The Song of Ban and Ulena
Play
Although the frustrated poet Trimueil later decided that The Song of Ban and Ulena could only be published as a poem, it was first conceived as a play for the stage. The script, while a trifle long, was written in beautiful poetic meter and after reading the opening monologue Lucin Seutorian went running to his uncle for funds for its production.
It was never staged, it wasn’t even rehearsed, the casting was bad enough. The stage gloves for the costume of the Black Duke of Thring were so bulky that many of the actors who tried out had difficultly ripping the wings off of the nightingale prop. To make matters worse, Lucin became inconsolable after his beloved Narosi hairless died in its sleep mere hours after he had finally found an actor who could pull off the Duke’s speech about the childhood injury he had suffered while place kicking puppies.
It wasn’t long before Trimueil stormed off into the wilds, taking the only copy of the script with him, vowing never to write for the stage again. But the very morning after he departed the youth who had been cast as fair Ulena, the lady who had been imprisoned by the Black Duke and who waited in her tower for her beloved Ban to return and free her with only a firebird for company, awoke with a single glowing feather clutched in her hand.
Sonnet
The following sonnet was found on a piece of paper crumpled up and shoved behind a bookshelf in Trimueil’s quarters. It is presumably a precursor to the Song of Ban and Ulena and, despite its rough form, we can see Trimueil’s signature iambic quadrameter.
The Black Duke of Thring
The Duke bound Ulena because
His heart was full of tears and seams
And colder than he thought it was
His nights were spent in evil dreams
His days were full of wicked schemes
To keep Ulena bound with shackle
And her door barred with heavy beams
Always he would limp and cackle
Through the bleak halls of his castle
For he had hear the green witch say
Gone his love his clever vassal
Ban would not live a year and day
He was cold and growing colder
But Ulena still burned warmer
Epic Poem
Trimueil’s epic poem of the same name was lost in a mysterious dungeon of the Imperium Undying (39.12). Having lost it, Trimueil could not conjure the energy to re-write it, but scholars would pay handsomely for the lost folio to be recovered.
The epic poem is a retelling of the founding of Blind Midshotgatepool, beginning with the arrival of the five founders on the shores of the Keening Sea and ending with the companions’ tragic death. Trimueil subsequently felt unable to conjure up the creative energies to re-write the entire manuscript, and as a result the work is considered lost. However, scholars in the Shuttered City would pay an exorbitant price for the poem to be recovered.
Hooks:
- Is there some connection between the meter of the script of the Song of Ban and Ulena and the songs of the leviathans (00.06.01)? What else could explain its apparent ability to bridge the gap between this world and the land of dreams?
- Who is Lucin exactly?
- Did the strange events of the casting of the Song of Ban and Ulena have any permanent effects?
- Who was (is?) the Green Witch?