Cue the John Williams fanfare.
Cut to starfield with improbable planetary-system-high letters receding into the distance.
And they said:

IT IS A TIME OF GREAT UNREST AMONGST THE CIVILISED WORLDS. AS THE RESOLUTION WAR APPROACHES, THE GAMESMASTER DECLARES THE NEXT TRANSWORLDS CHALLENGE, THE RACE OF SKILL, COURAGE, AND ENDURANCE TO WIN THE INFINITE ENERGY SOURCE KNOWN AS THE STARSEED.

NEWEST OF THE ENTRANT WORLDS IS A PRIMITIVE PLANET CALLED EARTH, WHOSE INHABITANTS HAVE GAMBLED A NATURE-AVATAR CALLED SORCERESS AND WHO NOW SET FORTH FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE CONTEST TO SHAPE DESTINY…



    “Wow,” breathed CrazySugarFreakBoy!, leaning out of the window and staring into the strangely-lit night sky. “This is going to be sooo cool!”
    “This is in no way cool,” grouched Hatman, pacing the Lair Legion Meeting Room. “Who the hell decided Whitney was Earth’s stake, to be forfeited if we don’t win this damned challenge?”
    “She did, apparently,” Lisa reported. “Apparently she owed a favour to the Hooded Hood for bringing someone back from Faerie?”
    “I never agreed to that,” complained Jay Boaz. He didn’t yet realise that his former lover’s indenture to the Hooded Hood was as a result of Hatman declining to stay safe and happy in the alternate reality the cowled crime czar had constructed for them.
    “So we go in, we do the race, we win, Whit comes home,” Trickshot shrugged. “So what?”
    “This is going to be a difficult challenge,” Amazing Guy warned. “The Gamesmaster screws up my cosmic awareness somehow, but I’m already picking up that there will be hundreds, maybe thousands of contestants from across the known universe.”
    “Skree?” worried Nats. “They won the race last time.”
    “Skree, Skunks, Shee-Yar, Thonngarians, Maxellians, Broob, Apuffyliptians, the S’Zox,” the Librarian listed. “You name it they’ll be in there. And all of them will be looking for the big prize.”
    “Then we need to beat them all, every single blighter,” argued Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Starseed’s one of our chaps, or he was when he was a chap not a big energy crystal thingie. We don’t let our chaps down. And was are most definitely goin’ to retrieve my granddaughter Whitney. No question.”
    “None,” emphasised Hatman.
    “And think of the good we could do with an infinite energy source,” suggested Dancer.
    “Um,” gulped Nats, raising his hand.
    “Um?” asked Falcon ominously. “Um what? Who you gone and slept with this time?”
    “No, it’s not that,” Nats promised. “Honestly. But… well, you remember when I accidentally married Uhuna?”
    “No, the Abhuman War had completely slipped our minds,” scorned Trickshot.
    “Well, you remember Yo took me to the Hooded Hood.”
    “Yo remembers,” agreed the pure thought being in the Zorro outfit. “And you are to be promising to be doing uncute Hoodily a favour in exchange for… oh dearing!”
    “Oh dearing?” Falc rumbled ominously.
    “I suspect the Hooded Hood may have called his favour in with Nats,” bubbled the Manga Shoggoth. “The Hood seeks the Starseed.”
    “Too bad,” snapped Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “He ain’t getting’ it.”
    ~~Is this why the Hood enmeshed Sorceress within his plots?~~ Cressida the wonder worm speculated.
    “One reason, perhaps,” Lisa considered. “He never makes do with one motive when he can have lots.”
    Nats raised his hand again. “Um.”
    “Now what?” Hatman asked exasperatedly.
    “We kind of need to work with the Hood on this one,” Nats winced. “And not just because of what he threatened to do to me if I reneged on my bargain with him. It’s Aunt Sally.”
    “Aunt Sally?” Dancer frowned. “Your sweet high-tech timespace-jumping whiz wagon?”
    “The one that Exile received from a distant mystery relative he never knew – oh damn!” hissed Lisa. “Damn and blast that devious attractive man!”
    “Exile?” Dancer wondered.
    “No,” scowled Lisa. “That Hooded Hood.”
    Amazing Guy raised his hand. “Okay, now I’ve got to ‘um’,” he admitted. “What?”
    “Lisa’s thinking back to the world tour,” CSFB! realised. “To when G-Eyed discovered his origin.”
    “Goldeneyed has an origin?” grumbled dull thud. “How come everybody has an origin but me?”
    “Your time will come, I’m sure,” Dancer comforted him, “and I bet it’ll be as convoluted and stupid as anybody’s.”
    “In the far future,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! narrated, “well, one far future anyway, the three lovely Zemo sisters were all impregnated on the same night, one by Starseed, one by Dirth Vortex, and one by, well quite likely both. They each had a baby that was sent back in time for safe-keeping, because these kids would grow up to be Goldeneyed, Exile, and Suicide Blonde.”
    “Hold it,” complained Trickshot. “Which one had Vortex as a father?”
    “Hold it,” interrupted Princess Uhunalura of the Abhumans, “You’re saying a girl can sleep with more than one boyfriend?”
    “More than one branch of the armed forces,” smirked Lisa.
    “G-Eyed was Starseed’s, Exile was Vortex’s,” CSFB! footnoted. “But that’s not important right now. What’s important was the lineage of the mothers. See they had a Zemo in their immediate past, but on the maternal line they descended from a pairing between the Celestian Madonna, whoever that turns out to be, and the Fernbiote.”
    “Okay, you’re just making this up now,” Falcon objected.
    “No, the Fernbiote is either spiffy or some descendant of his – or at least his fern’s,” CSFB! promised.
    “But this hasn’t happened yet, right,” Dancer shuddered. “spiffy hasn’t procreated.” A nasty thought occurred to her. “Where’s Kerry?”
    “I don’t see what this has to do with Aunt Sally,” Trickshot interrupted. “Or anything at all, in fact.”
    “Well, who was spiffy’s father?” Lisa demanded. “At least pre-retcon.”
    “HH!” Hatman realised. “So when Exile got Aunt Sally from an unknown distant relative…”
    “He got her from the Hood, yeah,” nodded Nats.
    “So she’s a villainous vehicle?” frowned Sir Mumphrey.
    Bill Reed shook his head “No. Just… indentured.”
    “Oh joy,” frowned Falcon. “Partnered with the Hooded Hood. You just know that’s gonna turn out well.”



