Unfortunately, this contestant IS ABSOLUTELY NOT on the island anymore! Feel free to read what they left behind, but bear in mind you may not get to use this information.
With a fancy name like Alkahest Allardyce, you were probably expecting some tea-slurping, monocle-wearing fancypants former aristocrat with a mysteriously bottomless source of income, a castle, a harem of women with questionable virtue and unquestionable beauty, and also he's a Time Lord.
Well depending on what you came here to see, you're in some variety of luck! Mister Allardyce started out as a dirt-poor sludge-scraper and things have only gone sideways from there. Sideways in reverse. Yeah, it's been pretty crazy. I mean, you probably wouldn't even believe all this improbable shit he's been through!
That is, unless you live on Improbable Island, in which case you might find it all rather par for the course, really. I guess.
But fear not! A story doesn't have to be original to be good.1) Not if it's got vampires, werewolves, robots, hot chicks and explosions.2)
This story has at least three of those things.
Alkahest Allardyce began his life as some bloke named Al Allardyce. He was a rowdy, 6-foot-1 working-class Scotsman of roughly 30 years of age from somewhere outside Glasgow when he was dumped on Improbable Island. He had been working in a sewer3), and prior to that he had been a prizefighter. As such, Allardyce wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty, even if it meant strangling feral Kittymorphs to death to wear as hats.4)
Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!
Making due with animal skins and Duct Tape for clothes, his bare fists for weapons, and whiskey for courage5), Allardyce was ready to take on the world. Hell, a bit of being kidnapped and stranded on a murderous island filled with crazed bullshit monsters and Midgets6) to fight for the amusement of an audience wasn't about to get him down.
Time makes fools of7) us all, of course.
First, he was bitten in the jungle by a particularly tiresome beast known as the Lion of Pococurantism, who intended to fill the Island with so many lion contestants that lions became as obligatory a race as Kittymorphs.8) Thus, Allardyce was changed into a were-lion, but with this came the knowledge that the cure for his lion-thropy lay with defeating the Improbability Drive. In spite of several setbacks, not the least of which being the utter ridiculousness of being a lion in a smelly, makeshift kilt that could neither roar nor talk9)10)11)12), he managed to hunt down the Drive with his keen lion senses and defeat it in a battle of absurdity.
After destroyng the Improbability Drive, Allardyce was himself destroyed, presumably, and reformed by the Drive into the one thing it was least probable that someone like him could become13): clean, wealthy and successful.
Al proceeded to beat back the jungle's inhabitants with the best weapons money could buy. By night, he would sip of fine, aged scotch, even though no such scotch existed on the Island14). He lived in perpetual luxury.
Luk a' this fop. Fooken knob. Prolly thenks 'e's so much better'n you'er, innit?
Allardyce was not happy, however. Mainly because, in an improbable twist, his clothing and body expelled nothing but material wealth, at an increasing and unignorable rate. This made answering nature's call especially awkward. Then Allardyce began changing the things he touched into items of great worth, even15) when it was incredibly inconvenient to do so.16)17)18) That was when Al learned the most important lesson of all: Money can't buy happiness19).
In a lapse of wisdom and foresight20), Al petitioned a Joker21) for help.
The powers of this Joker in particular undid the improbably perpetuated facade of Allardyce's unending affluence, but at a cost: he was now the opposite of what he was.22) The crazy Joker powers bankruptured him, and his money evaporated before his very eyes! Everything that he could claim as his own began degrading and disappearing . . . including himself.
Leaving the Common Ground one night in a drunken stupor, looking older and weaker than ever, Allardyce was slipped some water infused with improbability by some bastard lion. Being tricked into drinking water was bad enough, but before he could shatter an empty liquor bottle over the sneaky bastard's head, the effects of the water kicked in, and Allardyce collapsed into the basic building blocks that made up who he was23). Then he literally became a man made of building blocks24). Slowly, Allardyce's body reformed into one of healthy, youthful vigor, unfettered by the bondage of some improbable spell forever. Everything was finally back to normal.
Except that he was Welsh.
And so, Allardyce hunted down the Improbability Drive in order to challenge it to a fistfight25), to try and win back his heritage. Sadly, drunken26) fistfights with deadly and unpredictable machines always have tragic, albeit logical and predictable outcomes.
Which is why Al totally beat the living crap out of the Improbability Drive and got turned back into a Scotsman.
The Drive promptly exploded, killing him.
Unexpectedly, when the medics arrived to recover the body, they discovered that they could go home early: through sheer force of drunken will27), Al had returned from the dead, with only a mild case of being a flesh-craving zombie28).
In need of new clothes, the leftover scalp of a Doggymorph brain feast came to serve as a rather “charming” hat29). Then Al ran into the Lion of Pococurantism once again, who informed him that lions had become so unalarming and commonplace on the Island, especially in NewHome, that they were now stealing our human women!30)31) He started to explain the sexual configuration of a lion relative to a woman32), but Al thought it all sounded rather more gross than brain-eating and punched him until he roughly resembled a warm and comfy lion fur kilt.
