Letting the days go by, 365 of them since last ALaJVC Day

And you might ask yourself, How did I get here?
And you might ask yourself, Why am I dressed this way -- in the habit of a Cupatory Nun of the Littoral Dispensation, on the Isle of Varve in the Rhodomontane Reaches? Accompanied by a pair of the tutelary baboons essential to the votive duties of a Cupatory Nun, hoisting the Amphora of Holy Mugwump so that they might drink deep of the salted pineapple juice? And why does that costume appear to be modeled on the usual work clothes of Evangeline van Holsterin when she is barmaiding at the Old Entomologist?

And you might ask yourself, How is it that I address the baboons in this strange manner of speech, an idiom that is at once antic and lapidary and bombastic with braggadocio, as if intoned by Cardinal Bembo in the course of his secret career as a Landesknecht?

And then you remember, as if from a fading memory of a dream, that you allowed yourself to be cajoled and wheedled -- inveigled, even! -- into entering the immersive, multiple-player game that we at Riddled Research Laboratory commissioned from Space-Time Eddie. A game designed to celebrate International Act Like a Jack Vance Character Day,* and to make it easy by rephrasing all the players' interactions into the appropriate style.

Further gameplay

And looking down at your avatar, you remember that the game assigns you a persona without offering a choice about the gender... any more than it allows a choice whether to be a mooncalf or a non-pareil. Eddie reckons that all the cool MMORPGs have gone this route of imposing an avatar's appearance, and it has nothing to do with making life easier for the programmers because of female characters in the Jack Vance universe generally having SFA to say.

You won't make that mistake again, will you?

* Don't worry, you still have until April 20 to mentally prepare.

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Why is this not a MMORPG yet? In which guilds of crusading Librarians rampage from hexagon to hexagon of the infinite Library? The non-existence of "World of Lorecraft" is deeply disappointing.