'The Moloch Manoeuvres'

(Original 1996-1998 Version*)

Pity poor Count Molech, the Melanchlaeni Magician. Melancholy more like,-- because he is poor. His luck's been changing of late, however. He now has a legitimate genie, a jinn appropriately enough named Djinn, indentured to him. He wears him in the Ring of Nebuland. Which is not to be confused with the Ring of the Nibelung, although he has found the fabled Mithraic Treasury mistakenly known as the Hoard of the Nibelung. Found someone to sell the magically-sealed Tantalus to, too!

Trouble is there's all sorts of other things going on in Rome on the Twelfth of January 1938. And tomorrow, the night of the full moon, he will become fertile again. It doesn't happen very often and he can only be fertile with a certain sort of woman. That's because he's a Blood Beast Prime, a Vampire Maker, possibly the last of his unkind kind. Until he has a son, that is.

Oh, he could turn himself any time he pleased but he's a sun-lover, a gypsy, and hates the sight of blood, -- especially his own. With Djinn's help, he'll no doubt impregnate some unfortunately ideal young woman on the Thirteenth. She'll probably die giving birth to his son but, hey, if he decides to become a vampire by then he can always turn her as she's doing so.

By all means, pity poor Count Molech. He, with Djinn's help, is stalking Summoning Children, seventeen or nearly seventeen year old girls born as a result of the Summoning of 1920. Preferably they would be beautiful; even more preferably they would be of his own blood; most preferably their mothers would have died giving them birth. There are two things they have to be, though. The first is they have to be willing. Which means they have to know what they are getting into if they let him into them. The second is, it almost goes without saying, they have to be maidens.

He's a number of them to choose from and they are all in Rome. Most of them are at any rate. So are a lot of other Summoning Children and a good percentage of them, including the teenage girls he has his eyes on, may well prove to be incarnations of the Gods and Goddesses, the Demons and Monsters, of Antique Mythology. If they find out his intentions, they could become meddlesome. He's not overly concerned, however. In addition to his genetic heritage, he's lately become somewhat of an earthborn demon himself. And Djinn, well, Djinn's a devil, a Fallen Angel and therefore, by definition, an extraterrestrial. There isn't much he can't do between-space in his Nebuland and virtually nothing anyone can do to stop him.

Count Molech's real name is Etzel Sangati. His Mithraic Treasury, his Tantalus, his Hoard of the Nibelung, is filled with the goods and glories of the Teutonic Gods of Aesgard. The Nazis want it. So do the Volsungs and von Alptraums, who are not necessarily Nazis. Not yet anyhow. And there's another Tantalus out there. It's in the possession of Sangati's blood brother, Agenor Heliopolis, an avowed anarchist, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and an Etocretan Extremist. Heliopolis has found a way to get into it; he and his followers can use its paraphernalia. The Witches of Weir know it. So do Wayfarers in the Wild Weird. But even they aren't prepared for what happens once the seventeen year olds start realizing their Summoning Heritage.

Oh, in case you haven’t realized it yet, Count Molech's a notorious charlatan. Isn't a real Moloch at all. Neither, even if he is a devil, is Djinn. The real Moloch is Djinn's grandfather. And he may well be that of the Summoning Children as well!

Set in the first couple of days of the second week of January 1938, follow the saga of Count Molech, Djinn the jinn, the Summoning Children, and a certain little witch in monthly installments of PHANTACEA on the Web.

Top of Page Search Engine

'Helioddity'

(Revised Summer 2002)

The Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head has been around for a very long time. Under a variety of names, Mu, Lemuria, the archipelago of Pacifica, the Places of Peace, Eden's Zoo, it predates even the Great Flood or Genesea. Some six thousand years ago, as a life-preserving, both reflexive and reflective reaction to that cataclysmic catastrophe, the Demon Sedon raised the Cathonic Zone out of his own essence and thereby separated it from the rest of the Whole Earth.

Separated it not exactly forevermore, however. Over the intervening millennia Cathonia -- or, more simply, the Dome -- has developed any number of cracks or gaps. Most were short-lived, often lasting less than an average human's lifetime. A few endured and one in particular, the so-called Kore Gap, kept changing its point of egress. For example, in the Nineteenth Century our time, it came out on tri-peaked Easter Island for awhile.

