Psychodrama
PHANTACEA on the Web -- Story Synopses -- The Damnation Brigade Year One - After Limbo	Gold-Mining for PHANTACEA Factoids | Brilliant, Dark, Lucifer | A Cosmicar Described | DevicTalismans | Samsarites |	"Hope in Hell" "Sinistral Sloth of Satanwyck" "Cometh Goeth" "Nothing Like a Challenge/r" "Subcutaneous Sundown" "Manifestly Magnifico" "Subterranean Trigon"
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1. "Hope in Hell"

Psychodrama One, Damnation Brigade Twelve, has been up for awhile now so faithful readers already know where the Zeross girls, Persephone ('Percy') and Helen ('Paree'), sent Gloriella D'Angelo Dark, once Gentleman Jervis Murray and ex-Kronokronos Akbarartha. Considering what it is, I hesitate to use the word 'faithful'. Considering Gloriel is often referred to as 'angel', however, it's a fittingly ironic destination. We have of course been here before, in Weird-1 as a matter of PHANTACEA-fact. It's Satanwyck, Hell on Earth, Paradise for the Damned or, just as commonly, Pandemonium, -- though if you want to be absolutely accurate Pandemonium is the name of its capital city.

Then again Satanwyck sometimes doesn't have a capital, sometimes doesn't even have a city. Still, Pandemonium'll do for now. Do especially for D-Brig 3 (Radiant Rider, Wildman Dervish Furie and OMP, Old Man Power, the Awesome Akbar) since once in there's no way out. At least none they find in Psy-1, DBrig-12. What they do find is their house, the one last seen burning to the ground in Vancouver, Canada, back on December 5, 1980. Should they call it their Hotel in Hell, their 'ho-hel', their House in Hell? Oh probably, one or the other, or yet another. What they call it instead is ...

Before Akbarartha could protest she gathered them both up in her radiant rainbow and flew back to the city. She let them down in front of a sprawling, one-level house on a quiet street near a river. It was exactly like the ranch house they had moved into in Vancouver before they ended up beneath the Dome. Akbar knew the river wasn't the Fraser, knew the street wasn't in Vancouver, knew this couldn't be their house. The others did, too. Nonetheless, they seemed convinced it was there just for them.

The former Kronokronos pointed to the placard above the entrance. It was in Italian and read: 'LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH'ENTRATE'.

"What's it say, Rider?" asked Furie.

"Abandon all hope you who enter," she translated. "It's from Dante."

Akbar ripped the placard off the wall, tore off all except the middle word then hammered it back onto the wall and opened the door. They may be in Hell on Earth but they were going to live in a house named 'SPERANZA', -- Hope!

Things proceed from there. A little over a month later, on what would be January 31, 1981 beyond the Dome, they're still stuck in Satanwyck; are, apparently, the only fully alive beings there. Although the majority might look human, virtually everyone else is an earthborn demon. Some, we're to gather, are also occupied or at least animated by the soul-self of someone damned to Hell by the powers-that-be, whomever they may be. Either that or they think they are. It is a helluva of a place; it's also, potentially, a helluva lot of fun.

Of course, like everything else, Hell is what you make of it. For Gloriel, who takes to haunting churches, which are public washrooms in Pandemonium, it's a living hell; for Furie, who with his horns and cloven hoofs looks awfully devilish anyhow, it's a non-stop runaround looking for a way out; and for Akbar it's a massive headache. He really should stop bopping himself with his Homeworld Sceptre, trying to get it to tell him how to get away.

No fear. Whatever D-Brig 3 do to themselves, howsoever they punish themselves, their House called Hope is always there for them. The plumbing works, so does the air conditioning system, which one can imagine might come in handy in Hell. It's got central heating, the electricity and gas are never off, the cupboards are never bare, the fridge has plenty of beer and the linen's kept as clean as their clothes, the dishes, kitchen, bathrooms and indeed every aspect of the house itself. Paradise for the Damned it may be but, in many respects, it's also Paradise for the Damnation Brigade. Until New Years Eve, which isn't our New Years Eve, and the clock strikes twelve. Whereupon it strikes thirteen and, well, I can't say all hell breaks loose, because it has been all along, but it does blow up.

