Storytelling,

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction,

On Stories: Plots of Relationships

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

One way to understand the difference between competitive plots, journey plots and relational plots is to think of body, mind and heart.  Please click on the tab “On Stories” above to read about plots of competition and journeys.  I encourage you to do so. 

The Body:      Plots of competition are physical and active plots, not to be confused with action plots.  Whether the story is external (action oriented) or internal (character oriented) these plots turn on “what happens.”  When you have a strong protagonist and a strong antagonist, the plot will move on what they do, often to each other.  Whether they are in a rivalry, an adversarial relationship or one is an underdog,  whether it is man against man, man against nature or even man against himself, there is a fight going on and it will express itself in some outward form, though what happens.

The Mind:      Journey plots, on the other hand, might better be called plots of thought or learning if you will.  These are the plots that explore life, the universe and everything.  That is not to say nothing happens here.  The quest, escape, the rescue, or thrillers all have lots of action, but at the same time they are journeys of discovery.  Thus in the end the detectives understand something about life and perhaps something about themselves that they did not grasp at first.  This is especially true of plots of exploration, rising or falling, transformation or coming of age – all journey plots where something is learned in the process.

The Heart:     By contrast, plots of relationships are emotive plots, emotional explorations that depend more on what people feel than what they think or do.  Again, a plot where nothing happens will be dull, dull and no story at all; but in relational plots the whole motivation and response to what happens is more emotional than anything else.

Caution:         Competitors think and feel.  People on a journey do things and also feel.  And people in relationships are not mindless, inactive emotional blobs.  We are simply talking the emphasis of the story here.

The essential relational plot is two people in relationship (duh)!  Of course, one of those people might be something other.  Both the Last Samurai and Dances with Wolves might be described as plots of relationship where the person finds themselves in a strange culture with no means of escape.  There is a lot of emotional turmoil and angst in the process of getting adjusted to a new way of life.

Sometimes, the two people might be siblings as in Rich Man, Poor Man, or in some of the work of Jodi Picoult like My Sister’s Keeper.  Generally, though, the story is about a couple and again, generally it is about one man and one woman.  That does not mean it is necessarily a love story.  There is also fear, hate (falling out of love), anger and tears as well as faith, hope, joy and satisfaction.  There is also lust and to be sure, some people make money writing pornography.

The relational plot explores the emotional life that drives our relationships.  Yes, most plots of relationships are written and read by women who understand relationships in a way most men will never comprehend even if you spell it out and hit them on the head with the proverbial sledge hammer.  But don’t discount someone like Nicholas Sparks who in a single love story can encompass most if not all of the above emotions and more.

The Plot:

The basic relational plot starts with a spark between two people: eyes across a crowded room like Rhett and Scarlet in Gone With the Wind or escaping a nebulous enemy like Charlie and Rose in the African Queen.  Notice, neither starts with love at first sight (though that has been done, and often enough), but there is a spark of some sort to start things off.  Perhaps the best word to describe things is what we say in real life:  There must be a certain chemistry between these two people right from the start.

Next comes the obstacles, difficulties and testing of the relationship.  Sometimes there is no antagonist, per se, but simply circumstances that get in the way.  Where would Rhett and Scarlet be without the Civil War?  Sometimes the people are not separated but are still moved through various trials in which their true inner character is revealed, as in the African Queen.

The end may be tragic… or not.  People like a happy ending.  Despite the innumerable women that die in Italian Operas – even while they belt out monstrous arias – a tragedy need not include death.  Rhett reached the point where he no longer gave a damn.  In Casablanca, the lovers separated for the greater good.  Still, people like a happy ending even if Mister and Missus Allnut end up in the drink in the African Queen.  Even when she doesn’t meet him at the top of the Empire State Building – he tracks her down…

Next time, the Love Story versus the Romance.

Traveler: Storyteller Tales: Vordan 3-2

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

            “I see.”  Alice spoke softly and wrote something in her notebook before she spoke again.  “So tell me about this Danna and why the Little Ones referred to her as goddess.  I don’t recall you saying they used any word for you except, Lord.”

            “Tell you about Danna?”  Glen wondered what he could say.

            “Yes please.”  Boston spoke as she came back loaded with goodies.

            “They called her goddess because she was a goddess.”  Glen thought that was obvious.

            Alice threw her pencil down on the table.  “No, please.  It is hard enough to accept that you have lived so many lives and you can become those other lives, though I bet you can’t explain that one.”  Glen shook his head.

            “Something about exchanging the same basic genetic code,” he said, but Alice was not finished. 

            “It is even harder to imagine you as a woman, though at least I have seen that.  I mean, I was raised a good catholic girl in a catholic school.  I had Jesuits for teachers, not witch doctors.  This god and goddess business is just too much, it is freaky; even beyond the fairies and the rest.”

            “Would you like to meet a fairy?’  Glen asked.  “Would it help to see with your own eyes?”

            Alice said nothing.  She preferred to stare and leave her mouth open at the thought, but Boston made up for Alice’s shortcomings.  “Oh, yes, please.  I don’t need to see Avalon or anything as grand as that, only, please.  I would love to see a fairy.”

            “I’ve gotten that impression,” Glen said.  He called out in a way that made Bobbi and Lockhart both turn in their sleep.  Fyodor mumbled some unintelligible response before he got quiet.  Glen only said one word.  “Pumpkin.”  There was no flash of light or sound of trumpets or crack of thunder, or anything like that.  There was just, out of nowhere, a seven inch person with wings beating faster than a hummingbird, hovering in the air, getting her bearings before she rushed to Glen’s face and hugged him and gave his cheek lots of kisses.

            Alice had to put her hand to the back of her neck to brush the hair back down that had risen up.  Boston got up from her sitting position to her knees, and she squinted.  “Why is she so fuzzy looking?  I can’t seem to get her in focus.”

            “It’s alright, Pumpkin.  These are friends.  This is Alice.  And this is Boston who was just saying how wonderful she thinks the fairies are.”

            “You were?”  Pumpkin zoomed up to Boston’s face and solidified so Boston could get a good look. 

            “I wasn’t.  I was just thinking it really loud,” Boston said.  “I think you are wonderful.”

            “But you said that,” Pumpkin said.  “I can’t hear your thinker.  I am?”  That last comment caught up with the excited fairy.

            “Yes,” Boston affirmed.  “But I am surprised.  You sound just like a grown-up girl.”

            “And how did you expect me to sound?”  Pumpkin wondered.  “Like a boy?”

            “I think there is something in my coffee,” Alice said.  She looked down before she almost spilled it.  Pumpkin zoomed up to take a look.

            “I don’t see anything.”  The fairy smiled, and Alice got a good, close-up look. 

