Breaking news! I bring to you ill-tidings from the Greaze Lands of Kansas. The interdimensional conglomerate Greazeburger Incorporated has taken over a small Midwestern town and turned it into GreazeLanding One, a forward base for their capitalistic invasion of Earth. They have done so with the help of the Paranormal Military Contractor Valravn. The Eighth Wandsman of Aesgar reporting from the scene.
Your reporter, Corvus the Pedant
At the crack of dawn on June 3rd, 2022, the small Midwestern town of GreazeLanding One, original name now lost, found itself under a glistening dome colored the shade of hamburger bun, with sesame seeds stars glittering upon its top. The Emergency Services of the town mobilized: the cops and the firemen and the local doctor all gathered up at the side of the dome, and the plumber and the carpenter came by too to see if they could break through it.
They had no luck.
Then came the Valravn Valkyries. Shining monstrosities of feminine flesh and interlocking steel, swift and merciless. In less than a minute, all five cops collapsed to the ground, blood spurting from their torsos. The firemen broke out their hoses and tried to spray down the Valkyries, but the fearsome floozies surged through the hydraulic stream and struck the waterbearers in their hearts.
The plumber, the carpenter, and the local doctor tried to flee, but there was no mercy: the doctor was struck down from behind, his head cleft in twain, and the plumber and the carpenter shall never walk again.
Five minutes later, the Valkyries stormed the mayor's house. And they brought her, her husband and their children out to the main street. At gunpoint they forced the entirety of the town to watch as they paraded the captured leaders before them.
Then he showed up in a burst of oily light: Mettron Greaze, The Voice of Greaze. He laid out a litany of trumped up charges, all of them nonsensical — crimes against fast food, betrayal for the consumption of McDonald's, and many others that made no sense in this world or any others.
By lunch time, the mayoral family had been drowned to death in deep and thick vats of Greaze, and the town became a GreazeBurger town. Even now it remains under occupation, as the Valkyries and Valravn build a vast gate to the heavens, shaped like a hamburger drive-thru, under the watchful eyes of Mettron Greaze. I wondered, dear reader, what their intentions were, and so I pursued them, for the Right and the True.
I was lucky enough to score an interview with Mettron Greaze, the voice of Greaze.
Mettron Greaze
“What are you thinking? Why on earth would you do such a thing?” I asked objectively.
“I am the voice of the most holy and most imperial Greaze,” it replied in a relatively soft-spoken Brooklyn accent. “I come to liberate this world and free it for the holy and most ordained Greaze and turn it from the Cult of the Sackler Opium Poppy to that of the GreazeBurger.”
“Okay,” I said, with the goal of only journalistic investigation, “But it doesn't really look like the people wanted any of this. What exactly gives you the right to come in swoop in?”
Mettron Greaze looked at me through 360 pairs of eyes. “It is the cost of doing business.” it said. “Hostile takeover in the name and the most holy and most ordained GreazeBurger. The product must move.”
“You’re hurting these people,” I protested.
“So did the Sacklers,” it said with a smile. “But my Greaze, well, it’s all natural. None of this oxycodone or fentanyl or heroin garbage. Just pure unadulterated Greaze.”
It then flew away to smite a cow. We would continue our interview at a later time.
I was also able to speak with a Valravn Valkyrie, catching her on one of her routine Terror Patrols through GreazeLanding One. She was evasive at first, saying that she was nowhere near as eloquent a bard as a Valravn War skald. I flattered her, telling her that I was interested in her true thoughts, not in the corporate line.
“So this GreazeBurger,” I said. “Are you happy working with them?”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes as she casually brandished her gun at a cowering family. I couldn't place her accent. At one second it seemed like it could be Eastern European. Another, Nordic. Yet another, vaguely Asian. It was as if she was trying to study me as I studied her, and her entire face was a pockmarked mosaic of welded metal, so I couldn't tell where her origins were.
“Money is money,” she said after a while, before putting her gun back in her shoulder. The family made a break for it. “GreazeBurger pays well even if half their money is encrusted in oil, the other 30% is illegible or covered with presidents who never were, and only the remaining 20% is actually legal tender. Who cares? They promise us a trillion dollars per contract. 20% of that is still a whole lot more than we get from our other clients. What's the cost of one podunk American town next to all of that?”
Kansas.
The cowering family had almost made it about twenty paces or so when the titter-tat of rapid-fire gunshots rang out. All twelve of the family members collapsed to the ground, writhing as two Valkyries stepped from ambush, giggling to each other as they emptied the contents of their Valravn Gatling Arm Cannons. I winced as I saw thaumaturgic flashes of valknut-shaped light with every shot.
“It’s a risk, though,” I said. “Valravn, as I understand it, does its… scavenging in the more overlooked corners of the world. Here, in America — you’ve got to deal with bigger threats. The Americans have what, three magical departments alone?”
She snorted. “It’s a podunk town for a reason. America forsook this place long ago. Maybe they will try to bring down the Greazedome, but by then we will have been paid and have gotten all that we need from here.”
When the family writhed no more, the two other Valkyries embraced each other and shouted out a cruel and harsh prayer to Odin.
We watched this together.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked. “For god’s sake, that… that child was six.”
“So was my sister,” she spat. “Didn’t stop the Americans.”
“These people are civilians. They didn’t have anything to do with… I’m sorry about what happened in your past, but they had nothing to do with it!”
“And my family had nothing to do with the Americans and their wars, yet they came anyways.”
She drew her gun and emptied it into the corpses, emphatically, one bullet at a time.
“Let them rot in this monument to their excesses.”
“So that’s it? That’s why you’re okay with this? Ever worsening cycles of revenge? What a way to waste a life!”
