Dear Diary,
Well, it's been about a week since Mike Fors asked me to check out Shireroth as a potential venue for micronational involvement and as the start of a possible career in micronational law.
I miss Morovia with its commitment to realism and peace but I suspect it will revive once again. It always does.
With all due respect, Shireroth is not quite so high-strung on issues of realism and peace.
In fact, it doesn't seem strung at all.
But it is entertaining.
I flew into the Mattlore Devious International Airport late on the evening of July 6th from Briesk. I was shocked to see pictures of the Kaiser draped in black and the news scrawl on the airport televisions announcing his death.
From there I took a train to Yardistan and caught the last ferry to Amity. The ferry schedule is, to say the least, very ambiguous if not completely indeterminate and one of the locals on board mentioned that this is because the islands themselves are a bit ambiguous and indeterminate, but that may just be local folklore.
As I walked the short distance into the town square of Amity, I stopped at a ShireStuff convenience store to pick up some amenities, including a couple of safety razors and a tube of some exotic mango-flavored toothpaste. Adventurous as I am, I couldn't bring myself to experiment with any of the moose-flavored stuff...
I greeted my old friend from Morovian days, Mike Fors, at a pub in Negrixnaht. The islands may fade in and out of existence and move around a bit, but I'm not a cartographer and the bars are open 24 x 7, so I knew the place was inhabitable.
Despite the late night and jet lag, I was up at dawn and was greeted, in the common room of the boarding house in which I am staying, with a sumptuous breakfast. They sure know how to eat in Shireroth... another good sign!
Went to the local library and acquainted myself with some of the basics of Shirerithian law. So far as I can tell, the foundation of the legal system is as follows:
1.The Kaiser has complete and total authority over the realm, within the authority granted to him by the Shirerithian Charter.
2.The Kaiser can change the Shirerithian Charter at will.
Well, I think to myself, not much need for lawyers here, is there?
I'm walking back from the library ready to tell Mike, 'no deal', when I come across a disturbing sight - barricades, bonfires and Shirerithians apparently rioting in the streets over a dispute regarding the succession to His Late Niftiness.
I say "apparently" because, with all due respect to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late senator from New York, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably - BUT NOT INVARIABLY - a duck. (Or chicken.)
In this case, I noticed that Shirerithians who had been red-faced and screaming, confronting each other across the no-man's land of the barricades, were absenting themselves in brief intervals to join their adversaries in pints at local establishments.
I decided that Shirerithians have civil war the way Americans have 4th of July celebrations and Morovians have committee meetings.
And as I see the drama play out between the chief Kaiserial contenders and the Barons and the people and the gods, it strikes me that a force beyond the written law is at work in Shireroth.
Looking beneath the surface of law, it would appear that Shirerithian tradition plays a significant role here in what happens. Just because the Kaiser - or the gods, for that matter - have the power to do anything they choose, doesn't mean that they will necessarily choose to avail themselves of that power.
The traditions of the land and of the (legally powerless) commoners, apparently weigh heavily upon the gods in reality even if not in law.
I shall continue my investigations.
W. F. Beck
(legal pen name for Bill Bekkenhuis - Bekkenhuis is just too damn long :-) )