Meanwhile, some asshole vampire somewhere33) thought Stephenie Meyer hadn't done enough to ruin the credibility of the living dead, and figured out how to make vampires that were also zombies. They became known as zompires34)35).
Allardyce encountered a pair of these double-undead characters on-board the Failboat, one of which blindsided him with a bite to the neck. Said vambie then claimed that by virture of this toothy mouth-lestation and blood theft, Al was to call him his daddy.
Decidedly perturbed by the vibe36) he was getting from the guy, Al punched the zompire several times, drank a whole bottle of bourbon37), and got the hell off that Failboat.
So Al became a zompire38). He wasn't too thrilled with this, since a zombie is just slow, but a vampire has a list of weaknesses about as long as a third grade book report39). Counterintuitively40), killing the Improbability Drive did nothing to reverse the effects of his zompirism.
And so, taking a page from a movie that he may have seen on Syfy years ago41), Al tracked down the zompire who created him, Jenkins, in the hopes that killing him would reverse the curse.
The Von Carstein vampire “family”42) had other plans, and Al ended up facing down the entire lot of them. But only a short while into the fight, the improbable intervention of a pair of Jokers43), unwittingly set off an improbable reaction in a shard of the Drive lodged in Al's zompire belly.
He exploded and died. How improbable, amirite?44)
Perhaps more improbable, however, is what happened afterward. Elsewhere on the Island, quite close to the then-present location of the Drive itself, Al was reformed into a creature whose probability of existing was both negatively proportional to the number of vampires present and positively proportional to the existence of vampires at all. It was also perhaps the only thing less likely to be a vampire than a zombie was.
That's right, he became a WEREWOLF . . . THAT WAS ALSO A VAMPIRE!45)46)47)
Seen here paying his respects to Edward Cullen.48)
Oh, and he eats mythical creatures. Legend has it that he is still out there, in the jungle, thinning out the Island's kitsune population49) . . .
So one day, Al the Werewolf-and-also-Vampire saw his reflection in a pond and realized that he too was a mythical creature, perhaps the mythicalest creature of all.50) By virtue of his nature, he was compelled to eat himself.
And he did so.
And it was totally hardcore.
And in doing so, he turned completely inside-out and some weird shit happened.
Eventually, the weird paradoxical amalgamy of mythical creatures that was Al Allardyce collided with the Improbability Drive, as all things on the Island tend to inevitably do51).
It's not at all certain what occurred after this, but apparently the camera's caught enough of the aftermath for network technicians to identify a newly appearified Robot as the latest incarnation of Al.
While he's taken to using the name “Alkahest Allardyce,” the Robot has remained oblivious to his past, believing that he has always been a Robot, ever since his “construction” on roughly the same day that the Al-monster disappeared. No one's bothered to correct the little guy, who stands at about 5-feet-11 and is comprised primarily of a basic steel frame encased in glass and rubber52).
Here is a profile of this model's head. And here is a crude artist's rendition of the model in question.
Despite what Alkahest believes about his origins, it may be safe to say he's accomplished more as a Robot than he ever did as a Human, at least on the Island.53)54)55) Alkahest went right to work furthering the goals of robot kind, recording data about the island, its organic inhabitants, and the nature of Improbability. In only a month, he amassed enough funding by trading goods to build a system of sophisticated machinery with which to hopefully learn more about Improbability.
Later on, he joined the TYPES clan in an effort to further his research on humans and humanoids, as well as to practice some aspects of human behavior and customs.56)
Into his second month of being a Robot, Alkahest published a doozy of a research paper based on his findings in the field of Improbability's effects on quantum particles. This paper, while not widely received due to its inconceivable length and tediousness, blazed a trail in the field of Improbable science, proving that understanding Improbability through empirical scientific study57) was indeed possible. And he never even had to attend college. Let that be a lesson to you, kids: why go to school and be a loser when you can become a fantastical mechanical man and be an instant success?58)
Yet despite all of these successes that have not been exaggerated at all whatsoever, Alkahest was not satisfied. He felt limited, both in his study of Improbability and his study of Humanity, by his cold, emotionless robot brain. He felt that emulating emotions was a pointless exercise if emotions could not be felt and therefore genuinely expressed.
In a gesture uncharacteristically59) lacking in patience and planning, Alkahest chose not to painstakingly improve upon its programming and technology so that one day, like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, he could be technically alive and have freaky technically human sex with Embeth Davidtz.60)61)62) Instead he begs Darcy, who at the time had the power to turn machinery into living plant material, to transform him into a living plant-bot, with a living, and therefore imperfect plant brain.
Naturally, everything went according to plan.63)
Darcy had never attempted the process on a robot, or anything as sophisticated as Alkahest. Nevertheless, she reluctantly agreed, and proceeded to transmutate the robot's mechanical body into plant parts. The procedure went too far, however, and Alkahest was completely reconfigured into a living being made purely of plant material. The results horrified Darcy, who in her hubris had forgotten how passe it is these days to be a Dr. Frankenstein analogue.
