Just a stray thought about Thanos, the Infinity Gauntlet, and Deadpool.

The other day, I read an article describing Thanos taking down the Marvel superheroes in the original The Infinity Gauntlet comic (July-December, 1991), and reflecting on the Thanos/Deadpool team up comic from a little while back, I realized that if Deadpool (first appearance: February, 1991) had been the major player in the Marvel Comics universe that he is now, things would have been very different.

Thanos mops the floor with the heroes. As Terraxia finds herself distracted and frustrated by one terrified but surprisingly resilient Hydra Agent, Deadpool appears on a space scooter to confront Thanos one-on-one.

Deadpool: Okay, show me what you've got Grape-Ape!

Thanos: Are you so eager to meet your end with the other hominids?

Thanos charges up the Power Gem, prepared to vaporize Deadpool on the spot.

Deadpool: Eager? I've got a date with Death! And it's the third date, so...

Thanos: ... Then... I shall not kill you! Instead... I will simply curse you with unending madness!

Thanos zaps Deadpool with the Mind Gem. 

Deadpool stops in his tracks, pauses for a moment, and blinks.

Deadpool: What have you done?! One of the voices in my head sounds like Perry Como now!

Thanos: Very well, I shall corrupt you to my side, and turn you against your fellow heroes!

Thanos uses the Soul Gem to reverse Deadpool's moral axis... 

... Which results in a net-change of roughly 0.

Deadpool: *Gasp* now I have to change my costume from black-on-red to red-on-black!

Thanos: *Grrr...* I shall banish you to the past!

Thanos uses the Time Gem to send Deadpool to the dawn of time. 

Another Deadpool immediately shows up.

Deadpool: Apparently I was Dionysus. Who knew? Oh, and it turns out trilobites are adorable, so I saved them this time around, and now rich girls are all carrying them around in their purses.

Thanos: Just GO AWAY!!!

Thanos powers up the Space Gem, and flings Deadpool to the far reaches of the universe. 

With a crash of thunder and lightning, another Deadpool immediately appears and attacks Thanos with futuristic weapons.

Deadpool: Yeah, after a few eons, The giant guy in the starry-cloak thing couldn't take it anymore, so he called Mistress Death (did you know they're related?) to come and give me a ride. [Bow-shicka-wow-wow, by the way.] Of course, when we got back, you weren't around anymore, but fortunately, the future is *full* of time machines.

Thanos: Fine, if the Power Gem, the Mind Gem, the Soul Gem, the Time Gem, nor the Space Gem can rid me of you, I have no choice but to use the god-like power of the REALITY GEM!

Thanos uses the Reality Gem to create an entropic microcosm around Deadpool, a swirling black hole in space that no longer obeys the rules of logic or causality. 

Within moments, the sphere of irrationality begins erratically launching unicorns, rainbows, and chimichangas into real-space, before popping like a soap bubble. 

Deadpool emerges, wearing a toga and two Infinity Gauntlets.

Thanos: That's... that's not logically possible.

Deadpool: That's exactly what I thought! And then poof! Matched set! Now, tell Mistress Death I said, "The Lannisters send their regards!"

Being that it is 1991, Thanos and the reader are both, obviously confused by the reference.

Deadpool: Don't worry, she'll get it.

Deadpool obliterates Thanos with his double Infinity Gauntlets, and after giving himself a third arm, picks up the original Infinity Gauntlet. 

Performing a three-armed version of the Neutron Dance, Deadpool rewrites the Marvel Universe, reviving all of Thanos's victims and putting everything back the way it was (even the continuity errors), except everyone is now drawn by J. Scott Campbell.*

*Even Terraxia, who doesn't suffocate in deep space.

James N. McDonald is a "liberal academic" born and raised in Missouri and residing in Tennessee. He holds one degree in history, two degrees in psychology, but loves writing fiction. His first, completed novel, The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.

Game of Thrones - Too Cliche? Or just enough?

In a Facebook conversation about HBO's Game of Thrones, someone complained that they didn't want to see a grudge match between the Mountain and the Hound, because it was too cliche, and Game of Thrones (and Song of Fire and Ice's author, George R. R. Martin) should be above using such tropes. [I adapted this blog post from the shorter comments I made there.]

