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There are many tales of these modern-day Bandar-log, most of them strange and twisted. However, there is one such tale, whispered amongst the fishwives and barmen of sooty taverns, mumbled under the breath of the urchins of the street, that has the ring of truth to it. Granted, it is a truth both odd and alarming, but some small measure of truth nonetheless.
By accounts, David Norwood, the winsome but ill-humored heir to a modest toy rocket empire, departed the Gregori Rasputin School for Awkwardly Crooning Boys two full years before the completion of his curriculum. The headmaster remembers him only by his departure, saying, “I looked out my window one afternoon to see the boy ramblin’ down the road, lonely as a cloud. I did not realize that he had made off with one of the guitars from Mr. Pendleton’s strings class until it was too late.”
The story here becomes less clear, the details hazy at best, strung together like a cheap set of tin cup telephones from word-of-mouth accounts. It is known that Mr. Norwood, after several years of aimless wanderings and hard-nosed adventures, settled in the hamlet of Auburn, Alabama, at the height of a 3-year losing streak, so worn and torn by his time in the wilderness that it was not in him to take another step towards a more favorable climate. After taking a job as a deliveryman at a small-time chicken wing factory, he supported himself while indulging his tendency toward vice, slipping several times a week into some kind of drug-induced musical coma, from which he would awaken violently, spewing lyrics and bile with equal fervor.
It is during these days that the stage was set for a great and fateful meeting. After being excommunicated from the local temple of money-worship for heretical beliefs, a young friar by the name John McMeans sought safe harbor from the wrath of the church under the figurative wing of the same chicken wing factory that employed our other young hero, who had by now achieved full adulthood. United by a sense of purpose outside those city walls, the two began to construct a musical blueprint for a machine with which to secretly tunnel under the walls of Auburn and escape with all haste.
The early months of planning and scheming proved fruitful for the pair, due to David’s natural inventiveness and the brilliant mind and steady hand of John the Friar, whose daily duties at his former temple included those of sound manipulation and the acquisition of sonic materials. After a few months, however, it became apparent that the construction of such an ambitious machine would require a third maker, lest it never become fully operational.
While going about their daily routine of wing delivery, the two conspirators stumbled upon a town legend of a hermit living somewhere on the western borders of Auburn who possessed a drum kit pieced together from the leathered scalps of giants. Knowing that they had finally stumbled upon the engine necessary to power their musical machine, the two young heroes sought out the lair of the hermit Sam Whigham and accosted him in his cave with equal measures of threats and desperate pleading. Though deeply involved with the construction of his own escape machine, the hermit Sam Whigham was persuaded to join his formidable and various skills, honed to a razor’s edge by isolation, to that of John and David.
In half a year’s time, the trio, now referring to themselves collectively as the Bandar-log, emerged from the subterranean lair and announced the completion of their machine to any and every one who would listen, despite their previous intentions that it be kept secret. Such was their pride in their creation that they could not bear to hide its workings from the world. As is normal with the ranting of madmen, their announcements were completely ignored, which the trio took as a sign of success. They continue to improve on their machine to this day, streamlining and updating it in full view of the public eye, confidant that no one is paying them any mind, the cheeky bastards.
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