Post By The Hooded Hood (via Vizh) Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 12:02:59 am EDT	Subject #285: Untold Fairy Tales of the Parodyverse: Once Upon a One Last Time
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#285: Untold Fairy Tales of the Parodyverse: Once Upon a One Last Time Once upon a time there was an enchanted wood. And in the enchanted wood was an enchanted glade, and in the glade was an enchanted cottage. And the enchanted cottage was guarded by ravening gothenmanders who would shred anybody who strayed off the path and come near the cottage, then reave their souls so there was nothing left of them but a scream on the nightwinds. In the cottage lived a little girl. Every day she would wander the forest and make friends with the animals. She would sing songs, and the beasts of the wood came to listen. She would explore the deep places of the world, learning the secrets of the dwarves and the gnomes, or climb to the eagles' eyries and talk with the wisest of the birds. And sometimes she would creep out in the moonlight and talk with the flibbertiggibbets that danced under the stars, and hear their secrets. She never told Auntie about any of this, of course. Auntie didn't like her talking to strangers. She said it wasn't safe (although she never said who it wasn't safe for). Auntie always reminded the little girl that she had to be good because her fairy godmother had blessed her, and for that the little girl had to be eternally grateful. And obedient. One day, when she was old enough, the girl would come into a wonderful destiny, and then her godmother would look after her and be with her forever. In the meantime, old Auntie would sit and knit by the fire, except when she secretly slipped out to assume her true shape and feast on the hearts of unwary travellers. The little girl rarely saw her godmother. Once a year she came to inspect the child and see how she had grown, and every year she seemed a little disappointed that the child had not yet become a woman. But she always smiled very kindly when she knew the girl was looking at her, and before she left she always gave the child a tasty sweet to eat. The girl never ate them though, because unknown to Auntie, unknown even to the Lady who visited her each year, she had a friend after all. And he warned her to keep the sweeties hidden and never taste them. Nobody in the world knew that the little girl had a secret friend. Nobody could see or hear him except her. But he was able to travel far and wide and learn many things, and he brought back the stories of what he'd seen and told his sister. And when she went to play in the woods he came with her, and there they could talk and plan. Because while the Lady seemed to know what the little girl's future might be, nobody can be sure of those things. Especially in an enchanted cottage in an enchanted glade in an enchanted wood, where sometimes the story runs deeper than even the cleverest of godmothers can know. And so it was, my dearies, that one fine day, when the wind was from the east... The Tale of Magweed and Griffin by Visionary The Quest for Naari: Disarmed by Visionary The Quest for Naari: The Fellowship by Visionary Untold Tales#274: Dreams and Fantasies Fairy God-Dancer by Visionary Untold Tales#277: The Faerie Fayre Nymph-O-Maniaby Visionary The Tale of Magweed and Griffin, Part 2 by Visionary The Ballad of Sir Mixalot" by Visionary Untold Tales#282: Beyond the Fields We Know, or Through the Looking Glass Once upon a time there was a wicked witch who lived in an old cabin in the wild woods. And one day she caught a lost little girl who had run away from home…     Magweed woke up under a home-made patchwork quilt in a bed that smelled of lavender. Her scratches had been bandaged and her feet were wound in soft linen where she’d run them raw. She was in a log house with glazed windows and the sunlight was streaming in through the chinks in the shutters.     And there was a broomstick propped up in the corner.     Then Magweed remembered: the news that Griffin had brought her about her fairy godmother returning to see her; a hasty, unexplained flight from sinister Auntie and the gothanmanders; a desperate chase out of the Lady’s forest and into the wildwoods beyond; a sudden confrontation with the Wicked Witch of the South West; a yet more sudden darkness…     Other details of the situation began to register in Magweed’s mind. There was the smell of something cooking, the bubbling sound of a cauldron. Stew, perhaps? But only vegetables in there so far. No meat had gone into the pot yet.     There was a pile of books on the dresser: The Compleat Omphalomancer; On The Care of Basilisks; 1001 Handy Domestic Cantrips; Witches Are From Luna, Warlocks Are From Pluto. Witch’s books.     Witch’s books. Witch’s broomstick. Witch’s cauldron. Witch’s cottage.     Witch’s captive.     Magweed slipped out of bed. She noticed she was wearing a white cotton nightgown now, the sort sacrificial victims got put in. She tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about the Wicked Witch of the South West.     Well, she was powerful, for starters. Everybody said that. And very old and very grumpy. Sometimes people went to her for help, and sometimes they got it, but always at some price. Sometimes people went to her cabin and never came back.     The Wicked Witch of the South West didn’t like Magweed’s godmother, the Lady Camellia.     “Griff?” Magweed whispered, hoping her invisible imaginary playmate might be able to tell her the best way to sneak out. Griffin had been helping her sneak around since before she could remember. Griffin had helped her finally run away from Auntie last night.     Griffin didn’t answer. Griffin wasn’t there.     What if the Wicked Witch had already got Griffin?     The sound of singing came from the kitchen. It sounded like happy singing. The singer wanted to know if somebody was going to Scarborough Fair. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.     Magweed eased the bedroom door open a crack and peered out. The voice didn’t sound like it belonged to the ancient evil Witch. It sounded like a young woman’s voice, rich and warm and made of sunlight.     The woman bustling round the kitchen was young. She had long blonde hair that swirled around her as she diced carrots and runner beans then dropped them in the cauldron. She was rather good-looking, actually.     She didn’t turn round to Magweed but she did say, “Good morning, sleepyhead. Are you ready to have some breakfast?”     Magweed wasn’t used to talking to people except to Auntie (if Auntie counted as people) and to Griffin (and he was imaginary). Her first instinct was to duck back into the bedroom. But her curiosity got the better of her. “Are you a prisoner of the wicked witch too?” she asked the blonde woman.     “No,” came the answer. “Porridge or toast? Or any combination of porridge and toast. With honey.”     “But this is the Wicked Witch’s hut?” Magweed checked.     “It is. It says so right out there on the mailbox.”     “So where’s the Wicked Witch?”     The blonde woman turned round, smiled, and pointed at herself with two shapely index fingers. “Hi.”     Magweed swallowed hard. “Some sort of spell, to make you seem beautiful?” she guessed. “Or do you… do you steal bodies to wear like clothes?”     “Yuck!” replied the young woman. “That would be black magic. I don’t approve of that stuff.”     “But the Wicked Witch is old and warty,” Magweed insisted. “And, well, wicked.”     “Oh, I can be a bit of a bitch when I’ve had a few glasses of Southern Comfort,” the Witch replied. “As for the rest, well I tend to disguise myself when I go down to the village. A basic glamour in reverse. If some of the boys there knew there was a young single woman alone out here it might lead to complications. And really I have enough lawn ornaments.”     Magweed felt that the encounter wasn’t going according to expectations. She frowned.     “The old wicked witch wanted to take a long vacation,” the blonde explained. “I needed a place to stay while I got over an old heartbreak. So I agreed to sub.”     “So you’re here… being guest wicked?” Mags suggested.     “Well, wicked as in wicca as in an old word for wise, yes. The folks round here always need a bit of physicing and a bit of midwifery and a few blessings to make the crops grow.”     “And you make them pay,” Magweed accused.     “Well where else would I get bread, porridge, and honey?” asked the Wicked Witch. “Besides, if people get something free they don’t value it.” She dropped a bowl down on the table and pulled a chair out for her guest to sit. “You get a free breakfast though,” she added.     Mags looked at the porridge suspiciously. “Will it turn me into anything?” she asked.     “It might turn you into somebody who’s less hungry,” suggested the Witch. “Anyhow, eat. We don’t have all day. You have a story to tell me, I have some mystical defences to prepare before your Auntie gets here, and then we have to go into the barn and thaw out an elf.”     Magweed decided it was best to go with the flow. “Okay,” she agreed, reaching for the honey pot. “I’m Magweed.”     “I know,” the Wicked Witch told her. “You can call me Whitney.” *** Once upon a time, a group of travellers was lost in a forbidden forest. And when they settled down to camp for the night they suddenly found themselves surrounded by terrible monsters…     The gothanmander was the size of a small horse, but no equine ever had claws or a beak like that, or moved with such a deadly intent. It came out of the shadows right at Visionary and went for his throat.     Vizh fell backwards, raised his feet to catch the creature in the chest as it jumped at him, then used the gothanmander’s own momentum to tumble it right over him and into the campfire. There was a shower of sparks and an outraged screech.     The second gothanmander came in from the side. Hallie feinted left then caught it on the point of her toasting fork. Behind her Fleabot pounced on the next of the pack to arrive, hitting it at the size of a flea but with the weight of a minivan. The fourth went straight for Flapjack, who rummaged in the front of his hose, pulled something ragged and disgusting out and pressed it to the nose of the incoming monster.     None of the gothanmanders were dead, but they were surprised.     Vizh grabbed Hallie’s hand. “Run!” he told her. “This way everybody!” The gothanmander he’d tumbled was on its feet now, shaking blazing sparks off its coat. The possibly-fake man barrelled into it, catching in on the shoulder and tipping it back into the flames as he passed.     “Vizh, did you just beat up a monster?” Hallie asked breathlessly as they pelted through the forest of thorns.     “Hey, I’ve been doing this stuff for a while,” Visionary panted back. “Some of it had to stick. I was trained by Captain America, you know. For, er, about fifteen minutes during this one crossover. Well, I was in the room and asked if he wanted a sandwich.”     Behind them the gothanmanders howled and renewed their hunt. Now they were angry.     Flapjack sped past Hallie and Vizh, Fleabot clinging to his shoulder. He knew the old joke about the two men and the tiger; he didn’t need to run faster than the gothenmanders, just faster than Visionary.     “Hey!” shouted Vizh, “watch out for that…”     But Flapjack has already found the shingle slope at the side of the ravine. He only had time to say one blisteringly rude word before slipping down and toppling off the edge. Fleabot went with him.     Hallie rushed to the edge and looked over. “Are you okay? Flapjack?” she shouted. Far below there was the sound of a splash into running water.     “Wet landing, we’re fine,” Fleabot called back. “Well, Flapjack has some serious navigational issues, but otherwise…”     There was a crunching in the trees behind Visionary. “Maybe we should jump after them into that river or whatever it is?” he decided. “Is it far down?”     “You’ll survive the fall,” spluttered Flapjack, surfacing in the icy cold water, being swept along by the current. “It’s the rocks that might be a bit of a problem. We missed them. You don’t have the luck of the Flapjacks.”     “Hold it,” objected Fleabot. “You’re saying this is what your life is like with good luck?”     And then their bickering voices vanished into the distance as they were washed out of earshot along the midnight river.     The gothenmanders broke through the undergrowth.     “I… don’t think I can jump,” Hallie hesitated. “And I don’t just mean because of my pixie outfit.”     “No. Scrap plan B,” agreed Visionary. “Let’s go back to Plan A, the running.”     The gothanmanders loped towards them. Vizh bundled Hallie in front of him and pushed her onward into the forest; in the direction that Woodbend Windyway had said there was a cottage.     The gothanmanders stopped at the fence when Vizh and Hallie leaped over it. They growled and hissed and clawed the ground but they didn’t enter the garden; not without Auntie’s express permission.     “Are we still alive?” Hallie asked incredulously. “And can I firstly say, ouch, I hate having a human body. What is the point of bruises? And can I secondly say, Vizh if you don’t stop laying on me and grabbing me there I’m going to do you an injury.”     Vizh hastily withdrew. “Sorry. I needed to get you over the fence and that was… a handle.”     Hallie brushed herself down and adjusted her dress. “Moving on quickly,” she said, “I guess those monsters can’t get at us in here. Or at least they’re not hungry enough yet to come over the wall.”     “That must be the cottage,” Visionary guessed, regarding the ivy-choked ramshackle stone house that stood before them. “The one where the little girls are sent.”     “It looks sinister,” Hallie admitted. “But right now its looking a lot better than out here in the garden with those gothenmander things staring at us and slavering. Can we go inside?”     Vizh glanced over his shoulder at the dark forest. “You think Fleabot and Flapjack will be alright? Being washed down the stream, I mean.”     “I imagine washing will do Flapjack a world of good,” Hallie answered. “Let’s go in.”     They lifted the latch and stepped inside. *** Once upon a time, a little girl was given three gifts by her fairy godmother, to make her gracious, charming, and beautiful. And her godmother promised that one day she would become a princess, and that all the world would bow down before her. Or else.     “Hmm,” said Whitney Darkness, putting down the crystal ball she’d been peering at Magweed through. “This is more complicated than I thought.”     “How complicated did you think it would be?” Magweed had spent a fairly pleasant morning helping out round the cottage. She’d even learned to use the broomstick. It cleaned corners quite nicely.     Whitney shrugged. “Help me to position Zebulon in front of the hearth, please. He’s defrosting nicely now. In half an hour or so he’ll be as good as new.”     “This is the elf that tried to shoot me,” Magweed pointed out.     “I’ll make him apologise,” the Sorceress promised. “I owe him a little apology too. I’d never have iced him so hard if I’d seen who it was.”     “You know him?”     Whitney nodded. “You know you come from the mortal realms, right? Well so do I. And that’s where I met Zeb. He was… helping out at this house where I used to live.”     “Did he go about trying to murder girls back then?” Mags wondered.     “No. That’s new. He often carried round machinery that unexpectedly exploded, but that was usually not his fault. I’m sure he’ll explain as soon as he’s defrosted.”     “Is he an evil elf then?” Magweed wondered. “An assassin, maybe?”     “Well, he can be a bit stroppy, but not evil. He used to work for Santa, you know, and I’m pretty sure he’d have to have good references for that.”     “Who?” puzzled Magweed.     “Santa?” checked Whitney. “Jolly old man who comes down the chimney at Christmas time?”     Magweed glanced at the hearth in alarm. “Santa? Christmas?”     “Oh, of course. You’ve been raised by that thing that calls itself Auntie. You might have a few cultural education gaps. I’m so sorry, Magweed. If I’d known there was another little girl being groomed by Camellia I’d have tried to save you long before now.” She grimaced and added honestly, “I’d probably have died, but I’d have had a go.”     “Auntie will be looking for me,” Mags confessed. “It’s probably not safe for me to stay the night here.”     “It’s probably not safe for you to stay the night anywhere,” the Sorceress told her. “But at least here we’ll have Zebulon to protect us.”     “Can Zebulon stop gothanmanders?” Magweed asked uncertainly.     “I’d have to say no,” Whitney admitted. “But I damn well can.”     “And can you stop Auntie?”     “Um… we’re almost certainly going to find out.”     “Gri… I heard from somebody that my godmother is coming to collect me too,” Mags confessed. “That’s why I ran away. I was told by somebody I trust that I needed to get far away from her. Even though she gave me everything I have.”     Whitney rubbed soft fingers over Magweed’s cheek. “You poor thing, she really did,” she agreed. “And I suppose you’d better know the rest. Look in the mirror.”     “Is this a magic mirror?”     “It is now. Look at yourself. Graceful, charming, beautiful. That’s what your godmother made you. Now look again.”     Magweed looked into the mirror, then shied away. “Who is that? What is that?”     “That’s you, love,” Whitney told her gently. “Without the glamours. Without your godmother’s gifts. Clumsy, withered, and scarred. That’s what you’d become if she took her gifts away again.”     Magweed swallowed hard. “I… I don’t think… I heard that my godmother wasn’t very nice. Why would she give me these blessings?”     “So… you… can… be… queen…”     Magweed and Whitney turned round to find Zebulon had turned his head and was able to look at them. And to speak.     “Welcome back, Zeb,” Sorceress told him. “Now why on Middle Earth were you trying to kill this little girl?”     “Because she’s Camellia’s pet,” Zebulon warned. “Her puppet, prepared to be the mask through which the Belle Dame Sans Merci can overthrow the Faerie Queene. She’s evil.”     “I’m not!” objected Magweed. “A bit naughty sometimes, but that’s all.” She glanced at Whitney. “I don’t even drink Southern Comfort.”     Zebulon snorted. “Well, of course you’d say you’re not evil, when you’re looking down the crossbow of the deadliest elf alive.”     “He’ll be along later, will he?” Whitney asked. “Zeb, she’s not evil. She’s a little girl from Earth. You got it wrong.”     A whole set of different emotions crossed over Zebulon’s thawing face, starting with suspicion then progressing through realisation, shock, horror, and embarrassment. “I tried to kill her!”     “Yes,” agreed Whitney. “Crossbows don’t kill people. Uninformed elves do.”     “Well boy am I going to give Rimshard Kentish a piece of my mind when I get back to the office!”     “Am I really an Earth girl?” Magweed asked. “Gri… somebody said I was, but I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining it.”     “You really are,” Sorceress agreed. “I think you were stolen as a baby and brought here to be bred as a princess who could contest the throne of Faerie for Camellia.” She glanced outside. It was getting dark, and it was only the middle of the afternoon. “That might explain why Camellia wants you back so badly.”     “There’s war brewing in Faerie and the Mythlands,” Zebulon warned. “Lots of strife and discontent. The threat of an invasion by the Parody Master. An orc army marching from the Quincy Hills. An undead horde rampaging from Ultima Thule. Dragons and liches and old beasts from the elder times all waking and causing trouble. If there was ever a time when people might turn their faith to a new Faerie Princess this is it.”     “I don’t want to be my godmother’s puppet,” Magweed said. “I’m frightened.”     “So you should be,” Whitney Darkness told her. “So you should.” *** Once upon a time there was a Griffin who was imaginary friend to a lonely little girl. Nobody could see Griffin and only his friend could hear him, but Griffin could travel to all kinds of places and find all kinds of secrets to bring home with him. Then one day he discovered a terrible secret about himself…     Griffin raced through the woods. Right through them, passing like a ghost through the boles of the twisted trees, moving as fast as he could, running for help.     The elf that had tried to kill Magweed was down. The Wicked Witch of the South West had captured him and Magweed alike. Now someone had to save Magweed from the Wicked Witch.     