Introducing the Jelly Baby Commandos

Many moons ago (indeed, in Days of Yore), back in those heady days of university, my friends and I once played a game called "Tales from the Floating Vagabond", a role-playing game with the simple concept of the "Floating Vagabond" being an inter-dimensional nexus where creatures from every reality gather, before heading off on odd adventures. One of the consequences of this concept is that one's character could be anything that could be imagined.

Anyway, this gave some free reign to create characters. One of the players chose to play a small sun that was employed in the adult entertainment industry (apparently, she was quite hot), while the other decided to play Captain Tangent!, a superhero who could never stay on-topic, on account of being distracted by other things. Like fish. Lovely, sleek and shiny fish. But don't eat them, because they'll gie you the boak. Fish.

And then it was my turn. What should I play?

And so was born Captain Tyche, leader of the heroic Jelly Baby Commandos. And so too were formed his evil nemeses, the Chocolate Button Empire. Two titanic forces, locked in a vicious battle for control over the confectionary aisles in your local Tesco. (Obviously, Opal Fruits are a cunning mercenary force, playing both sides against the middle. Indeed, so two-faced are they that they even changed their name in the thick of the fighting!)

But, who would win? On the one hand, the Chocolate Button Empire vastly outnumbers the Jelly Baby Commandos. But, Captain Tyche's forces had a key advantage: when shot, they would collapse, but then dissolve into a goo and reform, ready to get back into the fighting.

On the third hand, the Chocolate Buttons were equipped with truly wicked English accents, thus marking them as being in the elite of Hollywood villains. (Although, as a friend has recently and helpfully pointed out, Hollywood have now taken to casting all their villains as French. Perhaps for the sequel, the main villian will have to be Les Biscuits, a fiendish force of French foes for our heroes.)

Anyway, Captain Tyche and his allies (and enemies) went on to outlive the game itself, and starred in a sequence of wacky emails that preceded this blog by some years. Indeed, at one point he was even going to star in a motion picture, played by big Arnie* (these were in the days before he was the Governator).

* Not really, of course.

I never did quite write the script, or even start it, except for one iconic scene: near the end, the Jelly Baby Commandos would be captured, of course. And the villain would have devised an elaborate and deadly way to permanently slay our heroes: by dipping them in molten jelly, they would be rendered unable to reform.

So, Captain Tyche would be suspended upside down over these deadly vats of jelly, of all the colours of the rainbow, and our villain would ask of him, "So, my valiant foe, I shall do you this great honour: do you have a preference as to the flavour of your demise?"

Naturally, Captain Tyche would look him dead in the eye, and with a steely voice that betrayed no fear, he would reply, "I'll be black."

It is perhaps a good thing that the film was never made. Or even considered.

Anyway, should the day come that we should meet gentle reader, perhaps at a weeding or similar celebratory event, and I should ask you "who would win, the Jelly Baby Commandos or the Chocolate Button Empire?", do not be surprised. Indeed, you should now be armed with the knowledge to make an informed choice in this most difficult of debates.