Alice raised her finger.  “May I?”  She asked.  She was asking Glen, but Pumpkin answered.

            “Can you scratch my feet?”  Pumpkin asked, and she lifted her legs so she looked like she was sitting in a chair, but she was still in mid-air, her wings pumping away; and Alice, after a moment, obliged.

            “Mrs. Pumpkin.”  Glen called after the matter was settled.  “You are acting like a fee still wet behind the wings.  Come here.  We were just talking about you, and I was about to tell them about Moira.  How is Moira?”

            Mrs. Pumpkin fluttered over and sat cross-legged, just like Boston, except she sat on the corner of the bed.  “Moira is fine.”  Pumpkin sounded hesitant.

            “What?”  Glen had to ask.

            “Well, if it wasn’t for me and Michaela, though she is getting older, you know, and Ellean, who is a hundred now and all full grown-up, I think Moira would be very lonely.  Michaela has Mister Oliver and their two children.  Michael is in college now, you know.  And Ellean has Macreedy, and Moira still looks like she is just twenty-something, and I think she needs someone.”

            “What?”  Glen had to ask the question out loud.

            “She needs a boyfriend.”  Pumpkin said it flatly, turned a little red and her wings came out and fluttered, though she stayed seated where she was.  “There, I said it.”

            “And that was very brave of you,” Boston encouraged the fairy.

            “I know,” Pumpkin commiserated.  “My Lord can be so scary sometimes.  I never know how he is going to react.”

            “Me neither,” Boston agreed and she looked at Glen.  He shook his head and yawned.

            “Can’t help you,” he said.  “The last thing a girl wants is to have her mother fix her up with someone, but the second-to-last has to be grandma interfering.  This grandma can’t help you.  I’m taking a strictly hands off policy.”  Glen folded his arms to show his determination.

            “Okay.”  Alice spoke up.  “You’re talking weird again.  You better explain.”

            “Actually, that is the rest of the story,” Glen said, and he sipped on his drink and sat up straight.  “When Danna blinked, she, Pumpkin, Macreedy, Ellean, Prickles and Ignatius vanished from the University woods.  We arrived at our destination in the same blink of an eye.  Whenever a Goddess takes you somewhere, it is always in the blink of an eye.”

            “That’s for sure,” Pumpkin said.

            “Faster than light?”  Boston asked.

            “Much,” Pumpkin said.  “And that light is pretty fast stuff.  Why, it is even faster than me, the light I mean.”

            “Instantaneous,” Glen said.  “And then someone immediately asked, “Where are we?”  I forget who.

            “It was me,” Pumpkin insisted, and after a moment’s thought, Glen smiled.

            “So it was.”

Traveler: Storyteller Tales: The Vordan 3-1

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

            Glen sat up and straightened the covers of his bed before he looked around.  He rather hoped he put everyone to sleep.  No such luck.    Boston had her pillow scrunched up beneath her chin and sat cross-legged on the floor, rapt at attention.  Alice had found a little roll-around tray table and she had her steno pad open and was taking notes.  It figured.  It was much easier to erase certain digital, video and audio information than it was to erase pen on paper.  Hard copy took some real magic to fix. 

            It was not that Glen, that is, the Traveler had anything to hide, but even at this late date, there were some things better not known and for a variety of reasons.  Glen frowned and looked at the rest of the room.  Bobbi was asleep on the spare bed on the men’s side of the partition.  Glen figured this would happen since the poor woman had to be exhausted from the stress if nothing else.  Lockhart was in the next bed, also sleeping.  Glen turned his head.  If Fyodor was not asleep, it was the next best thing.

            “Okay.”  Alice got his attention.  “All caught up.  Go on with the story.”

            “That was the whole story,” Glen said.  “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be working on that treaty?  Should you really be wasting your time on me?”

            “Absolutely.”  Boston spoke for both of them; but this time Alice frowned.

            “There are people working.  I have given instructions on several possible things to look for.  I’m supposed to be sleeping, now, go on.”

            “Go on?”

            “Danna just vanished with a whole troop of Little Ones,” Boston prompted.

            “Okay,” Alice said again.  “Maybe a few questions first, like who is Danna and why did the Little Ones, or whatever you call them, refer to her as goddess?”  Alice looked down at her notes.  “And, I am sorry but I am having a hard time believing all this stuff about fairies and goblins and elves and stuff.”

            “Yet you have no trouble believing that there is a Vordan battle fleet on the dark side of the moon preparing to invade the Earth?”

            “Only because I have seen some evidence of that.  Anyway, I saw Star Wars, but Lord of the Rings?”

            “You know, Peter Barrie said whenever someone stopped believing in fairies, somewhere in the world a fairy drops down dead.”

            “Yeah.”  Boston supported that idea.  “So go on with the story.”

            “Actually, I told Barrie that was not true, but he just said, “Dramatic License.”  Glen shrugged.

            “Stop it.  Would you just stop it.  I have seen the Princess with my own eyes, I’ll grant you, but I haven’t seen any geisha or cowboys or Dannas.”  Alice took a deep breath before she spoke again.  “Alright, start with these Little Ones.  What are they, really?”

            “They are sprites, spiritual beings, and the littlest spirits in the earth; though there are plenty of them.  They are what people all over the world have called nature spirits.  They green the grass, move the clouds, bring the rain and cause the waves that roll across the sea.  They cull the herds, tend the fields and make the roses bloom.  They work in the air, the waters and the fire under the earth where they keep the blood of the earth boiling and turning because the blood is the life; but people are mostly familiar with the sprites of the earth.  Those are the elves, fairies, goblins, dwarfs, pixies, brownies, hobgoblins, imps, and, well, I could go on.”

            Alice shook her head.  “Science understands too much of what you describe for me to believe what you say.  These things are strictly explained by natural forces, nothing more.”

            “Natural forces, yes.  But these are the natural forces that make it all happen.  When there is some anomaly that science cannot explain, it is because one of the little Ones has screwed up.”  Glen smiled, but remained serious.  “In the old days I used to get yelled at for that and often told to fix it.  I got yelled at a lot, sometimes, but anyway, you are just speaking like a modern know-it-all, no offence intended.  A hundred years ago and throughout all of the rest of history, people would have had no trouble understanding what I am talking about.”  He paused for a second to think and Alice politely kept quiet. 

            “Let’s put it this way.  These days, the universe is seen as a big, dead empty.  It is no more than dead matter and mindless energy that acts and reacts according to certain so-called natural laws, like the laws of gravity or motion or E=MC2.  But the truth is this: that the whole universe is teeming with life, only we can’t perceive it all in our lowly estate.  Think of it like layers in a cake.  We, and again I mean no offense, but we are like the bottom layer of the cake.  All we can see is cake, and so we assume that everything is just cake.  What we can’t normally see is the chocolate frosting, that holds it all together the other layers of cake, maybe a raspberry filling and the fancy decorations on top, not to mention the glass of milk to go with it.”

