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'Coueranna's Curse' |
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pH-Webworld-- Story Synopses --Heliodyssey
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6. COUERANNA'S CURSE: "Old Man Power"For those of you who've been following the story sequences set in 1980 as well as 'Heliodyssey', Kore-6 has a suggestive title, doesn't it? (Reference also a comment I made when I was doing the synopses for the initial version of 'The Moloch Manoeuvres'.) Here's a BLOCKQUOTE that, even if you only know of the comic book origins to the PHANTACEA Mythos, isn't at all suggestive:
After a chatty chapter, Kore-4, and one filled mostly with back-story, Kore-5, it's about time we got one packed with action, wouldn't you say? I know I would but the table still isn't quite set for it as yet. Kore-7 is the action-packed one you're waiting for and in fact there's so much action it'll needs be spill over into a few more chapters after that. Consider Kore-6 the aperitif, then, the beginning of the end of the Castle Nightmare aspect of 'Coueranna's Curse'. There's some research, an interesting tidbit or two about Hamburg in the 20s and 30s as well as some info re Germanic expertise of the same time period in terms of aerostatics engineering. Conrad Schroff, uncle of Hiliarti, an orphan who is also about the same age as Ramona Avar and Wilderwitch, gets some rare opportunities for dialogue. So does the Baron Tyrtod von Alptraum and Morgianna Somata. Plotwise, the Magister sends Fish and Delphi back to Africa to recommence their thus-far futile search for the missing Galvin-Shekmet party that includes his beloved daughter Barsine. We find out more about Aires D'Angelo's fascination with flying and old Joe's fear of it. There's more on the still strained relationship between Sorciere (Solace born Sunrise) and John Sundown. Was Solace, pre-Sorciere, after she left Sundown not long after they consummated their childhood marriage, really sold into slavery and forced to toil in a Persian sheik's harem until rescued by Sedon St Synne? Did she never give birth to their daughter? (Answer, as we'll discover when we get to 'The Vampire Variations' a couple of years from now, is actually no to both. But that's the story and she's sticking to it.) We learn, hardly for the first time, of Sundown's claustrophobia; his one non-supra weakness other than his nowadays unrequited love for his childhood bride. While all this is going on in Hamburg, having sent Delphi away with Fish Magister Mandam assigns Dragon Joe, who's presumably his personal psychopomp, to transport some of his cadre, specifically Sorciere, Sundown and Roxanne ('Hot Rox') once Heliopolis, now Kinesis, on nightly reconnaissance missions to Castle Nightmare over on the Baltic Sea coast. Laodice Atreides is there, recall, and she supposedly has a prison pod (a Utopian eyeorb) containing Kore-Concord, she of the Many Names, about her between-space. This Kore, our titular Coueranna, she of the curse, was the source of Clymene born Catreus, aka Lao's mother's mysterious might. Probably isn't the source of Lao's not-so-mysterious, electricity-generating abilities, though. That's more a matter of her Summoning Heritage. Hot Rox absconds with it in her usual Living Ghost fashion. But, back in Hamburg, Golgotha Nauroz, the leader of the Trinondev Warriors of Weir, who has been pretending to act as old Joe's Heliodromus, discovers it's empty. In other words Kore-Concord has gone elsewhere; rather, she got into someone and then got that someone elsewhere. (From Kore-4 we already know that someone and that elsewhere.) There's nothing else for it. Old Joe and company are going to have to go to Castle Nightmare themselves. In von Alp's Balder airship, what they're still planning to take to Africa; go there, via the usual subterfuge, minus old Joe himself of course.
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7. COUERANNA'S CURSE: "Cry Chaos"Someone has died at Castle Nightmare. Rather, someone is dead.
The now thoroughly dead lamia does indeed look right at home in a casket. Unfortunately for Magister Mandam and crew, there are a large number of Germanic sorts, led by Donar Lancz and Strife that fancy them in caskets as well. Unless, that is to say, they're the unfortunate ones. Magister Mandam and crew aren't about to lie down and be boxed. Yep, it's finally Battle Royal time at Castle Nightmare.