Griffin wondered what would happen if Mags got cooked by the Wicked Witch. Would he die as well at the moment that the friend who imagined him perished? Or would he linger on, invisible and inaudible to everybody, until he simply faded away? He hoped it was the former; he wouldn’t want to go on without Magweed.     Griff was half way back to Auntie’s cottage before he realised what direction his steps were taking him in. Then he reasoned that Auntie’s cottage was the only place he could go for help.     Who else was left? The animals who had come to Mags’ aid before were terrified and scattered. The best amongst them, Michael and Myrna, had been caught by Auntie and transformed into ravening gothemnanders. Griffin had never told his friend about their fates. The villagers feared and shunned the cottage and avoided Magweed for her godmother’s sake. Nobody crossed the Lady.     For a wild moment Griffin entertained the idea of trying to appear to the Lady Camellia on her boat of bones, of warning her that her plan to conquer the Many Coloured Land was in danger, of leading her back to save Mags from the Witch. Then he realised that that wouldn’t be a rescue. Just another form of being eaten.     But he was sure – sure – that there was something in Auntie’s cottage that might help Magweed. And so Griffin ran.     He didn’t usually get out of breath – Griffins didn’t pant – but he was gasping by the time he reached the cottage. It was late in the night and Griff was close to tears. Mags might already be dead, or transformed, or worse. Griffin remembered what Camellia had done to the river nymph and wondered if there was anything worse than that. He was willing to bet that the Lady could think up something.     The gothenmanders were out, prowling round the fences of the cottage. Not all of them. Bootface and Hellfang were missing. Auntie had probably taken them in pursuit of Mags, to track her blood.     Griffin ghosted past the gothanmanders as he’d done many times before. If only I could become a flesh and blood griffin, he thought, with lion’s jaws and eagles’ wings and talons then I’d show them the meaning of fear.     There was a light on in the house. Auntie didn’t bother with lamps when Magweed had gone to bed. Nor did it have the pale corpse-glow of one of the Lady’s conjurings.     Griffin moved closer, passing through the wall and into the main room. A lamp flickered on the table and two strangers were talking; two very strange strangers.     At first Griff thought the woman was a dryad. She had the green skin and the tiny dress, but her ears weren’t pointy and her face lacked that vacant willing expression. In fact her face seemed to be filled with intelligence, and she had a small set of spectacles perched on the end of her nose as she read through some correspondence. Griffin recognised it as the letters from the Lady that Auntie kept locked in her bureau drawer.     “Camellia can’t have brought Naari here yet,” the woman said. There was something about her voice that made Griffin’s heart leap. So familiar! “All these reports – the recent ones – talk about a child who’s ten or twelve years old.”     “Like the other ones,” said the man who accompanied her. He frowned as he looked over the bundles of letters wrapped in black ribbons, stacks upon stacks of them for every failed faerie princess that the Belle Dame Sans Merci had found inadequate. “We’ve got to find a way of breaking down that cellar door.”     Griffin examined the man more carefully. He was of average height and build. Average everything, really. He had receding brown hair that still managed to flop down over one eye, and he had eyebrows that quirked up when he thought. He was dressed like some kind of barbarian warrior, but he didn’t seem too mighty-thewed. Perhaps around three fifths of a thew, Griffin estimated.     “Maybe there’s a key hidden somewhere?” the woman suggested. That was a good idea. Griffin knew exactly where Auntie hid the key to the metal-bound door, right there under the hourglass on the mantel. If only Griffin could be seen or heard by somebody other than Mags.     “Over here!” he called. “Over here!”     They ignored him, of course. But Griffin knew what they’d find if they ever went down into the forbidden cellar. There were all the failed princesses, for starters. Auntie liked to go down and chew on them late at night when she was feeling lonely.     “Maybe we can pick the lock?” the man suggested.     “Did you study lockpicking with Captain America too?” the woman rejoined.     “Well, no. But it always looks really easy on the movies.”     “But you do know that’s not real, right Vizh?”     His name was Vizh! Griffin was good at putting information together. Now he waited to find out what the woman was called. “What are you called?” he asked her.     “Hallie,” she replied, then looked puzzled.     Vizh turned round. “What?”     “Nothing. I just… This place is creeping me out. We need to find a clue to where Naari is and we need to find a weapon to fight those gothenmanders and then we need to get away from here.”     Griffin agreed with that. “You need to come with me!” he shouted. “You need to help Magweed! She’s a little girl, and she’s all alone! She’s in danger. Please! Just this once, hear me!”     “Sorry,” said Hallie. “These human ears are nothing like as good as my HUD sensors. What did you say, Vizh?”     “When? I said maybe we could pick the lock.”     “No. just now. I thought I heard you whisper.”     “Nope. But I was thinking… You still have access to your database, right? You remember all kinds of Google stuff?”     “I don’t have my full memory resources, of course,” Hallie replied, “but the human brain does seem to have an amazing amount of storage capacity if you can only manage to get the indexing system to function.”     “Can’t you make some kind of explosives out for flour and stuff?” Vizh checked. “Powder and fire and things? Do you have that data?”     “She needs help now!” Griff continued to shout. “She might be dying! She might be dead!”     “I think I know just enough to get us both killed, Vizh,” Hallie pointed out.     But Visionary was gathering ingredients. “And these bottles of cider. Will they make Molotov cocktails?” he wondered. “Only I noticed those gothemanders didn’t like fire so much.”     “She going to die!”” shouted Griffin. In his anger he picked up the hourglass and threw it across the room.     Visionary and Hallie jumped.     “What was that?” Hallie demanded, going a paler shade of green. “Something threw that hourglass. Smashed it!”     “Okay, so it’s a haunted cottage,” Vizh said, trying to keep his voice calm. “It’s still better than a gothenmandered forest.”     Hallie relaxed her grip on Vizh’s arm and peered at the mantel. “Vizh, look at this? There’s a key here. It was hidden under the hourglass. Do you think…?”     The key fitted the cellar door. The strangers cautiously went down the creaky steps. A little while later they came back up looking sick and disgusted.     “We go back,” said Visionary through gritted teeth. “We get Donar. Enty. Dancer. We nuke this place.”     “There’s no time to get help!” Griffin shouted. His throat was getting hoarse (except he didn’t have a throat, did he?). “She’s going to die!. Just like those little girls down there!”     Hallie turned back to Vizh. “There! Did you hear that this time?”     “I heard something,” Visionary admitted. “Very far off. Like a cry for help?”     “A gothenmander trick? A ghost?”     “A Griffin!” shouted Griffin. “Me! Help me! I need you to save Mags! I need you to see me! I need you to hear me! I need you to know I’m here! I’m here!” he took a huge gulp of breath, moved between the two puzzled strangers, and bawled at the top of his voice, “I’m real, dammit!”     Visionary and Hallie recoiled away from the noise and turned hastily to look over their shoulder.     “Okay,” Vizh asked Hallie urgently. “Did you notice the naked little green-skinned boy here before now?”     “You have to help me,” the young not-a-griffin begged them tearfully. “You have to save my friend Magweed. Please!”     Then Hallie hugged him and for one brief moment everything was all right. *** Once upon a time there was a creature made from hate twisted together by lies and fed on cruelty who was poured into the skin of a woman. They called her Auntie and she was set as guardian to special children whom her mistress might one day have use for. And if the children failed, then Auntie got to feast. And one day, Auntie got very angry…     Sorceress knew the bad things were coming when the milk turned sour. A cold pelting hail clattered on the shingles of her hut then became a blinding downpour of rain. Outside it was pitch dark.     “Do you know how to beat gothenmanders?” Magweed asked nervously. She was huddled in her quilt before the fire, and Whitney Darkness had drawn a simple chalk circle round her.     “In theory,” Sorceress replied. “They’re a nasty little twist of magic, but I think I can unravel them.”     Magweed gave a nervous giggle. “Like knitting?”     “Inside every gothenmander there’s a creature lost,” Whitney said sadly. “Getting them out again is impossible.”     “But you can do magic!”     “There are some things magic can’t do. It can’t make true life, or restore true life. It can’t change history for very long. It can’t cause true love, or heal a broken heart.”     There was something about how Whitney said that last bit that made Mags look up at her. “Do you have a broken heart?” the little girl asked.     “I had a baby inside me once,” the Sorceress said quietly. “My daughter, by the man I loved more than life. It was all a cruel trick by a clever enemy, but for a while it was real and she was mine. Then our enemy made us choose whether to keep the baby and live happily ever after or to do the right thing.”     Magweed gasped. “That’s awful! What did you do?”     “What would you choose?” Whitney asked the girl. “Happy ever after or the right thing?”     “The right thing,” Magweed replied. “I hope. I mean, just because it’s your happy ever after doesn’t mean it’s everybody’s, does it? And how could you be that happy – happy at all – knowing that what you picked made other people… not happy?” Her voice trailed off. It felt a bit lame to say her reasons out loud.     “My true love chose to do the right thing. Of course he would. Why would he be my true love if he didn’t do that? But the choosing cost us everything. After that it could never be the same with us. We’re done now.”     “That’s so sad. I’m sorry, Whitney.”     That wasn’t a secret the Sorceress told everybody, Magweed realised. It was a deep truth, something that was only shared in the dark of the night when death was stalking outside. A last secret.     “I have a secret too,” Magweed blurted. “You… you haven’t seen a Griffin, have you? Or heard of one getting into trouble?”     “A griffin?” Whitney puzzled. “A lion eagle crossbreed? Why would I have seen one of those?”     “I… have one,” Mags whispered, aware as she spoke that she was crossing a line she’d never ventured over. “My best friend. But… I don’t think he’s real.”     “Not real?”     “A secret friend. We think he’s a Griffin, but even he can’t see himself so he doesn’t know for sure. But when he found a nest of griffins high in the Everchill Passes he was sure that was what he was.”     “And Auntie let you have a friend?” Sorceress wondered.     “Auntie doesn’t know. She doesn’t know all the things he found out, all the things he taught me. Auntie wants me to grow up to be a princess, but Griff just wants me to grow up. Griff helped me find out the things that a princess needs to know, not just what she should know.”     “Like what?”     Magweed thought. “Like how people are. Like what they do, and why, and what they hope for and what they need. Like how to look at people and see them for what they really are. Like how big the worlds are.” The girl shuddered. “I don’t think I could be the sort of princess my godmother wanted me to be after finding out all that.”     “Well Magweed, I think I approve of your imagin…” Whitney began, when suddenly there was a mighty blow on the door. Both of them jumped.     “Magweed!” came a shrill, angry voice. “You come out of there this minute!”     “Auntie!” squeaked Mags, trembling. “She’s found me!”     “Go away, thing of nightmare!” the Sorceress called out. “There’s nothing here for you but destruction.”     Another crash on the door. This time a big crack splintered down its middle. “And who are you to get in the way of Auntie and her darling?”     “I am a Darkness Witch,” Whitney warned. “We know what to do with fearshadows. Avaunt!”     The door smashed off its hinges, and Auntie filled the doorway. Her eyes glowed redly in the dark. Bootface and Hellfang prowled behind her, huge and hungry.     “Stay in the circle,” Sorceress warned Magweed. Then she turned to face Auntie.     It was as if Whitney had cast off a cloak. The affable young blonde woman suddenly changed – not how she looked, but who she was. It seemed as if she stood up, stood tall, stopped smiling with her eyes, let the hurt and rage inside her well to the surface, and used it all to hook into the very earth she stood upon. “Get out!” she told Auntie, and Auntie was hammered away from the door.     But not far. Snarling with anger, Auntie pushed forward again. Bits of her flesh seemed to get ripped off as she resisted the Sorceress, great bloody gobbets of it, but Auntie didn’t seem to care. Her face had twisted to something that wasn’t human; had never been human, all jaws and dripping bile. She swore and cursed in a dozen different voices at once.     The gothenmanders burst in through the shuttered windows. One leaped at Whitney, the other at Mags.     Magweed flinched away as the brute nightmare of her childhood dived at her, but she had the presence of mind to stay inside the ring of chalk. Bootface bounced away as if from an invisible wall, yelping, pawing at his face where he’d been seared. To Magweed’s terrified gaze it looked like he was untangling, just like knitting.     Sorceress pointed an outstretched hand at Hellfang. He burst into flames in mid-leap, then exploded in chunks of bloody meat across the kitchen.     Auntie barrelled into Whitney and bore her to the ground. “Now let’s see what Darkness Witch tastes like,” Auntie hissed.     Whitney said a curse word; not a swear word, a curse word. It made the cabin shudder, shattered small objects around the room, set dogs howling all across the wildwoods. It was spat into Auntie’s face and it hammered her away scratching and clawing at her features to stop the pain.     The Sorceress tried to stand but she couldn’t. Magweed saw dark wet stains blossoming on Whitney’s dress where Auntie’s claws had dug. Instead Sorceress contented herself with commanding lightnings to sear through her enemy, wind to buffet her, mud to choke her, salts to sear her; on and on and on every time Auntie lunged forward again.     It wasn’t about how powerful they were, Magweed suddenly understood. It was about how deep they could dig to make their version of things happen; how far they were prepared to go.     Sorceress clenched her fists so tight that the blood tricked from them up her sleeves. “Begone!” she told Auntie.     And Auntie burst, like an overinflated bladder.     And Auntie was gone.     Whitney slumped to the floor. Magweed called to her.     “Give me… a moment,” the Sorceress pleaded. “I’m not at my best right now. But you won’t be seeing Auntie again any time soon.”     “Not at your best. How sad,” noted Camellia of the Fay, standing in the doorway silhouetted against the rising storm. A pair of ogres loomed behind her, and beyond that the other gothenmanders prowled. “If you can barely survive Auntie, how are you ever going to challenge me, little Sorceress?” *** Once upon a time there was a Lady, and all who looked upon her loved her and despaired. Denied her rightful place as the cruel Empress of all the Many Coloured Lands she endured exile for long and long, until at last the time was right for her to return and vent her vengeance on those who had thwarted her. Dark and terrible would be her wroth…     “Hey! You guys on the ship!” Flapjack shouted across to the crew of the Aspen’s Reach. “You okay with me coming over there and selling you stuff?”     The officer of the watch noticed the mis-shapen butler on the shore and called the archers to be ready. “What do you want, dwarf?” he shouted back. He sent a boy below decks to fetch Captain Caladium.     “I’m not a dwarf. I’m a Carpathian Flapjack,” called back the being. “Some of my parts go back in our family for twenty generations.” He leered so effectively that it impacted right across the waters to where the white ship was anchored. “Want to see my goodies?”     “Do we shoot, ma’am?” the officer asked Caladium as she strode up onto deck.     “What is it?” she asked in distaste.     “We already had that conversation,” Flapjack replied. “But hey, if you’d like to go somewhere private and find out…”     “Shoot it,” Caladium decided.     “Hey, wait! I’ve got premium stuff here! But enough about me,” Flapjack called, ducking for cover as the first quarrels came towards him. “I got tobacco, whiskey, feelthy postcards…”     The firing tailed off.     “Yeah, I got it all, boys. You want faerie dust? Right here. Powdered unicorn horn to put the spring back in your sprocket? Wild oats? Magic mushrooms? You might not fly but you’ll think you can. Just let me on board to do a little business.”     Caladium scowled at him.     “Real nylons,” Flapjack tempted her. “And gum.”     “Bring the creature aboard,” the captain ordered. “We can have it spoiled and flayed before ever the mistress gets back.”     Flapjack waited for them to send a launch for him. There was no way even he was going to try and wade or swim across the sludge mire that was all that remained of the river.     “Nasty stuff, what you put in there,” he remarked as they hauled him aboard the white ship of ash and bone. “The river burned?”     “She was screaming to the last,” confirmed Caladium. “The river spirit dared defy my mistress.”     “That’d be Camellia of the Fey, right? I hear she’s not really big on the forgiving and forgetting.”     “The mistress’ fury is implacable and eternal,” Caladium assured the hunchback. “Pray that we have finished our sport with you before she returns.”     Flapjack leered at the captain. “Will it involve whips and chains and pain?” He turned and looked over the side. “Toxic waste, I’m guessing. Some napalm? Heavy oil fractions? I prefer a bit of nuclear sludge myself, but it’s not to everybody’s taste.”     “You heard us threatening you?” Caladium checked.     “Ohh, yeah. I’m getting hot. So where’s that baby Camellia stole? Where’s Naari?”     “Naari?”     “Yeah, y’know. Cute little bundle of joy, probably has a full diaper. Stolen by your mistress from the guy who gave me a job when I needed it. Visionary’s kid?”     “The daughter of the former Chronicler?” Caladium blinked. “We have not had her aboard this vessel for eleven years.”     Flapjack’s eyes widened, then closed, then set into part of a worried frown. “Damn. Faerie time distortions. I thought we’d offset that, but of course Camellia could do something tricky in this bit of her forest. Damn. And more damn.”     “So you are not a simple but disgusting peddler,” Captain Caladrium deduced, “but rather an agent of my mistress’ mortal enemy. And you dare to come here alone?”     “Nooo,” Flapjack denied hastily as the men around him drew their weapons. “It’d be suicidally stupid to come here alone. That’s why I brought my robot flea sidekick with me.”     The weapons came closer.     “No, really. Clockwork robot flea, can change size and stuff. So one minute he can be sneaking down into your hold where you’re storing the toxic waste and all the flammable stuff, doing bad things with matches, and the next he can be jumping out, changing size, grabbing me and leaping away before the whole boat goes up.” Flapjack paused. “Any time now would be good,” he added.     The sailors came in with many spiked weapons.     Fleabot jumped out, changed size, grabbed Flapjack, and leapt away. “I am not your sidekick,” the robot flea said testily. “For the record, you are my sidekick. Maybe my pet, in a disgusting makes-on-the-carpet rapes-the-visitors-legs kind of way.”     