            Boston jumped up.  “I got quarters.  I’ll be right back.  Don’t start until I get back,” she said, but Glen yelled after her.

            “Chocolate chip cookies and a Doctor Pepper!”

            “Wait a minute.”  Alice spoke but she was not talking to Boston.  “I see some convoluted sense in what you are saying, but it still sounds like nonsense.  Next thing you will be telling me is there is a Mother Earth or like I should believe in Santa Clause.”

            “No comment on Santa,” Glen said.  “But I have known several Mother Earths.  Gaia was nice; strange but nice.  She liked her Apollo which is probably why she gave him Delphi when she went over to the other side.”

            “The other side?”

            Glen shook off that question and answered plainly.  “When she died.  Of course, she did not really die the way you and I understand it.  She just gave up that little bit of flesh and blood she used to wear, that’s all.  As I said, they are all spiritual beings.  Once upon a time there were the gods, and there were Greater Spirits and Lesser Spirits and finally Little Spirits, some of whom I happen to be responsible for.  There are plenty of Little Spirits that I am not responsible for and primarily because for good or ill they have some relationship with human beings.  I have only had a passing glance with the human race because usually I am a human being myself, and because of that, it would not do for me to have some kind of power over people or whatever.”

            “Like the djin?”

            “Generally, yes.  That djin was somewhere between lesser and little.  It is not a hard and fast line, you know.”

            “So now you are saying there really are gods like Jupiter, Mars and Venus and stuff?”

            “Were.  They all, mostly, went over to the other side some two thousand years ago, or so.  That was when the human race was deemed civilized enough, or maybe mature enough to not need the prodding, the guidance, the testing in the fire, the inspiration of the muses, you know.   Curiously, I was always counted among them as the Kairos, the name they chose for me.  God of History, they said, but I really just watched history happen and tried to deal with things that might push it off track, like alien invasions.”

            “The Vordan?”

            “Yes.  It is funny, you know.  I have no idea what might happen tomorrow or for maybe the next hundred years.  I always said that was because time was in flux.  It was not exactly written yet, and might change if I was not careful.  Yet I can look back on this time period in history and certain things are clear.”

            “Look back?”

            “I remember future lives, too.”

            “Oh yes, I forgot.”

            “Anyway, I can look back and see some things clearly.”

            “The Vordan?”

            “They are not in the record books.  They should not be here.”

###

NOTE: To read this story from the beginning or to read any of the stories of the Traveler please click the tab “Traveler Tales” above.  You can read any of the stories on the right independently, or just the Vordan story on the left, or the whole work in order as written.  Your choice.  Enjoy.  –Michael.

My Universe: The Younger Races before Our Time.

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Shortly after the Corsicarian and Spiders battled it out over Cuba, say 1600 AD, the warring Reichgo and Kargill met over the planet of the Zalanid.  There are stories, legends, almost myths about the Zalanid powers of persuasion.  It was said a Zalanid could sell a mother her own child.  It was said they could make a drowning man beg for water, and so on.  Really, they were a wise and empathetic race who turned their gifts toward the benefit of all peoples.  Though their own world was destroyed and made uninhabitable by the war, the few survivors managed to make a peace, a treaty between the Reichgo and Kargill which held for 400 years.

The Kargill, who generally talked to no one and lived apart to where no one even knew what they or it looked like, would condescend to communicate with the Zalanid.  Part of the treaty was that one Zalanid should be taken aboard every Kargill ship to act as an interpreter and go-between for the races.  The Elenar called the Zalanid the Kargill’s messenger of peace.  The Gott-Druk called him the Kargill’s dog.  In any case, our earth was clearly granted to the Kargill by treaty.  The Reichgo could visit since we were so near the border, but they could not stay.  (whew!)  All the Kargill did was park its ship at the bottom of the Atlantic and watch.  The Kargill was also very protective against any alien intrusion in its territory.

That did not mean the earth remained untouched during those years.

For one, the Kargill established a kind of interstellar police force in their corner of space to take the burden of keeping order.  (Apparently, this was so the Kargill could spend more time pursuing its chief occupation of just watching).  One penal ship refueled in the Pennsylvania mountains during the French and Indian war.  One group of slippery characters manipulated the earth (various governments) and almost turned the War of 1812 into the First World War.

Then a prison ship crashed in the American West not long before the Civil War, and the police came for the prisoners some short time after the war.  In the Victorian era, we were visited by true shape shifters who could masquerade as human well enough to fool even the Kargill.  And then, finally, the inevitable happened.

During the 20th century and spanning into the early 21st, (for roughly 100 years) the Reichgo intruded more and more on the earth.  Our unsophisticated border planet in a back corner of Kargill space can hardly be blamed for the second Reichgo-Kargill war, but we did not help.  The more the Reichgo came to earth “just to visit,” the more the Kargill got upset.  Let’s just say the Reichgo really ticked the Kargill off once over Roswell.

Yes, it took little over two hundred years for the Kargill and Reichgo to wipe each other out.  Those races vanished from history around 2250.  Sadly, by then they had dragged a number of other species into the fight including the Vordan, the Orlan and the Bospori—all on the Reichgo side.  In 2278, a space fledgling Earth faced the Orlan (and first became aware of the Bospori) and our time in space was almost over before it began… but now I am speaking of the future.

 ###

Hmmm…  I suppose I could give a brief history of the future, if anyone is interested.

###

Every creative writer must be inventive–even in crafting the most mainstream, realistic story.  The setting must be a world in which the characters can live and breathe and interact.  These posts are inventive, yes, but encouragement to think through your own work and flesh out your world.  Your vision will likely be different, but so it should.

Traveler: Storyteller Tales: Pumpkin Seeds: Danna

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

            The djin had worked free of the ropes as Macreedy and Ellean, holding hands, got distracted with each other and forgot all about holding up their magic around the djin.  Glen shook his head.  It was inevitable, he thought, and he left that place one more time to let a woman from the deep, deep past take his place, that curious armor, like the fairy weave, adjusted automatically to this new shape and size. 

            The woman frowned at the elves who felt terribly ashamed.  She continued that frown as she looked around.  The dwarfs all doffed their hats and fell to their knees beside elves and Ignatius found a few fearful tears as he joined them.  Even Prickles did not hesitate to go to his knees and Sandra wondered what was going on.  When Sandra turned her head, she saw her own mother on her knees, and a big Pumpkin beside her with her head lowered to the dirt.  Sandra felt it, too, but wondered what it was all about.  This woman was beautiful, more beautiful than any human being had the right to be, being tall and deeply tanned, with hair as black as midnight and eyes as bright and blue as the brightest mid-day sky, and to be sure, the effect of all that beauty was inhuman so when the woman smiled at her, Sandra almost fainted for love, but then Sandra had seen so many inhuman things in the last two days, this was just the icing on the cake.

