Of all the horror franchises I wanted to write about, it’s long been my dream to do one on the strange history of the Phantasm series. These movies, with all their Tall Mans and death orbs and evil Jawas, manage to create one of the most unique artistic statements in horror cinema. How many franchises have four very solid, very different movies that span twenty years and even a variety of horror sub-genre in their quest to tell its tale? I don’t know of any that have even tried, much less succeeded, in the same way these four modest little movies did.

So this November we’re taking a trip into the world of mortuary horror, of mortal terror and endless dream sequences, a world where death is just the beginning of the horror. Wind down from your more traditional October horror movie projects and marathons with the stranger weirdness of Phantasm, a series that feels much more at home in the wastes of an encroaching winter than the harvest bounty of Halloween. Or maybe that’s just my excuse for being a month late with this project. The world may never know.

Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)

Phantasm is a series that’s predicated on an increasing upward amount of lore, and never is that more prevalent than in Phantasm III, a movie that takes the arc of the first two, already complex in ways that most franchises never manage in four times as many installments, and blows it out into something vast and complicated. The ideas are there, and now it’s time for the lore. And what a crazy insane amount of lore it is.

Which is also part of the problem. After Phantasm II didn’t exactly set the world on fire, Don Cascarelli was working with a much more truncated budget and a much smaller production scope. Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead then was the first of this franchise to go straight-to-video, that eventual resting place of all horror franchises, after a production marred with delays and a drifting release schedule that would have killed a less scrappy film. Thankfully, Phantasm’s a fighter, and we get a third installment that basically just kicks ass front to back.

Continuing with the not-quite-surprising ending of the second film, Phantasm III opens with Reggie, Mike (now replaced once again with original actor A Michael Baldwin) and that woman from the second movie getting attacked by the minions of the Tall Man. The Tall Man, presumably not quite as dead as people might have thought, emerges from another of the dimensional forks and tries to steal away Mike, as Reggie fends him off by threatening to blow up him and Mike. In a blast of hilarious narrative convenience, the dwarves are quick to dispatch the psychic girl (Laura? Mia? I just looked, and her name is Liz. Who knew?)

The Tall Man is shipping out a whole new door!

The movie then fast-forwards an unidentified amount of time (Wikipedia says two years, but I don’t know where they would have gotten that idea), where Mike has been comatose in a hospital. While there, his dead older brother Jody appears to him in a dream and convinces him to wake up, using the threat of the Tall Man to convince Mike to come out of a coma just in time to fend off a demon nurse that tries to attack him. When the Tall Man appears to interject on his own, Jody appears (having been turned into one of the spheres) and attacks the Tall Man only to get cooked into a charred form as the Tall Man captures Mike.

The burned Jody sphere then appears to a Reggie who has apparently settled into some form of normalcy again (because why not, right? Lots of folding cash in the ice cream vending business). Telling him he can guide Reggie to Mike, our intrepid hero gears up once again, grabs his crazy quad shotgun, and sets off in his Hemi across the blasted wastes of dozens of small towns and the increasing forces of darkness in search of Mike. Which is when things get really goddamn weird.

You see, as we’ll talk about later on, this is really Reggie’s movie. Much of it is spent with him interacting with the few scant survivors of the Tall Man’s warpath through the American midwest, including a sharpshooting kid named Tim and in one ramshackle town a militant ex-Army black woman who might or might not be a lesbian named Rocky, who serves as the romantic foil to the eternally frustrated Reggie. This weird ad hoc family all gather together in order to confront the Tall Man and take him down, which of course goes horribly wrong.

For a child sidekick, Tim is pretty cool. Mostly because he outright murders people and is better at it than the adults.

The full difficulties of that final fight involve some zombies, the increasing number of spheres, and the Tall Man’s increased and much more aggressive presence in the film. But at the same time this is all going down, Mike is undergoing something resembling an initiation as the Jody sphere appears to him and shows him facts about what happens with the Tall Man and the bodies he steals. It’s in this movie that we’re shown that he shrinks down the dead, reanimating them and putting their brains into the spheres that are under his full psychic control. Which means that the Tall Man really does control the dead, which makes the subtitle make sense. Look at that, movie writers! Good job!

Rocky: Cooler than Reggie. Also Pictured: Reggie taking a nice sit.

The thing is, as Reggie and company are all rushing to save Mike, the Tall Man takes a crazy stabby thing to Mike’s head and cuts open his skull, only to reveal that Mike not only has the yellow preservative blood that the Tall Man and his minions have, but apparently has a silver ball tucked inside of his skull. Why? I don’t know, because the movie’s almost over and Reggie and his friends burst in just in time to disrupt us finding out any answers as they take out the Tall Man in a burst of blood and bullets. And Mike, horrified at his crazy brain-ball, runs away with the Jody sphere, explicitly promising that there will be answers in the next movie. I wish!