Behind them, the Aspen’s Reach blossomed into a ball of fire and exploded across the river. *** Once upon a time there was a simple (and possibly fake) man who set out into danger to find the daughter who had been stolen from him by a Dark Lady. He travelled very far with strange companions and had many adventures. But at last the time came when he had to face his enemy and learn what being a father meant…     “That’s as far as we dare go,” Maeby Dormouse told Visionary. “We’re far from the forbidden forest now, down in the wildwoods. That path there, that’ll take you to the Wicked Witch.”     “There’s a smell in the air,” Fletcher Owl warned. “Its not just the marsh mist. Something much worse. There’s something terrible down in that valley.”     “More terrible than Auntie and her gothenmanders?” argued Mr Blakeslee. “What could be more terrible than that?”     “I never want to find out,” shuddered Maeby. “But the hero will have to.”     “The hero?” Vizh checked over his shoulder to see who’d come to help.     “She means you,” Hallie prompted him. “Well, you do have the furry loincloth for it.”     “There’s no guide that can take you further than this,” Fletcher Owl told them. “We’d not have dared so much, come this far, except you’re trying to rescue the princess.”     “I’ll take you the rest of the way,” Griffin told Vizh and Hallie. The woodland folk still couldn’t see him, but now that Vizh and Hallie had got the trick they wondered how they could ever have missed the intangible boy.     Visionary thanked the animals distractedly. It seemed the polite thing to do. Then he trailed down after the imaginary child to rescue the faerie princess from the wicked witch.     Griffin hurried them as best he could over the swampy ground, but he was clearly bothered about other things too. “Are you sure?” he blurted at last. “Are you absolutely sure that I look like a boy? Not a griffin?”     “I’ve scanned hundreds of bestiaries,” Hallie assured the green-skinned child. “I’d have to say that you look human to me.”     “Humans don’t have green skins,” Griffin argued.     Hallie pointed to herself. “I know at least a dozen more people who do,” she added, “not counting nymphs and dryads.”     “Maybe I’m a griffin who looks like a human?” Griff reasoned. “For… arcane purposes.”     “That could be it,” agreed Hallie kindly.     The sun didn’t rise that morning. The mists after the storm became ghostly grey instead of black, but that was all. Griffin led the travellers on along the squelchy marsh path, away from any main roads that might be watched. It seemed to take a long time, but eventually they broke through the undergrowth and found the witch’s hut.     A pair of gothenmanders were guarding the yard.     “Auntie!” yelped Griffin. “She’s here! She’s come for Mags!”     “Hold on!” Vizh called as the boy made to run for the house. “You seem to be having invisibility problems.” He grabbed Griffin’s arm and pulled him back. “Intangibility problems too.”     “But I’m just imaginary,” Griff protested. “You can’t touch me.”     Vizh’s hand passed right through the boy’s arm now. “I don’t want you getting into any danger,” he told Griffin.     “Magweed’s in trouble. That’s all that matters.”     “He sounds just like you, Vizh,” Hallie smiled. “All about helping his friend.”     “If Auntie’s in there, or a Wicked Witch of the South West, or even Camellia, we need to get inside to deal with it,” decided Visionary. “We need a way to draw those gothenmanders off. Maybe the Molotov cocktails?”     “I can draw them off,” Griffin said. “Really. If I can make them see me, I can make them chase me.”     “That doesn’t sound…” Hallie began, but Griff was already pelting across the ground towards the hut. He concentrated hard, bent down, picked up a pebble, and bounced it off a gothenmander’s nose. “Ya! Middenbreath!” he shouted, then raced away in the other direction.     The two gothanmanders growled, rose off their massive haunches, and gave chase.     Griffin ran for his life. He headed back into the swamp. The gothenmanders followed.     Griffin made himself intangible again, so that he could pass over deceptive ground that wouldn’t hold much weight; the lethal green carpets over the sucking mud.     The gothanmanders didn’t know what he was doing until they were shoulder deep in swamp; and then it was too late.     Visionary and Hallie made for the witch’s hut. There was no door any more, and the whole of the structure was rimed with frost.     “Well, well,” Camellia of the Fey noted, without even turning. “The fake man and his artificial woman have finally arrived. Now our little party is complete.”     “I’m real, dammit,” Vizh replied, stepping into the hut. “So is Hallie.”     “Visionary!” called Sorceress from the iron fetters that the ogres had put her in. “It’s a trap!”     “Wait!” Vizh asked confusedly as he took in the scene – Whitney in chains, a little princess in a chalk circle, ogres, another pair of gothenmanders, and the Lady herself. “What?”     There was something else as well, a dark shadow of evil that coiled in a little glass sphere that hovered above Camellia’s shoulder.     “Come in,” Camellia commanded Vizh. “I’ve been looking forward to this family reunion.”     Visionary looked around. “Naari’s here?”     Camellia regarded the possibly-fake man and his companion with contempt. “You didn’t bring the alien slave wench as well? A pity.” She gestured to the crystal ball with the writhing smoke. “I’ll have to send my grue out to find her, I suppose.”     “Grue?” Vizh was back to seeking exposition.     “Magical construct of emotion,” Sorceress supplied. “In this case, Camellia’s desire for revenge. They can be insanely powerful.”     Hallie was frowning as she puzzled things out. “Where’s Naari?” she wondered. She looked hard at the Belle Dame Sans Merci, then at Visionary, and then at Magweed huddled in her circle of chalk.     “Yes,” smiled Camellia coldly. “I believe Magweed was once to be called Naari, back before her parents abandoned her.”     Magweed blinked. “What?”     “Naari wasn’t abandoned,” Vizh argued. “You stole her, left a nasty changeling in her place to break our hearts. But Naari’s just a baby, not…”     “Vizh, faerie time doesn’t run like human time,” Hallie advised. “I’ve hundreds of folk tales in my database about people who dance with the faeries for one night then find a hundred years have passed.”     Visionary looked closely at Magweed. “Are you saying… this is my daughter? My little girl?”     Magweed looked back at Visionary with wide, hungry eyes. Her lips moved but no sound came out. They formed the shape of a forbidden word: daddy?     At a gesture from Camellia the ogres came forward and grabbed Visionary and Hallie.     “Get off them!” shouted Magweed, half rising from her huddle.     “Or what, god-daughter?” Camellia mocked her. “When you leave that absurd circle you are mine. Your life depends on me.” She stared at the girl. “I can see in your mind that the Sorceress has shown you what you would be without my blessings.”     “What does that mean?” demanded Visionary. “What have you done to her?”     “The child is sickly,” Whitney warned. “Camellia’s magics are making her whole.”     “Camellia’s magics were what cursed her in the womb,” Hallie snapped. “We could have fixed her genetic damage if we’d got to her sooner.” She looked over at Magweed. “Years sooner.”     Camellia smiled coldly. “But you did not. And so my revenge is almost complete.”     “You let her go, right now!” Visionary warned. “Even if you can stop me you won’t stop the Lair Legion and the Regulars. They’ll hunt you down.”     “That would be after they’ve finished off the Parody Master, would it?” Camellia smirked. “You’ve finally run out of friends to hide behind, Visionary.”     Visionary had an uncomfortable feeling that Camellia might for once be speaking the truth.     “Still, it might be amusing to transmute you both into gothenmanders to send against those friends if they come,” the Lady mused. “You were aware that gothenmanders are reshaped from sentient beings, Magweed my darling?”     Mags glared at her godmother. She’d never hated her more.     Camellia seemed to take that as some kind of compliment. “Take this pair, for example,” she said, patting the mis-shapen head of one of the monsters. “Would you like to know their names?”     Magweed had a sudden desperate desire not to.     “These two are called Myrna and Michael,” Camellia revealed.     Magweed had once had animal friends called Myrna and Michael. They’d disappeared. Griffin told her they’d fled far away, where Auntie couldn’t get them…     “Oh no…” Magweed gasped, the tears welling up unbidden to make her eyes sting. “No!”     Camellia looked sharply at Magweed. “There’s something I’m missing, isn’t there?” she sensed. “Something you’ve been hiding for a long time. A name…”     Don’t think about Griffin! Magweed told herself in panic.     “Griffin, yes,” Camellia said. “An imaginary friend. And such a useful one, it seems. I wonder…”     She gestured. Cold fire flared from her hand, making the chilly room even colder. Griffin suddenly found himself visible and solid, crouched in a corner behind the ogres.     “Uh oh,” he said.     Magweed stared at the boy who was the same age as her, staring back at her. He had tousled brown hair and a strange arrangement of leaves made into a makeshift loincloth. “G-griff?” she asked incredulously.     “Sorry, Mags. It looks like I’m not a griffin at all,” he apologised. “Otherwise these monsters would all be in a lot of trouble.”     “Keep away from him too!” Hallie cried. Suddenly it all made sense. Everything.     Camellia saw it in her mind. “Oh,” she declared. “How wonderful!”     “What’s wonderful?” Vizh demanded. “Hallie, what is it?”     “Remember when Naari was cursed?” Hallie asked hurriedly. “And we had to transfer her to my virtual womb? And the data shift was so massive that I had to pull in computational power from the Celestians themselves?”     Vizh shuddered. “That’s probably one reason Camellia thinks Naari… er, Magweed… could be Faerie Queene one day. She’s touched the Celestians.”     “But I could never figure why there was so much excess data,” Hallie went on. She looked over at Griffin. “Twice as much data,” she said.     “Invisible and intangible,” declared Camellia, glaring at Griff. “A child of science and illusion and numbers. No wonder I never saw him in the slave-woman’s womb!”     Vizh’s jaw dropped. “Griffin’s not Magweed’s imaginary friend. He’s her twin brother! And he’s my son!”     “What?” said Magweed and Griffin together.     “And he has worked against my will for Princess Magweed all this time,” Camellia noted. “But no more.”     She reached out to Griffin to begin his transmutation.     “No!” shouted Vizh, twisting to kick the ogre where it was most likely to do some harm. He’d also been trained to fight by Dancer. He slipped loose from the ogre’s grip even as Hallie hung by her arms, swung her feet up, and hooked them round her own ogre’s neck. He ran straight for Camellia with murder in his heart.     Camellia read his mind and took a step back. There were corners of that man’s mind that held things she didn’t want to see.     Visionary punched her right in the face.     She swatted him away, her lip bleeding.     Hallie threw an ogre at her.     She swatted it aside and pinned Hallie to the wall with daggers of ice through her limbs.     Griffin bit the Dark Lady on the calf.     “Enough!” screeched the Belle Dame. Suddenly Vizh, Hallie, Whitney, and Griffin were all hanging like puppets in the air before her. She glared at them with terrible malevolence. “More than enough,” she said. “Now it is time for my revenge.”     She reached for the grue in its little glass globe. It wasn’t there.”     “Looking for this, godmother?” Magweed asked. She’d left the circle. She had the globe in her hands.     “Give that to me!” commanded Camellia of the Fey.     “Powerful and dangerous, you said,” Magweed remarked. “Let my friends go.”     “I hold your life in my hands,” Camellia warned her.     “Easily breakable, I think,” Magweed replied.     “You will be Queen of the Faeries.”     “I don’t want the job.”     “You will obey me or die.”     “Then I’ll die,” Magweed said. “But first I’ll break this little orb.”     “Don’t!” yelped Camellia. But Magweed had already thrown the grue at her. The sphere shattered on Camellia’s ice-hard skin.     Camellia’s hatred and revenge bubbled out, uncoiling, twisting, writhing over her. Camellia’s scream echoed far over the Many Coloured Land.     “Revenge can be so self-destructive,” Sorceress declared. “It can turn on you and destroy you. Eat you alive. Make your life a living hell.”     The power binding Visionary and the others in the air failed. They fell to the cabin floor. Vizh jumped up as the ogres raced forward, bellowing at him in rage. He knew even then that he could never beat them.     “Myrna!” Magweed called out desperately, “Michael! Help him!”     The gothenmanders twitched and shuddered, then remembered for a moment who they had once been. They fell upon the ogres tearing them apart. And then, because a gothenmander can’t know love or friendship or loyalty or hope, they faded away, unspinning until they were finally at peace.     For just one moment, they’d obeyed the command of the Princess of All Faerie, and everything was fair.     “Vizh!” called out Hallie. She pointed to where Magweed was toppling. The little girl had become thinner, her skin blackening down her left side, her arm withering. Her beautiful hair became a greasy tangle. She tripped and fell, unable to stand properly.     Visionary caught her and held her in his arms as if he would never let her go.     “Watch out!” called Griffin as Camellia rose behind them, a tormented seared mass wrapped in seething shadow tentacles.     Hallie calmly reached into a pocket in the pixie outfit that hadn’t been there before and pulled out a virtual Magnum .45. She shot Camellia six times in the chest. “You know, I think I’m finally getting the hand of this faerie reality thing,” the Legion’s artificial intelligence said with satisfaction. “You just have to know when the story’s at a turning point and have a good imagination.”     Camellia couldn’t be seen now. Only her revenge grue was there, feasting and growing ever larger. Some of its tentacles ploughed through the walls of the house. Others burrowed through the floor. Most reached out for the survivors of the conflict, the humans it had been created to destroy.     Griffin had got Sorceress out of her iron shackles. Whitney crafted a hasty defensive barrier, but even that effort gave her a nosebleed. “You need to run,” she warned everybody. “I can’t hold back something like this. It’s too big.”     “We can’t leave you behind, either,” Visionary shouted back. The screeching of Camellia had become the hunger cries of her being of vengeance.     “Now it’s consumed her it’s far too powerful for me to stop!” Whitney warned. “Get the children… get your children to safety Visionary. Care for them, Cherish them. Never let them go.”     “Whitney!” screamed Hallie as the Sorceress’ defences crumbled and the grue surged forwards.     And then it stopped. It seemed as if it was being sucked backwards. It struggled against an invisible wind, but it was inexorably pulled away from Whitney and the others, out through the broken cabin wall.     Towards the bottle.     And when it was all forced inside the old wine bottle, Zebulon pushed in the cork and hammered it down.     “There,” he said. “All packed away neat and tidy.”     “Zebulon?” gaped Visionary. It seemed he hadn’t run out of friends after all.     “Since when have you been able to bottle up clouds of vengeance?” asked Hallie.     “I can’t,” Zeb replied. “I just did what you asked me to, Ms Darkness.” He turned and pointed to the shimmering lights behind him. “I went and got the Faerie Queene!” *** Once upon a time there were creatures who lived in the imagination, spirits of love and mischief, of joy and beauty, of mystery and malice. Humans came to call them faeries, sprites, elementals, goblins, pixies, the fair folk, the people of the mounds, and a thousand other names. And while humans didn’t know or understand much about these beings, they knew one thing deep in their hearts: the faeries had a Queene…     “So,” said the Faerie Queene, shimmering in the sunlight as the mists parted like a bad dream, “This is the girl who would be me.”     The whole of the Seelie Court was there: the pixies and the nixies, the pookas and the bookas, the naiads, the dryads, the oreads, the pucks and the leprechauns, the tallow men and the flibbertigibbets and the woses and the fetches and the cluricaunes, the hungry men and fear dherg and roanes and selkies and swanmays and foxwomen, the imps and the fauns and the satyrs and the dwarves; the elves in their shimmering silver gowns and the high faeries with their shimmering rainbow wings. Golden trumpets sounded. Bright flashes filled the skies.     Visionary’s eyes were only on the little girl who stood before the radiant might queen. “You want to talk to my daughter, you talk to me.”     The Faerie Queene’s gaze turned full force on Visionary. He glared back at her.     “Perhaps we should all just take a breath?” suggested Hallie.     “That would be a good idea,” agreed the Sorceress. “Excuse me for a moment.” She went silent then, mumbling something over and over under her breath.     “Is that really the Queen of Faerie?” Griffin asked. He’d travelled a long way but he’d never found the Seelie Court.     “One aspect of her, yeah,” agreed Zebulon. “She was the one who sent me to kill the little girl.” He scowled at Rimshard Kentish, the queen’s spymaster, and at Xaradim, her herald. “Well I quit!”     “It’s true,” the Queene agreed. “I ordered the child destroyed.”     “But that was before, right?” Visionary argued. “Before she took out Camellia of the Fey for you.”     The Queene considered this. “Camellia is not destroyed,” she announced. “But she will never be beautiful again.” She stared into some future with her silver eyes, then at Magweed. “Burned on her left side, lamed, withered. No glamour will conceal Camellia’s disfigurements, no spell will heal them. A fitting punishment for her crimes.”     Magweed didn’t agree. “That won’t bring back all the folks she killed, or make it right for the forest people,” she argued. “The Queene is supposed to protect them against people like the Dark Lady. That’s the job.”     The Seelie Court went absolutely quiet.     Except for the sound of a coke can being popped open. Xander the Improbable made another of his last minute appearances, taking a quick chug. Woodbend Windyway, keeper of the interfaces, tried to look as if it had nothing to do with him.     Whitney Darkness relaxed. “I called for my father,” she told Hallie. “It seemed like a theme.”     “What’s all this, then?” the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse asked. “A party? An execution?” He glanced at Magweed and the Queen. “A coronation?”     “This isn’t your domain, mage,” the Faerie Queene warned. “You have no power here.”     “I have no magic here,” Xander almost agreed; but the distinction was not lost on the wise. “I just came to offer my congratulations.”     “Congratulations,” Vizh asked suspiciously.     “Two fine children you have there. Congratulations on that, of course.” Xander turned to the Queene but he was speaking loud enough so his voice carried across the whole field. “And congratulations on your clever plan, your majesty.”     “My… plan,” said the Faerie Queene.     “To teach the usurper Camellia a lesson,” Xander prompted her. “How you used your magics to cause Magweed’s twin brother to be invisible to all, so that the Dark Lady’s schemes would go amiss. So that Magweed herself would grow to be the one that thwarted her. Very clever. Genius.”     “Yes. That was my plan,” agreed the Queene.     “It was?” asked Vizh,     “Shut up, Vizh,” said Hallie.     “My magics, yes,” agreed the Queene; and for a moment there was a shimmer of stardust around her as a certain glamour winged its way through time and space to the mortal realms some months ago. “My clever plan.”     “So now it’s time we were all getting back to Earth,” Xander suggested. “Magweed and Griffin would be happier there, don’t you think?” he asked Queen Mab.     “We had some other people with us,” Vizh called out. “When we came here. We can’t just leave them.”     “See?” Fleabot told Flapjack as the hunchback elbowed and pinched his way through the crowd. “I told you he needed me. I’m a very indispensable…” And then his clockwork wound down.     “Master,” Flapjack greeted Visionary, sweeping him a bow that took him low enough to peek up the Faerie Queene’s dress.     “Your other companions are in the… contended regions,” Rimshard Kentish admitted. “We will have to send them home later, by another route.”     “The regular paths to Earth have all closed now that the Celestian barrier is up,” Xaradim warned. “Sending even these travellers back would be perilous.”     Visionary fumbled in his backpack and unwrapped a shard of his bathroom mirror from his Dimensional Lighthouse. “This will always guide us home,” he said. Quoth had told him that.     “Well, so,” the Queene said, still eyeing Magweed a little suspiciously. The girl didn’t seem scared enough of her, and her brother was hovering protectively. Who knew what secrets he’d found out in his years of snooping? “Return them home, then.”     “One moment,” Xander interrupted as the Court made to depart. “There’s just one more thing to sort out.”     “What?” asked the Queene is dangerous tones.     Xander pointed to Magweed as she stood, stick-thin and wobbling next to her brother. “This child forfeited three blessings to do what was right. She turned her back on her godmother and lost her birth-gifts.”     “So?”     “So she needs new godmothers,” Xander insisted, “and you need to reach into Visionary’s head and project them here so they can give their blessings.” That didn’t sound like a suggestion. The sorcerer supreme’s face was set.     “Godmothers.”     “Three good ones is the tradition, I think,” Hallie noted.     Xander went over to Magweed. “Good name, Magweed,” he told her, “Colloquial name for the plant Anthriscus Sylvestris - that’s Greek for ‘Seeker of Knowledge in the Wilds’.”     “We call it cow parsley,” added Flapjack, rather spoiling the effect.     “Her given name is Naari,” said Visionary. “That means most beloved in all the world.”     “Can I have both names?” Magweed asked hopefully. “Not the cow one, though.”     Xander rolled his sleeves up and flexed his fingers.     “I want to be a godmother,” Whitney told him. “I could give good godmother.”     “Fine,” agreed Xander. “And here’s number two.” He cupped his hands, breathed into them, nodded to the Queene, opened has palms, and suddenly Cleone was there.     “Faerie,” she gasped. “I’m forbidden here.”     “You’re only a projection,” the master of the mystic crafts assured her. “Talk to Whitney, get up to speed.” He considered Visionary carefully. “Now who is in your forebrain that we can pull here as a third godmother? Ah!”     “Ah?” Vizh asked worriedly as Xander rapped on his forehead. “Ah what.”     “Ah left my heart in San Francisco?” suggested Dancer, climbing out of Vizh’s subconscious and stretching. “Hey folks. Is this another dream cameo or what?”     “We have to give magical gifts to Vizh’s daughter,” Sorceress summed up. “And nothing as superficial as charm, wealth, and beauty.”     “I hear it’s only skin deep anyway,” Dancer shrugged. “Er hi. You must be my, er, my friend Sarah’s little niece.”     “And nephew,” Magweed said loyally, tugging the now solid Griffin’s arm to present him. “He’s the nephew. It turns out he’s real after all.”     “Well, some of the family has to be,” Dancer whispered.     “Gift giving,” Cleone Swanmay smiled. “Very mythic. Come here, Magweed. We have presents for you.”     Magweed limped forward. Sorceress knelt until she was face to face, and kissed her on the forehead. “I give you the gift of friendship. As you talked with the animals and small spirits here, so shall you hear the voices of the lesser creatures everywhere, and be their friend.”     “Oh!” said Magweed. “Thank you. That’s a good present.” She thought some more. “Better than grace.”     “My turn,” Dancer called out. “Mags, I’ve got to tell you that wealth and grace and beauty aren’t everything. Not when you’ve got the right gifts. So kiddo, here you are.” She tapped her finger on Magweed’s nose. “Bibbety-bobbetty-boo!”     “She has a magic nose now?” Griffin checked.     “Luck, handsome,” Dancer told him. “She’s got the gift of being lucky. Special compliments of the Probability Dancer.”     “Oh, that’s a good one,” Cleone admired. She bent down and licked her thumbs, then moistened Magweed’s eyelids. “I bestow on you the gift of seeing people’s true hearts,” she proclaimed. “May you always know friend from foe, hero from deceiver.”     “Ooh, can I get that one as well?” pleaded Dancer.     “Thank you,” Magweed told her godmothers.     “She gets presents from all of you on her birthday as well, right?” Griffin checked, anxious for his sister’s wellbeing.     Flapjack blew his nose noisily. “A proper gift-giving,” he honked. “I haven’t been to one of those for longer than I care to remember.” Woodbend Windyway retrieved his coat tail from the hunchback’s clutches and gave him a cross stare.     “What about Lisa?” Visionary asked. “I’m pretty sure she’d want to be a godmother too.”     “Vizh, do you really want Lisa to bestow her, um, gifts on Naari?” asked Hallie prudently.     “Lisa should be a godmother,” agreed Xander, “but don’t you think Griffin deserves one?”     The Faerie Queene was looking impatient. The summer sky was darkening. Xander took the hint. “If you could just hold up that mirror shard, Visionary, so that her majesty can guide us back by the lighthouse’s beam,” he suggested, “we’d best be off. I have a Shepherd’s Pie in the oven.”     “With real shepherds?” worried Griffin.     “What about Miiri?” asked Vizh. “That’s your mother, kids. What about Asil and the others? Well, maybe not Johnstantine.”     “They’ll have to come home by another route,” Sorceress said. “I’ll keep an eye out for them.”     “If they’re not home soon we’ll be coming back to look for them,” Vizh promised.     “No,” said Queen Mab determinedly. “You won’t.” She flexed her fingers and suddenly there was a magic wand there with a star on the end. It bore the same resemblance to a Walt Disney fairy wand as a real Tasmanian Devil does to the cartoon one. It changed worlds.     “Wait, you forgot to shop for presents…!” the projection of Dancer warned them.     “The way is open,” declared Woodbend Windyway.     “Bridge, Thursday,” Xander reminded him.     There was a psychedelic swirl effect and a loop-the-loop A-ticket lurch. Then there was a lighthouse and the familiar shore of Willingham.     “Magweed, Griffin,” Visionary told his children, “Welcome home.” And they all lived happily ever after. Until next time… *** Next Time: The other faerie story, featuring the rest of the cast that should have made it into this one (but since this was, y’know, triple length without those guys it seemed best to let them have a chapter to themselves, give them space to breathe, give Al B.’s eyes a rest on that 8-point print etc). George, dragon, werewolf, Brass Baron, weddings, invasions, virgin sacrifices, Doomwraiths, the usual stuff. Untold Fairy Tales: Mything, Presumed Dead, coming soon. A missing tie in can be found in this lost scene by Visionary. Magweed and Griffin's homecoming is chronicled by many people in Welcome Home #1 #2 #3 and #4. *** And now… the Making of Magweed and Griffin drawn from e-mail correspondence since February 2006 Vizh: Basically, to refresh your memory (as the original discussion we had about this was back in August, according to my never-emptied in-box), the idea was that the family of one of the other "potential" father's of Miiri's child (some important intergalactic royalty, no doubt) would covertly put a bounty on the Caphan. Squibb, being the only bounty hunter to have actually met the fugitive in question, would be hired to abduct her. When she was out in the open, an assassination team would move in and make sure no embarrassing bastard child could be born. Miiri would be hit with a dart of seemingly easy to counteract poison, but then the LL'd find out that the antidote would be fatal to the baby. Hallie finds the only possible solution to save both their lives and uses the villain's transporter machine (which happens to have some rather striking similarities to the Movie Gun technology) to digitize the unborn baby and keep it's pattern stored within her own programming until they can figure out how to put it back into Miiri. Instead, after a short bit of time, Hallie herself will end up giving birth to what amounts to a proto-Yo being... a child of living data/energy... part human, part Caphan, part hologram. Just because I like to make things complex. I had hoped to get Vizh and Hallie's relationship a little further along a romantic path before I went this route, but things have definitely dragged out with HoD and then the Pricilla subplot. The question is, how soon would you need an actual, physical (sort of) baby for any ideas you had for the Faerie? HH: Ah yes, I remember now. I recall at the time worrying that this might be one of those concepts that sounds very entertaining in plot form but would be a serious challenge to write. It's a multi-part tale, for starters, requiring a number of different segments from kidnap to rescue to tech transfer to birth the explanation of birth. It's do-able, but I think you'll find it harder to pull off than you first imagined. That's not to say don't do it. I'm sure you could achieve what you wanted to do, but I've noted you get discouraged when you have to press through lengthy event-driven narratives. So make sure that you're wanting to do this and are willing to serve the time. That all reads back as very discouraging. It's not meant to be, honestly. It may just be me having a hard time to envisage how it would play out and how the baby would work as a cast member thereafter. If you go for it I'll do whatever I can to support your direction. On the baby front, I also wonder whether the hybrid digital nature would work out well in the long term. But maybe you have some fun ideas for that. Vizh: I had hoped to get Vizh and Hallie's relationship a little further along a romantic path before I went this route, but things have definitely dragged out with HoD and then the Pricilla subplot. The question is, how soon would you need an actual, physical (sort of) baby for any ideas you had for the Faerie? HH: Well, I'd assumed that we'd reference the birth in UT#251, with Vizh away having the hilarious (tie-in) adventure you promised when you disclosed the details of the birthing ritual. Ohanna and Kiivan will be in Lemuria at the time also. Then, around UT#253, we bring Miiri and the baby to PMH for a proper check up. After all, this is a Caphan-something hybrid. And the shock ending of that chapter is when the baby turns sickly and goes into cardiac shock - and dies! Except it's not the baby, of course. It's a changeling. The real child (I'm thinking girl for this plot, buy your choice of course) has been stolen by the fairies. In fact her godmother Camellia has given her three wonderful blessings, and taken her to fairie to grow up happy and beautiful and beloved, innocent of human ways. Then, when the child grows up she can overthrow the Faerie Queene and rule the many coloured realms, under the careful guidance of her godmother. But the good guys aren't going to be fooled for very long, and the hunt is on. That's why I assumed Vizh would eventually be going to war with Camellia, and why there's a trip to Fairie offing. The trip will be complicated by the parody Master's invasion of the Mythlands, but hey... And then Vizh and Miiri have to decide between leaving their child where she'll always be happy and beautiful and beloved, or bringing her home. I'm assuming they pick the latter, but it should be a tough, emotional call. All fairy tales should have hard edges under them. And blood. This method doesn't get you a digital daughter, I'm afraid, but it does get you a fairy princess. Or prince. There's one other option I suppose, which is that since time passes differently in faerie you might find the girl is already 16 when you rescue her, in which case she can come home and join the Juniors. But this is just one of a dozen plot strands I was thinking about for the next arc-and-a-bit, and there's plenty of other things I could do, so don't feel shy about saying No to this, or proceeding with your Hallie surrogate plot either. ____ HH: What a good job you're out of shotgun range. Good morning. Vizh: Okay, so I've been thinking over the possibilities. I haven't really come to a firm decision on which way to go, but I've gone from thinking about a more virtual son to a more fairy tale daughter, so it's a ways to travel. (And I've even considered the possibility of twins born apart in a very odd way. Obviously, I like to keep all my options open. ) HH: You do indeed. Most helpful of you. I quite like the idea of twins, given the Vision-Visionary parallels, but I promise we won't have them be figments of John Byrne's imagination. A male and female with a science and a magic backgrounds respectively would be interesting. Vizh: As is often the case when I'm plotting, I sketch. I've included the character that resulted... She's definitely not a teenager (I'd say 9ish), nor is she your typical fairy tale princess. I'm not sure what prompted the disfigurement (quite possibly an influence of Miles Vorkosigan, as well as some thoughts I had a while back when Lisette was horribly scarred), but she has some facial damage as well as a useless left arm. But she does seem sickeningly cute to me in Vizh's oversized sweatshirt, and I find the character appealing. HH: Are you sure you've thought this one through? Talking general narrative here, I'm sometimes bothered by the general addition of babies or cute children to established successful casts. On the one hand it's a natural way of showing progression, but babies and children can both be narrative drags. Babies don't do much, except in comedy terms of late-night nappy changes etc. Children however require interaction, and once you've done the three basics - gets into trouble the little mischief, asks embarrassing innocent question, and says cute heartwarming thing that resolves the story - they can be a bit tedious storywise. Factor in also that Vizh isn't short of vulnerable girls who are innocent each in their own way and one more might seem overindulgent! Vizh: One possibility I'm considering is an abbreviated version of my original story leading into yours. An attempt on Miiri's life leading to Hallie taking on the child as a way to hold it in statis while the team races to find a cure, then the premature baby going into incubation at the hospital (where it could be replaced with the changling). HH: You're a have-your-cake-and-eat-it kind of guy, aren't you? Okay, here are some features of the discussion as I see it: 1. Miiri needs to have the damn baby sometime soon, before the kid gets to Franklin Richards levels of comics time distortion. 2. Vizh needs to play some substantive role in the child's life, so he's not a deadbeat dad. 3. It's clearly important to you to tangle Hallie in the process, so as to complicate things between her and Vizh further. 4. You like the idea of a VR kid and you like the idea of a faerie kid, but the two may be difficult to reconcile in one character. 5. There's an issue about how the offspring fits into the dynamics of Vizh's life thereafter, and that's somewhat dependent on whether the offspring is fitted in as an infant, a child, or a teenager. Vizh: I found it somewhat amusing that you suggested aging the child to 16 when you expressed a mild distaste for that kind of thing over the summer. Still, there are more than enough teenage girls around, and the rest of the Caphans aren't that much older anyway... so a preteen child held more appeal. HH: As much as I dislike the kid-from-the-future stuff I can see why it happens so much. Younger children are ongoing-narrative deadweights. The features of the syndrome I especially dislike are when the child is artificially aged (e.g. Genis) or is sent back in time to complicate timelines (e.g. Cable, Rachel Summers). I also think there's often an implicit tragedy in letting the parents miss their children's upbringing. So I'm certainly cautious about how this might work. Vizh: However, I don't know if you were planning on bringing Samantha around to the mansion, and if so whether you'd want someone younger to be friends with her or if it would be starting a glut of even younger girls. HH: Actually, the main problem from that end is that after the Samantha Featherstone events the Legion might well be wary of being too closely associated with children or having them around, just as experience has taught them to be wary of recruiting interns right now. Vizh: I don't know what this concept of the character might do for your plot idea or how it might change things. She'd definitely be coming home to live in the Lighthouse though... tough decision or not (assuming theres a home to go back to after the whole war thing.) HH: Bloody artists that fall in love with their drawings! Okay, I'm not going to panic. The stuff below is couched in the definite sense, but it's actually for discussion purposes only. How about... For reasons of existing in a parody comics universe, Miiri is carrying twins. I'd suggest one of each gender, for cast balance. As with William and Thomas, one of them doesn't register on scanners, and therefore hasn't been detected. We'll think of a reason later, but it probably has to do with his later life and movie gun incidents spilling backwards. In fact this child, the male, already has super-powers to become invisible and intangible. He's intangible right now, coexisting in exactly the same womb space as his sister. Miiri's kidnap by Squibb might be a plot point too far this time round unless you want to invest some major storytelling time on it. It might be better to disentangle that plot and use it separately once the children are born. A potential father might be most interested in acquiring a super-powered offspring. So you don't have to abandon Squibb and the recovery adventure, and it avoids tainting Squibb with the rather nasty outcome of injuring a baby. Some kinds of villainy are harder for readers to forgive than others. So I reckon the episodes could be: PART ONE One plot point I think you struck gold with is the comic potential of the Caphan birthing customs, so I think you need to devote a bit of story time to the lead up to the birth. Then you can offer a dramatic sudden twist at the end, when Miiri falls terribly ill and needs to be rushed from Lemuria (where she was going to birth her child) to PMH (where the next bit could happen outside the Shoggoth's protection). PART TWO Miiri is suffering from Camellia's hex. Bad fairies often make births difficult. In this case, Miiri's biology is rejecting the hybrid children. Urthula can probably discern there's a mystic problem, but not its origin. The main purpose of the curse is to get Miiri where a changeling can be substituted for her child. Camellia wants the child (she only knows of the girl in Miiri's womb) for the previously stated purpose of eventually overthrowing the Faerie Queene, which clearly requires an extraordinary girl, daughter of a Chronicler of Stories. However, enter the ingenuity of the Lair Legion, and the idea of surrogate Hallie. It's during the transfer that Al B. or somebody discovers the twin. The transfer probably involves Mumphrey's temporal pocketwatch, because G-Eyed won't have his powers by then. And it involves all of Hallie's processor power, tying her to a grumpy confinement as surely as any normal pregnancy would. By the way, it would be interesting to establish that one or more of the older Caphan slaves like Sayaana have already birthed children back on Caph; it seems likely. PART THREE We could cover this bit in Untold Tales if you wanted (although clearly I'd have to push the plot back three or four issues to accomodate the rest). Hallie goes into labour, and she has the children. The girl can be born scarred and sickly as you require. The shock ending is the apparent cot death of one or both the children thereafter. PART FOUR Some, but probably not all, of this could be covered in Untold Tales. There's probably a heart-rending follow up, because Miiri and perhaps Hallie are both going to blame themselves, but really from Miiri's point of view this is the worst thing that's ever happened to her. I'm sure she would be totally devastated, the poor woman. But it could make for a gut-churning, compelling scene as she and Vizh try to cope with it (One that was sadly lacking from the Marvel comics version, as you have oft noted). But meanwhile somebody - Hallie, Urthula, even Con Johsntantine - needs to spot that these aren't dead babies, they're bundles of twigs and leaves. PART FIVE: There'll already be a Mythlands/Faerie sub-plot happening in UT, as the Parody Master seeks beach-heads there as staging grounds for the invasion of