Wheee! Clay, thank you for making me sweat and worry and for inspiring me to do my best in order to win this one. It's a measure of my respect for you that I tried something new to me, because I knew nothing more traditional was going to be able to top your writing.
I've never written comedy before. The closest is probably some Paranoia modules done for the RPGA ten years ago. Doing this was a risk in that regard, because I wasn't sure I could carry it off.
The "rock slices" photo is what ultimately convinced me to use a fantasy motif. I had this image of a dwarf sitting around and licking the rock like each layer was a different flavor. That's funny - so make the whole thing funny? Sure. I'm nervous that anything fantasy-based that I write will come out sounding like a story hour, so I might as well disguise that with a little humor.
So I asked myself how to provide fantasy characters that anyone would care about. I had rejected the characters from the D&D movie when something clicked in my head. The iconics? Hmmm. Everyone knew them, they were funny and chock full of in-fighting, and they'd give me the chance to do in-jokes and a tiny bit of editorializing. I knew that I needed to make normal adventuring situations slightly absurd, and I wanted to avoid puns; I'm no Piers Anthony. I never even thought of Yamara when writing Lidda's voice, but I'm sure it influenced me subconsciously. Some times form really does define function.
So I tried to cobble together a valid plot with well-fitting pictures. The main plot came quickly: Devis wanting revenge on Gimble. I then worked to layer the thematic elements of the photos, trying to make them come into play more than once and trying to give them as much relevance as possible. Doing this gave me some wonderful jokes. That's where Vadania's dopey animal stchick came from; there was no other way to introduce an exotic animal like a pangolin if I hadn't paved the way with other inappropriate animal choices.
Making it funny and satirical wasn't quite as tough as I had feared, as I just tried to pick what I personally think is funny - with a quick prayer that other peoples' senses of humor would be close enough to agree. A lot of the humor comes from subtleties and throw-away lines, which I think works okay. My personal favorite? Working in Necromancer Games' slogan into Devis' pick-up routine. Most of the humor was added or altered during my editing.
I agree with Arwink that it could be a bit shorter; in specific, I'd trim Mialee's pangolin lecture and remove an accidental repeated-line typo uttered by the wizard from the coast. Thanks for having the wisdom to not reject it out-of-hand when you first saw the theme.
Incidentally:
There once was a halfling from Bree
Who’d only come up to your knee
He'd usually pout
When we rented him out
For a truly exceptional fee.