Honestly, I'll be disappointed if Game of Thrones doesn't trope-out at the end. To me that's the point - Martin created a realistic world fraught with entirely believable cruelty, duplicity, and mortal danger. The excesses and evils in Westeros and Easteros were those of our own ancestors (and in some cases contemporaries). The game in Game of Thrones is one of political manipulation and maneuvering, back stabbing and murder. What made that interesting, though, was taking that very realistic world and putting it on the path to becoming a traditional fantasy world. At the beginning there's very little 'magical' about the world - it's like an alternate history of the British Isles. But since then things have gradually simmered towards a boil - dragons, giants, wargs, witches, and ice-zombies, have all transitioned from faint legend to very real plot points, and no matter how proficient you are as a manipulator, you can't lie to an ice zombie and back-stabbing a dragon is incredibly difficult.

The self-interested pragmatists who once capitalized off the foolish heroics of morally better people are being culled by their lack of plot armor, leaving behind characters who are less motivated by advancement and material gain, and more motivated by fundamental drives - love, freedom, compassion, courage, fear, hate, rage, revenge... The characters with fewer dimensions are those who have the strength of will, the inspiring presence, to endure the challenges that have eliminated everyone else. The sense of honor and duty that killed Ned Stark in the first season will likely be Jon Snow's greatest strength in the final seasons, because unlike Ned's world, Jon's world is a world of heroes and villains, and those characters have become as 'epic' as the adversities they've faced.

Her family having been killed off...

Fiction is rough on families.

Arya Stark embarked on a lengthy training montage journey of personal discovery, in which she learned from different mentors, joined a questionable cult, trained to fight blind and overcome her fears, and learned to let go of her past, before leaving her training unfinished because she couldn't let go of her past.

Important lesson: Don't trust anyone over 30.
Or under 30, for that matter.

She returns with a singular motivation, to be Batman to avenge the destruction of her family as a badass super-assassin.

Everything is permitted, even baking, in the name of poetic justice.

The Greyjoys are on track to become swashbuckling privateers. Yara's sailing about taking ships and romancing women while plotting to avenge her father...

You know the line.

... and reclaim their family's land and property from their cruel, two-dimensionally villainous uncle...

Euron Greyjoy has the gloat down, now he just needs to work on the facial hair.

... while we're left wondering if her new bestie is really, fully dead inside, or only mostly dead.

Life is pain. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Bran is doing hardcore druid magic after a timely rescue by his uncle, who just happens to be the undead, wandering hero of the North, who has dedicated his immortal life to hunting his fellow undead to protect the living.

Technically Blade isn't undead, but I think you see where I was going with this.

The Mountain has been resurrected through dark magic and alchemy to serve as the quiet, heavily armored, dome-helmeted, sadist-on-call who can murder grown men with his bare hands.

Put the dome helmet back on!!!

And of course, said monstrosity's master (donning a surprisingly out-of-genre costume) has consolidated power by annihilating countless innocent people with a glowing-green super-weapon.

I'd concede that the Wildfire under Kings Landing was a one-shot weapon,
but let's be honest: so was the first Death Star.

If information is power, and the pen is mightier than the sword, even a small library is an arsenal. Samwell Tarley has made it to the repository of all Westeros's recorded knowledge, the same place Qyrnan, who resurrected Darth Vader the Mountain, studied his art. All that stands between Samwell's spectacularly gifted mind and the secrets of life, death, and amazing cleric powers is navigating Westeros's card catalog.

The difference between Samwell Tarly and Neo is basically Ctrl+F.

John Snow, reluctant leader but true heir to the throne, has returned from his wanderings in the North, lost his star-crossed love, journeyed through the underworld, led an army of men drawn from across multiple kingdoms into battle against his evil doppelganger, and is now rallying for a last stand against a tidal wave of magical enemies bent on destroying the world of man.

And both were inspired early on by the death of Sean Bean!

Hopefully the tall, pretentious blonde and the hairy axe-enthusiast will have his back.

Who knows, maybe Brienne and Tormund will also sail off into the sunset together when the story is over.

But then, they're not the ones who really get things done, are they?

Sword-to-the-face, dog-to-the-face; it's basically the same thing.

As much as Jon Snow reminds me of Aragorn, Daenerys Targaryen reminds me of Arthur Pendragon. After languishing in obscurity because her father was a jerk, she eventually claims the title "Mother-of-Dragons," which isn't too different from "Chief-of-Dragons" (the literal translation of "Pendragon").

