| (Coauthors: WolfRun, JH, et al.)
Once upon a time.... There was a young knight named Frederigo D'Honaire who'd been tasked by the King of the Great Kingdom (Allaria) to slay the scourge of the countryside, the Dragon of the Southern Caverns. Not only would this be a great honor for Sir Fred, but it would be exactly what he needed to bring his father (a vile man who maintained the appearance of honor to the public but Fred knew him for the villain he was)....to justice. Killing this last dragon would, Fred was sure, bring enough political kudos with the King to where his father would be brought to task. The only problem here is that his father was one step ahead of him, and had the map to the young Dragon slayer's target altered. Instead of the lair of an ordinary dragon (bad enough), he got the lair of a wyrm (an older....more mature and more powerful kind of dragon). It was an opponent that Fred wasn't prepared for here. It was the lair of the Dragon Mage Minestus (a secret ally of Duke Drederigo, Fred'd father). The idea was that Minestus would kill the vastly unprepared Fred, and that would be that. That's not how it went, though. Like many other Freds from many other parallel worlds, this Fred found a naked red haired woman named Astra chained to a wall after meeting a small sentient dog that appeared to have been a young teenage boy named Velus. Turns out that this dog happened to be the dragon in disguise. Minestus is able to get the jump on Fred and teleport him away to a remote island down near southern Africa before the young man could do anything. Fred arrived naked, unarmed, and changing into a humanoid red furred fox. He had been infected with a modified version of lycanthropy made by Minestus who hoped to eventually create through that a means of making a new intelligent species to replace humankind. More on that later. Shocked at what he'd become, he then met another humanoid fox named Alicia (a transformed Ethiopian princess, descendant of Prestor John) who told him about this new place he found himself and about what his (and the other island's inhabitants) role was here. They all were lab subjects here of Minestus. No lab subjects could wear clothing (curse prevented it). It was impossible for any of them to read or right. That and they could only speak to each other. Ordinary humans only heard animal growls, yips, and barks instead of speech. Then things got....interesting. Interesting in the Chinese sense of the word. The Sun was setting and the full Moon rising, and the animalistic nature of their curses took hold. Fred became a simple red whiskered male, smiling fox. Alicia became a matching female vixen. Both were man sized, but foxes are foxes. Foxes being animals and subject to instinct, seaons, and such.....well.... Alicia and Fred joined while under the sway of the full Moon and it would soon become apparent that Alicia was with child. Two children, in fact. Fathered by Fred. Well, this leads to all sorts of interesting things. See, Fred had these old fashioned views about such things and a woman's place in the scheme of things while Alicia had rather more.....liberal ideas. Fred wants to be wed immediately, so as to not dishonor her or the children. Alicia feels that they should at least get to know each other before taking such a drastic step. They at first don't see eye to eye on things, but eventually Fred comes around to seeing Alicia being one incredible woman. That and his world view getting....upgraded. Eventually, Fred and Alicia are wed, and that's a great thing. In the meantime, this couple slowly get to know each otehr and the romance grows, as it were. Also, in the meantime, serious stuff is going down. First, Fred has dreams of getting off this island to get cured (and actually killing the dragon who'd done this to him). He soon gets his chance when some mysterious golems make the scene and the world seems to go insane. Okay, here's what is happening. There was this war going on between a reptilian Empire (the Enemy) and an human inter-dimensional alliance (the Alliance, made up of the Company and the Military at this point in time). It was to the death. At this moment in time things were pretty much at a stalemate, but that's where Minestus comes in. This dragon wanted a disease that would wipe humanity from the face of Terra, but anything he could find or make magically would be able to be countered by human magery. He searched the multi-verse with his scrying device for an answer, and found it in a biological weapon that had been created by the Enemy that, if modified by his magic, would be perfect. See, the Military had the means of countering this Phage with their science, and the Enemy scientist who'd created had been rather upset and saddened that his little creation was useless. But when his creation and he got whisked to Terra Prime and met Minestus, a deal was struck. Why was this Enemy scientist eager for this deal? Well, besides the fact that this "dragon" could create a hybrid of science and magic that couldn't be countered by just one means alone, there was the fact that it observed that this world was almost drowning in a certain substance called tiberium (the stuff that both warmachine of the Enemy and the Alliance ran off of). With this world to plunder, enough fuel would be available to create a massive fleet of death ships (Slammers) which would be used to crash into and destroy all their opponents fortifications ans strongholds....bringing this 50 year old war to a quiet halt (with the Enemy victorious). Minestus would use this new Phage to wipe the world of humanity. This Phage would keep the Alliance from being able to land and fight on Terra Prime (if they happened to learn of Terra Prime), it was believed, and a nice mutual association would be established here. The deployment of the Phage was done by the time the Alliance got word of Terra Prime. More on that later. Anyway, as for that association, it didn't work out this way. The Enemy are species supremists and as such view all others as either tools or obstacles. They used Minestus by setting up dragonkind as a diversion in case the existence of Terra Prime's riches was discovered. Intelligence would show that the dragons of Terra Prime were in cahoots with the Enemy in this Phage business and it was hoped that the Alliance would waste resources in smashing the dragons instead of concentrating solely on the Enemy on Terra Prime. It worked, and the Alliance proceeded to clean the dragons' clocks, nearly driving them all to extinction