In early 1938, the Kore Gap opens on another tri-peaked Island, that of Trigon in the Aegean Sea. Tiny Trigon is the ancestral home of the Family Zeross, of whom Angelo Zeross (sometimes called Ringleader or Ringkeeper) is the eldest surviving member, and a refuge for a number of their Etocretan 'Cousins'. These include the elder Atreides, Pelops and Clymene nee Catreus. Although both are getting on in years, they remain fairly formidable characters.

Pelops or Pops Polyps, as the disrespectful gypsy and Greco-Cretan Summoning Children call him, is a veteran of just about every lost cause struggle for freedom fought in the last half-century; Republican Spain being the most recent example. His wife, the mother of their five children (only one of which, Laodice, is still alive), is a self-professed, old time witch. Folks call her Mystery Might for a very good reason. She has undeniable talents, perhaps even supranormal abilities, but the source of them's, well, mysterious.

Ant Clymene, as the likes of Megaera Kinesis now Zeross, Roxanne Heliopolis now Kinesis, and Artemis Zeross now Hyperenor (Sagitta, one of the Silver Arrow Assassins) refer to her, knows about Sedon's Head; has been there any number of times; and is acquainted with Kyprian Somata, the Master of Weir and the true Sister Superior of the Superior Sisterhood, that of Flowery Anthea (who was named after the wife of Xuthros Hor, the Biblical Noah).

She also knows about the Dual Entities. These two are most commonly named Helios, also called Sophos the Wise (Heliosophos), and his fellow, time-tumbling, perpetual companion, the miraculous Mnemosyne Machine (Machine-Memory, Miracle Memory, the Female Entity, a three-thing humanized by devils).

Clymene personally knows Miracle Maenad, Corn Queen of Apple Isle, Sedon's Human Eye-Land, on the other side of Trigon's Kore Gap. And who is she, other than an acolyte of that mysteriously missing Master Deva, Divine Coueranna, myrionymous Kore herself? Mystery Might suspects Miracle's Rhea Ararat, the unaging mother of the late Olympias nee Sangati then Kinesis, Mata now Avar, Medea now Annulis (who, after being driven off the Outer Earth by Sorciere and Granny Garuda in the later stages of 'The Moloch Manoeuvres', has taken refuge on Ap Isle), and the recently deceased Count Molech (Etzel Sangati).

Only trouble with this hypothesis is that Rhea, going by the name of Norma (the Demon Druidess), was killed by that other Memory, Mnemosyne D'Angelo, in 1923. And why would Memory of the Angels kill Rhea of the Ararats? As also recounted in Moloch, it was because the latter killed the former's sister, Celestine, the Celestial Superior, the day before.

It all has to do with vampires of course. But there are no vamps left, at least not on the Outer Earth. And Miracle Maenad is not Rhea Ararat, certainly not any longer. She is however a three-thing in her own right: a machine (Machine-Memory) made human (Miracle Memory as Miracle Maenad) by a devil; none other than the far-famed Pyrame Silverstar.

The sometime hairless, sometimes silver-haired, but these days, as Miracle Maenad, long, dark-tressed Pauper Priestess (so-called because she has neither a power focus to call her own nor a devic protectorate to call her home) is the possessive mother of the mortal sedons, small case. For reasons more mystical than mysterious, without living sedons on both sides of the Dome it would collapse. That happens, as the saying goes, you'd be buying beachfront in the Rocky Mountains.

What of the other Summoning Children? A lot of them are on Charan's Ark. It's steaming across the Mediterranean Sea from Rome toward Egypt and, thence, as far up the Nile as it can go. After that, many of those aboard it intend to continue on overland -- by rail, car, wagon, and ultimately by foot, if necessary -- into the very nearly inaccessible Northeastern Belgian Congo. What's there? The so-called Tholos Tomb for Pygmies for one thing. What for? To locate the missing Galvin-Shekmet party. And why were they there? Because it may well be the site of legendary Fountain of Youth!

One of the seventeen year olds on the Ark is Tanith von Blut. She's always silver-haired and may be carrying Count Molech's child. Could also be carrying that of Yehudi Cohen, who isn't on the Ark. Tanith is definitely in the early days of pregnancy, though. Another's Virginia Mannering, who's not pregnant but, as she has been on and off since 1923, may still be carrying the Celestial Spook.

