Alistair Neezley
A humanoid named Alistair Neezley was a fixture of the Interdimensional Tavern, an inveterate braggart who spent his time telling sensational, overwrought stories about his own fictitious adventures as an interdimensional hero.
Description
Phsyical appearance
Neelzey was a humanoid man with large eyes and no nose. He had light skin, whose hue shifted from pinkish to bluish. He wore “an ostentatious red coat and a fancy hat”, the latter adorned with a plume. It was his signature item of clothing, to the point that his friends at the Tavern once gave him a new plume as a Christmas gift. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Personality
Claiming to be a great dimension-travelling adventurer, he constantly talked other guests' ears off with stories about his high deeds, despite it being highly unclear that he ever really left the Tavern at all for any extended periods of time. (PROSE: Multiversal Mischief) Though reluctant to admit it, he was aware that his stories were (as he put it) “exaggerated”. He was liable to get self-conscious about whether people actually liked listening to his stories, and seemed to genuinely care about the Tavern staff, seeing them as a family of sorts, which, to his surprise, they came to reciprocate. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Powers & abilities
Although by no means the interdimensional adventurer he claimed to be, Neelzey actually owned a Void Ship and was capable of flying it with accuracy within the Void Between Worlds. (PROSE: The Winter Quests) He was a capable mural-painter. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker, The Winter Quests) Though usually using a universal translator, he genuinely spoke several languages, including Yrevenzianese, Skidoorphellian and Spider Latin. Due to having once sat around, extremely bored, with “nothing but [his Ship's] driver's manual for company”, he had also, by 2021, learned Morse code by heart. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
Biography
Origins
Despite his claims of living in “a twelve-story manorhouse with a dinosaur butler”, Neelzey actually had no other home than his Void Ship, thus usually sleeping in the parking garage of whatever institution he was visiting. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
At the Tavern
Alistair Neezley was already at the Tavern during Darius's forced stay there following his banishment from the Prime Universe. His credibility among the Tavern's patrons tanked after he claimed to have camped for a year in the Impeccable Mountains of Kragza only to describe them as comprising six peaks, instead of nine, and to have ridden an Arisrian across the Rawl Valley despite describing them as five- instead of four-winged. As such, few listened when he abruptly climbed onto a table one evening and began telling a long-winded, implausible tale of his escape from a Gargoyle and a horde of Creepworms in the Glowing Caves of Swaatch. However, Tracker-764, who was trying to return to the Cupid Homeworld, took this opportunity to ask him if he knew its coordinates. As he didn't, an embarrassed Neezley quickly found an excuse to leave.
A little while later, when he was dumped back on the parking lot of the Tavern, Darius saw Neezley also returning aboard his Void Ship, about to begin another tall tale. (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market)
On Halloween 2019, Neezley was possessed by one of the spirits in the Great Ghost's legion and brought in this form to the Prime Universe. However, the ghosts were eventually driven to abandon their vessels, and then defeated. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
In December, while putting the finishing touches to the Tavern's decoration, the Tavern waiters received an invitation to a quest for the Frost King's treasure in the land of Manik. Neezley, who had recently read about the treasure, convinced them to accept the invitation and take him along, lending his ship to the quest. After arriving in Manik, the trio met an old man who directed them to the mountains where the treasure was supposedly hidden, though he tried to persuade them to get more supplies before they attempted the climb.
Despite Neezley's predictably burdensome antics, they managed to make their way to a ledge near the mountain's peak, where they met up with the various other groups who had been sent identical invitations. As the group included the villainous Wellsians and Retconning Crocodiles, things soon devolved into a fight, but the waiters and 21-419 managed to sneak out of it and start making their way up the remaining staircase. Though they were distracted halfway through by the red herring dropped by the Crocodiles, 21-419 helped them see through the perception trick and they were eventually able to make it to the top of the mountain like the others.
There, however, they discovered that the invitations had been sent as a trap by Darius, who had been attempting to gather everyone he had a grudge against in one spot. The waiters made the list due to allegedly “serving him the wrong drink over and over and over”. The substantially unhinged Darius, however, had not accounted for his assembled foes bringing weapons and generally outnumbering him. They easily overpowered him, and were about to go home when Dandy-432 discovered by pure chance that the treasure really existed. Another fight was about to start when an uncharacteristically mushy Pessimist-242 delivered a moving speech which convinced the treasure-seekers to temporairly put aside their differences and share the treasure equally. Amidst the hoard, Frederick and Tpxszum found a trei-mich, which they'd been missing, and a number of other trinkets with which to complete the Tavern's decor; Neezley, for his part, found a fetchingly weathered-looking sword which he took in order to lend verisimilitude to future tall tales. (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure)
Neezley was present at at least one real interdimensional adventure, the Christmas 2019 for the lost treasure of the Frost King, which also involved Wellsians and the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles, but he grossly inflated his role in events in retrospect, notably painting a mural with himself as the hero in the Tavern during the next year's Christmas season. (PROSE: The Time of the Toymaker)
During her first visit to the Tavern, Briar spotted, among other strange sights, “an almost-human man (…) telling a fantastic tale about evil gargoyles to a crowd of bored-looking onlookers”. (PROSE: Century Smith and the Time Terror)
Neezley was such an essential part of the Tavern's usual atmosphere that by the time of the temporary invasion of the Tavern by the denizens of the Interdimensional Black Market, he appeared to consider himself a member of staff outright, to the extreme confusion of Frederick and Tpxszum. Despite his eccentricities, he proved useful in this particular instance, however, by annoying the Black Market merchants with his stories until they agreed to leave on their own accord. (PROSE: Multiversal Mischief)
Visit to the Soda Jerkery
Around Christmas 2021, Neezley became self-conscious about the idea that the Tavern's staff may not actually like him or his stories. Leaving the Tavern, he headed to the Interdimensional Soda Jerkery where he attempted to drown his sorrows in Urgleburp Cola. The despondent Neezley was found by CS-NA, who asked for his help in learning about holiday spirit. Neezley, knowing that the Tavern was preparing for a Christmas party, flew him back there, telling him one of his stories on the way. He arrived having recovered much of his usual poise, and his spirits were fully restored when the Tavern staff reassured him that they'd missed him and wanted him at their Christmas party, having even acquired a present specifically for him, namely a new, fancier plume for his hat. After attending said party, Alistair also followed the Tavern staff to the party organised in the Cupid Homeworld by CS-NA, where he regaled some young, Mark 17 Clockwork Cherubs with some of his best tales. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)