What's happened? (In case you didn't figure out the import of all that foreboding provided in Kore-2 and/or neglected to trigger the lynx provided at the end of in Kore-5, Strife has merged bodily with the real Hulga Faust always Volsung and now appears to be none other than Hulga's grey baby, Valfreja Volsung, albeit both cancer-free and no longer pregnant.) Who else composes Magister Mandam's crew? (Here's a hint: two out of the three's right.) Who do they fight? Answer to that is that, other than the men are Nazi Hermiones whereas the women are mostly Horrid Hulga's Korants (as trained by Mata the Muse and Medea the Sybil), there's so many of them even I don't recollect all their names. How did they come by the contents of the Aesgardian Tantalus? (You see there's this little boy and he takes this little girl to Doc Jay's well-equipped infirmary within Castle Nightmare in order to play doctor. There's this locked tantalus, a metallic cupboard with glass windows, there. It's full of medical implements. He can see through illusions. Apparently she can't. In fact apparently she's just a little girl. The medical implements, they're the illusions. The contents of the Aesgardian Tantalus, guess what they appear to be? Who said medical implements?) And if Hush's Gush has been killed yet again, which he has, and if he's done his free airline ticket routine only to end up on Aegean Trigon with his Uncle Abe, which he also has, then who the hell is masquerading as Unholy Abaddon at Castle Nightmare? Would it help if I asked who the Herr Hell? Top of Page |
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8. COUERANNA'S CURSE: "Cain, Slayer of Abel"From time to time in these here Web-Wheaties, as in cereals, as in serials, I take a break in the action to delve into some of the PHANTACEA Mythos back-story. Kore-8 is one of those times. Only this time, as its not at all suggestive title will have alerted you already, we're going way back. We're not talking prehistoric times, we're talking pre-Biblical times. Well, I suppose that's not entirely accurate. To antediluvian times then, to the Golden Age of Humankind. When Kore-8 starts there's not only a Whole Earth, one not divided between an Inner and an Outer Earth, there aren't even any devils on it. So, in the beginning ... Forget about alien astronauts, in Atlantis the Whole Earth had all the advanced civilization it needed. Call Atlantis Eden. It sank. Glug, glug. Before it did, Edenites performed experiments in biogenetic engineering. They were after immortality. They didn't find it, quite the opposite in PHANTACEA factuality, but the results of their experiments were deposited on the hundreds of islands that made up the Archipelago of Pacifica, the Places of Peace. (Pacifica became the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head after the Genesea, the Great Flood of Genesis. Edenite experimentations account for the vast array of sentient lifeforms still extant on the Hidden Headworld.) Golden Agers, led by its First Patriarch, Alorus Ptah, and Trishtar Thrae, his life's love, survived the Great Glug of Old Eden. Thanks to the Golden Apples they ingest, they live exceedingly long, healthy lives. Now enter the alien astronauts. They'd be the fallen angel devils, devakind. The year is 669 pre-Flood (4669 BC). The devils are led by the Devil, the Moloch Sedon. Other than their All-Father, only three of them are solid individuals. These are the Thrygragos Brothers, the three members of the second generation of devakind. The rest, their offspring by the long-lost Trigregos Sisters, make up the third generation of devakind, the Master Devas. (There are no azuras yet; nor are they any fourth generation devils. These last, primarily the Thanatoids of Lathakra, don't come along until the 60th Century of the Dome, the Outer Earth's 20th Century.) Master Devas are still insubstantial Spirit Beings. They quickly discover they can't possess Golden Agers due to the fact they ingest Golden Apples. Which is of course why they're called Golden Agers. There are plenty of other sentient lifeforms they can possess, however. The vast majority are ordinary men and women altogether allergic to Golden Apples. These Golden Apples grow all over the Whole Earth, on offshoots of the original Tree of Life. (Think Johnny Appleseed.) It still stands, in the remnant Garden of Eden, but its Gates are guarded by Angelics. (Presumably they're yet another sentient lifeform indigent to the Whole Earth; yet another product of Old Eden's discredited science, that is to