Gleaming Balls of Death

The balls, which the movie now refers to as Sentinels (and which I will never do) end up all over this movie, as the Tall Man supposedly has used the hundreds of people he’s killed or exhumed to create a full army of the things. So they’re all over, filling up ceilings and pinning people to walls and being in the brains of otherwise normal looking humans. Not to mention the Jody ball, and the strange eyeball-stalk ball that the Tall Man apparently uses to spy on people when he’s busy doing other things. This movie is, to borrow from the vernacular, straight trippin’ balls.

Nothing stops the Super Ball.

But more importantly, right when they’re about to ‘kill’ the Tall Man, a giant golden ball bursts out of what’s left of his head, and begins flying around being totally badass because this is the ballsiest of ballers. But because it’s still one of the balls, it has that proclivity for slamming into bad guys instead of the heroes like it’s supposed to. But this ball? Not content to drill through people’s skulls, it instead just blows right through them, leaving a neat round hole like a shotgun in a cartoon. Which it does to the zombie woman, leaving her head looking more like the eye of a needle than a face. Because the Tall Man don’t stop for nothing.

The Reggie Factor

This is Reggie’s movie, and it’s clear from the beginning that the adventures of Reggie Bannister are not only the heart of this series, but some of the best bits of the entire franchise. From his random moments of being a total badass, to his endless fascination with hitting on any woman he can find (no matter how obviously evil), to his endless array of flannel shirts that accessorize so well with his ponytail—Reggie comes into his own as one of the greatest heroes of horror cinema. Not through actual skill, but through trying hard enough.

Some of the highlights? Reggie’s constant running down of the Jody sphere, using ball jokes that would put mine in the prior section to shame. His ability to kill four jawas in a single shotgun blast, no matter how far apart they might actual be in space. That he basically adopts the kid Tim only to drop him off with the next family he sees. Or his aggressive attempts to get into Rocky’s pants, no matter how obviously not into it she seems to be. Reggie’s a born loser, and like all born losers spent his whole life waiting for just enough shit to go wrong to fail upward. That he gets the chance makes him endearing, that he learns nothing and never changes cements him as a beloved cinematic icon.

Reggie, you sorry bastard, we love you.

Mike has seen way better days.

The End?

Mike’s fled, the Tall Man’s supposedly dead, and Rocky decides after the fighting that she’s sick of all this crazy nonsense and takes off in a hearse like a total BAMF. As Reggie and Tim scour the mausoleum where everything went down trying to piece together what exactly did go down, Tim remembers that Mike warned him to tell Reggie ‘there are thousands of them’. Not understanding, he tells Reggie too late, as he walks into a room only to see Reggie pinned against the wall by dozens of the balls, hundreds more clinging to the ceiling. As he does this, the supposedly dead Tall Men bursts into the room and reminds us that “It’s never over!”

Which is when hands reach through the window and pull Tim through it into the darkness. Which is fine Phantasm tradition. The problem? There is no window. Tim is standing in an empty doorway and it jump cuts to a window that exists only for this window gag. Because Phantasm is the kind of series that worries more about doing it right than doing it sensibly. Thank god. They care more about greatness than logic, and that’s why Phantasm continues to live on in our hearts.

In the late 19th century there was a national interest in the Irish language and Irish Gaelic culture in Ireland, aptly named the Gaelic Revival. This was inspired by the growing nationalism movement that started in the early 19th century. Gaelic had diminished as a spoken language under English rule so much that it was confined to isolated rural areas. The majority of Ireland spoke English.

Although the movement wasn’t as widespread as the political movement in Ireland there came to be a resurgence of Irish names (word names in particular). For so long it had been ingrained in people’s minds that the use of Irish names was shameful, which explains the use of Catholic and English names in Ireland. But with the Gaelic Revival those feelings of shame seemed to fade away. Here we see the beginnings of Firinne as a name.

Firinne is the Old Irish word for ‘truth’ coined during the Gaelic Revival. Pronounced FEER in yeh it may seem a hurdle for non-Gaelic speakers but at least its easier than Saoirse’s Seer sha or Caoimhe’s Keeva. However it is a rare name even in Ireland for it has never entered the charts, but it has had some usage.

Another interesting fact is that Firinne has some part in Irish mythology, albeit a small part but a part nether less. Donn, the Lord of the Dead/Storms lived in a place called Cnoc Firinne “hill of truth” (see picture above). Whenever there was incoming bad weather Donn would forewarn the local people by gathering up rain clouds around him on the hill.

This piece of mythology was so iconic that thousands of farm families and workers would make the annual pilgrimage to the summit Cnoc Firinne every Béltaine for tens of centuries… carrying bouquets of flowers. All would entreat Donn to provide sufficient rain the coming summer for good crops, but to moderate the winds and hail so no shoots or mature grain were ruined.

