Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #349: Change and Decay Previously: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #348: The Core, or Deepest Down ***     Sir Mumphrey Wilton awoke with a splitting headache to the chiming of his pocketwatch. He roused from sleep slowly as the aches and pains from his limbs and torso reported in: scratches and pulled muscles.     â€œLisa?” he asked reflexively.     The woman in bed with him was curled in most of the blankets with her back to him. Her blonde hair was sprayed out over his chest.     â€œA gentleman’s first duty is to remember the lady he took to bed with him the night before, leibschen,” his bedmate scolded.     â€œOf course,” the eccentric Englishman agreed. “Deuced bad form. Terribly sorry.”     She paused to allow him to recall who she was. Mumph raced through a selection of possibilities. What had he been doing yesterday? The last thing he remembered was supper with…     â€œMy wife?” he gasped.     â€œCorrect. You may live.”     That begged the follow-up question: who was his wife?     â€œThis sort of thing only happens to Nats,” Mumphrey complained. He did seem to have a hangover but it seemed unlikely that he had accidentally got married.     He took a deep breath and asked, “May I enquire as to whom you are, madam? You’re certainly not Madge, and I confess to having no memory of a second wife.”     The lady turned over, regarding him sceptically through bed-tousled tresses. “Really? So eight years of marital bliss have entirely slipped your attention, kuchen?”     Mumphrey toppled out of bed, looking around for his service revolver. “Baroness!” he hissed. “Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen!”     â€œHer Excellency Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen Wilton!” his bedmate corrected him. “There was a cathedral, a dear choir of little children singing anthems, an overabundance of irritating superheroes? The traditional attack from some desperate adversary without the wit to realise that assaulting an entire church full of people with metahuman powers was insanely suicidal?”     â€œNot ringing a bell,” Sir Mumphrey warned; except that now she mentioned it… it did.     â€œWe met shortly after you put down my uncle for the mad dog he was? You said I was…” The Baroness paused in irritation and snapped, “Would you please quieten that wretched timepiece while I’m deciding whether to kill you?”     The eccentric Englishman looked again at the chiming pocketwatch. The tone was an ominous discord. The illuminated face of the Chronometer of Infinity that he held was glowing a lurid warning red.     â€œAhhh,” he sighed, relaxing. “That’s it then. A retcon attack.”     â€œA what?” His wife was grumpy in the mornings until she’d had he first coffee and cake.     Mumphrey indicated the whirring sub-dials on the face of his complicated pocketwatch. “This is set to detect any changes made to my timeline – to prevent them usually. Some event in the past has altered that has affected me anyhow, and that’s why the alarm is pinging.”     â€œMake it ping quieter, Mumphrey,” the Baroness ordered. “Silent would be better. Doesn’t that thing have a vibrate function?”     Mumphrey cancelled the alarm while initiating a detailed diagnostic. “Looks like a classic burst of retrospective continuity. From him.”     â€œWinkelweald, the Hooded Hood?” Elizabeth Wilton snarled. “Looks like today’s vendetta is all sorted out then.”     â€œHe’s used his retcon powers to make some major change somewhere and it has led to us being… like this.”     The Baroness pouted. “Liebschen, I thought we were very happy together. You get a little grumpy when I beat the servants, I get a bit territorial when you do your team-ups with all those strumpets in spandex, but generally we have a solid foundation for a marriage that can rule the planet.”     Mumphrey pulled on his trousers and found a shirt and collar. He intended to be properly dressed to contact the greater Office Holders.     The Baroness was surprised when one wall of her bedroom melted away to reveal a small alcove containing three old-fashioned cradle telephones. Then she remembered that she had known about the hidden space for the last eight years. Mumphrey occupied the minor office of Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity, holding the countdown clock to the end of the universe. The phones were hotlines to the three senior Cosmic Offices whose remit and power were considerably wider.     