say.) The devils discover there's a power struggle going on between Golden Agers. The Biblical Good Guys, the Patriarchs, are descended from Alorus Ptah, who died in 4726 BC, through the 2nd Golden Age Patriarch, Pseth Ra, who's still alive. The traditional Bad Guys, the Anti-Patriarchs, are also descended from Ptah, albeit through our chapter-titular character, Anti-Patriarch Cain, who's also still alive. Both sides have hoards of massively destructive weaponry left over from Old Eden. That they haven't used them on each other is mostly because both sides recall what happened to Old Eden, which didn't just sink. Rather, it didn't sink just because of natural phenomena. Old Eden was the author of its own ruination. (And, no, none of its inhabitants became dolphins in order to survive its Great Glug. At least, if they did, that hasn't become part of the PHANTACEA Mythos as yet.) Must be time for a gold-mining BLOCKQUOTE:
What they saw may have been the Male Entity in his first lifetime. (The comment that the Female Entity has always had her own agenda is significant, especially if you recall how Kore-4 ended.) They also saw the Anti-Patriarch's three young wives, whose names are Mnemosyne, Cybele and Eden. No coincidence there, since those are the names for PHANTACEA's Trigon Triplets. However, I did a modicum of research for Kore-8 and among the things I discovered was that the folkloric name for Cain's first wife was Awan, a word which reputedly meant wickedness compared to his, which meant smithy. Supposedly she was Adam and Eve's third child, who was born between Abel and the Biblical Seth. Be that as it may, PHANTACEA's Awan died giving birth to Enoch-Cain, the Anti-Patriarch's firstborn, while Adam and Eve's fifth child (assuming Cain was Trishtar Thrae's child; not that of Primeval Lilith, the Demon Queen of the Night) married Seth (PHANTACEA's Pseth Ra). According to the Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford University Press, 1993), her name was Azura, the same name I use for the other half of the devazur race. (Which I procured from the Indian Vedas as well as both the Hindu and Zoroastrian Faiths. As near as I can make out, depending on the context, the words 'azura', 'ahura' and 'asura' all mean either 'lord' or 'lady'.) By her slightly older brother this Azura thereafter had the Biblical Enosh (Enolon Su, PHANTACEA's third patriarch of Golden Age Humankind). In the graphic novel ("Forever & 40 Days, the Genesis of PHANTACEA"), which is where most of the material found in Kore-8 first appeared, Enolon Su was the patriarch who expired when a dragon he was boozing it up with burped. (Hey, I'm not afraid to repeat myself ==>) The moral of that story is obvious: Never drink with a dragon. Something else the future Unities saw in Enoch City was Cain's pet bull, Serapis.
All of which leads us to ==> Whereupon, after we finish with 4661 BC's WMD finale, it's back to 1938 AD's action-central, Castle Nightmare, for its ditto. Top of Page |
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9. COUERANNA'S CURSE: "Cry Helios"Early on in the synopsis for Kore-4 I wondered if, despite what happened to them in Odd-14, the time-tumbling Dual Entities are still around. Well, the wait is over and the answer is yes. Kore-9 starts off with a few references to events documented in 'Helioddity'. The first is very nearly a direct quote from close to Odd-14's happy ending. The date then was January 21, 1938 (Yamana 21, Year of the Dome 5937 on most of Sedon's Head). That was when both Taurus Ulysses Heliopolis (no longer possessed) and his consort, the three-thing (devil + demon + machine = Humanized Memory), Miracle Maenad (Pyrame-Lilith-Memory), were shot to shit. Whereupon they, Mithrant Boss Bull and Korant Boss Cow, immediately vanished. The second reference is to something that happened in Odd-5, when the latter was dismembered in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon by Golgotha Nauroz, whom you'll recall is now with Magister Mandam and crew at Castle Nightmare. As we quickly discover, neither the Taurus nor 38's Miracle Maenad were shot to hell. While they were definitely shot to shit, her much more terminally than him, they ended up in Sub-Trig (Trans-Time Trigon), not hell (although Sub-Trig is then-currently subterranean). Were still in shit, as in deep dreck, though. Were so terminally because the thousands-of-years' joint, Pyrame-Lilith aspects of Miracle Maenad is/are Silver-Arrows-splattered so badly she-they can't hold onto the Female Entity any longer. (Just to be clear, Pyrame so dominates her Lilith aspect she believes it, her body, is just a de-brained demon.) That means their Machine-Memory aspect has to take herself wholly into her terminal, the computerized innards of the Dual Entities' Trigon; become altogether the Mnemosyne Machine again. The sorry, not to mention, yet again, shitty state of Pyrame-Lilith's remains provokes the following, typically significant dialogue between Heliosophos, speaking to the wall, and the wall itself:
All of which is to say that if the Male Entity wasn't Kadmon Heliopolis in his First Lifetime, then there's no point in him trying to kill either of as-yet-unborn Kad's parents (Agenor Heliopolis or Argiope 'Bright Face' still Zeross) in his Eleventh. This revelation so unhinges Heliosophos he tries to finish off the Pyrame-Lilith two-thing. Whereupon Pyrame tries to possess him. Unsuccessfully, we're to gather. (Back to the action at Castle Nightmare, when it's January 29, 1938.) In Sub-Trig, still on Yamana 21st, Machine-Memory has to take matters into her own hands. Which, being once again wholly her Computer Self, means she has to first of all acquire some hands. Re-enter an old acquaintance of ours from Odd-4, Aquilla the Hunter. (He's a garuda. He's also an Inner Earth Summoning Child like Morgianna Somata and Demios Sarpedon, the other two Utopians with Magister Mandam and his crew at Castle Nightmare. Which means he isn't so very old, barely 17.) He's been lying in a tub of Cathonic Fluid since events described in Odd-8; which is to say ever since re-membered Miracle Maenad returned from Cabby's Weirdom with it. (Even if 're-membered' isn't a word it's not a bad pun. Mnemosyne does mean memory after all.) Unfortunately for him it isn't just his hands Machine-Memory needs in order to patch up her Herr Hel Helios. She also needs the tub full of Cathy he's been lying in for not enough time as yet. End result being he's now severely brain-damaged:
At which point in our narration, we return to what's going on in Castle Nightmare over a week later. (Sooth said, Kore-9 bounces between Sub-Trig and Castle Nightmare throughout. PHANTACEA fact of the matter is so much happens during the course of Kore-9 there isn't much point in even trying to summarize any more of it in the space remaining. Guess that means you'll have to read it while it's still up here in WWW-Dotland.)
What's this! John Sundown's been shot? Yehudi Cohen, having already self-codenamed himself 'UD - The Untouchable Diver' (in Kore-6), is sort of right in that Sundown had indeed had himself an exclusion zone. What the Diver doesn't realize (though Sorciere {Solace Sunrise} and likely Magister Mandam, who purports to know just about everything, do) is that it was arguably due to the fact Sundown also once had himself a Raven Fetishim. So what became of it? Recall once again how Kore-4 ended. Recall also that Mnemosyne D'Angelo is codenamed Circean.You might even recall that on Charan's Ark (the 'Noah Two') Human Memory, Lovely Lady Afrite that she is, hooked up with her much younger (by 11 years), adoptive nephew Aires (Airhead).
Meanwhile, on the Noah Two ==> [NOTE: The wafer Sorciere (Solace Sunrise) is referring to is transformative faerie food. As for what effect it has on her and old Joe, well, I suppose that's all the more reason you should read Kore-9 as well as Kore-7 while they're still availabe for a fee-free perusal.] Top of Page |
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10. COUERANNA'S CURSE: "Aegis-Jesus"Recollect SOS, the Sorority of Sausages, from 'The Moloch Manoeuvres'? Well, they're back. Sort of back anyway. I say that because hardly any of the original Sausages remain on the Noah Two (Charan's Ark) as it steams its way through the Red Sea closer and closer to its destination, Italian Somaliland on the east coast of central Africa. Sea Stuff (Thalassa D'Angelo), Telemax (Maxwell Dre'Ath) and Circean (Mnemosyne D'Angelo) are, at least theoretically, in Scotland. whereas Airhead and General 'Huff and Puff' Jollity (Hush, Joli Blon) are in Germany. That leaves us with Ginny Gemstone (Virginia Mannering, albeit with rainbow eyes and now going by the codename of Living Agate; in other words the Horny Ghost is back inside her), Werewolf in Shorts (Jervis Murray aka Dervish Furie), Icicles for Arms (Camille Dugas aka Clair du Lune), Kid Killjoy (Will Tombstone aka Kid Cemetery) and his girlfriend, Torches for Arms (Brunhild 'Burning Hell' von Alptraum, the bronze-haired Volsung Summoning Child). It seems someone