After an hour of battering, one of the gates finally began to give.
Using the ram as a wedge, the besiegers of Keen Mansion eventually
succeeded in levering one of the gates open a fraction. Just enough for
the huge crowd of people to flow through, as the thunder, now louder
than ever, rumbled warningly.
But something far more dangerous than thunder lurked within that
stronghold. Until the moment that the gates opened, nobody had managed
to set foot in the grounds of Keen Mansion, due to the high voltage
security surrounding the mansion's entire domain. The crowd of Keen
fans, screaming with delight, ran through the opening and into the
enormous front garden of Keen Mansion. But soon, their running slowed.
Something was coming towards them. A stampede of creatures that were too
distant to be identified. But as the stampede neared the now retreating
crowds, the mysterious creatures were still unidentifiable. And then it
all became clear what these charging beasts were:
They were Yorps.
Hundreds and hundreds of bipedal, green-skinned, one-eyed yorps
flowed across the ground, yipping like dogs. While most of the crowd was
retreating, a few people ran ahead to meet the yorps who, in the
original episode of Commander Keen, were friendly and, on the
whole, harmless. The yorps ripped them to shreds.
Gasps of horror burst from the crowd as they saw humans being flung
around in the melee of oncoming yorps. The razor-fanged green monsters
tore off these people's limbs, savaging torsos and heads, while the
greater mass of yorps drew ever near.
Those who were inside the gates tried to retreat the way they had
come, but the larger crowds outside, oblivious to what was happening on
the other side, kept pushing through. Keen fans were crushed by their
own people. Some climbed the fence in an escape attempt that ended their
lives with a blast of 5000 volts DC.
Guns were drawn. Banners became spears. Pogo sticks became cudgels.
Helmets did nothing to save people as the bloodthirsty yorps sank their
fangs into soft, unprotected areas, as all the while, lightning hurtled
across the wild, rainy skies.
What was to become known as the Mansion Mutants Massacre was
the darkest three hours of Commander Keen history, and at the end
of it, there was no question: Commander Keen was dead, and Billy Blaze
was the one who had killed him.
Among the dead were college student
Terence Chalmers, best known for his portrayal of Keen's nemesis
Mortimer McMire in episode three of the Vorticons series, and
Jakob "Snake" Logan, from the Apogee game Bio Menace.
Both were bitterly ironic deaths, but
Logan's perhaps more so for the fact that the yorps, as was determined
after examination, were the product of very advanced genetic
engineering; Logan's Apogee character in Bio Menace was that of a
man who fought against a mad scientist who created hideous monsters in a
genetic engineering lab.
The origins of the genetically engineered
yorps is unknown even to this day, but it is suspected that the yorps'
genes included those of dogs and bats.
"Well I ain't never seen one o' these
critters before so's when I saw 'em all comin' out of the Ol' Keen
Place, I was quick to get my shotgun and blast a few o' their green
bug-eyes. Vicious little varmints - they was eatin' everyone and there
was screamin' and runnin' and people was gettin' crushed in the gate.
An' they killed my ol' Grampappy, and cousin Jake, too. We's was
fightin' side by side during most o' that battle, me an' Jake, an'
then... An' then one o' them devil-critters just jumped him from
behinds... and... I shot the thing, but it was too late. Too late... I
couldn't save Jake. I just kept fightin' them devil-critters until
they's was all dead. But I couldn't save ol' cousin Jake..."
Keenstock was finally over. People seemed
more concerned with counting their losses and leaving than staying to
try to entice Billy Blaze from his stronghold. No longer seen as a hero,
Billy was now held in the public opinion as a madman, an eccentric
villain.
Many of the Keenstock attendees, bent on
avenging the horrors that Billy had inflicted upon them that day, formed
a group called "Keen Three". The significance of this name is that
episode three of Commander Keen was named "Keen Must Die".
Two nights after the Mansion Mutants
Massacre, Keen Three banded together with whatever weapons they could
find and set out to invade Keen Mansion itself and destroy Billy Blaze.
Men, women and children of all ages and backgrounds marched to Billy's
hilltop fortress, brandishing their weapons menacingly.
Encountering no further resistance from
yorps or otherwise, Keen Three reached the doors of Keen Mansion and
demanded entry. There was no response. The leaders of Keen Three then
proceeded to douse the doors of Keen Mansion with gasoline and set it
alight. As well as this, the battering ram was again employed, and soon
the mighty doors crashed inwards. This time, the invaders entered more
cautiously than they had at the main gates. Trapped inside his own
dwelling, Billy Blaze ran from the hunters like a mouse from a cat.
"It was quite a place he had in there. We
all split up into every direction and hunted the insane Commander Keen
through his maze. It wasn't long before we found him, holed up in a
secret passageway behind one of the walls. It was only because he was
carrying his pogo stick that we found him. The metal detector picked up
something moving inside the wall, and we soon cornered him and broke
open the wall. But instead of killing him, we took him outside, into the
grounds where the yorps had attacked."
"There was still evidence of the slaughter that had taken place two
days earlier. But what happened next had nothing to do with me."
What happened next was that Billy Blaze was brutally killed by the
hysterical masses of angry people who felt betrayed by their hero. As
the fists and feet pummeled the life from Billy's body, he made little
effort to resist, knowing that there was nothing to be done.
Angry resistance to the murder from some of those present simply
agitated the mob further.
Billy's body was propped against his pogo stick onstage like a
decaying scarecrow, his form limp and misshapen.
It was the tragic end of an era.
