Prologue
Wridna is dead. Wridna the Fertile, the most prolific Animaedifex, Archon of the Bios Council and Generatrix of the Phylone Hall. She died far too young, and the universe will never see her like again.
But, in fairness, it’s kind of her fault. We did all tell her to stop messing around with uranium-based life.
Wridna’s death and the near-disintegration of her Evolarium archive has left us with a problem: thousands of her inspired and often-dangerous creations are now scattered across the Realms, and nobody knows anything about them. The Bios Council is sending dozens of its members, myself included, to find and catalog these rogue life forms. I think someone on the Council must have a bone to pick with me, because they dumped me out here in this backwater world where I can’t even manifest properly.
So, I went looking for a Hero to do the work for me.
Prologue (continued)
As any modern deity would, I sent out a recruitment call using the latest tools of social media: I posted flyers on people’s walls and sent little birds to tweet at potential heroes. At the end of the week, I had a bunch of dead birds and a criminal citation for improper advertising. Apparently social network penetration here in Godville is not quite as high as one could hope for.
The next week, I resorted to more old-fashioned tactics, broadcasting random snippets of half-formed prophecy and watching to see who responded. None of the well-armored, shiny warriors so much as glanced at the sky; apparently they are all sworn to other gods. Ooh, “other gods,” scary. Turns out, the only real response I got was from a quirky young lady named Linnea. Linnea seems (relatively) resourceful and (relatively) intelligent – the type of girl that heroes in a more civilized world like Teiryllia would be racing to propose to. Of course, in Godville things don’t work that way. I’m actually not entirely sure Linnea is her name. The roster at the “Silk & Sighs House of Working Girls” was a bit messy.
Prologue (continued) (continued, the last one, I promise!)
Well, I’ve managed to mess things up. I pushed a bit too hard on the “divine revelation” bit and Linnea is now convinced that I’m the omniscient, exalted, one true god. I was hoping to at least give her a few dream-visions of the Evolarium before sending her on her way, but she is suddenly so enthusiastic that she’s run off into the woods to hunt down the “thingies of Wree-nad.” I’d facepalm if I had a proper face.
Anyways, I suppose given the investment I’ve made, I might as well stick this one out and see if Linnea (who has also developed the notion that she is somehow the first of a new breed of human) can actually do anything useful.
Prolo—no, just kidding
Chapter 1: The Devil’s Pony
Four days and three dozen beers after I began my “partnership” with Linnea, she picked up some unusual gossip in the town square about a man-eating mare. The description reminded me of one of Wridna’s early works from her space-cowboy phase, a horse that she designed to be able to survive on asteroid fields by eating rocks and oxidizing the organics and metals inside. The horse had a mean set of jaws and we all promptly began calling it the “Gift Horse”. Disturbingly, the rumors implied that the horse had begun to eat flesh, which would wreak havoc on both its digestion and its teeth.
I prodded Linnea to go investigate the Gift Horse immediately. She took “immediately” to mean “before buying any equipment.” Surprisingly, she managed to follow the rumors to a bloody pasture outside Herowin, where we found the miserable Gift Horse leaking something foul from its mouth. In a prophetic vision that I’m actually quite proud of, I instructed Linnea in what I believed to be the proper practice of dentistry on the Gift Horse.
She grabbed a bunch of rocks from around the pasture and stuffed them into the horse’s gums.
Evidently Wridna had anticipated this situation, because the horse took quite well to the new teeth by biting into Linnea’s left hand. It then allowed her to ride it back to my sanctum.
The next week, a gremlin nailed a court summons to Linnea’s door. The complainant was one “Verr I. Badegg,” a respectable devil of Los Demonos who claimed to be the rightful owner of the horse we had quarantined. Mr. Badegg sought damages that my fledgling religion could not pay for, so I determined that the best solution was to send Linnea to do what she does best: seduce him.
The upcoming Full Moon Ball of the Los Demonos Salsa and Tango Society provided an ideal opportunity for rapid romance. The major challenge, then, was to convince Linnea that “dancing” was not the same as “gyrating vaguely next to someone attractive.” Fortunately, a gentle suggestion that learning salsa might help her pick up more guys in bars was enough motivation for her to practice to the extent of skipping meals. Thus, by the time she arrived at Los Demonos, she was good enough to pass for an experienced amateur. I quickly used a minor miracle to fashion Linnea a fancy dress out of the skin of a Monty Python that she had killed on the way, and sent her off to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.
