It was oh so long ago, that it is nearly lost in the mists of time. Be this account known as part of the legend of Sir Kaus Eisenhand, Tanis of the Principality of Gleann Abhann.

As best as I can recall, this was in either February or March of 1997. I had been relocated into the Shire of Lagerdamm for a few months then, and was the only authorized fighter that we had at the time. Kaus was coming over to help with the couple of new fighters that I was working with, plus it gave him an extra day of practice during the week.

Now, at that time, he was training pretty hard to be ready for the Spring Crown List and was working pretty intensely to be ready. After one of the practices when he was loading his gear to head back to Little Rock, we got to talking...

I'm not sure exactly how the conversation went, but at one point, I said to him that "I had heard that he was an odds on favorite to win Crown List next time around."

His reply to this remark was: "Yeah, when blue monkeys fly out my ass!" Now that was the wrong sort of remark to make around me.

Admittedly, he didn't know me that well, so he had no idea that remarks made like that in jest would be remembered and made especial notice of. At the time, a big yellow sticky note was written on in big red letters and stuck inside my head.

He clearly forgot about it and I just let it go, but over the next couple of weeks, I made sure that several people heard about the remark, especially Susana. I just made sure that enough people knew about what he had said and they started to spread the story for me.

Now we were planning on having blue monkeys ready for when he fought in Crown the next time so that we could throw them at him if he won. I was thinking about involving Kane (who would be on the field observing as a member of the Chivalry) who could be primed with the line of "Look! It flew out of his ass!" when he won the final bought of the List. But I was convinced that it would be in poor taste to do something like that this early in the Principality's history, so it didn't quite happen when he won the Coronet List this time.

While Coronet List is not Crown List, Evensong Forest did indeed present the new Tanist with a winged blue monkey at court; upon seeing this His Excellency began laughing most heartily and may have begun turning blue himself.