You've got me dead to certain rights

[sovay]

I have been out-Munchausened by the BBC News:

Colonel Blashford-Snell first encountered a Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound called Bella in 2005 when he was carrying out reconnaissance for this year's expedition in the area near Ojaki.

He said: "While we were there, sitting by the fire one night, I saw an extraordinary-looking dog that appeared to have two noses.

"I was sober at the time, and then I remembered the story that the legendary explorer Colonel Percy Fawcett came back with in 1913 of seeing such strange dogs in the Amazon jungle."

Real life. Wins every time . . .

(To the questions of schreibergasse and setsuled, however, I must reply in all honesty that if I had possessed one quarter of the forethought attributed to me in the popular versions of these tales, I should never have attempted my audience with the lovely, if deluded, Alexia of Trebizond—for how else was I to know that south of the Black Sea, the particular cheese I sought, elsewhere mentioned only in reverent artisanal whispers, was considered such poor and common fare that far from being served alongside the fine wines of the royal cellar, the knowledge of its making was current only among peasants and brigands?)

Comments

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

I have been out-Munchausened by the BBC News:

Wow. No, be honest--your tale is much stranger. But that dog's amazing. His eyes are beautiful, if snooty. It's a sad snooty, though.

Colonel Blashford-Snell

Now that's a name.

if I had possessed one quarter of the forethought attributed to me in the popular versions of these tales, I should never have attempted my audience with the lovely, if deluded, Alexia of Trebizond

At what time, then, did you procure the cheese from the goatherd, and how was combining it with a corkscrew, however fabulous, able to produce an effect so frightful that invocations of the cheese are prevalent among the blackest curses of the Turkish soldiery to this day? And why was the infamous burning goose added to the Trebizond crest shortly after your victory?

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I may be able to shed some light on this to my everlasting shame. Once bested in the field of commerce and saddled with a mounting debt with nothing to show but three million threshing flails that had been pre-empted by our worthy companion's clever introduction of scythes to aforementioned nation where she, not I made a fortune, my thoughts, I do admit, though it still troubles the heart were turned to thoughts of revenge. Learning from my trained sparrow spies (for all human company had deserted me once I could no longer pay a decent wage) I learned of our mutual friend's quest, and knew, also, of the Sultan's hatred for her, owing to a certain set of dealings in the past involving a matched set of absolutely black pigmy elephants and a princess born without arms below the shoulders. I came to the sultan and told him of Sovay's return to his precincts, though my soul still bears the stain of betrayal. The sultan, being a cagey man, demanded that I hunt her myself, and gave me a flare with which to signal his armies when I found her. Well, as it turns out, while I stalked my quarry, a great storm blew up off the Mediterranean, and, by the time I traced Sovay's whereabouts, my flare had been so thoroughly doused that the fires of hell itself could not light the thing. Thinking quickly, I made a quick stock of all the little village in which I found myself and determined the most flamable thing available was a goose, once doused in the last of my precious emerald vodka, which I lit, and set free.
The poor old thing, which had never once flown in this century took wing then, and swept out over the hiding place where the sultan's armies were laying in wait. This signal caused some consternation amongst the generals and commanders of the force as to its meaning and import. Half of the forces revealed themselves, half did not, and the resulting bickering up and down the chain of command set them in a horrible disarray before they even engaged their foe.
As for the rest, I must confess, I am as interested as you, for I took the poltroon's path and fled the seen ere the battle was joined, though I have been led to believe that it was our friend's own fighting prowess that finished them off, and having later crossed blades with her in St. Petersburg (and much to my sorrow), I must say, I believe it.

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know all this; the goose is infamous. But why was it added to the Trebizond crest?

Why did the goose have a twelve foot wingspan? And why does no-one else remember a storm that night?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I can't phrase this as the right sort of question, but I'd love to know more about those cheese-making brigands...