             “Who are you?”  Sandra asked, and she revised her thinking.  This woman was both the icing and the cake and all of the rest just added together to make the cake plate.

            “Danna.”  The woman said in a voice that matched her looks, and Sandra trembled as the woman reached out and took her hand, but it was a trembling, awesome fear that gripped her, like one might feel in the presence of an angel.

            “Are you an angel?”  Sandra had to ask.

            “Heavens, no.”  The woman answered with the slightest hint of a laugh in her voice that was so contagious even in passing, any number of those on their knees had to suppress their own laughter.  “But, dearest Sandra.”  Danna looked a sad as she drew the woman up to walk beside her.  “You and Glen cannot be.  He is responsible for all of these Little Ones as you have seen, and as long as you have fairy blood in you, he cannot be with you in that way.  I am so sorry.”

            “No?”  Sandra looked sad enough to drop a tear at that thought.  “But I was thinking…”  She did not finish the sentence.

            “No, love, and I feel just as sad for him as for you.  He loves you more than you know, but in a small way he cannot help it because of your blood.  Even I cannot say exactly what is real and what is because of your blood, though I will say this much, that much of it was real in the way a man really loves a woman.”  With that, Sandra did drop her eyes and cry while Danna finished speaking.  “If you were the tenth generation, that would not be a problem.  Even in the ninth generation, something might be worked out, but sooner than that it is impossible.  The duty of being god of the elves, light and dark, and all the dwarfs that live in-between makes it impossible.  I am sorry.”

            “God?”  Sandra looked up.

            “Never over people.”  Danna smiled again and with her eyes on that beatific sight, Sandra felt better – she felt warm and loved in a way she never imagined before, and it was a revelation.  “Meanwhile.”  Danna turned stern and looked at the three goblin statues that were just outside a strange and fuzzy looking bit of air.  Sandra thought it looked a bit like the haze that rose from hot pavement on a summer day, but as Danna reached out and touched that place, the view of the cave and its goblin inhabitants became crystal clear.  Sandra clutched at Danna’s arm, but Danna just kept smiling.  The goblins were doffing their hats with abandon and Cormac, who was at the rear because he could look over the other heads, thought briefly about turning and running for his life. 

            “Goblins go home.”  Danna said, and as she touched each of the statues, they came back to life and doffed their hats as well as they backed into the dark and began to back down the tunnel.  “And Cormac, no more people.”  Danna raised her voice a little.  “I mean it.”  With that she turned Sandra back toward the others.  “Dwarfs go home.”  She said right away.  “And thank you for all your help.”

            The dwarfs smiled at the idea of being thanked.  They raised their hats and said things like, “You’re welcome, don’t mention it, glad to do it, and think nothing of it.”

            “I guess I’ll be off, too, then.”  Ignatius said and he started to walk away, until he found his feet stilled like his soles had been glued to the ground.

            “Stay, hobgoblin, and you too, Prickles.  I will be taking you with me.”  Danna said, and she turned Sandra toward the other women.  “Mona.”  Danna said, calling Sandra’s mother by name.  “You must take Sandra and Melissa home.  After a time the memory of all this will fade for you.  I am sorry, but even with your blood, some things are better not known.”

            “No, please.”  Sandra started to say, but Pumpkin interrupted.

            “But Great Lady.  I have only just found them, and I have been away for such a long time.”

            Danna looked down on the Little One, though the fairy was currently in her big form, and there was a moment of silence while three faces appeared to be plead and Melissa just appeared to be cute.  “Very well.”  Danna said at last.  “You may visit from time to time, but only briefly.  No more than three days at once.  And no one after Mellissa since she is now beyond the seventh.”

            “Yes Lady.  Thank you Lady.” 

            “Only not today.”  Danna added.  “Today I need you.”  She tapped her shoulder and instantly, Pumpkin got little and flew to Danna’s shoulder where she sat and took hold of Danna’s hair.  And with that, Danna let go of Sandra’s arm and returned the young woman to her mother and daughter.  She caused the stroller to come up and be straightened and fixed in every way needed, and all with the merest thought. 

            “And now.”  Danna turned toward the ropes, and they vanished while she raised her head and raised her voice.  “Djin.”  She said only the word, and the djin, wherever it may have gone in the world, or any other world, vanished from that place and with a slight sound of thunder and a flash of light, she appeared in the place where the ropes had been and she looked very, very afraid.  It was not like calling the Hobgoblin to appear because that was natural and easy enough for even non-magical Glen to do.  This was an exercise of power, incalculable power to be sure.

            “Goddess.”  The djin fell to her knees and began to sob great tears.  She was used to tormenting and torturing humans.  She survived off the fear and pain they felt, but though she could dish it out, it was clear she could not take it.

            “Why are you here?”  Danna asked and she continued without waiting for an answer.  “You should have gone over to the other side with your brothers and sisters of the djin.”

            “Many have gone, but some have not.  I am not alone.  O please, goddess, I do not want to die.”  The option of not speaking or giving a less than truthful answer was not available.

            “And if the man had lived and I had not intervened?”

             The djin drooled.  “After he finished having his way with these mortals, I would have had his soul, and it would have been… delicious.”

            “And why should I not send you over to the other side?”  Danna asked.

            The djin shook her head and looked down.  “No, please, please.  I cannot help being what I am.  But I could serve you, I could.”

            “I should trust you?”

            The djin looked up with a speck of hope.  “Goddess.  I keep my bargains.  I do.  Many don’t, even among your little people, but I keep my bargains.  I made a bargain with that mortal fool, and I kept it, to the letter, I did.”

            Danna frowned again.  “Not to the letter,” she said.  “But point taken.”  She stooped down and picked up a rock the size of her hand.  “You will be bound.”

            “Goddess, no.  Not to a rock.  Not one rock among millions, I may be lost forever, please.”

            “That is a risk you would do well to remember,” Danna said.  “And here are your instructions.  You must guard the gate.  You may not so much as touch the others who guard the place, nor interfere with them in any way.  You may not interfere with those who are welcomed or invited, but those who do not belong, you may frighten to your heart’s content, keeping in mind that humans must never know that this is the work of a djin.”  With that, Danna raised her hand and the djin cried out as she became compressed, like a mere image of a person being turned into something like smoke, and she was sucked into the stone which glowed for a second before the light went out and it became one stone among millions. 