    Wilma Stauf liked her job. She didn’t earn much on the checkout of the local ROXXoil filling station and twenty-four hour convenience store but she got to chat with the regulars when they called in and it kept her in soppy romance novels and the occasional box of soft centres. Nothing unusual or exciting ever happened in Germaine, in the whole of Brighome County, and she liked that just fine.
    Until the strangers arrived.
    Wilma knew they were strangers because they rolled up in an battered old open-top caddy with rental plates, and they were all dressed very oddly.
    The driver hopped out to fill up on gas, and he was dressed in one of those white Elvis suits, with rhinestones embroidered at cuffs and lapels and up the sides of his pants. He had a big hunting knifes stuck down the front of his wide ornate waistband and Wilma couldn’t think that was at all safe. The passengers were a young woman with remarkable silver hair – surely not a natural colour or length, trailing almost to the floor – and another person. Wilma didn’t pay much attention to the third person. It was almost as if her eyes and attention slid off him.
    When the tank was full the Elvis came in to pay and the others entered the store with him. “Hi,” he called to her as he stocked up on chocolate bars for the next leg of the journey. He paused at the spinner rack filled with road maps. “Hey, should we buy one these?” he called to his male companion. “We’re almost off the map we have.”
    “Yes we are,” agreed Xander the Improbable with some satisfaction. “But no, we won’t need another chart. We’ve reached our destination.”
    Cleone looked around in puzzlement. “Here?” she asked.
    “Her,” answered Xander, pointing at Wilma Stauf. And something about his eyes terrified the shop girl to the core.
    “That’ll be… $23.49,” Wilma stammered as the three outsiders looked at her. “Have… have a nice day.”
    “Are you happy, Wilma?” Xander asked, staring intently. “Happy here? With this life?”
    “Y-yes. Yes I am. Happier than I can ever remember being.”
    “I’m sorry about that,” the master of the mystic crafts admitted. “Sorry to take you away from it.”
    “Take me…?” Wilma’s hand crept down towards the alarm button. She didn’t want to be kidnapped by weirdos. She’d read in World Weekly News what happened to kidnapped young women. Now she thought about it, these three looked like Satanic cultists.
    “You said this was the happiest you remember being,” Xander prompted her, “but can you remember anything else? Where were you before this? Your childhood? Where were you born?”
    And Wilma realised she didn’t know. She’d never known, and she’d never realised that before now.
    “You’ve been allowed to sleep for a while, for your comfort and the world’s safety,” Xander told her, brushing his fingertips across her forehead and speaking slowly and hypnotically. “Now I’m afraid it’s time for you to wake up. We need you.” He withdrew his hand and looked into a very different face with eyes that flickered in rainbow hues. “Mad Wendy.”