The middle phone was jet black, so dark that it seemed almost pressed out of shadow. Mumphrey lifted the handset and cranked the handle at the side of the base unit. Then he did it again.     â€œLine’s dead,” he warned with a frown. “That’s a first. Bad news.”     â€œPerhaps the Chronicler of Stories is in the lavatory?” Elizabeth speculated. “Persistent bowel problems would certainly explain a few plotlines and characters we’ve had to deal with.”     Mumphrey tried the white phone to the Shaper of Worlds, whose domain was beginnings. “No reply here either. Hmph!”     The Baroness pointed to the last phone, a leopard-spotted device trimmed with leather and lace. “Try the floozy, then,” she conceded. “It’s not like you haven’t before. Like everybody hasn’t.”     The eccentric Englishman tried calling Lisa, the current Destroyer of Tales, responsible for narrative conclusions in the Parodyverse. The line was as dead as the others.     â€œTroubling,” Mumphrey snorted. “Anything that can cut the channels to the Triumvirate is very powerful. Haven’t seen anything like that since the Parody War.”     â€œIt’s possible the Greater Office Holders might all be dead,” the Baroness considered. “There may be promotion opportunities.”     Mumphrey glanced over at the zaftig woman in the four-poster. “You may want to put some clothes on.”     â€œWhen there are promotion opportunities?” Elizabeth recognised that she was seriously degrading her husband’s ability to resolve whatever was happening and reached for her corset. “You’re serious about the retcon? All these years I can remember of us together didn’t happen?”     â€œWell, they did right now,” the keeper of the Chronometer advised. “That’s the whole dashed point of a retcon. It changes the backstory as if it had always been like that. But I’m still somewhat protected from temporal shifts by virtue of my office and a good wedge of experience in it. I can still remember a bit of what the old reality was like. You were not a very nice person, Elizabeth.”     â€œI’m still not a nice person, Mumphrey. When I get hold of the Hooded Hood I’ll show you what I mean.”     Mumphrey frowned. “Not like the Hood to be so blatant with his changes,” he judged. “Something’s going on. There’s a bigger picture.”     â€œHe never does anything for just one reason. He’s efficient like that. I’ll miss him after I’ve killed him.”     â€œWe need more information. Can’t sort the bally problem grappling in the dark.” That phrase triggered another bunch of retconned memories of Elizabeth Wilton that he had to quickly shrug off. He reached into his waistcoat and pulled out his credit-card sized Lair Legion comm-card. “Wilton calling in. Anyone still at home there?”     The card fuzzed for a fraction of a second before resolving into the image of a green-fleshed young woman with an intelligent stare. “Good morning, Sir Mumphrey,” greeted Hallie. The Legion’s resident artificial intelligence automatically compensated for the five-hour time difference between the Lair Mansion in Paradopolis and Sir Mumphrey’s Shropshire estate. She also ran background voice stress pattern analyses. “What’s the matter?”     â€œMy Chronometer’s registering a retcon. We have a Code Grey.”     â€œEep! I’ll check my shielded backup databanks right away, but chances are that if it slipped past your defences it will have breached Al B.’s quantum buffer fields. Is there any indicator I can check for?”     â€œWhat’s my marital status?”     Hallie compared her present and back-up databases. “Still married despite the advice of friends?” she offered.     â€œThe retcon got you,” Mumph confirmed. “So, let’s see who and what else it got. Fill me in on the Legion.”     â€œWell, we’re still breaking in the new members. Hatty’s taken the new guys on a training trip into the Hole Man’s subterranean tunnels. They’re on their way back now. Sounds like it might have been exciting. Donar, Yuki, CSFB!, Al B. and the Shoggoth are working a lead in New Orleans. Vizh is sitting quietly in his office hugging himself and whimpering occasionally. Business as usual.”     â€œWell, go do whatever it is you do with Visionary these days that gets him leading the team and start up an investigation about what might have prompted the Hood to rattle our cages. I’ll see about Winkelweald himself.”     