The world’s first interactive, choose-you-own adventure concept album. Coming 2011.

Little is known about the origins of the stories that are featured in the First Book of the Republic of Thoronia. What is known is that the book was compiled in 1973 by Sir Athanasius Altair, a monk in Eastern Uzkani. From what we have seen and read up until this point it is understood and accepted that the monk believed that these texts were a collection by the Prophet Roland.

Even less is known of Roland’s life, other than the fact that he devoted all of it to the preaching and studying the Republic. He was the driving factor behind the Good King Thor’s popularity in the early 10th century. From this, we the modern reader and believer in the King’s abundant glory and wisdom, can critique and assess the books of Thoronia with a critical eye, not for hatred of the Republic or the King, but rather to further understand the texts and what they mean in a modern context.

For the purpose of this study, we’ll be breaking the book into more manageable sections. Here, we’ll take a look at the “In the Beginning” section. I am well aware that there is text that comes before this, but it is the belief of this particular critic that these were meant mostly as filler, and were actually written by Athanasius as a means to insert himself into the stories. That being said, these beginnings are still a vital part of the history, and should be studied by those who believe in the Good King and his wisdom. We, however, won’t.

One would think that to begin with “In the Beginning” is to begin with the creation of the universe. It is clear that Roland could never have been there, and it is likely that the Good King spoke to him when he was transcribing the universe’s origins. However, none of that happens “In the Beginning” it all happens before. You’ll notice that “In the Beginning” is not actually a beginning at all, it is, for lack of better words, a trivial and useless meandering across subjects that are clearly beyond the grasp of the Prophet Roland. For instance, the line, “He placed these people next to animals that were like them.” The Prophet Roland believes that the Good King Thor set up the lands of Thoronia by a means of comparison, so that the animals on any given continent would be similar to the humans. The two then, would feed and learn from each other. This is clear in some ways, however, the assumption that the animals were actually present on the planet first is contradicting a statement earlier in the book , “Dear sir, I am King Thor, the one who has created you. I have created a galaxy and universe and dinosaurs and dolphins along with you.” The key word here is “along.” This denotes and assumes that we, the human race were created at the same time as the other animals and were in fact, not placed on the continents in a manner that corresponded with the animals whom were already there.

I would like to offer a new reading to the The First Book of the Republic of Thoronia. It is my belief that the monk, Athanasius, actually has inserted himself up until this point, and perhaps beyond. I have read the original scrolls, and is clear that many, if not all are forgeries based upon how Athanasius had chosen to understand the universe. From the Introduction up until Capitols, the text feels deeply rooted in the slang of the ’70s. It attempts to use humor and banter to push its motives. The business with the tote is still highly suspect, as no other mentions of the tote can be found in any of the other history books, with the exception of the traditional song, “March of the Tote.”

However, these revelations do not negatively affect the words and teachings. On the contrary, the monk was likely a good candidate to continue the teachings of the Good King Thor. Yet I worry that perhaps we, the audience of believers, may lose sight of the Republic’s goals if we accept all these things at face value. We must look closely to better understand not only ourselves, but those around us. Next time we’ll be looking at Capitols. Until then, for the Good King Thor, we move.

Subject: Show this Friday, November 7th

Hello people. We have announcement making potential. This time, four or five six months ago, the Republic of Thoronia Band played a show. Now we make it again. November 7 at the hi-dive. Opening for Sunburned Hand of Man, Franklin’s Mint and Outer Neon. Funny thing is, show start at 9 o’clock. Not a joke. For real. Be there at 9 or miss the RoTB. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Good King Thor

If you asked me what video game’s I’m most excited about right now, I’d probably give you a laundry list of different games (actually just Dead Space, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Endwar, Prince of Persia, Resistance 2, and…). Most of those games would be exciting because of technical prowess, immersion, complexity. Yet one of these games is simple mind blowing in its absolute open-endedness. That game is Little Big Planet for the PS3.

