EverEpic

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 30.3(64)

Jack Harkness grinned. “Then you may have been the one who saved my life when I was in London, of the PreBreaking Earth.” He turned and looked at the great disk embedded in the floor. “I used such a device back during the PreBreaking, just before I fled from the Earth with other survivors in the Arkpods. When I died out on one in one of the space colonies, I returned to life here on the Broken Earth. Those things are awful to use and one might end up almost anywhere below us.”

Samson snapped his fingers and out of the disk arose, from its centre, a cylinder shaped structure. It ceased moving when it was three metres high, as well as being three metres wide. In its side, facing Samson, was a curving metallic door of material the same as the rest of the mechanism. “At least, in theory, we have a way back through that elevator. Question is, why bother using such a...?”

Another, smaller, cylinder arose with a sloping disk shaped top. It was a control console.

He stopped as if hit by a thought. After a moment he walked over to the console and began to tap on its keyboard even as he examined a 3Dflatscreen inset into the console. The others watched him closely except for those on guard duty.

He turned to the others. “This area is part of the original Edinburgh Castle, though altered in some relatively small ways after the Breaking. The slide-inverter-entrance was hidden by a holographic projection of false stone flooring. The exotic sliding transportation network-system skips many solid layers of ground and exits in a very deep PreBreaking Earth built bunker supercomplex. I need to fully activate it after getting past its first layer of lock coding.”

He began to work on the problem at once with an impressive intensity of focus.

As Samson did that, there, Samson was also in his tower doing some art and Samson was in the Fatedomain doing some training with Rhonda Rhodes. Samson had become three bodies but still, somehow, one entity. This was not like the Rhodes Sisters who were semiautonomous parts of the one. Nor was it like Sampha, Samtha and Samsha who were semiautonomous to Samson and to each other.

Samson was a little perturbed by the new type of existence, the being one as three bodies, but it was something that he had to be to get done what he had to get done. As it was he was getting used to the change with surprising speed as if he had gone through such experiences before; he had done so!

The others went off to carry out various tasks, many returning to Fortress Freedom through the Fatevator.

[Maharg67]

EverEpic Zero

Story Directions Continued On From Post #46

*Introducing the Brownlingo Estate.

*Sallie first reveals an odd change in nature.

*Smuggler is killed by a fake demonic attack in a laneway beside the Hopeville Temple of Holiest Truth.

*The introduction of Samsha into the story being Samson's 'sister'. She joins the TPMI-SIRIO Taskteam.

*Phanto encounters, and fights, Democultists in a long abandoned temple complex.

*Democultists, and demonic beasts, fight against Doomlordic demons at the temple complex.

*Phanto drops through temple floor to find a chamber, an AAA with an encapsulated superhuman along with a pool. There are also elevator doors in one wall that are identical to those that materialised in the main library of the Foremale Estate. When tentacles, from the pool, attack Phanto he escapes using the 'elevator' that opens for him.

*Samtha joins fight against Doomlordic Invaders of that area of the Hopelands. First test-transformation takes place being of a soldier badly wounded in the fight The man is rejuvenated and enhanced of mind-body-spirit. The message is from the 'Multiversal Primary Adjusticators' and is 'that you must take care as Fateplayers, that much more is at stake than you so far even guess at'.”

*Battle ceases as Doomlordic Forces withdraw.

*TPMI-SIRIO Taskteam arrives at battleground with Samsha but Samtha avoids openly acknowledging her and is drawn away to meet one TriGuardia Marshal Travis Jekyll who makes arrogant demands of her. He turns out to be a fake, a doppelganger as are the others with him. The doppelgangers are seeking information about what is going on but they do not know who has hired them or why; this is fairly typical for such infiltrators.

*They exchange information and Samtha learns that the powerful Doomlordic Forces were pulled through into that realm against their will. The implications of this are dire.

*Thug-mercenaries, in two platoons, attack the Foremale Estate. One is destroyed by unknown supersoldiers of amazing ability. The other is knocked out by stunflash handgrenades. Sallie Foremale is found amongst them but was a hostage of the thug-mercenaries. She had fallen to the seductive power of a dark stranger but had fought herself free of it; she had the strong will of Foremale women. Nicolanda Foremale, from an estranged part of the family who dwell in Hopeville, is also captured but he soon dies from damage done to his mind.

*The dark stranger is identified as James Jamestone of the TPMI-SIRIO Taskteam.