â€œWe,” the Baroness corrected him. “We shall see about Winkelweald. The Wiltons.”     â€œMeanwhile, check again on what the team are up to in the field. It might be related to the disappearance of the Triumvirate and my sudden affinity with Nats.”     â€œOn it, Sir Mumphrey,” Hallie promised. “I’ll get the boss up and running. It’ll be my pleasure.” ***     The last day of Cantrelle, Louisiana began with a bang. Citizens who weren’t up by 6.55am were awoken by a great thunderclap out over the Atlantic that shook the timber-framed houses and set the fishing skiffs bobbing at their moorings. It was the all the talk in Fryer’s General Supplies store as the work of the day began.     â€œAh blame BP,” argued Cooter Wallace, stacking crates of Diet Cola beside his pickup. Cooter ran the concessions stand down at Little Cocodne Bayou where business had been seriously threatened by the recent oil spill. Right now BP and the President were the top two causes of everything from the unseasonable fly swarms to the poor TV reception.     â€œT’went no thunder neither,” Joanie Bigger corrected the old man. “Everyone knows as the Navy’s out there conducting experiments with their submarines. Look at what became of Jemiah’s catch-nets. Ain’t no fish this side’a Behemoth could tear a hole like that.”     Sharkjaw Smith just kept on stacking the shelves. He’d heard the bitching lots before. “It’s just weird weather is all. I’d’a rung those science boys at the weather station over at Bay Lucien but the damn phone line’s out again.”     Cooter hauled the crates onto his truck. “Well, ah hope we don’t get no more storms this season. Ah blames all that oil fer the weird weather.”     Daily life went on at Cantrelle, Louisiana for the last time.     Down in the bayou the dead walked across the muddy lake bottoms. ***     The LairJet lined up for landing pattern alpha, a straight descent to the runway beside the Parody Island aircraft hanger.     â€œLair Mansion, we are good to land,” Ham-Boy said nervously over the head-mike clipped over him ham-cowl. “Approach is good. Seeking permission for final touchdown.”     Hatman sat in the co-pilot’s chair in his airman’s cap and nodded encouragingly.     â€œLairJet Four you have clearance to land on runway Alpha One,” said Hallie, the Lair Legion’s resident A.I. “Welcome home, guys. Flapjack’s getting the coffee on.”     Ham-Boy remembered his training and carefully guided the LairJet down towards the landing strip.     Then the vessel rocked as if hit by a missile. Every control gauge on the dashboard shattered. The cabin was filled with a devastating screeching sound that clawed at the minds and souls of the occupants.     The aircraft nose tipped down towards the ground.     Liu Xi vomited, then forced a gust of air to lift the falling LairJet for a moment.     Silicone Sally swelled her flexible form to surround as many of her team-mates as possible in a rubbery crash cushion.     Vinnie de Soth yelled something in Latin and the shrieking stopped for a moment.     Hatman grabbed the LairJet steering yoke and pulled the vehicle up for a rough horizontal landing.     The entire aircraft skidded sideways across the runway towards the radar tower but stopped short as it embedded in a massive wad of Manga Shoggoth.     â€œHello,” said the loathsome elder being.     Ham-Boy rubbed his forehead, “What was that?” he gasped. “Some kind of sonic attack?”     Goldeneyed pulled off his mask to check that his ears weren’t bleeding. “That was a banshee wail,” he recognised. “Usually the banshee in my bathroom only does that when someone’s dying.”     â€œSomeone nearly did,” objected Silicone Sally. “Ouch.” She retracted herself from around the others in the cabin and rubbed the cold-burns where she had enveloped Citizen Z. The enigmatic night-avenger was immobile in her seat.     Vinnie pointed to the remanifesting form of Marie Murcheson, Parody Island’s Celestian-empowered guardian spirit. His emergency exorcism hadn’t held very long. “Um, maybe someone should ask her what the story is?”     â€œWhat’s the story, Marie?” Hatman asked of the insubstantial Victorian girl hovering in the LairJet aisle. “Why the attack?”     Marie was shaking with rage. She pointed an accusing finger. “Her!” she hissed. “You tried to bring her past me perimeter? You bought that here?”     She pointed right at the unmoving form of Citizen Z. ***     Leveau M’Tumbe woke up naked under a pile of beheaded chickens. Again.     