before the truth of the matter came out. More on that later. It began that a metal that shouldn't be allowed on this island got into the hands of a Foresaken (one of the island's inhabitants who've fallen into a permanent animalistic state, losing their humanity forevermore). A pirate ship had been able to somehow land and bury it's stolen treasure here, despite Moreau. Fred and a few others took it into their heads to talk with their jailer, Dragoness Moreau, to see what was up here. Fred, Alicia, and another friend named Loam (a huge humanoid wolf who had issues with aristocracy) found that the island's dragon keeper Moreau (a female dragon who was Minestus' sister in all but blood....and was proficient in magical barriers as well as the magic user preventing the inmates from being able to read) very dead. The author of this dragon's demise was what they'd mistaken for a golem (was actually a humanoid cybernetic puppet that the Alliance's Military was using to wage battle on Terra Prime). It told of the Phage having been released upon the face of Terra Prime right before blowing what was let of Moreau's lair and it's battle damaged self to smithereens. The adventurer brought this news to the ruling heads of the island, and boy did this frighten a lot of people. As soon as Minestus learned of Moreau's death, the dragon would flip out at destroy this island and everyone on it in rage, most likely. Talk went to using a ragged, ill built fleet of rafts to get off the island, but the leader (Carradene) of the Manimals (the animal shaped inhabitants of this prison island) said that they were little more than floating death traps. Some snide comments were made about Carradene being oh so friendly with their keeper, but an affronted Carradene reminded them all he did what he had to do for the safety of all his charges. Before this argument could escalade, Fred remembered that there was still a pirate ship out their (with it's crew dead, now, due to the Phage). If Moreau was dead, then her spells on them all would be gone and he'd be able to reach the pirate's charts. Then, using the pirate's ship, they'd be able to sail away and find safety. Fred tested this by writing, successfully, "I am not an animal" on the meeting hall's wall, and the crowd cheered. In that instant, Fred became the new Pack Leader, much to Carradene's annoyance. See, Carradene had been trying for decades to win a way to freedom from this island (finally finagling aid from a rogue dragoness named Malachi who'd have come later on that week to rescue them all from this island) , and then this newcomer comes along and does in a night what he'd been trying to do for so long. Well, he no longer had to play the fool and wasn't going to stand in Fred's way. Well enough, but he contacts Malachi and finds that the Golems (the nickname for those cyborgs running about) had been rather busy in hunting down and killing every dragon they could find. Seems that their demands for the dragons to cease and desist their supposed alliance with the Enemy had been ignored, and that signaled this retaliatory action for all the deaths caused by the Phage on Terra Prime. Malachi had barely been able to escape alive a Golem ambush (many of her Dragon Circle hadn't), and basically told Carradene that the Manimals were on their own (she had problems of her own right now). After the last night of the full moon, and the Manimals found out that something about the curse upon them was....changing (Minestus had placed upon Fred's curse the final adjustments to the lycanthropy that would change the accursed animal shaped humans into an actual, new race). Fred and the others, during that night, had thought and simple words running through his canine mind. It wasn't supposed to be that way, since animals thought in images.....not words. Fred wasn't Fred at this time, but Swift Foot and his mate wasn't Alicia, but Leaping Stream. It wsn't known at this time, but these were their True Names (similar to what the Fey have....but not as powerful). They were becoming increasingly empathic in nature and something of a communal heart (vice a communal mind) was developing here. That's for later.... So, not having much choice, the Manimals sailed and escaped. Good thing, because when Minestus found out about Moreau's death...... Well, in the course of things the Manimals found and rescued Astra and Fred's cousin, Willian la Post, captives of now dead pirates (Willian had discovered Drederigo's map tampering too late to help Fred, but had been able to rescue Astra, and then escape an invasion force lead by Duke Drederigo into Aqualaria later on during the onset of the Phage....by using an old Atlantian teleport system called the slipgate). They made their home in Panaras, but where to go from there and what to do was a question they weren't sure how to answer. Stay and form a nation? Go forth to their old homelands? Seek out a cure for their lycanthropic curse as well as the Phage (so as to not die upon becoming human again)? The last part was a worrisome thing for Fred, who saw that while Astra and Willian were alive and well.....the chances of his survival upon becoming human again was one in five..... Same for anyone else who'd want to become human again.... While what to do was being decided by Fred and the others, things were happening. In order to get the killing of their race to stop (as well as save his life), a mortally wounded dragon mage named Synizn (part of Malachi's smashed Dragon Circle) got transformed into a bear type Manimal and convince the Golems to cease their attack on dragonkind. Synizn was successful, and soon joined up with Fred's group....to keep an eye on him as well as to maintain the illusion of him just being an escapee from another of Minestus' Manimal enclaves (wouldn't do for the Military to learn the truth about him too soon). That's about the time when everything....went further into the toilet when Minestus, seeing he'd been betrayed by the Enemy, unleashes a secret feature in the Phage and made it deadly to the Enemy as well as human beings. Terra Prime now became too deadly for the Enemy to use. In order to deny it's use to the tiberium to the Alliance in case the human's should find a cure for the Phage (as well as have their revenge on the dragons), they launched a nuclear missile salvo on Terra Prime. If one of the delivery vehicle's hadn't malfunctioned...... Terra Prime would have been soon in the grips of a massive nuclear winter.
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