*James Jamestone vanishes from Fortress Freedom, taking valuable information with him on the Temple of Holiest Truths along with some valuable artefacts; yet he did not manage to take anything of primary value or perhaps he did not want to do so. Another TPMI-SIRIO member, Peter Daviding, was found dead in his comfortable observation cell.

*James Jamestone had been under investigation by the TPMI Internal Security Office. The investigating team was led by Jack Harkness, formerly of the super secretive organisation called Torchwood. He had come, along with his own team of people, all the way from Wales of the New British Isles that was part of the Heartlands of the TripleEmpire.

*Jack, with his comrade named Gwen, meet with the TPMI-SIRIO Taskteam and also Patty Vandis, the CrystalMage who has become an unofficial member of the team.

*James Jamestone's real name was James Whitelasn of the infamous Purity Path Movement that is anti-demonic and black magic to such an extreme that they are dangerous to most people. The PPM is also controversial in preaching the supposed good of being 'possessed by angelic spirits' and yet it is generally believed that true angelic spirits would, could, not do such a thing. After a series of dark acts both the PPM and the Whitelasn Family were forced to go into hiding.

*James Jamestone seems to be trying to infiltrate the Temple of Holiest Truth.

*The PPM and the THT were once closely linked but a violent schism took place leading to much death and destruction in both factions. The differences were that the PPM went with the 'traditional line' of limited angelic possessions only while the THT wanted to take a new, more radical 'path' in which they would make deeper contact with what they called 'more powerful kinds of angelic spirits',
*Samsha reveals the existence of the chamber with the pool, the AAA with the humanoid inside it and the 'elevator' along with the tentacles monster.

*Samsha speaks to the TPMI-SIRIO Taskteam of what took place on the Foremale Estate with the attack of the two thug-mercenary platoons, along with the fates of the two Foremale people. Sallie Foremale does not remember why James Jamestone had her taken to the estate.

*Fatevator 'elevator like' doors appear in the TPMI-SIRIO central chamber along with a strange vending-machine like AAA.

*Introducing Marshal Prishana Strongbow who is in command of the TPMI at Fortress Freedom.

*Samson leads a group into the depths of the Foremale Mansion and finds a chamber with a row of big barrels against a wall. Sampha materialises and causes the barrels to be exposed as fakes. Clay-flesh golemites come out of them, except some destroyed by failed maintenance. The other golemites are slow and easily destroyed.

*Introducing Sampha who appears like a younger version of either Samtha or Samsha.

*They confront Samvil in a capsule type AAA. It is explained how Samson, Sampha, and others led the TriLegions into the Darklands to destroy such as the Darkjover Estateclan.

*A short verbal confrontation between Samvil and Samson following failed trickery by Samvil. Samvil, and the AAA he is trapped in, vanish.

*They discover a secret Darkjover complex scattered with long dead Darkjover people. It turns out that the complex was mainly dedicated to the finding of the 13 Diamondafa Vaults.

*In the complex they discover an AAA of great power and strange appearance of a type called a NineVitoAza. The Darkjovers tried to activate it, though they considered that it had nothing to do with the 13 Diamondafa Vaults. They failed but some other force did so and all of the Darkjovers were killed. The device is part of the problem drawing demonic entities into that world.

*In the PreBreaking World the Foremale Castle was the Edinburgh Castle of Edinburgh.

*Samson decides that the AAA is too dangerous to try to deactivate.

*The AAA vanishes and exposes a superhuman built slide-inverter-entrance from the PreBreaking Age of Scientific Madness.

*Samson works out that the slide-inverter-entrance is a way to a very deep PreBreaking built supercomplex. He begins to work on getting past 'lock coding' so he can fully activate the superhuman built device.

*One Samson becomes three Samsons in one.

Edited July 14, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 31.1(65)

Samvil stood up, unsteadily, and looked around in surprise that he was free from the ancient alien artefact that had held him for so very long. Except that, deep down, he knew he was not totally free from the ancient alien network of artefacts for all of the AAAs were linked. Behind them lingered a very ancient and dark intelligence full of bitter rage, self pity and very cunning over complicated plots of evil intent.

Even as he looked around the very old temple chamber, he crouched in his survival power armour, wishing that with his weapons he had Samson in his sights and could blast him into bloody burned mess.

They called them the false angels, the creatures that moved around the temple busily erasing all signs and magic of the Democultists that once worshipped devils there. False angels wrapped in painful false holy light. Deceptive, and self deceptive, the false angelics fully believed that not only were the real thing but that the real angelic entities were false. They were demogels.

