Here’s why I cre­ated this website–the sto­ries I have bang­ing around in my head. I’ll start by tweak­ing stuff that I’ve already writ­ten and then see how far I can fol­low the char­ac­ters. Enjoy–GDH.

A thou­sand years of Ezra Darkwood’s his­tory sur­rounded him in sta­tic dis­plays and liv­ing his­tory kiosks on the fifth floor of the Bedortha Library, one of the aca­d­e­mic crown jew­els of the Uni­ver­sity of Tiabar in Ryeldden.

A pop­u­lar music star­let clung to his left arm, leav­ing glit­ter and the scent of per­fume on his for­mal wear. Dark­wood looked like the silver-haired father that a teenage girl’s friends lust after. At his right, the com­man­der of the old­est continually-serving cav­alry reg­i­ment in the Alliance stared at an ancient ban­ner. It bore the same crest that was embroi­dered on the shoul­der patches of his dress uniform.

“What do you think?” said the cura­tor of the exhibit, a woman who had spent her aca­d­e­mic life study­ing the lit­er­a­ture and arcane spells of Darkwood’s youth.

“It looks like a shrine to a self-important old wind­bag who wants to make damn sure that the whole world knows just how big of a deal he is,” Dark­wood said. “I only wanted you to box this stuff up and look after it until I get back.”

“Your ‘stuff’ is our cul­tural her­itage,” the cura­tor said. “If I had my way, you’d be under glass in here, as well. You’re too valu­able to blast into space — espe­cially in a jalopy designed at the Uni­ver­sity of Hycha.”

“Well, they did, after all, break the light bar­rier. That’s more than we can say.”

The cura­tor sniffed. “We’re a lib­eral arts insti­tu­tion. And we’re trust­ing our prized lan­guages pro­fes­sor to those clowns.”

“Their the­o­ret­i­cal math and alchemy for­mu­las are sound. Believe me, I’ve checked their num­bers. Let’s hope their engi­neer­ing is just as sharp,” Dark­wood said. “But back to your ques­tion: The exhibit is mar­velous. My effects are doing more far good here than hoarded away in a stor­age unit.”

The pop star squeezed Darkwood’s arm. “Dar­ling, you’re talk­ing like you’re already dead. You’ve gotta come back to me safe!”

He kissed the pop star on the top of her head, gin­gerly avoid­ing the tow­er­ing col­lar flar­ing upward from her scanty dress. “The peo­ple at Hycha are pompous, arro­gant asses. But they’re good at what they do, and the ship’s crew is the best we have. We’ll be fine.”

The cura­tor ush­ered Dark­wood and his com­pan­ions through the exhibit an hour before an open­ing gala to cel­e­brate the professor’s depar­ture. Each sec­tion of the exhibit fea­tured relics and vignettes from a dis­tinct era of his life—and the life of the Alliance—in chrono­log­i­cal order. A suit of plate mail armor, a bat­tered shield and a bearded ax dom­i­nated the first sec­tion; ornate full plate armor with match­ing wheel lock pis­tols presided over the next. The weaponry and equip­ment evolved as the early vis­i­tors wan­dered among the kiosks. Arque­buses with magic runes and alchem­i­cal pro­jec­tiles gave way to early death rays and light­ing guns and mod­ern case­less car­bines; plumed hats and cod­pieces were replaced by great­coats and derbies.

Infor­ma­tion pan­els explained how sor­cer­ers evolved into alchemists and then to the techo-mages who dis­cov­ered light-bearing aether. Other pan­els explained how the sen­tient races of the world even­tu­ally, in fits and starts, learned that there were far more dan­ger­ous things to fight than each other. Cold fusion and the link­ing of the world’s air grid finally made war obsolete—mostly.

A side dis­play showed the evo­lu­tion of gun­nery with sim­ple brass gunner’s quad­rants on one end and a battery-powered ground posi­tion­ing sys­tem at the other.

“Artillery,” Dark­wood said to the colonel. “You take it for granted now. If you don’t have counter-battery going out­bound thirty sec­onds before you hear the incom­ing rounds whoosh­ing in, you blow your stack and won­der loudly what the fuck is wrong with your lazy gun bun­nies. But the first time I watched stone can­non­balls shat­ter our North Tower at the Bat­tle of Vaisia, I thought I had seen war­fare change right before my eyes.” He looked at the colonel. “And I had. Gun­nery is fas­ci­nat­ing stuff, if you have a head for num­bers and a taste for mayhem.”