Earth. Sydney St Sylvain and some of CSFB!'s cast will be out there, and possibly Donar too. Sorceress is already in faerie, but I don't know how much we'll use her in this arc (she's got a big role in the one after). It's just a backdrop to interact with this bit of the story. But once it becomes apparent what's happened to the children and who's behind it I expect Vizh to come down on Camellia like a force of nature. Remember that comment from spiffy about Vizh being the most powerful Legionnaire of all? I see bad times ahead for the House of Camellia, followed by Vizh and a few of his cast (Zebulon hasn't had much to do for a long time) heading into Faerie to rescue the children. We can tie all this in and cover it in UT. Mumphrey might possibly contribute a cast member of his own. Lost children probably require some intervention from the mentioned-but-not-yet-seen Nanny Greenwood. Then there's a set of choices to be made about the condition of the children when they're recovered, particularly their ages and what has happened to them since they were stolen. The girl is now definitely a fairy princess, whatever age, and she's got the three gifts Camellia gave her - health, wealth, and happiness is traditional, but perhaps you can think of something better. And THEN there's the choice about what to do with the children thereafter. Do they actually move to the lighthouse and live with Vizh, or does Miiri get to see her children and have them in Lemuria? Or does Nanny Greenwood get to take care of them? Or do they join Christopher safe in the Golden Age dimension? If you do want to do a 9-year old version than faerie timelines is possibly the way to go, because it also allows a skip to an older age later on. I quite like the idea of a teenage character who can wrap up all the Bill Willingham Fables stuff together in one package, a girl who literally gets bluebirds coming and singing on her fingertips and little mice helping her with her homework. Vizh: Let me know what you think... I can take it. HH: I think it's good that the writers of the board have different creative sensibilities. No, really. It's very, very good. Really all of this has to be your call. You need to plough through all the chaff and work out what's the essential thing you want to do. One child or two? Hallie birthing or not? Disfigured or not? Baby or not? You figure out the bits you want and I'll try and work out how much of that I can assist with in Untold Tales. ____ Vizh: You've got some surprisingly strong reactions to this whole thing... I don't take it as discouragement at all (I'm stubborn that way), but I can't help but wonder if trying to accommodate me is simply going to frustrate your efforts to tell the kind of story you want to tell. HH: It's really more the personality difference between late-night me (now) and early morning me (then). I'm much grumpier first thing. Vizh: We seem to be coming at this issue from different directions. You're looking for a piece in a larger plot that has a definitive end, while I'm looking to create an ongoing character/situation. It was never my intention to reach the 'end' of this plot thread when I decided to take the plunge and start it. HH: That's a useful distinction to make. As long as the paradigm change is one you want to do then of course you should do it. Vizh: I really think I'd rather enjoy writing someone who's old enough to be interesting, and young enough to really take wonder in some of the Parodyverse again. You're likely biased by actually knowing what kids are like at that age... I'm sure my take will be highly fictionalized. HH: I'm going to run out of ways of saying "Hey, it's your character, it's not like anyone else has to give you permission"; you probably know that already anyhow, so I'll assume you're just taking pity on me and explaining your thinking. Vizh: As for it being overindulgent, that's quite possibly correct. The teens characters grow up and move on, as teens tend to do. HH: Poor Kerry, abandoned already. I take your point, but at the moment I'm expecting the Asil-Mumphrey association to have a finite duration. Vizh: As for making her a vulnerable misfit by having her be a scarred half-breed, well... The bottom line is that I *like* misfits, and the vulnerability that comes with being one. And since I'm open to her having some significant supernatural abilities, should the story call for it, I'd like to balance it with some physical limitations. HH: On that, I think there has to be a powerful story element about it. For example, say the child's godmother gifts are song, wealth, and beauty - she's got the voice of an angel, she's always somehow got at least a cent in her pocket, and she's very pretty. But in the adventure where Vizh comes to find her, there's some point where she has to save the day. And the only way she can do that is to trade in one of Camellia's blessings for a better one that she really needs right now. So she trades the beauty blessing for truth instead. She's physically blasted, but she's able to discover the secret of to rescue everybody and make things right. So her deformity is a personal sacrifice, her service, her choice: "I just thought, being pretty only helps me... but seeing the truth in things, that could help everybody in the whole wide world!" Vizh: My one big fear with twins is that it calls for me to make *two* compelling new characters instead of just one. I'm still giving it some thought, but one possibility that has occurred to me is to start her brother out as her imaginary friend... He's intangible and invisible and undetectable... and to start with only she can hear him. And he might not know if he's real, or if she just imagined him up. HH: That is very clever. HH before:: There's an issue about how the offspring fits into the dynamics of Vizh's life thereafter, and that's somewhat dependent on whether the offspring is fitted in as an infant, a child, or a teenager. Vizh: I'm pretty sure of my preferences here, I'm afraid. It's a story angle I'd like to explore, and the reason I started the whole subplot to begin with. I may fall on my face, but I'd like to give it a try. HH: Hey, it's your character, it's not like anyone else has to give you permission HH before:: Actually, the main problem from that end is that after the Samantha Featherstone events the Legion might well be wary of being too closely associated with children or having them around, just as experience has taught them to be wary of recruiting interns right now. I can understand how that might end up being the case. However, now that Vizh is living in his own place (albeit just down the beach from ground zero), I think there are more possibilities. The Lighthouse offers a variety of means of removing any children from immediate danger should an attack come. It simply slips to Willingham perhaps. Or we install a doorway that leads the child to Lemuria, while depositing anyone else unlucky enough to go through within the body of the Shoggoth. And I'm certainly not adverse to assigning any children a bodyguard/nanny to protect them. HH: I hope you don't feel I was listing a series of insurmountable problems. I was listing a series of things you need to surmount. Vizh: See, now I feel like I'm derailing something larger. Don't feel you need to compromise your Mythlands tale to squeeze in my characters if you don't think they'll make a good fit. HH: Aw, we'll manage somehow. HH before:: Miiri's kidnap by Squibb might be a plot point too far this time round unless you want to invest some major storytelling time on it. Vizh: Fair enough, although in the original story idea Squibb and Cin are merely after the bounty for capturing Miiri. It's once they get her away from the Legion that the assassination squad moves in to take them all out, and Cin pieces together what they're really after. Squibb doesn't much care, but isn't about to let anybody steal his bounty. So the two become Miiri's protectors before being overwhelmed. HH: Hey, it's your character, it's not like anyone else has to give you permission. There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't do a Squibb/Cin plotline in there. HH before:: Miiri is suffering from Camellia's hex. Bad fairies often make births difficult. In this case, Miiri's biology is rejecting the hybrid children. Urthula can probably discern there's a mystic problem, but not its origin. Vizh: Cleone's not available? In any event, the genetic realignment necessary to conceive could unexpectedly begin to break down... HH: It depends on where this interfaces with a UT timeline, but Cleone is missing at the moment and when she reappars it'll be in a very specific role. HH before:: Camellia wants the child (she only knows of the girl in Miiri's womb) for the previously stated purpose of eventually overthrowing the Faerie Queene, which clearly requires an extraordinary girl, daughter of a Chronicler of Stories. Vizh: Ah. I wondered how a mortal child was going to be such help in conquering the Mythlands. HH: Faerie is made of belief. The child of a Chronicler of Stories must have an awful lot of belief. Get her early and raise her on nectar and ambrosia in a gingerbread cottage in the enchanted forest and by the time she's old enough to prick her finger on a spinning wheel she'll be ready to overthrow the Faerie Queene and rule in her stead. Vizh: I'd like to keep the original idea of the treatment for Miiri being fatal to the children. If she keeps the baby, the damage done to her will progress until it's irreversable and fatal, though she may last long enough to give birth. It's either Miiri or the baby, and Vizh wants a third choice. I'd also suggest that since all of this is damage is happening at a genetic level, it's something that Uhuna can't transfer, any more than she can trade genetic traits between people. HH: I guess she could shift the gene damage to another Caphan; but she can't shift the curse that would cause it to come back again. And the curse is probably: "When you have birthed your firstborn death will claim you". So getting the kid(s) out into Hallie is a great way of circumventing the curse too. Vizh: Danny making an attempt to do something but not being able to also might make for a touching scene. HH: "You're not going to d... going to d... to d... Damn it, there's something pushing back! I'm sorry. You're not going to feel any more pain." Vizh: She can either be carrying them to term, or acting as a stopgap measure to stabilize them until Al B. can figure out a treatment for their own hybrid genes. I'm unsure from the pocket watch reference whether you're thinking the children are converted to digitized code or not, however. I would think even without aliens directly involved the LL would be able to find a transporter... or go commandeer one. HH: Dr Moo: "Okay, I can design an organic womb-substitute that'll fix the baby's genetic damage I guess, but there's no way I can grow it in the time given. I'd need six months." Hallie: "Wait a minute... In the digital realm tthat he Movie Gun created I can take on any kind of organic form I program myself with. Could I shift the kid into the VR world and give myself this super-womb?" Al B: "It's completely insane. There are all kinds of readings coming out of Miiri's body that I don't understand. So yeah, let try it." And by that method you don't need Mumph, only Hallie's VR generators (there has to be a VR lab somewhere in the Mansion where Hallie digitises the clothes she keeps in memory and things like that). I suggest you leave the kids in Hallie for a week or so to cause maximum grumpiness. Vizh: I'd like to keep the brother a secret at least until the family is reunited. There can definitely be some hints that there's more there than meets the eye, however. HH: Clever, like I said. HH before:: By the way, it would be interesting to establish that one or more of the older Caphan slaves like Sayaana have already birthed children back on Caph; it seems likely. Vizh: I agree. Sayaana is one of the triplets though, isn't she? I'd give the distinction to one that so far doesn't have any significant personal traits defined. HH: Pick a Caphan. While you're at it, which if any Caphans do you feel might carry Kiivan's heir(s)? Vizh: Okay. I'm willing to shortchange the Hallie pregnancy stuff if you need to get on with the story. It can simply be said that Al's come up with a treatment after a few days, and the children can be incubated. But grumpy Hallie is always fun. HH: Hey, it's not as if I'm going to be short of sub-plots. And by the outline we're discussing, Miiri has unloaded the kids by the end of part 2, so there can be a bit of breathing space before having to deal with Hallie giving birth, alleged cot death etc. I'll just shift things round a bit. HH before:: But meanwhile somebody - Hallie, Urthula, even Con Johnstantine - needs to spot that these aren't dead babies, they're bundles of twigs and leaves. Vizh: Again, if available I'd go with Cleone. But big things are obviously brewing... HH: It depends where we are in the other plots. There might be other options available too. Jury would probably know: "This isn't the storyline I started!" Let me think on whether I can drop Cleone in earlier. Vizh: I'm not sure how busy everyone is going to be at this point... Normally, I'd say you couldn't possibly keep Vizh's closest friends from being at his side, but this is certainly a trying time. Even Vizh would understand if Donar had a lead on his Kingdom and various other things that hit them the hardest. It might be fun to see what Vizh can put together when denied his traditional resources. I had thought of Zebulon as well, and I'd be interested to see Nanny Greenwood. It also might be fun to drag along Karl Shepherdson with the Sorting Hat. HH: Yes, it might be an irregular group Vizh assembles then, but I think many of his usual players would be around, probably including the remaining Juniors. And George, for that matter. It might be good to use him in a non-Asil context, or people will start seriously associating him with her. HH before:: The girl is now definitely a fairy princess, whatever age, and she's got the three gifts Camellia gave her - health, wealth, and happiness is traditional, but perhaps you can think of something better. Happiness is a narrative dead end. Trust me, I speak from experience. I'd lean towards the idea that Camellia's idea of Happiness is power... The child is going to have everything she could ever want, which is really a perfect ending after her parents sold her for some faerie gold due to her ugliness. She'll be pretty, whole, and people will bow and scrape before her. What could be better? So what if the child has to make up an imaginary friend to talk to, or commune with little woodland vermin or whatever. HH: Now I've got this far down the e-mail I'm thinking that maybe the curse on Miiri does disfigure the baby, but that Camellia's gift of beauty undoes it - for as long as the kid accepts Camellia's gifts and guidance. And maybe she rejects all three of Camellia's gifts, which might well be beauty, power, and success. That way afterwards she can get three other gifts bestowed upon her by more deserving ladies - I'm guessing that Dancer, Sorceress, and maybe Cleone by then could come up with things that are much better. HH before:: And THEN there's the choice about what to do with the children thereafter. Do they actually move to the lighthouse and live with Vizh, or does Miiri get to see her children and have them in Lemuria? Or does Nanny Greenwood get to take care of them? Or do they join Christopher safe in the Golden Age dimension? Vizh: Sorry... I'm still sticking to my guns. HH: Hey, it's your character, it's not like anyone else has to give you permission. As a footnote, I've never got round to mentioning that there isn't an easy way to get to the Golden Age dimension. There is only one known transfer ticket, the one that Andy Dean used before Finny debuted in the regular PV, and that's the one he gave to Chris and that's why Lisa can't go visit. Vizh: You can always introduce a teenage step-sister for the character, and bring her back with the twins... HH: Thank you. Maybe later. HH before:: I think it's good that the writers of the board have different creative sensibilities. No, really. It's very, very good. Vizh: Um... you've put down the shotgun by this point, right? HH: You're still out of range. You don't need to rush as I won't be able to check my e-mail until this evening now. Vizh: Sorry... I'm suffering from a pulled muscle in my back and some kind of stomach bug, so I needed a while to get back to this. And it's kind of a long discussion at this point too. HH: See, that's what happens when you don't listen to these pearls of wisdom. Baron Z of Germany didn't accept good plot advice and then he found himself shunned by whole internet communities. Mr J broke the chain and lost his position as butler and was exiled to France. Anyway, it's always good to discuss PV things with you, and I feel I have all the grip I need of where you're going to slot appropriate things into what I'm writing at appropriate points. I need to sleep now, so I can be grumpy to people tomorrow morning. ____ HH before:: It's really more the personality difference between late-night me (now) and early morning me (then). I'm much grumpier first thing. Vizh: Considering the hours you keep, I'm amazed that you can tell one from the other. HH: Easy. I just look to see how grumpy I'm being. Vizh: But if it's to be something of a collaboration in telling this stuff, I should at least be able to make it sound to you like it might possibly work. HH: I actually knew you were locked once you'd coloured your sketch. Vizh: Combined with other comments you've made, put me down as seriously concerned for Mumphrey's well-being. As for Asil and Kerry, the nice thing about family is that you can always go back to them to lick your wounds before heading out to get fresh ones. They'll always be welcome. HH: I'm going to give Mumph a tough time and a last big adventure. Vizh: I have my moments. Thankfully, I have plenty of people around to keep me from getting a swelled head about it. HH: Congratulations on that. HH before:: There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't do a Squibb/Cin plotline in there. Vizh: No, there is... and it's the argument you brought up that held the most weight with me: I'd have to find the time to write it and follow it through to completion. And my schedule isn't looking too good for now. HH: It's always hard to mesh stories to windows of opportunity, isn't it. See below. HH before:: Faerie is made of belief. The child of a Chronicler of Stories must have an awful lot of belief. Get her early and raise her on nectar and ambrosia in a gingerbread cottage in the enchanted forest and by the time she's old enough to prick her finger on a spinning wheel she'll be ready to overthrow the Faerie Queene and rule in her stead. Vizh: That's going to be one bizarre childhood. HH: Indeed. And it probably causes an allergy to peas. Vizh: Here's a complete side question about Uhuna... If she can shift genetic changes like that, would she be able to shift alterations that lead to super-powers between people? "Let me just take the affects of that radioactive spider bite out of you, Mr. Parker..." HH: I guess it would depend on whether the changes were reversed if the trigger was removed. Uhuna can't make somebody's hand grow back. And I guess it depends on the definitions we draw of illness. Could Uhuna transfer a pregnancy? Vizh: I think one thing to note, since we got rid of the movie gun itself, is that whiles he might be able to digitize something still, she shouldn't she be able to take something VR and make it exist in the real world again... making it something of a one-way trip for the child. That's why I keep going back to transportation, since we seem to have that technology. We may have to do a technobabble cheat, and point out that she's recycling the actual energy of the baby, keeping it and the data of the child's pattern cycling through her own programming of this "super-womb" to keep them from degrading. A very delayed, instead of instantaneous, transport. HH before:: Pick a Caphan. [to have been a mother] Vizh: Losiira is the eldest... seems a likely candidate. Done. HH before:: While you're at it, which if any Caphans do you feel might carry Kiivan's heir(s)? Vizh: Interesting. One thing I've never been quite sure of, do you think Caphan's find motherhood diminishes the value of a pleasure slave? It seems like it would put a kink in the career, so to speak. So would the most