Other Namesakes:

Ruby Firinne Photography-A studio based in San Diego, U.S.A
Deirdre Firinne-From the video game series Blazblue, Deirdre is a swordmaster who is revered by many as a hero

Possible Middle Names:

Firinne Aisling | Firinne Caitlin | Firinne Iona | Firinne Juliet | Firinne Lily | Firinne Margaret | Firinne Pearl

Possible Sibling Names:

Aisling | Eilis | Eseld | Iona | Liadan | Mhairi | Morwenna | Orla | Rozenn | Roisin| Saraid | Tesni
Ardal | Cothal | Dafydd | Daveth | Eamon | Fergus | Jowan | Lorcan | Niall | Rhodri | Tadg | Tavish

Overall there isn’t a lot of information on this name, but I’m sure you could make it your own.

Asher Dove from Mayan Craving

A.S. Fenichel’s new book, MAYAN CRAVING, releases this May. When she first contacted me about doing a guest blog post in connection with her new Romantica book from Ellora’s Cave (for more on the Romantica line of erotic romance novels published exclusively by Ellora’s Cave click here), she told me  a little bit about it. Because I’ve used various mythologies as inspiration in my own writing, I was curious about her process. She agreed to write a post about how she used Mayan and Aztec mythology in her work. A.S. is also giving us a sneak peek at MAYAN CRAVING with an excerpt from Chapter One below.

The Mythological Mictlantecuhtli

Thank you for having me here, Jill. I’m so happy to have this opportunity to share details about my May 4^th release of Mayan Craving, my second book with Ellora’s Cave Publishing. This has been such a wonderful, crazy ride for me. From getting “the call” last Spring to having not one, but two books published. It’s a dream come true.

I’m thrilled that you asked me to share a little of my Maya research with you today. It’s rare for an author to have that opportunity. For the most part, we try not to let it show that we’ve researched and studied. After all, when you read a book, you don’t want to think about the research behind it. You just want to get lost in a story. Right?

I struggled for a long time, trying to decide what bit to tell you all about, and settled on the BIG BAD in my stories, Mictlantecuhtli. I like to call him Mictlan for short. I’m not ashamed to tell you that although my books are titled “Mayan” I plucked Mictlantecuhtli from Aztec mythology. I have taken a little “writer’s license” as far as that goes. He was a principal god to the Aztecs and often referred to as the Lord of the Dead. He is depicted as a blood splattered skeleton or a large head with big teeth and no eyes in his sockets. In some descriptions he wore a necklace made from human eyeballs. Pretty yucky stuff. As I said, I call him Mictlan, but if you look it up, that was actually the name of the level of the underworld, which he ruled over. Again, a little license. The truth is, I didn’t want to distract the reader with trying to pronounce meek-tlahn-tay-COO-tlee every time it appeared.

He has his horrifying moments in my book, but for the most part, in both Mayan Afterglow and Mayan Craving, Mictlan appears as an extremely good looking man of about thirty. In fact he’s so perfectly handsome, he’s an abomination, and the characters find him hard to look at. When he loses his temper…well that’s another story.

Mythological Mictlantecuhtli was the ruler of the lowest level of the underworld, the northern realm of the dead. In my books, he is taking advantage of the End of Days in order to take over the realm of humans. He goes through ritual after ritual in an attempt to enter our world and end the reign of humankind. Our hero (Asher) and heroine (Nancy) have their work cut out for them. They have to defeat Mictlan, save Nancy’s sister from Mictlan’s harem, and deal with their own issues of falling in love.

And you thought it was easy, being the star of a romance novel.

The Aztecs worshiped and feared Mictlantecuhtli but in my post-apocalyptic world, Mictlan is the devil. Only those he has turned to the other side worship him and they are cursed.

I know this all sounds a little gory for a romance novel, but trust me, it works.

Thanks for taking the time to visit with me today. You can find more information about Mayan Craving on my website. If you would like to buy the book, it will be available on May 4^th here. One more thing, I’m giving away  a free E-copy on May 4^th, so visit my blog and leave a comment on the 4^th to be eligible to win.

More About Mayan Craving

Surviving the End of Days was only the beginning of the journey for Nancy. After years of searching, she’s finally found her missing sister, but when she attempts to rescue Robyn, she enters her worst nightmare. Captured by demons and about to be sacrificed, Asher is her unexpected hero. Asher’s kindness and bravery arouse her lust, and leave her wanting much more than just his friendship.

Asher has been in love with Nancy since he first laid eyes on her, but her infatuation with another man always left him standing in the background. Her sudden craving for him couldn’t turn him on more. He can’t help finding rapture with Nancy, but the attraction could only be fleeting.

While danger and passion pull them together, doubt may rip them apart. They’ll need more than a carnal connection if they’re to survive.

Chapter One

 “Damn her,” Asher Dove muttered over the droning Cessna’s engines.

“What was she thinking, going out here all alone?” He’d asked himself the same question over and over since setting out to find Nancy.

The closer to the Yucatan peninsula Asher flew, the more the sky blossomed with familiar dark-red clouds, just as it had five years earlier after the End of Days. The sky had clouded over, leaving most of the Earth in shadow. Some said that the heavens had burned. Once the Lord of the Dead, Mictlantecuhtli, or Mictlan, as they called him, was defeated, those red, ominous clouds had parted and slowly disappeared, allowing the land to live again.