*Epic Music Plays*

She has the charisma, the great destiny, and the circle of devoted friends, but she also struggles to comprehend petty self-interest motivating others. Her goal of ending slavery, liberating the downtrodden, and uniting all the kingdoms isn't too different from the ideas that motivate Arthur to create Camelot's Round Table, and like Arthur, she's more comfortable fighting a war with an outside force than handling drama within her kingdom, and tends to fall back on might-makes-right when she hits an obstacle. Although, to be fair, it's not like she has one of those pesky, ill-fated love triangles to deal with.

Well... okay, but it's different.

Of course, even considering his apparent ability to charm dragons, Dany's current adviser, Tyrion, isn't exactly Merlin. Although... being the guy who asserts might doesn't make right, values wisdom and education, and modernized Lannisport's plumbing, Tyrion does seem to have the anachronistic progressiveness one would associate with T. H. White's interpretation of Merlin as the backwards-living wizard. Oh, and he was (for a time) imprisoned by the betrayal of the only woman he really loved, so there's that.

Granted, Shae doesn't measure up to Nimue or to Morgan, but I can imagine Sibel Kikilli in either role.

And finally, you have Baelish. Petyr "Little Finger" Baelish started out as the sort of greedy vice peddler and political money-manipulator you'd expect to encounter in a Noir story about organized crime, complete with the demeaning nick name. He has since risen through the social strata to become the sinister vizier/count, who has labyrinthine, ambiguously destructive plans which chiefly require marrying the princess. At this point, his character background and trajectory is basically identical to Once Upon A Time's portrayal of Jafar.

Complete with the devilishly well-trimmed facial hair.

All in all, I will actually be disappointed if Game of Thrones doesn't end with "And they all lived happily ever after - by process of elimination."





James N. McDonald is a "liberal academic" born and raised in Missouri and residing in Tennessee. He holds one degree in history, two degrees in psychology, but loves writing fiction. His first, completed novel, The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.

History of Kaleida V: The Establishment of Caelia

Even after the  Great Orc Rebellion toppled Feguncia's Second Kingdom, the elves in what is now Caelia retained control of the mountain-ringed plateau for quite a long time. However, after the rebellion, there was no shortage of men and orcs who wished to keep fighting. One among them, veteran commander Caelus Ravencroft, took his human and orc warriors from northern Feguncia up the Gygian and laid siege to the last great holdout of the Second Kingdom elves.

Although the elves initially put up a fierce fight, it was no more than a few years into their war with Caelus that the elves' orc soldiers rebelled and toppled the kingdom from within, This resulted in intense internal strife, as orc commanders declared themselves chieftains, carved the realm into holds, and vied for control of the plateau. With their unified defense broken, however, they were unable to resist the conquerors from the south. Caelus's army broke through the southern defenses and quickly laid claim to what has become Kingstown. From there, his forces pushed outward to the coasts, seizing control over what people came to call the Caelian Kingdom, and eventually, Caelia.

Owing to Caelus's intervention, the elves were not slain or driven out of Kingstown as they were elsewhere, and many were able to evade the wrath of the orcs in other portions of the country by cutting deals with their land's new ruler. Caelus's relatively light-handed treatment of the elves sat poorly with the orcs who'd overthrown them, making them even less inclined to sacrifice any measure of their newly won freedom. Having many orcs already within his command, Caelus offered governorships and commissions to any of the self-declared chieftains prepared to swear loyalty to him, but most refused.

There was no formal conclusion to the orc resistance in Caelia, but historians generally agree that after three generations it could no longer be considered as such. The orc military that had served under the elves splintered into warring clans after their masters were overthrown. Never unifying into a true resistance force, the clans turned to guerrilla warfare when they proved unable to face Caelus's armies in open battle. The orc guerrillas were succeeded by orc raiders, who plundered Caelia's countryside while dodging Caelus's armies, and fanatical orc terrorists, who attacked 'soft targets' with no real plan or strategy. Eventually all but the most zealous terror cells sold-out; they initially engaged in mercenary work to finance their aimless rebellion but finally ended up renting themselves out as career thugs and enforcers.

