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Post By The Hooded Hood launches another story off in all kinds of directions Fri Jul 29, 2005 at 07:06:58 pm EDT |
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#224: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Nitz Must Die! | |
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#224: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Nitz Must Die! The Shallow Gravers were dark twists of hate knotted into rotting bodies of electrocuted murderers, and their electrical discharges silently and easily overcame the keycode lock on Shawn Griffon’s dorm bedroom. Once inside they slithered to either side of the bed and prepared to rend the sleeping Priest of Zeku to tiny shreds. “F&%$offeku!” Nitz the bloody shouted as they came for him. His words triggered the localised transformative magic granted him by the Earth deity who had chosen him as his mortal representative. The Shallow Gravers were hurled away and bounced off the walls. “Hey, some of us have tests in the morning!” came an angry shout and some hammering from the neighbouring room. Shawn knew about the tests. He’d been awake worrying about the tests when the mouldering monsters had come to kill him. He held out his hand and the ritual club of Zeku appeared, a thorn-studded rosewood weapon that struck with the force of a minor earthquake. As the dead men crackled forward Nitz caught the first with the club, smearing it across half a dozen dimensions, then revered the weapon to smash into the outreached hands of the other Shallow Graver. “Shriveleku!” Shawn commanded the second attacker, and stepped back as the gory creature folded in on itself until there was hardly anything left. “Go to your boyfriend’s dorm, you faggot!” his angry neighbour bellowed through the wall. “Drippingtapeku!” Nitz muttered vengefully before he knuckled the sleep from his eyes. “Okay, so a pair of dead guys just called in for a random student slaying, or else I’m being targeted by the corpse liberation movement.” He glanced around the room. “I don’t suppose you’re in a helpful mood are you, Zeku?” he ventured. The next few moments were distinguished by a complete lack of astral rhinos, Zeku’s preferred avatar beast to appear to Nitz as. “Thanks,” Shawn told the earth deity. “I’d just like to thank you for that helpful handbook explaining the duties and dangers of being the High Priest of Zeku that you gave me when I got this job. Oh wait, you didn’t. That accounts for why I get attacked in the middle of the night by creeping cadavers and don’t have the first clue what the hell is happening.” Nitz considered this a bit more closely. “Maybe it’d be better to not be here,” he decided. “On the grounds that, y’know, the dead guys might have buddies on the way.” That seemed like a sensible move. Nitz grabbed a few things hastily into a rucksack and flung open his door to exit. The doorway was blocked by a tall man in a grey cloak and heavy shadowed cowl. “Good evening,” Shawn’s visitor said. “Pushawayeku!” Nitz said; or would have had he not been suddenly suffering from a bout of serious laryngitis. Then as soon as the problem had flared up, it had never happened again. “I’d appreciate you restraining your urges to apply the Zeku force,” the Hooded Hood told Nitz the Bloody. “There are more unpleasant things than laryngitis.” “Like you,” the post human commando suggested. “Indeed. And now you need to make a decision. You can seek your own way out of these halls, past the several hundred occult assassins, restless undead, extradimensional parasites, and crazed cultists who are currently closing in on you… or you can join me for a cup of tea.” Nitz considered this. “I think I’ll go for the crazed cultists and undead, thanks,” he told the archvillain. “The safer option. Bye!” And he raced for his life down the darkened corridor of the student hall. “I don’t know about this,” Al B. Harper worried, pouring over his calculations. “The theological dimensions are always hard to fold into.” “But that won’t stop us,” Miss Framlicker interrupted brightly. “Because we here at Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises don’t know the meaning of failure.” “Or common sense,” added Amy Aston, truthfully. “The point is, the hell planes tend to protect themselves,” Al B. went on. “Getting people in there isn’t usually a problem. Extracting them again…” “By people we mean me, right?” Nats worried. “I’m the people who have to go to hell.” “It’s not like you haven’t been before,” Miss Framlicker shrugged. “Did I mention that I’m getting married in forty-eight hours’ time?” Bill Reed pointed out. “I should be having a stag party or something.” “Most stag parties I’ve been to are noisy, smoky, and full of screaming writhing bodies,” Amy pointed out. “What’s the difference?” “How many stag parties have you been to?” Al B. wondered. “And