Mictlan had nearly conquered the Earth. If he had succeeded, everyone who Asher loved would be a servant to Mictlan. However, humans had banded together to defeat the Lord of the Dead all those years ago. Unfortunately, it looked as if they had not done enough.

He prayed thatNancyhadn’t been picked up by any demon patrols. Asher focused his attention on the single-lane highway below, searching for any sign of her. The roads she’d have to have taken stretched over eight hundred miles, a lot of ground to cover. A glint of metal caught his attention and he circled back for another look. He spotted a Jeep parked on the road about twenty miles west of Acayucan. His heart leaped.Nancy.

From the air it looked intact, but he could see no sign of the young woman driver. Before he could land and investigate further, something else caught his eye. Coming toward him from the south, a massive beast loomed dark against the red clouds.

“Shit,” Asher swore. “Dragon.”

An attempt to veer off to the right failed as the dragon moved too fast and slammed into the front of the plane. The impact rammed Asher back against his seat, but by some miracle, he managed to keep his hands on the yoke. The Cessna bucked against the added weight and plummeted toward the Earth.

“Not good.” Pulling back to keep the plane’s front end up, his heart leaped into his throat as the desert grew larger in the window.

The dragon’s blood-red eyes stared back at him while the black, snake-like body clung to the nose of the plane. Twenty feet of leathery wings beat against the wind-shear, creating a tug of war between Asher and the yoke. Even over the wind and engine noise, those tremendous wings battered the air like thunder. Asher ignored the cacophony of noise pummeling his eardrums and the strain on his muscles.

As the land grew closer, Asher pulled back, hoping to glide in rather than collide with the ground. His shoulders and arms screamed with pain as the dragon’s weight made controlling the descent nearly impossible.

“You are going to die now, little pilot. Join me and I will spare your life.”

More About the Author

A.S. Fenichel

A.S. Fenichel adores writing stories filled with love, passion, desire, magic and maybe a little mayhem tossed in for good measure. Books have always been her perfect escape and she still relishes diving into one and staying up all night to finish a good story. Originally from New York, she grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in the southwest with her real life hero, her wonderful husband. When she is not reading or writing she enjoys cooking, travel, history and puttering in her garden.

Readers, do you like stories that incorporate details from various real world mythologies? Do you mind when authors take poetic license with these elements if the end result is a more entertaining story? Writers, have you ever been inspired by real world legends or myths when writing your stories? Which ones have you written about? How closely do you stick to your inspirational material?

]]> http://mirrorpalace.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/read-write-prompt-2/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:07:10 +0000 Laria http://mirrorpalace.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/read-write-prompt-2/ Read Write Prompt #2: Eat, Drink, Write a Poem

Hades and Persephone.

It wasn’t hard to find something that she
Would like; little fruit, hiding promises.
She doesn’t take it like I thought she would.
Seeds, kissed away from my fingers. Swallowed.

I follow those seeds, down her throat, soft, white;
I kiss, leave red stains: pomegranate juice
Flows between us; life stirs in this shadowed
Womb-world; we create something new. We live.

I know what will happen; I always know.
I offer her a dance, a kiss, a ring.
She accepts everything; Queen Hera gifts
Our marriage as her mother stirs in rage.

Such a small fruit, but containing so much.
We have the fruit and we have each other.
Reality, life, death; nothing matters
In our private world. Nothing but our love.

I believe that Hades recognised his equal in Persephone. He did not part the earth and incite Demeter into almost killing gods and humans everywhere just so that he could have a pretty little doll sit on his lap. No: he brought her into the Underworld and helped her become his equal. And she, in return, accepted the pomegranate seeds—Hera’s seeds; the seeds of marriage—and they were wed.

One might wonder how, and why, Hades and Persephone are equals. Prior to his abduction of her, they were not: in spirit they were, but in terms of influence they were all but opposites. Persephone was responsible only for spring growth, for the gentle blossoming of flowers; and Hades was the King of the Underworld. Persephone was also living her immortal life in Demeter’s shadow; she was watched constantly by her, and those that vied for her hand were turned away by her mother, not by her. If Hades had not abducted Persephone she, arguably, might never have reached her full potential: she would have likely lived forever in her mother’s shadow, responsible only for the beginning of spring.

With the help of Zeus and Gaia, according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hades was able to steal away Persephone, unnoticed by all but Helios and Hekate. There is significance in this: Helios, lord of the sun, sees everything that occurs throughout the day; Hekate, queen of necromancy and ghosts, would know of everything that occurs throughout the night. Thus the transition of Kore to Persephone—girl to woman—is echoed not only in Persephone’s annual return from the Underworld and the awakening of the earth, but also in the time in which she was taken: at dusk or dawn, the in-between times.

In art and myth, Persephone is often described as a “young” goddess. She is a youth; stolen from the sunlight before she can achieve her true form, and yet she is not a child. She is at the in-between stage, the ‘dawn’ of womanhood: she is the quintessential woman-child. In abrupt, modern terms, she is a teenager. She does not yet know the delights and sorrows of being a woman; she is not a matron, and she will never be a crone. She is caught at a stage of hormones, a twist of cool logic and sharp emotions – and thus can be seen in how she behaves as Queen of the Underworld.