She laughed at me.
“You're a fucking Wandsman,” she said. “You people think that being journalists makes sense in the Wanderer’s Library. Do you sleep thinking any of us care?”
It was rather mean of her to say that. The Wandsman are fully aware that we’ve chosen this task of preserving and storing knowledge as a bulwark. Yes, we have increasing amounts of pressure from the higher ups that we can augment and eventually replace the Wanderer’s Library, which is, in my opinion, very bold since none of us have explored all that far.
But the fact of the matter is I firmly believe that our individual personal accounts provide immeasurable worth in the hallowed annals of the Library. We put boots on the ground and we figure out what the people there are thinking. We have a similar job as the Planasthai and nobody thinks they’re jokes. The Planasthai are taken seriously because their editors don't put manacles on their authors, and I for one think that I will not be silenced. Censorship is not okay. I fully expect my Editor to remove this passage and that for you to never read it. No one can say Corvus the Pedant, Eighth Wandsman of Aesgar, does not try.
Editor's note: The Wandsmen Gazette is not in the business of censorship. Censorship is not okay, ever, under any circumstances. Corvus, like many of our reports, embraces the flair of the dramatic for entertainment purposes.
I spoke at length, additionally, to one of the people who lived in this town, currently being overtaken by this Unholy Alliance of Valravn under the command of Mettron Greaze. My conversation went something like such.
"John Smith", Cooperative Citizen.
“Oh God, who are you? Are you that ‘Val Raven’ that executed the mayor in cold blood in public?”
“Actually,” I said, “I'm a jackdaw.”
“You look like a crow to me,” said the understanding member of the public. I remember his name completely and totally, but in the interest of protecting his anonymity I'll call him John Smith and refer to him with he/him pronouns. “Crow, jackdaw, as far as I'm concerned a crow is a jackdaw.”
“Here's the thing,” I said, “you said that a crow is a jackdaw.”
He cut me off, an astounding lack of respect towards my identity.
“Shut up bird brain,” he said, “I don't care. What the fuck are you why do you exist, and why did you kill the mayor?”
The average citizen, I regret to inform you, is often uninformed, remains that way and is happy to do so. I decided perhaps it would be more productive to try and conduct some market research.
“What is your opinion on Greazeburger products?” I asked.
“What the fuck? Is this some kind of sick joke?” said John Smith. “Is that some sort of knock-off McDonald's? Or some sort of Burger King?”
“Well no,” I said. “Weren't you paying attention? Valravn killed your mayor and took over your town on the behest of Greazeburger Interdimensional, an interdimensional corporation that focuses on selling hamburgers and hamburger adjacent products.”
He squinted at me. “Are you a furry? Is that your fur-suit? Is there a hidden camera somewhere?”
“No, sir,” I said. “This is all very very real, this is the life you live in right now.”
“Okay but you're really expect me to believe all of this bullshit: that not only is there an interdimensional Burger Corporation that's ripping off the voice of god, but that there's also this band of Norse themed mercenaries who have super laser guns and magic weapons, and also you're telling me that Joe Biden didn't deploy any of them in his foreign wars, but rather that somehow a Burger Corporation can afford to sic them on a small town? Etcetera etcetera… etcetera etcetera blah blah blah. I mean for God's sake, why us?”
He wasn’t very coherent after that. I think he was rather upset at what he thought were the cruel whims of fate. Yet to my eyes it seemed just as likely that the flocks of the American Empire were coming home to roost.
And so I sought another audience with Mettron Greaze.
"This is but the first vanguard into many thousands of worlds," said Mettron Greaze. "I speak for the Almighty Dollar. I speak for the Alpha of the stock market, the Omega of Optimal Methods and Engagements of Greaze Acquisition. This world is a GreazeBurger world. It shall be so. We shall coat your skies with deep fryer smoke, and your rivers will run red with Greaze Juice. Every potato shall be frenched and then fried. The false Burger King and Ronald his Jester shall be drawn and quartered, their reigns ended, and The Jezebel Wendy shall be thrown into shame. This world is a GreazeBurger world. It is the first, but it will not be the last."
“Don’t you feel a single lick of shame?” I asked. “I mean, here you are, just shamelessly ripping off Judaism to justify the conquest of infinite worlds. It was messed up when the Romans did it, and it’s messed up now. Hell, calling yourself Mettron when most of your infinite selves go by Anglo names? Really? One syllable off of Metatron? This is real problematic, Metty. Real problematic.”
“I got no idea what you’re talking about, bird brain,” said Mettron Greaze. “Can you even read the Hebrew letters in the Wandsman logo?”
I report his accusation for the purposes of transparency, but rest assured, dear reader, that it is one so absurd you need not even consider it.
I have consulted the Wandsman Archives. I have delved into the annals of The Wanderers Library. I have even scoured pilfered documents from Foundations across the multiverse, and never before have I heard the term GreazeBurger World. We may be viewing the 1st of a multiversal parasite, a cross-universal contagion that shall spread and spread like a burning fire. That will end everything we know about the Multiverse As We Know it. I recommend upgrading any GreazeBurger World into a Black-level threat, and deploying our Legions wherever we might to eradicate them from all being.
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I'd like to close with a review of Greazeburger products. I bought a GreazeBurger, some GreazeFries, and a GreazeSundae. They are too oily. For a week after eating them all I was bedridden; the week after that I sat atop a porcelain throne, spilling my bowels. 0/10 would not recommend.
Corvus the Pedant, Eighth Wandsman of Aesgar, Waylayer of the Wiseless, Gourmand of the Grave, Infiltrator of the Inane.