â€œGrandma!” she complained.     A wrinkled old black woman in a bright flowered shawl glared down at her. “Don’ you go be grandma-ing me, missy! How many times you t’ink I’m gonna be able to bring you back ‘fore the spirits decide to keep you fo’ good? You gotta stop running wit’ those bad men and getting killed all de time!”     Leveau pushed aside the sacrifices that had reanimated her life force. There were also a dozen or so bargain buckets from KFC. Grandma M’Tumbe got peckish while she worked. “Listen, grandma, I don’t need you running after me no more! I got my own arrangements in case I happen to get killed. I’m the Voodoo Vicaress now and I have to stand on my own two feet.”     â€œNot been doin’ a whole lot of standing from what I hear of your shameful goin’s on with those Purveyors of Peril,” Grandma scolded. “Just laying back with yo’ legs…”     â€œI made arrangements,” Voodoo Vicaress insisted. “You know how much showering it’s gonna take to get this smell of chicken out of my hair? The Hooded Hood brings his people back. There’s an employment clause.”     Grandma put down her fetishes. “And are you back now, girl? Then that Hooded Hood done kept his side o’ th’ bargain, hasn’t he?”     â€œBut I never meant…”     â€œNever-meants don’t count for nothing, Leveau. Now git yo’self some clothes on ‘cause I expect we’ll be having some visitors breaking the door down pretty soon.”     â€œVisitors? What visitors?” Leveau looked around the cluttered shack on the edge of the swamp. Grandma’s curse markers were still intact. The little gods she’d made and hung around the rafters were all still there. “What you mean, visitors?”     There was a crack of thunder and the door flew across the room and splintered on the back wall.     â€œHo, foul hags!” shouted Donar Oldmanson, leaping into the room. “Cease thy demonic magics ere I smite thee to Miserablegitheim!”     â€œAnd also put some panties on,” Yuki added, pointing at Leveau. “We have CrazySugarFreakBoy! with us you know, and we don’t really want him to explode.”     Al B. checked his sensors. “Yep, she’s naked alright,” he confirmed.     â€œDonar?” Voodoo Vicaress panicked. “The Lair Legion are here?” She looked up at the twisted puppet gods on the roof beams. They all appeared to have gone into hiding.     Something gelid and translucent bubbled up through the floorboards. It slowly formed up into a roughly man-shaped blob of quivering mucous. “Hello,” said the Manga Shoggoth.     â€œI just polished that floor,” sniffed Grandma M’Tumbe.     CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced past with an alligator in each hand, whooping happily.     â€œYou dare attack me in my place of power?” demanded Voodoo Vicaress. Then, catching her grandmother’s eye she added, “Um, in my grandma’s place of power?”     â€œWe fear neither crone nor thy skycladness,” warned Donar. “Verily, I art a married man.” He looked around suddenly. “And if mine Queen Annj art perchance watching this in the scrying pool of all-noseying then I hadst not even noticed any kinds of pertness nor bounciness. Verily. Er, I think I wilt guard yon outside now.”     CrazySugarFreakBoy caromed in through one window and out through the other, balancing an alligator on each palm. “These are loads better than the usual guard goons,” he approved. “Back soon.”     He briefly bounced back. “By the way, love the new costume, VV!”     Yuki took control. “Yes, we’re the Lair Legion. Yes, we tracked you despite your mystical defences. Some new kind of app that Al B. wanted me to try out, homes on necromantic emanations.”     â€œIt’s based upon some readings we got when Lara was teleported to the former Shee-yar Imperium,” Al B. Harper began to explain. “It occurred to me that if there was a bio-ectoplasmic residue on the quantum timespace membrane…”     â€œ Also CSFB! asked the postman,” added Yuki. “And yes, we’ve come here seeking answers.”     Voodoo Vicaress looked round for her sigils and talismans. The Shoggoth was sitting on them. “You fools know not what you meddle in!” she warned them.     â€œI do,” the Shoggoth promised. “Would you like me to explain it to you? With diagrams? And possibly glove puppets?”     â€œNo we wouldn’t,” snapped Grandma. “Now stop all this damnfool damnfoolery and tell me why you’ve come disturbing my peace. I’m an old woman and resurrecting my granddaughter takes a lot out of me. And my chickens. So say what you done come to say.”     