Persephone’s relationship with Adonis (which I will discuss in more detail further on) is an echo of this transition. After his death, he spends half of the year in the Underworld with her, and half with in the world above with Aphrodite. To coincide with this, Adonis would spend the autumn winter months with Persephone, and the spring and summer months with Aphrodite: thus their relationship echoes the themes of life-death-rebirth that are so common in the Greek mythologies.

When Persephone is stolen from the world, Demeter proves that she is willing to go to any lengths to get her back. She refuses to let the living things taste fruit and feel warmth—both fruit and heat here symbolising life, as food and energy are required for most, if not all, life-forms. (It is also ironic, then, that the only fruit that can be found in the Underworld—the pomegranate—still grew without Demeter’s influence; if she had killed that, too, Persephone might never have become the Queen of the Underworld.) Thus both Demeter and Persephone are here goddesses of winter; of the hard, cruel, cold months where—and this would have been particularly true in antiquity—jagged, icy death reigns and humanity becomes the prey, rather than the predator.

And then, when Persephone returns from the Underworld, she and her mother bless the earth with life – the flowers begin to grow; the fruits shine; the snows recede. Demeter and Persephone, then, are goddesses of the seasons—for Demeter brings about the changes of summer and winter and Persephone rules spring (as Kore, the maiden, goddess of spring growth) and autumn (as Persephone Karpophoros, the bringer of fruit, goddess of the harvest).

As Queen of the Underworld, Persephone is a much more merciful, benevolent ruler than Hades – and such is shown in how she treats the (would-be) heroes that find their way into the Underworld. When Herakles entered the Underworld, he was ‘welcomed like a brother by Persephone’ (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History); and according to Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca, Herakles passed up victory in his wrestling competition with the Underworld god Menoites ‘at the request of Persephone.’ When Psykhe reached Persephone’s palace, she ‘declined the soft cushion and the rich food offered by her hostess,’ (Apuleius, The Golden Ass) and when she reported the trial that Aphrodite had tasked her with, Persephone immediately filled the box of beauty for her. Persephone took favour on Sisyphus and released him from the Underworld; and when Orpheus sang of his love for Eurydice, he ‘persuaded her to assist him in his desires and to allow him to bring up his dead wife from Haides’ (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History).

However, Persephone also proves that she is not a goddess with whom one can trifle with; when Peirithoos plans to kidnap her from the Underworld for his wife, the youth Persephone blossoms into a woman and deals swiftly with him: ‘Peirithoos now decided to seek the hand of Persephone in marriage, and when he asked Theseus to make the journey with him Theseus at first endeavoured to dissuade him and to turn him away from such a deed as being impious; but since Peirithoos firmly insisted upon it Theseus was bound by the oaths to join with him in the deed. And when they had at last made their way below to the regions of Haides, it came to pass that because of the impiety of their act they were both put in chains, and although Theseus was later let go by reason of the favour with which Herakles regarded him, Peirithoos because of the impiety remained in Haides, enduring everlasting punishment; but some writers of myths say that both of them never returned.’ (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History).

In discussing Persephone and her transition—after her abduction at Hades’ hands—from child to woman, it is inevitable that one must discuss who she has ever taken as a lover. Unlike many of the gods, Persephone did not have numerous lovers – only Hades (to whom she gave birth to the Erinyes, according to the Orphic Hymns 29 and 70), Zeus (to whom she birthed Zagreus, according to the Orphic Hymn 29, Hyginus, Diodorus Siculus, Nonnus and Suidas; and Melinoe, according to the Orphic Hymn 71) and Adonis.

Persephone’s infamous love-affair with Adonis produced no children, and, strangely, did not incite the jealousy or wrath of her husband Hades (though Ares, only the paramour of Aphrodite, was envious enough of Adonis to kill him, according to some classical writers). It could be argued that Persephone’s relationship with Adonis is symbolic of the process of rebirth. Before his death, Adonis spent a third of his year with Persephone—I suggest that this third was the very end of autumn, the whole of winter, and the very beginning of spring. As such, Aphrodite would be cold and in mourning in the months when sex and love would, especially in antiquity, have not been at the forefront of the minds of humankind; and his emergence from the Underworld would coincide with Persephone’s own. Thus the relationship of Adonis, Aphrodite and Persephone would symbolise the entire theme of life-death-rebirth: Aphrodite as the ruler of life, Persephone as the ruler of death, and Adonis as the transition between their realms. Adding to this, both Aphrodite and Persephone share the epithet Despoina—the ruling goddess, or the mistress—and this, I think, lends further credence to the idea proposed.

