Origins #1
Author’s note: This is the first in what might be a series of short essays about some of my favorite fictional universes. Today; we’ll take a look at the backstory of the Land, the world of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.
The story of the Land, and the larger world that it is a part of, begins with a Creator. The Creator sought to make a living world, so first he used white gold and wild magic to forge the Arch of Time, as a place for his world to be made within, and a bridge of light to connect it to himself.
At first, all seemed well. The world slowly took shape, and the Creator’s children crossed the bridge to dance in the sky of the new-made world.
But then disaster struck. The Creator looked at his world, and saw terrible banes buried deep in the earth through no will of his. He thus realized that Despite, his shadow or his brother, had been at work, and so he wrestled with Despite, finally throwing it through the arch and in the process broke the bridge of light.
Thus both Despite and the Creator’s children were trapped, and could not return, as long as the Arch stands.
But Despite was weakened, and for a long time the land had peace, as the great Forest grew.
Yet not all was well, for into the land came three spirits - the Ravers, who could possess bodies, and they attacked the trees.
The children of the Creator decided to sacrifice one of their own to create a guard for the trees, who would later be known by men as the Colossus of the Fall.
The forests were thus protected for a long time, until Men came to the land.
As Men cleared the forests, the trees responded by taking some of the energy of the Colossus to create Forestals, strange creatures that seemed like a blend of trees and humans, and who wielded the power of the Earth itself - Earthpower. These creatures became the guardians of the forest, which slowed the destruction of the trees, but it was too late.
The Ravers had returned.
One of the Ravers possessed the king of men, and shocked by his sudden cruelty his wife the queen began a revolt against him.
She gathered heroes to aid her, and the greatest of these was Berak, the bravest and the best that the kingdom had to offer.
But even Berak could not defeat the forces of the King, and during one of the battles, he himself was wounded, losing the last two fingers of his right hand.
Defeated, bleeding, and desperate, Berak fled to the foot of Mount Thunder, a place of ancient power, and begged the Earth below him to help him, offering his life and service in exchange.
And the Earth responded.
The top of the mountain opened, and great creatures of pure flame called Fire Lions came down, and swept away his enemies.
True to his word, once the battle was over, he gathered the survivors of his people, and began teaching them the way of Earthfriendship. He then replaced the monarchy with a Council of Lords, with himself as the High Lord. Despite that title, he ensured that the office of the High Lord was one of cooperation rather than dictatorship. He then forged the Staff of Law, as the ultimate expression of Earthpower.
Generations past, and the people slowly repaired the damage their ancestors had caused, and each new High Lord seemed greater and more powerful than the last.
And soon, they also had allies.
For into the land came Giants - beings almost twice the size of a man, who were sailors who had lost their way home, and now lived on the other side of a great swamp.
Soon, with the Giant’s help, the people had built Revelstone, a massive city made out of rock, a place that could also act as a refuge in times of trouble.
More time passed, and then another group came into the land, the Haruchai, who were fierce fighters from the high mountains. The Haruchai disavowed weapons or magic, relying on their extreme physical skills, and they wanted to challenge the Lords, who were at that time led by a new High Lord, a man named Kevin.
But Kevin won the Haruchai over, so much so that they took an oath of service, an oath so strong that Earthpower entered them, and some of them became the Bloodguard - sleepless, ageless, and stern.
But just when Men had all but forgotten evil, a being arrived at Revelstone. He appeared to be human, and named himself Lord Foul, but despite the name, he proved to be a holder of much knowledge, and Kevin came to trust him.
Then, one day, he sent a message to the High Lord, saying he wanted Kevin to meet him in the swamp because he had secret information to give him.
Despite his trust of Foul, Kevin doubted, and instead of going himself, he sent some of his most trusted aides in his place.
As Kevin had feared, it was a trap. His aides were killed, and Foul declared war on the High Lord.
And very soon, he was winning.
Eventually, Kevin was desperate enough to try something unheard of.
He challenged Foul to meet him at Mount Thunder, and recite with him a deadly spell, the Ritual of Desecration.
To help limit the damage he was about to cause, he sent the Giants back over the swamp, and had the Bloodguard take the people as far away as possible.
He met Foul at the mountain, and they recited the ritual together. Kevin knew he would die in the spell’s effect, but he thought that at least he would take his foe with him.
Unfortunately, he was wrong.
Because Foul was not human, he was Despite, and could not be destroyed by any spell.
The Land was devastated by the spell, and lay in ruin for some time.