    Nitz looked out from behind the sofa. “Are they all gone?” he asked anxiously.
    Naomi nodded. “Sure, because the paparazzi just go away quietly and apologetically when you ask them to leave,” she snorted sarcastically. “On the bright side, as soon as I’m legal I’ve got a pretty good offer to pose for Playboy. In your costume.”
    “They’re still at the door?” Nitz wasn’t used to the frenzy of media spotlight.
    “Front door, back door, climbing the drainpipes, the whole nine yards. Mom’s gonna freak when she sees the trampled gardens. Who’d have known that being Priest of Zeku would make you Earth’s representative for naming our contestants in this Transworlds Challenge?” Naomi shrugged. “Anyway, you have a visitor.”
    Nitz looked cautiously from behind the couch. “Not a reporter?”
    “No,” agreed the elegant coffee-coloured woman in the doorway. She smiled a smooth, exotic smile and looked down at Nitz the Bloody. “I’m the high priestess of the Manga Shoggoth,” she explained. “You can call me Ebony of Nubilia.”
    “Are you… are we enemies as well?” Nitz despaired. “Ancient rivals locked in a bloody struggle through the centuries?”
    “You wish,” snorted Naomi.
    “Nope,” the young woman assured him. “Not enemies. Just in the same line of work. I thought you might like a few handy tips.”



    “You’re criminal scum, a nasty little mercenary bully with no personal code and no personal hygiene.”
    “Says the killer cop wannabee ninja from the lame universe what can’t even get itself no superheroes.”
    “We have clowns, so why do we need more idiots in tight? With pony-tails.”
    “Because that way it’s even funnier when you get your ass spanked by a real fighter, darling!”
    “If you happen to see one be sure to tell me, when you come out of hiding!”
    “How long have they been at this?” Sorceress asked as she returned to the guest lounge in Herringcarp Asylum.
    “Dunno,” shrugged Blackhearted, sitting morosely on a couch and sipping a beer while Keiko and Killer Shrike bickered. “I lost score about half an hour ago. I’m just hoping they kill each other soon.”
    “My money’s on Keiko, after a fairly tough fight,” Sorceress considered.
    “I guess,” judged Blackhearted. “She’d get pulped by the Yurt or Onslaughter, but I think she’d beat KS with both hands tied behind her back.”
    “Hey, I heard that,” Killer Shrike objected. “Beat me? In a bake-off, maybe.”
    Keiko snorted. “I'm sure you would fit easily into the oven with a few appendages removed.”
    “If that's your idea of award-worthy baking no wonder you have a hard time keeping a man. Maybe I'll buy you the Joys of Cooking.”
    “Thank you. I'll gladly take advice from the book which helps you keep your man.”
    “Just because I'm not attracted to your ‘Lizzie Borden on PCP’ act doesn't mean I'm gay.”
    “Because the yellow hair extension’s just a lifestyle choice.”
    “Yeah, cause I don’t have to live with man-envy, sweetheart.”
    “Could have fooled me, cupcake.”
    “I don’t know why they keep on,” Blackhearted admitted.
    “Shrike is bored,” Whitney Darkness explained, “and he doesn’t realise that Keiko’s assessing him for if she has to kill him later on. It’s all just to keep their minds off the mission we’re waiting to start. Neither one’s been off-planet before, have they?”
    “Not like us?” Blackhearted suggested. “Look, I’m not the Bry Katz you knew, Whitney. I’m not your old friend. I don’t do ‘friends’ now.”
    “Because things went badly for you?” Sorceress asked him. “You made some bad choices, had some bad luck, lost someone you loved because you drove them away?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “Cry me a river!””.
    Every cup and bottle in the room shattered.
    “Oooh, scary!” mocked Blackhearted, teleported all the fragments into a pile in the bin, then teleported away.
    Sorceress got up abruptly and stalked out.
    Killer Shrike glanced at Keiko. “What’s wrong with them?”