Persephone’s relationship with Zeus was one of the most devastating of unions: the King of Life and the Queen of Death. As such, perhaps Zagreus was doomed from the very offset – born of trickery and lies, for, according to such authors as Nonnus, Zeus took the shape of a drakon (a dragon; a serpent) and ravished Persephone. Zagreus was a colossal explosion of Fate—for Zeus and Persephone both influence it, and have been influenced by it—as well as the primal stirrings of desire. Thus Zagreus—and, in turn, Dionysos—is a god with influence over life, death and fate, for he commands his followers to take their destinies into their own hands and twist them into oblivion.

In answer to the question proposed by the very title of this essay—Why Persephone?—I give this: Hades chose Persephone because she was his perfect opposite: feminity to his masculinity, warmth to his cold and light to his darkness. Between them, Hades and Persephone are, also, the very embodiment of two principles that rule supreme in the psyche of humans – the notion of life after death, and the promise of rebirth. They are fair rulers of the Underworld and just governors of fate; and in their capable hands, I am assured that the flow of life, death and rebirth will continue as long as the Moirai—the Fates—see fit.

So, here I am again at the Labyrinth of the Dead, on the tenth underlevel. I can't go outside this room right now, but I'm here already.

Fooling around aside, it’s an easy matter to get down to the fifth underlevel; I spent a few minutes longer than usual on the holy water purification floor, as I had determined to get through without using the map. I ‘died’ about three times consecutively on one jump, being completely unable to see both the ledge I was jumping from and the ledge I was aiming for, but otherwise the total ‘deaths’ numbered less than I expected.

Did you know one casting of Earth Javelin (with Extend Spell in effect) is all you need to take out Dullahan?

As expected by this point, the first part was no challenge whatsoever. The second part is where things begin to get interesting. The first thing anyone’ll notice is that the Labyrinth becomes distinctly Egyptian-themed in its second part; coffins disgorging the undead are still a fixture, but here they’re replaced by sarcophagi mounted on the walls, which open to release mummies, rather predictably. Some of the maps are even painfully complicated; the rest are rather straightforward, but sometimes it’s relieving to be able to get lost even with the map.

Half of the areas here aren't even conventionally-accessible. You MUST fall through traps to get to them.

There are no less than three different varieties of mummy; ordinary white-bandaged mummies, red-bandaged mummies that may be a little stronger, and a single gold-bandaged mummy guarding some rather nice treasure… but more about that later. There are also things that look like zombies but move as quickly as the evil undead monkeys – apparently ghouls – from the first section, large knight-like enemies with red crosses on their shields, and two-dimensional shadows that throw off spells. Oh, and the purple ghosts from the holy water area return with… very little vengeance, as they’re horribly weak compared to everything else the area throws at you.

I remember everything in this area as being somewhat tougher when I came here as an Elf, but…
Well. Okay. I’m playing a Sorceress. Our schtick is supposed to be casting spells. We’re supposed to be good at resisting magic, great at casting magic, and mediocre at best at doing anything else. Even with a legendary weapon, I should not be one-hitting all but one enemy in the area, without the buff. Level 190 is probably overlevelled for this place but aside from going through the Old Palace twice and the Ancient Ruins a couple of times, I haven’t been doing much extra exploration with the Sorceress. The only reason this area remains a challenge to explore at all are the status effects most things can throw at you – I counted poison, drain, silence and paralysis this time around – and the traps.

Oh, yes. The traps.

This? Trapped.

This is somewhere around the... 7th or 8th Underlevel, maybe the 9th. I don't remember exactly.

The boss! The Lord of the Dead, who has dominion over the souls of the dead, or… something. The guy responsible for the infestation of the undead in the crypts here.

'Honour your ancestors or else we'll eat you'? That's probably not the right reason to respect them.

So. Bleh. The boss. As interested as I am outside of a fight with him, the battle is just… sheer pain. It took three attempts, and I was never able to hang around for long enough to learn all of the attacks he could do; he’s the deadliest yet. Whilst the other second-part bosses tended to defeat me through slowly-whittling my character down or never giving me a break to recover HP and MP, the Lord of the Dead fight is all about praying you don’t get hit with status effects. He took three attempts to beat, and I was rather close to death at the end of the third, anyway.
He comes accompanied by two purple ghosts, two zombie/ghoul halflings, and two or three Dullahans, responsible for some of the status effects thrown about during the fight, so it’s a pretty good idea to deal with them quickly.

Status ailments you can ‘acquire’ in the course of the fight:
Poison. I think this was a Dullahan’s fault. It was also the first ailment I got struck with, and had me cursing ditching the Cure Potions in order to take a Sol Crown earlier on. Then I died, started over, and got hit by the following bunch in subsequent attempts, which made me feel better about that.
Confusion… maybe from a chest trap, but nasty all the same. Today, I learned that you can’t cast spells whilst confused. I somehow managed to outlast this status with only 50 HP left, and then he threw Chaos Flare on me rendering all my effort for naught.
Silence, the doing of one of the purple ghosts. I knew they could throw this about from earlier in the region, but considering how long any status takes to wear off naturally, in here it was a threat.
Slow. The Lord of the Dead has the Fairy spell, yes. This is probably the best thing you could get afflicted with, as it doesn’t slow you as much as Paralysis does, and doesn’t directly do anything nasty to your stats or health. The spells everything throws about in the fight are the ones normally hard to dodge, anyway.
Drain from the Lord of the Dead, and this is probably the only situation where you can’t just laugh it off and keep hitting things. At least Poison only gradually reduces your health; this will completely destroy your offensive capabilities, no matter what class you are. The purple ghosts can probably do this to you, too.
Berserk, probably the Lord of the Dead again, and his eyelasers. This is probably bad for a spellcaster, but as I was confused at the same time, I didn’t get a chance to see what it’d do to my spells.

