Miserable-Failure is a walrus-faced monopod with a plaid sweater and peacock tail. His two favorite utterances are “Oh no, not again” and “I blame this on toast”. It is thought if we knew why he said these things, a number of other mysteries about the universe would also become clear. Miserable-Failure dwells in the volcanic pits of The Lands that Burn, where he spends most of his time trying to drown himself in pools of boiling lava. unfortunately for Miserable Failure, he is immortal.

An Edraei order dedicated to knitting Miserable Failure a better sweater

Miserable Failure flees the burning lands into self imposed exiles in order to avoid comparing himself to the beatuiful Edrai. As he ventures northwards, he comes upon the Greryn's dwelling near their forest homeland. Shocked and horrified by Miserable Failure's hideous appearance, the Greryn's form an order The Humane Society, whose goal is to put Miserable Failure out of his misery, a goal which the avatar ironically agrees with.

In an effort to achieve their goal of blotting out Miserable Failure from existence, the Humane Society locks him in a wooden crate and drops him out of a ship at the middle of the ocean. As Miserable Failure sinks to the bottom of the ocean, he thinks for one happy moment that perhaps he might drown to death. Eventually, however, Miserable Failure discovers the unfortunate fact that he can breath underwater. He drifts beneath the sea for years, thinking about how unlucky he is, till at last he washes up on the shores of F9, finding himself in the land of the Krumps.

The Krumps are naturally horrified to find Miserable Failure polluting their beautiful flower gardens with his hideous existence. At first they try to stomp him to death, but once they figure out that won't work, they instead form The Society for Appreciating the Subtle Artistic Difference between Flowers and Walruses, or SASADFW for short. The society dedicates itself to expressing the beauty of flowers through art, primarily in the form of paintings similar to the Japanese style of painting water-lilies.

Miserable Failure flees the lands of the Krump, tripping over not a few highly sacred flowers along the way. The Krump aid his flight by kicking him in the right direction whenever they get the chance. Eventually Miserable Failure finds himself in the lands of the Kycamuuni. There he finds unlikely aid from the much maligned Order of the Squid in the Sky. After mushrooms replaced squid as the highest object of adoration in Kycamuuni society, only a few true believers remained. They continued to meet in secret, praying that his unfathomable madness might send a sign their way. When Miserable Failure appears in the lands of the Kycamuuni the faith of these true-believers is confirmed: the world is indeed a sick and twisted place. An offshoot of the Order of the Squid in the Sky emerges dedicated to worshiping Miserable Failure, lauding him as “the second most hideous thing in all of creation”. These new believers create the Order of Secondmost, which seeks to understand the mystery of Miserable Failure's misery.

Miserable Failure is evicted from Kyacamunni lands when a group of anti-squid zealots sieze him and throw him into the ocean. He sinks deeper and deeper till he comes upon the home of the wattors. Seeing a slight resemblance between Miserable Failure and themselves, the Wattors take pity on Miserable Failure, declaring him “and odder wattor than most”. The laid-back Wattors create the Well, Let's Celebrate society, which spends most of its time throwing extremely lavish parties in Miserable Failure's honor, although they occasionally fail to invite the avatar, stating that “he complains too much… he's a real party pooper” and the like.