has been sticking silver arrowheads under the bed-pillows of those still on the Ark. Silver arrowheads, you may recall from both Manoeuvres and Helioddity, are the calling cards of the Silver Arrow Assassins (Nester 'Sagitarrius' and Artemis 'Sagitta' born Zeross Hyperenor), who were last seen on Aegean Trigon. Naturally the ex-Sausages are concerned about this. And so they should be. Sagitarrius and Sagitta aren't called the Silver Arrow Pacificists after all. Consequently, in some respects on the theory that the best defense is a good offense, Celestine-Ginny has decided to launch a pre-emptive strike on that Trigon. For reasons detailed in Kore-10, she's decided to leave Will and Brunhild behind. However, she's managed to convince Mr Brilliant (Immanuel Dark) to accompany the rest of them. Even though she has no known supranormal abilities, Tanith von Blut, the silver-haired Volsung Summoning Child, has also agreed to go along for the ride. Needless to say, all of this has sparked a degree of controversy among the latest SOSers. For synoptic purposes we join the debate as Celestine-Ginny attempts to recruit our chapter-titular, would-be saviour of supranormalkind. That'd be Jesus 'Jesse' Mandam, who looks a lot like Ginny when she doesn't have rainbow eyes. As we've long known, Jesse has a thing for Tanith. All of which brings us to this rather lengthy, says-it-all BLOCKQUOTE. (The initial speaker is Jesse.)
No go Jesse, evidently. Maybe Celestine-Ginny shouldn't have tried to get him to let her wear the Aegis Armour. Immanuel Dark is hardly the only one not overly bothered by his lack of participation, however.
Yep, after a not particularly long absence from Curse, Fisherwoman is with us again. In Rome, on the Thirteenth of January, the original Sausages banded together in order to try to rescue, from Djinn the jinn and the ill-fated Count Molech, Fish and Delphi, her psychopomp. The next day, still in Rome, Jess had the temerity to shoot, howsoever non-fatally, both of them. That was how he managed to acquire the Aegis Armour in the first place. Equally evidently, him trying to keep it from his suspiciously sisterly lookalike hadn't gone down well with Celestine-Ginny (whose codename, as noted above, is now Living Agate, not Ginny Gemstone).
Meanwhile, back at Castle Nightmare ...
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Synopses of Kore 1-5Synopses of Kore 6-10Synopses of Kore 11-15 |
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Graphical Notes and Clickbacks- Double-click to enlarge in a separate window - |
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Dragon JoeSpotted and shot in a rainy day in Versailles, France, 2004. Dragon Joe is Joseph Mandam, Jesse and Barsine's father of record. He has a secret -- a number of them in pHanta-pHact. Perhaps the most interesting are in this title and this Gold-Mining box. Return to image in context. |
Hel AllSpotted and shot in the Musee D'Orsay in Paris, 2004. The horse on his helmet is reminiscent of the horses who pull the Mythical Helios's sun chariot. However the daemonic creature atop his helmet definitely suggests All of Incain, of whom much more is here. Regardless of this, phantacea's Helios is not a Shelios. He's none other than the Male Entity. Return to image in context |
Plathon as Cain's SerapisIan Fry drew this version of Multi-Horns, the Bull of Mithras, whom ancient Illuminaries of Weir named Plathon for reasons unknown, ca 1989 for the Phantacea Phase One Project; he also drew this close-up and this unused cover of Cain, Slayer of Abel. Return to image in context. A couple of other pertinent references to Helios, his resemblance to Thrygragos Lazareme and to Cain himself are just a click away on this very page. |
Webpage last updated: Spring 2015There may be no cure for aphantasia (defined as 'having a blind or absent mind's eye') but there certainly is for aphantacea ('a'='without', like the 'an' in 'anheroic') Ordering Information for PHANTACEA Mythos comic books, graphic novels, standalone novels, mini-novels and e-booksDownloadable order form for additional PHANTACEA Mythos Print PublicationsCurrent Web-Publisher's CommentaryJim McPherson's Worldwide Email Address -- jmcp@phantacea.comPHANTACEA: The Web SerialspHantaJim's WeblogWebsite last updated: Autumn 2015 Written by: Jim McPherson -- jmcp@phantacea.com© copyright Jim McPherson (www.phantacea.com) Websites featuring, at least in part, Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos
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