The following morning, I returned from my studies of the Gift Horse to find one cancelled civil lawsuit, one soundly-sleeping devil and one happy, naked, and rather flushed heroine. I didn’t ask.
Chapter 2: Like a (Level) Boss
On the way back to Godville, Linnea informed me that in addition to getting Mr. Badegg to drop his case, she had also convinced him to give her details of a lucrative opportunity. In her own words, it involved “taking something from one guy and delivering it to another guy for a reward.” I was about to dismiss the idea entirely when Linnea told me what the reward was: again, in her words, “a weird ball of plants with suckers and lots of ugly mouths.” That sounded too much like one of Wridna’s space-cowboy creations to be a coincidence, so I reluctantly approved her quest.
Back in Godville, we spent a few days trying to trace Mr. Badegg’s connections and discover the identity of “one guy.” We were rather astonished, then, to find a merchant family in the city with the surname of Guy. Upon further investigation, we located the eldest son of this family, a Mr. One Guy, who had indeed contracted for a present to be delivered to his brother Another. It wasn’t even a particularly dangerous shipment, just a couple of Ballpoint Penguin eggs. I told Linnea to take the job. After all, what could go wrong?
Well, first of all, I could fail to account for the overwhelming airheadedness of this realm’s heroes. One night, just after passing through Trollbridge, Linnea decided she wanted fried eggs as part of her dinner. Forgetting that she had not actually bought any eggs back in town, she promptly cracked open both of the items she was supposed to be delivering and emptied them into a skillet. Fortunately, she at least had the presence of mind to realize that those odd-looking things in the pan weren’t egg yolks.
At this point, I had already begun composing a sincere apology to Mr. One Guy regarding the loss of his gift. However, once again I failed to account for an aspect of heroic personality: their incredible stubbornness. Rather than giving up on the quest, she vowed to nurse the premature penguins and deliver them intact. She actually made this vow in my name, which left me a bit confused: was I supposed to help her honor a vow that I didn’t actually agree with? Eventually I settled on “yes”, hoping to avoid having to make an apology.
The following day, I learned how terrible a mother Linnea would be. She managed to keep the penguins alive, but failed to keep an eye on them and allowed them to vanish while her back was turned. To her credit, she then spent half an hour turning over literally every rock she could find. This frantic search actually revealed a clue: A fragment of some hard material that Linnea’s friend Belladonna recognized as part of the exoskeleton of a Bee Holder. Immediately, Linnea scampered off to find their hive, and hopefully the lost penguins.
It ended up being relatively easy (perhaps the easiest part of this whole quest) for Linnea to find and clear out that hive of scum and villainy – especially since all the Bee Holders lined up to fight her one at a time. Strange how things work in this Realm… in any case, she did recover the Ballpoint Penguin chicks, and also stumbled over something far more interesting to me: a map with a sketch on it that depicted one of Wridna’s “abstract phase” creations, a giant but completely flat predator that she jokingly named the “Level Boss”.
I decided I absolutely had to catalog that one – none of the other Curators had yet found an abstract-phase work, so I thought if I could be the first, my superiors might transfer me to a less frustrating Realm. So I sent Linnea off to follow the map, then burned a vast amount of energy helping her defeat the Level Boss. She dragged it back to Godville, where I happily examined it while Linnea, equally happily, drank away all the money she had earned on the journey.
A week later, Linnea delivered the Ballpoint Penguin chicks to Another Guy — several days after his birthday had come and gone. I ended up having to make that apology anyways. Also, my superiors were so pleased with the cataloging of the Level Boss that they decided to extend my assignment to Godville. As they say on Earth, FML.
Chapter 3: Off to See the Lizard
I returned from my meeting in the Phylone Halls to find another less-than-desirable surprise: Linnea had vanished. When I couldn’t find her in the usual taverns, my first thought a terrifying one: what if she was running up a huge tab at one of Godville’s fancier establishments? Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Instead, I found her several miles outside the city, searching for a periodic table. This statement rather puzzled me, so I quickly sketched out a periodic table on a sheet of paper and handed it to her. I was then further puzzled when she turned it upside-down, pointed at hydrogen and helium, and asked, “So are those the legs?”
