For obscure reasons, I had occasion last night to re-read the bit of UF2 in which Lord Fahrvergnügen explained(?) to the founding Wedge Defenders who he was, where he came from, and what business he had with them. I hadn't looked at that file in... uh... 20+ years? And it got me to thinking. The easy explanation for how weird the whole scene is would just be to chalk up the wild improbability and/or complete impossibility of everything this weirdo is telling them to the extreme inexperience of the writers, but I prefer to think that the kids know Wolfgang is full of shit right from the beginning of his story.

They're probably not au courant with all the details of the period of history he's talking about, but they would know that it was vanishingly unlikely anybody in central Europe was performing "experiment[s] concerning magnetism and electricity" during the Hundred Years' War. Those investigations didn't really go much of anywhere before the 1600s. For that matter, even 1990s teenagers would have been likely to know that "von Fahrvergnügen" isn't a real modern German surname, let alone one from the late Middle Ages--particularly Fritz Koopman, who is German.

No, I choose now to believe that they recognize right from the off that the guy is either bullshitting them or out of his damn tree, and are just abiding because... hey, free space adventure. And for all the decades afterward, they never called him on it outright, just out of politeness. Let the man feel like he's getting away with whatever it is he's getting away with. His heart is in the right place. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.