The Old Improbable Island Wiki

Csodas is, out of character, a Moderator on the Island. Distracting him is probably the most reliable way to reach him, unless you see him posting in Player Chat. Cs makes a ch-sound, as in church; the final s makes a sh-sound, so that the last syllable of his name rhymes with gosh, more or less. If you're curious, you can enter it into Google Translate and have it speak to you in Hungarian, or click here for a song clip with the word.

• Name: Csodas. For plots, he'll go by some version of Eugene: Eugen, Jeno, or just plain Gene.
• Age: 36
• Height: 156 cm.
• Leader of QUIET.

the thing is –

“Why don't I say what I mean? You take that back. Words are words. We do things with them, all of us. They have weight, sometimes even edges.”

blip

“…that's what the press is for, anyway. To have something to work for. To make warm things so that people on the snowcap can be comforted, to remind them that they're part of a community if they try.”

blip

“…the time we had together will remain securely shelved among my happy memories (I rather thought you'd like that)…”

blip

“Can I - have you eaten? There should be some of the season's last apples and quinces, and I think there's some French Hen stew, too.”

blip

“…the proper systematization is vital to the advancement of knowledge…”

blip

“Nothing the lads couldn't have passed off as good fun, or accidents, really. A torn shirt here, papers half-scattered into a puddle there.” He shrugs. “But never anything more than- than cornering me in an alley and looming,” he says to his feet, “just to watch me squirm a little. Suppose I wasn't worth bothering with properly, really.”

blip

“There are conventions to be upheld… rules to work by. Hospitality is a sacred trust, you know!”

blip

“They're always so cheerful, when they say hello. And I know I wanted to believe it, but…” He sighs. “He was a cataloguer. Foreign books, mostly Russian, a completely different wing, really. That's what… made it better and worse, really, because there I had no idea if he knew me from Adam, and to be greeted as if he had… It seems so normal, when it happens, something nice and familiar, and then you think, I've changed, how did they know, and sometimes I don't know if it's worse when it seems so obviously made up by the Drive, when you catch sight of a camera and wonder if Arpad is out there, blinking at some parody of himself on the screen, or if this is the time it's real and it'll be your weapons, not even some monster, or if…” He swallows, heavily. “If he recognized you because whatever the Drive has made you, it… was always lurking there, behind your eyes, and you were the only one who didn't see it.”

click

“I've never been,” he confesses, “what you'd call a man's man. And yet, here I am.”

Fond recollections of a lot of time in libraries and bookshops. By trade he was a bibliographer and card-cataloguer for the National Library of Hungary, with a weekend hobby of working on letterpress prints; he's working on amassing the sort of Island library that will allow him to make use of this.

While unassuming and sometimes shy, he remains a curious observer with a mild weakness for beards. Despite his best efforts, there are always one or two inkspots on his coat; when it's warm, rather more are visible on his rolled-up shirt-sleeves.

Csodas administers the Champollion Press and Lending Library at (20, 36), which specializes in non-English printing jobs and doubles as the QUIET clan hall; the Improbable Island Airport at (15, 38); the Kelp Forest at (25, 1); and Herodotus' Historical Wunderkammer, a reenactment theme park devoted to multinational polities located at (8, 21). The first two are substantially complete; the last two are works-in-progress.

“Rude man attacks you? Rude man with bad memory?”

ksssh

“The mutation process did an awful number on you, didn't it? Were you this morose before your current incarnation?”

ksssh

“At one time, you reached a point where you had to look at yourself, and think about who you were and what you wanted. You weighed what you would gain against what you would lose. And you made a choice.”

ksssh

…can't begin to fathom how he can blindly walk into an Outpost with absolute faith in the Island's population and inhabitants. Didn't it ever occur to him that people aren't walking beacons of kindness and enlightenment?

ksssh

“Oh, Csodas! You know they aren't even real. Just products of Improbability disguised to look humanoid. All that screaming and 'Ahh! Don't kill me!' and 'Please, no! I have a family!' is all just a ruse to try and get you to feel bad for them or something. Playing on your feelings and trying to generally get sympathy so they can eat you. Honestly, it's a waste of meat you're just leaving to rot in the Jungle!”

ksssh

“I got the packet, yes. It was very… thorough. On the filing at least.”

ksssh

“You're always welcome to come see me after class if you need some… individual attention.”