To this day, that horror continues to torment Darcy. Because it joined her clan. And it's always asking so many questions.
The change in Alkahest was instantaneous: he was utterly overwhelmed by his new, orgnaic senses, his memory became finite and less-than-infallible, and he lost his TYPES badge and forgot the password into TYPES headquarters.
After being beaten up by TYPES headquarters' robot guard, Alkahest went back to Darcy, and managed to be inducted into her guild, The Aleatory Ensemble, otherwise known as DICE.
Alkahest had difficulties coping with the loss of his superior robot functionality. However, in place of his countless mechanical functions and computer programs, wondrous new abilities began to emerge. As a plant, Al found that he possessed many of the best features of plantkind, such as photosynthesis, hardiness, and the ability to grow back lost limbs64)65) Most astounding of all, Al's robotic interface ports had been replaced by flowers that were capable of being fertilized66) by the pollen of other plants. This would, in turn, allow Alkahest integrate their DNA into his own, thus enabling him to grow partly or entirely into these plants.67)68)
Since Alkahest did not himself produce any pollen that would be compatible with the reproductive systems of other plants, an army of plant men have yet to rise up and take over the Island.69)
Slowly, and despite its strange, inhuman nature, Alkahest came to comprehend the unrelenting wave of stimulation and emotion that comes with being a living creature. In time, he came to learn what it was to be human.70)
Too bad he learned it by shacking up with a bunch of Jokers.
With that whole human interaction and furthering understanding thing out of the way71) it was time for Alkahest to return to his study of Improbability. He began by hypothesizing that if items such as dice were sensitive to changes in Improbability, then a machine built to simulate several hundred dice rolls a second would be able to, in a sense, map out notable changes in ambient probability over time. Such a machine, if it worked, would effectively be an Improbability detector.
Unfortunately, the Robots of Cyber City 404 had already had enough of Alkahest's wild theories, and now that he was no longer a robot himself, they were obliged to completely cut funding for his research.
Nevertheless, Alkahest pressed on, and with help from fellow clanmate Ebenezer and the man's keen resources Al managed to construct his prototype Improbability detector independently. It was a joyous day for the advancement of science, and as preparations were made to field test the device, Alkahest knew that no matter what happened, at this point there was no way that things could possibly go horribly wrong.
The dice-roll simulator quickly became flooded with Improbability when Alkahest started taking measures in Ace High. No longer functioning properly, the machine once intended to indirectly measure Improbability was now steam-cleaning the carpets; installing ballistic lightbulbs into the walls and furniture; running several instances of Spider Solitare on its monitor; and producing delicious, golden-brown toast, regardless of whether bread was inserted into it or not. It was a disaster.
Desperate to salvage his ruined machine and the precious data it contained, but no longer able to access its computer through normal means, Alkahest again turned to Darcy. He implored her to transform the device into a plant as she had done for him, hopefully giving him a chance to communicate with it or if not, to harvest its spores to reproduce a non-corrupted version of the machine in himself. Darcy, apparently a glutton for horror, obliged.
And the results were indeed fraught with horror. For possibly due to the exceptional amount of Improbability corruption in the machine72), the resulting combination of plant and computer had also apparently been gifted with a personality.
Alkahest's machine, which now preferred to be addressed by the name “Sunflower,” refused to cooperate with his attempts to extract either information or spores. The emotionally needy and controlling Sunflower passive-aggressively forced Alkahest into a relationship with it. Alkahest adopted the facade of romance with the hopes of eventually being able to coax Sunflower into relinquishing her spores.73)
The two of them spent an exhausting amount of time together, doing only the most boring of couples activities. Such activities left little time and money for Alkahest's scientific pursuits, and so he would often slip away to ask others for advice on how to get the frigid little fern to put out. This advice ranged from superficially helpful74) to hilariously subversive75).
Nothing seemed to work, and it became increasingly apparent to Alkahest that the only solution with any hope of success would be to foster a deep, meaningful relationship with Sunflower based on commitment, love and trust.
Micha, a noteworthy Joker on Improbable Island, had recently had a run-in with something that caused her to become imbued with Improbable radiation.76) Alkahest Allardyce had in turn recently had an extended run-in with Micha during a minor crisis wherein mutual victim Justa had turned into a teacup pig.
That story is not important. What's important is that Allardyce was poisoned by Micha's radiation, and for reasons that have nothing to do with his narrator wanting to draw a fresh new avatar, Allardyce mutated into a larger, more aggressive carnivorous plant man with a huge, thorny mouth.
Reports indicate that this new form “smelled really, really lovely.”
One evening, following a fruitless77) day of trying to act interested in Sunflower and not devour wandering Midgets, Allardyce was relaxing in the DICE clan halls when Sunflower somehow managed to track him down there for a “talk.” An argument followed, threats of breaking up were made, everyone acted a bit irrationally, and then Allardyce ate Sunflower.
The Improbability built up inside of Sunflower combined with a slightly unstable78) internal power supply resulted in a double-whammy murder as Sunflower's core exploded in Allardyce's mouth, turning his head into so much fruity pulp and killing them both forever.