            Danna sent her armor and weapons to wherever they were kept and clothed herself in fairy weave which she shaped into something like a Laura Ashley dress, though with white socks and running shoes on her feet which was all the rage in those days.

            “And how do I look?”  Danna asked the others as she slipped the rock into the soft, oversized purse that hung at her side.

            “Stunning.”  “Beautiful.”  “Gorgeous.”  The others said, but Sandra had another thought.

            “Still too lovely to be human,” she said.  Danna nodded.  She could not help it.  She was a true goddess of old, but she could always make a glamour to tone it down a bit if needed. 

            With a simple wave of her hand, the old man’s body disappeared.  She sent the body back to China where there would be some local consternation over exactly what happened, but the man would be buried with his family.  Then she turned again to Sandra and her family with this last word.

            “It was many years ago that Glen was touched by the goddess of memory.  He did not know anything about the Little Ones when you met him as I think you know.  He knew neither the Little Ones, nor his place among them, and he did not know that he had lived before, and so many times before. 

            “Now, Sandra, there is something else I have to do, and it is long overdue, but first I must tell you.  If your memory of all this fades apart from your memory of Pumpkin, his will likely vanish altogether.  I must ask you.  Please do not speak of these events if you see him again, and please do not speak of me at all.” 

            With that, Danna, Ignatius, Macreedy, Ellean, Prickles, Pumpkin and the stone of the djin all vanished, and two women and a baby in a stroller were all that were left in that place, like any ordinary mother, daughter and granddaughter out in the University woods taking a late afternoon stroll.

My Universe: The Younger Races in the Modern Era

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

I suppose it was to be expected.  The Reichgo (ET) imposed order on one section of our corner of the galaxy, primarily by moving in on certain planetary systems to get what they wanted, even by toying with the genetic code of the locals if that was what it took.  Meanwhile, the Kargill imposed a kind of order of fear on the other portion of our interstellar neighborhood, mostly by not permitting one civilization to impose on another.  Even trade was carried on very carefully, and outright shunned by many.  The races became isolated in Kargill space, each left to develop in its own way and at its own pace.

I suppose it was inevitable, though, that these two powers should eventually clash.  That happened about the time Joan of Arc was leading the French against the English.  Things looked bad for those otherwise innocent races out moving between the stars.  They did not look quite so bad for us, being as we were on the border, but technically in a back corner of Kargill space.  No one bothered us at first.  The Kargill would not permit it.

During those two centuries of interstellar war, once the war started, we were touched twice:

The Corsicarian were a people who lived and died according to their family ties, and far reaching, extended families at that.  They had a Patriarch and Matriarch and various relations such as uncles, aunts and cousins to the tenth degree.  Their planet, though, was badly overpopulated, and they felt with the Kargill distracted, they just might be able to spread out a little.  They wanted land, and one extended family saw the earth as a perfect opportunity for settlement.  After all, Earth came complete with a solid, working class. 

The Corsicarian arrived at Gibraltar in 1490.  The Patriarch himself wished Columbus the best of luck.  They had no chance to set down roots, however, not because we were a rebellious lot, nor because the local Kargill returned from the war and intervened, but because of the other species that was eyeing the earth along with eyeing any number of other worlds.

Dubbed the “Spiders” by any human who saw them and lived (and there were not many), these insect-like creatures saw the Reichgo-Kargill war as the perfect opportunity to pursue their destiny which in the short form was to destroy all other forms of intelligent life.  While not quite the mad fanatics that the Balok had been, they were nevertheless killers of the first order, and like insects, they swarmed and seemed impossible to get rid of completely.

The Spiders actually looked more like bent upright wasps without wings.  They stood on four feet and had two arms free.  Though a bit smaller than the average human, there was no chance that they could be squashed with a rolled up newspaper.  They were poisonous besides (though they did not sting or have a stinger) and they spat a kind of acid that could melt unprotected human flesh. 

Needless to say, the Corsicarian had their hands full, and eventually wanted no part of it.  The final battle occurred in the Caribbean where at the time there were pirates and privateers and all sorts of Spanish gold.  There was also the Flying Dutchman, but not at all like the Disney version.

The Spiders were beat back and I am sorry to say there is little information about what happened to them after that.   At that same time, the Corsicarian left for other, easier pastures, and they must have traveled a long way because when humanity first ventured out to the stars, most of the nearby planets that had life were devoid of any intelligent life… easy colonies for a while…

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Every creative writer must be inventive–even in crafting the most mainstream, realistic story.  The setting must be a world in which the characters can live and breathe and interact.  These posts are inventive, yes, but encouragement to think through your own work and flesh out your world.  Your vision will likely be different, but so it should.

Traveler: Storyteller Tales: Pumpkin Seeds: Cowboy and Geisha

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

            The man gasped on seeing the goblin and took a half-step back as he had when he first saw the elves, but he managed an answer.

            “I promised that I would be hers for as long as we both shall live,” he said.

            “And you figure after you avenge your betrayal, she will not live long.”  Glen understood.  “But you do not know what you have promised, for this is no ordinary old woman.”

             “Ah,” the djin interrupted. Her voice carried a curious note.  “I see how the mother made it through the maze of traps.  She brought a warrior with her.”  The hag took a half-step forward, which prompted Glen to pull the long knife from behind his back.  He did not dare pull the sword again.  “But it is strange.  I do not understand.”  The hag looked as confused as she sounded curious, and it was clearly something of an unusual experience for her.  “I cannot read this one’s mind.  It is like he is invisible to me and that must be how I did not notice him before.  Still, no matter.”  The hag snatched her hand and Glen’s knife vacated his hand as the bow and arrows had vacated the hands of Macreedy and Ellean, only this time, Glen smiled and stretched out his hand toward the knife.  The knife did an about face in mid air and sprang back into Glen’s grasp as if it never left.  He put it away then, having thought through another option.

            “Who are you?”  The hag asked  She looked a little sickly, but even as she asked, Glen left that time and place to be replaced by a man who could only be described as a cowboy.  He wore chaps and a hat and had a six-shooter at his side; and he had a rope in his hands that was tied in a lasso.  Sandra and her mother shrieked in surprise.  Macreedy and Ellean went to one knee, and after a jaw dropping moment, Ignatius joined them.  Pumpkin began to cry in her cage.  Mellissa applauded.

            “My name is Miguel Enrique Casidy, Federal Marshal; or as my wife used to call me, Michael Henry the Texican.”  He turned to Sandra and tipped his hat.  “Mam.”  He began to twirl his rope.

