The Tales Of A Modern Day Knight (Part 2)

Wolfram's Urban Adventures tell the tale of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the last living descendant of his namesake, the 13th Century knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, who fought alongside count Herman von Thüringen in the third Crusades. Friendly knight Wolfram clearly has a hard time adapting to our modern times, as is made evident by his funny, clumsy and sometimes downright inappropriate way of handling everyday situations.

I took it upon myself to document Wolfram's daily struggle to be accepted by society. Each image is accompanied by a narrative, giving the series a storytelling feel.

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"Even though bravery, justice and valour are evident in my appearance, there remains some doubt as to my ancestry. The lack of clear documentation on my part raises questions about the validity of my knighthood.

I have taken up a quest to find a royal house to bestow knighthood upon me. A royal house to which I vow:
- to fulfill any and all duties bestowed upon me by my monarch.
- to keep faith, following St. George Michael's proze
- to protect the innocent, to punish the injust and to guard the purity of ladies. I shall take their virginity and keep it safe from others.

My journey led me to the oldest reigning monarch, the Queen Elizabeth. Her refusal of my services drove my desperation into a frenzy as I roamed the streets of the City, yelling about how I am a mere foreigner, willing to work harder for less compensation. I have been made to believe that the conclusion of their frustration with me is now called a 'Brexit'.

Amongst constructions of various retail, I found the palace of a true King! A feast was in full sway in the main hall and the kitchen was bursting with activity. The plebeians gorged themselves on oozing meat on bread and crunchy sticks of a yellow vegetable I could not recognise. Their children played horrible sounding instrumentations, fashioned of colourful cups and straws, to make one want to sear ones ears shut onto the kitchen grills.

I requested passage into the throneroom and was directed to a hallway, where a little girl sat crying for her parents. Upon learning of my duties, she made me haste to clarify myself, asking me wether it would be a number one or a number two. Stating I needed to fulfill all duties, she led me into the shimmering throneroom and told me to pick a throne for myself. Alas, Princess of the Burger Kingdom, I could not sit on a throne so glorious before first entering into your service.

Since she did not have the proper regalia on her, I fashioned her a sword and knelt once more, to be inducted into the tier of knights and noblemen. My impression of her could not have prepared me for the mighty blow that followed my request for the gentle tap known as an accolade. Had it not been a blunt sword of wood, she would have decapitated me! Nevertheless she dubbed me Sir Wolfram, knight-servant of the Burger King, protector of the porcelain throne, keeper of duties.

As I woke from the debilitating blow to my neck and exited this golden hall of marble thrones, a flame-grilled feast welcomed me. My songs of joy were less appreciated by the seated thralls, whose food I claimed. As Lady Fortune smiled upon me, it didn't require more than one public beheading for them to see my true nobility."

"According to several letters I've received from council, police and the owner, my house is not, in fact, my house. Rudely I was woken when two uniformed brutes tore me out of my dreams and escorted me off the premises that had previously provided me with a roof to sleep under.

The cloudy night sky was my new blanket, the wet streets, downtrodden by the townspeople I so loathe, my living room floor. I stood forelorn, coming to terms with my newfound vagabondry. A companion I found in a scraggly streetdweller. A man of stringy posture and the beard of a fourteen-year-old, he offered me a share of his meal and his drink.

My trust was betrayed and I felt foolhardy when the cold air of night tickled my private parts as I found myself bare and without armour! The lout had filled my belly with spirits and he left me bereft of my senses and my possessions. Never again will I trust a man who offers me his body for nightly warmth.

I hastily followed the familiar sounds of my rattling metal husk across an unfamiliar maze of dark, sleeping houses and spotted the cretin in an ally, at the end of which he got caught up with my blade. In the crisp air of night, the vagabond's last breath left the hole in his greasy neck in a puff of thin vapour, taking with it my hope of befriending anyone in this world."

"At last, the little box my chronicler presented me with has proven fruitful in its endeavour to find me a suitable lady. The flat little screen shows me pictures of women that require me to move them to the left or to the right. This 'right swiping' has produced me an unparallelled match in the form of a true Amazonian. She promised to mount me like a pony, ride me hard until sunrise and she did. Her abode was horrendous, but pretty women don't need pretty houses. Perhaps the maid had an off day.

The morning found me feeling refreshed and soiled at the same time, and so I went downstairs to find the armour and my weapons that I shed that previous night. Suddenly, the door creaked and through a flap in the door appeared something wicked, demonic even. The image of this living gargoyle etched itself into my eyes and as it jumped up onto the table, I could not move a limb. Slowly I reached for the broomstick behind me, which was covered in cogwebs after what can only have been decades of careful neglect.

As milady trotted downstairs, moving unsteadily after last nights escapades, I warned her about the beast and immediately gave it a mighty heave with the broom, sending it crashing into the door, where I pummeled it into a bloody mess, for which the willow branches at the business end of this housekeeping instrument proved dismally insufficient.

Standing gloriously over its wretched corpse, I expected the lady to thank me for saving her from this abomination, but instead she started bawling about her pet. Vaguely and in the back of my mind, I do recall her mentioning that, if I turned out to be a long term companion to her carnal desires, she would let me pet her hairless pussy...

Maybe this Tinder cannot find me true love, for it raised my hopes on horny clouds and let them crash onto the pavement outside the house of my first true love."

"Spending one's day hunting scraps for food is a life unworthy of my noble self. But as of recent, Fortune hath smiled upon me with barren-toothed grin, as she sent me the White wizard of Heißenbergen with a book of potions!

