The Moderately Prodigious Treasure of Fester Shinetop

Initial Announcement

4675gc, to be precise. Buried in a secret location, the whereabouts of which I have concealed within a series of clues. For the first clue, dear, sweet, avaricious treasure hunter, read on.. Fester Shinetop[1] approaches the podium, clears his throat, prepares to address the hushed masses

Gentles; commons; Petit-bourgeois: Lend me your ears.

Money, whatever your station in life, is not, as you have been led to believe, a necessary evil.

No.

Far, far better than that, money is, in fact, is a sublime sophistication.

Without money, there is no commerce, little incentive or opportunity for art, and a great amount of inefficient labour. Yes money makes our lives more complicated, but in doing so it frees us from the mundane distractions of the nasty and brutish 'natural' state, and provides us with an artificial platform upon which to build our greatest achievements.

But I come here to bury money, not to praise it.

And where did I bury it?

Well.....

I wanted, you see, to use the large sum that I had accrued during my time on Shartak for something that would provide people with a modicum of entertainment. I wanted people to whisper in awed tones about the legendary treasure of Fester Shinetop. However, I soon discovered that, not only did I not have the patience to save up a nice round sum like, say, 5000gc (although I did manage to save up enough to get me into the top twenty overall gold gains[2]), I also lacked the ingenuity to make a treasure hunt so fiendishly designed and so dauntingly long that any potential treasure-hunters would throw their hands up and declare the prize an unobtainable myth.

Also, people were starting to make their own treasure hunts[3]. I felt that it was below me to rush out nothing of any challenge, but also not right of me to punctuate the search with periods of full stop[4]. Therefore it was left me to hope that, although no challenge to any one of our greater minds[5], it was not above me to give some passing amusement to some of the more kindhearted and indulgent[6] denizens of the island.

To this end, I do crave your indulgence, as it has been at times necessary to stretch or distort the sense or reasonability of anything that I might say in order to fit clues into otherwise seemingly innocuous statements. If this makes me come across as slightly more nonsensical or opinionated than I would hope to be, then I apologise. It does, however, provide you with your first hint to finding the treasure - if something seems strained, then possibly it is.

Further hints:

• I always try and spell things, as far as possible, with correct capitalisation, spacing, and punctuation.
• I have tried to avoid anything that require any particularly abstruse knowledge - if you need to know something you should at least be able to easily Google it.
• I have tried not to rely on anything of too transient a nature - I hope that the clues will be as followable next year as next week.

Now, until the treasure is found, I have decided to play at being hermit, and retire to a small, hopefully out-of-the-way, location. If you should happen upon me, feel free to say hi. That, I believe, is everything I need to share with you, barring your first clue.

So here it is..

Your first clue is this: A red herring.

Changes to Contest

Fester Shinetop, at some point, changed the contest by rounding it up to an even 5000 gold coins.

This is a historical article, describing a past event or events that occurred on Shartak.