A Tale Retold by Black Bart, Highwayman and H.P. Lovecraft, Writer
According to the tale, a race of shepherd people colonized the banks of the Tomac River, in a land called Amer, forming flourishing prosperous cities, which rose to great intellectual and mercantile prowess. But craving evermore land, possessions and wealth, these people took as their ruler a being of curious lineage and stature … Umpe – the Great Water Lizard.
Visually described as “in hue as orange as the pumpkins in the shepherds’ patch, had bulging eyes, pouting flabby lips, pompous teased hair and an irritating demeanor”, this arrogant being was literally worshipped by his followers, the Umprecans. His ideology was confined to arrogance, avarice, and his demands of devout loyalty and adoration. His opinions and ideology were hard gospel; he made up his own facts with no tolerance for descent. His ability to invent or believe in things that were not true worked as a powerful tool. Eventually the good people of Amer came to despise Umpe and his minions.
A great plague spread across the world: rather than being constructively dealt with, Umpe emphatically decreed the threat to be an overstated false manifestation by his political enemies. As divisions within the populace became even more polarized, the disenchanted majority elected to drive Umpe and his ilk from their land of Amer. Oseph, the high priest of Amer, was chosen as the new ruler. Umpe’s reaction was to refuse to concede his lawful removal, to further spread his own brand of unmitigated lies and to incite and motivate an armed assault on the Amer Main Temple, causing death and destruction.
Just as descent and confrontation was reaching dangerous levels, Umpe – the Great Water Lizard slithered away to his southern countryside estate. Found scrawled in blood inside the Amer Main Temple was his promise to return.
As time passed, Amer began to regain both its power and its promise. But the Umprecans clutched even tighter to the fierce loyalty that they espoused toward Umpe and his carefully crafted lies. Behind closed doors and away from any scrutiny, many of his cohorts expressed a genuine fear of any challenge to their ‘ruler in exile’. Their dark celebrations in the dank empty marshlands were witnessed only by these sorry bootlickers, an abundance of water lizards, and most disturbingly, the exiled Umpe himself. But even to this day, Umpe remains the chief god in the land of the Umprecans with a diabolical agenda of greed and a bulging eye on the land of the Amer.