Dark­wood was not Ezra’s given sur­name; it was the last of many he appro­pri­ated over his preter­nat­u­rally long life. In the tumul­tuous era in which he was born, com­mon­ers only had one name – if they had a name at all. A siz­able per­cent­age of infants died before they were a week old dur­ing that sav­age time. Still more were aban­doned by par­ents who could not afford to feed them and had no land for them to work; oth­ers were orphaned by dis­ease and war. Those who sur­vived early child­hood played on dirt floors until they were old enough to work the tiny farms their fathers rented from local knights, lords or clergy. They went to bed hun­gry many nights and slept on straw-filled mat­tresses with their par­ents and sib­lings; they braved spi­ders in the sum­mer and freez­ing winds in the win­ter to shit in drafty outbuildings.

Chil­dren were both lia­bil­i­ties and assets; they were cheap labor­ers and viable mil­i­tary tar­gets along with their par­ents, hov­els and live­stock. The landed gen­try waged war upon each other by burn­ing the peas­ants and crops of their com­peti­tors at court until one sued for peace. Ezra blankly watched a maître d’ approach and silently gave thanks that he sur­vived long enough to see an age in which chil­dren are trea­sured, no mat­ter how “use­ful” they were. As the cura­tor nod­ded and led the party toward the recep­tion hall, he thought about some­thing else – how damned fun life was back then, if you lived long enough to learn the con­cept of fun.

“Babe, you still haven’t told me about your speech. You haven’t prac­ticed, you’ve crum­pled up all of your notes, you’re half-drunk already and the party hasn’t even started–”

“Too easy, Honey,” Dark­wood said, wav­ing aside the starlet’s con­cerns. “I’ll lead off with some boil­er­plate about this his­toric part­ner­ship between our two uni­ver­si­ties. Then I’ll shoe­horn in some bull­shit about my career of fight­ing and for­ni­cat­ing across the face of the planet through the ages, and wrap it up with a teaser about our three­some with – ouch!”

“You didn’t plan your speech at all!”

“Well, no. I am, after all, a stu­dent of the Maneu­verist War­fare doctrine.”

“Fuckin’ hooah, sir,” the colonel said.

“Well, what­ever you do, don’t embar­rass me, or you’ll find out how quickly tenure can be revoked,” the cura­tor said. The doors opened, and the crowd applauded as Dark­wood approached the podium.

*  * *

“…all sys­tems go. Final crew check green. Liftoff com­mences in five, four, three…”

The musi­cian sat curled up among the cush­ions in her spa­cious, steel-and-glass-encased hotel suite in Gar­rothad watch­ing the launch on the tele­vi­sion. The rocket arced into the sky, trail­ing fire and smoke, and pushed the orbital shut­tle toward its appointed release point. After a few orbits, it would dock with the Intre­pid, the world’s first faster-than-light star­ship, and soon there­after her lover would be on his way into the wilds of space. That’s how the announcer described it, at least.

The star­let drifted over to the floor-length win­dow on which the images were dis­played and placed her del­i­cate palm on the glass. The image dis­ap­peared, and she adjusted the trans­parency of the win­dow so she could see the impos­ing cityscape beyond. Her tour sched­ule demanded she miss being present at the launch, but her sense of guilt faded when she saw that Ezra and the rest of the crew made it into orbit.

The cho­rus of her lat­est sin­gle filled the room, alert­ing the singer that her assis­tant was at the door.

“Come in.”

A young man walked in car­ry­ing a heavy old tome. “The book you ordered.”

“Set it on the cush­ions, sweetie.”

When the assis­tant left, the star­let poured a glass of wine and curled up with the book. With her slen­der, ath­letic body cradling the book, she opened it to the title page and sipped her wine. The aro­mas of old book and new wine min­gled in the air, and she read the title page aloud to break lonesomeness.

“The Per­sonal Rec­ol­lec­tions of Ezra Dark­wood. By Ezra Dark­wood. Fifth Edi­tion. Trans­lated into Mod­ern Stan­dard By Ursula Bedechec.”

She skipped the translator’s pref­ace; she already knew that Ursula was a stu­dent of Ezra’s a century-and-a-half ago and quite frankly didn’t care about the lex­i­cal cal­is­then­ics involved in trans­lat­ing a work from an “old, dead ver­sion of the lan­guage into a vibrant ren­di­tion that main­tained the text’s lit­eral mean­ing and pre­served Darkwood’s lively voice.”

She wanted to know what it was like for her ancient, time­less lover to hack his way into besieged cas­tles when he was her age.