AND AS FOR YOU AND YOUR....FAMILY?

She taps her still playing tape recorder for emphasis.
 
 

"Oh," Morganna says, pleasantly surprised that the historian was interested in that.
 
 

Morganna complied with this request:
 
 

Just another day of life. Another day needed to adapt to new things. 

However, I will be the last elf to complain about how things change, considering how much I had to change....to adapt. 

Adaptation is a dirty word in many of my peers minds, sad to say. They fear it. They want the endless, unaltered rhyme they enjoyed before the appearance of the New race. The race of elf always had a slightly condescending view on the other races, but no real.....dare I say it.....fear of them. Human are different. They are short lived, but they are VERY energetic and aggressive. They have gone out and settled lands that we elves had called impossible to settle. And let's not mention the alarming rise in the threat they pose...... 

But then again, if one doesn't adapt, one is doomed to be left behind....to fade. 

My mother gave me that, and I consider her wise indeed. Much wiser and more intelligent....more far sighted than many of mothers of elfin children. This is ironic, for my mother was of the very race that elves called the most short sighted race of the land! You see, my mother was human...and died a human well before I matured (by elven standards) at around 100 years. 

I and my father grieved, though we knew it had to happen. The average human just lives a fraction of life compared to elves. 

Ah, but you wonder how it is that I, an elf, could be of "pure blood" if my mother was human? Well, when my mother met my father, a mage with a fondness for exotic pets/servants had captured my mother, and used the spell called "Polymorph other" to change her into an elf. My father came along and bested the mage in the most honored of elfin thieves methods. He stabbed him in the back. 

Now, admittedly that would horrify a paladin what my father did.....but my father was no paladin. When one goes up against a powerful.....and dangerous opponent.....one without much in the way of morals (else my mother would not have bee slated to become his newest pet....an elven pet)......one doesn't fight fair (unless one wishes to die....or worse). There was nothing he could do for the other, heartbroken servants. The course of the magical spell had ran too long, and the very mentality of the altered creatures had become that of the forms they now wore. In other words, they had forgotten the form they had been born to....believing instead to have always been thus....even if they couldn't remember anything before becoming their new....selves. 

When my father came across my mother, chained to a wall and naked, he inadvertently found out after freeing her that the wizard had placed a very POWERFUL infatuation spell....a love spell....on my mother. To make a rather......er.....touchy story clean, let us just leave it that my mother was very persuasive with my father. Thus, I was conceived. 

Soon, my mother gained enough sense to beg father to transform her back to human. Father, aghast at the truth, knowing what would happen eventually if the spell upon my mother ran it's course was able to pull out a magic scroll he'd saved for special magical obstacles. A "Dispell Magic" spell does wonders on certain magical traps, and it also was the proscribed remedy to the spell upon my mother.....as the lore that my father diligently forced me to learn in later years. It didn't cure my mother of her infatuation, nor did it cure her of ME. The transformation should have aborted my existence then and there, but I survived....much to my parents surprised. 

They had been expecting a half elf when I entered the world, screaming my little lungs out! 

That was a sign of things to come. My life always had been different, and continues to be so. I was more aggressive by far than my elfin counterparts, and hey found that I didn't handle slights very well. Many a lad or lass found themselves bloody and bruised after slighting my mother or father.....or me. I was something of what is now known as a "Tomboy" and it grew out of that that I should combine the calling of my father, a thief, with the calling of my mother, a warrior.
 
 

I soon joined a local Thieves guild in a prosperous town in what I now know as Scandinavia, for the thief without a guild is a rogue awaiting a knife in the back. There I plied my trade, earning a few comments about my odd habit's but nothing I found insufferable. Considering that I'd earned my mother's short temper, that was a good thing!
 
 

A few years into my trade, I crossed paths with a rather unusual group of adventurers that needed my talents....though they had a rogue in the party much more skilled than I at the time. They needed an extra person good with a sword....and good with lockpicks. They were on a quest to return some type of holy item to a sacred sight or such, but as fate would have it, we soon received the unwanted attention of a tin plated godling with nothing better to do than bully us into a mission HE wanted us to do! I know not of what the others were to do, but I found myself quested to retrieve some type of sacred book from a sight with the Negative Plane, a dimension of vampires and other evil undead....a place that was adverse to all living creatures. Only a family heirloom, Pi, powered by special magical substances called Black Crystals, would protect me. With a large supply of that...along with a Dark Beast summoned to be my mount.....I was sent to retrieve the book. However, I fell victim to a malfunction of my item, and instead was put into a state of suspended animation, buried under fifty feet of earth in a land that would one day become Richard Scabower Air Force Base, a small military base in the now vanished state of Missouri. In what was the United States of America.
 
 

They dug up the sight I was buried, and found the cube of ice that my malfunctioning magical item had magically frozen me within. The ice is what they call cyro-ice, a special substance perfect for those times when you want to sleep....for a few hundred or more years!
 
 

I was thawed out by this huge mutant cat with psionic powers, and that's were the fun began. What had happened to me, it had done lots! I found out that I was more dexterous and strong than I ever imagined possible. I also found that....well....things came easier for me as far as figuring puzzling things out. Basically, the malfunctioning item had also boosted my intelligence to frightening levels. That' isn't vanity speaking, that little monkey doctor keeps chattering it to me every time we meet."
 
 

Tarn, having actually met the intelligent and pleasant (but tiny) mutant descended from small primates nodded. Indeed, that doctor was a monkey....a literal monkey.
 
