Mir Yannick, 1067 GUE      Yannick Profile      Yannick: before/after hair loss, 1048      Yannick's "Propaganda on Parade" speech      Yannick and Jack (A) / (B) / (C) / (D)      Yannick & Wartle Capture AFGNCAAP                  (A) / (B) / (C)      Yannick's Inquizivision Speech (A) / (B) / (C)      Yannick Goes after AFGNCAAP (A) / (B)      Trying to take the Coconut (A) / (B)      Yannick knocked off tower (A) / (B)      Grand Inquisitor Poster      Talk To Me Grand Inquisitor

MIR YANNICK

SHORT SUMMARY
Mir Yannick was the Grand Inquisitor of the anti-magic Inquisition and the CEO of Frobozz Electric during the eleventh century. He hated the magic counterculture and the touchy-feely "peace love magic" freedom lovers who espouse magic. He was an evil, sarcastic, even bored dictator who loved—and loved owning—technology. He was the beneficiary of a long-life spell that was cast upon him by his one-time classmate Dalboz of Gurth.Yannick planned to inflict pain on the people of the Empire for an eternity. He pretended to be the religious leader of the land as a means of obtaining power, but he was really not interested in anything except the technologies he employed to make certain he wiould forever rule the Empire. Inquizivision, the Inquisition Cable Network, is the diabolical tool by which he planned to realize his dastardly dreams. He progressed in anger and irritability as magic began to return. Yannick's plans were foiled in 1067 GUE by an unknown adventurer, AFGNCAAP, who fully returned magic to Zork and later became the Fourth Dungeon Master. In the process, Yannick was thrown from a radio tower and possibly perished, although the results of the long-life spell may have prevented this.


EARLY LIFE
Mir Yannick was named when his expectant mother told his father, Yannick the Elder, that she had a surprise for him, and he would have to guess what it was. He guessed a sack of gold, a sack of wheat, and finally even a good, sturdy sack. So when his wife answered him, “Nay, merely another Yannick,” Mir Yannick found the unfortunate name stuck. One can imagine Mir’s own expectations of his life were somewhat as low. Mir’s father saw magic in terms of its affordability, profitability and fiduciary viability. Being a yeoman farmer who bred platypus for pie, he paid Zm500 a term at GUE Tech so his son could learn the proper spell set to make his grain grow golden and tall (THROCK “causes plants to grow”) and his platypi grow fat and furry (a variant of CONBAK “causing bodies to grow in twelve different ways”) so that at the end of the year the profits ledger might for once equal the costs.

Taking into consideration that GUE Tech was Dalboz’s alma mater, and that most university programs require an average of four years to graduate, we can properly assume that this tale begins in the fall term of 962 GUE. The good-natured, chubby Dalboz of Gurth, and the sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued Mir Yannick, were unlikely roommates at Zork's fame magic university. Dalboz, who was by all accounts the talent of the two, found himself drawn to the university for a variety of inexplicable reasons, and one quite explicable one: He had scored so high on the entrance exam. Mir Yannick did not have the Gift, but he and Dalboz grew to be friends all the same. The two novice first-years debated many naive questions, such as "What is magic? Is it a business? Is it a philosophy? A religion? A source of power or equilibrium? Is it to be disturbed or balanced?"

It is commonly held that those who cannot practice magic cannot understand the practice of magic, either; whether or not this is so, it is true that Mir seemed a bit literal in his interpretation of the Higher Lessonry of Thaumaturgy—a bit forced of hand in Basic Enchanting—and certainly, his sneering, bottom line orientation towards the whole business of magic did not win him any favors with the faculty.


THE FIGHT AT FLOOD CONTROL DAM #3
Try as he may, at the end of his first year exams, Mir could no more make a field grow than he could make a platypus fatten. In fact, everything he touched seemed to wither and die. His grades continued to falter, and the same week Dalboz made the Mage’s List, Mir was put on probation, having achived the lowest grade possible (Z-). When the Trustees were called to approve Dalboz’s qualifications for the appointment of Mage, they stayed after to vote on Mir’s expulsion. Mir made it by one vote-and had Dalboz not be so good at ZEMDOR (“turn original into triplicate”), he would have been out by two.