He made promise of one recipe so potent that it could endow its user with great imagination of otherworldly happenings. Once prepared, the solution of ingredients would boil down to crystals of a heavenly beauty, the colour of angels' eyes and the sparkle of shattered ice from the greatest glaciers the alps have ever seen.

The wizard's directions led me into a forest of ominous atmosphere. Along muddy paths and through a thicket of shrubs I came onto a clearing where a forgotten carriage no longer supported its previous inhabitants, but provided an excellent kitchen for my recipes to come to fruition. The vapour of the brew had the effect of a thousand pungent onions, burning the eyes and scraping my throat. This made me curious as to the effect of the finished potion, as there were no onions in the recipe, just something called 'AA batteries'.

Through my wanderings I had seen the potion being used by the filthy gutterdwellers who were aptly named 'junks'. By their account, its use imbues a mindbending glory, which overwhelms the senses and numbs the coil of mortality. A dragon seems to ride the pulse in your veins, while the putrid odour drives your very soul to the edge of oblivion.

While the potion needs a small amount of fire to release its potency, it robs a user from their fire, leaving them weak and impotent as evidenced by their hollow stares. This concoction is not for those who seek interaction of a carnal nature, but merely for those without company, to wallow in their misery without knowing it."

"As demand is growing for my magic blue potion, thralls were required to fulfill the tasks of delivery. In the forests behind my wheeled laboratory, I found a following of seven hard-working men, stout in appearance. Once upon a time, they operated a small-scale mining company, until a roving necrofiliac prince took control of their mines to pay for his ostentatious wedding.

Although their size would suggest the contrary, a greater work ethic I have never seen. Their assignments they fulfilled with joy, not wanting more reward than a roof to sleep under and a bowl of porridge to fill their bellies. But their gleeful demeanor turned to their doom, as their restless singing of 'heigh-ho' plucked at my nerves like a blackbird digging for a worm. Their whistling of the same tune had to my ears become so despicable that a mere pouting of their lips stirred a lust for slaughter inside my tormented mind.

So on a midsummer's night, heavy with mosquitos and the stifling odours of the blooming wilderness, I found myself in the forest upon their shack and summoned them to gather their digging tools. One by one, I had them dig their own, half-sized graves in the leaf-covered soil. Unbeknownst to them, they had carried out their final chore. As they merrily congregated in front of me, it only took but one fell swoop of my cold blade to strike the light from their eyes and send their heads in opposite direction from their bodies. No man whose death becomes him under the service of a true knight should rest without a proper burial, and therefore I fashioned the symbolic crosses of christianity to sanctify their eternal sleep.

It wasn't until then that I noticed but six graves, where I expected seven. The little lout was bound to return, I deduced from his porridge still on the table. No sooner had I started digging the unknowing dolt's grave, when he turned up with a bag of mushrooms and snared squirrels he gathered nearby. Our emotions were evident as we gazed into eachother's eyes. He feared for his life. I was hungry. And so, a deal was made. Squirrel and mushroom stew with porridge for dessert does truly quiet the nerves. The mushrooms seemed to make the dwarf a little dopey, too. Who knows, I might just let this one live."

"Wandering through towns and cities, fields and forests, each soggy step drains my will to move on. My stomach loudly protests the efforts of my muscles to extract even more energy from the empty vessel I have become. But lo, shimmering with dewdrops in the last light of yet another foggy dusk, there were mushrooms!

Soon after I ate some handfuls my stomach felt full for the first time in what must have been days. The dirt from their stems crunched between my teeth, their rubbery flesh tasted entirely unlike chicken and then, the world started spinning in more colours than I could ever imagine a rainbow.

From under my fingernails, a tiny tavern sprouted and grew larger and larger until I was completely enveloped by it. There were all sorts of scoundrels and scallywags, bandits and berserkers, harlots and heroes. Well, one hero, namely myself. The tavern's wall kept pulsating like a beating heart and most everyone swam away like sardines before a shark when I turned to look around.

Slowly, I realised I really had become a shark in the ocean. My belief was strenghtened by the blueish light from above and my own shining exterior. I swam around untill I came upon a tasty salmon, only to find another shark wanted to lay claim to its pink insides. He bared his teeth and I did mine as we circled one another to battle for the prize. I won the battle after receiving some blows to the body, but my counterpart finally went down after turning into a vicious, armoured knight of sorts. He slowly sank to the bottom of the abyss, letting out one last 'moooo'...
Then, my hunger turned into lust as I and the room spun around and my fish had turned mermaid and I had become man again. Her eyes lured me in, her breasts beckoned to be suckled...

I shall never know what happened next, for when I woke, my lips still tainted with the silken taste of warm milk, my chronicler was dragging me feet first out of a paddock where a very satisfied-looking cow lazily chewed her cud next to a brutally butchered bull."

--- special thanks to Wijnand Burggraaf | Burbex ---

"I felt like a visitor to what is closest to a home. My ancestor's castle stood as magnificently as I could remember it. Yet, I chose not to dwell on feelings of lost chances, but to revell in this splendour like a true visitor and have a flashbox graft a reflection of myself onto paper.

My trusted blade perfectly balanced the photo-chamber at the proper distance and, as it is considered appropriate according to my knowledge of nowaday culture, like the minstrel Tupac, I identified myself by holding my hand in a 'W' shape.

My chronicler calls this a "selfey". I say: "It's Wolfram, b**ches!""