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| ORD OF THE TEXBOOK |
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| The Battle of the Liberal Arts Colleges |
| The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it... |
| It began with the writing of the Great Textbooks. Three were given to the Board of Education at Brown: immortal, wisest, fairest of all school administrators. Seven to the Board of Education at Colby College: great miners and craftsmen of Maine. And nine... nine textbooks were gifted to the Board of Education at Harvard, who above all else desire power... For in these textbooks was bound the strength and the will to govern each college. But they were all of them decieved.... In the land of Connecticut, in the great fortress of Wesleyan, the Dark Dean Sauron wrote in secret a master Textbook. And into this Textbook he poured his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all liberal arts colleges. One Textbook to rule them all... One by one, all the liberal arts colleges in the land fell to the power of the Textbook. But there were some who resisted... A last alliance of school administrators from Bard College and Brown College defied Dean Sauron. And in the Dining Hall of Wesleyan they argued for the freedom of all the liberal arts colleges in the land. Victory was near... But the power of the Textbook could not be undone... It was in that instant... When all hope had faded... That Isildur, son of the Dean Elendil of Bard, snuck into Dean Sauron's private study and stole the Textbook. Sauron, the enemy of the free liberal arts colleges of the US... Was defeated. The Textbook passed to Isildur, who had this one chance... To destroy Evil forever. But the hearts of Bard students... Are easily corrupted... And the Textbook of Power... Has a will of its own. It betrayed Isildur... To his death. And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend... Legend became myth... And for two and a half thousand years the Textbook passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, it ensnared a new bearer... The Textbook came to the boy Gollum, who went to Montpelier High School in Vermont... And he bore the Textbook deep into the Appalacian Mountains. And there... It consumed him. The Textbook brought to Gollum unnatural long life... For five hundred years, it poisoned his mind... And in the gloom of Gollum's cave... It waited. Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in Connecticut. Whispers of a nameless fear... And the Textbook perceived It's time had come. It abandoned Gollum. But something happened, then, that the Textbook did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature of all: A young man, Bilbo Baggins, of Montpelier, Vermont. For the time would soon come That Montpelierians would shape the fortunes... Of all. |