Gilead+Waynevor

In the context of Western Civilization, Gilead Waynevor is without a doubt one of the most influential figures in the history of science, poetry, art, music, drama, philosophy, and cheese-making.

Born in 1569, as the illegitimate son of Joffrey of Waynevor, a Franciscan friar well known for his adept skill at cheese-making, Waynevor grew up as an apprentice cheese-maker at [|Bangor Abbey] in Ireland. At age sixteen, he became well known for "Waynevor Goat Cheese," a complex cheese consisting of fermented goat's milk and termite excrement. It was an instant hit among the Irish Aristocracy, and allowed Gilead to save enough money for an education at Edinburgh.

He departed for Edinburgh in 1588, but was met with great disdain due to his "uncouth Irish tongue." A forewarning, perhaps, of future insanity, he was barely saved by a friend as he attempted to cut the very thing out with a cheese slicer in his own bedroom. The authorities heard of the incident, and he was sent back to Ireland. While vowing to get his revenge, he was shoved into a small goatherd's house by radical Irish Jesuits and ordered to "cut cheese until death," a statement Gilead found humorous, and decided to follow the order in perhaps not the manner the Jesuits expected. The Franciscans responded to this "monstrosity of flatulation" with their own monstrosity of flagellation, at the physical expense of Waynevor.

Waynevor was a dignified man (or at least by self-proclamation), and did not take kindly to this insult. He still had some money, and made his escape onto a small boat headed to the Middle East. Unfortunately, when the Arabic Captain saw his facial profile, it did not sail to the Middle East but rather to Scotland Yard, where there was a reward offered for his capture. However, on the way around the southern portion of Ireland the boat ran into a large gale, and was taken under heavy fire. In the din and confusion, Waynevor lit the captain on fire with a torch and rammed the small craft into the hull of a massive Spanish Galleon, causing an explosion in the powder room destroying the flagship of the Spanish Armada. Waynevor, as a testament to the incredible luck he would enjoy later in his career, survived.

After being taken aboard a British Ship o' the Line, he became an instant favorite among the crew, particularly [|Sir Francis Drake]. He spent over a year with Drake, hunting Spanish trade ships off the Iberian Peninsula. However, his earlier capture had fostered an intense disliking (despite his upbringing) for Catholics, or "'esuits," as he called them, and was discharged after boasting of (while quite drunk) critically sabotaging a Spanish-Jesuit missionary ship headed to the Caribbean. The ship was never fully recovered, though charred pieces of the hull were found floating off the coast of Western Africa.

With this latest set-back, Waynevor decided to lay low for a period of time. However, it did not last long- returning to Ireland, he managed to find himself mixed up with Henry IV of France, who had a preference for "Waynevor Goat Cheese," and wanted it distributed amongst his soldiers before the eminent war against the Duc de Mayenne. He complied, vowing to get his revenge on the Catholics, and delivered a cheese so moist and delectable that it arose the greatest passion and bravery in the heart of the Protestant soldiers, who routed Mayenne's army in the [|Battle of Ivry] so handily that only //fromaggian//brilliance on the part of Waynevor could be the cause. He was thus knighted, and allowed to return to his studies at Edinburgh.

His second time at Edinburgh was wildly successful, quite literally- he was a favorite among his Scottish colleagues, who admired him greatly for his ability to down unfathomable amounts of alcohol, a skill developed in his time with the British navy. So prodigious and well-known was his drinking ability that the Irish carry an identity of drunkenness and alcoholism to this day. The game of "beer pong" was said to have been invented by Waynevor, after boasting to a comrade that he could drink sixteen pints of hard liquor and still bounce a cheese roll into a tankard fifteen feet away. He missed, instead launching the ball of cheese into the exposed corset of a nearby barmaid. The action began such a brawl that it was catapulted into legend, popularizing both Waynevor's brash social charm and the fun of drunken accuracy-training (a trend not unfelt by the British marksmanship training officers of the nearby garrison).