    “Good evening, m’dear,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton bade the large red and yellow whiz wagon that sat in the middle of the Lair Mansion hanger bay. He tipped his hat politely and went over.
    “Good evening, Sir Mumphrey,” Aunt Sally bade him. “And thank you for sending those two interns down to give me a polish and detailing.”
    “Least we could do. Don’t mention it. But I hoped we could have a little chat if you don’t mind?”
    “Ah. I wondered when somebody would broach the Hooded Hood connection. I was asked not to mention who I came from until somebody worked it out first.”
    “Asked by the Hood?”
    “Sort of,” Aunt Sally answered. “but not the Hood as you know him. By the Marquis of Herringcarp, in 1799. It’s a long story.”
    Mumphrey perched on an old oil drum and tugged his whiskers smooth. “I have plenty of time,” he said affably. “Do tell.”



    “Where are you two to be going off to?” Yo asked Dancer and Lisa as s/he spotted them leaving the Lair Mansion. “Is not to be conquering-the world Tuesday again is it?”
    “Nah, don’t worry,” grinned Sarah Shepherdson. “You just carry on with the preparations for the big Wacky Races contest, okay?”
    “We’re just slipping out for Mumph,” Lisa added enigmatically. “To open up a second front.”



    “There are basically two kinds of priests,” Ebony explained to Nitz the Bloody. “Well, three if you count the screaming cultist sacrificing-virgins kind, but it’s really best to just put them out of their misery.”
    “Okay,” Nitz agreed. “And the other two?”
    “There’s the priests who get direct communication with their deity…”
    “Like say seeing a big rhino that talks to them?” the Priest of Zeku asked anxiously.
    “Or carrying a bit of their employer round in an amulet,” added Ebony, indicating the rather pretty necklace she was wearing. “And there are those who have to get by on faith alone, just like the other worshippers.”
    “The ones with made-up gods,” Nitz suggested.
    “Or gods too big to fit into a rhino or an amulet,” Ebony suggested. “Anyway, a priest of either kind has two basic jobs.”
    “One of them isn’t sermons , is it?” Nitz asked worriedly. “I don’t think I’m good at sermons.”
    “The priest acts as their god’s representative, a kind of middle-man or woman, saying and doing the things the god wants saying or doing. In my case with the Shoggoth, who’s not exactly a god so much as a loathsome squamous elder entity , what he usually wants doing is buying DVDs and what he usually wants saying is ‘Why aren’t they making any more Tenchi?’”
    “Zeku usually wants me to root out misuses of his power, Drak Zeku, and to care for the planet and stuff,” Nitz admitted. “DVD purchasing would be so much cooler.”
    “But the second part,” Ebony went on, “the second part is still more important. You see the priest really is like a middle man, a mouthpiece. But it works both ways. The priest has to convince people to do as his god wants, but he also has to convince his god to do what the people want.”
    “Like a lobbyist in Congress.”
    “Only with less of a hospitality budget. The priest represents the needs of the people. Stands up for them.” Ebony sighed. “Sometimes our bosses don’t really understand what it means to be human, so they need us to stop them getting carried away or missing the point.” She looked at Nitz seriously. “Sometimes the bravest thing you’ll be called on to do is to say no to your god.”
    “I was going to say aren’t gods supposed to be infallible,” Nitz admitted, “but then I thought of Zeku’s track record.”
    “If there was a god who really understood being human, and who really was infallible… well, that would be a terrifying, awesome thing indeed,” Ebony whispered. “That might be a very different discipleship.” She shrugged and lightened up. “But us, we just try to stop the boss from eating the McDonalds stand not just the burger, you with me?”
    “I think so.”
    “Good,” Ebony told him. “Y’see, you’ve just got yourself dropped in the middle of an intergalactic media circus. Everyone’s going to want a piece of you, to manipulate you, to tear you down, to bask in your limelight, whatever. It’s going to be desperately easy to make a really huge ass of yourself. You could get rich, get laid, get set up for life. Or you could do the job.” She glanced across at the young hero. “Which are you going to do?”
    “Can I take a minute to think about it?” Nitz the Bloody pleaded.