Mir never realized what Dalboz had conjured up on his behalf, to cheat the vote and keep him enrolled at GUE Tech. Instead, he recruited a group of popular upperclassmen conjurers to confront Dalboz, and have some fun at his expense. When they tried to stop him on his way to class, Dalboz fled to the Great Underground Subway. Mir and his bullies chased him from car to car as he tried in vain to get away. When Dalboz saw the train stop at the famed Flood Control Dam #3, he leapt off the train and headed for the top of the Dam.

Perhaps he thought that tossing a few VAXUM spells (“make a hostile creature your friend”) behind him would end the matter. Perhaps the slightly flabby freshman was too out of breath to think clearly. In either case, once Dalboz reached the edge of the Dam, he soon found himself surrounded. Mir accused Dalboz of having cast NUMDUM upon him. (NUMDUM is a common stupidity spell that lesser enchanters particularly liked to cast upon one another, as a kind of hazing prank at GUE institutions.) Despite Dalboz’s proclamations of loyalty, Mir attempted to invoke a KULCAD spell (“dispel a magic spell”) in return. But after turning purple and spluttering to such an extent, the conjurers took over for him.

However, since the only spell in operation was the ZEMDOR spell that had kept Mir from being expelled, a Certificate of Expulsion instantly appeared in Mir’s hands. The upperclassmen began to laugh, and Mir, furious with rage and embarrassment, tore the certificate in half and, before anyone could stop him, pitched Dalboz over the side of Flood Control Dam #3. But Dalboz held fast to Mir’s cloak, and when he flopped over the side, he took his roommate with him. All who witnessed the event were certain that the friends were plunging to their deaths. As the two went screaming towards the bottom far below, Dalboz—in probably the most important invocation of his career—cast a long-life spell upon himself and his roommate, and the two bounced up from the rock, as if made of soft Borphean rubber.

Mir was quite ashamed of himself, and Dalboz, to his credit, was equally forgiving. He did everything he could to mend their friendship, which ultimately included expelling everyone in the entire school, to negate the expulsion and, in fact, make it somewhat of a promotion, seeing that Mir was actually the first one to be expelled at all. Mir never apologized, but Dalboz knew that to bear the shame of a public encounter with one’s own honest stupidity, was far worse than any apology he could require. What Dalboz could not have known was the depth of the hatred Mir felt, not just for Dalboz, but for magic itself and the shame and self-loathing it brought him. What Dalboz never saw was the sight of Mir, night after night, slipping into the archive of GUE Tech, burning precious scrolls of High Magic, a few at a time. That much less to learn; that much less shame. Mir Yannick vowed to destroy magic (and Dalboz with it) before it ruined him.

Yet in their own awkward fashion, the two schoolmates remained cordial. Possibly this is because neither Mir nor Dalboz were the run of the mill, ale-swilling, mage-bonding sort of student enchanter that had any friends at all. And Mir always needed Dalboz’s help in order to pass his exams. In return, Mir would ply Dalboz with platypus potpie sent in a picnic basket from home. In fact, the only bit of cruelty Mir ever showed Dalboz after the incident at the Space Needle, was an endless needling about his girth (“Well, they don’t call you Dalboz of Gurth for nothing!”) - about which Dalboz became a bit sensitive, especially considering Mir’s athletic, farm-bred physique.

Throughout the remainder of Mir’s enrollment, he was frequently crammed into his locker, forcing Dalboz to jimmy him out each time. He was also prescribed anti-anxiety medication (Prozork) to keep him from becoming a megalomaniacal tyrant. Combined with a stack of cheat sheets, Cave's Notes, and bulletin board notes, he was able to scrape through his classwork. One such frequently tacked notes, is the following (966 GUE):


CLOSE OF THE FIRST AGE OF MAGIC (966 GUE)
When Dalboz became the Third Dungeon Master, Mir was the only person to congratulate him, because only moments after this supreme honor of Dungeon Master was awarded to Dalboz, word arrived from Borphee that the university was closing immediately and permanently. There had been an accident, a mishandling of magic, and a powerful mage had knocked the cosmic equilibrium out of balance—destroying the entire Age of Magic in the name of his improving his own power. Magic had disappeared from Quendor. Dalboz was devastated, but Mir, of course, enjoyed this turn of events immensely. Though he tried to console Dalboz with the rumor around school that all magic had been crammed into the Coconut of Quendor, where it would be watched over until the return of magic itself, he secretly scoffed at the notion. But as the roommates parted ways that evening, at the crossroads of the Great Underground Highway, they pledged to meet again, should that great day ever come. Their lives were woven together in the long life spell; they would certainly meet each other again, under happier circumstances. Or so they thought at the time. And with that, they dragged their bags in separate directions down the Great Underground Highway.