Before that, Faun-Furie wakes up with white skin underneath his wiry fur; Gloriel encounters a foul-mouthed and even fouler-behaving cupid who calls himself the 'Pocalyptic of Paranoia (look up cupidity in a dictionary for a hint as to what he really is) then a greedy Santa Claus who looks a lot like Akbar, only he has three eyes; and OMP keeps bopping himself. Furie plays poker with a one-eyed Cyclops wearing a visor, who spews positivism as he loses hand after hand mostly to a red-bearded madman. There is also a changeling, who is forever shifting shapes most distractingly, and an annoying boy-child, who finally goes bust and is arrested for being underage. They're all dressed in similar outfits. In PHANTACEA-fact the uniform Pyrame Silverstar was wearing when she met Baaloch Hellblob in Weird-1 was much the same. (I'd say identical but she was possessing a Cosmicaptain, you might recall. Her shell, Nehrini Purandar, being female, the tailoring was somewhat different.)

So, who or what are they dealing with? Is Furie's underaged annoyance the same envious cupid Gloriel encountered in the church? The Cyclops calls himself Eyeball, if that helps, and in additon to being a madman Redbeard puffs on a smelly calabash that never goes out. Then, after Pandemonium blows up and reconstitutes itself initially as a 17-layered birthday cake, D-Brig 3 spend all night in a dancehall celebrating someone's deathday. Said party starts out with them, and everyone else there, being addressed by a masked devil who annouces he's Domdaniel. I first made reference to him elsewhere a long time ago in terms of PHANTACEA on the Web (and it isn't as the Moloch Sedon); their names have been listed in a different elsewhere for almost as long, and deviations of one of them was around in the 1938 web-serials. (Still is in Autumn 2003, which is when I'm writing this.)

Psy-1, DBrig-12, really is too enjoyable to read, and reread, for me to tell you much more but here's a final hint:

Gloriel came into the kitchen. She was wearing nothing except the modesty gown she conjured when she was using her powers; that and a rainbow towel overtop. Her silver hair was covered with gunk and her skin was blotched, as if soiled by what they usually flushed. She was on the verge of tears and was about to say something when they heard the doorbell ring.

Faun-Furie answered it. He returned a half minute later followed by a dwarfish, ambulatory, red-shelled egg in a chef's hat and apron. He had two skinny stickman legs and was wearing disproportionately big clogs. Similarly he had two stickman arms, only they finished off in big, fat hands. On a platter he was carrying a pile of piping hot pizzas. Significantly, he was not wearing any gloves. Equally significantly, he had three eyes.

"You'd be Gluttony," said Akbar.

"The devil you say," said the devil. "This is takeout."

In other words, if he was Gluttony he'd have eaten the pizzas already. Ask me the English language really buggered up when it defined 'viceroy' as someone who rules by the authority of a sovereign or king. I'd have defined it as a King of Vice. As it is I'm stuck with Sinistral.

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2. "Sinistral Sloth of Satanwyck"

So, who or what are D-Brig 3 dealing with? The title of Psy-2, DBrig-13, reminds us, if we need reminding, that the kings of Hell on Earth, -- the Inner Earth version of it, that is --, are called Sinistrals. Baaloch Hellblob is aka Lord Lazy, not Sinistral Gluttony, so we are speaking of embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins, aren't we? Because the poker players Faun-Furie encountered in Psy-1, DBrig-12, were wearing uniforms similar to Cosmicaptain Nehrini Purandar you've probably already surmised, quite correctly as it happens, that they're dealing with possessed cosmicompanions.

Since Hellblob does it for us early on in Psy-2, DBrig-13, I might as well identify the other ones here and now. The red-bearded madman is Grim Thordin, once Sinistral Wrath, today the 'Pocalyptic of Pollution. The foul-mouthed and even fouler-behaving cupid is Bobby Badboy when he's male and Robin Goodgirl when he's female and making nice. He calls himself the 'Pocalyptic of Paranoia but was once Sinistral Envy, Jealousy or Covetousness. The lookalike Akbarartha, the miserly Santa Claus, the 'Pocalyptic of Poverty, is Mammon, Sinistral Avarice. Cyclopean Ibal was their viceroy, their Grand Vizier, their ever-cowardly, ever-puling-positivism adviser behind the throne. He isn't a Sinistral Anything but he is the 'Pocalyptic of Politics or, as Baaloch puts it, the 'Pocalyptic of Pusillanimity.

Since, as well, every cosmicar had aboard it a crew of seven and since we already know one of them was their cosmicaptain, Nehrini Purandar, as possessed by Pyrame Silverstar, whom we'll be getting back to a couple of chapters from now, that leaves two more companions unaccounted for. Because it doesn't come up this chapter, I'll hold off identifying the changeling, the latest deviation of the one who was around in the 1938 web-serials, for the time being. However, the last of those whose cosmicar must have crashed somewhere in Satanwyck is possessed by this Domdaniel fellow. Chronologically, Dom was the first of the Prime Sinistrals and, as such, he's also the embodiment of the worst of the Deadly Sins.

In Psy-1, DBrig-12, Akbarartha encountered a group of ebonite demons. They, these Nezers (as in Ebon Nezer), made reference to Dom in quite a clever way I thought. Quite a signifcant way as well, as Gloriel quickly comprehends:

"My beautiful archangel," responded the devil [Baaloch Hellblob, Lord Lazy], "You are new to Sedon's Head. You have no notion of the powers we devils wield here, particularly in our own protectorates. Nor do you have any idea whom you offended last night. Bobby Badboy's just an envious little sprite, and Ibal's a coward, but Grim Thordin's the devic god of Wrath and miserly Mammon's justifiably called Avarice. Neither will rest until either the former has revenge or the latter has you, body and soul. Then there's Domdaniel, the first king of Pandemonium. You've met. Sort of."

"I have?"

"Not in here, out there."

"Oh, no," realized Akbar, suddenly apprehending just how much this Hellblob knew about them. "One of the 'Nezers I came across this morning said Cometh didn't want me dead."

"Cometh?" had to ask Furie.

"Before the Fall," had to reply the old man, not feeling very clever now.

"Lucifer!" Gloriel flushed more horrified than outraged. "Mr Brilliant's animus."

D-Brig 3 take the devil's contract; agree to bodyguard Hellblob in return for their eventual release from Satanwyck. Hope, as opposed to their House called Hope, is they will successfully recathonitize his predecessors, predominantly Pride but also Wrath, Avarice and Covetousness, before one of them gains the popular support necessary to reclaim Sloth's throne. The biggest battle is between Old Man Power (OMP, Kronokronos Akbarartha) and Wrath (Grim Thordin, he with the polluting pipe, his calabash, the equivalent of a smoke stack as well as, not surprisingly with a name like his, the Hammer of Thor).

The mere fact he survives it bolsters OMP's self-confidence no end. (As a 3-year old is forever repeating, 'Oh -oh!'). And, while there are many another encounter between the three of them and the decathonitized devils recounted in Psy-2, DBrig-13, his is the most significant:

Akbarartha laid the body out on a table in the living room and began to examine it. Furie and Baaloch joined him but Gloriel wasn't interested. She refused to congratulate Akbar on what he thought was his well-earned victory. She was infuriated the Kronokronos had put his life on the line and equally disgusted that another human being had died just so the D-Brigade could test themselves. She stomped out of the room and went to the kitchen to make some tea.

The corpse was wearing some kind of uniform. It was in tatters now but it consisted of black boots and pants and a striped silver and black top. They realized it was of Outer Earth design by a label that read: 'Property of New Century Enterprises, Centauri Island, Hawaii, USA.' The body itself was in rough shape, so desiccated that it crumbled under the slightest touch. As it continued to deteriorate in front of their eyes, Akbar covered it with a sheet.

Baaloch conjured some demon-undertakers, yellow-skinned anthropomorphic worms with stove-pipe hats and spindly arms, to dispose of it.

In their endlesly frustrating efforts to prevent the usurpation of the Satanwyck-throne belonging to Sinistral Sloth, D-Brig 3 were killing off cosmicompanions!

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3. "Cometh Goeth"

Sometimes I hate titles like this one, the one for Psychodrama Three, Damnation Brigade Fourteen. They give so much away there's almost no point reading the chapter. Unfortunately, however, almost as often titles like this one are simply irresistible. You got a character whose attribute is Pride; you got demons who call him 'Cometh', as in 'Before the Fall', he goes somewhere, what else are you going to call it? It's a 'Pundemonium' and, as Baaloch Hellblob, Lord Lazy, Sinistral Sloth of Satanwyck, tells D-Brig 3 (Radiant Rider, Wildman Dervish Furie and OMP, Old Man Power, the Awesome Akbar) in their House called 'Hope':

"Pundemoniums are very popular in Hell." Hellblob grinned so widely it was even odds whether the top of his head would fall off like the top sliced off a soft-boiled egg. The three-eyed egg-folk would have been Humpty Dumpty incarnate were it not for the fact that every time they smashed him he just pulled himself back together again.

There are potholes full of Pundemonium-puddles of Psy-3, DBrig-14. Which shouldn't surprise anyone who recalls that the capital city of the Domination of Satanwyck is, when it's there, Pandemonium. Here's another one.