            The djin’s eyes were much bigger than humanly possible, and she elicited shrieks from Sandra and her mother as well as the man beside her when she began to rise up into the air.  Fortunately, since she was under a tree, she could not move very fast at first, and that gave Marshal Casidy enough time to lasso her by the ankles.  He tugged sharply on the rope and brought the djin to the ground very roughly, and then he leapt, and like a true rodeo champion, he had the djin dog tied in the blink of an eye.  The djin tried to bite him, but he slapped her face, hard.  The djin also tried to go invisible along with several other ideas, but between the magic invested in the rope and the fact that Macreedy and Ellena were holding hands, the djin was powerless.  Macreedy or Ellean alone would have been no match for the magic of this djin, anymore than Pumpkin was a match, but by holding hands, in some way they were able to combine their strengths, and increase the power of their natural magic, and it was enough.

            Casidy stood and fingered his six-shooter.  “And now, sir, I believe you are under arrest.”

            The man was not buying it all.  He knew what he wanted and he had learned how to get what he wanted.  He waved, and a dozen men came out from behind the trees and bushes.  “No one is going anywhere until I have got what I want.”

            “Is murder really what you want?”  Casidy asked.  He eyed the dozen men, still fingered his six-shooter but considered his options.  Nine of those men had guns, but there was one that stepped to the front dressed as traditional ninja, complete with sword and no doubt a number of hidden weapons.  Despite the guns, Casidy knew the ninja was far more dangerous.  He decided a change was in order, and with a turn of his head and another tip of his hat to the ladies, he vanished, to be replaced by an honest to goodness geisha. 

            She was Japanese, obviously, and she was dressed in a traditional long geisha outfit.  Her hair was neatly put up and tied with sticks and pins, but what gave away the fact that she was geisha was the white face paint and the intensely red lips, and the way she held her unopened fan.  She spoke in Japanese, and while some of her verbs and phrases sounded ancient, they were understandable.  It was much like it might have been if someone spoke a kind of King James English in the present day. 

            “Samurai, give account of yourselves.  Since when does your honor allow you to enter the employ of one who deals in drugs, murder and betrayal?”

            “Who are you?”  One of the men asked.

            “I am Niko, the teacher of your teachers and the master of your masters.  I made you in the days of the great wars, when the Shogun first came to power.  I made you to protect my sister, and you failed.”  The man was not convinced.  He let three stars loose from his sleeve.  Niko merely waved her fan without opening it and everyone heard the click-click-click, and the stars were gone.

            “Very sloppy.”  Niko scolded.  “If you were mine to discipline, I would have you beaten for sloppiness.”  She opened her fan to show the stars, each caught in a different place in the rice paper and bamboo, caught but not seriously damaging the fan, which was a bit of a surprise to think that the fan had not been torn to shreds.  “You must always go for the soft places, the neck and the belly.  Bones can stop the stars as easily as this fan.  She flicked her wrist, and the stars shot right back at the man, caught him in both thighs, though did not cut too deeply, and the third star came very close, but shot between his legs.  “You would do well to remember the lesson,” Niko said, and she turned back to the old man beside her.  He was seething in his anger, though he had taken another step back so there was now a couple of yards between them.

            “This is not over.”  The man reached behind the tree and pulled out a great sword, Chinese in design, but ancient.  Niko guessed it might be two hundred years old.  “All of you women will die in the old way as planned, even if I have to cut you all myself.”

             “Ignatius.”  Niko spoke to the hobgoblin beside her.

            “You will not cut the women.”  Ignatius said, and a number of the men with guns gasped at the full effect of that devilish face and the snake-like tongue it bore.

            “Stay out of it.”  Niko finished her thought, and her dress and accoutrements all went away to be replaced by the same armor and weapons Glen had been wearing.  When Niko pulled the sword, however, there was no doubt that she knew how to use it.  The ninja went face down in the dirt, but Niko had one more thing to say before she faced the old man.  Her accent when she spoke in English was heavy, but again the words were understandable.  “You men had better run as fast as you can lest you end up haunted all of your days in prison.  Do not think your guns will protect you.  I also have an army to call on, and you will not like the look of it.  Prickles!”  Niko shouted, but then she had to defend herself, even as she shouted, “Ameratsu, be my light!”

            Prickles raced out of the cave, followed by every dwarf and three of the goblins.  Of course, most of the goblins and Cormac knew better than to run into the sunlight.  They had to content themselves with what they could see and hear through the fuzzy opening between the worlds.  And sure enough, the three goblins who came into the sun turned to stone, but the dwarfs moved rapidly and the men who had unwisely chosen not to run on sight of the hobgoblin were soon on the ground, tied up like the djin.

            The fight between the swordsmen did not last long.  Niko mercifully cut the man deeply across his belly which disarmed him and brought him to his knees, and she paused only long enough to declare that she was showing mercy before she shoved her blade into the man’s heart.  As she withdrew her sword she bowed first to the dead man.  “Forgive me.”  Then she bowed to the ninja, still on his face.  “Forgive me.”  Then she bowed to Sandra, her mother, Macreedy, Ellean, Mellissa and Pumpkin.  “Forgive me.”  And Glen returned to hear Prickles complain.

            “But I didn’t get to pound anyone.”

            “Don’t worry, big guy,” Ignatius said.  “I am sure with the Lord around you will have plenty of chances to do some pounding.”  It took a second to penetrate, but eventually the ogre grinned at that idea.

            Glen kept the armor in place, just to be safe, and he blanched a little at having to clean his sword before he put it away.  Mishka was the doctor.  Glen could hardly stand the sight of blood, especially the blood of someone he just killed, even if technically it was not his hands that did the actual killing.  He went then to open Pumpkin’s cage, but found that Sandra had already opened it and the women, and Mellissa were all hugging and kissing, and then Pumpkin had one more surprise for the women as she abandoned her little fairy form and took on her big, full, human-sized form so she could have real hugs and give real kisses.

            By then, Breggus was bringing up the trussed up gunmen, but all Glen really had to do was threaten to have Prickles eat them if they dared to come back or ever tried to harm any of these women.  That seemed effective medicine as two threw-up and three fouled themselves just looking at the beast.  Glen did not add the part about having the goblins haunt their dreams because they probably would in any case.  He turned last of all for a word with the Samurai, now on his knees even if his knees were covered in blood.

            “Niko says you must go up Mount Fuji on your knees where you can, and seek the reconciliation of the son.  Suicide is not acceptable.  You must make up for your wicked choices with this penance, that you make honorable choices and help people for the rest of your life.  Go.”  He did not have to say it twice.  The man touched his head to the ground like a martial arts student might bow to his master, and he rose, walked off and never looked back.

            At last, Glen could get down to the really important business.  “Pumpkin!”  He hollered, and the fairy immediately returned to her natural, small state and flew to face him, a little afraid of his wrath; but Glen thought Pumpkin was so dear, he could hardly keep a straight face.  “I thought you were banished to Avalon for a hundred years.”

