Array Wars Episode 3.0: Attack of the Stiff
an excerpt

Once upon a time, in a magical kingdom rife with sorcerers, soldiers and seers, there lived a beautiful princess. An evil warlord had invaded her kingdom and enslaved her people. Wrongfully imprisoned in a dread fortress built upon a floating island, the princess scribed a plea for help upon a scrap of parchment. Sealing her missive in a bottle, she threw it out of the window of her high tower, and it splashed into the ocean upon which the island sailed.

Eventually, the bottle washed up on a distant, sun-kissed shore where it was found by a lowly farm hand. He read the message excitedly, but much of it was illegible to him. In the few fragments he could discern, he made out the name of an old hermit who lived in the wilderness. In due course, the farm boy came to visit the hermit, only to discover that the old man was a retired knight, once the hero of the kingdom. Together, the two set out to rescue the princess and free the land.

As is the way with such tales, our unlikely pair of heroes recruited the assistance -- and the ship -- of a roguish pirate and his crew. After a long voyage, they reached the floating fortress, only to be captured by the warlord's forces. Being cut from heroic cloth, they managed to escape, rescue the princess, and ultimately destroy the fortress itself -- but only at the cost of the knight's life.

Fleeing the wrath of the warlord, they took refuge in an arctic wasteland, but were soon driven out by the relentless armies of their foe. As the farm boy followed his destiny into the stench-laden swamplands, seeking the advice of a mysterious wizard, the princess and the pirate were pursued through the badlands, a barren rocky region inhabited by dragons and other dangers. Narrowly escaping the jaws of one such beast, they managed to elude their pursuers, but were forced to set sail for a distant harbour to make repairs to their ship. However, an old friend of the pirate betrayed them to the warlord, and they were captured.

Hearing of their imprisonment, and the indignities and tortures inflicted upon them by their captors, the farm boy cut short his training and set out to rescue his friends. Ultimately he freed the princess, and together with the pirate crew they sailed away in their liberated ship. Of the pirate captain, however, there was no sign. He had softly and suddenly vanished away, and his friends determined that they would not rest until they had tracked him down and won his freedom.

This is where our story begins. More or less.