WHAT HAPPENED TO YANNICK?
While the Third Dungeon Master faded into obscurity, the untalented, but very ambitious Mir Yannick did the only thing the untitled second-son of a yeoman farmer could do in an age without magic, he went to Port Foozle and joined a Zorkastrian Seminary to begin a career in the booming and highly lucrative field of religious fanaticism. Mir’s father reasoned that although he would be no use in the platypus-fattening department, perhaps he could at least pray for the financial security of his family. And so it seemed Mir had finally found the perfect calling for a slightly lazy, fairly greedy, and moderately educated person with no particular skills of any sort—he became a Zorkastrian Brother.

Master Mir was spectacularly relieved to not have to know much, be able to do much, or even be in possession of some sort of predetermined destiny. He simply kept his mouth shut, kissed a few rings, and mumbled something while he stared into the fires. Magic? He was not required to know magic; it was forbidden! His brothers despised the magical arts.

Over time, Mir found that by bartering with his superiors over student directories of True Names stolen from the admissions office, he might accomplish the double purpose of avenging himself on all those who ever laughed at him, and ingratiating himself with the Zorkastrian officials. It worked better than Mir ever hoped; his classmates found themselves under perpetual surveillance as infidels and heretics, and Mir himself quickly became Master Mir, Father Mir, Elder Mir, and then Bishop Mir.
By the time the reclusive Dalboz had formulated the answer to his Bozbar Postulate (circa 1000 GUE), Mir would ascend to the calling of First Archbishop in High Office of the Grand Inquisitor of Zork. He no longer had time to return Dalboz’s rambling, boring, letters, filled with useless packets of rare and newly cultivated seeds, which the Archbishop promptly threw into the fire. Mir was no longer interested in magic. He was interested in power. And he was interested in something more than talk.


BANK OF ZORK ACQUIRED BY INQUISITION ENTERPRISES (1000 GUE)
The Bank of Zork, unable to handle the change in calendar dates to four digits, folded and was acquired by Inquisition Enterprises. Mir Yannick was the major investor.


THE SECOND INQUISITION BEGINS (circa 1000~1033 GUE)
Mir understood that if magic was, indeed, finally going away, in its departure lay a real opportunity to persecute those who had once enjoyed such power. He could finally wreak revenge on all who had ever practiced the Thaumaturgical arts. He would not be satisfied until he saw to it that all of his one-time classmates (the same conjurer bullies who had laughed at the NUMDUM incident) were confined in the dark recesses of Steppinthrax Dungeon. When Mir called for a good old-fashioned inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor refused to listen to him. Mir was disgusted. Had he been the Grand Inquisitor, he would champion the death of magic…

It was not until Mir heard the confession of convicted criminal embezzler Undersecretary Wartle, the Undersecretary to the Undersecretary to the Secretary of the Zork Patents Office, during the Archbishop’s sojourn in the wonderfully horrid White-Collar Confessions Ministry, that he knew how his destiny should unfold. After handing out a number of Hail Yoruks, Mir opened the confessional and offered an alternative rehabilitative plan: he would use his influence with the Grand Inquisitor to demand a full pardon from Syovar III, if Wartle would begin altering a few patents for unique Zork technologies, here and there, transferring them into Mir’s possession, as only a partially reformed patents embezzler knew how. Mir became certain that his rise to power and fortune—not to mention his vengeance upon magic—would lie with technology. Though popular sentiment had long held that technology was for “stupid people”—inferior people who had no magic to them—in the new, anti-magical economy, technology would become invaluable. A new magic, belonging exclusively to Archbishop Mir himself.
Wartle, who had always been spineless, fell under the spell of the Archbishop’s ambition immediately, and by 1047 GUE, when Mir would succeed to the High Office of Grand Inquisitor himself, he possessed the patent to every known piece of registered, trademarked, and patented technology in the Great Underground Empire. He even went so far as to resurrect the famed, abandoned Frobozz Magic Company as the Frobozz Electric Company. And in this manner, the seeds of the Inquisition fell from his barren hand…


