Hop Hop Kinkaju

The simple hopping and rhyming game common among children in Clavier actually references an insane series of gruesome murders commited nearly a century ago by a squadron of disgruntled city guards. The game involves placing a 'pit' for each player in a circle and tossing a 'token' (usually a potato or onion) from player-to-player until someone drops it. When that happens each player hopps a number of 'pits' equal to the times the token was thrown before being dropped. Some variations include skipping ropes, multiple tokens, or special rules to keep older children entertained by a similar concept.

The trick of getting tripped up by hopping around represents how the guards ended up getting caught. Each murderer was working too independently from the each other and three of them were caught on the same night because they all showed up at the same place to find prey. Had they coordinated better they wouldn't have accidentally left their squadmates exposed but instead uninentitionally ended up getting each other caught in a bizarre chain of events resulting in a swarm of incensed kinkaju devouring the entire squadron in the Clavier city jail before they could be convicted.[/in

The rhyme is usually as follows, although dozens of variations exist and become more frequent the further you get from Clavier.

Flowers that spilled
Were never killed,
Safe in their beds
Resting their sweet head.

Officer Konner
liked the garden,
Captain Lenen
wanted a pardon.

Rile hopped
with their shadow,
And Shoal alone,
awaited the gallows.

Historical Basis

The squad of city guards that ran amok for several months are well documented in the legal archive. Although a lot of the specific details weren't released to the public most of the basic information in the common version of the myth is correct. Traditionally the game is played with five bases, each representing one of the grizzly 'flesh-pits' found at crime scenes - ironically, each crime scene was found because of another guards' inadvertant inference. They were eachothers' downfall which is represented by the way hopping in a circle can trip you up when playing the game.

Spread

This strange game originated in Clavier and quickly spread to all corners of Allegri. It seems like Allegran children have somehow adopted the custom of checking to 'make sure' every other child they meet knows this game and the appropriate rhyming names. It's a strange custom that goes back generations like some kind of subtle self-sustaining numonic earworm ensuring that every child learns of it.