 

And he'd warned Tarn NOT to talk down to Morganna, else she'd blow her out of the water in a debate or discussion. Ditto for her short (3 foot nothing) husband!
 
 

I also found that I generated a rather disturbing anti-psionic field that played hob with the resident psionists. A substance was found to dampen out the dampening field, and thus they didn't lynch me for something I had no control over.
 
 

Needing a steady source of income, for a woman or man without money is a person without recourse, I joined this armey...and found out that after something called a nuclear war....the land abounded with mutant animals, mutated humans, and a few regular humans. There were even some aliens from other worlds on this Earth, but not dwarves. No halflings. And.....not even the most common type of elf....my type. There were no High Elves. There were no elves beyond me, period!
 
 

What had happened to the wise and reclusive Grey elves?
 
 

What had happened to the merry but somewhat ill mannered Wood elves? 

What of the Dark Elves, always ready to cause sadness and grief? 

Where were the other demi-humans? Where were the creatures I had grown up with, besides the humans?
 
 

Dust.
 
 

I knew not of what had happened to the other races (still don't), but I knew of what had happened to my race. They had chosen to go to dust!
 
 

Which is what I'd be if I followed the path they had followed. I saw it in a dream. Tired of the world, and seeing their place in it continually challenged by mankind, the elves had done nothing to prevent their fading....so their numbers soon dropped to zero as births halted due to a lack of will.....
 
 

Well, I'm not a person to go softly to my own death.
 
 

Drastic measures were called for, and so I took them. I did all I could do and think of and finally caught the eye of the leader of that burnt out world. I caught the eye of the man they call Prime.
 
 

Morganna pauses and pulls out a disturbingly familiar looking pair of sunglasses. Wayfarer sunglasses just like....the ones that the.....cyborg known as Crater had been wearing when he'd brought her in, grinding his teeth all along.
 
 

"I got Prime's attention despite Crater's interference," Morganna said in a chilled voice. "He says he did it so Prime wouldn't take advantage of me. So I would remain free and such nonsense! I was the LAST of my KIND! I was desperate and in need of aid and was PRAYING that my special property of blocking psionics, along with being an elf, would get Prime's attention. My best and only hope for my race's survival laid within Prime...and nowhere else. There were just no facilities available to me by ordinary means....by any means except THIS way."
 
 

"And despite all the alarmist nonsense, it turned out that Prime, while a bit...old fashioned in his views....was light years ahead of what I had faced with many of Human...indeed, of elven views of what a proper elven woman should be and do! And as for some things...it took a bit of doing, but I was able to convince him of the logic of my side of things.
 
 

If a tenth of what they say of your mental capacity and prowess are true....then it's small wonder you got your way with this Prime fellow, Tarn thikns to herself.
 
 

"I died due to a mishap during some routine medical tests, some type of allergic reaction," Morganna sighed. "But they were able to modify....donations....to conform to elven standards....and fertilized every last potential of my ovaries. They grew to maturity quickly, for Prime had been able to increase the maturation rate...and soon he had a force that floored all other hostile forces to the Empire of Earth...for the backbone of those civilization are psionics...just like magic was to my old world."
 
 

"I was....however, reborn in another elven body," Morganna continued. "I found myself in a position to change things...change the same thing from happening to the elves I found myself with....change it so that the same fate didn't befall them. Using what I had learned from Prime's world....."
 
 

Morganna chuckled a little bit.
 
 

"Oh, we didn't go out and try to conquer the world, but we did so much..... and we permanently bolloxed up the plans of some rather annoyed human 'gods' who wanted their charges to be on top of the food chain...on top of the order of things. They even tried to try me and execute me....only to have this gentleman righ here to step in and defeat them."
 
 

179 is looking at the ceiling, pretending not to notice Morganna smiling.
 
 

"So it went...and I found out one very important thing about one particular pantheon of 'gods' in particular...about their lead 'god.'" Morganna sighs, pulling back her hood. "He has even worse loyalty to his wife than advertised....for he kept trying to seduce me...despite me being married!"
 
 

It still angered her to no ends...and was very glad that the lechorous "god" was gone...and buried if he ever touched her again!
 
 

Erin Tarn is stunned stock still at the vision of loveliness before her.
 
 

"Oh....and the malfunction did this to my old body," Morganna chuckled, putting her hood back. She then places the sunglasses in a pouch and chuckles yet again.
 
 

"As for Crater...I made sure that his career was ruined," the elf said in a cold voice. "I wanted to kill him, but that is not justice. And thus I do just little things....that are slowly driving him up the walls! Watching him jump when I say frog....that's a bit childish....even for one like me of well over 10,000 years from experience."
 
 

"But I do enjoy it," Morganna says softly. "Just as I'll enjoy outliving the SOB....seeing that it seems that I and Rugen seem to have become something imortal....for we don't age....even at the elven rate....and we come back from even the worst of fights and disasters. God seemed to have placed my feet back on the path to my children....now grown, and I thank Him for his gift to me."
 
 

And she apparnetly likes to steal the borg's sunglasses every chance she gets, Tarn says to herself, nodding. Considering the harsh feeling she give off when she mentions Crater's name......the guys' lucky to be in one piece.
 
 

1. And so, after a few cliffnotes and other supporting evidence to substantiante the story just given, 179 and Morganna are alone to see what the other wants...... 

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