But finally, the people came back with the Bloodguard, and seeing the damage, they decided to take an Oath of Peace, to never again fall into the passion that led to Kevin’s decision.
They were cheered when the Giants returned and bearing a device that they came to know as the First Ward of Kevin’s Lore, something he had prepared long before. They would soon learn that all of his knowledge and wisdom was recorded on the Wards, of which there were seven, and that when they had mastered the first, it would reveal the location of the next.
They set up a new council with a new High Lord, and despite the loss of the staff of Law, began working at healing the ravaged land.
Meanwhile, the Despiser, although not killed, had been seriously weakened, and could not threaten the Land directly for a very long time.
But as he recovered his strength, he decided he wanted to do more than defeat the new Lords and take over the Land. He wanted to escape the Earth, to get past the Arch of Time and take his fight to the Creator once more.
But to do that, he discovered he needed white gold, and there was none anywhere in the Land.
Then the staff of Law was found by a creature called a Cavewight, named Drool Rockworm.
And Despite saw his chance to acquire white gold, by having Drool summon a bearer of the metal from whatever world had the substance.
And a bearer came: Thomas Covenant, who had once been an author, husband, and father - until a diagnosis of leprosy took all those things away.
Abandoned by his wife and child, shunned by the small town he had grown up in, and isolated on the farm he had once shared with his wife, he struggled to continue to find a reason to live.
Until he was pulled into the Land, and because he also had lost the last two fingers on his right hand, he was seen as Berak reborn, as well as the wielder of wild magic from the white gold wedding ring he still wore.
But he was convinced that he was experiencing a dream while recovering from being hit by a police car on his last futile trip into town, and resented the demands the Land would put on him.
And so he would take the title of the Unbeliever, but his time in the Land would change him forever ...
The beginning ...
Author’s postscript: If this intrigued you, check out the books, called collectively The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. If you liked this, please leave a kudo and a comment..
Origins #2: Inferno (Marvel Comics)
In order to do this essay correctly, I need to explain how teleportation works in the Marvel universe. When a character like Nightcrawler teleports, he doesn’t simply disappear from one place and appear in another, he actually travels through another universe.
Which leads me to the character Magik, younger sister of Peter Rasputin, also known as Colossus.
Her teleportation ability had her cross a dimension called Limbo, and soon she attracted the attention of the denizens of that dimension.
She was kidnapped and spent years in Limbo, finally learned enough magic to escape, and this is where we begin.
There were several encounters between the heroes of Earth and various inhabitants of Limbo, usually referred to as “demons”, but at some point, one of them came up with a new plan.
His name was N'astirh, and he made contact with a woman named Madelyn Pryor, whose life had been tainted with darkness from its very beginning.
She had been created as a clone of Jean Grey by a villain named Mr. Sinister, to breed her with Scot Summers, otherwise known as Cyclops.
He believed that a child from that union would be one of the most powerful mutants ever, and as he hoped, her resemblance to Jean made Scott fall in love with her after Jean’s apparent death.
When Jean Grey returned, Scott abandoned Madelyn, taking their son with him.
Many of Scott’s fellow X-men didn’t approve of this, and despite seemingly not having Jean’s powers she became an unofficial member of the team,
So when N'astirh contacted her and offered her power to take revenge, she agreed.
Their plan was first to merge New York city with the realm of Limbo for 24 hours, a “goblin night” as they called it.
But in order to make that merger permanent they needed Madelyn to sacrifice thirteen children - including her own.
This brought Scott and his new team, X-Factor, as well as his former team the X-Men, and Magik’s teammates the New Mutants in, and because Limbo had taken over New York, most of the non mutant superheroes were drawn in as well.
For the sake of giving you all a reason to check out the stories yourselves, I will only say that there would be many after effects of the Goblin night, not the least of which was a confrontation between Scott Summers and Mr. Sinister, a confrontation between the X-Men and N'astirh, and from the non-mutant side, the re-establishment of the Avengers, who had disbanded shortly before these events.
If this has gotten you interested in the event, a trade paperback is available on amazon.
Origins # 3: Captain Canuck
Author's note: Captain Canuck is not mine. He belongs to Chapterhouse comics. The idea of this essay is hopefully get people interested enough to look up the comics.
The story of Canada’s first superhero starts with two brothers.
Tom and Michael Evans were very different people, but the bond between them was strong.
So when Tom was told his brother had been injured in a car accident, he got leave from the Canadian army (He’d been in Afghanistan working as a medic), and rushed home.
But by the time he’d made it home, Micheal was missing and enemies controlled the company he’d built.