A third's that great Cheyenne killer, John Sundown, and a fourth's Jesus Mandam, the self-proclaimed Mithraic Messiah (in contrast to his father of record, Magister Joseph Mandam, who is referred to as the Mithraic Master Magus). For Jesse that makes him the Saviour of Supranormalkind. Not that supras, most of whom are Summoning Children, need saving. Except, perhaps, from Jesse himself.

Barsine Mandam is Jesse's identically aged sister or half-sister. Although bought up as his twin, there are those who believe they had different mothers. She's another lookalike for Rhea Ararat and is one of those missing in the Congo. Jess is also the one who now has, in addition to the Mithraic Treasury of the Northern Gods, what's left of the Aegis of Athene. (Its Gorgon Goggles are now in the possession of the aforementioned Yehudi Cohen.) The rest of the Olympian Tantalus is still in the hands of Agenor Heliopolis.

Among other things, Agenor is Hot Rox's much older brother, Mystery Might's nephew, and the leader of the Black Rose of Anarchy. He and some of his closest associates in the Black Rose (the Malantheus) are the deadly dangerous Minoan Maniacs largely responsible for the Shootout in the Okay Colosseum and so much else of what went wrong during the Alliance of Man's ill-fated gathering in Rome. On top of all that, once he finds out about it, Heliopolis is blood-bound to avenge Count Molech's execution. And a couple of those most responsible for it are on the Ark.

Agenor's betrothed, Argiope still Zeross, wants the Aegis back. Bright Face, as everyone calls her, also wants a modicum of revenge on Jess for shooting her in the back on the Fourteenth and on his other possible twin, none other than Virginia Mannering herself, for forcing the situation that resulted in her being shot in the Colosseum. So, how's she going to get from Aegean Trigon to Charan's Ark? More importantly, what can she do about a ship full of supras, not to mention the Xuthrodites' patriarch, Loxus Abraham Ryne, and his professional mercenaries?

Nay probs in either case! She's Granny Garuda's regalia; can fly between-space; can do everything the late Kanin Nauroz could do. Does that mean Granny's dead? Temporarily anyhow. But she could become a phoenix and rise from her own ashes. Only if her body's burned with her feathers, though. Which brings us to Aquilla the Hunter and, lest we forget, Sorciere {Solace Sunrise, John Sundown's childhood bride), who's a prisoner of the Etocretans.

At least she starts out as their prisoner. By the time the ever-fishifying Fisherwoman, someone else Jesse managed to shoot in Rome, and her recently acquired personal genie arrive on Trigon, intending to access the Kore Gap and thereby return to the Hidden Continent, the situation is, shall we say, more mercurial. Not to mention Dionysian and, momentarily thereafter, terpsichorean. (Who, as opposed to what, has Angelo Zeross got in those rings he's been keeping anyhow?)

All that already too much for you? Hey, we haven't even got to the Argo Ghost Ship yet. And where there's a Female Entity, there's bound to be a Male Entity, right? So there is: Our titular Helioddity. That'd be Heliosophos, the Time Tumbler most responsible for bringing the Moloch Sedon into existence, albeit six lifetimes earlier. Only thing is, ten lifetimes earlier than this, his current one, which is to say in his original lifetime, he wasn't born until 1940. Two years from now!

What would be the one sure way Helios could undo Sedon's creation? By making sure he never gets the chance to accomplish it in the first place. And who were his parents? What would happen if he killed even one of them? Then he'd never be, would he? Then again, what if Heliosophos isn't Kadmon Heliopolis? What if he's Cain, Biblical Slayer of Abel, the man who, reputedly by divine decree, can never truly die?

Follow the adventures of the so very young, so very cocksure of themselves, teenage Summoning Children, the Etocretan Extremists of Aegean Trigon, and the Dual Entities of Subterranean Trigon in seasonal installments of PHANTACEA on the Web.

(Oh, and did I mention the Male Entity starts out as possessed as his female counterpart? By a certain ever-smiling fiend? Didn't! Must have forgot.)

Top of Page Search Engine

Coueranna's Curse

(Serialization began in Winter 2003/2004)

At the conclusion of 'Helioddity', Magister Joseph Mandam went to Aegean Trigon. There he, Magister Mandam, Dragon Joe, the Mithraic Magus, asserted his authority over the Etocretan Extremists. At his insistence they accepted the hospitality of that ever-accommodating devil, Djinn-Ghoster, the Heliodromus of Lazareme. Ghoster agreed to expand his personal protectorate, the Nebuland, and take them all into it, somewhere between-space.

