Hmm why do you call yourself sir pentious?
“Ahhh, an excellent quessstion! And one that I’ve been eagerly looking forward to anssswering! Let’s see, how to put this…” He flashes a bright, almost excited grin, his hood flaring open as he clenches his fists with glee, before pausing for a moment, idly tapping his chin with a claw as he ponders to himself until finally snapping his fingers. “Right! Now, tell me, do any of you happen to recognize this?”
“Thisss, for those who don’t know, is a political cartoon created by Benjamin Franklin in 1754, titled aptly, Join Or Die. As you can see, the illustration isss that of a ssssegmented snake, each piece meant to represent all of the 8 American colonies at that presssent time. Now, while mosssst people make the mistake of assuming this is meant to advocate unity among the colonisssssts during the time of the Revolutionary War, this is actually falsssse. The cartoon was actually made to promote unity of the colonists from the invading French during the French Indian War, assss the events of the American Revolution wouldn’t occur until the late 1700’s.”
“Now, what makessss this particular image so important to why I chose my name sake is becausssse of the symbolism behind it. Each colony representing a part of one whole sssserpent, bisected, segmented, cut off from the whole, with the sssstatement that to stay apart is to perish. But when the serpent is united, when the ssssnake is made into one singular entity once more, that is when each part of the snake avoids death, avoids the inevitable, avoids the danger that loomssss over them like the shadow of a circling hawk, waiting to ssstrike. I had sssspent as much time as I could in my childhood years reading almanacs and such when I could, for it was my only glimpsssse into the world outside the loud, dirty factories and the cramped, smog choked streetsss that I called my home, and that ssssingular piece was an image that had sssstayed with me for a long while after I first saw it.”
“And when I finally realized that it was my goal in life to bring the world under my power, when I had made it my mission to rip out the foundations of ssssupremacy that were cementing themselvessss into the ground during my time and place my own throne in it’s place…Well. What better metaphor to choosssse than one where all governments and nationssss must come together as one, must unite, under one singular serpent…to avoid death?”