I’ve got Curse in my head, now, but that list up there is from the attempt at writing this report post-boss, and I don’t think I’d have left it out of the list if it had happened in that fight. Hmm. Maybe I got hit by Curse elsewhere in the area?
Well, Curse is just nasty to contract for a Sorceress. We’re MP-fuelled and usually turn pathetic without our spells.

The Lord of the Dead acts like an Archmage from the Old Palace; he floats, making himself difficult to hit in melee, and he casts spells fairly frequently. Unlike the other Sorcerer-type boss in the game, the Lord of the Dead is actually pretty resistant to physical attacks; I was only able to do around 50 damage to him unbuffed, rising to around 100 buffed. He may have been resistant to Holy; sensible, but odd considering nothing else in the area has that resistance, and he’s presumably undead himself.
On the other hand, with Extend Magic, Blaze does around 300 damage a cast to him, or more if he dodges back into the path of the flames after invincibility wears off. The best tactic for any character is probably to go entirely on the offensive; the longer you hang around in the fight, the more chance you’ll get hit by one or more negative status effects. The minions are a huge threat in this one; the Dullahans can Poison, the ghosts can Silence, and the zombies that act like ghouls can… I don’t know, but they can probably do something to you. The ghosts can also cast Dark Wave, and multiple Dark Waves in effect make it very difficult to dodge anything else.

Special Bonus Content!
…because I don’t particularly want to make this any longer, and I’ll go over loot in a later post.

So, throughout the various screenshots that actually made it into this post, you may notice my character went through several colour-changes; this wasn’t just idle screwing-around. As you may know, the save-icon for any game in Blaze & Blade is a tiny icon of your character’s face, and it naturally differs depending on your character’s class and gender. It also changes slightly depending on your selected colour.
So, whilst running around with the Sorceress, I hit all the savepoints in the area whilst switching colours, and used MemcardRex to export the save icons.

1

2

3

4

After going to all that effort… I think the first and second alternate colourschemes are pretty nasty – the blue-haired one doesn’t have enough variation in the colours of her clothing, and the brown- or yellow-haired Sorceress is just a rather nasty set of shades. The basic colouration and the third alternate are my favourites, despite my usual dislike of pink in favour of blue.

“It’s all my fault,” she whispered. Glory remained silent, waiting as Carys struggled to get the words out. Her gnarled hands feebly clutched her ragged quilts as she relived her past.

“I should have been with them, but I had slipped away to meet with my husband. My family did not approve of Jacob, and… they were right. All he cared about was the money. We had secretly been married only days before. We were planning how best to tell them about our elopement over dinner.”

She sobbed, momentarily overcome with her memories. “I waited at the restaurant where we were to meet for hours but he never came. I thought th-that my family, and my brother, had found out about us and finally scared him away. My brother had always been very protective of me. We were twins, you see.’

Glory swallowed down a tightness in her throat and took a deep breath. Twins, no… she had no experience at all with over protective twins.

“It was our birthday, but Jacob had convinced me to skip the party. He said the family money was just one more way they tried to control me, so not going to the party would be a way for me to show I didn’t need their support. I didn’t really understand how that would work, but I trusted him. He was so smart and handsome. I felt sure that my family would love him once they got to know him. He could go to work in daddy’s company and prove he was hardworking and reliable.”

“I waited until the very last minute before leaving for the ferry. All I could think of as I told the cabdriver to hurry was that my brother would be crushed that I wasn’t there to share our special day. We’d never been apart on our birthdays. It was a family tradition. Everyone gathered for the party. But when I got to the dock… there were police and- and ambulances. I knew. I knew something horrible had happened to my brother. I didn’t… I didn’t know at first how bad it was.”

“And then, there was Jacob. He put his arms around me and led me away. I kept asking what had happened. Who were the ambulances for? Jacob didn’t tell me anything until he had us set up in a hotel. And then, then he told me. There’d been an explosion, and the ferry had capsized. My family, everyone, had been on the ship. He told me, they’d come looking for me, all of them. I was devastated.”

“It came about that the police blamed the same saboteurs responsible for the Black Tom Explosion. They were convinced that my family’s support of the war had made them a target. Someone had sent my parents a note that I had been in an accident and wasn’t expected to live. Everyone at the party was on the ferry.” Carys broke down in tears and could not continue for several minutes.

