Inigharini was the name of both a popular puppet show and the puppets that appeared in it. (A single one of these puppets was called an Inigharin.) The performances consisted of a sequence of short scenes depicting violent interactions among two, three, or four of these little emperors. The show was always performed by a single puppeteer, usually female, known with a certain conventional jocularity as an "Artificer".

Many believe that the Inigharini show's roots can be traced to the Iskuskva Komethya tradition of the pre-Imperial city-state of Tverz. The figure of the "little Inighar" is of course modeled on the Uzdamalian emperors of that name, but also plausibly derived from the Tverzan stock character of Ininye, a manifestation of the Divided Self archetype. The great trick of the Ininye character was to multiply onstage whenever faced with a dilemma, no matter how intently other characters might try to convince him to choose a single solution.

In the traditional Uzdamalian Inigharini show, the Inigharini wore ragged garments of many colors and carried the bells and scepters of imperial office, frequently bashing one another in the head with the latter. Most of their lines were gibberish, delivered with gusto but limited enunciation, except for a handful of stock catchphrases, and always delivered in an assortment of squeaks and roars. These squawking voices were produced with the aid of contrivances known as "dizzers," which the Artificer held in her mouth while speaking. During the early Middle Imperial period, there was a brief enthusiasm for "undizzled" shows, but performers and audiences alike swiftly reached the consensus that the traditional voices were too crucial to the experience to do without, and dizzers returned to general use.

The story of the Inigharini varied between puppeteers and over time, but the usual formula was this: Some vague but ludicrous crisis has befallen the empire, and the citizenry has petitioned the emperor for assistance (a moment that usually involved some vigorous audience participation). The emperor is in a complete muddle over what to do, and argues the point with himself at length and with vigor, resulting in a series of scenes in which the multiple emperor-selves connive to trick one another, beat each other in the head, fuck one another's livestock, and so on. In addition to the Inigharini, these performances sometimes involved a cast of supporting characters, including a sheep, Borpo and the lost sailors of Arpapella, and a large sausage. The Inigharini were portrayed as simultaneously cunning and idiotic in their vigorous schemes against one another, and the classic ending of the show has one Inigharin triumphing brutally over all the others, crying out, "Hotcha! I've killed the devils!" -- only to find, of course, that he has killed himself while he was at it. All was performed as an apotheosis of outrageous humor, designed to provoke shocked and delighted laughter, which by all accounts it regularly did.

The Inigharini were revived by some religious groups during Early Targhandism. These performances were deliberately sober and indeed aggressively unenjoyable. The brightly colored stage sets were replaced by piles of dirt, and rather than moving the puppets around the stage, the puppeteer would simply prop them against these piles and leave them there. Then he or she would make use of the dizzers to deliver lengthy, marginally coherent diatribes in the Inigharini's voices, berating the audience for their many failings. The point of these performances was not that these speeches ought to be rhetorically effective in themselves, but rather that the dreariness itself was aesthetically valuable, especially in conjunction with the allusions to both the real emperors of Uzdamalia and the decadent entertainments of the empire. A typical Targhandist Inigharini show was seven hours long.

See also:

Arpapella

Color

Early Targhandism

Large Sausage

Tverz