Ironically, many of these profit-minded orcs sold their services to elvish families who had survived the turmoil with their coin-purses largely intact. Three elvish families, the Biahnkarosas in Kingstown, the Cherneshypas on the west coast, and the Shirbaymunzas on the east coast, actually gained influence and power when their brethren were deposed. They sank deep roots through much of Caelia's economy, ensuring that they could never be easily dislodged, even by the considerable efforts of Caelus I's successors.

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Interested in reading more about Caelia? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

History of Kaleida IV: Antelven Caelia

Though overshadowed by the Gnoman Empire to its south, Caelia is a reasonably sized kingdom, hundreds of miles across at its widest point. Of course, Caelia was likely once much larger, but like Fugencia, much of it was claimed by the rising seas that followed the Star Shift. Now the ocean laps at the edges of its most prominent geographic feature - a concave plateau that stretches across nearly the entire kingdom. Dwarven geologists I have studied with suggest that the formation is a blast crater resulting from a massive volcanic eruption; there is considerable volcanic activity in the mountains north of Caelia, and there are some ancient structures in the Gnoma Range which historians believe are evidence that those mountains also hosted volcanic activity at one time,

Due to the encroaching seas, Caelia is now a geographic bottleneck between Fugencia and Quinox, Fugencia's northern neighbor. The entire country is effectively a landbridge between the two continents. Because of its concave topography, the country's most notable river, the Gygian, does not flow to either of Caelia's coastlines; instead, it runs from its headwaters in northern Caelia, through the center of the kingdom to the massive artificial lake formed by the Old Wall in southern Caelia. From there, the Gygian flows through the River Gate, cuts through the northern end of the Gnoma Range, and crosses northern Fugencia, finally emptying into the Facian Sea. In all of the known world, the Gygian is the only river known to have its headwaters and mouth on separate continents.

At some point before the decline of Fugencia's First Kingdom, the dwarven mines in the ring of mountains surrounding the area went rogue, separating from the First Kingdom and becoming small subterranean city-states. The renegade dwarves built a series of massive walls through the plateau's southern mountains, turning the plateau into a single, massive fortress. During that same time, they carved passes through the mountains on the eastern and western edges of the plateau, permitting easy travel from the interior to either coastline.

The city states lacked powerful offensive armies, and most of their inhabitants were leery of the surface world, but the densely populated dwarven cities were dependent on the crops grown in the basin and fish pulled in from the sea. As a result, the greatest power in the region was wielded by the dwarven rulers able and willing to fight for the world above ground. The dwarven history of Caelia is a dynamic and exciting topic in its own right, simply because the dwarves struggled to manage their conflicts with one another, while still contending with assaults from the South.

The last great dwarven power in the region was the Bhatt Dynasty. The Bhatt's emerged not from one of the old mines, but from the massive above ground city in which their First Kingdom masters once dwelt. More accustomed to life above ground, mingling with other peoples, the Bhatt's were eventually able to seize and maintain control over most of the river basin, and all the food grown within it. The Bhatt Dynasty formally began when Irir Bhatt shrewdly negotiated a union between his territory and the surrounding dwarven cities. People often refer to the Bhatt's as kings ruling over vassal cities, but that's inaccurate. The union functioned less as a system of government and more as business arrangement. The consortium that was created ensured that the Bhatt's would be able to trade freely with all of their neighbors, and the consortium controlled prices and capped consumption in order to guarantee that the Bhatts would trade with all of their neighbors fairly.

After the fall of Feguncia's First Kingdom, the consortium prospered. Over time, the Bhatt's gained more power within the consortium but, oddly, the trade between the Bhatts and the dwarven cities became increasingly lop-sided, until the Bhatt's were effectively paying the cities to maintain their alliance. When the elves of Feguncia's Second Kingdom came north with their orc armies, the last ruler of the Bhatt Dynasty, Rheyger Bhatt, was already straining to make payments to all of the allied cities. Because of this, the southern cities eventually abandoned the alliance. They withdrew their support from the consortium and made peace with the elves. Rheyger, of course, was forced to abandon the city which had, for so long, been the seat of power for his family. He retreated north, to the cities which were still loyal, but it was a hopeless endeavor - eventually Rheyger's forces were overrun, and the land fell under the control of the elves.

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Interested in reading more about Caelia? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

History of Kaleida III: The Rise of the Gnoman Empire

Separated from their 'homeland' in the east for generations, the Facian colonists in Gnomania became "Gnomans" and prospered due to the good farmland of the plains, the rich mineral resources of the mountains, and the abundant lumber from the rain-forests to the the northwest.