From what madness had such risen was not known by Samvil but he really did not care where the strange entities had come from or how they had arisen.

There were false angel possessed humans, flesh puppets who souls were trapped in limbo while they were held in dreadful slavery of mind-body-spirit. They had been fanatical fools who had willingly given themselves to the false angels, the demogels. They were demogols.

He was in a big hidden temple deep below the Temple of Holiest Truth in the city of Hopeville. The temple, in the city, was abandoned by the demogels and their demogol slaves. Samvil only knew that a small majority of THT Followers had realised, almost too late, the horrific truth of the true nature of the demogels. Those followers had waged battle against the twisted entities, and their slaves, driving them from the THT Temple. Samvil did not really care for, in truth, he only cared about himself.

A demogel, glowing white with false holy light, and rushed at Samvil with a sword in each hand screaming hateful condemnation. To a demogel hate was love and condemnation was acceptance. Samvil scowled, turned and shot the creature with the pulselaser of his multiple-gun. The demogel screamed out in agony and rage even as it died, burning away in a very demonic fashion.

A second demogel charged him and then two more; they all met the deadly fate of the first attacker.

Samvil laughed with pleasure for to kill, in that fashion, caused him pleasure and gave him a brief surge in false confidence, of power.

A strange moaning noise swept through the great, deeply underground chamber and the demogels withdrew away from Samvil, cowering in fear as they did so. The demogel false archangel came into view with great spread wings and much false holy light. Its eye glowed blood red in colour and it smiled with great fangs much stained with blood. It was a demogela.

Samvil realised that he needed to talk to the monster and not try to kill it. He lowered his multiple-gun but not totally as he was not stupid.

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 31.2(66)

The demogela spoke with a voice meant to sound holy but which sounded false and jarring, causing Samvil to scowl in annoyance. “Hate is love and love is hate. You give honour to my kind by killing some of us. We would give honour to you by torturing you to death. Alas, this can not be so. Injustice is justice and justice is injustice.”

Samvil frowned. “You demogelics are insane!”

The demogela laughed and again it was an awful parody of a true angelic laugh. “Insanity is sanity and sanity is insanity. Alas, we must talk though I would prefer to burn you slowly to death. You came for the ancient superhuman artefact that we have found. You would give us your everything for it as agreed.”

“No such agreement was made, as you know somewhere in that rancid mind of yours, if one can call it a mind.” Samvil shrugged. “The agreement was that you would give me three superhuman made artefacts and, in turn, I would give over three litres of holiest of unholy water.”

“True holy water!” The demogela hissed in rage and then gave a skittish laugh before speaking again. “The one that spoke to our minds was wondrously holy and showed much darkness of true light. He was the one-of-many-of-one who drew us to come to this horrid mortal realm where our faithful followers waited to be so lovingly betrayed and when we betrayed them, so that they screamed and screamed, we felt only true love, of hate, for them. If you serve him faithfully, we should cheat and torture kill you.”

Samvil sighed heavily. “I just knew you fools would be troublesome. Make the deal, as stated, or the one-of-many-of-one will cause you much real suffering.”

For a moment the demogela hissed at him and less powerful demogels gathered as if to attack but Samvil knew that they feared his Dark MasterMistress greatly and were wise to do so. They were part of that one's plans that were causing increasing havoc in the local area of the Hopelands but which had done damage across the world. It was ironic that most of the death, and destruction, caused had been unintended.

What had happened to the Citystate of Eurolin caused even such as Samvil to shudder though he hid his horror from others, or at least he tried to.

Five demogols, flesh-puppet humans with eyes full of exhausted horror, brought the artefacts to Samvil who inspected them carefully. Everything was there that should have been there and the false angels had not even tried any form of booby-traps.

Samvil snapped his fingers and the five crystal-glass bottles of unholy water materialised out of mid air. Then he gave the demogela the 'finger' and vanished, along with the artefacts, with a sparkling shimmer.

When the demogels realised that the crystal-glass bottles were full of tap-water, they were enraged. Then the bottles shimmered with black-red energies and were for a moment surrounded by a bracken mist. Then the water, the the bottles, was truly unholy. The demogels sang in horrific parody of true angels and the demogols moaned softly in pain and fear.

