the source of the amber tint was discovered, Roger suffered little career damage, but staid Richard, scandalized, never fully recovered from the incident. See also:
MANZIISM. The rat-worshipping heretic religion inadvertently founded by Manzikert I near the end of his life. This cult has had little or no influence on history while inexplicably continuing to thrive, at least in Ambergris. Nothing sticks in the throats of Truffidian priests in the Religious Quarter more than the sight of rat bishops, rat clerics, and just plain old rat-bastards paraded down the street during the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, a-glitter in their specially-made robes and silver crowns. See also:
MANZIKERT VI. Death by bliss. In all fairness to the sixth Manzikert’s moral fiber, he never really wanted to be Cappan of Ambergris. He was only too happy to retire to a monastery, especially a Manziist monastery. In those days, the only difference between a Manziist monastery and a brothel was that the latter attracted more priests. See also:
MANZIKERT VII. Death by an extreme miscalculation while flossing. Of his actual reign, the less said the better. See also:
MANZIKERT VIII. Death by tire tread. An expert at staging extravaganzas, Manzikert VIII had no notable political or military victories during his reign. He has the dubious distinction of being the first historical personage to be killed by a very early form of steam-powered motored vehicle (during the Festival). An entire line of motored vehicles was later named The Manzikert. See also: Manziism;
MANZIKERT MEMORIAL LIBRARY. Oddly enough, the ineffectual Manzikert III established the Manzikert Memorial Library. He established the library to house his ever-expanding collection of recipes and cookbooks. Since that time, the library has grown to include a healthy selection of fiction, secret documents, and erotica. The position of chief librarian has often been a political as well as administrative position, as when, during the conflict of the Reds and the Greens, the library became a repository for Voss Bender sheet music. Built in the same location as the gray caps’ original “library,” the Manzikert Memorial Library has experienced some of the strangest fungal outbreaks in Ambergris’ history. See also:
MAP, BRANDON. An unfortunate splotch.
MARTIGAN, RED. Leader of a doomed underground expedition against the gray caps. This victim of his own curiosity would otherwise have passed out of history altogether. Instead, due to his overwhelming stupidity, Ambergris remembers him as being somehow larger-than-life. He is frequently an inhabitant of horror and ghost stories — in a sense, more substantial in memory than in the flesh. See also:
MASOUF. The general who finally defeated Stretcher Jones and personally slew the great rebel leader.
He is said to have wept over the body of his adversary. After so many years of battling Stretcher Jones, Masouf was distraught to have finally destroyed the only man who had been his equal in military skill and tactics. In his journal entry that fateful day, Masouf wrote, “As I stared into that pale, bloodied face, as I cupped his head with my hands as he breathed his last, I felt as if I were staring into my own face, into an ill-fated reflection, and as the life flickered out of his eyes, so too the life briefly seemed to have left me as well.” Masouf relieved himself of his own command three days later, and after an unsuccessful suicide attempt left his wife and children and spent the next 20 years as a recluse in the self-imposed solitude of Zamilon. He would eventually take up Stretcher Jones’ struggle and for a brief time liberated the Kalif’s western-most vassals from servitude, before being defeated by a general more brilliant than even he.
Masouf died when his horse, spooked by a rabbit, threw him as he fled the battlefield. See also:
MIDNIGHT FOR MUNFROE. The first volume in Maxwell Glaring’s series of novels detailing the adversarial relationship between the anti-hero Munfroe and the criminally-insane Krotch. Voss Bender once considered writing an opera based on this book, but abandoned the idea after reading the complete series. Bender’s purported reason? “There is too much Krotch in the world already.” The book first appeared as a serial in Dreadful Tales, which may explain the staccato “voice” of the book — its high number of cliff hangers and near-escapes. Glaring found the story’s success inexplicable and, vowing never again to write a Munfroe-Krotch story, proceeded to churn out a large number of them. See also:
MIKAL, DRAY. Randomly chosen to be the Petularch by a ceremonial bull, as is still the custom. Let loose by the Priests of the Seven-Edged Star, the ceremonial bull was allowed to roam free until it had chosen a Petularch. The selection process consisted of any “sign” from the bull deemed suffi ciently conclusive by the priests. Although the “sign” from the bull in this case has been lost in the garbage heap of unimportant facts, it is known that Mikal was a fruit-on-a-stick vendor before his Ascension. He had immigrated to Ambergris from a small city north of Morrow called Skaal. Luckily, the position of Petularch has been largely irrelevant ever since the overthrow of the Church of the Seven-Edged Star several centuries ago. See also:
MONSTER, THE. Depending on the context, either a huge sewer ball or a huge ball of fungus. See also:
MOONRAT. A pure white rat, about the size of a terrier, that gathers at midnight to drink from tributaries of the River Moth. It feeds on honeysuckle nectar and fungi (to which latter food is attributed the fact that some moonrats glow an intense green in the dead of night). Sacred to the Nimblytod Tribes, the moonrat is also of some significance to Manziists, who every year make the dangerous pilgrimage to the southern rainforests to observe the moonrat in its natural habitat. The moonrat’s mating call is sonorous and deep, akin to the sound that emanates from the long horns used by the monks of Zamilon. The symphony created by the moonrat in concert with the Nimblytod’s mouth-music is said to rival even Voss Bender for its odd mixture of vulnerability and strength. See also:
MORHAIMMUSEUM. A repository over the years of many strange and eccentric treasures, from first editions of Vivian Price Rogers’ Torture Squid books to gray cap knives. Thomas Daffed’s priceless five-thousand specimen collection may be theMorhaimMuseum ’s crowning glory. The Morhaim family has remained sharply a-political throughout the years and thereby gained the confidence of many influential figures in Ambergris. See also: Daffed
MORROW RELIGIOUS INSTITUTE. Although Ambergris is the city of religions, Morrow is the city of religious studies. As Morrow is in all ways removed from the lustful thrust of real life, so too is it removed from its spiritual heart to the extent that it holds its faith at arm’s length, the better to examine faith’s anatomy. The Morrow Religious Institute is the most famously able at this dissection process. However, despite producing some famous religious figures and teachers, a disturbing number of its graduates, once exposed to religion-in-the-raw, have either “gone native” or succumbed to the pleasures of this too mortal flesh. Formerly theInstituteofReligiousity. See also:
MUNFROE. The ever-weary anti-hero of Maxwell Glaring’s Krotch and Munfroe series, Munfroe is a protean sort whose past changes from book to book. First the son of humble farmers who travels to the city to become an accountant, Munfroe later becomes the son of accountants who travels to the country to become a humble farmer. Other incarnations include parents who serve stints in the circus, the army, as doctors, and as carpenters, variously. Only one thing is for sure: Munfroe had parents. See also:
