In a wizard’s practice, he or she will often run across creatures who defy description or analysis. It’s something you come to expect; for what use is a universe where you can see everything coming, or figure it out right away when it arrives? The mystical, the deadly, the peculiar, the bizarre: it’s all here, if you can cope. And if anyone can… wizards can cope.
The Master-shark: Ed’rashtekaresket is his name: a name with teeth in it. He’s a great white shark nearly a hundred feet long. He could eat a van in one gulp. How old is he? Whose side is he on? Did he really see the fall of Atlantis? How closely was he involved? And possibly most important…is it possible to have a conversation with him that doesn’t end in you being eaten? Nita knows the truth…but she’s not likely to want to say much about it. She’s the one who thought calling him “Ed” was simpler than using his whole name. She never guessed what that intimacy was going to get her into…
Macchu Picchu: She looks like a scarlet macaw. She sounds like a scarlet macaw. She lives in a cage in a Senior wizard’s house and eats peanuts — a lot of them. But like many creatures that associate with wizards or wizardry on a regular basis, she’s gotten a little…strange. She tells the future (in the voice of the newscaster of your choice). She knows what’s going to happen, and she might share that information with you…assuming you offer her the right bribe. She might also nearly pull your ear off in the process. She doesn’t play nice. But then that’s not in her job description…as Kit and Nita find out, without warning, on a planet far far away…
The Stationmaster: He has run the Crossings Exocontinual Worldgating Facility on Rirhath B, the intergalactic equivalent of Grand Central Station, for over two hundred Earth years. He is expert in the details of how to walk through a doorway on your own planet and out a doorway thousands of miles away on your own world, or one on a world hundreds or thousands of lightyears distant. It doesn’t bother him if you think he looks like a giant purple centipede. He doesn’t think much of your looks, either. Not that he’d ever waste his time saying as much to your face: he’s much too busy. The Stationmaster sees beings of a thousand species a day, and to him Earth is just an annoying little planet with a much higher worldgate quotient than it deserves. He’s seen wizards come, and go…and he likes them best when they go, especially the ones from Earth. The Crossings has been trashed by Earth-based wizards before. If you’re planning to cross his path, it might be smart to sew some other planet’s flag on your backpack…
Biddy O Dalaigh: She looks like a little old Irish lady with a mobile forge built into the back of her flatbed truck. But she’s older than she looks…a lot older. You might have to follow her for a long time before you catch her working with steel that was already old when the universe was young. And only if you know the right words to say in the Speech will you be able to get her to admit what she had to do with the events that made the New World out of the Old one…
The Transcendent Pig: Not just your usual porker. To say that the Pig’s origins are obscure would be understating the case, as no one — not even the Powers that Be — remembers having created it. It’s just always been there. Some people say that it’s an aspect of the essential chaos of the Universe expressed as humor. Some people say that it’s the essence of the Joke made flesh. Some people say that it looks like a pig, and walks like a pig, so it’s a pig. This, too, is probably an understatement of the case. The Transcendent Pig can appear at any point in time, in any universe, without warning. When it appears, it always has good advice to offer…if you can afford it. Just don’t forget to ask the Pig the single most important question, the one every wizard is enjoined to ask it when it appears: “What is the meaning of life?” Who knows, you might be the lucky one who gets the Pig to slip and reveal the secret…
…And this is only a beginning…for there are so many more stories lying in wait, told already or about to be. Tales of humans and other creatures, good and evil: friends and enemies, the normal and the unexpected: the world and the Worlds, inextricably intertwined, and wizardry running through them all, in the hands of old wizards — and most importantly, of young ones: for young wizards are the most powerful.
Welcome to our worlds: and well met on the journey!