valuable pleasure slaves be the most desired mothers for one's children, or would they look to a completely different set of traits for that? HH: If we're looking to the Eastern pattern, fertility and motherhood (especially of sons) is a value-enhancer. I guess there must be some kind of status for older-former-pleasure-slave-looking-after-the-nine-children-she-bore-me. Perhaps they're the slave mistresses who keep the record books and value legers? I decided in retrospect that Kiivan probably would visit some of the Caphans. I'm thinking five out of the nine got a visit, the exceptions being Miiri, Kaara, and another two who I haven't picked yet but who probably prefer each other to man given the choice. It would be criminally irresponsible of the Emir to go to war without leaving an heir somewhere. It's probably Ohanna who insisted he go do his duty. Vizh: Either way, the triplets seem like the favored ones here, as they're obviously daughters of a prominent house from their importance as the "lost jewels" and all that. The fact that they're also top pleasure slaves is a nice bonus for Kiivan. But again, is the question who would be the best choice narratively, or by Caphan custom? HH: I'm guessing he'd be trying to impregnate as many as possible, but even the Emir of All Caph has some physical limits. Vizh: Personally, I think Kiivan should be sterile and need a little help to produce a proper heir. But that would be a whole other story. HH: It's an interesting idea but really would be a whole other story. HH before:: Now I've got this far down the e-mail I'm thinking that maybe the curse on Miiri does disfigure the baby, but that Camellia's gift of beauty undoes it - for as long as the kid accepts Camellia's gifts and guidance. Vizh: I'm sorry, I should be more clear, as that was my thinking all along. When you suggested health, wealth and happiness as the gifts Camellia gave, I was thinking along the lines of the "hard edges" you favored in the endings of fairy tales. I knew that I wanted the child to come home, so the idea that she'd be happier in the Mythlands seemed out. So I figured on trading her health for being with her family... That seemed like a nasty enough bargain to have to strike on all sides. HH before:: As a footnote, I've never got round to mentioning that there isn't an easy way to get to the Golden Age dimension. There is only one known transfer ticket, the one that Andy Dean used before Finny debuted in the regular PV, and that's the one he gave to Chris and that's why Lisa can't go visit. Vizh: I thought Lisa was able to go and visit. Now it's all so sad seeming. HH: I imagine that Chris can come to visit Lisa at holidays, perhaps up on her ranch, but not the other way round. ____ HH: Any ideas yet for names? Vizh: I may have more to respond to in the discussion of the twins later tonight... (and I'm still mulling over names. I suppose now the question is whether Vizh and Miiri name the girl, or if Camellia names her. The boy might be named by his sister at this point. If you have any suggestions, I'll happily consider them.) HH: For a girl: Rosamund, Chanson (for her voice), Cordelia, Arianrhod, Ragnell (diminutive Rags; also Arthurian story link), Sheela (A sheela-na-gig is a Celtic female fertily statue, plus it has the Caphan double letter), Wren (sacred Druidic bird) For a boy: Cuilein (means wretch), Spike (as in EM pulse), Fig (as in figment of the imagination) ____ Vizh: He [Visionary] does have a rough road ahead, doesn't he? HH: I don't think it's going to be all that tragic, if I get the timing right. As I see it the beats are: Miiri goes into labour. Vizh gets called to Lemuria. Wackiness ensues. The labour goes wrong. Miiri gets taken to PMH. Somebody diagnoses what's happening. Drama ensues. Hallie comes up with a solution. Hallie gets pregnant. Humour ensures. Hallie gives birth. The child is blighted. The child apparently dies. Tragedy ensues. Miiri blames herself. People do weepy character scenes. Pathos ensues. Somebody works out the truth about the changeling. Vizh works out it's Camellia behind this. Rage ensues. And then we're into the big quest thing in Faerie. Fantasy ensues. And probably hags. But that can be quite upbeat. The kid's at least alive, and there's a plan to retrieve her. It's just that there are a few complications too. Vizh: Hmmmm... I'm rapidly running out of experts to use for exposition in explaining what's gone wrong with Miiri. No Librarian or Al... I suppose I could use the Shoggoth on Lemuria to provide the necessary explanation. I probably won't use Dr. Gale again, since the poster behind him hasn't been around for ages. I'm not sure what I do when I move Miiri to Phantomhawk Memorial. I guess I can have characters relaying information to people who just arrived on the scene (Vizh telling Dancer and Kerry, for instance) without saying exactly where the diagnosis came from. HH: Logically, you could have Enty adapt the device that Hallie could copy (I'm sure he can find a wet-vac somewhere). Dr Whitefield is the senior medical practitioner at the PMH and he's proved more than willing to use atypical methods before if it's going to save lives (he's one of the very few who knows about Grace's condition, too). For that matter, Lisa could summons Dr Moo. And there's also Uhuna. As for the mystical diagnosis, I'm thinking Vizh still has Urthula's pager number. But we may well have Cleone available to see to the heart of the truth about the dead changeling later. Vizh: Urthula's a little harder to work in, but I do like her. Perhaps if Grace could perceive that something wasn't right, like she did with Vizh's heart, then Vizh would have a reason to look for a mystical diagnosis. ____ On Miiri’s pregnancy rituals: Vizh: Some other minor Caphan notes: Miiri was planning on choosing Deeela, Losiira, Luuma and of course Odoona to be in Visionary's Mera'h, the birthing party that Vizh is supposed to... er, "entertain" repeatedly to prove his virility while Miiri's in labor for 12 to 36 hours or so. Vizh is told not to worry, as Deeela and Losiira are experts in prolonging a master's stamina. (Odoona, it has been mentioned once or twice, harbours a crush on Vizh. One assumes the rest just admire and respect him without being particularly attracted to him.) However, those plans were prior to the arrival of the Emir and his bedding of half the women there. If they're planning on producing heirs, they might not want to be entertaining the only human to have ever gotten a Caphan pregnant. (Send me an email on your thoughts, Ian, as I don't know how that bit of the story is going to go.) IW: You know, I'd have taken the time to plan out these characters backgrounds if they'd been anything other than a one-scene throwaway joke. As for the sex/pregnancy thing, I'm guessing the Caphans must have some kind of contraception, either natural to their biology or pharmaceutically. After all, they serve two sexual purposes as pleasure slaves: they entertain their Master and their Master's honoured guests, and they provide their Master with children, preferably (but only 20% of the time) with sons. Unless the Caphans cleave to the ancient Celtic custom of assuming that all sons born to a wife are the sons of her husband no matter who fathered them biologically (the Celts being very generous in their hospitality, especially to visiting heroes and kings) there's presumably a method of preventing unwanted impregnation. By that definition, there's no bar to them doing their duty as loyal Caphans to preserve the royal house (just sleeping with the Emir is a huge value-boost, but bearing him a child is very significant indeed) AND supporting their harem-mate in the traditional way at the moment of her blessing. By the way, I'm guessing that Losiira at least is versed in midwifery. Ebony might be too. As for the way your story goes, if you get as far as Vizh spending 36 hours with four Caphans (and I believe Miiri also invited Hallie, Asil, Lisa, and Dancer to join in too, and three of them will be available at the time) it's probably going to be a posting for CSFB!'s website. But you're right that it's Odoona who should come and deliver the message to Vizh. ____ HH before:: You know, I'd have taken the time to plan out these characters backgrounds if they'd been anything other than a one-scene throwaway joke. Vizh: Hey, the rest of the PV characters are made up as we go along... why should the Caphan get any special treatment? HH: I'll have you know that many of my characters come with extremely elaborate plans. HH before:: As for the sex/pregnancy thing, I'm guessing the Caphans must have some kind of contraception, either natural to their biology or pharmaceutically. Vizh: I imagined there must be, or the population would be truly outrageous. Still, it seemed like the kind of thing where you wouldn't want to muddy up the situation with even the question of another possible father. I may stress that, beyond contraception, they know plenty of ways to test virility that never lead to pregnancy. My main question right now is whether Kiivan will have already taken them all to his bed by this point or not. HH: Whatever you prefer. I don't think you even need to reference it at this point. By the time it gets mentioned in a story of mine it'll be long after the fact anyhow I suspect, so by then nobody will be too bothered about the "running order". It might not happen until afterwards if that helps. In fact if Vizh is distracted from the Mera'h by cause of having to rush Miiri to hospital then Kiivan might fell noblesse oblige to step in, so to speak, and uphold the honour of the House of Visionary that has given him hospitality. Ohanna: "Kiivan, you should go into them. The girls. You should go be with them." Kiivan: "Anna, you know I don't want to be like... well, like." Ohanna: "And you know that we're going into combat soon, and that you'll likely get killed. You're the last scion of the Emirs of Caph. It's your duty to beget an heir before that. And... I can't give you one." Kiivan: "I know that. And I see the need in those poor slaves' eyes. An Emir's grace would show all of Caph that they are still worthy, despite their many trials. It would vindicate them in our society's eyes, be a crowning glory in their records of achievement. It would be a kindness to help them so. But still..." Ohanna: "Kiivan, Lord Visionary must be with my sister. He struggles to save her life, and that of their child. You accepted the shelter of his hospitality. Now you must stand for him in the Mera'h. If our customs mean anything here, if they truly have some relevance to my sister's wellbeing, then who better than the Emir of Caph to stand for the father? Please, Kiivan. Will you?" Kiivan: "You are the... I can't say it, Anna. You know what you are." Ohanna: "And I know what you must be, too, Kiivan of Caph. I know what I need you to be. Now do your duty." Vizh: Well, Vizh has his Mera'h party, and Miiri has her own attending party for her, closed door ceremonies in giving birth. Ebony, who actually knows what each party involves, will be stressing her role in Miiri's side of things early and often. HH: I'm sure. The question is whether she can save Asil and Hallie too. If Kiivan's subbing for Vizh, Dancer might not feel the need to be quite so saved. HH before:: As for the way your story goes, if you get as far as Vizh spending 36 hours with four Caphans (and I believe Miiri also invited Hallie, Asil, Lisa, and Dancer to join in too, and three of them will be available at the time) it's probably going to be a posting for CSFB!'s website. Vizh: No doubt. And it'd probably get rather repetitive too. HH: Don't underestimate those Caphan pleasure slaves. Vizh: Anyway, Caphan tradition states that Miiri, as most honored slave, chooses among her fellow slaves to best test the father's mettle. However, the other half of the Mera'h is chosen by the father, from the women of his allies and even rivals, so that they may carry back the news of his virility to their houses. She merely made some suggestions. It's up to Vizh to extend the invitations so that the ceremonies can go forward. That's why I needed to know if I should reduce the Caphan's role in this, so I knew how many names Vizh needed to come up with to fill out the 8 spaces on his team. HH before:: But you're right that it's Odoona who should come and deliver the message to Vizh. Vizh: She's the one that most romanticized the stories that Miiri told after her encounter with Vizh, building that moment of free, rebellious sex as something near legendary. I hear she's expecting great things from him. HH: I'm glad you're writing that one. Or shall we turn it over to Sarah? ____ Vizh: I know that Camellia is looking to overthrow the Queen of Faerie, and I believe you mentioned something about the ParodyMaster looking to invade the PV through the Mythlands (much as he tried to come through hell, I'd imagine). I was just wondering if you could give me a rundown of which side of the Parody Master conflict Camellia's going to be on, if any. I've been writing a bit of a story introducing the twins, and I've been kicking around an Akiko SR1066 tie in, but both could benefit from a little better understanding of the big picture and Camellia's motivations. HH: I haven't planned out the mythlands war in any detail yet, other than to know that Donar's going to be there, Sydney St Sylvain is going to be there, and now Vizh is going to get tangled up in the crossfire. I think Camellia is probably going to be willing to ally with the PM, but I'm willing to be convinced differently. After all, if he destroys the Faerie Queene right now and puts a new ruler on the throne then they're not even a waiting time for Maggie to grow up. Vizh: By the way, I think I've settled on Griffin for the boy (and he hates to be called "Finny"), and Maggie for the girl (short for her Camellia-given name, Princess Magweed. And don't bother looking... it's a made up plant that grows only in the Mythlands, I'd guess. I didn't like any of the real plant names I tried.) HH: Actually, Magweed is a colloquial name for Anthriscus Sylvestris (Greek for "Seeker of Knowledge in the Wilds"), commonly known as Cow Parsley, Gypsyflower, Cowchervil, Devil's Oatmeal, Queen Anne's Lace, Sweet Ash, Scabflower, and Kadle Dock amongst others. It looks like this: http://www.waldhang.de/bilder/0105108.jpg It flourishes in margins of woods, waste places, and hedgerows and it's common in Britain and Northern Europe. The hollow stem can be used as a pea shooter. Reginald Scot mentions it in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft" (by yet another name, Charvil) as being a witch's herb. It's also a favourite delicacy of rabbits. Nice choice. Vizh: That gives them both the double-letter favored by Caphan names, within fantasy based ones that still sound reasonable in contemporary society. There's still the possibility that Maggie will be named "Viisi" on her birth certificate, but I'm not sure. HH: Or perhaps Naari? ____ HH: Flask will be throwing his considerable weight about during the SR 1066 stuff, and he'll probably annoy Akiko quite a bit. Camellia is likely to be working as part of the same shadowy conspiracy to bring down the heroes for the Parody Master. Akiko is likely to back Visionary when he starts his jihad against Camellia over her attack on Miiri. Vizh: I agree... I'm just looking for her own reasons for going all-out against Camellia at that point, rather than playing it quietly. We could just do a huge big-ass ninjas vs fairies war at some time. That would be fun. And I'd like to see Wangmundo vs Oxalis. HH: I think her power should come from whatever gifts her new godmothers bestow on her. It should be fairly subtle but manifest itself in her being able to see people's true hearts, have birds come and sing on her fingertips, and be able to make flowers bloom even in winter. And while she can handle her cursed blood it might be bad if other people came into contact with it. Vizh: Godmothers plural? HH: I'm still happy with the idea that Camellia granted Maggie three gifts: Grace, Wealth, and Beauty (suitable gifts for a future Faerie Princess). When she turns against Camellia she loses the gifts (she has to make a choice), leaving her crippled, poor, and disfigured (as she'd have been after her traumatic cursed birth). So she gets better godmothers, probably Dancer, Sorceress, and Cleone, and I'm betting they could offer better gifts that present more story opportunities. I'm thinking luck, the ability to speak with small spirits, and the ability to see into people's hearts. After all, three good faries often counter the curse of the bad one. Vizh: The blood thing is interesting when you consider the effect of Hallie's blood in regards to Elder magic. HH: I'm sure there's absolutely no connection. Really. Just because Maggie and Griff were gestated in the basement of the Lair Mansion by one of its avatars there's no reason to assume that the forces defending the place took any interest at all. Vizh: I planned on having Maggie be able to talk to the various woodland critters in the story I started, so that could be either a regular ability or a Mythlands thing. (I suppose it depends if we want to continue to give Rabito and Lisa's cat a voice.) HH: Okay. For dramatic purposes I think it should be far easier to get useful information out of mythlands woodlands creatures than out of Paradopolis pigeons. HH before:: The main technical problem is to get the baby out of the Mansion so it can be substituted. I'm thinking a second curse once it's born. Vizh: The child may simply need round-the-clock medical care that can be best provided in the hospital. Or perhaps we could say that the curse has never been lifted, and yet it has outlived the original terms (it should have been finished at Maggie's birth), making for some unusual results. HH: Looking back now on my original notes, I think the curse worked on Maggie and Griff because Camellia wanted the baby (she only knew of the girl) to be dependent on her magic to prosper, giving her an eternal hook into the child. In Maggie's case it caused her to be born deformed and disfigured (until fixed up by Camellia's magic). The unsuspected Griffin's body simply dissolved away all together, until his latent powers interacted with the mansion defences and with the virtual realm to give him his insubstantial invisible form. HH before:: The actual "death" bit of the story should come in the same chapter as lots of other terrible things happen, near the end of the SR 1066 stuff. Vizh: Don't be too mean to the board now... HH: I won't be. It'll be in about four or five weeks time. As for Vizh vs Camellia, it's a fair bet that he'll follow when she retreats to Faerie. I'm thinking the companions he'll have are Hallie, Fleabot, Zebulon, Flapjack, and perhaps one or two stray Legionnaires or Juniors. Vizh: No Miiri? I'd kind of like to see her in action, so to speak... Moo's treatment could have her up by then... HH: I considered Miiri, and we could put her there if you want, but I was trying to avoid trailing a harem of Vizh's female characters behind him this time. The Miiri birthing story had sixteen females and four males in it. We could easily add Quoth, Cleone, Urthula, Kerry, Yo or many others to the team, but for story reasons it's best to go with "our hapless hero and his small band of trusty companions". The other point about Miiri being there is that the axis of concern (and reader affection) naturally becomes Vizh/Miiri at a time you may be wanting to focus their thoughts, speculations, and anticipations on Vizh/Hallie. One solution might be to send a larger group in then split them up after the Avawarriors raid the faerie market. That gives Miiri a chance "to show what she can do" while keeping her out of Vizh's little fairy tale. Vizh: Flapjack's a fun surprise, definitely... Hallie and Fleabot would be fish out of water, I'd think... I've never wondered about how Fleabot is powered until now... HH: I think Hallie will find herself flesh and blood again in the Faerie realm. Fleabot will be fine except for the need to be wound up by a clockwork key every now and then. Flapjack's there because everybody needs a loathsome disgusting guide on a quest like this, and Flapjack has a great aunt somewhere in the mythlands. "She's got this great house on chicken legs. You should taste her delicious stews." ____ Vizh: That all sounds good, although I'm worried about powers overlap, especially with Cleone. (I figure a little bit of luck from Dancer is alright, as long as she's nowhere near Kerry or Sarah's