Scrambled Egg
is a Low Fantasy web novella written by Tyk 5919, and is the fifth entry in the Legatum series.
Somewhere in the distant mountains, a mountain troll named Snorrv comes across a white mage named Tanya who claims she's in danger from an evil dark mage named Sonya. She also claims that the egg she's been carrying around contains an angel that will be able to purify the world. After Snorrv reluctantly agrees to help Tanya, he soon runs into Sonya as well, who reveals her side of the story, and presents Snorrv with evidence contradicting Tanya. Snorrv soon discovers that the entire world may be in danger, and he'll have to decide which mage is telling the truth and which one is manipulating him with lies.
Has no relation with Scrambled Eggs.
Scrambled Egg provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- Snorrv's father was a He-Man Woman Hater who tried to force his son to be as misogynistic as him, and even forced him into raping an innocent troll. He also beat him for several years, and when Snorrv was fertile, he repeatedly molested him just to see how long it would take for him to ejaculate.
- Zig-zagged with Trellorv's parents. Both of them would frequently abuse him, but only to discipline him whenever he acted out. They also at one point nearly beat him to death, forced him to stay locked in a small room for a month, and nearly sodomized him with a heated pike. But this was only after they found out that Trellorv murdered a mentally-disabled troll and lied about it. After this incident, they never abused him again.
- Accidental Murder: After Trellorv humiliated a troll in a revolting way and he began to scream for help, Trellorv bashed him in the head with a rock to try and knock him out. Instead, he gave the unfortunate troll brain damage that caused him to have a seizure. So Trellorv bludgeoned him with the rock since he knew he wouldn't survive anyway.
- Agony of the Feet: In chapter 5, Snorrv bludgeons Trellorv's left foot with his spiked club. This causes Trellorv to drop the boulder he was carrying on his right foot, breaking all of the toes.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Is the creature in the egg a demon? Is it an angel? Is it capable of understanding morality? Can it understand that it can be good despite having a dark upbringing, like Snorrv, or that it can be evil despite having a healthy upbringing, like Trellorv? Snorrv shreds the creature to pieces as soon as he opens the egg, so we'll never know.
- Everything about the three wanderers Snorrv encounters in the final chapter. Are they really just wanderers, or are they a gang of murderers, rapists, thieves, etc.? Did they kill Snorrv off-screen, shortly after the story ended? Were they telling the truth about their pasts, or did they fabricate parts of their backstory the same way Sonya did when she first met Snorrv?
- And Then What?: In chapter 5, Snorrv gives Trellorv "The Reason You Suck" Speech by asking what he's going to do once he's won and the whole world's been destroyed.Trellorv: "That demon will destroy the world—"Snorrv: "And then what? Hmm? Fuck you gonna do when the world's been destroyed? There won't be anyone left to kill. There won't be anyone left to rape. No one will see how disgusting you are. No one will be able to fuel your pride in accepting how revolting you are. You'll be the last person alive on this planet, forced to wander around a barren, empty wasteland with nothing but skeletons and corpses to entertain you. So go ahead. Kill me. Kill Tanya. Kill Sonya. Set this whole fuckin' world on fire. Because sooner or later, those flames will be extinguished. And there will be nothing left for you to burn. And once you finally realize that, then and only then will you realize that you've just doomed yourself to your own personal hell for all eternity. And people like me are gonna look down at you and smile with smug satisfaction."
- Anyone Can Die: Snorrv is the only main character who survives—which is shocking considering there are only four main characters to begin with.
- Ass Shove: Subverted. When Trellorv was younger, his father tried to get him to confess that he murdered another troll by threatening to insert a heated tip of a pike into his ass. He admits to what he did when the pike was inches away from his anus, and his father decides to seal him inside an enclosure instead.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Sonya the dark mage and Trellorv the swamp troll, both of whom team up to kill Tanya and steal the eponymous egg from her so they can transform the creature inside of it into a demon and destroy the world.
- Bittersweet Ending: Snorrv kills Trellorv and destroys the creature inside the egg, thus saving the world. But Sonya is killed by Tanya, and Tanya commits suicide after witnessing Snorrv literally crush her final beacon of hope. Snorrv is forced to leave his home, unable to cope with everything he had witnessed, but eventually accepts the fact that the world can't be changed and that all he can do is try to remain optimistic in a pessimistic world.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Nobody in the story is heroic, not even Tanya. Everyone has their own justifiable reasons for doing what they do, even if their actions are highly immoral, selfish, or ambiguous. Trellorv, however, is pitch-black in terms of the morality scale.