THE TOTEMIZER MACHINE REDISCOVERED (1033 GUE)
Mir Yannick listened with impatience as Wartle read him “The Signs of the Times” (Section B of the New Zork Times). There were unmistakable signs throughout the Empire: magic creatures awakening, magic spell scrolls materializing, a few Enchanters regaining limited powers. Mir was gloomy; for his Frobozz Electric Company, the return of magic promised nothing but a loss of power and capital. Without magic, Mir governed a monopoly of industries that made him a higher power than any one religion could. He had nothing to gain from even Vice Regent Syovar III, who had grown contentious just as the Mir was reaching the height of his power. They had been arguing over what change in policy needed to be driven by the alleged return of magic.

At first, Syovar III has been in favor of Mir’s proposed (and rather extreme) inquisition, believing him when he preached magic as the harbinger of social anarchy and political unrest. He had not complained when the anti-magic propaganda had gone up, nor when the propaganda P.A. system had been installed. Yet, when Mir had begun the magic trials, the Vice Regent had grown suddenly strangely populist. Syovar III was siding with his people, over the Council of the Generals—a tribunal of war heroes that controlled various political and tribal factions throughout the empire. Mir had no other recourse but to meet with the Council—privately. And a difficult decision had been made.

Mir could not have hoped for more terrible timing for the whispering, insidious, reappearance of magic. He was now only days from asserting the final phase of his rise to power—the Council approved removal of the Vice Regent himself. And even if the removal of the Regent was successful, he was uncertain what was to be done with the reappearance of magic.

Magic, unlike mere human flesh, cannot be destroyed simply because its use creature is “killed.” Magic, like some strangely radioactive Thaddium waste, must be contained. Like a reverberating vibration moving along a wire, magic resonates ten-fold once freed of physical form. All that binds a magical property to its physical form is how it is Named, by way of the Old Tongue, the ancient, magical language of the Empire, the language that lends its runic power to every woven spell.

Mir knew that somehow the magical creatures had to be Un-Named. If Nameless, then powerless. But he was uncertain how to accomplish this process. He reasoned that his problem must have been encountered previously in the long history of the Empire. Was there any technology, any industry in his control that could be revamped, readjusted a bit, to provide some kind of containment to the rise of magic in the Empire?

Hastily, with fear of displeasing his master, Wartle searched out a handful of out-of-date patents—including one for a massive, misshapen machine, a remnant from the Flathead Dynasty—when Enchanters were plenty and plenty troublesome, and Lord Dimwit was always looking for some way to control them. Wartle produced not only the patents, but discovered the very machines first employed by Dimwit Flathead for the same hostile purpose—controlling the magical masses. One of these long lost machines was the very nasty Totemizer, unused since the Unnatural Acts in the days of Duncanthrax. Mir Yannick rose to the rank of Junior Executive Maniacal Zealot in the Inquisition. He then rose to the rank of Senior Executive Maniacal Zealot after demonstrating the machine’s effectiveness on his supervisor.

TOTEMIZATION OF A CERTAIN GRIFF (1037 GUE)
Yannick continued to victimize magical creatures with the totemizer technology, hoping one day to utterly cleanse the land of any reminaing traces of magic. The population of magical creatures in the Eastlands was drastically reduced during these days, many creatures reaching the brink of extinction.

When a certain griff (who would be responsible for the return of magic in 1067), was captured and brought before Yannick and the Totemizer. Although the creature begged for clemency, a magic race was a magice race, and there was no room for any sort of magic in Yannick’s new regime. The troops  teasing the griff for some time, provoking him until he began to sob with such vigor that even Yannick began to feel a bit uncomfortable.