levels. More uncontrolled than anything.) Some way of distinguishing what Cleone can do from what Maggie can would be good. HH: I was assuming these weren't actually powers as such, so much as blessings, natural virtues, qualities. So she's fortunate and a good judge of character, but not able to require remarkable things to happen in the way Shep does. Vizh: As for Camellia's gifts, the only one I'm not sure about is wealth, as I'm using the little fairy tale outline you provided before and it just doesn't seem all that wealthy of an upbringing to be raised in a lonely cottage in the woods isolated from all contact with people. So at the very least, it doesn't seem as though she's been blessed with that yet. HH: We'd better make that Grace, Charm, and Beauty then. Vizh: Those will do. As would Health, or even Fame... all the critters of the woods know she's a princess, and it would explain why Camellia keeps her so under wraps. Ultimately, I don't know that it matters until the character is more fleshed out anyway. HH: Grace, charm, and beauty are nice superficial gifts, the kind that Camellia would think are important. Vizh: I feel poor Griff is being left out of a lot of the deals... I'm not sure how to handle him. One possibility is that he gets the ability to turn visible and tangible on his own. Another is that he reacts to the same fields that Hallie uses to display holograms, making him visible and tangible in their presence, but not giving him the ability to control or alter his appearance. A third would be Yo teaching him how to think he's visible and tangible. I definitely want him to be able to be seen and heard, and still be able to go undetected when he wishes. I'm not sure about how tangible to make him yet. HH: I think he should be seen and heard, but for comedic effect he can also select who sees and hears him, so he can be speaking to, say, Maggie and Vizh but not be perceived by Epitome and Trickshot at the same time. And I think that being solid and visible to anyone by Maggie is an ability he discovers about the same time Maggie gets her new blessings. He might even need for force himself to appear the first time to get help for his sister. Vizh: In the story I'm working on, he has a tendency to know something without knowing how he knows it. I figure he absorbs every bit of information that he's exposed to (his benefit from being in Hallie's womb... a hodge-podge of encyclopaedic knowledge to begin with), but while he retains it, he doesn't have the capacity to organize it in any easily accessible way... something like having a photographic memory that's more of a jigsaw puzzle... it takes him a while to make all of the connections. If current information conflicts with something he learned before, he'll instinctively know something's wrong but it'll take a while before he can figure out what it is. So in some ways he's both as bright as Hallie, and as befuddled as Visionary. HH: Seems good to me. VizhL As of the story being written, Maggie has only ever heard Griffin... He's never touched anything, nor been seen by anyone. At least that he or I know of. After the excitement of being real wears off, I expect him to be more than a little disappointed when he first sees himself as an average human kid. HH: After he gets over the excitement of having footsteps, and before Harlagaz introduces him to the joys of softball. HH before:: Okay. For dramatic purposes I think it should be far easier to get useful information out of mythlands woodlands creatures than out of Paradopolis pigeons. Vizh: Well, that makes sense. City pigeons rarely wear little capes and hats and carry tiny swords like mythlands mice. I'm guessing their interests might be a little more scatterbrained. HH: Let me know if you need lyrics for their big musical number. HH before:: As for Vizh vs Camellia, it's a fair bet that he'll follow when she retreats to Faerie. I'm thinking the companions he'll have are Hallie, Fleabot, Zebulon, Flapjack, and perhaps one or two stray Legionnaires or Juniors. Vizh: I still vote for Karl and the Sorting Hat, although I admit to finding them somewhat challenging to write myself. HH: You'd better check with Sarah about using her brother. There are some tricky issues using PV-versions of real-life people who aren't posters. Plus Karl is very large and only lives 20 miles from me. Vizh: I'm not looking to add a great deal of characters to the story... I just worry about Miiri not getting the chance to fight for her kids. (And I counted 6 males in the birthing story ) HH: Oh sure. You were counting the males. Vizh: I agree that I definitely want more Vizh/Hallie time. HH before:: One solution might be to send a larger group in then split them up after the Avawarriors raid the faerie market. That gives Miiri a chance "to show what she can do" while keeping her out of Vizh's little fairy tale. Vizh: I really like that idea, as it echoes all of the epic fantasy I've read in splitting up the band of heroes (usually with one group taking a stealthy track to the goal, and the other joining up with the command of an army.) However, it also sounds like more work for you. HH: Doesn't it just. We need to sort out which bits I'm supposed to cover. It's complicated because I'm nowhere near plotting the Mythlands campaign section yet. Timewise, I think Hallie will be pregnant at least up to around UT#261 or later. The revelation about the supposed cot death won't happen until the issue after. The Vizh-Camellia conflict happens the issue after. And then it could take a while to track where Camellia is actually gone to. Vizh: Heh... I love the idea of a clockwork Fleabot. I'm not sure he would. HH before:: Flapjack's there because everybody needs a loathsome disgusting guide on a quest like this, and Flapjack has a great aunt somewhere in the mythlands. "She's got this great house on chicken legs. You should taste her delicious stews." Vizh: I like that one too. And I'm more than happy to have Flapjack with them. In fact, I'd enjoy the interactions of Vizh, Hallie, Fleabot and Flapjack as their own very small group... or maybe sending Fleabot with Miiri and having an excited and eager Zebulon to play off of Flapjack. If you're looking to give anybody else's characters something to do in the Mythlands, that would definitely be a consideration to keep things from being overrun by supporting characters... especially to go with Miiri. (It does seem like she and Donar would get along well, and you mentioned he was going to be around to do some whomping. Plus, there's always Jay's centaur...) I do like the idea of Karl the barbarian though... HH: Zeb may be better with Donar, who's going to get to do Braveheart on steroids. Vizh: Ah well, there are so many fun ways one could go with this... I'm sure I'll be happy with whatever comes about. HH: Feel free to correspond further. ____ HH before:: Let me know if you need lyrics for their big musical number. Vizh: I'm pretty sure I do now! HH: To the tune of Raindrops on Roses: Dust out the attic and mop up the cellar Block out the leaks with a big red umbrella Open the doors so the rugs can be beat We'll do the work Mags, you just take a seat. Dust all the ornaments, clean all the dishes Careful don't break them, her Auntie does wishes Make up the beds and then bake up the bread We'll see it sorted, don't worry your head. Now for the laundry, the linen, the drying Hang out the washing so Mags won't be crying Come on and help her there's nothing to fear Help out our princess while Maggie's still here! Vizh: Personally, I'd suggest giving PV Karl a different middle name to help provide some plausible deniability to the character's origins. HH: Oh yes. That'll help. Vizh: And I counted 6 males in the birthing story HH: Oh sure. You were counting the males. Vizh: I had enough fingers. HH: That's encouraging, indicating as it does that both hands were free. ____ The debate about Mythlands cast: HH: A number of possibilities come to mind, including Sir John and Lileblanche. Vizh: I had assumed they were going to be involved in one way or another with the Mythlands stuff. They weren't quite what I had in mind, as both are too level headed and competent. HH: I know what you mean, but they're in the Parodyverse now. For a villain, what about Anvil Man? Vizh: He seemed too evil from his appearances, especially where he tried to kill Zdenka. HH: My take on it is that he's a career supervillain but a bit on the thick side. He can be brutal but he's not a sadist. he's kind to puppies unless puppies get in the way of the job. My favourite appearance of his was in that story Josh did a long time back where the two of them just chat. Vizh: It occurs to me that I might be able to get what I want from Hallie... I know you suggested that she be turned human for this. What if she had planned to go in her malfunctioning robot body? As a result, she still turns human, but has unplanned fits of super-strength. HH: Why do you need a strong guy? The reason I ask is that having combatants in the party puts the emphasis on combat. Otherwise people have to use their smarts to beat the dragon or get past the hag, and that's often more interesting. And Visionary and Hallie need to be the heroes here, and they have to struggle, so letting them do it as everyday people rather than superheroes might be the way to go. Put a powerful fighter in the party and as soon as the danger starts it becomes all about him. You could use that robot body again but I really think it's best assumed destroyed at the end of Strong Suit. Besides, we've established that robots turn into clockwork in the Mythlands. Just ask Fleabot. If you're really desperate to have a tough guy in your group, what about Wangmundo? That said, the other team will have plenty of firepower, and they'll be getting lots of things to fight. Or Brap? Vizh: I wouldn't mind bringing Brap into the regular continuity, and with Moo there it would be fairly easy to have her send for a crate with him inside. But he's not really a fighter, and I suppose we already have a lot of characters. HH: True. I'd like to see him appear sometime though. Perhaps not just now. Did we reach a decision about Karl? Vizh: I think maybe no Karl. Again, there are a lot of characters already around. One does wonder about Ma and Karl in light of the pressures being put on other family and loved ones. HH: In suspect they're improbably being overlooked right now; but see the next chapter of Untold Tales. Donar's going to be in there too, but probably not with the Vizh party but leading the ground war against the dark lord while Vizh and co. get to be the hobbits. Vizh: I'm looking forward to that one. HH: By then we'll be due for a Donar focus episode, and he and Zebulon might make a nice barbarian and sidekick duo. Miiri in a chaimail bikini would fit right in. I haven't plotted this very much yet, but I think I'd like to keep the group with Vizh very small and put the rest in other situations. The group probably get separated at the Faerie Market, with Vizh, Hallie, and no more than two others (Flapjack and Fleabot, say) going off to discover Magweed and Griffin (and Sorceress), and Miiri, Cleone, Zebulon and others doing the more epic armies of darkness story and hooking up with Donar and ultimately with Fashion Faerie and the LL for some very major smiting. And then I have to tie the two strands together at the end, with Griff and Mags making good. Vizh: That sounds good... I like the grouping of Vizh, Hallie, Flapjack and Fleabot, and chances are most of my tie-in material will center around them. Which means any characters in the other half of the group should be ones you have the most ideas for. HH: I generally try to make sure that the Untold Tales series can stand on its own without people having to read any tie-ins or crossovers, so I'll attempt to ensure there's something worthwhile in the Vizh strand too. Vizh: How does Sorceress enter into things on the Maggie and Griffin side? HH: I don't know yet, but I imagine when they run away they'll have to face the Wicked Witch of the South-South-West (as they've heard her described). By the way, since there was a delay in posting the next Untold Tales I decided to rewrite it (it just wasn't nasty enough), so I folded in the birth and "death" of Naari to that one too. The Underwar chapter thereafter doesn't reference that event, but the chapter following - "The Grave Mistake" - picks up roughly an hour after the discovery of the cot death, when Cleone arrives and spots the deception. That leaves you a small window if you want to cover the reactions of the various cast members before the cruel hoax is exposed, and about ten days to write the piece. If you'd prefer me to forward you the Vizh portions of the chapter I've got waiting then let me know. Cast members who aren't around include Asil, CSFB!, Yuki, Dancer, Ebony, Fleabot, Grace, and the Librarian (he's confined to his library now by order). Cast members who were are around at PMH at or after the birth include Vizh, Miiri, Hallie, Kerry, Danny, Yo, Lisa, Ohanna, Kiivan, Moo, Davidowicz, H9, Uhuna, and Dr Whitwell. Thereafter, once Cleone has discovered the changeling and the faerie magics involved, the chapter thereafter involves Vizh going a bit nuclear, teaming up with Akiko, and taking on Camellia. And shortly after that there's the trip to the Mythlands to follow her and to find Naari. ____ HH before:: Why do you need a strong guy? The reason I ask is that having combatants in the party puts the emphasis on combat. Put a powerful fighter in the party and as soon as the danger starts it becomes all about him. Vizh: While that's a danger, I don't think it's necessarily the way things have to go. Still, having one "strong guy" can help resolve some conflicts very quickly, where as having to work out a clever way out of the same one might take an extra page or two (Your recent Donar/Dancer MetaWatch scene being a perfect example). It's usually not a problem to block the option to punch one's way out of things if necessary. But that's why the leaning towards a rather simple bruiser, instead of someone like Sir John who would naturally move to the forefront in a party with the rest of this cast. > That said, it's not a necessity. I just felt it would widen the amount of situations that I could put Vizh and co. into. HH: We'll perhaps revisit this when we get nearer to the moment then. I suspect Donar might want to come along, unless Gav gets back to me on the plotline he was hoping to pursue. That said, the other team will have plenty of firepower, and they'll be getting lots of things to fight. Vizh: I look forward to the whomping, and to Miiri's knife dance. HH: Noted. ____ Vizh: I will happily write a departure story ... if you just will let me know who is departing. HH: That seems fair. Vizh: On the "definite" list, I have Vizh, Hallie, Fleabot, and Flapjack. HH: Since I hope to split those four off from the others at the faerie fair later I think we need some others. Miiri is a must, if only for the chainmail bikini. I really don't see why Asil would allow herself to be left behind either, and I suppose that might drag in George and his hat so there's some gender balance in the party. Karl is still a possibility too. The ones that Cleone will advise against not taking are the ones that will "ping" the cosmic beings detector on entering Faerie - any cosmic office holder so that cuts out Lisa (George is new so he might slip under the radar) and any cosmic-type beings so that cuts out Dancer, Yo, Lara, Liu Xi, Donar, the Shoggoth, Quoth, maybe even spiffy's fern. Of course, I'm hardly going to pass up on the chance to send Donar in later with the backup party for the Faerie Campaign against the Parody Master. Vizh: I figure all of the Legionnaires are going to be needed for the siege story, so I'd like to do a scene between Hatty and Vizh about the consequences of asking any of them to go with him. HH: At this point Mumph's still in the big chair, and he's not really the person to discuss putting one's children's needs before the world's needs with just at the moment. Vizh: Of course, some could come along without being asked, and there are some non-members around who might be able to help. If you're looking to send more people to the Mythlands, I'm open to it. Certainly Sir John and Lilly would be logical choices to recruit (most likely at the suggestion of Hatman), but I'm not all that confident in my ability to write either of them well, so there'd be less of them from me. Ohanna and Kiivan seem like they would definitely want to go, but that would put all the Caphans in one basket, so to speak. The Hood could simply order Ohanna not to (well, maybe not "simply", but still...) and direct Kiivan to another task as well. HH: Kiivan and Ohanna will be unavailable. Their time on Earth ends before the Parody Master's deadline eight days from now. Vizh: So I guess the question is who, if anyone, should go beyond the four listed above? Considering that you'd have to do more of the heavy lifting for the other group (most likely), I figure it's your call. HH: You could take Sir John or Princess Lilli if you want (princesses seem to fit in Faerie) but that's really your call. Let me know. Are you still working on the idea that everyone gets transmuted into their D&D analogue? If so I wonder if Hallie isn't fey herself. And if Asil is stuck looking her true chronological age in Faerie that could be disconcerting for George. ____ Vizh: I was likely to end my chapter with them stepping through the gate, so what becomes of them immediately on the other side would still be up in the air. I had just been asking for general looks for various characters, not suggesting that they'd have anything more than the outfits that went along with those analogs... but I'd have no problem with Hallie being something other than simply a green human on the other side. If it's something that gives her some unexpected traits to deal with, I'm all for that as well. I didn't even mind the idea of her being a centaur, although I'm not sure how we justify that one. HH: Fair enough. I thought you'd prepared some artwork, however? Vizh: I do think Asil looking her true chronological age would be disconcerting for the readers as well as George, if there's ever to be any more hints of romance between the two. HH: I don't know that the Asil-George romance can progress much further given Lisa's long-stated preferences for the character. This would be one means of damping it down. But I accept that it might skew reader perception of Asil thereafter. I just keep getting pictures of Asil as Judy Garland in Oz. ____ On costuming: HH: I hope to write some of the Vizh-in-Faerie stuff while I'm on holiday, so I just hoped to clarify a few points. Vizh: Okay, I'll do my best to help out. I take it then that you're prepared to finish the story from this point on? HH: That sounds as if I'd be being unfair, especially if you're having fun writing it. What I do want to do is tell a story that can be complete unto itself in Untold Tales, even if it references other narrative. I don't know how far the plot will progress in the next UT chapter, but I don't expect it'll finish the storyline. There'll be opportunities for you to carry on or tie-in as appropriate. I’;s just unfortunate that I'll be incommunicado this coming week to prevent better liaison. Vizh stays looking much the same but with furry barbarian Conan pants Vizh: Well, that's not good for anyone to have to see... And don't expect a drawing of it. Actually, for Vizh I was thinking more along the lines of a peasant outfit to go along with his 'average man' status: Ruby: "Interesting outfit... what's it made out of?" Vizh: "I don't know... can you actually weave dirt?" Really, I picture him wearing clothing a lot like Skeeve's from Phil Foglio's comic adaptation of Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures, especially seeing how much Skeeve inspired Vizh. Here's a picture of him: http://home.comcast.net/~vizh/images/skeeve.jpg And it's a complete coincidence that he's being hung on by a gorgeous green-haired woman. After all, it's not like she's got green skin... (Also, note the "What's New?" dragon in the corner. Phil and Dixie show up in the graphic novel as well.) HH: On this, I'll use the furry diapers to start with just for the fun factor, and Vizh can barter for new clothes as you describe them at the Fayre. "Is there a big market in third-hand barbarian hero jockstraps then?" "It's not the hand part that's bothering me." Vizh: If you really think fuzzy underpants are the way to go, I'll go along... I'm open to any