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 32.1(67)

Getting into the Hopeville Temple of Holiest Truth was of little difficulty for Sampha, Jack Harkness and Drend. Drend was another TPMI Agent who was of a nocturnal subspecies of humanity. The noctumans had been genetically engineered just decades before the Breaking of the World and had only reached a population of twenty millions before the Breaking. Their numbers had increased greatly in the TripleEmpire, and UIC, but they were still a relatively small minority of humanity.

Drend had hard feelings towards the Temple Followers of the Holiest Truth who wanted all human subspecies to be rounded up and turned into slaves or even exterminated. He would do his duty, to the TPMI, but hoped to do damage to the extreme religious political faction.

They got in through a largely forgotten servant's entrance from the rear of the big, fortified temple building. There was a high walled courtyard there half filled with junk such as discarded furniture. It had been of good quality once but was now damaged with neglect and being subject to weather conditions.

Inside they found nothing like they had expected to do. There was a large temple chamber, which they entered into from the rear, where large statues stood and once had stood many smaller ones. None of them had been in that temple before but Jack Harkness had been in another THT in a far off TriImperial City that should have been almost identical in appearance. Except there, in that temple chamber, there had been much violence and all of the smaller statues were toppled over and badly damaged while the bigger ones stood but were badly damaged.

Dead, slowly decaying bodies, were scattered across the temple being mostly robed followers with fewer initiates, guards, priests, priestesses and others of special status. Sampha walked carefully across the heavily blood stained flagstone floor and noted some other marks, some being very strange and disturbing.

She spoke, with a grave tone of voice, to the others. “False angels, the fools summoned demogels also known as demonic false angels. The demogels actually believe they are not just angels but the only real angelic entities. They are deranged and evil. This could explain, at least partly, the schism between the Temples of Holiest Truth and the Purity Path Movement. The demogels could be at least one kind of 'powerful angelic spirits' that the THT Followers wished to summon forth. In theory it is impossible for such entities to come to this kind of realm let alone to exist here. Something very bad is happening.”

With blind white light the angel appeared and stood facing them as the light surrounding her became far less blinding. She was standing just above the floor as if not wishing to touch it or being repelled by it. The coming of true angelics to the material realms was quite rare even if this one was an angel of the lower orders holding a brass staff in one hand instead of the silver of the high angels or the gold of the archangels.

The angel seemed confused, annoyed in a blissful manner. She was beautiful in a white robe-leotard tunic of odd design. Her skin was white but not as humans were white. Her eyes were large and glowed softly with golden white light. Then she spoke. “This is not the Mid Circle of the Heavenly Archives of the Holy Records of Life and Death. I was supposed to appear there and pick up records to deliver to the Elder Angel Council of Blessings.”

Edited June 28, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 32.2(68)

She looked around and a look of graceful disgust came to her beautiful face. “False angels, how very horrid and also how very.... unexpected.”

She thrust her angelic holy-staff out and from its tip spat glowing, spreading beams of holy light. As she beamed it over the temple dead bodies either vaporised or resurrected, standing there in bewilderment in cleansed nudity and blissfulness. The temple became cleansed in other ways with blood vanishing away, unholy objects evaporated and so did emblems and such like.

Then the angel frowned ever so sweetly. “I must return to Heaven and report this. This is very very bad. There is no more that I can do here for now.” She focused on the TPMI-SIRIO people. “These others have been converted and reformed; please care for them and take them to one of the Orders of the Light for sanctuary.”

Then she closed her eyes, focused on something and vanished with another flash of light.

Sampha shook her head in wonder. “Well that was unexpected, to paraphrase the angel herself.”

She used the resources of the Fategame and her own Faterings to summon forth sets of basic durable clothes for the resurrected folk there along with boots, knives in sheaves and backpacks with other useful items.

They led the large group back out of the temple, the same way that they had entered it, and were not far away from the building when it violently imploded in a seemingly impossible fashion. The building was literally sucked into its own core and downwards with a huge roaring noise and a great crashing of stone and other building materials. It collapsed also downwards into destroyed basement levels.

The Hopeville Temple of Holiest Truth was totally destroyed along with any secrets hidden inside it or so it seemed at the time.

The angelic 'saved' former followers, of the THT, were taken to the Order of Compassion. Sampha passed over $5,000 to the Followers of Compassion as a devotional donation to their cause and to the GodGoddess.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 33.1(69)

Samson unlocked the locking code of the superhuman slide-inverter-entrance and began working to activate it. He soon ran into a security program that tried to stop him from doing so. It was clear that there had been a very strong attempt to stop anybody accessing the deep superhuman bunker complex.