After some confusion and a little bit of shouting, I discovered that Linnea had gotten bored and decided to seek out a quest in my absence by looking for the most suspicious people she could find and asking them if they needed anything done. It hadn’t taken her long to meet an extremely nondescript man who had offered her a gold brick in exchange for “the leg of the periodic table.” Once again, I was surprised when this turned out to be a real thing. A few native artisans near Los Adminos had been selling “periodic tables” made from surplus periods that they got from the local sentence factory, and Linnea’s client needed a replacement leg for one he had bought years ago. For once, this quest proved to be quite straightforward – the local artisans were easy to find and happily provided a replacement leg at a reasonable price.
On the way back to Godville, though, we ran across another tantalizing rumor: some of the wizards in Tradeburg were talking about a new wonder acquired by the head of their order: the severed head of an enormous lizard that had been terrorizing the countryside for several weeks. When Linnea pushed them for more details, they described a creature that could easily have been one of Wridna’s pet dragons, gigantic things which all of us Curators knew about but were too intimidated to approach. It was a shame that the dragon had alrady died, but even its skull and brain were well worth examining, so I dispatched Linnea to negotiate with the wizard.
It should really only have taken us a day or so to get to the wizard’s outpost from Tradeburg. However, Linnea insisted on following the “golden brick road”, a winding trail three times as long as the direct route. When I questioned her about this extra effort, she simply stated with an uncharacteristic calm, “It’s for the sake of the story.” She does mention “the story” a lot…I’ll have to ask her about that someday. Whatever her motives, Linnea did eventually make it to the wizard’s tower, where she was invited in for tea. A few minutes later, she had her sword to the wizard’s throat and I had to hastily explain to her that “negotiate” was not a synonym for “threaten”.
Contrary to my expectations, the wizard was quite willing to get the head off his hands. Even dead, it was proving very difficult to enchant and had started to putrefy. He did have some business sense, though, and set Linnea a series of tasks, mostly involving collection of rare ingredients. I prepared for a stay of several days, only to be surprised early the next morning when Linnea, carrying the rotting head, told me we had to go. Just before we left, I glanced into the wizard’s study and saw him still in bed, mumbling happily. Only then did I notice that Linnea’s clothes were unusually disheveled. I didn’t ask.
Interlude: Gold
Linnea sat in a dimly-lit room, admiring her growing collection of gold bricks. “Oh Great One,” she whispered, “I wish I knew more about what you want all these gold bricks for…”
In a puff of smoke, a small chameleon appeared on her shoulder. I was aiming for “dragon,” but this corporal manifestation business is trickier than I’d expected. “What I want them for? I thought you were collecting them of your own free will.”
Linnea shook her head confidently. “Of course not, that’s silly! I’d much rather spend all this gold on some good whiskey, but I know you commanded me to bring you 1000 gold bricks!”
“And when did I say that?” I vanished briefly and tried again for “dragon” but ended up reappearing as a relatively large bat.
“Oh, it was right near the beginning! Y’know, just…after you called me…um…” She suddenly looked very confused.
“You see? I never asked for gold of any kind. Although, I do have to say, it’s come in handy.”
Linnea looked incredibly proud of herself. “Really?! How?!”
“Well…it turns out that the physics of this Realm mean that some of the biological instruments I brought with me don’t work exactly as expected. My single-cell nanopore sequencer was giving me huge fluorescence noise for weeks before I figured out that I could use a thin plating of gold to damp out the electrostatic field near the fluorophores. Also, the portable synchotron needed…” I suddenly realized that Linnea was staring blankly at me. “Ahem. I mean, I’ve been able to use the gold bricks to help me make progress on my work in this world.”
“So…you still want the gold?”
I paused. Technically I didn’t need any gold bricks, but they were proving useful enough, and from what I heard from some of the other deities, getting enough of them might yield some interesting benefits. Plus, it would be such a shame to let all of that money fall into the hands of the bartenders. So, I nodded as clearly as a bat could nod. “Yes, please keep it up. I’d appreciate it greatly.”
Linnea stood up suddenly, throwing me off her shoulder. As I clumsily righted myself in midair and landed, she saluted. “Absolutely, Exalted One! I’ll do everything I can!”
I quickly turned back into a chameleon so that I could roll my eyes. “You can stop with the absurd titles, you know? Just ‘Anjanoth’ is fine.”
“Whatever you say, Highest of High!”
I really have to do something about this girl…
Chapter 4: Scrambled Eggs