Dervish Furie, who's still a white-skinned faux-faun, competes in a Triathalon. It's described as the ultimate torture the human body could endure. Which of course makes it Satanwyck's national sport. During it he encounters, yet again, the one-eyed Cyclops known as Grand Vizier Ibal, he whose power focus is the Evil Eye. Only Sinistral Sloth has had possession of it for thirty eyes. (Lord Lazy's talisman is a frond.) The former viceroy says to the Wildman: "You might be the Furie but we're your Furies. We're going to harry you until you finally have no other choice. If you want to truly eliminate us, you'll have to kill yourselves."

And that's the nub of the gist of the chief coyote in not just Psy-3, DBrig-14. D-Brig 3, with the possible exception of Gloriel, who's having a rough time in Hell (calls Furie 'dear' instead of 'Der', as in Dervish, and even starts talking sex like one of the boys) has no intention of committing suicide. However, Domdaniel and the 'Pocalyptics have every intention of claiming their bodies and using them as their shells like the real Apocalyptics did on Damnation Isle in 'The War of the Apocalyptics'. Which is why a 'Nezer once told Akbar Cometh didn't want them dead.

I'd call it a plot portent except someone might think, given that in Hell on Earth, Paradise for the Damned, we're talking about a popular afterlife destination for bad guys, I'm making a burial plot pun. I'd never do that. Gloriel, however, does complain about Furie endlessly grousing about how far down, and down, and down, they've been going into the depths of Satanwyck in search of Dom, his fellow former Sinistrals and their Cyclopean viceroy.

"Down Syndrome," protested Gloriel, "Is nothing to joke about."

"What else would you call what we've been doing the last month, Rider? Up yours?"

"No need to be crude, Dervish."

"Crude, my butt! We've gone down so far we should swimming in the stuff by now."

One day Radiant Rider (Gloriella D'Angelo Dark) ventures into Hope's basement. She'd have gone there before, except 'ho-hel' has never had a basement before. There she finds a spacecraft.

Turns out Cometh hasn't gone anywhere. Not in Psy-3, DBrig-14, he hasn't. Unless it's to the bathroom. Turns out, also, Dom and his fellow 'Pocalyptics have been hiding out right under D-Brig 3's noses. In a bathroom. Or at least in a basement suite with a bathroom. Of course we don't find this out until nearly the end of "Cometh Goeth". Which comes not all that long after Gloriel's picked up by a sleigh driven by a 3-eyed Santa Claus who looks disturbingly like OMP.

"So, what do you say, Radiant Rider?" demanded Ibal on Domdaniel's behalf. "You can be with us but you can't be against us."

"I destroyed you once. I'll do it again!"

"Thou'rt insane!" shouted the luminous devil. "Do as thou wilt w'her, Greed!"

Akbar, Dervish Furie, and Baaloch burst into the basement of their house in Hell just as all Heaven broke loose.

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4. "Nothing Like a Challenge/r"

We leave D-Brig 3 in Hell just as all Heaven breaks loose. They'll be back; some of them anyhow. Instead we return to that other D-Brig member who disappeared in Weird-9 ( the early morning of Tantalar 26, 5980 Year of the Dome). That'd be Yehudi Cohen, codenamed the Untouchable Diver. He wasn't sent to the Domination of Satanwyck by the two eldest Zeross girls. Rather, he took himself elsewhere, to a platform between-space. That was where he encountered Phaedra, who turned out to be none other than Fey Woman, Wilderwitch's daughter by an unknown father.

Born in '46, Fey is barren. She has, however, managed to acquire a little girl of her own, a child with wings for arms. There's more where she came from and we meet a couple of them in Psychodrama Four, Damnation Brigade Fifteen. Meet more than just them, sooth said, though most of them we've met before, primarily in the 'Launch' Tetralogy but also in 'Ringleader's Revenge'. One of these last is Uriah Cohen, the Diver's son, whom we only heard about in 'The War of the Apocalyptics'. Another is the Young Baron, Gunther von Alptraum, a now 61-year old Summoning Child like the Diver (except the Diver's still only 36, recall). He's in Hamburg. So is the Diver. Von Alp spots him and contacts Signal System's Saviour. He's in California. Guess who's on their way to Hamburg shortly thereafter? That's right. Welcome back to PHANTACEA on the Web the Silver Signallers.