With the help of the head of security for Michael’s company, he discovered that his brother had headed for the Arctic circle, a place called Aleph.
It was a place both brothers were familiar with, as their father always claimed he’d seen a spacecraft crash there.
It would be in that remote place that both Tom and Michael would be changed forever.
Aleph was surrounded by a “dead zone” where nothing electronic worked, so Tom was forced to travel to the site on foot. He discovered Michael’s team dead, and Michael himself taken to the spaceship their father had seen years earlier.
Tom went into the spaceship, and found Michael “plugged in”, connected to the ship.
Tom broke Michael free, and then began to try to get far enough away from the “dead zone” to call for help.
While attempting this, they were intercepted by a polar bear, and it was at that moment that Tom discovered the spaceship had altered him.
He found himself covered in a skin tight outfit, and he now had the strength to wrestle the polar bear - and win.
With the threat dealt with, Tom was able to drag Michael far enough out of the “dead zone” to be able to call for help. After returning home, the brothers separated, Tom returning to Afghanistan, while Michael began to try and sort out the knowledge the spaceship had shared with him.
He would eventually set up Equilibrium, as a disaster response unit, to protect his native Canada, and the world at large.
At this point, Canada had become the most powerful country in the world due to some technology and its large amount of resources, so no one could really object when Michael made sure that Equilibrium was Canadian through and through.
And as part of that identity, Michael decided what Equilibrium needed was something more than an ordinary person to be the public face of the organization.
He decided it needed a superhero.
So he persuaded his brother Tom to not only use his new strength, but to take on a new identity.
That of Captain Canuck.
Unfortunately it turned out that Michael and Tom weren’t only ones with extraordinary gifts.
A man calling himself Mr. Gold wanted the secrets of the alien craft, and had incredible power to help him in his quest.
He could generate a liquid substance that looked like gold, and any person who contacted it could be infected and controlled by him.
This process would eventually kill the person so infected, but even after death, he could manipulate their bodies to suit his purposes.
He was able to lure Michael back to Aleph, in hopes of discovering all the mysteries of the crashed ship.
He failed, but Michael learned one thing. The alien pilot had survived the crash and had sent a message to his people many light years away.
And Michael decided that he, and the men and women of Equilibrium would be ready, especially with Tom as their leader.
The hero, Captain Canuck.
End
Origins # 4: Wild Cards
This story starts with one person, the alien from Takis who would be known on Earth as Dr. Tachyon.
Takis was in many ways, much like feudal Europe, except that they had highly advanced technology, and among the elite - telepathy.
But for one family, telepathy wasn’t enough.
They studied the genetic quirk that had given them telepathy, and mostly thanks to the work of Dr. Tachyon, they eventually found a way to trigger their full potential, a virus that would overwrite the target’s DNA.
There was only one problem, the trigger responded randomly, sometimes it gave extraordinary gifts, but far more often it resulted in terrible deformities, or death.
But at the same time, they had made another remarkable discovery.
A planet with beings who were genetically identical to themselves, a planet called Earth.
The idea of using it on the inhabitants of Earth came to be accepted, and a ship was dispatched to perform the task.
But Dr. Tachyon objected, followed in Baby, his own sentient ship, fought against his own family, and killed them, but the container with the virus fell to Earth, and his ship was too damaged to track it, so he landed on Earth in New Mexico, hoping to get help from the humans.
He succeeded, but unfortunately, the virus and its container had been stolen by a ruthless man, who planned to fly the container up into the sky above New York City in a dirigible. Having no regular aircraft capable of climbing high enough, the authorities called in the most famous pilot from World War Two, Robert Tomlin, also known as “Jetboy”.
Jetboy was so called because he was the owner and pilot of the very first jet airplane, which is why the authorities thought he had the best chance of stopping the villain. Unfortunately, Jetboy was only partially successful, and the virus was unleashed over New York City.
The virus was given the name “Wild Card” because it seemed that its effects were random. About nine in ten people who caught it died, and those people were referred to as those who had “drawn the black queen” and of the survivors nine in ten developed terrible mutations, and they were referred to as “Jokers”. A lucky few, about one in a hundred, developed powers, and soon they were known as “aces”.
The American government decided to take advantage of these aces, and soon had recruited four individuals. But the “four Aces” as they were called, would only have a brief moment in the sun before being stopped by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and by the betrayal by Golden Boy, one of the four aces.
Despite this, there would be more Aces, and even Jokers, who would play a part in the history of the world, and no one would ever forget the day Jetboy failed, Wild Card Day.