BOOT PATROL

The Boot Patrol was the police organization employed by Gladys The Evil One in Witchville. Headed by Sergeant MacGuffin, the Boot Patrol was literally a platoon of gigantic, living leather army boots. When Festeron became Witchville, the boots would begin their rounds, arresting curfew violators. These criminals were thrown into an especially smelly boot and carried to the lobby of the Police Station to await sentence by MacGuffin (they were thrilled of the usual sentence, tossing prisoners into the shark-infested waters of the bay). The lead boot was an especially tall boot. Due to rules laid down between the three sisters (Y'Gael, Hortense, Gladys), the Boot Patrol was forbidden from entering both the cemetery and the underground caverns.

In 1157 GUE, the first postman was captured by these boots and cast into the sea to be eaten by sharks. An army of thousands of seahorses came to the postal worker's rescue, as well as causing the entire Patrol to slip into the water and be eaten by these sharks instead.

Though other Boot Patrols have been seen since, by the reign of Simon the Postman, Sergeant MacGuffin's police organization had been replaced with a squad of 24 men, his own son, Brad MacGuffin as their head. This enforcement unit was the nastiest group of enforcers anyone was ever likely to meet. They wore trooper uniforms, complete with the highly polished riding boots and striped jodhpurs, leather jackets, policemen’s caps and those kinds of highly-reflective sunglasses that prevents an onlooker from seeing behind. Only the jackets were not standard trooper issue—they sported far too many chains. They marched at goodly clip, six lines of them, four men across, with the four at the corner all holding torches to light the way. All curfew violators were dumped, head first, into a six-foot-high (non-living) boot. Arms and legs were strapped to the leather interior, then the boot’s side was zipped up to the top so that the prisoner was completely enclosed in the dark. It was this method that criminals were delivered to the Sergeant.

Eventually Sergeant MacGuffin realized that twenty-four men had been to ungainly, for they had too much time off and too much leisure in which to think. Thus he took every second one, had those twelve lined up against a wall, and had them shot. It was a simple solution that kept them in line and the dozen remaining were more effective alone than the twenty-four.

In the days of Simon the Postman, during the first Witchville curse he thwarted, the Boot Patrol was ordered to violate the long-established rules by pursuing both Simon and Mr. Sneed into the cemetery where several of the troopers were snatched away by eldritch vapors. Further overstepping its bounds by entering the underground caverns, the remainder of the squad found themselves entirely devoured by Amy Sue Grue, who Simon had managed to befriend beforehand. It is unknown whether Sergeant MacGuffin found any sort of replacement (boots, humans, other monsters) for his Boot Patrol.

Though the Festeron Boot Patrol had been no more, frequent posses of “Renegade” Boot Patrols have been located across Zork. These autonomous boots obey no master. They were especially spotted during the Great Monster Uprising of the Second Age of Magic, specifically in the following regions: The Casino in Port Foozle, The Gray Mountains Asylum, Granola Mines, Peltoid Valley, Mines of Mendon, Grubbo Hills, Kovalli Desert, The Old Lingolf House, The Southern Wastes, and the G.U.E. Tech Training Grounds in the Ethereal Plane of Atrii.


COMPILATION OF BOOT PATROL MARCHING SONG VERSES


The last two of these verses were part of a twenty-eight verse capture song:

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SOURCE(S): Wishbringer, Wishbringer (novel), Legends of Zork