The game itself is a fairly straightforward platformer, you control a little sack-person, having them run from left to right while jumping over obstacles and such. But the games design sets a remarkably interesting tone in that it looks like some magical set piece that you’d order from Etsy. It’s beautiful, to say the least:

I had a chance to play with the beta over the last few days, and I’ve concluded that this is one of the most stylized and remarkable games on the horizon. But the real appeal of LBP, the kicker, the whole shabang… is the fact that you can build your own levels, customize your own characters and turn your level into almost anything that you could possible imagine. The developers of LBP have given the user a complete design experience, which the beta of course doesn’t even begin to touch. You can, essentially, build an entire level (or hell, a whole new game), and subsequently share it with everyone on the game’s servers. Yep, build, share, rebuild, customize, borrow, share, repeat. It is going to be amazing.

It’s going to be amazing because it is one of the first console games ever to not only be full of creativity, but to breed it (yeah yeah yeah, we all know about Quake and Half-Life Mods… but those aren’t console’s now are they? And hell, this is 100X easier than making a Quake level (albeit the last time I tried to make a Quake level was for Quake 2, so it may have gotten easier by this point)). It’s going to showcase what games can do, in all of their good, bad and ugly (we’re all going to assume that yes, there will be at least 1000 user-generated penis based levels). On top of that it boasts a collective creativity in that you and your friends can sit down together (literally or figuratively online)  and create levels with each other. Already, with the beta being live for under a month, a few great levels have been produced…

(video’s after the break)

One of my favorite’s, based on the excellent Shadow of Colossus, this one is called (logically, I suppose)
“Little Big Colossus.”

And another, based on something else…

And… another… based… on something else…

Of course, there is a fair share of Mario levels as well…

But don’t let that discourage you! There are going to be some real innovations in gameplay and connectivity, and LBP will make playing online a completely different and exciting experience. I, for one, have already started sketching out the designs for a Republic of Thoronia level, and will deliver it upon you once its ready (kind of like the iPhone game… huh? What was that? I’m sorry, I have to go… do…. this other thing….)

As most of us all walked away from Spore stunned and dissapointed, LBP will be a saving grace for user-generated unlimited ability content. All this comes to PS3 owners on October 21st. The online service is completely free and you can bet your ass that it’s going to be a popular time-waster here in Thoronia.

CLICK ON PHOTO FOR DESCRIPTIONS/ARTISTS

The only thing I’m sorry for is the lack of armor — something that the first visitor of the evening really sucked us in for. I apologize man with moustache, the next time we do this I will come to you for armor. I swear it. I promise it. And on that note, you’ll have noticed some extra special wordage there — “next time.” That’s right. You didn’t think this was a one off did you? No, this was the deal the score the whole shabang of the FIRST ANNUAL REPUBLIC OF THORONIA ARTIFACTS EXHIBIT. What does first annual mean? It means there will be a second annual. And for that we’ll be further prepared. Ready for anything. Artists and contributers, you have a year. There will be a second half to the gallery, as I was too nervous in the way of picture taking (fuzzy out of focus shots!), so hold on for round two later on this week! Gallery!

(NOTE: Again I apologize for the blurry pictures, and if you’d like to download your own HISTORY OF THORONIA Chart, please get it here.)

Republic of Thoronia Schwag!

If that’s not enough than there will be art too! Brent Neustifter’s monster! Brandon Knapp’s shield! Mojiferous’ Smoking KT/Jesus! Bryan Danknich’s animals! Cameron Munier’s Constitution! MORE! MORE! MORE!

Wonder what other people are saying? How about the Westword!?!

——————————————————————————

Of Gods and Men

By Mark Dragotta

Published on September 04, 2008

This letter is to officially and honestly announce the Republic of Thoronia Artifacts Exhibit, which will be taking place on September 5th at the Skinny Squirrel Gallery (3047 Larimer St., Denver, Colorado). The exhibit will feature a variety of pieces from collector’s from around the world, with pieces raging in size and scope from booklets to armor, dolls to paintings. Officially licensed exhibitor’s include: Bryan Danknich, Mojiferous J. Colossus, Brandon Knapp and Brent Neustifter, with unofficial applicant’s still waiting approval. The Exhibit will help to found the History of Thoronia in the minds and souls of Denverite’s as well as continue the always running teachings of the Good King Thor. Please feel free to submit your applications for your admissions to this website, and be sure to bring your friends.