There was a crack like thunder across the bayou, setting a flock of startled herons into flight.     â€œThat wast not one of mine,” frowned Donar.     â€œZombies,” Yuki told Grandma. “Three tourists in the Wookiegetlucky Swamp barely escaped with their lives. A schoolbus got attacked on the other side of the bayou. A pair of shambling corpses tried to eat a Wendy’s in Marionville.” She glared at Leveau. “That’s the sort of thing that gets our attention.”     Voodoo Vicaress sniffed. “Well, they weren’t mine,” she told the cyborg P.I. “On account of I happened to be a little bit dead at the time. I have chicken hair to prove it.”     â€œThat weren’t no regular zombies anyhow,” Grandma told them. “These things jus’ felt all wrong. I put ‘em quietly to sleep soon as I heard ‘bout them.”     â€œYou put them to sleep?” Al B. repeated.     â€œFor sure. Who needs the competition? ‘Sides, if’n I hadn’t, I don’t doubt but that Darkness hag woulda come down here a-sniffing and a-sticking her nose in and looking all superior-like. As if I was gonna let that happen.”     Leveau frowned. “There’s somebody else raising zombies on our patch? The Necromancer General? Baroness Morbo? Morgosa le Fay?”     â€œYou art claiming it wast not thee?” Donar asked, studiously not looking at Voodoo Vicaress.     â€œIt wasn’t these two,” the Shoggoth bubbled. “I’ve tasted their magics now. They’re not the same as whatever animated those other things. That was more tinny with a hint of absinthe.” He absent-mindedly ate a KFC carton; after laying the chicken pieces aside, naturally.     â€œDid you happen to, er, keep the bits when you’d… rested those unfamiliar zombies?” Al B. asked Grandma.     â€œNo point,” the old woman replied. She gave her gumbo pot a stir then went on. “Whatever animated them drained all the lifeforce clean outta those poor things. Weren’t nothing left but crumbling rotted dust when I snapped the bindings on ‘em.”     â€œIt might have been useful to be able to analyse them in more detail,” Yuki argued.     Grandma shrugged. “Why bother?” she asked. “Since you got yourselves a fresh crop of ‘em rising up right now outta the swamp there to attack us.”     â€œThere’s what?” yelped Leveau.     â€œGuys!” yelled CSFB! happily. “It’s Dawn of the Dead out here! You’ve gotta come and help me do the Monster Mash!” ***     Citizen Z lay on a medibed in the Lair Infirmary. The monitors attached to her showed no brain activity.     â€œOkay, tell me the stuff that’s going to ruin my day,” Visionary asked Dr Whitwell, senior consultant at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. He remembered Sir Mumphrey’s call. “Well, ruin my day more.”     The physician scratched his chin and sighed. “It’d be a lot easier to give a diagnosis if I was allowed to take her costume off,” he noted. “At least her mask so I can see her pupil responses.”     â€œThat’s against the LL charter,” Hatman pointed out. “Citizen Z has lodged a living will about her wishes in a case like this. We offer anonymity.”     â€œEven if she’s dying?” objected Liu Xi. “I mean, come on, she’s hardly breathing. Is this really the time to go by the rulebook?”     â€œSecret identities are important though,” argued Ham-Boy, who maintained one. “What is somebody came against our loved ones?”     â€œThere was that whole Special Resolution 1066 thing, I guess,” Silicone Sally remembered. “Secret IDs were pretty useful there. For those of us who weren’t transformed into Obedience Branded puppets, that is.”     â€œIs that why you murdered Lisette and helped the Baroness turn Beth Shellett into a killer?” G-Eyed accused. The recent trip to the Centre of the Earth had resulted in a number of revelations.     â€œI was being controlled again, by the Baroness’ nanotech,” Sally objected. “Besides, there was an amnesty.”     â€œSo the murder is okay now? We can all forget about it?”     â€œI didn’t say that!” Sally turned away and retreated to the window, where she stared out at the bleak ocean horizon.     â€œGuys, this isn’t helping,” Hatman intervened. “We’re a team. We pull together, not apart. We learned on our last mission that we’re stronger when we’re united.”     Liu Xi shrugged. “I learned that the necromancer Slithis has somehow attached a lien on my soul to collect it when I die. And that’s all that’s stopping an extraplanar entity called the Void Spectre from breaking into the Parodyverse. That’s my take-away from the trip.”     