Just as Yannick gave the signal for the griff to be pushed into the machine, a brogmoid guard, conveniently named Brog, who had felt badly for the griff, and had shown him many preferences while in jail, leaped up out of the crowd and, ripping a massive iron tube off the side of the Totemizer, knocked a guard down into the machine instead of the griff. And, for one tense moment, Yannick himself wobbled on the edge of the Totemizer; he would have fallen inside, if he had not caught the guard with his hands, and knocked him into the machine by way of keeping himself from falling. Chaos ensued, and when the chase was over and done, it took six men (each twice the size of Brog) to hold down the wrathful, growling brogmoid, while a seventh stuffed the griff down the hatch. The totem was later dumped by a rider into the bottom of a well on the outskirts of Port Foozle.

The Brog made a ridiculously plea at his speed trial in the Court of the Inquisition, but was finally taken to the Totemizer machine in a massive metal collar and two sets of chains. Twenty guards hoisted him up to the top of the machine, and the Yannick did not waste a minute dawdling, this time around. Despite all of the precautions that were taken to ensure his capture, Brog somehow managed to break free from the guards and escaped his imprisonment, but he was later accidentally totemized.


A NEW VICE PRESIDENT OF UNREASONING ZEAL (1046~7 GUE)
Mir Yannick rose to the position of Vice President of Unreasoning Zeal, second only to the Grand Inquisitor himself in 1046. During a private conference with Yannick, the Inquisitor accidentally hit himself repeatedly over the head with a blunt instrument until he died (at least that was the report given by Yannick). Other reports of the Grand Inquisitor’s death include having eaten a rather lethally rancid platypus pot pie. Mir claimed to have been in sorrow for many days because of the “unfortunate demise.” Despite the efforts of Syovar III, Mir Yannick then assumed the title of Grand Inquisitor in 1047. Accepting advice from the Dungeon Master, who told the king of the impending reemergence of magic, Syovar III began making efforts to end the Inquisition.


THE MURDER OF SYOVAR III (1048 GUE)
In the meantime, the Grand Inquisitor’s call for a return to Flathead values sparked renewed interest in the Flathead Dynasty, which further generated the funding necessary to carry out the largest excavation ever undertaken. Having been buried for over three centuries, the missing pages of Dimwit Flathead’s autobiography were excavated from four bloits deep beneath the statue in Fublio Valley. A team of scholars would spend seven years analyzing the unabridged work, splitting into groups of ten in order to scrutinize each chapter with the attention it demanded, and gathering occasionally to discuss their many findings.

In addition to these and the Totemizer, Wartle had managed to retrieve several other useful technologies dating back to Dimwit Flathead, the least of these being a deceptively simple iron cap, known to enemies of the Flathead Dynasty as the “Maidenhead.” The Maidenhead employed the traditionally lethal technique of the Iron Maiden to the head of the victim only, so that the effect became one of instant flat-headedness. The Grand Inquisitor planned to use this device for his own purposes. There would soon be a new ruler in Quendor.

Dalboz, excited about the return of magic, ventured to the Steppinthrax Monastery Headquarters and Museum to share the knowledge with Yannick. He was told the Grand Inquisitor could not be disturbed and waited in the lobby for quite some time. Just as he was staring up at the massive propaganda posters of his old schoolmate, and wondering at what strange goings-on he had missed while in his deep seclusion, he heard anguished screams from the Grand Inquisitor’s office—the sounds of a violent struggle. The Dungeon Master tried to dematerialize, and then, giving up, fumbled with the door for some time, before he remembered about the knob, and pushed inside only to find the Grand Inquisitor himself standing over the slain body of Syovar, whose head was neatly cleft in twain, and lying in a growing puddle of blood.

The Dungeon Master seemed strangely steeled by the discovery, as if some part of him had been waiting for the Grand Inquisitor to reveal his true colors for a very long time. Then, circling the body, the two old friends began to argue bitterly over the ramifications of both the assassination and the return of magic. The Dungeon Master argued that Zork was an enchanted land that could not be ruled except by magic, or by its consent. The Grand Inquisitor knew, however, that he himself could not rule (as per his designs) if magic were allowed back into the Empire… he would be impotent next to the reunited, reinvigorated Enchanter’s Guild. He begged the Dungeon Master to help him put down magic and reclaim the Empire. The Dungeon Master refused. He looked down at the magical plant in his hands, and it curled in on itself instantly withering into a dead stalk. The Dungeon Master looked up at his old friend sadly, suddenly understanding what was about to happen. He turned to go, disgusted. He said only two words. “Tell them.”