    “We do not,” Miss Framlicker argued, “and I want to emphasise this point extremely vigorously, we do not do freebies.”
    “But if we don’t help with this Transworlds Challenge then the world gets deleted,” Al B. pointed out. “And if we don’t win it, then Whitney gets executed.”
    “Then we should ask for time and a half.”
    “Al and I are kind of members of the Lair Legion,” Nats ventured, staying low because his employer sometimes had a habit of hurling coffee mugs when she was very irritated. “We are supposed to help out when the planet’s threatened with, y’know, imminent destruction.”
    “Not in office hours, you’re not,” Miss Framlicker insisted. “Look, I don’t want to be the hard-nosed one but we’re a new company here. Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises. We’re just starting out, and we’re already foundering for lack of business. We’re trying to compete with ITC and the big boys and we can’t, just can’t afford to do charity work.”
    She looked despairingly at the unpaid bills on her desk. Who knew dimensional phase transference coils were so expensive?
    “Think of this as marketing,” Al suggested. “We’re going to be providing tech support to Aunt Sally in a race that’ll be seen by all the civilised races of the galaxy. That’s got to be worth a few contracts.”
    “And by the time we get them, we’ll already be bankrupt,” Miss Framlicker answered. “Look, we’re already behind on our payments. Another week and we’ll be shut down.”
    “But we have to help,” argued Nats. “It’s the right thing to do.”
    The firehouse doorbell rang. Amy put down her beer and hopped up to answer it. “Keep bickering,” she told them. “This’ll just be the solution I rang up for earlier.”
    “Bickering?” objected Miss F.
    “Us?” argued Al B Harper.
    “Yeah, hard to believe isn’t it?” snorted Nats.
    Amy Aston returned with a smartly-dressed young Filipino businessman.
    “Enty!” cried Nats. “Er, I mean, Jamie Bautista, employer of the world-famous corporate icon and founder Legionnaire NTU-150.”
    “Nice cover,” Jamie told him. “Amy called me and told me you were having a few problems.”
    “Nothing major,” Al B. said enthusiastically, scooping up an armful of complicated equipment from his workbench and proffering it to Enty. “Just an annoying glitch in the phase resonator interface that I can’t seem to…”
    “I think Mr Bautista meant the financial side of the business,” Miss Framlicker interrupted coldly.
    “We’re kind of a new company,” Amy explained. “So we can’t afford to go save the world.”
    “Is that all?” Jamie asked. “Okay, how about Bautista Enterprises hires you to provide tech support to our Transworlds Challenge contestants, a kind of sponsorship deal? Would that help?”
    “That…” swallowed Miss F, “that would be marvellous.”
    “Fine. And if we happen to win, I’ll also switch over all our offworld and offdimension haulage business to EEE, okay?” Enty suggested. “Deal?”
    “Deal,” agreed Miss Framlicker quickly, pumping Jamie Bautista’s hand.
    “Fine,” smiled the young inventor. He retrieved his hand and turned to Al B. “So about that phase resonator interface?”
    “I’ll go get the fire extinguishers,” Amy said prudently.