Secrets of the Darkjovers were being uncovered and many were of atrocious experimentation done on victims, of attempts to reanimate the dead in varied ways, of attempts to turn Darkjover 'volunteers' into some kind of dark superhumans. The great majority of the experiments were total failures but what remained was still terrible. They were cleansed away apart for items to be placed securely in TPMI archival vaults.

A small chosen number of individuals gained the ability to use the Fatevator to travel between the Darkjover Foremale Complex, the Foremale Estate Main Library and Fortress Freedom. They could take others with them, along with goods, and access the devices in the Fatevator Main Chamber. They even gained credit to use the devices which was added to every midnight. So they bought items not only to use at once but to take with them for later use, often passing them to others. Thus they obtained lasertorches, stunclubs, hypoguns, zapguns, zipguns, fleshers and other such items.

The TPMI-SIRIO Taskteam was being expanded to become a Taskforce with many more people and other resources. More SIRIO people were being sent from the UIC as well as far more TriImperials joining the group.

The strange vending-machine like AAA, in Fortress Freedom, was a fixer and upgrader of standard technologies small enough to drop down the down-chute. Fixing, and upgrading, cost upwards from a basic fee for basic fixing-upgrading to what ever else was able to be paid for and done by the AAA. It turned out to be a 'basic form of AAA' known as a rejuvenater-upgrader. The upgrades were improvements on standard technologies but only to a limited degree which meant no amazing new technological breakthroughs. Yet the TPMI-SIRIO Taskforce was soon making very good use of the rejuvenater-upgrader.

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 34.1(70)

Samson had not forgotten about Professor Harold Hoggins, over in TriImperiarna, and approached the TPMI people with the subject. Jack Harkness seemed surprised by the subject of the professor and led Samson to a private area in the Foremale Main Library. They sat in the quiet study antechamber across from each other in lightly padded chairs.

Jack spoke first. “The rise of the UIC took place about 200 years ago and a secret faction war began, as James Jamestone stated. He said that he belonged to one side but that was a lie. The real James Jamestone did so but vanished centuries ago. One side fights for life, for a natural balance of existence, for the extremely limited use of the ancient alien artefacts. The other side wishes to create a new form of supposedly superior life, to create a new order of existence dominated by a new breed of superhumans and want to not only use the AAAs excessively but to carry out the same sort of experimentation that led to the Breaking of the World. One side is the TriOrder of Guardianship, TOG, and the other is the PaxIlluminate.”

Then Jack sighed heavily. “The TriLegions and Aerofleets, along with other TriImperial Elite Forces, have seemingly vanished. The truth is that they are busy fighting massive military campaigns against three sets of powerful enemies. About a third of TriImperiarna itself, the capital supercity of three great domes, is a battlefield. The region known as the Doomlands is a second battle zone. The third is the Panatlantic Ocean, or at least part of it closer to the TripleEmpire where there are many minicontinents and great clusters of islands known as super archipelagos. The only exceptions are those protecting the rest of TriImperiarna and those specialising in active combat training, service-support and special forces functioning across the TripleEmpire. There are also actions being carried out that I have no real knowledge of, just hints if anything.”

Jack shook his head. “Professor Harold Hoggins was known to me but he was murdered by PaxIlluminate Assassins some five years ago. Can I look at what he supposedly sent to you?”

Samson snapped his fingers and the envelope, and former contents of the envelope, appeared spread out on a small table between, and to one side, of them. “This is all of it.”

Jack grinned mildly. “Nice trick! Could use such myself.”

Samson grinned back. “Takes too much energy. Most of the time it is far more efficient to get things the old fashioned way but I 'sense' that this is very important.”

Jack just grinned some more. “I would want it for the special occasions.”

Jack Harkness went quickly through the items that Hoggins had sent. Every so often he made a small gesture or sound and once he arched his eyebrows high.

At last Jack put the items down and raised his head to look at Samson. “The writing seems to be genuine in more than one way. The physical way it is written is his and so is the style along with his biases and various beliefs. The choice of other items goes along with his character including the comic strips that he pretends that he only collects to send to you. Yet I examined his dead body, and was at his funeral, five years ago.”

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 34.2(71)

“All the items are about four months old which would be explained if he sent the envelope to you, using snail mail, across the TripleEmpire. The dates on the articles from the newspapers, for example. Those newspapers are still published in TriImperiarna.”

Samson frowned. “The letter is written as if the professor is still alive.”