The battle that began between then was fierce and well-matched. While spraying a can of Frobozz Electric Wizard Repellent, the Grand Inquisitor sprung open the Maidenhead, which clamped itself to the Dungeon Master just as his clothes fell to the ground, empty. When the smoke cleared, Dalboz was dead and Yannick bald. Though he appeared dead—his body had, after all, disappeared in a cloud of gray smoke—the Grand Inquisitor was left to suspect that he had pronounced some kind of protective spell on himself, the moment before he was struck. What had happened, was that Dalboz, having been sprayed with the Wizard Repellent was torn from his body the moment before the Maidenhead could have been clasped upon his head. Floating helplessly, his spirit was kept alive and ascended into the Ethereal Plane of Atrii, where it was he shared a walk-up with the Enchantress Y’Gael.

Being the only witness present of the murder, the Grand Inquisitor told of the incident, stating that Syovar III had accidentally strangled himself. With Syovar III out of the way, the Grand Inquisitor soon became the recognized leader of the Theocracy of Quendor and the Chairman of the Frobozz Magic Company, which he formally renamed Frobozz Electric. It seems that in the meantime, the remainder of the population was unaware of the death of the Dungeon Master, and the Grand Inquisitor employed someone to impersonate Dalboz. This imposter held many speeches on behalf of Mir Yannick, most of which were relayed to Zork via propaganda newsreels.


REPORTS OF MAGIC
The Grand Inquisitor had appointed Undersecretary Wartle, and a certain number of trustworthy men, to the task of Magic Surveillance. Soon after the death of the Dungeon Master, reports began to flood in. The land appeared to be quickened and invigorated, growing with magical life again; just as in the Dungeon Master’s garden, enchanted trees sprang from seeds, some bearing ripe, splitting fruit in a single moment; others producing umbrellas or thermoses or galoshes and other such sundry items. Along the Great Underground Highway, a magical sword of elvish workmanship sprouted up from the land in a strange, sealed box. And someone had even reported strange activities at the deserted GUE Tech. The Grand Inquisitor knew he had to get things under control, and he did not have very long. Magic was on the rise; his propaganda campaign did not seem to be stopping it, but instead sending it underground. People were starting to hope.

As the Grand Inquisitor tightened his control on the land, he coaxed the Council of the Generals into an alliance based on their shared exploitation of the people and resources of the Empire. As the Grand Inquisitor’s power expanded, he began to train the population of the Great Underground Empire increasingly towards technology, and away from magic. The Grand Inquisitor owned, and thus could control, all of the existing technology in the Empire—and with it, the people. Magic was unruly and uncontrollable, and the Grand Inquisitor made it quite clear that no type of magic, of any purpose, was tolerable in the Empire. Anything that even smelled of the return of enchantment was to be shunned, and ultimately, destroyed. This included the sealing of the ancient network of time tunnels that ran beneath the Empire.


THE FATE OF LUCY FLATHEAD (1058 GUE)
Lucy Flathead was captured by Wartle in 1058 for defacing Inquisition propaganda and employing telepathic abilities. She was placed under arrest and bound over to trial for High Treason Against the Empire. The Magistrate had broken the seal on her file, and alerted Yannick immediately. Implicating Yannick—the only remaining authority that held the temporary government of the Empire together, in the time of flux and chaos following the death of the Vice Regent—rapidly earned Lucy a sentence of death. The fact that the Grand Inquisitor was the presiding official of the court did not help matters much, but it did somewhat speed up the deliberations. Though she fully expected to die, the Grand Inquisitor had other plans for her.

When Yannick discovered that her bloodline traced directly back to the Flathead Dynasty, and she was thus the rightful heir to the empire, the horrid man enjoyed not only the pleasurable surge of power that lay in giving her the sentence, but yet another in commuting it. Now that he had the attention of the population, he determined to make an example of Lucy, and brought her to the Totemizer. Though she would not give him the satisfaction of showing her fear, the Totemizer was truly a hideous machine. Lucy who was born into Middle Magic, and given her True Name through the power of the Old Tongue upon the third day following her birth, would lose her visionary powers when she lost her Name. She would become captive in a disk of base metal without substance, a lifeless totem of her magical self.

