[Ar-basinno's note: The Squee and the Fizzers engage in a ceremonial dialogue, each clearly responding with predetermined questions and answers, manipulating the sacred objects while passing along the holy road. We can be confident that the whole ceremony was witnessed by awe-struck devotees, who probably consumed the sacred drinks, as well as ritual-based food, during the event.]
[Note in margin: Well, when it comes to consuming sacred drink, whether of his own making or drawn from a tap, Ar-basinno's on familiar ground. I've seen him go through four bottles of wine during an evening's carousing. L. B.]
Fizzers sister an modder wuz watchin us an dey started yellin an laffin an cheerin.
[Ar-basinno's note: "Sister" and "Mother" here are obviously metaphorical. These are references to the high priestesses of Squee, who now join in the ceremony.]
Den dey wuz throwin grass clumps at us an dey started wavin roun big clumps a grass an jumpin up an down. We wuz laffin reely hard.
[Ar-basinno's note: Very important. As the procession of "bugs" led by the Fizzers moves toward the Squee manifestation, it is joined by the high priestesses, who wave plant fronds, thus signaling the coming of the new year through the benevolent agency of the Squee. Thus we find confirmation that the Squee cult was a fertility religion. I have discussed this subject extensively in my well-known and highly respected work The Regenderization and Dis-sexification of Goblinesque Interaction in the Period of Antiquity.]
[Note in margin: Oh, please! Ar-basinno has an amazing talent for overlooking the obvious. His interest in "fertility cults" was probably fueled by the fact that his wife left him- understandable, since he used to start every morning by reading sections of Regenderization to her over the breakfast dishes. When she left the house for the last time, she also left him with a black eye, which he explained to his colleagues at the university as the result of walking into a lamppost. Most of his acquaintances assumed from the shape of the bruise that his wife had heaved the "well-known and highly respected" work at him. L. B.]
So any ways, everbudy in da town come runnin and wuz watchin us throw da bomb aroun whan Fizzer drops it an it blows up. We found part of Fizzer on top a me roof later.
[Ar-basinno's note: Clearly the culmination of the ceremony is the ritual sacrifice of the high priest, or Fizzer, while those around him chant praises to the Great Squee. One can imagine the scene clearly: the pure white robes of the acolytes, the rich golden trappings of the high priests, studded with gems that gleam in the sunlight. The air is filled with the sound of songs bringing praise to Squee, asking the gods to bless the coming harvest with their beneficence. The archpriestess (referred to in the document as the "mother") stands astride the Fizzer, a jeweled dagger in her hand. It glitters against the blue sky as she slowly raises it. The chanting rises in volume, and then she slashes it down in a mighty stroke. Blood sprays upward, splashing her robes with the water of life, and the crowd gives a mighty shriek of delight and religious ecstasy.]
[Note in margin: Pure romance! Ar-basinno should have written stories for a living. L. B.]
Da game wuz fun an so we do it again. Dis time we had too teems an dey wore diffrnt shirts. We thrued da bomb to Quilk an he run wit it to try to get to da odder end of da field til da odder teem catch him an beat him wit clubs an stuff an he wuz down. Den we do it agin til da odder teeam (we called dem da Raiders cuz dey raided us an tried ta steal our bomb) got da bomb and den dey run wit it.
[Ar-basinno's note: From this fairly confused passage, we can infer that the ritual slaying of the Fizzer was followed by an orgy, involving all the participants in the ceremony.]
[Note in margin: Of course. All of Ar-basinno's theories involve orgies sooner or later. L. B.]
We had ta name our teem an we coodnt think a somtin til somebody, I tink it wuz Fizzers cozin Farf who wuz throwin da bomb most, sed we should pack beatle bugs fer lunch nex time cuz he wuz hungry.
[Ar-basinno's note: Again the reference to increasing the number of "bugs, " i. e., followers necessary for the ceremony.]
So we callin ourselfs da Packers.
[Ar-basinno's note: It seems clear that this religious cult split into several competing factions, which evidently led to religious wars. This probably explains why this cult was eventually wiped out and has left only faint traces in goblin culture today. From the extent of the destruction in the cult, we are safe in inferring a series of increasingly severe religious wars and crusades carried out by the "Raiders" and "Packers" upon one another, resulting in their mutual extinction. I propose to deal much more extensively with this issue in my forthcoming book, The Shattered World: An Investigation of the Goblin Religious Wars and the Collapse of the Cult of Squee.]
[Note in margin: The gods preserve us, he proposes to write another sleep-producer. L. B.]
Anyway da game is fun an now we play it all da time cept peeple don lik getting hit wit clubs, so we had ta tell everybody no more of dat, jus grab da guy wit dat bomb an push him down. Also wes runnin out of goblin bombs an people don like throwin dem so much cuz if dey drop em dey get blooed up. So maybe well uze somfin else. Like a ball. We wuz tryin ta cide what ta call da game. Somebody sed we should call it Ball kickin wit Feet, but we all laffed. Den I sed we should call it affer food, cuz it makes us feel like eatin after. So we dacided ta call it Cricket.
So concludes this remarkable document, the most detailed and persuasive evidence for my theory of the cult of Squee yet adduced. The author of the document even gives a name to this important cult: Cricket. I take considerable pride in presenting this evidence to refute the ignorant attempts by certain of my colleagues at the Argivian University to dismiss my research and request that the regents of the university take it into consideration when discussing my application for future resources to continue to investigate the exciting and intriguing pathways opened up by this find.
Note appended to the above:
To the Regents and Masters of the Argivian University, from Lavino Bar-bassanti, late of the university.
As you can plainly deduce from the above document, old Ar-basinno has gone completely around the bend. His "theory" of a goblin religious cult of Squee, which he began developing twenty years ago, has been preying on his brain, and now he's taken it to new heights of lunacy.
As I mentioned above in a marginal note, I was with Ar-basinno when he investigated the ruins at The Flarg. Since he was drunk most of the time, there was little he saw and less he remembered. He's right about the field, though: Sarapinna and I found it more or less the way he describes. It was striking only in that whereas the rest of the settlement had fallen into ruins after the human raids that laid waste to the area, the broad field was actually well-preserved. I don't deny that it was a place of importance to the goblins, but Ar-basinno's idea of religious rituals has no evidence for it at all.
I told him as much at the time, but he wasn't inclined to listen, and I felt it was best to keep quiet and hope the whole thing would blow over. We found the spheroid objects, wineskins, and whistle exactly as he says. The garments were in pretty bad shape, but I could make out the word "Raiders" on one and "Packers" on the other. On each side of the field were places where there had been some sort of arrangement of benches. Ar-basinno is right in saying that whatever was going on there was seen by a gathering of goblins.
At one end of the field was a large rock, on which, at some time in the past, someone had chisled some numbers and words. It was hard to make everything out, but there was something about "downs. " However, we were unable to decipher the word's direct translational meaning.