“Wh-when I finally remember to ask Jacob where he’d been, he said some men had jumped him and stolen his wallet. They’d hit him in the head, and he hadn’t been conscious long before hearing about the ferry disaster. He figured as late as it was by then, I might have been on the ferry when it went down. He was beside himself until he saw me on the dock.”

“We… didn’t have to hide our marriage after that. Anyone who might have objected was gone.” Fat tears welled from her closed lids as she pressed her face into her hands. When she had recovered, she opened her eyes and looked directly at Glory. Not sad, so much as angry now.

“We fought over everything after that. It was always money. I wanted the Nazis to pay for the deaths of my family and put every cent I could into the war effort. He said that would just make us targets as well. I called him a coward. He told me to stop living in the past.”

“He wanted to renovate the house, and I finally let him. He was right. I wasn’t living. I was dwelling on the dead. My grandfather always said that the dead should be remembered and respected, but mourning them too long would only call them to you.” She made a sound half way between a sob and a laugh.

“There’d been a big to-do over some piece of architecture brought over from Wales when our great grandparents emigrated. It’d been covered up in my grandfather’s time, and my father had often expressed a wistful interest in finding it and restoring it, even though my grandfather expressly forbade it on his death bed. Jacob had heard rumors about it though, and I was curious as well. The project became a way for us to make peace.”

“When the door was finally revealed though, neither of us thought much of it. Why would anyone place a stained glass window against a wall? And it was quite ugly, all gray tones. Jacob figured that’s why it’d been covered over in the first place. We began to make plans for removing it and putting a real window in its place.”

“One night I woke and found Jacob missing. When I came to the top of the stairs, I heard his voice, though I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Before I could call out to ask him what he was doing up so late, I heard someone respond… in German. I stood at the top of the stairs for what seemed like hours as Jacob and the stranger spoke. Though Jacob tried to keep his voice low, his guest did not and several times Jacob raised his voice loud enough for me to hear. I knew then that Jacob was one of the saboteurs. He had killed my family.”

Carys closed her eyes as she recounted the events that had caused her so much pain. “I confronted him when he finally finished with his friend and came up to bed. I waited for him at the top of the stairs, and when I told him I knew… he laughed! He laughed at me and said he was glad I’d found out… that it had always been a plot, and he- he had never loved me.”

“I-I hit him. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt him, but he stumbled and then lost his balance. It all happened so fast, and then he was lying at the foot of the stairs. I ran down to check… the see if… but he wasn’t hurt. He waited until I bent down and then lashed out at me. There was this big ring he wore on his right hand, and it cut my cheek.” She gestured to her face, but if there was a scar, it was lost long ago in the many fine lines which covered her face. “My hand was covered with blood from the cut, and when I backed away, I reached out to steady myself. W-when the blood on my hand touched the glass of the door, it… came alive.”

“Jacob was hurt, but not badly. He was limping towards me, and I could see murder in his eyes. But when my blood touched the glass, it… there were colors, so bright. It lit the room. He stopped and just stared at the door for a long time, then he started talking in German. I th-think he was talking to his parents. He had told me they were dead, and maybe they were… because I think he saw them in the glass. Jacob walked right past me and into the door as if it wasn’t even there. And then, there was Cadfael as if he’d never died.”

Glory grimaced and hoped her mother wasn’t in the glass. She doubted that would be a happy reunion.

“I was so happy to have my brother back,” Carys continued, oblivious to Glory’s mood swings. “It was his idea to bring the others back too. At first… I didn’t object. I hope you d-don’t think ill of me for it. If not for me, my family might not have died. I felt so guilty, I let my brother talk me into trading others to get them back. Only those who didn’t have anything to lose, people who wanted to die… but it was just chance that brought Cadfael back first. Some of our family that’s come through since have been dead for centuries. Some like Dilys… well, they don’t age. They don’t even need to eat, though they get hungry. They can’t die, and the door won’t have them back. Dilys has tried a dozen or more times to go back… and it’s only family that comes through, no friends, no spouses.”

As Carys lapsed into silence, Glory mulled over her story. “I heard you and your brother talking. He said something about an ‘esteemed ancestor’.”

Carys looked mildly embarrassed and shrugged her bony shoulders. “It’s just an old family legend. We’re supposedly descendants of Arawn. He is lord of the dead in Welsh legend, and it’s his kingdom that my family has been fleeing. They don’t remember much of being dead, but they do remember the name of the Otherworld, Annwn. If there’s anyone who might object to their leaving, it would be him.”

“The door… it’s… it’s Caer Wydr, the fortress of glass,” Glory said in awe.

Carys gave a start in surprise. “Y-yes… I’d never thought of it, but it must be.”

“And your family isn’t affected by the glass?”

“We see colors, swirling, twisting, but never a face, never someone we’ve lost. It‘s beautiful to look at, but it doesn‘t call to us.”

“Huh…” Glory said thoughtfully. “That’s all I saw too.” Carys peered at Glory curiously as if she thought Glory might be related, but Glory shrugged. “It could just be there’s no one there for me to see.”

to Book 4, page 8