In the final moments that Lucy stood atop this giant mechanical spectacle, she became something of a folk hero to the crowd at its base. Yannick, who was more taken with the vision of her body than her visionary mind, offered her a last chance at clemency if she were to subject herself to an inquisition of a more personal nature. To this she only spat out “Murderer.” Then, her eyes began to radiate the same strange purple light, and up she floated, straining against the ropes that bound her to the platform of the machine. She began to speak in a low monotone, warning the Grand Inquisitor of his doom in a strange vision. There would be only one, one who could call the Great Lady down from the Planes of Atrii, through the Last Door. She would come for Yannick, and a great sacrifice and a brave heart would destroy him.

The frightened Grand Inquisitor could bear no more of such nonsense, and slapped her… hard. In whipping her head to the side, her hair seemed to move, and then the top of her headdress sailed cleanly off-revealing her truer, flatter nature. The crowd hushed, shocked. Lucy was a flathead! There were still flatheads living in the Empire? How could this be?

But Lucy herself, just smiled defiantly. When her ropes were loosened, she laughed at the Grand Inquisitor, and threw herself into the machine. An iron totem fell to the stone floor with a clatter. Lucy was no more and her totem was put on display in the headquarters’ main exhibit hall.


NEWLY DISCOVERED AREA OF THE UNDERGROUND (1066 GUE)
Meanwhile, while Matchlick was lost in a book (and the other Inquisition Guard’s heroes were indisposed), the Grand Inquisitor discovered a piece of the Great Underground Empire, a region of the lost Cultural Complex originally built in the days of Dimwit Flathead and expanded by later successors. He sent a lowly minion, a Private 7th Class of the Inquisition Guard, to research the heretofore undiscovered area near Port Foozle, thrusting into their hands a brass lantern of dubious quality and a plastic ersatz-Elvish sword of no antiquity or use whatsoever. After returning with reports of grues and rat-ants, the Grand Inquisitor and Wartle welcomed the Inquisition Guard. The minion received a half day off for the exemplary work.


THE OPPRESSION CONTINUED
Already Yannick had parlayed his position as the head of the mega-conglomerate Frobozz Electric to rule the land like a fascist regime. Because Frobozz Electric owned all patented technology in the land, as long as the Inquisition could keep magic from the people, he could rule the populace as he pleased. But the rumors of supernatural sightings and the return of magic were talked about with increasing clamor by the populace. Fearing that a magic rebellion would grow from the people, the Grand Inquisitor grew more nervous by the day. In response, he tightened his stranglehold, fattening the citizens with further anti-magic propaganda and encouraging them to take more excessive actions against it.


PORT FOOZLE LIBERATED (1067-02-34)
With the removal of the Enchanters Guild, Port Foozle was liberated by the Inquisition on the Thirty-Fourth of Frobuary, 1067 GUE. The Grand Inquisitor claimed that the magic wars were finally over. “Shun magic and shun the appearance of magic! Shun everything - and then shun shunning!” said the Grand Inquisitor from atop Flathead Mesa (his locale near the city for making public announcements), where the grateful masses thronged to welcome Inquisition troops to newly-occupied Port Foozle. A region-wide evening curfew initiated by the Grand Inquisition.

On that day, the imposter Third Dungeon Master read a brief but impassioned statement in support of the transitional Inquisition government, before he “accepted the Inquisition’s generous offer of a permanent vacation” in prison. This was off course not true, as the Dungeon Master had been defeated for quite some time, but it prevented Mir Yannick from having to upkeep the pseudo-Dalboz and risk the discovery of the false identity. Although rumors that the Dungeon Master was leading a Magic Resistance abounded, the Inquisition assured the populace that these were entirely false.