Just as Gnomania was beginning to thrive, Facia reached its peak. The Facians had prospered a bit too quickly within the confines of their mountainous island, and after some attempts to colonize lands to the north and south failed catastrophically, and even a failed attempt to cross the Morn, it had become increasingly difficult to convince people to uproot from the overcrowded cities and leave Facia. Besides overpopulating the island, the Facians (who had gained little experience with agriculture even while serving the elves) had exhausted their limited farmland and even over-fished the waters off of their shores. They attempted to sustain themselves by pressuring their colonies to provide a greater share of their resources to the Facian homeland, but eventually the colonies rebelled and cut them off. Facia broke down into civil war, and all but destroyed itself.

And then the Gnomans stepped in.

Having followed the decline of Facia from afar, and having made a dedicated effort to learn from their kinsmen's failures, they eventually decided they couldn't stand by while the civilization that birthed them fell apart entirely. With great numbers of healthy and disciplined soldiers, the Gnomans swept across the sea from the west. They forcibly reunited the wayward colonies and eventually seized control over their ancestral homeland outright. This aggressive 'peace-keeping' endeavor marked the formal end of Facia and the beginning of the Gnoman Empire.

The Gnoman's next pushed westward, into the mountains. The Gnoma Range was chiefly inhabited by the "dwarves", descendants of Fugencia's stout, powerfully built industrial laborers and miners. The Gnoman's initially clashed with their cousins over water-rights, the inhabitants of the great city of Dwara holding the headwaters of one of Gnomania's major rivers hostage. Eventually the Dwarans faltered, unable to hold their ground against a sustained siege by a civilization cultivating millions of square miles of cropland to feed their armies. Emboldened by their victory, the Gnoman Empire moved to seize control of the entire Gnoma Range, bringing them into conflict with all of Dwara's sister cities.

It was, initially, more than the Empire could handle, and it became their most costly war. The Alpine War finally reached a turning point when one of the cities negotiated its voluntary annexation, joining the Gnoman Empire under a charter which preserved a great deal of its autonomy. Many others followed suit, and the rest ultimately surrendered. As the dwarves bowed out of the war, the Gnomans' chief opposition became an alliance of humans and orcs organized by elves who'd returned to Fugencia's west coast. The elves had persuaded their former servants that they would eventually be annihilated by the Gnomans, and that their only hope was to seize control of a massive subterranean Fugencian fortress that the dwarves had been restoring in an attempt to tip the war in their favor.

The war's final battle lasted a full winter, and was fought at the gates of an ancient Fugencian citadel. The elves had laid claim to the place after forging an alliance with a number of dwarves who rebelled against the treaties their brethren had made with the Gnomans. The Imperials and their new dwarven vassals confronted an army of orcs and humans united by the elves and supplied by the rebel dwarves, but the long battle and freezing conditions eventually broke the alliance of the western kingdoms. The rebelling dwarves eventually surrendered to their kin, and the orcs and humans once again betrayed the elves, this time delivering them to the Gnoman Empire. In exchange, the Gnoman Empire absorbed the kingdoms on the western coast, forging the same agreements they had with the dwarven cities. The former coastal kingdoms and the inhabitants of the Gnoma Range formally entered the Empire as Western Gnomania.

From there, the Gnoman Empire spread along the Gnoma Range to what had been the northern and southern reaches of Fugencia.

The range trailed off into an island chain to the south, which defined the southern edge of the Facian Sea. The Gnomans had initially settled the largest of these islands, Tulusa, which also sat the closest to Gnomania, and had attempted to establish peaceful trade with the inhabitants of the hundreds of smaller islands that spread to its south. Unfortunately, ownership of those islands was contested by three different, powerful kingdoms on the mainland south of the islands. The Gnomans made multiple attempts to negotiate peace with these kingdoms, or at least some sort of treaty that would allow the Empire to trade with the islands unmolested as a neutral party, but after one treaty negotiation ended with Tulusa itself being attacked, the Gnomans' naval forces moved into the islands, formally claiming many of them for the Empire, and committing to an ongoing, four-way war that continues to this day.

