If you don't recall what happened last time, please check out Part 7 of the table of contents here.
Where we last left off, the bazookas, having identified tamers and their dragon turrets as public enemy number one, decided to study the stablemasters. As described in our previous tale: "In the not-too-distant past, the bazookas determined, by careful analysis of human assets, that one of the most important ways to protect Britannia involved clearing out the stables of as many tamed dragons as possible, and filling them up with as many rats, rabbits, another other less-destructive-to-Brittannia creatures".
To increase the sample size of our stablemaster study, we went to every stable in Britannia and observed the stablemasters. They all appeared extremely dedicated to their work--as if they would never leave it for even a moment--yes, that was the conclusion of all the tests we ran on them (some of which resulted in a few dead bazookas). Strangely, however, some were a little less attached then others...
We started with the Minoc stablemaster, Virginia. At the time, she was the only stablemaster in Minoc. We discovered she could be led to anywhere in Minoc, and that she felt right at home there. We figured that she wouldn't mind hanging out in the butcher's shop--we thought the stink might persuade her to leave the animal-care business.
What was the result you ask? After about 24 hours, ANOTHER stablemaster appeared in the stable! We have no doubt that no less than those all-powerful GM's (encountered in our previous tale) and Lord British himself were involved in the spawning of this extra stablemaster. We quickly brought this stablemaster over to the butcher for the stench conditioning... and discovered something new on the way. Hitherto, we had simply pulled the stablemasters away from the stables. Saying "stable" in their presence when they were even a couple steps outside of the stable resulted in them immediately popping back to their stable--black magic indeed! HOWEVER, we discovered that apparently SOME stablemasters were not bound so tightly. In fact, anywhere within the town limits, they responded to our "stable" command as if they were at home in their shop. I ndeed, an intriguing concept!... We tested other stablemasters, and found that Akbaar was one of these loosely bound types (Note that Akbaar is a second stablemaster spawned in Britain castle's stable--quite obviously in response to our previous capturing of Arlin, who was formerly the lone stablemaster there).
We decided (given our astute sense of justice bestowed upon us by Lord British) that it was not fair that Lord British gets BOTH stablemasters, so we went ahead and pulled Akbaar over to Lord Blackthorn's castle to set up shop. Furthermore, it appeared that he still shared the stable spots back in Lord British's castle! Lord Blackthorn didn't even need to invest money in a stable--ahh yes, 'twas the beginning of the deregulation of the stable industry (an event that we predict will lead to a total collapse of the entire Britannian economy some time in the middle of 2012)...
We posted a surveillance bazooka back in the stable to see what happened when people claimed their animals. It appeared that they were having a little bit of trouble getting those animals back in the stable! Hrrrrm!
It is unfortunate that we did not more carefully analyze this video--in fact it was not until the writing of this Tale that I finally found this video evidence for a strange occurence (which almost certainly contributed to the Stablemaster's getting extra protection from Lord British a few months ago and becoming invulnerable). If my memory bank serves me correctly, we were also kidnapping the Skara Brae stablemaster at the time of this video. The conclusion that appears most probable from the following images is that when a stablemaster is pulled too far away from the stable, the total number of spots throughout Britannia goes down. People thus could not restable their just-claimed animals. Then, when the stablemaster was returned, the number of spots available returned to the normal number, and suddenly lots of spots were open. At the time, we were blissfully unaware of this occurence (in fact, it bit us in the butt, as you will soon see)--our tactic at this time was simply to steal stable spots using Akbaar the rogue stablemaster from within Lord Blackthorn's castle (which we also did very successfully )...
Bobby Orr had a little trouble restabling his dragon turret... Mission accomplished.
As you can see in the pictures above and below, many stable spots were acquired by the bazookas using Lord Blackthorn's stablemaster. The animals that are shown are approximately half of the spots that we obtained. As we were still unaware of the odd bug that causes reduced number of stable spots, I claimed all the animals (>50) while we had Bambi the Skara Brae stablemaster out on a boat. I was very confused when I couldn't restable about half of my animals. I failed to make the connection at the time, and I even posted about it on the forum here. Indeed, it appears that the bazookas shot ourselves in the foot this time (but oh well, about 30 stable spots isn't bad).
Our study yielded some interesting results, but nothing more interesting than what was discovered when we studied Bambi, the Skara Brae stablemaster. Bambi was a different kind of stablemaster... She was a very sad case of a human being--we were certainly moved with compassion by her plight. But our interactions with her also revealed a great secret to harnessing the power of the stablemasters in accomplishing our quest of wiping out the human race from the face of Britannia, as you will see next time.
See you then!