In addition to the occupation of Port Foozle, the Grand Inquisitor had completed his technological wonder, a powerful mind-control device in the form of the Inquisition Cable Network, Inquizivision, which he planned to broadcast from atop Flathead Mesa and use to broaden and enlighten the minds of citizens across the countryside. This super-plan would tighten his grip on the minds of the Quendorans so painfully, that he believed it might never be reversed. With Inquizivision, non-stop twenty-four-hours-aday Inquisition programming would brainwash the already mind-numbed, dogma-fed population until their brains would become useless mush. He planned to unleash this powerful device on the following day.

Following the power outage that night caused by a malfuction of Flood Control Dam #3, riots began in the city streets as people were excited over an alleged magic rebellion and rumors of an adventurer carting the Dungeon Master around in a magic lamp. The idea that Yannick’s plans would be ruined crippled him with a terrible emotional outburst. He sought to converse with Antharia Jack who had been taken prisoner in the Foozle Jail, hoping that he would be able to assist him. After confessing the situation to Jack, Yannick almost collapsed in an outburst of tears. Fearing this breakdown, Jack tried to empathize with him by telling how he let the love of his life slip through his fingers over a stupid game of strip Grue, Fire and Water. Hoping to cheer up Mir’s spirits, Jack revealed to him the location of AFGNCAAP—the time tunnels. This advice did not prevent Jack from be tortured by watching a hungus getting prodded. Mir Yannick proceeded with Wartle to apprehend AFGNCAAP and the totems just as they emerged from the Steppinthrax Monastery time tunnel. Wartle had the adventurer stripped of his belongings and locked up in the Port Foozle jail in a cell adjacent to Antharia Jack.


THE RETURN OF MAGIC (1067-02-35)
That morning, Wartle stayed behind with a small regiment of Inquisition guards (less than the usual number) while the majority of the troops attended Mir Yannick at the Flathead Mesa. Here the entire population of Port Foozle and the surrounding regions gathered at the long-expected ceremony, where the Grand Inquisition started to announce the radical new mind-numbing technology that would implement his visionary “One Point of Light” program. AFGNCAAP and Antharia Jack escaped from the Foozle jail and rode a walking castle to the Flathead Mesa where the adventurer placed three magical artifacts upon the radio tower which had been constructed upon it.

It was then that Antharia Jack kicked in his part of the plan, which was to create a distraction. To the adventurer’s dismay, his clever distraction was to point AFGNCAAP’s presence on the tower to the Grand Inquisition himself in the middle of his speech. Despite the cheering crowds and their support, the Grand Inquisitor’s broadcast was cut off and he immediately came up the tower. When Yannick reached the top, he smiled to see the Coconut of Quendor and approached it, straining to pull it out of the antenna’s compartment. As he did so, a blast of powerful magic from the adventurer's MAXOV hit the top of the antenna. The resultant blast threw AFGNCAAP, the totems, and the Grand Inquisitor from the tower while sending a shockwave of magic across the land. The burst of magic diffused all of Yannick’s technology—the monitors and the rest of his Inquisivision system, and even the Grand Inquisitor “I am the boss of you” posters supernaturally altered to “Queen Lucy the Levelheaded.”

As Yannick was enchanted with a long-life spell, it is uncertain if he survived the fall from the tower.


TRIVIA
Yannick was the author of the book, "The Twelve Hundred Steps to Self Containment in the Post Magical Era." Facsimile autographed copies were available at the Port Foozle Inquisition gift shop kiosk.
Yannick never had a girlfriend.
Yannick wore contact lenses.
While Grand Inquisitor, Yannick was known at times to reward viligant soldiers with free T-shirts and touching but overly long "thank you" speeches.

Much Inquisition merchandise was produced during the days of Mir Yannick, including the stuffed "Talk to Me Grand Inquisitor" (which were highly flammable). When the cord was pulled, it spoke the following phrases:

1. Who is the boss of you?
2. Me! I am the boss of you.
3. Frobozz Electric
4. Try to follow the logic. There is no magic.
5. We don't need magic. We have technology!
6. Brain washing the general populous 24 hours a day!

Originally selling for Zm1500 at the Inquisition gift shop kiosk in Foozle, their lack of popularity reduced the price to under a mere Zm1.

Mir Yannick found the annual Camp Egreth's Royal Guardsmen's Convention to be an occasion to practice totemization procedures and parade for his personal staff. Despite this, remnants of the group lived on.