why?” Amy gave him a warning glance and the archscientist went back to his calculations. “You don’t have to go,” Xander the Improbable shrugged, watching Nats. “I could always get a quote from Baroness Zemo over at ITC.” “Of course Nats will go,” Miss F persisted. “He’s eager to go. Keen. Look at him. Have you ever seen such a picture of eager and keen?” Xander looked at the flying phenomenon and admitted he had never seen eager and keen look quite like that before. “I know I owe you a big favour for that saving Uhuna’s life thing,” Nats admitted to the master of the mystic crafts, “but do I really need to get sent to hell two days before my wedding?” “Usually that’s after the wedding,” snorted Amy, who didn’t have a high opinion of Nats’ Abhuman princess. “The key to a lower planes transfer is a good power source,” Al B. Harper frowned, oblivious to that conversation. “The usual quantum fold engines can’t do it. We need something on the mystic harmonic spectrum, and then we have to find a way to cross-match the vortices jump nodes to enable a paradigm shift on the Day-Wrichards recursive…” “I’ll get the fire extinguisher,” Amy offered. “He hasn’t built anything yet,” Nats pointed out. “I know. But a good blast of CO2 usually shocks him out of his geekery fits.” “I’m sure we’ll find a way to get Nats to hell to collect your package, Mr the Improbable,” Miss Framlicker promised the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse. Xander had been a major asset to the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation back when she’d worked there. He didn’t pay fees for the work he commissioned, but he more than made up for it in his useful little interventions in some of the trickier technical challenges of cross-planar transport. EEE’s administrator was very keen to get Xander on their side now. “It might take us a short while to locate a lower planar power source to fit into our equipment…” “Hold on then,” the master of the mystic crafts told her. He rummaged in his pocket, pulled out half a ham sandwich, a yo yo, a scale model of the Eiffel Tower, a copy of the Rules of Crown Green Bowling, and finally a small glowing object shaped like a letter c. He dropped the c into Amy’s hands. “Try that. It’s got a fairly accurate lower planar signature.” “What is it?” the engineer asked nervously. The thing felt hot and cold in her hands at the same time, and usually Amy didn’t even feel heat. “It’s part of a letter a, ” Xander told her as if it was self-evident. “Lower case. Hook that in to your machinery and you should be able to open a rift so Nats can get into the forbidden chasms and pick up the package.” “Wait,” Nats yelped. “The forbidden chasms? Nobody mentioned forbidden chasms.” “The former realm of Mefothto and Blackhurt,” Xander told him. “From the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret all the way to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance. Not a good tourist spot.” “And I’m going there because…?” The mage’s face became serious. “Because you owe me a favour from when you had your Psychostave problems,” he told the flying delivery man. “And another one for helping you out this morning. A big favour. This is it.” “Ah.” “And because you’re an employee at EEE, and we never let a customer down,” Miss Framlicker added fervently. “Don’t worry, Mr the Improbable, you can count on us to do or die!” “Yes,” agreed the master of the mystic crafts. “7.9 on the Richter scale, epicentre somewhere in Northeast Africa,” Hallie reported, correlating information from a score of scientific survey sites across the globe and half a dozen satellites above it. “Rainforest mostly, but depending exactly where the shock began it could hit some major population centres.” “But it’s not an earthquake?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton checked, resplendent in his paisley dressing gown. “Not natural?” “I don’t think so,” the Lair Legion’s resident artificial intelligence answered. “That’s why it’s so hard to pinpoint. And it doesn’t have the characteristic signature of say a nuclear detonation.” “Yo is to be thinking we are to be going and looking,” Yo suggested. “Is to be many people might be needing of help.” “Who’s in the mansion?” Mumphrey enquired. Many of the team were still beaten up from last night’s crisis in upstate Gothametropolis. “Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, the Manga Shoggoth, and Trickshot,” Hallie answered. “Lisa, and Dancer are around with Donar too, but they’re preparing to head off for a meeting with the Chronicler of Stories. I can ask them to put it off, but…” “But Donar’s keen to find out where his Ausgardian kingdom’s vanished to, what?” the eccentric Englishman understood. “No, best not interrupt that investigation. Send the others, and see if Uhuna’s willin’ to go along. There’ll be some serious casualties.” “Shall I try and contact