Jump 250: The Princess Bride

Jump #250: The Princess Bride
>Three of Cups (Abundance): The conclusion of a matter in plenty and perfection.
>Age: 23
>Location: The Cliffs of Insanity
>Identity: 23
>Drawbacks: No Money In Revenge (+150!), Castaway (+100), Is This A Kissing Story? (+200), Why Won't My Arms Move? (+200)
So I'm always going to be strapped for cash. That's okay, though, it just means I'm going to have to be very careful about who I mooch off of. And careful how I plan my travel, because I'm going to plan to travel from one town to the next, if not from one campsite to the next. And as far as romance? It can solve everything except my limbs flopping around. It's going to be an interesting decade.
>Speed Reading (1450)
A most important perk. And now that I've got this, I'm going to go into the warehouse, activate Hyperbolic Time Chamber mode, and read ALL THE BOOKS because the library is massive. See you in an hour! (Which, since it's running at 7000x speed at this point, will be about nine months of subjective time.)
>Hello (Free, Mercenary)
Be polite.
>My Name Is Inigo Montoya (1350, Mercenary)
Be professional.
>You Killed My Father (1150, Mercenary)
Have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
>Prepare To Die (850)
And don't let anything stand in your way.
>Death Cannot Stop True Love (250)
Not even death.
>Mysterious Mask (200)
While I don't intend to use this here, I will most certainly be saving it for later, as it will be helpful when I become a hero.
>Bookcase (100)
This, incidentally, is why I was taking so long in the warehouse. I consolidated the entirety of the library to this single bookcase that can hold an infinite number of books.
>Miracle Max's Medicines (0, Mercenary)
Mmm chocolate coated life energy which regenerates and purifies. I'll be giving this out in certain places like candy.

When I was a child, this was my favorite movie for a large number of reasons. When I got older, it remained such, as well as being something of a guilty pleasure. And the main reason I ever followed the careers of Carey Elwes and Robin Wright, both of whom have made some really interesting movies over the years.

As is often the case, being there changes things immensely. The smell of ocean, the sound of gulls, the woosh of air as I fall from the cliffs of insanity because my arm just went completely limp and the crush of the sea on the rocks.

God damn it.

So, once I manage to drag myself up the cliffs... well, I've got five years until the main event. So I sat and I thought, what should a mercenary do to entertain themselves? And of course, it came to me: mercenary work. But since I've got an ailment, I have to fight by proxy. To all of those around me, it simply looks like I'm accident-prone and I do nothing to dispel the rumors - the neck brace is a necessary anachronism, but a crutch or a sling for my arm are acceptable things.

And so, I spent years building clockwork automata and selling their services to the kingdoms of Gilder and Florin, setting the stage for an inevitable war, ensuring that neither knew the truth of the other getting such automata, and gradually making them more and more advanced. By the time the Man in Black finally entered the stage, they would be indistinguishable from a normal man on the battlefield, though they would have to be cloaked or else look inhuman from anything but a distance. But what better way to fight a war? A one time cost to buy an automaton, as opposed to paying a wage for a soldier, and the machines would be more durable to boot.

I met him, at one point, after he had a battle of wits. I told him and the princess that I'd sworn not to interfere - surely I was not there, and as I was not there, I had never seen them. I wished the both of them a long and prosperous life, both the princess of Florin and the lost prince of Gilder, but made myself scarce; they didn't have time to process my words before they saw the signs of a hunting band on the horizon, looking for the princess.

Did you know that Great Man from Civ could just go 'bamf, you're next in line for the throne, and the Dread Pirate Roberts is in truth a Gilderian privateer'? I love that perk.

In truth, I didn't show again on the stage until a year later. Buttercup and Westley were wed and were living happily in obscurity. Inigo Montoya met the man who killed his father, returned the favor, and was living life on the high seas. Fezzig had even found a very large woman and was intending to raise a very large family, both in number and size. The prince's earlier manipulations, and the fact that Gilder had a privateer preying on their sea traffic, made war inevitable though. Prince Humperdinck's death, alleged to be poison delivered by some assassin, made war immediate.

And so, the day came that the armies clashed. And... it was a curious sight. Bystanders flocked and watched as the armies cursed each other in autotune voices, the automatons' gears shining in the sunlight. Bronze and cheap iron swords clashed; wooden arrows flew and embedded in armor. Tirelessly, the automata fought for days, and it became less of a battle and more of a morbid curiosity as it stretched into weeks, the weapons that the automata wielded becoming blunt, running out of arrows and reusing ones that hadn't broken, while everything they used was simply not enough to put them out of commission.

After all, I wanted to make sure everyone got their money's worth.

As things progressed... the king of Florin, without an heir or remaining family thanks to Count Rugen's machinations and murders, proclaimed Buttercup's brief marriage to have placed her next in the line of succession and she was now crown princess. Westley was found by a messenger of Guilder, and told that he was indeed their prince. And just like that, the war was brought to a screeching halt; Inigo- I'm sorry, the Dread Pirate Roberts had earned enough in that year to live in comfort, if not purchase his own island, and much the same for his crew, and became the Retired Pirate Roberts. And both the heirs apparent came to me, where I was sitting on a lounge chair on a hill overlooking the seemingly endless, bloodless conflict.

They looked at me. Looked at the battlefield, where the automata had been reduced to makeshift weaponry, had subsequently BROKEN said makeshift weaponry, and now the battle had been reduced to a game of chess - quite literally a game of chess, with the two sides' generals directing them on a life size chessboard... (How they got that, I had no idea, but it was hilarious to watch. The people were selling admission to watch this whole thing now, and Miracle Max had a souvenir stand going.)

They looked back at me. "We want a refund," said Buttercup and Westley simultaneously.