After shoving Hansel in the oven, the witch turns to Gretel - who is currently fending the witch off with a gingerbread chair - and says:
"I can't believe you thought a trail of breadcrumbs would save you. I mean, honestly, this is a forest! It's full of animals. Honestly, the very idea that a dumb shit like you thought you could get the better of me is absurd."
Gretel hits her in the face with said chair. To be fair to the witch, she takes the chairshot like a champ.
"Ow!"
"Did you know," says Gretel, "that crows are capable of facial recognition?"
"Eh?" Says the witch, clambering to her feet and pulling a candy cane sledgehammer off the wall. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Not only that," Gretel continues, "but they can remember both friends and enemies. And they'll often follow people they remember as friends."
The two fence with their sugared weapons for a moment, before the witch knocks the chair out of Gretel's hands.
"Enough with the bird facts! Honestly, this whole attempted escape has been utter clownshoes. Get in the fucking oven!"
She seizes Gretel by the collar. Gretel immediately sandbags, letting her whole body go limp. This eminently practical defense forces the witch to try and deadlift her. Which is hard, as the witch often skips leg day.
"For example," Gretel says, as the witch struggles and grunts, "if you feed crows a lot of breadcrumbs, they'll probably start to see you as a friend and follow you in the hope of more food."
The witch stops. Outside, she hears the thunder of wings.
"They'll even bring you shiny things they find as presents!" Says Gretel, as a corner of the gingerbread ceiling is suddenly cut away by a large crow with a knife in its mouth.
"Oh shitballs." Says the witch, as the crows descend. "I hope you know this is a great unkindness."
"Technically," Says Gretel, "It's a murder."
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The duchy was founded - unofficially - when some enterprising little thief had read through the royal lawbooks, looking for loopholes like a worm trying to wriggle its way through a brick, and had discovered that while the king's men could follow a man across mountains, forests, and plains, they were not granted the same jurisdiction over bodies of water.
This had started the popular idea amongst the kingdom's criminal underbelly that if a thief took a boat and paddled out into the middle of a pond, the king's men technically couldn't do anything about it.
Of course, the realist interjected, it'd never work; if you tried it, then you'd be one thief in the middle of a pond, with all those guards waiting on the shore for you to either wash up with the flotsam or die of starvation.
Still, the idea was alluring. It hung around the popular consciousness as a thought, an untested hypothesis, an interesting fact.
It would've remained so if it wasn't for Edmund Snood, an enterprising young thief who hadn't quite enterprised an escape plan, and with the guard closing behind him had grabbed a rowboat and cast himself out into the largest of the kingdom's lakes so fast that he had skipped like a thrown stone.
And as Edmund fended off the banks and the horrible, grinning, patient faces of the guards waiting for him there, word had spread across the kingdom. Soon enough, thieves and thugs were all paddling up to the little rowboat with a sandwich and a few words of encouragement, attaboy, Eddie, show them who's boss, eh? We're all rooting for you back home!
And after four days, the duchy was founded - unofficially - when Jack "Jackal" Jaseroque had lashed his rowboat to Edmund's and took over the duty of paddling while Edmund took the first sleep he had in half a week.
After that, another boat lashed together with the two. Then another. Then four more. A lean-to shelter was built, torn down, and rebuilt bigger. Walkways were tied together. And then in a wave of tidal force, the thieves and thugs, bandits and brigands, vandals and vagabonds of the kingdom all sailed out to the little assemblage. Leather bladders were inflated to help with bouyancy. Ramshackle halls were raised. A strict rotation of paddling duty was arranged to fend off the banks.
And the tune of the realist had changed - they can't be watching all the shores, right? So if we just spend a couple days here, keep an eye out, and head out again once we've spotted a gap, then who cares about a little bit of paddling in the meantime, right?
The duchy was founded - officially - when Edmund Snood took on the role of dukedom to universal acclaim. This was also when the name of the little commune had been agreed on, as the makeshift structure bobbed gently on the water's surface.
It was called the Robber Duchy.
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There Was An Attempt To Shoot Some Sweet Archery Video
(source)
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