Nats and Al or Lee and DBS?” Hallie suggested. “Or I could call Vizh…?” “Not till we know what’s goin’ on,” Mumphrey suggested. “Let’s get some chaps out there to take a shuftie first, I think.” “And quickly,” added Yo. “Is to be people will be in trouble!” “Lightningeku!” Nitz called out to fry the Clock Wraiths that had almost corned him outside the University gym. With a discordant twang they fell apart in melted tangles of cogs and springs, still seeping human blood. But before the Priest of Zeku could get his breath the Acid Orphans giggled their way down the corridor, spraying their caustic sweat as they held hands and gambolled. “Crap!” breathed Shawn Griffin for the hundredth time. It had taken him almost an hour to get halfway across campus. He’d faced dozens of adversaries, he was exhausted, he was getting cornered, and he still had no idea why it was suddenly open season on Priests of Zeku. He ducked into the darkened gym. He knew at once it was a tactical mistake. The Flensing Man glided towards him without even moving his legs, his great sharp cleavers trailing ectoplasm as he advanced. “My mistress Penny Blood claims the great reward,” he proclaimed as he brought his blades down on Nitz. The beleaguered post-human commando managed to block the strike with his sacred club, but the freezing chill of the Flensing Man made the weapon hard to hold. The night terror came in again and again, pushing Nitz back towards the corner of the gym where the Shadow Minors were digging their way through the darkness and setting up spirit traps. “Who the hell is Penny Blood?” Shawn demanded. “And why is there suddenly a weirdathon happening in my honour?” He spotted his opening with the Flensing Man and hammered home another spell. “Burneku!” The magics flared on the thin bloody undead’s flesh, crackled uncertainly for a moment – Nitz had used a lot of Zeku’s blessings in the last hour, and it was worrying to find there was a finite limit – then caught and seared the Flensing Man to ash. “Lighteku!” shouted Nitz., so that the Shadow Minors would be repelled. The mild glow didn’t do too much so he resorted to hitting them all again and again with his mace. The gymnasium walls changed colour as the blood began trickling down them. Nitz started having Carrie flashbacks. “The entire room has been possessed by the Geometry of Horror,” the Hooded Hood explained. “The minor anomalies have all been fought off. Now the greater beings are beginning to manifest.” Nitz noticed that blood blisters were beginning to grown from the wooden floor. Something was moving inside the sacs, growing and replicating in their gory wombs. “The greater beings. Wonderful. And they’re after me because…?” “Because there is a bounty on your soul,” the Hood replied. “It will be interesting to see which of the many occult forces arrayed against you will actually succeed in destroying you, and whom Zeku will elect to appoint as his next emissary when you are slaughtered and damned.” “Alright! I give in. Get me out of here!” “You wish to accept my offer of a conversation at Herringcarp Asylum, Nitz the Bloody?” Nitz considered his options. “Okay,” he finally agreed. “But I don’t put out on the first date.” “Except for lovesick androids,” the Hood replied. He had studied Shawn Griffon, of course. “If you would be so good as to follow me through the Portal of Pretentiousness to Herringcarp Asylum…?” “Will I get out again if I want to?” Nitz worried. Something new and dark skittered at the end of the corridor, and there was an unpleasant smell. The first of the blood-sacs burst open. “You may depart when you are ready,” the cowled crime czar promised him. Nitz hurried through the shimmering silver rectangle that was one of the Parodyverse’s primal artefacts. “Excellent,” said the Hooded Hood. They vanished just before the Choir Menstrual and the Unholy Orifice manifested where they had been standing. “Welcome to the Moon Public Library,” Lee Bookman told his team-mates. “Thanks for having us,” Dancer smiled back. All of them had been there before at some time, but the graceful Victorian architecture of the solar system’s greatest book repository was always rather awe-inspiring. The Librarian has led them up from Landing Bay Chaucer into the massive domed central chamber, a panelled circular room with half a dozen galleries and as many alcoves, every one of them lined with volumes. “Tis good of thee to aid us in our quest,” Donar rumbled, trying to keep in his impatience. “We already asked Xander about the hole where Ausgard was,” Dancer told Bookman. “He said he’d look into it.” “I know you must be eager to get on,” the Librarian told them, leading them across the parquet floor to a private reading carrel. “So I took the liberty of checking the required tome out for you. Here.” Lisa looked down at the brass-bound book that was almost half her own height. “What