- Dark and Troubled Past: All four main characters have had a crappy upbringing or have done something arguably immoral in their past. Even Trellorv had to deal with the fact that his parents (admittedly rightfully) almost mauled him to death, and he went through an existential crisis when he was thirty.
- Deconstructor Fleet: Several tropes related to Black-and-White Morality or High Fantasy are either subverted or deconstructed throughout the story.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Sonya's husband, suffering from depression, hung himself some months after Sonya miscarried.
- Tanya slits her own throat after Snorrv kills the creature in the egg, having lost all hope that she would be able to cleanse the world of sinners.
- Egg MacGuffin: The whole story revolves around an egg that may or may not contain a demon or angel, which may or may not save the world or destroy the world.
- Excrement Statement: As an adolescent, Trellorv knew a mentally-handicapped troll who had a bad habit of frequently soiling himself. So Trellorv decided to humiliate him by defecating on his body and rubbing his waste against his skin.
- Foregone Conclusion: The story chronologically takes place before any of the other Legatum stories, so it's obvious that the world isn't going to be destroyed.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: At least one person calls out every single main character for why they behave the way they do.
- Snorrv lives alone in isolation and doesn't try to help others because he hates how "complicated" and corrupt society is, and because of how his father abused him. Sonya tells him that he's just a craven who took the "easy way" in life, as opposed to trying to accept that there is good and evil in the world.
- Sonya wants to destroy the world because she believes life is ephemeral. Snorrv quickly tells her that she still hasn't gotten over the death of her unborn child and husband, and thinks that since she had a horrible life, then everyone will—which isn't true.
- Tanya wants to "cleanse" the world of evil-doers because she feels that everyone around her is inept and incapable of stopping them, especially after finding out her parents' murderers never got justice. Snorrv (and many others) tells her she's naïve, the world isn't black and white, and she has absolutely no right to take justice into her own hands, even when it's sometimes warranted.
- Trellorv wants to destroy the world because he feels that killing others is the only way he'll be happy with his life. Synnyk openly tells him that he's not doing what he does because he wants to be happy; he goes around killing people because he doesn't care. He just wants to spread anarchy across the world, no matter who he hurts or kills.
- Genre Deconstruction: Of High Fantasy. The main villain trying to destroy the world isn't a moustache-twirling sadist; she's just a pessimistic woman who thinks all life is pointless. The innocent bystander is just that, a bystander; he's not secretly The Chosen One. The hero isn't a white knight who upholds the law; she's a Knight Templar suffering from Black-and-White Insanity. The villain's lackey isn't loyal to the Big Bad or anything she's doing; he's just a self-serving hedonist. There isn't even a happy ending like a normal fantasy; the story ends with everyone dead except the bystander, despite the fact he ended up saving the world.
- Godzilla Threshold: Both Sonya and Tanya try to make the world more peaceful by becoming vigilantes. When they realized this wasn't working, they resorted to trying to find a mysterious egg in hopes of using the creature inside to end the world entirely, or kill everyone on the planet who committed a sin, respectively.
- Groin Attack:
- Trellorv murdered his mother by beating her and shoving the heated tip of a pike into her vagina.
- When Trellorv tries to force Sonya to rub his oversized phallus, she creates disembodied hands composed of dark magic. Said hands then proceed to squeeze Trellorv's penis so hard that they nearly crush his urethra.
- Happy Ending Override: Invoked In-Universe. This is exactly why Sonya wants to destroy the world. She knows that no matter how hard she tries, and no matter how many lives she saves, there's no way she'll prevent another war, plague, genocide, famine, etc. from happening. So she figures it'll be better to end the world now instead of letting humanity stay locked in a cycle of happiness and despair.
- Karma Houdini:
- It's never revealed who killed Tanya's parents when she was a child. Presumably, the perpetrator(s) got away.
- Synnyk Synncader, who runs some kind of secret underground criminal organization, doesn't face any comeuppance for his actions.
- Karmic Death: Trellorv is killed after Snorrv repeatedly bludgeoned his head with a blunt weapon. This is exactly how Trellorv murdered his first victim, along with many others.
- Kick the Dog: Trellorv does this frequently. Most notably is when he pretended to befriended a mentally-disabled troll, then forced him to get naked and defecated on his body just because he annoyed him.
- Minimalist Cast: There are only four main characters. Except for Synnyk Synncader and the three nameless wanderers Snorrv comes across in the final chapter, no one else plays a vital role in the story.