            “I was, Lord.  I stayed there the whole time and I was good, I promise.”  The fairy crossed her little heart and looked down as she hovered near eye level.

            “Banished?”  Sandra did not like the word, but Glen explained.

            “That’s sort of like being banished to Disneyland,” he said.  “Now.”  He coughed to clear his throat and remove his smile.  “Now, do you see what I told you about the consequences of your actions?”

            “Yes, Lord, I see.  Those were bad men.”  She looked briefly at the dead man but quickly had to look away, and she shook her head, but Glen knew the fairy probably did not fully understand what all of that was all about.

            “You told her?”  Sandra had another question.

            “Casidy told her, but it was me all the same.  You see, I lived a number of times in the past.”

            “And the geisha? 

            “Me.”

            “I see,” Sandra said, but Glen suspected that she did not really understand any more than the fairy.

            “Now the djin,” Glen said, but the djin had gone.

My Universe: The Younger Races in the Pre-Modern Age

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Back in the days of Charles Martel, Charlemagne and King Aelfred of Wessex, out on the edges of the Humanoid sphere in space, there were a number of younger races untouched by the Wolf that were ready to move into Humanoid space and enter the big time.  Sadly, there was no clear leader among them, and so for some 600 years after the Wolf they clashed, one with the other.  Twice there were battles on earth that should have come nowhere near the earth.  It seemed for a while that it was going to be a pattern, and not a healthy one for the human race.

The “Apes” (ape-like creatures that could separate a human head from a body with their bare hands) came from -20 degrees eliptic north +30.  They were a peaceful people for the most part, but very territorial.  Once claimed, they would defend their territory to the death.  Surrender was not an option.

The “Flesh Eaters” (people who could easily pass for your neighbor if they did not show their sharp teeth and who liked their flesh raw and saw us as we might see a field of ripe strawberries) came from +70 degrees to the east -10.  They landed in England as against the Apes in France.

The Apes built a second base in Sweden to protect their flank, but the Flesh Eaters countered with a base in Morocco near the Algerian border.  Naturally there was a battle, mostly in North Africa, but it ended in the alps, just shy of Bavaria around Y1K.  Needless to say, neither side won, and there were men there to clean up the remains, but it was a close encounter of the kind no one would ever want.  Sadly, those men did not know that worse was coming.

From almost perfectly -90 degrees (straight out from the south pole) there came a single people who were busy fighting among themselves and in the process brought a large part of our small corner of the galaxy into the argument.  Apparently, at one point the people needed to defend themselves from another people, and they did two things that must never, ever be done.  Never.

One group enhanced their abilities to fight and became connected one to the other by cybernetic technology.  The other group sought to enhance their abilities through controlled mutations.  They actually toyed with their own genetic code.  By the time they came to earth, they had long since forgotten the threat that got them started.  Indeed, they had destroyed their own planet: brothers fighting brothers and with such cyborg and mutant capabilities they dwarfed any such confrontation that might have taken place during the American Civil War.  Of course, this was long before the United States convulsed itself, but you get the idea of what it was like.

The Cyborgs landed in Normandy just as William was ready to move on England.  They hid there because things were not going well in space.  Roughly 50 years later, a group of Mutants landed in Japan and hid because things were not going well in space for them, either.

They discovered each other after another seventy years or so and that battle raged from the Caspian Sea to Nepal before the two groups escaped once again into space.  Poor Marco Polo ran across some mutant remnants not far from the silk road where they had burrowed in and, using some Agdaline-like cryogenic technology, remained dormant and hopefully undetectable until it was safe to come out…

Apart from these close encounter events, there are two others that should be mentioned because they had a much more long-lasting effect on the earth.  When Richard the Lionheart was in the Holy Land and John was botching up rule in England, the Kargill made its first visit to the earth.  It did not stay at that time, but it did lay claim to our world, whatever that meant.

Some years after Marco Polo, in fact not long before the battle of Pointier, the Reichgo visited.  The Reichgo are the ones most people think of when someone says the word “ET.”  Pictures of the Reichgo have appeared on book covers, on television and appear regularly in those supermarket magazines.  You know the ones I mean.

No one knows what the Kargill looks like, except one person—but that is a story.

With the arrival of the Reichgo and the Kargill, though, we leave the pre-modern era of the Younger Races and enter into the Modern Era, because between them, the Reichgo and Kargill impose some stability on the space ways—the most stability since the Humanoid era, or really almost since the Anazi Empire.

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Every creative writer must be inventive–even in crafting the most mainstream, realistic story.  The setting must be a world in which the characters can live and breathe and interact.  These posts are inventive, yes, but encouragement to think through your own work and flesh out your world.  Your vision will likely be different, but so it should.

Traveler: Storyteller Tales: Pumpkin Seeds: Pumpkin Found

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

            “And here she is.”  It was a woman’s voice and a chilling voice that Sandra heard before she saw.  “I am a bit surprised she made it, but I see she brought a couple of friends with her.”  The woman was an old woman that might best be described as a hag if that hag was struck in the face with a bucket of ugly.  She waved her hand and Macreedy and Ellean lost their glamour of invisibility, but they did not lose the arrows that were strung in their bows and ready.  The man beside the djin took a step back on seeing real, live elves in his face.

            “Wait a minute.”  Sandra was looking around.  “This is the University woods, not very far from where Mother and Mellissa disappeared.”

            “Very good.”  The hag said.  “And it is only a couple of hours since you left.”

            “But we were gone for two days.”  Sandra protested.

            “And a whole night.”  The djin nodded and cackled which solidified Sandra’s impression of the djin’s hag-like appearance.  “Sadly, the tree people came out in force so nothing untoward could happen in the night.”  She looked disappointed that nothing came out of the dark to tear Sandra and Glen to shreds.

            “Old woman.  You swore you would gather the whole family.  How dare you try and send this one to Hell before I had the opportunity to do it myself.”  The man beside the djin, an Asian, Chinese looking man with perhaps a taint of European blood raise his hand as if to slap the hag.

            “But I did exactly as you asked.”  The hag stayed his hand with the words.  “They are all here as promised.  All of the living in the family line are here.  The fee was the first, and this is the last of them all but for her baby; but if she died on the way.”  The hag shrugged.  “I did not promise she might not die on the way.”  She cackled again as if she was enjoying the idea of Sandra’s death too much.  Sandra would have stepped back in horror at that attitude, but in truth, she hardly heard the exchange as she spied her mother holding the baby, and she ran to them.