is it?” she wondered. It was even bigger than the battered black Booke of the Law that was in her lifetime guardianship. “It’s a Chronicle,” the Librarian told them in hushed respectful tomes. “A rare facsimile copy of one of the official records of the Parodyverse created by the Chronicler of Stories himself.” “And this wilt summon yon Chronicler that I may question him about Ausgard for the nonce?” Donar demanded. “If you read the text – and if the Chronicler is willing to communicate with you – you’ll be sucked through the book’s pages and sent to his realm,” Lee explained. “And it’s really a one time deal,” he warned. “Isn’t it always?” Lisa sighed. “Well, are we ready?” “Let’s read,” agreed Dancer. “This is the story of the greatest heroes of a very strange place on the far edge of the probability curve called the Parodyverse. It tells how they came to be, and why, and of the reasons for the plummeting property values of their hometown of Paradopolis. It contains the secret of the universe. It’s a tale of triumph and tragedy, but like most stories set in the Parodyverse it’s mainly a tale of ripped-off characters and marginally humorous misunderstandings. And like all stories it’s hard to know where to begin telling it… Then the three heroes were gone. With a scream like a hundred thousand tortured souls, the dimensional portal squeezed Nats out onto a vast black plain of ashes. The flying phenomenon plummeted down and landed hard on the dead sand. “Bill, are you okay?” Miss Framlicker called over his earpiece. She only called him by his first name when she was really worried. “I want to puke,” the delivery man admitted. “Congratulate Al for me. Of all the cruddy stomach-churning dimensional jumps I’ve ever made, that was the cruddiest.” “Continuous improvement,” Amy Aston said over the comms circuit. Nats pulled himself up and dusted the dead ash off his jacket. There were little bones amongst the dust, ground small by the thousand mile winds that often howled across the plain. “Any ideas where I go now? My compass isn’t playing.” “There’s no magnetic field in hell,” Xander informed him. “No north and south, no edge or end. Just fix your destination in mind like I told you and head in any direction you like. You’ll get there eventually if your will is strong enough.” “Or…?” “Or you’ll keep flying forever until just your mindless wraith wanders lost in the soul wastes beyond eternity.” Back at the EEE headquarters Miss Framlicker looked at the sorcerer supreme admiringly. “You have a flair for staff management,” she congratulated him. “I don’t like this,” Al B Harper worried, pouring over the readings of the transfer while Amy bolted in yet another new interstitial conversion coil to transfer gate one. “No wonder we had such a hard time hammering Nats through the theology barrier. It wasn’t just the mythlands real estate shift that’s disturbing the vortex. Look at this.” Miss Framlicker glanced at the proffered data. “A protective barrier? Something mystical?” “The divine word of Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions,” Xander told them. “He’s the most prominent of the current Hell-Lords. His power is growing.” “And he doesn’t want Xander in hell?” Amy asked. “He doesn’t want anyone at all in that particular patch of hell,” the master of the mystic crafts admitted. “Except himself. He’d like the power that’s contained there. The power lost by Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs and his son Blackhurt when they were destroyed. The rulership of that tier of hell.” Miss Framlicker frowned. “Isn’t that what you were gambling with Grimpenghast about at Christmas when we all got damn near slaughtered at Sir Mumphrey’s manor?” “Yes,” Xander admitted. “And the Master of Ignorance lost. He had to agree to defend the abandoned lands against all intruders so that none could rise and reclaim Mefrothto’s throne. At least until certain conditions were met.” “What conditions?” demanded Al. “Guys,” came back Nats’ distant voice over the speakers. “I’ve got a big domed temple thing up ahead that looks like it’s Dracula’s summer house. Is that the place where I pick up the package?” “Until somebody got to Everrue Palace,” Xander told EEE. “Then all bets are off.” “Still no word from the field team?