In the North, the predominantly human descendants of the Fugencians had survived comfortably on the farmlands surrounding the massive Gygian river that cut through the Gnoma Range and emptied into the Facian Sea. The poor mineral resources had made metal tools and weapons a precious commodity, however, and they'd been unable to reclaim their ancestors' former glory. Many accepted Gnoman rule simply for access to plows and other work implements fashioned from Gnoman steel. This brought the Gnoman Empire's influence to the lands just south of what is now Caelia.


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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

History of Kaleida II: The Rise of Facia

On the eastern edge of the shallow sea, the Faci Mountains became known simply as Facia. In this large, mountainous, thickly forested island, the peace established in the wake of the Great Orc Rebellion did not last long.

The smallest of the Fugencian races had been crafted to handle the administration of Fugencia, and they had been among those who'd been most discontent with their roles in Fugencian society before the Star Shift. To add insult to injury, although these small people had comprised an extraordinarily large portion of those living in the cities, they had been among those given the lowest priority when the cities were finally evacuated.

Still, many of these people did escape to the relative safety of the mountains; unfortunately, most of these refugees had never left their city of birth before, let alone spent time in the wilderness. Given this lack of preparation, and their small size and relative physical weakness, it is remarkable that they survived the ensuing chaos at all.

According to Lady Heppa, their attention to detail, their capacity to learn and focus on complex tasks, and their ability to work for long hours with minimal sleep was "beyond human." Being urban dwellers, they were naturally more resistant to the diseases that ravaged the tightly packed refugees, and being exceptionally small, they could survive on less food than their starving kinsmen. Eventually they found comfort and safety in the high trees that covered the mountains, and life in the Facian forests hardened them, honing their innate mental strengths into what Heppa described as "remarkable cunning" and "breathtaking ruthlessness."

When the elves swept in with their orc armies, the former administrators readily turned on their prior masters, happily betraying them to the elves, who accepted their aid and granted them freedom and status second only to their own. They served happily in this capacity until the Great Orc Rebellion came, at which point, most of them stepped out of the line of fire and waited to see which side would come out on top.

Although orcs and elves alike knew that the small Fugencians' neutrality was a matter of self-interest, and denigrated them for their lack of loyalty, they assumed that the small Fugencians' intentions were to dedicate themselves to the survivors once the war was over. Much to the orcs' surprise, however, when the outcome was finally settled, the descendants of the seemingly meek administrative caste turned and struck at the victors. Their small size, quick bodies, and home-field advantage made them dangerous combatants in the thickly forested Faci Mountains, and after generations of war, the Facians ultimately drove the surviving humans, orcs, and elves from the island and declared themselves to be the people of Facia.

The Facians prospered, and after settling into a period of relative peace, they focused on developing maritime skills to match their proficiency in the forests and mountains. They became great shipwrights, fishermen, and traders, as well as explorers. They 'rediscovered' much of their lost country, colonizing scattered islands inhabited by orcs and humans who were too disorganized to fend off the coordinated tactics used by Facian invaders. The Facians eventually claimed dominion over the entire shallow sea to the west of Facia and named it, unsurprisingly, the Facian Sea.

About the Facian Sea: The waters are so shallow and often so peaceful, that it is sometimes possible to study the seafloor below. In fact, Facian mariners began mapping the sea floor as they rolled along the oceans above it, and as others have contributed since, we now have relatively detailed maps of what Fugencia must have looked like before its flooding. Of note, long, wide, deep trenches running along the sea floor have been determined to be ancient rivers. The longest of these, in fact, still connects to the mouth of the Gygian river, carrying cold river water along the sea floor down to the warm, tropical waters of the Facian Sea. Littering the seafloor, and particularly concentrated around these submerged rivers, are numerous ruins which now host massive coral reefs. Most of these ruins are nearly unrecognizable to the untrained eye, but one of these locations must be carefully avoided in rough weathers, as the structures remain tall enough to tear through the bottoms of ships.   

Eventually the spreading Facians reached the large landmass that had once been the expansive, high elevation plains that lay east of Fugencia's western mountains, the Gnoma Range. Shielded by the mountains, these plains had once been relatively dry, even desert-like in places, but thanks to the shifting climate, the rivers running down from the Gnoma Range had swelled and increased in number, turning the dry plains into verdant farmland. The Facians, of course, claimed it as "Gnomania" and took it for their own, gradually displacing or eliminating the disorganized clans of freed orcs and indigenous humans over the centuries that followed.