“Yes!” Jack Harkness sighed. “He was a good friend of mine, had worked with the TPMI and with Torchwood along with other agencies. His public face of being a largely ignored academic was quite false for he even at meetings with the TriEmperor, TriBishop and TriChancellor of the TriImperiate. I have no idea how we could effectively respond to this mystery. TriImperiarna is a far distance away.”

Samson shrugged. “Perhaps the Fatevator might come in handy in this case. Perhaps it can open, even if just briefly, in the TPMI HQ in TriImperiarna.”

Jack frowned but then grinned. “The TPMI Central Headquarters is now in NewImperiarna, the supposedly temporary TriImperial Capital which is now about 200 years old. TriImperiarna has no TPMI presence. This is true for nearly all of the TriImperium and its facets. TriImperiarna is a supercity under siege and partly a savage battleground but we know little more than that.”

Samson frowned. “You spoke of three big campaign battle zones but what is invading them?”

Jack shook his head with an expression of frustration. “The TriImperiate has isolated TriImperiarna and the other battle zones, is being even more secretive than it usually is. What the TPMI has picked up is that the TriImperiate is deeply concerned about what is happening and fearful of the enemy, or enemies, that they refuse to identify to the greater population of the empire.”

They examined the items, that the professor had sent, again, and this time found an article on the back of a cut out newspaper article that Hoggins had highlighted. Jack shook his head in wonder and then spoke. “Very clever! The highlighted article on one side is not the most important but the smaller, non highlighted one is. It speaks of whispers of the dead returning to life not as in reanimations but as if they had never died in the first place; it is as small pockets of timespace have been altered in relation to slowly growing numbers of individuals. This is very bad for it indicates some kind of profound distortions or does it?”

Samson had no real answers to that question.

[Maharg67]

EverEpic One 35.1(72)

Meanwhile Samson also went to the Brownlingo Estate to visit for the first time in about ten years and the crazy, mixed up Estatefolk there were mostly happy to see him. In truth he had missed the Brownlingoes generally much more than he did many of those on his own estate. This was despite that he had 'dreamlinked' with many of them, sharing vivid dreams of surprising real like nature. This was a spiritual based form of empathic-telepathic communications.

The Rhodes Sisters had quietly, charmingly, taken over much of the management of the Brownlingo Estate in a way that went very much with the Brownlingo way of life. Many of the Brownlingo Elders were only too happy to pass over duties that they were hopeless at and they 'sensed' they could trust the Rhodes Sisters. They had already sunk thousands of dollars of resources into fixing up matters at the estate but mostly they simply used the resources, already there, more efficiently.

Samson met with the Elder Matriarch Kiasha Brownlingo who was one of the minority of Elders who was able to actually help run things and the Rhodes Sisters reported to her. Often she had a meeting with one of the Rhode Sisters who had all come to quickly love both the estate and those that lived there, as numerous outsider folks did, a fair few ending up living on the estate.

The Brownlingo Estate was friendly, warm, especially compared with many of the more orthodox Traditionalist Estates. The Foremale Estate was a more moderate Estate being closer to the Brownlingoes than it was to the Traditionalists.

Kiasha walked with Samson, through semiwilderness gardens that provided food and other resources. Humans were there but also dogmans, catmans and other types of animal-humans. They were also products of the PreBreaking Age of Scientific Madness. The Brownlingo Estate was large, as was the Brownlingo Mansion, and were together a sanctuary for many types of people who were not all welcome in the Estatelands.

The mature, handsome, woman spoke. “We thank you for all that you have done for us.”

Samson smiled. “You did much for me over the years, giving me a place to escape to from the foolishness of even a moderate Estate Family. Anyway, you need help and I can give that help so I give that help. Do you need more of anything like blankets, tents, healing serum, food rations, axes, carpentry hammers....”

Kiasha nodded. “Yes but firstly I need you to hear something that we Brownlingo Elders should have told you ten years ago but were too frightened to do so because we were threatened into being silent until it was too late. To our shame we were also bribed.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

Then she explained. “Our ancestors, those of the Brownlingoes, used to be a minority of Darkjovers who were evil but far less so than others. They turned against what the majority of Darkjover Estatefolk were doing and suffered for it by being attacked. The survivors, about 67% of the original minority, were forcefully exiled to these lands. We began to fall under the influence of others and, over centuries, let go of our Darkjover ways. But then, about 15 years ago, a minority of us returned to the bad old ways and did something very stupid.”