    “Why me?” demanded Asil for the dozenth time. “What have I done wrong?”
    “You haven’t done anything wrong, Asil,” Visionary assured the Lisa-clone. “That’s why I know I can rely on you.”
    “To look after Kerry while you’re off saving the world?” Asil sulked. “Can I use capital punishment?”
    “I think you mean corporal punishment,” the possibly fake man told her. “And no, not really.”
    “I know what I meant,” Asil answered darkly.
    “Look, Hallie will be around to help you and things will be pretty quiet with most of the LL away. I’ve arranged some guest tutors. I’m sure the Juniors will enjoy Frog-Man.”
    “For breakfast,” muttered the young administrator of the Lair Legion. “Can we at least staple tracking tags to their ears?”
    “Sir Mumphrey’s staying around. If there’s any problems just tell him.”
    “And then he’ll think I’m not able to cope!” wailed Asil.
    Vizh laid a hand on the young Lisa-clone’s shoulder. “I think you’ll do just fine,” he promised, hefting his duffle bag of clothes ready for the mission. “Take care.”
    “And I think it’ll be a great show,” snickered Fleabot, just before the plant pot hit him.



    Whitney Darkness took a lantern from a rusty hook on the wall and ventured deeper into the undercrofts of Herringcarp Asylum. It was cold down here, bone-chillingly cold, and great icy drops of water fell irregularly onto the flagstone floor. Some of the paving was reused grave markers.
    At the bottom of a flight of stairs was a heavy door shod with iron and held shut by a thick metal bar. The thought of passing through the door terrified the Sorceress.
    She steeled herself and pulled aside the bolt. The door creaked as it opened just as she’d known it would. The breeze flickered the lantern and made the shadows dance madly in the low passageway beyond.
    The walls weren’t built here, they were carved, chiselled out of the basalt, rimed with dead mould. The corridor smelled like the decay at low tide, and indeed there were salt marks where ancient flooding had risen. And at the far end of the tunnel was a heavy iron gate.
    Even from a distance away Whitney could sense the mystical wardings around it. They were potent and complicated and very, very nasty.
    “Too nasty for you,” a gravelly voice said from the darkness ahead.
    Whitney controlled her fear. It wanted her to be frightened. It had wanted her to be frightened ever since the Hooded Hood had brought her to this place, ever since it had first called out to her.
    “There’s nasty and nasty,” she answered. “Some people thought you were nasty, Bloodreaper. Until someone nastier took you down and locked you away in the dark.”
    “When I get free,” the creature in the shadows promised, “I shall show you nasty.”
    “Actually you’ll stay well away from me,” Whitney Darkness commanded it. “That was the bargain I made with your friends. The Chain Knight keeps his pacts.”
    “Then loose me.”
    The Sorceress shook her head. “In my time, not yours,” she defied him. “I let the Hood enmesh me, enslave me because I’m tired of being manipulated. Tired of being hurt. Now it’s my turn to manipulate and hurt those who attack me.”
    “You talk the talk,” the Bloodreaper challenged, “but can you do the deed? Let me out.”
    “When I’m ready,” answered the Darkness witch. She turned away, ignoring the threats and insults of the killing machine, and rebolted the door behind her. Then she padded back up the stairs to get a sound night’s sleep at last.
    Keiko peeled herself from the shadows and watched her go.



    “Okay, I’ve set up a big trans-space teleport gate and synched it to the Gamesmaster’s receiver signal,” Al B. Harper called across the courtyard behind the Lair Mansion. “As soon as G-Eyed’s wired in it’ll fire off and take us to Alpha Reticula where the game’s afoot.”
    “Why do these things always involve me being strapped into a pain chair?” Bry Katz grumbled.
    “I’m sorry, Bryan, but I simply can’t carry all the people and equipment you’re needing to bring along,” apologised Aunt Sally.
    The away team was indeed assembled for the mission. Six of the seven crew who would fly Aunt Sally were already aboard the whiz wagon, Trickshot and CrazySugarFreakBoy! each in one of the side nacelle seats, Nats behind the joystick at the pilot’s station, Vizh on scanners, Amazing Guy on navigation, and Hatman at engineering on the gallery deck behind.
    The support crew who were going with the team were packed into two of the Legion’s all-terrain road vehicles. The first had a hastily-stencilled EEE logo added to the side, and carried Al B, Miss F, Amy, and Uhuna. The second transported the diplomatic team accompanying Nitz the Bloody: Yo, the Librarian, Falcon, and Ebony.
    “Godspeed!” called Sir Mumphrey Wilton, and the group staying behind who stood by the French windows to the Lair Legion Living Room shouted their farewells and encouragement along with him. dull thud, Mr Epitome, the Manga Shoggoth, HALLIE, Asil, Flapjack, Art, Randy, Mindy, and Amber all sent their best wishes and farewells to the departing contestants.
    Then Al B. Harper pulled the big breaker lever that powered up the gateway to link into the Gamesmaster’s systems four thousand light years away. Aunt Sally and her escorts trundled through the crackling interface and off to the races.