It’s now available on MP3.com by following this link. Be sure to rate the album while you’re at it.

As well as muxtape by following this link.

If you want to go all covert about it, you can search your favorite newsgroup client at alt.binaries.indie for “Republic of Thoronia.”

Anyone know of any other places to throw this shit? I want it on every free download service possible.

That’s right folks, the critics have spoken. The first Republic of Thoronia album, Episode 1, was just reviewed in this week’s Onion. I have to say, that through all of the reviews of things I’ve been involved with in my life, this is my favorite. It seems to hit the nail on the head regarding a lot of the influences and I have Jason Heller to thank for that big musical memory of his. You can check out the article by clicking on the picture below, but here are some highlights:

At times the abstraction even coheres into something resembling disjointed electro-that is, before it disolves into another pool of luminous fizz.

…robotic chants paddle through digitized ambience nearly worthy of Tangering Dream or M83… in the album’s prakish, meta-mythic euphoria.

Thankfully, though, Episode 1 seems content to mildly distort the brain instead of breaking it.

B+

Thanks Onion!

You can download the album here in a zip format, here in a rar format or here by each individual MP3. Enjoy!

King Thor and his internet connection have been arguing lately. It is believed that this is due to the FBI’s wiretapping the line after the release of the first book. Please stand by with us through these technical difficulties, if necessary, King Thor has aligned himself with several militants and prophets that will continue the stories and teachings of the Republic of Thoronia. Plans and situations have been set forth to ensure that the Republic of Thoronia — no matter what happens to King Thor, will never die.

I’ve heard from one person who was having problems with the .zip of the full album, so I’ve uploaded a .rar as well. Get it here.

We weren’t able to actually distiguish why he was running into problems. Which is why I’m just addressing it by uploading another format. The .zip worked fine for me, as well as for others, so who knows really?

Let me know if you’re having any other types of problems or weirdness on the downloads… other than them being slow — I don’t want to about hear that.

The .zip file has just reached the 50 downloaded mark. That doesn’t really sound like much, but it’s certainly more copies of the album in more people’s hands then ANYTHING My Calculus ever put out (I still have 200 records in my closet… anyone want one? Four? Ten?). Be sure to tell your friends, associates, anyone who you think might be interested in what the RoT has to offer. I mean, it’s free. How can you go wrong? ALSO! At the next RoT show, hard copies of the album will be available for free. Yes, free. They will be packaged in limited edition felt covers. When is the next show? I dunno. We may have t-shirts available for free as well. But the t-shirts aren’t anything too special, I mean you can make one yourself, just get a paint roller, some t-shirt silk screen ink, an old t-shirt and download this file. Print/copy it on a piece of mylar. Cut out the stencil, roll out the paint, stick your shirt in the oven for a minute and you’ll be good to go.

For all of you who love to remix (maybe what, one, two people?) the Republic of Thoronia  Episode 1 album is now ready to be remixed and chopped and screwed and etcetera by all of you. You know its kind of like what that one band did… what were they called? Dismemberment Plan. What were you thinking? Radiohead? No they ripped it off from DP. Anyway, only four tracks available now. If you want more, let me know. They are being uploaded at this moment, so if you try to download them this instant (09:45 AM MTN) then you’ll just get an error. Enough babble…

• “Here is Where We Are” (Remix Tracks 124MB)
• “March of the Tote” (Remix Tracks 126 MB)
• “When the King Comes Home” (Remix Tracks 60 MB)
• “For Him We Move” (Remix Tracks 91 MB)

That’s right folks, the first Republic of Thoronia full-length album, Episode 1, is now available! Now, there are several ways for you to go about getting said album:

Download .zip

Download Mp3’s individually

Download individual tracks for remix (set your face to “stun” for the file size, 1.1 GB… youch!)