They, aka the Malanthean Minoans because most of them belong to Agenor Heliopolis's Black Rose of Anarchy (Black Rose = Malantheus), are therefore no longer an issue as far as he is concerned. He trusts they will remain that way as well. At least until he has chance to undo some of the damage they've done to his personal dream of Panharmonium, a world of friendship and togetherness, a world without war. (Old Joe has always been somewhat of a dreamer. Has even been known to cast a few of them in his lengthy time alive.)

He's kept four of the wannabe Minoans behind to aid him in his fence-mending missions. Along with a pair of D'Angelos, Mnemosyne (Memory) and her adopted niece Thalassa (Sea), a white-as-light Utopian Summoning Child named Melina Sarpedon (Illuminatus) and some of Golgotha Nauroz's Trinondevs, he sent two of them to Scotland. They were his grandniece, Megaera nee Kinesis (four-fingered Meg) and her husband, Angelo Zeross (Ringleader or Ringkeeper).

The other two, his grandnephew, Meg's older brother, Alexandros Kinesis (Alex), and his spouse, Roxanne nee Heliopolis (Hot Rox), he kept with him. Together with Aires D'Angelo (Air), Sea's twin brother, Scylla Nereid (Fish or Fisherwoman), Delphi (Fish's psychopomp, who stays between-space), John Sundown, Solace Sunrise (Sorciere), Morgianna Somata (Morg), Demios Sarpedon and Golgotha himself, they're off for Germany.

(The last three are Utopians from the Weirdom of Cabalarkon on Sedon's Head. Utopians were originally extraterrestrial humanoids; the women are white-skinned whereas the men are black-skinned. Demios Sarpedon is Melina's twin. Hot Rox, Air, Sundown, Sorciere, Morg and the two Sarpedons are Summoning Children. Only a couple of years older than the Summoning Children, Fish is also a teenager. Sundown and Sorciere consider themselves married, though they're not acting like it.)

Who's in Germany? Among others, the Baron Tyrtod von Alptraum, he with his still moderately anti-Nazi cadre of influential industrialists and Mithrant initiates. They're in Hamburg, however, and a great deal of the action set in Germany takes place in and around the von Alptraum estate on the Baltic Sea Coast of what was then Prussia.

Who's there? We'll get to that momentarily. Who's in Scotland? Also among others, Angus Dre'Ath and wife Gilda nee O'Ryan. They are two of the main-movers behind the establishment of an Academy of Man in Amsterdam. If everything goes well, the now 17-year old Summoning Children will commence their advanced schooling there come September 1938. Why is fence-mending needed in Germany? That was detailed in 'The Moloch Manoeuvres'. Why in Scotland? That was detailed in 'Helioddity'.

Fence-mending isn't his only reason for going to Germany, though. The Magister has made a commitment to Golgotha Nauroz and his Trinondev Warriors of Weir. In return for their help on his various missions, not all of which have to do with fence-mending, he will lead them to Laodice Atreides, one of the Etocretan Summoning Children. (In case you missed it, in 'Manoeuvres' Lao went to Germany with Baron von Alptraum, the Annulises, and the Volsungs to help look after her 10-year old relative, Ramona Avar, a regular resident of Aegean Trigon whose parents were, um, unavoidably detained in Rome.)

He'll convince her to give up the Hellstone her mother gave her for protection before she left home at the beginning of January. Lao wouldn't dare turn him down. He might get upset, cross, and a cross Dragon Joe is not unlike a dragon with an upset tummy. Blazing belches are not just bad breath.

Lao's mother is Clymene Atreides, who's moved to the Nebuland with the majority of her Etocretan compadres. Clymene's been called Mystery Might for decades. What's in the Hellstone? The source of Clymene's mysterious might; what's now, albeit only arguably, become the source of Lao's mysterious might. And it's a who, not a what. It's Divine Coueranna, Kore-Concord, the devic Goddess of Apple Isle, on the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head, Big Shelter, the Otherworld of fable, the Inner Earth of PHANTACEA factuality.

And why do the Trinondevs want Coueranna? As was also detailed in 'Oddity', it's because their Master, the Master of Weir, Kyprian Somata, is being held hostage by Cruel Plathon, the Bull of Mithras, he whose devic protectorate is Corona City, on the aforementioned Ap Isle. And who, as opposed to what, do you think it would take to get him to release her? Could it be Myrionymous Kore? Yep.