Next time: It’s time to meet the other contestants, to discover the contest, to hear the rules, and to understand the forfeits. Yes, our story takes us the Alpha Reticula and the Gamesmaster’s Worldship, and to a social gathering unlike any the Legion’s seen before. Join in the fun in Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: The Starting Gate, or Lives of the Party.

And for a CrazySugarFreakBoy! crossover go to #172.5: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion's Loves Left Behind

It’s Footnotes, Jim, But Not as We Know It:

The Starseed: Starseed (Manuel – I don’t know if a surname was ever established) was an early poster-character who served in the Lair Legion and in solo adventures as a master of the Gah!-force. By shouting Gaaaah! loudly he could accomplish a range of effects, from simple percussive blasts to quasi-mystical outcomes. Starseed died at least twice in his own stories and came back more powerful each time. He took on Space Ghost as an acolyte at one point.

By the time I started writing Starseed the poster was rare on the board. I established Starseed as “the professional one” in the LL with the poster’s consent, and later expanded the parallels between Starseed’s abilities and some legendary martial arts disciplines. I introduced Starseed’s evil counterpart Dirth Vortex as a Mumphrey villain, (drawing on the comparisons between the Gah! masters and the Jedi). When it became apparent that Starseed was unlikely to return as a poster I had Starseed move on to a higher plane of existence and go out into the stars to develop and evolve again after yet another death.

Finally, in UT#106 I established that Starseed has transformed into the penultimate stage of his evolution, a kind of cosmic Gah!-energy crystal from which he will emerge fully transformed. But that transformation will also be one of the last conditions for the coming of the Resolution War, the ultimate battle for which the Parodyverse was created. The Starseed vanished after that story arc, appeared as a quest object in AG’s Crisis series, and has resurfaced again now as the prize in this time’s Transworlds Challenge.

Many Alien Races We’ll footnote them next time when they appear in person.

Goldeneyed and Exile Genealogies: As explained in the story, G-Eyed and Exile were sent from the far future as infants, to be brought up by the Order of the Observing Eye, a sect that prepares young male warriors for the coming Resolution War. The third cousin, Bambi Bacall, the Suicide Blonde, was raised separately. All three of them could trace their ancestry back to Zemo and to spiffy, and were fathered by either Starseed or Dirth Vortex. The identity of the Celestian Madonna has not yet been revealed. Since spiffy was the Hooded Hood’s son at the time all this happened (although now retconned not to be) it explains why Exile received Aunt Sally from “a distant relative”. As to how the Hood came to have possession of the last Austernal exploration vessel, that’s another story yet to be revealed.

Mad Wendy is a world-class psionic from the Technoverse. She has massive reality-warping abilities and can suck people into her own private mental worlds. After her last encounter with Sorceress, Wendy was recruited briefly by Xander the Improbable to fight the Red Watchman’s science villains. Her fate thereafter was unchronicled until now. Mad Wendy’s principal appearances are in Premiere #16: Lost Children and Premiere #22: Here Comes a Candle….

Naomi Takoshi is the daughter of former Priest of Zeku Jenna Takoshi. Nitz isn’t staying with Jenna and Naomi right now, but for the purposes of this story that’s where he was hiding out from the media.

Ebony of Nubilia is the high priestess of the Shoggoth Cult, which is nothing like as gory or formal as you’re imagining. She’s worked her way up from being a human sacrifice. Ebony’s origin is recounted in the Manga Shoggoth’s story Prices and Favours.

The Bloodreaper is the captive fifth member of the Hellraisers, a powerful band of villains now plotting the downfall of the Hooded Hood. This is the first time we learn they have gained the Sorceress as an accomplice.

And thanks to Killer Shrike and MangaCoolJason for providing the additional dialogue in Shrike and Keiko’s confrontation. Some of the insults are drawn straight from board chatter in response to an earlier episode.


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 © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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.