| My name is Jonathan Tisbitt, and I've been dead for quite a while now.
And let me tell you something, death isn't all it's cracked up to be.
After I died, I roamed the world, a restless spirit. Oh, I wasn't looking
to avenge anything or destroy anyone. I was just bored. But then THEY caught
my eye.
And I've been watching them ever since.
I'm speaking of the Manimals, of course. They keep running from one
adventure to another, and I am very happy to have a front row seat for
it all. But perhaps it would be easier to tell you their story if I concentrated
on only one of them. A manimal by the name of Fred. He is the hero of this
little drama, after all.
LORD FRED D'HONAIRE is the son of Duke Dredrik of Suffex and
peer knight of the Great Kingdom of Allaria. Fred had been sent by King
Emry Exultaine to the Southern Caves to slay a dragon. It was there that
he met the warrior-princess ASTRA. But before he could free her,
the evil dragon MINESTUS had teleported him to the Island of the
Dragon MOREAU.
And moreover, Lord Fred had now become a manimal! What is a manimal
you ask? Why, it is a man (or woman) with the shape of a man (or woman)
but the body of an animal. There are catwomen and manbears and wolfmen
and ferret people. They aren't lycanthropes (humans who turn into beasts
when the moon is full) or demi-beasts (magical races of humanoid animals),
but rather they are something sort of the same but then again not really.
They are manimals.
And what kind of manimal was Fred? A 5'10" red whiskered fox. He was
quite shocked, I can tell you. But he wasn't alone, on the island were
hundreds of others just like himself. There was LOAM, a wolfman
and ALICIA, a very attractive she-fox. All of them were victims
of the Dragon Mage Minestus who had created this odd type of human/animal
hybrid.
The island was split up into two groups: The Pack, those who had retained
their sanity and their humanity, and The Forsaken, those who hadn't. There
were a lot more Forsaken than members of the Pack. In part because the
manimals, like human lycanthropes, would fully transform into beasts during
the phases of the full moon. And many never changed back, but stayed that
way, vicious animals, forever.
Fred didn't like that idea very much. He was determined to escape as
soon as possible and find a cure. Luckily for him, the Leader of the Pack,
CARRADENE
was secretly in league with the rogue dragon MALACHI. With the dragoness'
help, the Pack might gain its freedom. Unluckily for Fred, Minestus was
in league with an alien race of LIZARD MEN, and had used their super
science to create a plague that would wipe humanity off the face of the
map.
And just to make things more complicated, there was an interdimensional
ALLIANCE
that was waging a war against the Lizard Men. And Moreau's island had just
become ground zero for the next attack. The dragon Moreau was killed and
the Pack escaped, but Minestus' plague was let loose on the world and within
weeks 80 percent of the human population was dead.
After their escape, Fred and the Pack set up camp in the deserted city
of Panaras. Things unfolded rather quickly after that. The Alliance, in
their war with the Lizard Men, began attacking every dragon stronghold
they could find. Malachi's companion, SYNIZN was fatally wounded.
In order to save his life, Malachi transformed him into a manbear. She
then sent him to aid the Pack. Minestus realized too late that the Lizard
Men had planned all along on the Alliance destroying Dragonkind. That way,
once they had secured the planet from further Alliance assault they would
be able to rule the world unmolested. Both the dragons and the humans would
all be dead. But Minestus had an ace up his sleeve as well. He had designed
the plague with a dormant gene that he immediately activated. Across the
globe, the Lizard Men began to die and their leaders quickly realized what
had happened. A retreat was ordered, but in order to keep the planet out
of the Alliance's hands and to exact a certain measure of revenge, they
bombed the world with hundreds of nuclear warheads before they left.
But the story didn't end there.
Though there had been much destruction, and nuclear wastelands now pocked
the globe, the world still turned. It was still alive. And so was Fred
and the Pack. The Manimals had taken the city of Panaras for their own.
And they had also learned that their lycanthropic curse had mutated. They
were no longer slaves to the full moon. They could now change at will from
their half-human form to full-animal, and without losing their human
consciousness. Things were finally looking up for them. But Fred wasn't
ready to live the rest of his life as a manfox.
He now turned his attentions on getting back home and finding a complete
cure for his animalistic condition. As far as the Pack knew, Minestus was
dead. But his lair was still in the Southern Mountains, and so too perhaps
was a way to regain their stolen humanity. And Fred had another mission
as well. In Panaras, he had been reunited with his cousin WILLIAN.
When King Emry had sent Fred to dispatch the dragon of the caves, Willian
had discovered that Fred's father, Duke Dred, had switched the maps so
that Fred would face the Dragon Mage Minestus instead. Now Fred had been
trained and equipped to fight a dragon, NOT a Dragon Lord, so this was
a veritable death sentence. Willian had gone after him, but had never found
him. Instead, Willian had come upon Princess Astra and rescued her. The
two soon married. When the plague hit, they escaped to Panaras via an ancient
Alantean built slipgate.
It was this slipgate that would send them all back to the Great Kingdom
so that Fred could confront his father and find Minestus' magical library.
By this time, Fred and Alicia had married as well. So the two couples,
Synizn and a handful of others stepped into the magical portal and left
Panaras behind.
But instead of the Great Kingdom, the group found themselves sent to
the Arabi Desert and the land of Alicia's birth, fabled Ethiopia. Alicia's
father had been the King, but the royal family was now dead, victims of
the nuclear missile attacks. In their place, Malachi of all people, was
now ruling what was left of the desert nation. Alicia resigned her royal
authority and together with Fred and the others she continued the journey
back to the Great Kingdom.
They braved the radioactive wasteland and battled mutated monsters and
many died, but they were most terribly stricken when NATTHIAS, Alicia's
insane father who was not dead but had become a half-mad were-jackal instead,
attacked Alicia. He was fought off but Willian was fatally wounded. They
hoped to save him by turning him into a manimal, but they discovered to
their surprise that they were no longer lycanthropic in nature. Their manimal
transformation had fully mutated into its final form and they were now
the founding members of a new race of beings. Unfortunately, this left
poor Willian hanging out on death's doorstep without much hope of being
saved.
And that pretty much brings us up to speed. It's been a wild ride so
far, and I fully expect that the fun is only beginning. I mean, there's
just so much that's going on. Just today in fact, our heroes crossed into
the Channel of Sueze, a marvel of ancient Alantean engineering. It is a
passageway that cuts across the northern continent and connects the western
ocean with the eastern. It hasn't been sailed by Man in over 10,000 years.
Who knows what they will find there?
Well, actually I do. But I hate spoiling a good surprise. If
you want to find out what happens next, well you'll just have to keep on
watching. Just like me.
-
 Back to their Mysterious
Voyage
Go Back
|