"What concerns me and my clients, Lord Snookums - apart from your new name - is the clause in the contract that reads, 'Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,' " quoted the tall man sitting at the foot of the table.

"Well, Kenneth, I don't think you and your esteemed colleagues have any grounds to complain about names, now do you?" retorted the Dark Lord Sauron. The eight other Kenneths looked at each other, wondering what the problem was with their names. They liked them. "But the passage you have quoted is purely legal gibberish. You need not concern yourselves with it," he tried to dismiss.

The lead Kenneth replied indignantly, "Legal gibberish is my meat and potatoes! I am a lawyer, after all!"

"Ah yes, I heard that about you somewhere. You truly are the most evil of the Kenneths." And Sauron smiled back at Kenneth.

"Well, yes, I admit lawyers have a bad reputation, but to label us all as evil is, well... unfounded." But Sauron just looked at the head Kenneth, waiting him out. Finally Kenneth lowered his eyes and said, "Okay, okay, it's true! We are all evil! And I'm the worst of them all. We just don't like to brag about it." And he sobbed into his hands like a baby.

Sauron rubbed his hands together in glee and continued the negotiations. "Now, as I was saying, the passage you quoted doesn't mean you really are doomed to die, it's just that you are doomed to die if you stay mortal. And with the new Rings in your possession, that is hardly the case now, is it?"

Slowly it dawned on the Kenneths what Sauron was offering them and they started nudging the lead Kenneth to agree to the contract and their new positions of power. Immortality! Woo hoo! they thought collectively. He threw up his arms in defeat and muttered, "Amateurs." To Lord Sauron he said, "Very well, Lord Snookums, my colleagues seemed pleased with the contract." With that he signed his name on the first line of a parchment before him and passed it to the Kenneth on his left, who signed it and in turn passed it to the next Kenneth until finally all the Kenneths had put their marks on it.

The signed contract was eventually passed to Sauron, who scanned the signatures, expecting them all to be identical. But to his surprise, he discovered that each Kenneth signed his name in a different style. In fact, only a couple of them could be easily read as 'Kenneth'. He laughed at one, the fifth Kenneth signature, reading it aloud the way it looked on the parchment, "'Laurellie' - what a girly name!"

The Kenneth responsible took offence at the name, saying, "I'm Kenneth, and proud of it!"

Sauron held up his hand, suppressing a laugh and said, "Okay, okay, don't be such a baby. I'll call you Larry instead. How's that?"

Indignant, the Kenneth started to protest, but the other Kenneths were laughing too hard and he couldn't be heard. Great, he thought to himself, now I'm Larry. Hopefully they'll forget the new name by morning. (But a millennia later, the name would still haunt him...)

Seeing the distress of his client, the lead Kenneth held up a hand to protest, "Lord Snookums, I must protest... with my hand up, no less!" But Sauron was laughing too hard, having joined in with the other Kenneths. He looked down at the first signature and snot came flying out his nose as he tried to read it.

"'Bitch Queen'?" he tried to say, but the others misheard him and started chanting the new name of the lead Kenneth.

"Witch King, Witch King! Witch King!"

Kenneth the lawyer almost protested, but thought better of it. Witch King wasn't so bad a name... a hell of a lot better than Larry, that's for sure! Keep your mouth shut, Kenneth he thought to himself.

Finally, Sauron held up a hand and quietened down the Kenneths. "One last order of business and we can have some nice sandwiches and coffee."

One of the Kenneth's spoke up - number nine - and asked, "What's 'cough-ee'? It sounds nasty..."

Sauron answered, "It's a little drink I invented. Black, strong and full of caffeine. I think you'll like it." The Kenneth didn't sound convinced, but Sauron didn't really care. He continued, "Here's a little known fact: the name 'Kenneth' in the Mordor dark speech is, in fact, 'Nazgul' - and not 'Nancy Boy' as you may have been told by some of my less educated orcs." Some nods could be seen in response. "I would much prefer to use that name in future. Kenneth just seems too 'goodie'..."