            “Melissa, Mother!  You’re alright, O thank God.”  She caught Melissa up in her arms and squeezed and hugged and kissed the two year old with her lips and her tears, while Sandra’s mother hugged her daughter and cried on her daughter’s shoulder.  Macreedy stayed where he was.  He kept his arrow aimed at the djin and the man and never wavered, but Ellean ran with Sandra, and she was the one who found one more person.

            “Miss Fairy, are you well?”  Ellean asked, and Sandra stopped crying and hugging long enough to gasp.  A real, live fairy, no more than seven inches tall, was in a small cage, hanging on a tree branch.  The fairy shook her head, sadly, and then reached out for Sandra, of all things.

            “Pumpkin.”  Melissa said, pointing to the fairy, and the two-year-old smiled.  She was too young to realize the danger she was in or the danger she had just gone through.

            “Sandra.”  Sandra’s mother made her daughter pause so the older woman could tell her daughter something first.  “Sandra.”  She repeated.  “This is your great-great grandmother, Mrs. Pumpkin.”

            Sandra went up to the cage with the wonder written clearly on her face while Ellean was apologizing for some mistake.  “Pardon, Mrs.,” the elf maid said.  “You look very young and I am not very old.”

            Pumpkin merely glanced at the elf as if to say no offense was taken, but then Sandra put her finger up to the cage as she might have held her finger out for a parakeet.  Pumpkin reached out between the bars, touched that finger and attempted to smile.  It looked difficult.  It looked like the poor fairy had been tortured, and all at once, Sandra got terribly angry.  She spun around, handed Mellissa back to her mother and tromped to within a yard of the man and the old woman.

            “How dare you!”  She yelled.  “Who do you think you are?  You have no right holding us.  Kidnapping is a crime.  You let my family go, and I mean it.  Let us go, now!”

            The man laughed and the djin grinned and with a wave of her hand, the bows and arrows that Macreedy and Ellean were holding were ripped from their hands and came to the old woman’s feet.  “You have no power here.”  The hag said through her cackle.

            Sandra took a step back and her expression turned from one of anger to one of incomprehension.  “But why?’  She asked.

            “Family honor.”  The man stepped up.  “To finally cleanse the stain between your family and mine.”  Sandra looked at the man with questions dancing in her head, but she kept quiet as the man spoke. 

            “One hundred and thirty years ago, my poor family came to California in search of prosperity.  As a young girl, my many-times mother married a man of European decent over the objections of the family.  But this was a new world, full of hope, and they had great hopes, and had a son, my sire.  Then men found gold along the rivers and the madness began.  One man, a man named Marshal Casidy tried to maintain order in the chaos, but he brought with him the creatures of whispers and legend.  One of these was the winged goblin now held prisoner to account for her crimes.  She stole the heart of that European man and together, they ran off and had a daughter.  The stain of that betrayal has never left my family name. 

            Our gold was stolen, our hope was gone, and my great father brought his family back across the sea to the place of his birth in disgrace, and the strange looking son who had no father could find comfort only in the arms of prostitutes.  My great-grandfather should have been a rich man, living in a California mansion, but he was born in a brothel.  My grandfather was born in a ditch and died of alcohol poisoning before he was fifty.  My father learned to steal and I was nourished on stolen bread. 

            When the Japanese invaded my country, I became a traitor to my own people, and I became rich betraying my neighbors for a price.  I made peace with the invaders, and with the money I obtained, I began to deal in drugs and built my own little army of thieves and murderers; but I always knew the shame of what I had done.  The soul of my family has never known peace since that first betrayal that destroyed our hope, and I vowed revenge.”  The man was angry, spitting.  He could not finish his speech, so another had to prompt him.

            “And what did you promise to this hag for capturing the fairy and gathering the survivors of her family?”  It was Glen, and he had come into the light, and Ignatius, the hobgoblin had come with him.

My Universe: The Middle Ages in Space: The Humanoid Era

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The Anazi Empire had been a centralized, information hoarding empire that proved in the end to be an easy kill.  When their own androids revolted, it was only a matter of time before they shut down the central command, and with that shutdown, the empire ceased.  It did not slow down, decay or collapse, it just ceased to function altogether in one moment. 

Anazi all through the star systems were hunted and slaughtered, but then people were uncertain as to what to do next.  Some peoples had been under Anazi rule for 500, 800, even 1,000 years.  Freedom was fine, but our corner of the galaxy was suffering from a great power vacuum.  There is some debate in the histories as to whether the “Humanoid” (Hungdin) people took advantage of the situation or had leadership thrust upon them.  I suppose it depends on which side of the aisle you sit on; but however it may be, they quickly moved to the front of the line and soon enough became the head of the line.

One reason may be the fact that they saw that the real danger to the civilization was not the utterly defeated Anazi, but the androids.  They spent some three hundred years tracking down and killing every android they could find so that by the end of that time, roughly when the Chaldeans were taking over in Babylon and preparing to throw off the Assyrian yoke, the Humanoids found themselves in control of much of the old Anazi star systems. 

The Humanoid empire was much more decentralized than any that came before.  These were classic medieval types with Lords and servants, many levels of overlaying loyalties between various houses, and sometimes inclined to give the central authority and the emperor lip service while they did as they pleased.  All other people were or became like serfs to dig in the earth for all the riches and pay their tithe and tax to the Lord of the manor (or as the case may be, the Lord of the planet).

One way the Humanoids maintained control over the various people was by their servants which in our world came to be called the wolves, as in “big, bad wolves.”  They were found in a world on the edge of known space and bred for their violent tendencies, like one might breed a pit bull.  They were vicious, always hungry and seemed capable of eating anything (or anyone).  They were not bred for intelligence, however, and that became important later on…

Like the Anazi before them, the Humanoids made an aborted attempt on earth.  Too much infighting among the houses involved is the only thing that saved us.  The wolves were withdrawn and the houses bickered themselves into the future without us.  (Whew)!  But in the end, like the Anazi before them, the servants revolted and dragged the Humanoid Empire to the dust.  Curiously, at that same time there was something of an Anazi revival, but it, too was crushed by the wolf.

The Age of the Wolf

The Wolf rebellion did not last a hundred years, arching over the time when the Ch’in declared himself the First Emperor in China and the people of Carthage and Rome were going at it in the Punic Wars; but then the fallout of the Age of the Wolf continued for another three to four hundred years beyond that. 

Using a technology they did not fully understand and could only minimally repair, great “packs” of wolves descended on planet after planet, ravenous creatures that were almost more beast than intelligent people.  They destroyed whatever civilization the locals were able to build, and moved on.

Once again, even as a darkness fell over Western Europe, (when Arthur was King and the last Anazi Android on record crashed in Wales), so a darkness fell over the space ways.  But in the interstellar worlds there was no Arthur to hold back the darkness of the wolf.  And space just about emptied.  Even the Agdaline had long since completed their journey home.