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton worried. “There’s still massive electromagnetic disturbance in that region,” Hallie reported worriedly. “They’re pretty much on their own.” “They’ll be fine,” Asil assured Sir Mumphrey. “The Legion’s been doing this kind of thing a long time.” Hallie’s eyes unfocused for a moment as they always did when the artificial intelligence was deep-scanning her databanks. “We are getting a whole bunch of weird reports coming from in and around Paradopolis U.,” she noted. “We’re dealing with an international crisis just now,” LL/US liaison officer Amber St Clare pointed out. “We don’t have time for frat house tricks.” “There’s a gymnasium full of blood,” Hallie admitted, “but there’s all kinds of weird things going on. Dozens of levitating Bart Simpson dolls. A vending machine prophesying. Spontaneous canine combustion. A liberal arts professor who can now only speak in backwards Lithuanian.” “Would anybody know the difference?” Amber wondered. “There was some correspondence about some ghost reports last night,” Asil remembered. “Commissioner Graham likes to keep us informed of the weird police call-outs.” “I’ve got no less than a hundred and sixty one different anomalous reports in a half mile square radius of the campus,” Hallie summarised. “I think the ghostly platypus is my favourite.” “Hmph. Sounds like something dashed peculiar’s goin’ on over there,” Mumphrey admitted. “Better look into it, what? Ask Visionary if he’d saunter over and take a gander, would you?” “Shall I go with him?” Asil offered. “Even the Great Man shouldn’t go alone into something like this.” “No,” Mumph considered. “Page Miss Yuki. She’s a probationary member now, on retainer for investigative missions. Sounds like this is something that should be investigated. She can go with Visionary.” “That’ll be a baptism of fire,” Amber St Clare muttered to herself. “I’ll tell Vizh to make sure he wears his raincoat,” Hallie said. “Apparently it’s raining sardines right now.” “Aaaaaaaaagggghhhh!” gasped Nats as he was swatted from the skies like a mosquito. The turgid red clouds over the desert of desolation had turned black and there were things like giant maggots writhing overhead. “Guys?” “Soulworms,” Xander answered, observing what the delivery man was seeing via an EEE monitor link. “The abandoned realm of Mefrtohto is being invaded now that somebody has penetrated its interior.” “Somebody’s broken in?” Nats worried. “You have,” Miss Framlicker pointed out in the tone she reserved for idiots and Bill Reed. “But apparently that’s enough to break the truce that kept the demonic fortune hunters out. Now everybody wants a piece of the action.” “Nats went in there and suddenly all hell broke loose,” Amy noted. “Must be a Thursday.” “I’m certainly picking up a lot of biopsychic impulses,” Al B. Harper warned, checking the monitor boards. “It might be a good idea for you to hurry up. Before you, you know, get ripped to shreds by incoming demon hordes.” Nats decided that this was probably good advice. Then the demon hordes seethed over the horizon, saw him, and bellowed for his blood. Donar, Lisa, and Dancer were on the edge of a vast grey plain that stretched to infinity in all directions. It was completely featureless; except for the vast hole where the Chronicler of Stories’ castle had previously been. The ground curved down, a grey smooth inverse lens fifty miles in diameter. “By mine father!” breathed Donar. “Tis the same as with Ausgard. Yon felon hast stolen the Chronicler of Stories!” “Okay, this is bad,” Dancer admitted. “Anything that can hijack the Chronicler is on my take-seriously list.” “This is what happened to Ausgard?” Lisa demanded urgently. “This is what it was like?” “Pretty much,” Dancer agreed. “Only bigger.” “Most verily,” Donar said. “This art turning into one bummer of a week.” “But we’ve seen this before, big guy!” Lisa reminded the hemigod of thunder. “We’ve seen exactly this before. And we know who’s behind it!” Bill Reed clawed his way out of a flashback nightmare that involved a lunatic calling himself Nats’ father, his mother screaming madly, an evil counterpart who was batter at everything than he was, and everyone he had ever known at the newspaper he’d once worked at being fictional. “Gaaah!” he gasped, then wished he hadn’t. The phobovores crawled closer, chittering in excitement as they circled in for the kill. Nats detonated them with his pyrokineisis, plastering them across the landscape until they were lost in the howling duststorm. “Bill,” came Miss Framlicker’s voice over the comm-link. “This is too dangerous. Come home. We’ve opened an exit transport portal for you, but we can’t keep it up long. Get through quickly!” Nats lurched towards the shimmering rectangle then stopped at the threshold. When had Miss Framlicker ever spoken to him so solicitously for his comfort? He tapped his comm-link again. “Just to check,” he called before he plunged through the portal, “are we still on for our hot date tonight?” “Of course,” Miss F’s voice told him. “I’m really looking forward to it. If you ever get back!” Nats fled away from the hungry portal as fast as he could. For a while he could see it flapping after him, desperate for its prey. Everrue Palace was below him now in all its sinister splendour, a Gaudi-like creation of black basalt carved into writhing organic forms, high twisting columns of agonised naked bodies with expressions of abject torment. Nats didn’t think the screaming