Once upon a time, in a magical desert kingdom, lived a king who was terribly jealous. So ridiculously jealous, in fact, that upon pain of death, he was the only male allowed to acknowledge that women even [i]existed[/i]. (You might wonder whether this would cause problems with keeping the kingdom alive for more than one generation, but LOOK, A DISTRACTION.)

Anyway, as this was a magical kingdom, many of its citizens were mages. Unfortunately, owing to the king's insane jealousy, every male mage was slaughtered at birth. There was a magical academy for women in the capital, but years ago its head had gotten upset with the king and run off into the desert. Rumors swirled that she lived alone with her cauldron, brewing mighty potions and dispensing revolutionary advice. The men, meanwhile, grew up to be laborers, or farmers, or to join the Kingdom Guard or the Royal Messengers.

And overseeing it all was the king's spy corps. Certain women were born gifted with the greatest magic of all, that of Second Sight, able to remotely view anything within the kingdom's borders. Anytime a male and female fraternized, they would know, and his guards would immediately be dispatched to execute the man. The head of these powerful seers was known as the Look-Eye, and their logo was an unblinking white eye on a blue background.

But even with his spies, the king was unhappy: their vision couldn't penetrate the vast, lifeless desert. The sorceress of the dunes continued to elude him, no matter how much Second Sight he threw at her, no matter how many soldiers he marched around under the grueling sun.

So one day, the head of the king's spies began work on an item that would help her channel her powers: a handheld stick of solid oak. After weeks of painstaking carving, it was finally ready, and with her new casting implement in hand, she turned her vision toward the dunes. She gasped, and her eyes flew open. Badly shaken, she summoned a messenger to relay her vision to the king—a messenger who, as luck would have it, was secretly the lover of the rebel desert sorceress.

The messenger dashed into the throne room.

"My king!" he cried. "The Look-Eye just—"

"TRAITOR!" the king bellowed, and chopped the messenger's head off.

[b]The moral of the story:[/b] Don't mention a woman to the jealous king, you dumbass.