Claude Lemieux

Claude Lemieux was named artistic director of Le Ballet National du Dementlieu upon its reopening in 748 BC and remained in the position until his disappearance a decade later. He was not especially well regarded in his professional capacity, but was well liked by most of his noble peers and was of a moderately well-connected family.

The artistic director's crowning moment proved to be most curious. He revived for the season of 757 BC the project of staging Raven Field. He had always thought Vacheq's work promising but in need of improvement. Vacheq's death in 747 BC afforded him considerable scope for doing just that. The result failed to impresss the audience on opening night however. Indeed, Borcan aristocrats who had travelled to Dementlieu to attend the opening, stormed out in the middle of the second act, accusing Lemieux of "desecrating a Borcan national treasure." Bizarrely, the following morning the artistic director was accused of having led a band of ruffians in an assault upon the Borcan ambassador as the latter returned home from the ballet. The ambassador not only demanded that he be hung, but implied that members of the government had orchestrated the affair, and insisted upon a personal apology from the Lord-Governor.

The official response was silence. The unofficial response was to repay Borcan insults in kind. Lemieux's dubious variation on Vecheq was proclaimed by Dementlieuse critics to be a vast improvement upon the original. The proclamation was backed up by a sudden and insatiable demand for tickets. Handsome profits underwrote the bold plan of taking Lemieux's variation of Raven Field on the road with a tour of Darkon being scheduled for 758 BC. And it was in that land that Lemieux and the national ballet, en route to Viaki, vanished without a trace. There are whispers that the party responsible for the disappearance was none other than Vacheq himself.