was any more than the high winds cutting through the gaps in the masonry; he hoped not anyway. The flying phenomenon dropped hard at the main gate of the palace, so exhausted he hardly heeded the monolithic statues that twisted to form the entrance archway. He hammered the gates open with the last of his telekinetic strength and staggered into the dim interior. A demon lord was waiting for him. “Ah, Mr Reed,” said Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Deceptions. “So you have made it this far. Welcome to the big leagues.” “So what’s going on?” Nitz demanded; in part because he didn’t take kindly to massed undead attacks on him the night before a major test, but also to try and distract himself from the solemn gothic splendour of Herringcarp Asylum. Nitz had been to other planets and not felt as lonely and overwhelmed. “As I told you, there is a bounty on your soul,” the Hooded Hood explained. “A vast reward to the entity who can slay you and deliver the abstract article before midnight tomorrow.” “I have a soul?” Nitz answered. “Yay me.” “When this contract was brought to my attention I felt it would be an opportune moment for us to converse.” Shawn Griffon realised he’d agreed to be transported into an archvillain’s lair while there was a major reward for a dead Nitz the Bloody. “Is converse old-style villain-speak for kill me and claim the reward?” he worried. The Hooded Hood seemed amused. “I have no need for such a crude strategy. Killing heroes is hardly an effective use of resources. Far better to manipulate and corrupt them to my purposes.” Nitz wasn’t happy. “So who’s put out the hit on me? And what’s your angle in all of this?” he demanded. The cowled crime czar sat back in his throne and cradled his fingertips. “Your enemy is an ancient demon who goes by the name of Neka. He is…” “That’s the thing that empowered that creepy internet stalker to go after Molly!” Shawn Griffon recognised. “Okay, so he’s definitely on my to kick the ass of list.” “Neka is concerned about a prophecy discerned by an occultist known as the Necromancer General, which suggests that you may soon become powerful enough to inconvenience the demon-lord’s plans.” “I get a power upgrade? Cool.” “Neka believes that it is therefore critical that you must be destroyed before the time you claim the powers of a demon lord yourself and descend to rulership of a piece of potent abyssal real estate as the new Prince of Fibs.” Nitz stopped in mid retort. “B-before I what?” he asked. “As for my ‘angle’, as you put it, I thought you should have the opportunity of swearing fealty to me in order to preserve your life and soul before one of the innumerable occult forces arrayed for your destruction catches up with you.” The archvillain sat back and smiled thinly. “Your choice.” Next time: An Untold Tale like any other, as you the reader select the route our heroes will take as they investigate the emergency in Africa. Mystery, high adventure, sudden death, gratuitous nudity, old villains, older jokes, and the chance to get the Lair Legion killed off in Untold Interactive Tales of the Lair Legion: Dangerous Paths And after that: Nitz has a few hard decisions to make under pressure. Lisa reveals the real-estate kidnapper. Nats vs Hell. Vizh and Yuki vs Daimon Soulshredder. Xander vs the alphabet. The Hooded Hood’s new ally. And the debut of a new Prince of Fibs. That’s in Nats Must Die!, coming soon to a Parodyverse near you. Sympathy for the Footnote: Nitz the Bloody (Shawn Griffon) is the chosen High priest of the slightly senile Earth deity Zeku. As such he has access to Zeku’s Earth-based transformative and conceptual magics, released by vocal command including the suffix –eku. Nitz also has use of an enchanted thorned rosewood club which changes size as he desires and is especially effective against supernatural creatures. Zeku appears to Nitz (and usually only Nitz) in the form of an ectoplasmic rhino. Amongst Nitz’ adventures have been a romance with a robot (which the Hood makes oblique reference to in our story above), a time working with the radical post-human commandos the Commission, and a mission to rescue his former team-mate Molly from the clutches of an internet pervert empowered by the demon Neka. Recently Nitz’s quest to battle misuses of sour Earth magic (Drak Zeku) have ben interrupted by his enrolment at Paradopolis University and by his association with the radical post-human commando group the Commission. Xander faced off against Sage Grimpenghast and struck the bargain referenced here in UT#199: Four Funerals and a Wedding (Except for the Wedding), and his “Christmastide gambit” formed the basis of the plot in UT#200: The Feast of Yule and Other Anomalies and UT#201: And Ever More Shall Be So, or The Season of Murder. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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