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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

History of Kaleida I: The Fall of Fugencia

According to Thinell and other well respected elvish historians, when elves first arrived in Kaleida's western hemisphere, Fugencia was a single contiguous continent controlled entirely by humans.

These humans constructed massive cities using stone, sand, and metal, and created many elaborate contraptions. Most remarkably, however, these humans had used biomancy to reshape their bodies, differentiating themselves into different races specialized to perform certain duties within their societies. I have had the good fortune to meet and interview the Lady Heppa, an elf who was present when her kin crossed the Morn Ocean and first encountered the Fugencians. Heppa described the society as initially giving the appearance of harmony, functioning much like one of their miraculous contraptions, but it didn't take her or her fellows long to discern the discontentment among the various racially defined castes. She commented to me that a catastrophic end for the civilization seemed inevitable.

That said, even the elves were shocked by what eventually happened.

Any casual student of our world's natural history is aware of the dramatic, heavenly event that has been dubbed the Star Shift, and is likely just as aware of the cataclysmic events that the Star Shift heralded. The old saying, 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' proved very true in the case of Fugencian society - intensely dependent on their world's ordered infrastructure, the people could not recover from the disruptions caused by the unexpected changes that followed.  

About the Star Shift: Some astrologists believe that Kaleida is not a stationary sphere around which other bodies move, but rather a moving body itself, coordinated with other bodies in a sort of elaborate dance. As proof, they point out that it is highly unlikely that the sun, stars, and all of the other celestial bodies moving around Kaleida would collectively alter their course at the same time and in the same direction. It would be far simpler to assume that something occurred which caused Kaleida itself to alter its movement, and that from our perspective it simply appears as if everything else has moved. Supporters of this theory describe Kaleida as a top spinning around an orcish hearth on a perfectly smooth floor; they believe our top "wobbled" causing both the visible change in the heavens and the catastrophic events which they seemed to foreshadow. Many question the plausibility of this, however, pointing out that when a top "wobbles" it does not simply lean a certain amount and then stop, it either returns to its original orientation or careens across the floor (with disastrous results). Two answers are given by supporters of the top theory: the first is that the critics are taking the metaphor too literally (Kaleida behaves like a spinning top, but clearly it is not a toy), and the second (more nihilistic) response is, "give it time."

The Fugencians were evidently immediately alarmed when the constellations, and even the path of the sun, shifted north permanently and (relatively) quickly. According to Heppa, they attempted to take action at a massive scale, as if they somehow already knew what would ensue. However, although they alone seemed to know what was about to happen, conflict among the castes and among the Fugencians' leaders evidently made deciding what to do about it impossible. Although it took months for Fugencia to feel the consequences of the changing climate, the only large-scale response was a badly organized attempt to evacuate the coastal cities.

Evidently, many of the lower castes never escaped the cities, attempting to 'ride it out' in the larger structures. The rise in sea level was apparently far greater than they expected, however, and what buildings were not completely submerged were eventually undermined by the waves, collapsing into the sea like sand castles. Heppa estimates the death toll at the hundreds of thousands, a shocking number to be certain, but I must note that I had the definite impression she was low-balling her estimate because she believed I would not believe the full story as she remembered it.

In the east, the Morn Ocean not only devoured all of the Fugencians greatest cities, it swept many miles inland, forcing urban and rural dwellers alike to move to the high ground of the Faci Mountains for survival. The refugees packed into the cramped mountain valleys to escape the rising water, but starvation, disease, and violence ultimately claimed most of the initial devastation's survivors.

In the midlands, the great river basin that defined the continent's interior flooded and became a shallow sea, wiping out most of the kingdom's most productive farmland. Although most of the midland people escaped to the west and north, the disruption and upheaval broke the back of their society. The refugees clashed with their own kinsmen as they crowded into their neighbors' lands, pleading and eventually fighting for food and shelter. As the kingdom fractured, reformed, and fractured again, frantic warfare brought it lower still. Small provinces became independent kingdoms, and those kingdoms in turn declined into barbaric feudalism or worse.

According to Lady Heppa, her people quickly determined that there was no real way to 'save' the Fugencians, and sailed back to the Old Kingdoms to carry word of what they'd discovered and seen. Of course, quite to their surprise, the Old Kingdoms were contending with similar problems, and in a desperate attempt to resolve their own developing refugee crisis, the elvish kingdoms committed their armadas to a one way trip across the Morn to claim Fugencia and "put what was left to better use".