- Potty Failure: Invoked. When Trellorv was twelve years old, he intentionally wet his loincloth in a public dining room just to embarrass his parents.
- Pyrrhic Victory: The world is saved, but two women who wanted nothing but peace on earth end up killing each other, a troll who initially wanted nothing to do with their conflict is forced to leave his home, and people like Synnyk Synncader are no closer to facing justice than they were since the story began.
- Spoiler Title: The name of the story foreshadows what happens to the creature in the egg. The narration even mentions that Snorrv "scrambled its insides" as he kills it.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Snorrv tried to annoy Tanya by farting in front of her while they're walking through tunnels. His gas is so noisy that it echoes in the tunnels, and Trellorv and Sonya hear the noise and deduce where Snorrv is located.
- Both Sonya and Tanya become vigilantes at a point in their lives to try and change the world. The only problem is that the world is a very, very big place with hundreds of thousands of criminals and other evil-doers in it. They both realize that they're only one woman, and there's no way they can cleanse the entire world unless they do something drastic.
- After defecating on a mentally-disabled troll, Trellorv tries to shut him up by bashing him in the head with a rock when he starts screaming. The troll starts convulsing and has a seizure, and Trellorv is forced to kill him.
- Trellorv murdered an innocent troll at a young age, and no on suspected that he did it. His parents knew it was him almost immediately, largely because he spent most of his childhood defying his parents and knew he was capable of such a thing.
- In chapter 5, Snorrv tries desperately to convince Sonya and Tanya to stop fighting each other by attempting to talk to them. They either ignore him or subdue him, and then go right back to fighting each other until Tanya fatally wounds Sonya.
- Tanya spent her entire life believing the only way she could save the world was by killing evil-doers. She became so frustrated and desperate that she resorted to finding the eponymous egg and taking care of it in hopes that she would finally make the world a better place. When Snorrv kills the creature inside the egg in front of her, she kills herself with no hesitation, believing her entire life was nothing but a waste.
- In the final chapter, Snorrv comes across three wanderers who are all very affable and welcome him to their group with little hesitation. As it turns out, for all the evil, repugnant, and downright shameless people occupying the world, there are just as many good-natured, friendly, selfless people occupying the world—much to Snorrv's surprise.
- Take a Third Option:
- Throughout the entire story, Snorrv is constantly being compelled to join Sonya, or to join Tanya. He doesn't join either of them and chooses to remain neutral and go on his own path.
- Also, the entire conflict centered around letting Tanya infuse light magic into the creature inside of the egg, or Sonya infusing dark magic into the creature. Neither option happens, as Snorrv cracks open the egg and mutilates the creature inside, ruining both of their plans.
- Teeth Flying: Snorrv bashes nearly all of Trellorv's teeth out of his mouth as he's bludgeoning him to death with his club.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- Snorrv kills Trellorv by violently bludgeoning him to death with a spiked club. His face is mangled beyond repair, his skull is cracked, and his teeth fly out of his mouth. Even after Snorrv bludgeons him, he lets Trellorv choke on his own blood and die from his wounds as opposed to finishing him off.
- Snorrv kills the creature in the egg by bashing it against the ground several times, smashing its skull, bitting off its head, and then stepping on it repeatedly like a cockroach.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: The final chapter. After all the hell Snorrv went through in such little time, it's relieving when he comes across three wanderers who aren't trying to destroy the world and are nothing more than friendly bystanders. It's even more relieving that the story ends with him coming to terms that the world is no different from durian: repulsive and intimidating, but still a joy to uphold if you're willing to get past its initial features that disgust most people.
- Toilet Humor: Invoked by Snorrv. In an attempt to annoy Tanya and hopefully persuade her to leave his domain, Snorrv walks in front of Tanya and passes gas in her face repeatedly. She eventually realizes he's doing it on purpose.
- Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: Trellorv cares little for personal hygiene, and both he and other characters acknowledge that he's got horrible body and foot odor. He's also the most deplorable character in the story.
- Wham Line: This line at the end of Chapter 5, which made it very clear that there was no hope left for this character after Snorrv destroys the creature inside of the egg.Tanya: "Fuck it."
- Yank the Dog's Chain: At the end of chapter 3, Snorrv comes very close to convincing both Tanya and Sonya to come to a peaceful solution so that nobody has to fight each other. Then Trellorv comes along and ruins it all with his self-serving, sadistic ranting, and it culminates with Trellorv fighting Snorrv, and Sonya fighting Tanya.
