Depiction
Saint Guillermo the Bastard is often depicted as a middle aged man, brown hair lined with grey, a crooked nose, and a wide grin, the way he looked upon his final execution in the court of Sir Crambidae of England. Usually, he will be shown leaning companionably against his holy steed, a donkey named Brunhilde whose reputation was just as sordid as his own. He is never shown on top of Brunhilde's back.
In the Beginning
There are numerous variations on the early history of St. Guillermo, half of which were most likely started by the man himself. All of them begin the same.
At the age of nine or ten, Guillermo and Brunhilde arrived in a small Franciscan village, Guillermo able to speak only in an unidentified language the locals deemed to be tongues and that Guillermo himself later insisted (depending on the person asking), was either Atlantean, Enochian, 'The language of devils and traitors' and French, but with a heavy Russian accent.
After his arrival, he was taken in by a local priest, Nicodéme (who later became his closest friend and biographer), and made to dig cabbages in the garden to earn his keep.
The First Miracle
Two years later, a local lord's daughter became deathly ill and possessed by spirits. The priest and the boy were called to the lord's manor. While the Nicodéme prayed over the girl and prepared for an exorcism, Guillermo went over to the frothing girl, looked her in the eyes, grinned, and slapped her across the face, chattering to her in the same strange tongue Guillermo had spoken when he first arrived.
The lord's daughter laughed and responded in kind. Twenty minutes of intense conversation later, the boy asked that several barrels of beer be brought into the bedroom, claiming he was going to flush the creature out.
Thus began the first miracle of Guillermo the Bastard, the Three Day Drinking Contest. The lord, the priest, and the servants of the house watched as for three days Guillermo and the possessed girl roared at one another in the strange language and drank only beer until, on the third day, the demon collapsed below the table.
Witnesses claimed that Guillermo grinned, finished his drink, and then collapsed as well.
When the girl woke up later, she was perfectly healthy in mind, spirit, and body and had no recollection of her possession. Guillermo had to be carried back home in a cart, as once he'd woken, he experienced the first great penance of Guillermo the Bastard: the three day hangover.
So started the exploits of Saint Guillermo the Bastard.
From then on, Guillermo, Brunhilde, and Nicodéme were called all over the countryside to exorcise demons (the reports of demonic possessions having spiked as soon as word got out that Guillermo could be rid of them). Soon after, it became apparent that among other things, Guillermo could heal the sick as well, but (so he claimed) only when he was drunk. For every act of healing he did, he would be incapacitated the entirety of the next day due to severe a hangover, no matter how much actually he drank.
The First Execution
The first attempted execution of Guillermo the Bastard happened shortly after his twenty-fourth birthday. He petitioned Queen Elophila to have a small church built on what was at the time royal land. She denied the request, stating that 'royal venison (was) worth more to (her) than the imagined spiritual plight of farmers.'
The night after her refusal and during a royal ball, all the wine served to the guests congealed into blood in their glasses, and all the bread turned into still bleeding flesh. During the ensuing chaos, a note was slipped the queen saying, 'A small gift to complement the venison'.
The queen immediately ordered the capture and execution of "Guillermo the Bastard".
He did not fight when the men came to arrest him and only asked that his donkey be allowed to witness the execution. The queen obliged.
On the day of the execution, before the executioner could strike, Brunhilde jumped onto the stage and knocked the man down. She bit the chains binding Guillermo's hands, and they fell off, their links broken. He then rode Brunhilde off the stage, through the city, and out of France.
The Second Execution
The next time Guillermo appeared was in Italy, where he went around giving sermons and healing the sick. When the church officials heard him preach, however, they immediately accused him of being a charlatan and a consorter of spirits.
'The man if obvioufly a heretic. Every fermon begins with "Dear Big Daddy G, we your adoring creations think you're cool, and hope you remain cool, and you totally need not demonftrate your cool by fmiting fhit. Amen." What does that mean? It is gibbrefh!' - The Journal of Bishop Contiger
When confronted with these accusations, Guillermo admitted that he had "done quite a lot of charlatanry in (his) time".
He then looked over the shoulder of the accusing bishop and began to speak in tongues. When interrupted, he chided the bishop for poor manners. He continued to talk to the unseen entity for the next half hour. When he finally stopped, the bishop asked who he was talking to. Guillermo declared it to be the spirit of the bishop's first illegitimate paramour.
Again he was arrested, this time set to hang without trial.
On the day of his execution, the rope around his neck broke three times. Each time it did, he would taunt the hangman, mocking him for his for incompetence until the man broke and attacked him. Both fell off the stage and into the crowd. A riot ensued, and when the dust finally cleared, Guillermo was nowhere to be found.
The Final Execution
His third and only successful execution attempt came at the hands of Sir Crambidae of England a number of years later. After Nicodéme was (probably) falsely arrested for stealing chickens, Guillermo helped him escape from prison, only to be caught himself and, once again, accused of witchcraft. He was tried, found guilty, and burned to death.
When he burned, the flames purportedly rose up in a great blue blaze, engulfing him within seconds and leaving nothing but ash behind. On the way home from the execution, Crambidae was struck by lightning and killed. Burned into his face were the words, 'Who's laughing now?'
At Nicodéme's repeated insistence and based of the witness accounts of the various people he'd healed over the years, the church finally agreed to declare Guillermo's sainthood a full thirty years after his passing.
Thus ended the life of Saint Guillermo the Bastard, patron saint of liars, bastards, snarkers and annoying little shits.
LieQuest 2013