Corbiss the Bemuser

[Drassil]

Beaujolais de Pfeffel has been deposed. Corbiss the Bemuser, unable to retake power for himself, has instead installed his daughter: Luztriss the Bemused.

Watchers may recall the first encounter between a dungeoneer and Luztriss's cousin Sidriss. Sidriss, with the assistance of a consummate joker and without the necessary grasp of detail, cast an ambitious spell... which duly went wrong, spooked and endangered everyone and had to be swiftly reversed.

Who is Luztriss to break with family tradition? Her spell, intended to increase gold across the realm, instead conjures up huge amounts of fool's gold. How will ferrymen, dragon taxis, corruptible guards and traders know what they're being paid in? The markets aren't happy - except the pork markets, who are delirious for some reason - and call for the sorceress, now known as Luztriss the Defused, to go.

Corbiss and Treguard are forced to intervene. Corbiss undoes Luztriss's magic; Treguard prepares for his customary spell while a sympathetic Pickle slips Luztriss some food for her long journey. Having misheard Treguard quoting a scribe - 'she's crackers' - Pickle gives her cheese and crackers. As Luztriss fumes about the cheese being a Norman import, Treguard completes his spell. That. Is. A. DISMISS.

BeauJeau, who is in the New World conducting before-speaking dinner engagements, learns of Luztriss's dismissal and begins to plot a return. Could it happen? As life force sprites skip straight from green to red, the realm waits.

[Drassil]

Beaujolais de Pfeffel ... held as many as 17 private quests at the height of dungeon plague restrictions. According to some tales, his advisors gathered in the Dungeon with him

During the 7th and 12th quests of Series 3, shortly after dungeoneers Kelly and Chris arrived at the Vale of Banburn, a woman in a red dress was seen dallying at the far end of the vale. Beaujolais de Pfeffel learned of her terpsichorean powers and invited her to dance in the background during one of his private quests.

As musicians played Faerietale of Dunshelm, and the woman in red danced with a male companion, BeauJeau revelled in the company of acolytes who acted like the sun was shining out of his fundament. But unbeknownst to BeauJeau, one of them had become disenchanted and was harbouring his own ambitions of power. He stood apart, holding a spyglass. A few people asked their fellow Acolyte of the Sun (he was considered too minor a character to be given a name) if he was filming that they were, like, bending the Adventurer's Code. He replied that it was a magnifying glass and he was trying to find BeauJeau's sense of decency. They laughed and wished him luck.

Over time, the Sun Acolyte distanced himself from BeauJeau, but not so far as to arouse suspicion (for BeauJeau was easily aroused). Working as a money lender, he amassed considerable wealth.

And then, two-and-a-half phases after the illegal quest, his moving pictures from the spyglass appear in the Magic Mirror.

Treguard is appalled. BeauJeau by this point has been deposed but retains some of his powers, and Treguard knows that BeauJeau must be dealt with once and for all and for the moment. Yet he cannot trust Corbiss the Bemuser to take decisive action.

Treguard awards Corbiss a higher calling: building on Brother Strange's work by compiling dungeon ditties for the many. And making jam for clue rooms. Setting Corbiss to work deep into a northern part of a southern part of the dungeons, Treguard ponders the next leader of the Powers that Be: someone who knows how to strike at BeauJeau's very heart. Treguard approaches the man behind the spyglass recording: the Rich Sun Acolyte. He accepts Treguard's quest, taking the nickname Sunac.

Sunac knows exactly what to do. Identifying all the acolytes on whom BeauJeau had spellcast HEROES shortly before leaving power, Sunac and Treguard dispel. Across the realm, Silver Spurs of Squiredom are withdrawn.

This causes uproar. Doorries, the spellbound door who once protected BeauJeau, becomes unhinged. Moggrees bemoans the loss of his knighthood yet his IF and BUT spells are to no avail.

BeauJeau himself is furious, claiming he is the victim of a "witch hunt" and a "cavernwight court" (while forgetting that those were the names of two personal speed-dating nights he organised). In a fit of pique, he seduces a maiden and conceives a child and in another fit of pique, he throws his bauble: the true source of his power. It tumbles down a hole. BeauJeau leaps after it, but it may be irretrievable. In losing his laughter, has he finally lost it all?

[Drassil]

As the Dungeon returns for a new phase, the Powers that Be have a new leader:

The knight who once tamed a wild bovine and founded the realm's finest inn, the Crazed Heifer, in its honour. Because of this deed, people started calling him Sir Bullock Settler, until he persuaded them to modify it to Sir Steer Calmer.

Corbiss the Bemuser, as a long-lived mage who appears to draw power from outside, was one of the few denizens in a position to make the Dungeon form again. Having mislaid the arcane wisdom that once gave him true power, he resorts to a simplistic spell. But there are horrendous side-effects to the spellcasting of REFORM.

Amid the Dungeon's general resurrection, an excess of magic is channelled to a small group of renegades deplored by the Powers that Be and tolerated by the Opposition. Their leader is...

a coarse vagabond named Forage.

In an attempt to sound widely influential yet anti-establishment, Forage asks to be known as Nudge-All the Disparager. Yet people keep calling him Forage, and pronouncing it to sound Norman, which infuriates him.

Not that he and his brigade (the Reformed) are anything less than furious. They direct this fury at dungeoneers. It's obvious to most that the Knightmare Realm would not be what it is without dungeoneers, but not to The Reformed. So visceral is their hatred that they make Lord Fear look like Rothberry, so to speak.

In his smug, insatiable hunger for influence, Forage sets out to incite every dungeoneer hater in the realm. To enchant these unsophisticated folk, he uses an unsophisticated incantation, attempting to conjure up a "Huge Ol' Riot".

Instead, because of a concealed silver spoon impeding his speech, he summons Hugo Myatt.

A firm, prolonged stare sends Forage scampering for shelter in the expensive property that we're not supposed to know he owns. Have Forage and the Reformed been subdued, or will they continue to be a blight on Treguard, Sir Steer and the realm?