Vinnie rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, we’ll need to get on that at some point. And it is possible that Sally wasn’t responsible for… what she did before,” the jobbing occultist ventured. “There’s a lot of destiny flapping around CZ. I sensed a few things but I don’t know how appropriate it would be to break confidentiality about them.”     â€œThe Lair Banshee evidently senses some things too,” Liu Xi pointed out. “What does she say?”     â€œMarie’s not manifesting right now,” Hallie reported. “Look, CZ is down. We need data. If anyone knows anything useful about Citizen Z or her condition then we have to have it.”     G-Eyed hesitated. “Well… let’s hear what the doc has to say first.”     Vizh was well used to pulling the argument back to the point by now. “Your prognosis,” he urged Whitwell. “Please!”     The doctor glanced over at Hallie, who was a whole medical diagnostic array by herself. “Well, tentatively,” he offered, “I’d say that this woman is in a state of metabolic encephalopathy – that’s a coma as you suspected. Added to that she’s suffering from respiratory problems and arrhythmic cardiac function. If her condition deteriorates I will need to hook her up to life support and then I will need to remove her clothing.”     Liu Xi noticed Sally stir. “If there’s something you want to say that will help, you should say it,” the elementalist encouraged the flexible ex-felon. “Hatty was right before. Whatever our own… problems, we have to be a team.”     Silicone Sally moved back to the unmoving Citizen Z in her purple and black outfit. “You know, I spent a lot of time being that costume,” she recalled. “Well, obviously not that actual costume but one a lot like it, back when… when…”     It took a moment for the retcon to click into place in her mind. Previously, the Baroness had taken on the CZ identity to infiltrate the Legion. Sally had used her flexible plastic form to enhance Beth’s speed and dexterity and strength as part of a plot to overcome the team and rule the world. Now…     â€œWhen Lady Wilton wanted to check on us incognito,” Visionary recalled. “You played the role of the outfit, giving her superpowers. It was an important trick to fool the Parody Master. That’s why we voted you onto the team afterwards in your own right.”     â€œYeah. Yeah, that’s it. But the point is, I got to know that costume pretty intimately. And the Baroness, unfortunately. She wasn’t that much into underwear.”     Ham-Boy blushed.     Silicone Sally held up one limp corner of CZ’s short ragged cape. “This outfit is a modified version of the one I copied, which was itself a feminine version of the uniform worn by the World War II Citizen Z who Heinrich Zemo killed. The colours on this one are slightly darker and the raggedy cape is new. And it has a whole set of different gizmos.”     â€œThe Baroness’ version had all kinds of traps and electronic gadgets in it,” Vizh remembered. He’d once had to wear the outfit – or Sally. He tried not to think about it.     â€œThis version of Citizen Z can charge her devices with some kind of weird energy,” Liu Xi reported. “Even her costume. Right now it’s just limp cloth. When she’s awake it twitches as if there’s a wind and it leaves a kind of… psychic blur.”     â€œI wish Al B. was back to do a full analysis of the data I’m getting,” Hallie admitted. “I’d even listen to the Shoggoth right now. With a major back-up of my sanity parameters first, of course.” Once he had completed his LairJet retrieval task. the team’s resident elder being had shifted his main consciousness back to his biomass with the field team.     â€œThis isn’t the first time CZ has gone like this,” Hatman noted. “During our field trip she actually – I don’t quite know – walked out of her body and possessed someone else.”     â€œMaybe that’s what she’s doing now?” suggested Sally. “Maybe she’s bringing in pizza?”     Goldeneyed sighed. “Okay. I think I know what’s going on. I think I know who is under that mask.”     â€œTell us, Bry,” Hatman encouraged his long-time friend. “What’s gotten you so worked up over this?”     â€œYou know we all had those weird visions when we got attacked by the psionic Spawn of Umsharr, right? They were digging in our brains for secrets.”     