There's only 7 of them this time. One's new (Spelaean, called Caveman for reasons obvious). A couple were last seen on Centauri Island near the end of LAST-Moon (Sapperstein and Sebastion). The other four are Spartan, Shadowswirl, Sapphire and Sharpshooter, who's now calling himself Silver Arrow. They've been with us since the first part of 'Apocalyptics'. Their task is to take down supranormals activated by the Alliance of Man when aliens were detected on the Moon. Although they've done some impressive work in the past, they haven't had much luck against members of the Damnation Brigade. Don't fare much better against the Diver either. Do drive him back between-space, however. Whereupon he encounters our titular Challenger.

He needed someone to talk to, someone who might know all there was to know about Samsara; someone familiar. He thought about the floating platform with the bonfire on it; about the girl-child with wings instead of arms, and, especially, about the woman who named herself Phaedra. He thought and was there. But the platform was empty; the light, actually a campfire, was barely smouldering. There was no winged girl, no Phaedra. There was, he sensed, something else however: a presence, for want of a better word.

"I gather you're the Diver," said the presence.

"You have me at a disadvantage, sir."

"Name's Gnathion Challenger. Call me Nat, -- without the G. I think you'll agree I'm not easily squished."

"I'll take that as a given, since I can't even see you."

A human took shape on the platform. He was a man in his mid-twenties. White, perhaps six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, narrowing to the hips, with straight blonde hair that hung almost to the middle of his back, Nat was wearing a red robe, a yellow sash, and sandals.

That description remind you of anyone? Bet it does now. How could that be? Ah, as to that, the System Seer known as Shooter when first we met him back in Apocalyptics developed a theory about what the apparently still young King Crimefighters were after he and his fellow Signallers encountered them in Vancouver. He was wrong about D-Brig but if he'd ventured the same thing about Challenger, his mate Arachne (who will be along shortly) and Windrush (the girl-child with the wings for arms), whom he may or may not know about, he'd have been right. Must be time for another gold-mining box.

All of which bring us back to why D-Brig 3 were sent to Hell, what happens to the Diver toward the end of Psy-4, DBrig-15, and why Year One - After Limbo is only the subtitle for this here 'Psychodrama'.

The Diver thought himself to his former bedroom in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon's old palace. He had much to think about and it was best to do so in a secure place. [Except] the room [he found himself in] was cold and dark, hung with cobwebs. It looked like no one had been in it for decades, if not centuries. Yet it was the same room. Had he somehow travelled into the far future, a future where no one lived in the Weirdom anymore? A figure, some kind of ghost, came towards him. It walked through everything as if it wasn't there. The ghost smiled and tipped his homburg. His cranium was transparent and his brain pulsed visibly beneath it.

"Psycho!" gasped the Diver, recognizing him instantly.

"Saul," requested Cerebrus's twin. "If you have to use a nickname for me, I prefer 'Magnifico'."

["How?"]

"Patience, Diver. When you're a brain in a box you get good at it. I latched onto you again in Samsara and you brought me here. My body's around somewhere nearby. I can sense it ... I need it back, Diver. Unite it with the rest of me. I want to become whole again."

And where is Saul-Psycho's body? Who has it? Answer is, if you'll pardon a Pundemonium, Cometh Gotteth!

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5. "Subcutaneous Sundown"

As promised at the beginning of the synopsis for Psy-4, DBrig-15, D-Brig 3 are back. At the time I wrote that some of them would be back. I should have written that aspects of them would be. The one aspect of Gloriel that isn't back she marks with a peculiar inscription etched onto his tombstone.

'LEANDRO D'ANGELO -- RESTING IN PIECES!'

Seems that Leandro, Amoeba Prime, has made a habit out of doing just that. (Recall the Psychic Siblings from both 'Centauri Island' and 'Helios on the Moon'?) Be that as it may, be that as he may or may not have been Gloriel's Big Angel, in terms of this here 'Psychodrama'D-Brig 3 are hardly the only ones back. The title identifies one of them, Blind Sundown, and since he was last seen in the Weirdom of Cabalarkon you might expect Wilderwitch and Raven's Head to be as well. If you are, you won't be disappointed.

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6. "Manifestly Magnifico"

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7. "Subterranean Trigon"

We hereby interrupt the synoptic proceedings of 'Psychodrama' to announce the Second Coming of the Great Flood of Genesis. Sorry for any inconvenience.

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The Damnation Brigade: 'The Weirdness of Cabalarkon', Chapters 1-6

The Damnation Brigade: 'The Weirdness of Cabalarkon', Chapters 7-11

The Damnation Brigade: 'Psychodrama', Chapters 1-7

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