Welcome to my worlds. 

He is just William actually.

Traveling the infinite and myriad mainlines of the nona-dimensional construct called the Interweave we would find my main protagonist William, and the sentient cursed artifact that he carries which is simply known as “the Book” The Book does have a name. It has the words “De Planetae” written across the top of its front cover in faded embossed gold leaf. However, over the last five centuries, the people that meet William tend to assume that “De Planetae” is William’s last name, and William has given up trying to tell them otherwise.

William began life in the Irish countryside in the year 1500 or thereabout. People really didn’t care so much about precise dating unless they were lettered. By 1536, William had become one of those lettered individuals, working in the monastery at Kells on illuminated manuscripts. One day, a man Arturo from Rome (so he said) visited their monastery with a curious book that he claimed to have divine powers. It was indestructible, as the man demonstrated, and written within it were the Words of God. Casual observations of this book showed it only had blank pages, but Arturo insisted that all one had to do to read the words of God was to accept the book freely just as one would accept God into one’s heart.

He was lying, of course…..

It isn't just leather, paper, and a curse. it is actually a sentient being. The Book is cursed with a need to travel and explore, it can see the entirety of creation and travel anywhere in the Now via an arcane mechanism of its own creation. It is only lacking the means, it needs legs.  William is just a man but he does have legs, and in the year 1536 he accepted possession of The Book, and it in turn took possession him. It is a fairly benign sort of possession. The Book maintains his body using a template it made when he first picked up The Book. All that is required is for William to lose consciousness and The Book will restore him within 24 hours. He also never suffers for funds, which is another special benefit. The Book does drive him to travel as a function of its curse, but he doesn’t need to travel alone.

William and the Book combined are “De Planetae”, the Wanderers. They travel between worlds in the Now around the Disk of the Interweave. 

The ex-nurse and closet Empath.

Only in her twenties, she has only just begun her journey, especially when compared to the journeys of the near-immortals that she has just now entangled herself with. In her first job as a nurse in a ward reserved for the nearly dead, she is confronted by a man unlike any other. Something about him makes her choose an unlikely path, one that her original destiny supposedly had not intended. She has no idea, about this strange man, or about certain aspects of herself, but more importantly about the strange future that is still more than another book away.

Saul King is William’s oldest friend and the sole living witness to the creation of The Book. Saul is somewhere close to 3000 years old or more due to having been placed under the “Mark of Cain”. No… you are wrong. He is not a Vampire. Rather, he is a victim of the now extinct cult once known as the “Rabbi’s of the True Faith” who were actually descended from the bastard children of Moses fathered during the exodus. They created the “Mark of Cain” as the ultimate punishment for their enemies. Those who receive the Mark are presumed to be banished from God’s grace. They can’t sleep. They can’t eat kosher foods. They can’t enter temple nor walk through a door marked by a mezuzah. Most importantly, they can’t die… although they still age like anyone else. Normally this would be the worst of all tortures, to age forever and never die, as its creators intended. Fortunately, Saul was somewhat saved from his endless fate by another whom also had the Mark named Yeshuah bin Yosef. He had discovered that the consumption of those things considered impure or “anti-kosher” by rabbinical law exploited certain loopholes in the Mark. Most importantly, through the trace consumption of that most vile of substances in all of rabbinical law, the clock could be turned back with no limits save one’s own revulsion.

There are, of course, other things… but why spoil their discovery.

The smartest man in the world.... or would be if he could be.

Older than he appears, Professor Von Teasa has been around a long time. He joined forces with his soon to be mentor Nicola Tesla and against the malevolent Doctor Edison shortly after the destruction of Tesla’s laboratory at Wardenclyffe. It was the Professor’s connections in the Southern Confederation that allowed Tesla to escape Edison’s trap. Together they constructed the experimental solar collector array in the Saudi Arabian Peninsula and The Professor began a life long enmity with what you would one day call the Israeli Hegemony and their quest to quell scientific inquiry in favor of Religious Dogma. Their Universe never had a Galileo, but The Professor would have understood his dilemma. There is only one adversary that he finds more vexing…..Death. Clearly he has made some headway on both fronts, but Death is patient. It can wait. He knows this, but a tantalizing hint of a solution has just gained his notice 

Chaos personified.

She does not speak of the past, but if you were to ask her, she would tell you her life began when she met the Professor. He rescued her from a Canadian man hunter squad that had been intent on her capture. Sources had told the Professor that she was wanted by the Hegemony for crimes against God. He took issue with that, and he was curious about anything that could vex them so much. It turns out that she was the only child of an Israeli inquisitor who had wanted a son but got a daughter. He had instructed her in all of his inquisitorial arts and skills, despite the laws against teaching these things to women. Through her, The Professor has learned how to embrace the aspects of his humanity that he found unsettling and inconvenient. In him, Kisa has found purpose and a reason to live. She would die rather than disappoint him, but she would rather kill to please him. It is fortunate for everyone concerned that The Professor keeps her on a short leash.

…and secretly, she likes it.

He is her safety net.

John Payne is an indulgence of mine. His character is based on my impressions of the real man John Payne, my wife’s uncle, and a well-recognized leader in the arts community. In fact, several arts communities, including the Wedge in Asheville, NC, owe their existence to him. I did not get the chance to know him as well as I would have liked, and if I had, I would probably have been building artistic monstrosities…. Not writing about them.