UPDATE: REMIX TRACKS WILL BE UP TOMORROW/WEDNESDAY – My server doesn’t want a 1.1 GB file resting inside it’s laurels, so I’m going to cut up and divide three of the tracks into three seperate downloads. For now, just enjoy the album, you can do your fiddling with it later.

That’s it!

The MP3’s are all 192kps, high quality. Enjoy.

TRACK LISTING

01 — Introduction to Thoronia (narration)

02 — Here is Where We Are

03 — What the Good King Must Say (Narration)

05 — Interlude

06 — When the King Comes Home

07 — The Unicorn Man (Narration)

08– For Him We Move

Seems simple enough, no? Anyway, so there you have it. People have been repeatedly asking me questions about the sound, “What’s it gonna sound like?” “What kind of music is it?” “Is it going to be noisy?” I usually reply that the album should be up and finished very very soon, but people want more. They want it referenced, like a fucking Encyclopedia. So, fine, here: 

That’s all for now, I have work to do!

The purpose of this is create a more community based experience on the user end. The people of the Republic of Thoronia must unite, because having several bloggers blog together is much stronger than keeping us all seperate and apart.

So if you’ve ever found yourself amused by my bemusings, or strangling the mouse to my antics, please, apply. Together we can make the Republic strong. Together we can fight the power. Together we can shed light on a world filled the darkness of a King that has, for the now, gone missing.

UPDATE: The server errors seem to have stopped after I talked to my provider. So, no need to worry about that… for now. For those that care/in the know, it appears that my database server was different then my web server, and that was a shared server — other people were overloading it and causing my PHP to get pissed about it. So, either they fixed it, or when I changed the PHP to a longer timeout range it fixed it. Yep, interesting stuff there.

• 30,000,000 Billion years ago: King Thor get’s bored, create’s Tote Bag and universe to put into it.
• 3 years ago: I created the First Pamphlet of the Republic of Thoronia, on a whim, for questionable reasons. It is still unclear as to why this event happened, but perhaps was related to an excessive amount of internet and television babble about Scientology. The idea remains fairly dorment until…
• 1 to 1 and 1/2 years ago: The RoTBand is “formed” as King Thor realized that he did actually miss making music (prior to that he spent an excessive amount of time writing and performing songs in My Calculus Beats Your Algebra with his fool-hearty teammate and design genius pal Bryan). Spending hours upon hours of time and money researching and finding the perfect instruments, King Thor eventually ended up with: Roland SH-201 Keyboard, Korg Electribe ER-1, Korg Kaoss Pad, Behringer 4 Channel Mixer. 
• May 5th, 2007: First Republic of Thoronia Band show. Very strange and proves that the music isn’t really ready for a public outing yet…
• June 20th-21st, 2007: Second and Third Republic of Thoronia Band shows. Things go better the first show, not so good the second. 
• June, 2007: After purchasing instruments and paying for various school related things over the last 7 years, credit card is paid off. 
• July, 2007: http://www.mcbya.net officially undergoes the change to the Republic of Thoronia moniker, King Thor never bothers to get a new domain, as everyone already has this one email address. The blog is launched shortly thereafter and undergoes, along with the website, at least 15 design changes before settling into the setup that it has now. The original blog was haphazardly updated and operated poorly (RSS didn’t work, each posting existed on its own page, it would get crazy “widget errors”). Until the next event which sent King Thor in to a writing frenzy. 
• August, 2007: House burglarized, thieves steal: Apple Powerbook laptop, Fuji Camera, iPod, Korg Electribe ER-1. 
• August 25th: Just weeks after the burglary, Republic of Thoronia plays fourth show. The show is high energy and exciting, but sounds stupid. 
• September, 2007: With some help from Dad and a newly paid off credit card, new Korg Electribe is purchased, Korg Electribe EMX-1. As well as new computer, iMac 20?. The day after computer is purchased, Apple releases new, shiny metal iMac’s. King Thor’s heart breaks slightly, credit card seems to weigh more, somehow.  
• September 23rd, 2007: The History of Thoronia project starts. King Thor promises 365 blog posts relating to the Republic of Thoronia. Soon thereafter trims that number to 100, then subsequently to 50. Also promises book, which nobody believes, but people feign excitement.
• October 3rd, 2007: RoTB plays again, things go okay this time, but its evident that some big chnages are in order… band doesn’t play again until March.
• November-January, 2007/8: The blog continues to grow as to the followers and worshippers of the Good King Thor. Excessive amount of gift guides, year in review’s, and other lists appear on the site.
• February, 2008: King Thor is out of a job! Which means constant site updates. Site overhauled (again). Podcasts begin airing, but eventually stop due to the constant struggle of this server and Apple iTunes’ penchant to ping the damn thing repeatedly.
• February 29th, 2008: The First Book of Thoronia published on Leap Day. Millions upon millions of dollars are donated to the RoTBlog project.
• March, 2008: After many many job interviews, the Good King Thor is getting saltier and saltier everyday. 
• March 28th, 2008: The Republic of Thoronia iPhone/iPod Touch game is announced! King Thor quickly realizes how hard it is to develop an adventure game, but him and Mojiferous J. Colossuscontinue on with heads high and hearts filled dollar signs and RoT logos. 
• May 1st, 2008: The first mention of the RoTBand anywhere except here. It’s inconclusive exactly what the world things still, but at least nothing negative was said. Soon, the world will know how great it all is, that is, once I figure out how to make it all work how I want.
• May 2nd, 2008: This retrospective is created in order to help all of you. Oh, and shows were played in between March and now. 
• UPDATE: May 7th, 2008 KING THOR BLOW’S IT BY DELETING THE ENTIRE DATABASE!

