suggested music: "Bubamara" from the Black Cat White Cat soundtrack
Midgard, Transdacia, Doomheim
The Principality of Transdacia was a derelict place. A small country with less than a million citizens, the younger of whom usually left home with forged Romanian passports to work in the European Union, commonly as prostitutes, burglars, or copper&scrap metal thieves.
Centuries earlier, Dragan the Divider had split off the country from his kingdom of Latveria to give it to a younger son. Interesting times had followed. Asgard would enjoy some of the local heroes' tales.
There was the story of Béla Bushybeard, who had been decapitated for being late on the battlefield on the king of Hungary's behest, his hairyness forcing the executioner to try chopping from either side and re-sharpen the axe thrice.
Another reknowned voivode of Transdacia was Radu the Well-Spoken, who had refused to swear fealty to the caliph and had subsequently had his tongue cut out.
Then there was Hubert the Woodsman, who had avoided taking sides in the Thirty Years War by being out hunting in the forest any time anyone asked for his allegiance. He was also said to have fathered many a future subject with herdswomen and dairymaids. His famous hunting trophy gallery of jackelopes had much later been seized by the Nazis and lost in the comotion of WW2.
The Thirty Years War that had laid waste to so much of Europe had also caused the rise of the Latverian Orthodox Church, still the predominant denomination here, allowing the locals not having to choose between catholicism and protestantism. The distinguishing feature of this church was apparently the rejection of bread and wine at mass, since handing out such delicacies might lure the dead back from their graves to taste them once again.
The last voivode of Transdacia had been one Luitpold the Pale, who had spent all the country's wealth and credit on building the fairytale-inspired fancy castle of Neudoomstein, only to lock himself in the keep then, unsuccessfully trying to gain superpowers by living solely on bats' blood.
After the lunatic's death, the country should have fallen back to the Latverian crown, but, considering the pile of debts that came with it, then-king of Latveria Franzl the Sly had declined and granted Transdacia eternal independence.
In the capital city, Doomheim, Loki was sitting in Goran's Internet Café, a shabby place with bare concrete walls, on the ground floor of a decrepit multi-storey appartment building, still advertised as „The Kombinat Workers' Cultural Meeting Hall" on the outside (missing two letters, though).
The coffee was much better than the building's looks, but his internet research had not proved very fruitful so far. As amusing as the place's historic anecdotes were to an Asgardian, information about natural resources, the economy, or general knowledge about his new kingdom were sparse, and often hardly believeable.
According to one site, for instance, famous local dishes included rutabaga marmelade, a sausage-like thing called „bratwurstersatz" made from sawdust and horsebeans, soups based on stale rye bread, and potato peels fried in industrial grease.
A Soviet-built nuclear power plant (whatever that was) had never been finished, the tractor factory had gone bankrupt, and even the Research Institute for the Physics of the Paranormal had been closed.
The local library he had consulted earlier had of course not been any more helpful, mostly comprising biographies of people Loki had never heard of, like one lady Anna Karenina, or the Karamazov brothers, as well as repair manuals for tractor engines, and instructions on how to apply for kosmonaut training. At least the librarian had pointed him to this café and modern 'online search'.
Goodness, who would have thought the internet could gain importance so quickly? Had they not barely invented it the last time he'd been around? In Asgard, the transportation committee were still in dispute over whether to install a teleportation device between observatory and citadel – half a millennium after the initial proposal.
Surreptitiously, the god watched his fellow patrons in the cafe. Next to him, a slender young man in wifebeater shirt and sweatpants was chatting with some buddies from his former handball club in Germany, asking whether they could arrange a professional contract for him, or any kind of job.
A bit further on, an extended family were trying to marry off their eldest daughter or granddaughter, respectively, magic-mirror-talking ('skyping') with a used car salesman in Austria. The bride looked to be sixteen at most, if Loki could judge his mortals, prettied up like a hooker with false fingernails, half a pound of make-up and her long dark curly hair sprayed up into a mop. She was also none too slender. Her outcry upon seeing her intended, though („He's so faaaat!") implied to Loki that the groom to be would outdo Volstagg by an order of magnitude. The family elders ignored her and insisted that she was a virgin and a good cook and so worth at least a minivan.
Oh well, thought Loki with a sigh. The long game then. He'd have to find out the lay of the land, talk to people, get in touch. Convince them to tell him how everything worked, whom to meet, and who was important. On Nidavellir, he'd spent decades doing this, and on Svartalfheim some years. Hopefully, this would not take as long.