of these ideas. Another option, since you've forgotten them, is to give Ruby the furry bikini and give Tanner a thrill. I think your odds of getting a picture of that ensemble are much greater... Vizh: Noted. Hallie gets the pixie outfit Vizh: A Tinkerbelle micro-mini skirt with fringed edges and an embarrassing danger of popping out of it then? I could support something like that... HH: If you insist. George gets wizarded, maybe including the sorting hat Vizh: Harry Potter or Gandalf? HH: I'm thinking Potter now you've said it. Did we establish he's borrowed the Sorting Hat or not? Johnstantine stays exactly and annoyingly the same. Vizh: Lucky bastard. That's what he's good at. HH: For plot, we get to do the faerie fayre, but that'll split the party into: A - Vizh, Hallie, Flapjack, Fleabot B - Miiri, Asil, George, Con Vizh: Again, there's also Ruby and Tanner. HH: Whoops, forgot all about them. I'm doing that too much recently. Nobody's even noticed yet that I completely forgot to put Falconne in the Badripoor/Juniors ensemble. Team A get to do the actual Naari adventure, which should lead them to Mags and Griff and Zeb and the wicked witch of the south-west. Vizh: You had mentioned before having Maggie and Griffin run into Whitney (I assume the witch in question). If you like, I had some ideas for a story where Griffin fears that Camellia is about to return with a new baby, and urges Maggie to flee before she meets the fate of the previous "princesses". They could end up in the land of the Wicked Witch. HH: There's no reason why you shouldn't do another Magweed/Griggin story where they run away. By all means identify the Lady as Camellia too if you want. She's probably in a raging fury now, and she needs to accelerate her plans for taking over Faerie for the Parody Master. Since the child's not maturing fast enough its probably best to resort to skinning her and wearing her shape. Sure, it won't fool everybody but that huge army of orcs and trolls is a big convincer. I'm probably - but not certainly - unlikely to get as far as Vizh meeting Mags and Griffin anyway in this chapter, so by all means pen a parallel story for them. You might want to leave it at the cliffhanger of them being caught by the (unidentified) wicked witch of the south-west. Team B get to learn about the Parody Master invasion and Miiri gets to [spoiler deleted] Vizh: With a happier ending? Or is it Miiri's time? HH:I really wouldn't do anything bad to Miiri without [spoiler deleted]. I'm not sure which of our female cast will get the close encounter with the villain of the B-arc, Prince Perfect, who has tragically been widowed on his wedding night six times so far, and is the last best hope of negotiating a peace treaty with the orcs, trolls, and dragons. And if I recall the plot we discussed, Griffin will have to strain to appear and save the day by warning Vizh about some threat to Magweed, and then all the truth comes out. Vizh: There are a few ways this could play out... Ultimately, I imagined that Hallie would first figure out who Griffin was by finally piecing together the extra memory of pregnancy transfer (Which has gone missing, by the way. The expanded programming/Dark Hallie stuff that Fleabot is worried about is a red herring at this point. While pregnant, all of that expanded processing power was tied up with the babies, so her own consciousness wasn't expanded any. When Griffin was "born", he took a large chunk of her processing power with him, leaving her back to pre-pregnancy levels and unsettled for having no explanation to what had happened.) Having her be the one that Griffin strains to reach might work best, and a mental image I like is having Griffin's true look first revealed in the reflected light from the lighthouse mirror... Hallie being the first one to see him, revealed as a young boy with an average face, unusually d ark eyes and scruffy brown-green hair. HH: Noted. Vizh: For Maggie, I thought her true identity could be revealed when she fully rejects Camellia's blessings and reverts to her true look with a whithered arm, scarred face, mousy brown hair and a sickly, mottled pink and green complexion. HH: Also noted. There's really no reason you shouldn't tell this part of the story if you have it mapped out. Vizh: Obviously, there needs to be a showdown with Auntie... I'd like to see the gothenmanders that were once Jacob and Myrna turn on her at some point and protect Maggie. HH: Noted. Vizh: It seems that many posters have pieced together who Maggie really is... We could cheat and introduce another Camellia trick by having a "baby Naari" to rescue instead... perhaps even a real child that does stay to become queen of Fairie someday. (The Magweed/Griffin story I imagined where they fled included Maggie wanting to rescue any new baby so that it didn't have to grow up like she did... especially not without a "Griffin" of its own.) HH: Noted. Vizh: I don't want to step on your toes, so I'm willing to keep out of this one if you prefer. However, if you'd like me to contribute any scenes, just let me know. HH: You seem to have a really good feel for this, so you might want to consider covering pretty much the whole Vizh-Naari strand from the time past the Faerie Fayre. See how you feel about it after whatever I post next. Vizh: I had a Zebulon story laid out that was a stand alone, happens-on-his-search-for-Magweed adventure... that shouldn't affect anything of the larger tale, assuming it ever gets written. *** Clearly, thanks are due to Visionary for both his amazing art (including the images attached to this story) and for his extraordinary and ongoing input. *** 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 © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 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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Follow-Ups:

* Loved it. - DONAR - Thu Sep 07, 2006 at 06:57:42 am EDT * Re: Loved it. - HH - Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 11:29:06 am EDT * Sorry it's taken me so long to get over here...I'm reading this one as soon as I finish Caleb Williams for class!! *nt* - Whit, Lurker Extraordinaire ;) - Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 09:58:49 pm EDT * Poor Caleb Williams. Try not to completely wear him out. (no text) - HH - Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 11:21:10 am EDT * A fine end, and a fine beginning... - Manga Shoggoth - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 05:08:47 pm EDT * I had to double-check that this didn't refer to the centaur chapter... - Visionary - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 05:39:40 pm EDT * Now that really did deserve punning answers. - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 10:58:56 am EDT * It's like all of our characters are suddenly cultivating their own Dune-style dynastic families ... [Spoilers] - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 03:16:06 pm EDT * I'm excited... [Spoilers] - ag - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 04:00:34 pm EDT * I keep meaning ... [Spoilers] - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 01:55:59 am EDT * back the truck up! [Spoilers] - ag - Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 07:02:32 am EDT * No cause for alarm yet ... [Spoilers] - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 04:03:02 pm EDT * When should we panic? [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:01:04 am EDT * I look forward to his first team-up with ArrghYle, evilest of socks (no text) - Hatman - Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 07:37:17 pm EDT * Which begs the question, pre-diaper change, which one smells worse? (no text) - Visionary - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 02:35:05 pm EDT * Did "Dune" have the Stormtroopers or the Klingons? [Spoilers] - Visionary - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 03:55:12 pm EDT * No, it just has a desert-dwelling culture that controls a natural resource that everyone depends on for transportation; in ot ··· [Spoilers] - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Fri Sep 01, 2006 at 01:48:08 am EDT * Hey, we always have Venezuela. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 02:48:16 pm EDT * At least until the Parody Master arrives. [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:04:43 am EDT * What if we appeased him by giving him France instead? (no text) [Spoilers] - Visionary - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 08:59:05 am EDT * Good, but it could have been longer. ;-) [Spoilers] - Visionary with his own response - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:44:33 pm EDT * You're trying to kill me. [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 05:31:38 pm EDT * Bah... it'll only make you stronger. With no free time. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 09:01:17 pm EDT * Stronger but dead [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 10:18:54 pm EDT * But you'll cut an imposing figure in your coffin [Spoilers] - Visionary - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 08:51:50 am EDT * That's such a comfort [Spoilers] - HH - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 11:34:33 am EDT * Buff guys might be very popular in the afterlife. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 05:52:01 pm EDT * I think it's the wings that attrack the chicks [Spoilers] - HH - Tue Sep 05, 2006 at 01:08:17 pm EDT * And here I thought it was the horns and tail... [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 11:40:52 pm EDT * Well, they were both the same originally, so it's said. [Spoilers] - HH - Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 11:27:12 am EDT * Oh, and by the way, many thanks for posting and responding so valiantly during my absence. (no text) [Spoilers] - HH says don't feel you have to stop - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 06:44:04 pm EDT * 5 out of 6 readers surveyed say he did a good job. (no text) - Al B. Harper - gives Vizh the thumbs up! - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 05:01:20 am EDT * Hmmmm... so if it's not Al, who's that traitorous #6? (no text) - Visionary - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 08:54:40 am EDT * It's nice to see that plot point got tied up for now. It's also nice to see *Spoiler Magic Woman*. - L! - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 03:30:19 pm EDT * It's nice at least to fob off the rest of the work to other writers. (no text) - Laconic HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:06:12 am EDT * That replying was hard work. People were chatty. (no text) - Visionary - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 04:38:54 pm EDT * Whenever I get in a guest replier they always do better than I do. I think you might have set a record, though. (no text) - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 09:59:58 pm EDT * Wohoo! A record! I don't want to know what the catagory was. (no text) - Visionary - Mon Sep 04, 2006 at 08:55:34 am EDT * Indeed, one can never have too much *spoiler woman* (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 05:34:54 pm EDT * I think so too. I tried to tell her to come over and read it but she didn't answer her Messernger. (no text) - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 10:00:20 pm EDT * Hopefully she's lurking and can drop by eventually. (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:34:25 pm EDT * Now all they need are long, hot showers (edited for more content). - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 10:49:19 am EDT * Flapjack's game for that. - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:44:26 am EDT * I figured as much. - Anime Jason - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 12:09:28 pm EDT * That would require a whole other set of illustrations... - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 05:49:11 pm EDT * I'm sure some of them are just calling to you now. - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 07:54:27 pm EDT * Well, of the group that just made it back, only Hallie would, and she doesn't need to shower. - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:32:37 pm EDT * I'm sure she can make an exception. - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:53:57 pm EDT * She might still be sore about her tail. - Visionary - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 12:34:28 am EDT * Phantom limb pain? - Anime Jason - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 11:38:33 am EDT * Heh... - Visionary - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 03:27:05 pm EDT * Hey, I didn't start it. - Anime Jason - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 04:34:39 pm EDT * It was always burning since the world's been turning. - Visionary - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 02:56:33 pm EDT * I thought I put that out already. - Anime Jason - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 04:45:21 pm EDT * Can't be too careful with matches. - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:47:21 am EDT * I like using those wand torch lighters cranked all the way up. But that's just me. - Anime Jason - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 12:08:14 pm EDT * Hopefully the lighthouse won't be blacked out then when they get home - Hatman - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 03:22:14 pm EDT * That would be very, very bad. - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 07:24:43 pm EDT * I think I said that as long as Hallie's alive, the lighthouse light shines... So I hope so too. - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 05:51:27 pm EDT * Rock on. That was awsome [Spoilers] - ag in da hood - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 10:23:33 am EDT * I think the precise word was fantastic, in the original sense. [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:55:06 am EDT * True enough. [Spoilers] - ag - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 10:05:45 pm EDT * See? And to think he wanted to shoot me with a shotgun. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:00:31 pm EDT * He's never wanted to shoot me. And all that from a pic, THAT WE HAVE YET TO SEE! Ahem! [Spoilers] - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 09:20:18 pm EDT * I take it you'd like to see the picture. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:13:37 pm EDT * Sorry. I askwed in too many places. [Spoilers] - ag - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 07:14:55 am EDT * Yes, because I hate enthusiastic anticipation of my upcoming stories. ;-P [Spoilers] - Visionary - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 10:22:48 pm EDT * But what if I want to be "cool" and act disinterested? ;) [Spoilers] - ag - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 11:38:38 pm EDT * Needy and pleading is the new cool. Honest. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 03:03:45 pm EDT * SWEET! I neeed to pleeead more! Exclamation points are cool!!!!! [Spoilers] - ag - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 09:19:46 pm EDT * Question marks are the new exclamation points. [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:56:49 am EDT * And commas are the new Question marks. [Spoilers] - ag - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 10:44:12 pm EDT * Ahhh....so that's how it all works... - Al B. Harper - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 07:05:51 am EDT * That line could well be Al B.'s epitaph - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 12:00:17 pm EDT * See? All fairy tales have a logical explanation. Er... sort of. - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 07:52:08 am EDT * Leave it to the scientist to find a logical explanation. - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 10:34:17 am EDT * Some of the best centaur minds are working on the problem right now. - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:04:39 pm EDT * Good to see somebeasts are. - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 09:23:01 pm EDT * A fine almost conclusion. (no text) - killer shrike - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 04:22:57 am EDT * A fine almost reply. (no text) - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 11:57:25 am EDT * I'm more than happy that Untold Tales never quite reach an end. (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 07:53:07 am EDT * An amazing tale! - The Hooded Hat - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 01:49:46 am EDT * No, an Untold Tale. It says so right there in the title. Except it's been, well, kind of told. - HH - Sun Sep 03, 2006 at 12:33:22 pm EDT * It's one of my favorites as well. - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 08:29:06 am EDT * Great pic, btw. (no text) - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 10:29:35 am EDT * Thank you! I'm quite glad it wasn't permanently lost on my old computer. (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:05:34 pm EDT * I guess you never got my email but you did get everything, right? If there is something I can do, let me know. (no text) - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 09:28:26 pm EDT * Thanks, but things are finally under control again. (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:16:58 pm EDT * Good thing. (no text) - ag - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 07:15:56 am EDT * Bonus feature to #285: Untold Fairy Tales of the Parodyverse: the Making of Magweed and Griffin [Spoilers] - HH presents a behind the scenes look - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 12:10:05 am EDT * That looks a lot like my story notes only I'm usually talking to myself. (no text) - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 03:39:21 pm EDT * You color-coordinate the different voices in your head? (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:06:15 pm EDT * Only in my head. I'm too lazy to do that in documents. (no text) - Anime Jason - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 07:22:32 pm EDT * I made it half way through. I'll finish when I can. Where is the Maggie pic mentioned inside? [Spoilers] - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:47:05 am EDT * The pic has been updated to a full-color one of Maggie and Griff. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:07:26 pm EDT * And we'll see it... when? [Spoilers] - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 09:24:21 pm EDT * Probably with the next story featuring the kids. (no text) [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:17:53 pm EDT * Sounds good. (no text) - ag - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 07:16:39 am EDT * So that's how it's done! [Spoilers] - Al B. Harper - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 10:21:33 am EDT * My secret's out. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:09:08 pm EDT * Ooh, special features! I'm about a third of the way through but sleep beckons. I shall finish in the morning (no text) - The Hooded Hat - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 01:51:16 am EDT * Everything's in there short of a phone number so Ian can provide audio commentary while you read. (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 08:30:46 am EDT * I would have liked that, since I've never heard his (or your) voices. I'd settle for a pic of Maggie and Griffen, please. (no text) - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:52:44 am EDT * The pic is coming soon... [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 06:12:26 pm EDT * To a PV Board near you... [Spoilers] - ag - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 09:26:30 pm EDT * Same myth time, same myth channel. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 11:19:13 pm EDT * Holy Farie Dust, Bat-Vish! [Spoilers] - ag - Thu Aug 31, 2006 at 07:18:41 am EDT * Robin had enough image problems even without reading a line like that. [Spoilers] - Visionary - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 03:06:16 pm EDT * Poor Robin, people never got him. I never got him. [Spoilers] - ag - Sat Sep 02, 2006 at 09:27:48 pm EDT * The above offers a glimpse into how the story evolved, from subplots that might have been, characters that almost were, and may offer some clues about future events. (no text) - Visionary - Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 12:14:44 am EDT

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