Sounds simple right? The Zerosses and their companions get the Dre'Aths back into the Alliance of Man's fold, Magister Mandam and his cohort get von Alp and his fellow industrialists ditto, the Trinondevs get the Hellstone containing Coueranna, and they all regroup in Africa. Africa? Yes, Africa, at the Tholos Tomb for Pygmies, in the northeast corner of the Congo, in the vicinity of Lake Victoria, to be precise. (Don't tell me you didn't read either 'The Moloch Manoeuvres' or 'Helioddity'?)

Africa is where, everything goes well, they'll rendezvous with those on Charan's Ark, which is currently winding its way through the Red Sea toward Mogadishu, in Italian Somaliland, on the Indian Ocean. Again assuming all goes well, those on the Ark will thereupon catch a ride inland with the Baron von Alptraum on his airship, the Balder. Once in the Congo they'll bust through the aforementioned Tholos Tomb to the Inner Earth's Hidden Continent. Once on the Head, they'll race off to rescue Master Kyprian. After, it should go without saying, rescuing the missing members of the Galvin-Shekmet party, including the Magister's Summoning-aged daughter Barsine, who've been lost since Christmas.

That's the plan, Magister Mandam likes simple plans, and he's very intolerant when it comes to putting up with deviations of and/or interference with said-simplicity. In fact, at the risk of repeating myself, he's been known to get quite cross about that sort of thing. So, will everything go well? It could, probably would too. Except, hey, it wouldn't be much of an Anheroic Fantasy if it did, would it?

If only all those darn Summoning Children weren't in Scotland, in Germany, on the Ark and already in Africa. Teenagers cause enough trouble just by being teenagers and most of these teens are supranormally gifted. If only those bloody minded, Nazi supremacists didn't still want the Treasury of Aesgard. If only the contents of the Northern Tantalus, the goods and glories of the Teutonic gods and goddesses of myth and legend, weren't in the possession of a certain female trickster, a faerie fart, name of Jolene Callion (among other names, including Joli Blon, Hush Mannering and Young Life), who thinks she's a little girl again after not being one for nearly thirty years.

If only a real little girl hadn't been kidnapped in Scotland by, presumably, a bunch of changeling Selkies, faeries all. If only Hush's Gush (aka Aug the Dog, the male trickster, Augustus Nauroz, Auguste Moirnoir, and Young Death), who's also been a seven year old for something like seventeen years, hadn't brought his Uncle Abe back with him from Big Shelter. If only there wasn't a Kore-Discord to match Kore-Concord. If only Lao wasn't staying at the von Alptraums' Baltic Sea estate. If only 'alptraum' didn't mean nightmare. If only Aug's Uncle Abe wasn't Unholy Abaddon, the Unity of Chaos.

If only that titular odd fellow who wanted to kill his parents before he was even born had been killed by his presumably father-to-be at the end of 'Oddity'. If only, perhaps better put, he didn't just keep time-tumbling back into their lives again and again. If only Magister Mandam wasn't a rapidly-losing-it, as in approaching senile, late septuagenarian. If only he'd thought to ask Divine Coueranna if she wanted to return to Sedon's Head and thereafter submit herself to the Bull's ever-so-bullish attentions. If only she wasn't prone to cursing. If only, if only.

Structurally speaking, for some characters 'Coueranna's Curse' carries on from when they were last seen in 'The Moloch Manoeuvres'. For others it carries on from 'Helioddity'. Like 'Manoeuvres' and most of 'Oddity', 'Curse' is set on the Outer Earth in January 1938. Each of its initial locales, Scotland, Germany, on the Ark and in Africa, has its own group of characters. Each chapter is akin to a mini-novel or short story with, foreboding aside, its own beginning, middle and end. Some characters move on to a later chapter, others stay where they were, perhaps to reappear even later on, there, elsewhere, or perhaps not.

Perhaps even more remarkably, especially given the amount of action and sheer number of characters it contains, 'Curse' started out as one of the shortest novels thus far presented in PHANTACEA on the Web. And, please trust me on this, by the end of the day everything does turn out well. For someone. Might that someone's name be Uncle Abe Chaos? Answer is, - it's already history!

Top of Page Search Engine