OBJECTIVES AND GOALS OF THE REPUBLIC OF THORONIA:

Okay, so now that you have a fairly truthful and accurate history, you may be wondering what the hell the point of it all is. To be completely honest, it’s to get you completely involved with every single aspect and section of what it means to be a King. From musical conception (demos, trash songs, crap, crap, crap) to what eventually will be a fully realized and amazing album, you, the reader, will be there. Or perhaps the eventual full-length novel, you, the reader will have seen many parts of it. It’s here to create a completely cohesive brand and ideal for how to operate a life. It exists to document and bridge the gaps in ideas. How they come from one place, how they end up in another. The band? The band WANTS to sound like an old radio show being filtered through the eyes of Bruce Haack, Yes and Aphex Twin. It WANTS to be an interesting and informative snippet of stories and tales. It isn’t there yet. It’s not even close. The book? Honestly? It’s more of a retrospective, memoir sort of thing that relies on haphazard fiction faux-pas’ to get it going and hide the fact that it is, after all is said and done, just a memoir. This is a testing ground for all the absurd and more often than not, stupid ideas that King Thor has. Also, it’s a place where lists can be printed (P.S. “Refined Unemployment Songs” list is printed at the Westword here. May be in print next week?) 

But more than anything else, The Republic of Thoronia is a life-guide. It’s a place where people aren’t idiots, where they tip their servers, where they share idea’s openly, where they clap even when the band sucks, where they listen to my advice because really, I’m usually right, where people are civil to each other, where music is something that can be worshipped and criticized without people getting mad, where video games have plotlines and aren’t always in 3D, where Rolling Stone never existed, where drinking beers and hanging out doesn’t always have to lead to being drunk, where friends with families get good jobs, where experience isn’t an issue so much as enthusiasm, where it’s okay to brand your life and give yourself your own logo, where ideas can be shared from start to finish and it’s okay when they suck a little bit, where people honestly give a fuck about what you’re doing with your life instead of pretending to be interested or completely unresponsive to the fact that you might have just done the impossible by getting this story accepted here or that article printed there, where writers get paid to write, where musicians get paid to play, where jobs are handed out like wafers at a Catholic church, where the Deadliest Catch is on all the time. 

This is the Republic of Thoronia, get used to it.