The ships were packed to capacity with orcs, who were in that time the elves' servants. They endured extreme hardship - a long voyage through unpredictable weather with minimal supplies. Heppa claimed that the rulers of the Old Kingdoms had not been interested in whether the voyage was successful; faced with a sudden population crisis, they had decided that sacrifices needed to be made, and that those sacrifices should largely come out of the orc population. Organizing a seemingly doomed expedition had been deemed a palatable alternative to mass executions.

A note: As to why any of the elves joined this apparently futile effort, Heppa explained that motivations varied. Some of the elves believed that if they did not go, the orcs would not be convinced to set sail, and so they embarked with the orcs believing that they were sacrificing themselves for the good of their people. Other elves, however, couldn't accept the ruthlessness of the plan, and traveled with the orcs, believing that their leadership would give their servants the best chance of survival. Heppa herself claimed that she was motivated by ambition and a degree of youthful recklessness - on the chance that she survived the journey, she'd be given her own force to command, and would be entitled to whatever she could lay claim to.

Heppa estimated that less than half of their ships survived crossing the Morn, and many of the orcs on the surviving ships had perished from starvation or in accidents. Nevertheless, although the orcs and elves alike were in a pitiful state when they reached what was left of Fugencia, the Fugencians were fairing at least as badly, and were in no way prepared to fight highly motivated elves and orcs. The armies from the east easily seized control of the island that had once been the Faci Mountains, gathered their strength, and then spread across the shallow sea, sweeping across Fugencia and conquering everything out to the far western and northern coasts. The surviving humans were either driven from the continent, or joined the orcs in serving the elves.

However, as Heppa acknowledged, this proved uncharacteristically short-sighted on the part of the elves. Elves, of course, reproduce much more slowly than either orcs or humans, and so as they expanded their influence, they also thinned their numbers, to the point of (in a few places) having to entrust their orc servants to oversee themselves. Mixed with the Fugencian humans, who had not been cowed by generations of subjugation, the orcs grew restless and that eventually set the stage for the Great Orc Rebellion.

Though it was a long war that the orcs very nearly lost, the elves were eventually defeated, and scattered to the fringes of civilization. With the elves defeated, the orcs and humans carved the remaining land into a number of smaller kingdoms, maintaining varying degrees of segregation and friendliness over the years that followed.

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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I,  is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon. 

The Rise of Azraea, Book I

Currently available on Amazon:

The Rise of Azraea, Book I
A work of historical fiction based on three years of academic research into the life and reign of Caelia’s most controversial ruling woman.

The kingdom of Caelia fractures and crumbles beneath the weight of a dragon whose spiteful greed and silver tongue have sowed desperation and resentment across the country; for a college graduate, it’s the sort of hopeless job market that makes strolling into a dark forest to face a vicious monster seem like the least-objectionable option available. 

Three college friends, Azraea (a human necromancer), Kaira (an elf who wants to be an orc), and Ochsner (a dwarf who wants a job), have finished their studies in Caelia’s capital city, and are faced with a seemingly hopeless future. The three women agree to spend one more summer together, and accept a contract to kill the Scolopendrae of the Dark Dweller’s Forest. Their post-graduation road trip leads them through far more danger than they’d anticipated, as they’re forced to deal with corrupt highway guardsmen, orc survivalists, ancient automatons, gnoman spies, and werewolves perpetrating insurance fraud. Fortunately, as they say, "What doesn't kill you..."


The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination.

Much to Do, Little Time

I finally took the plunge this weekend and put my first completed novel on Amazon. I was getting to the point that tweaking it and editing it was doing more harm than good, so I decided I needed to get it out of my hands and move on with my life.

I've had the rough draft for the immediate sequel finished since March, so I would hope to have that up within the next year, hopefully sooner than later. I also have another, unrelated novel finished, for which I want to try finding a publisher, but fitting it to a market is tricky. All while that's going on, I want to get my dissertation ready to defend by September, and look into advertising for the book (though I may wait to seriously promote it until after the second book is online).




James N. McDonald is a "liberal academic" born and raised in Missouri and residing in Tennessee. He holds one degree in history, two degrees in psychology, but loves writing fiction. His first, completed novel, The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.