It was not all fun and games at Edinburgh, however. Gilead Waynevor gained his first intellectual acclaim (outside the drinking halls) with his stunning treatise, "Of Cheese and Man," of which came the famous quote, "life is like a crate of Franciscan cheeses," much later lifted and modified (shamefully, in the opinion of this Waynevor Historian) by the Tom Hanks film [|Forrest Gump]. It was a philosophical enigma, layered with elements of pre-Englightenment humanism, Aristotelian principles, and Confucius-inspired life quotes, as well as a defense of Calvinism, a defense of Pelagianism, and precise recipes for different exotic goat cheeses, which less culinary readers found rather didactic. The publishing house wished to trim down the work by removing the cheese references, to which a drunk Waynevor replied, "to remove the cheese would be to remove the very heart of man," and then chastised the editors for being profit-driven and overly urbanized. The recipes stayed.

Waynevor had become quite rich, both through wide sales of his treatise and lucrative investments in Virginian tobacco. A complacent life did not naturally suit him well, though he managed it to the greatest level of extravagance. He bought a manor near York, and was known to entertain only the finest of guests. It was during this time that he had his only portrait made, by the young art prodigy Flamingo de Navarra. Navarra was known as an irratable and eccentric painter, who would often flick his subjects with his paint brush upon them moving unnecessarily. Waynevor never liked his own eccentric personality to be overshadowed, thus throughout the ordeal he held outstretched his riding crop, threatening to lash the painter if he tried such tactics. The two did not part on good terms.

It was during this time that Waynevor heard of a radical Chinese uprising of "Waynevorites", rice-farming peasants who took the message in "Of Cheese and Man" as a stunning political critique of the Ming Dynasty, and thus called for its violent removal. Waynevor joined a caravan travelling the Silk Road in order to mitigate this rebellion (or perhaps lead, his motives were never completely clear), but before arrival was captured by a band of Serbian carpet salesmen, who were desperate for cash and recognized him as a man of great wealth. He spent six months locked in the basement of a deserted Serbian monastery waiting to be ransomed (once again vowing revenge upon the Catholics) and while so imprisoned requested a canvas and paintbrushes, which he used to paint the great epic, "Cheesy Bravery Upon The Hills of Ivry," hearkening back to his days in France. It was a stunning work, but oft criticized in more conventional artistic circles for its complete lack of coherent perspective and strange overuse of maroon paint, to which he would always simply reply, "they gave me a lot of maroon."

He was eventually ransomed, and, hurt by the criticisms of his painting, decided to reverse course and dedicate his life to science. He was on the verge of a huge breakthrough, claiming to have discovered an unknown element capable of, in his words, "horrors and delights unimaginable." However, his scientific career fell to shambles when, in the extravagant ceremony in London for the revealing of this new element, he unveiled the curtain and shouted that the hidden element was "love." This was met with terrible laughter from everyone in attendance. The soldiers from the papacy sent to arrest him for propagating science were touched, however, and decided to let him go free. After meddling in some paranormal cheese-related experiments, he declared his retirement as a public figure.

Waynevor met his death in 1619 when hosting a party attended by Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish King. After a harrowing political and religious debate over the cards table, Adolphus said to Waynevor, "my dear sir, it seems to me that your personal accomplishments are due less to your own intellectual ability, but rather to dumb luck and an uncanny propensity towards refined bullshit." Waynevor took great offense to this statement, and met Adolphus three weeks later in Sherwood forest for a duel. Waynevor however, had grown quite fat in his years of sedentary life, and Gustavus was young and vigorous. He stabbed Waynevor through the heart, and Waynevor was attended to by his mistress (whose name is lost to history) as he lay dying. He said to her, "they've taken the heart of me, those Catholics," and pressed a small hunk of goat's cheese into her hand. He requested one last bottle of scotch, drank it, then died. So perished Gilead Waynevor, one of the few great men to walk this earth.