â€œLike my problem with Lord Slithis,” Liu Xi supplied. “And my meeting with… nobody.”     â€œYeah, well I had this shared mindscape with Sally and CZ. Except CZ didn’t remember being CZ, and when she pulled her mask off she was Bethany Shellett.”     â€œBeth?” Vizh puzzled. “Didn’t she emigrate?”     Hallie was able to call up records instantly. “After she was restored from her crippling injuries via the Baroness’ nanotechnology and that bit where…” She halted as the retcon caught up; now Beth had not been sent to infiltrate the LL staff to be close enough to assassinate Mumphrey while under the Baroness’ control; the Wiltons’ marital disputes had never got that bad. “Beth didn’t want to be near superheroes any more. She took a teaching post in London. But then… the nanotech evidently failed. Her injuries recurred. She went back into her coma.”     â€œWhy are we only hearing about this now?” demanded Hatman. “Don’t we keep a watch on our friends, even those who don’t want anything more to do with us?”     â€œOf course we do,” the A.I. insisted. “Except… this time we didn’t. I have no idea why.”     â€œI have a theory,” Vinnie warned. “But here’s the thing. I reckon that Beth’s comatose body is inside that CZ costume, but not her mind. While she’s in a coma her flesh can be possessed by a walk-in spirit. That is what is playing the part of Citizen Z.”     â€œI got sent to jail by a ghost?” Silicone Sally objected. “A ghost wearing a coma victim wearing my old form?”     â€œBut what ghost?” Goldeneyed demanded urgently. “We need to know!”     â€œWhy did Marie attack her?” Ham-Boy worried.     â€œIt looks like we need to ask her,” Vizh told them. “Maybe then we can get some answers.” He turned to G-Eyed. “Quickly – to your bathroom!” ***     â€œThese aren’t just zombies!” CSFB! shrilled as he slithered beneath the attack of writing intestinal organs from the late Joanie Bigger. “These are super-zombies! That’s so much groovier than un-super-zombies!”     Yuki punched the head off Cooter Wallace but his body kept on fighting her. “Any idea how they got to be super? Or how many of them there are?” She flashed facial recognition software through her forebrain and managed to ID one of the horde that had risen from the swamp. “That’s Jemiah Corcoran of Cantrelle, Louisiana. Three drunk-driving offences and one unlicensed shotgun.”     Donar caught the shark-headed monster that was trying to bite his baseball-bat-holding arm off and examined the undead closely. “This one hast torn his own head off and replaced it with yon zombie shark. ‘Tis rare to find a shambling horror that doth take such attention to detail.”     The Shoggoth reformed after diving to absorb a half dozen attackers. “These are very spicy,” he admitted. “Possibly a little intoxicating. 120% proof zombies.”     Voodoo Vicaress had already tried using her juju powder to take command of the invading undead. to no avail. Now she appealed to a higher authority. “Grandma! We gon’ just hide in this corner while the Lair Legion fight these zuvembies?”     Grandma M’Tumbe shook her head and indicated that she had retrieved one of her bargain buckets so that she could nibble as she spectated. “Hush, chile. You know dis place has all kinds of obeah on it to protect us from attack.”     â€œWhere is it then? Because right now only the Lair Legion is stopping us being zombie-chow!”     The old voodoo woman nodded. “Like I said, all kinds of obeah.” She reached down and passed a drumstick to Al B. Harper where he was calibrating a backpack of sensor equipment.     â€œThanks,” the Archscientist nodded. He absent-mindedly stored the chicken leg behind his ear beside his pencil as he finished his adjustments. “Donar, could you please zap this emitter pack with a medium-sized lightning bolt now?”     The hemigod of thunder turned to the stitched-together revenant of Sharkjaw Smith. “Excuse me one moment. I shalt return to smite thee right fully forthwith.” He pointed his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it at Al B’s equipment array and loosed the requisite energy bolt.     The pack exploded. Every zombie around the swamp hut exploded with it.     The Shoggoth burped.     CrazySugarFreakBoy! rode out the shockwave with a dizzying somersault and landed beside Grandma’s bucket. “Take cover,” he warned her. “Here comes the scientific explanation!”     It was not often that Donar delivered it. “Yon Al B. didst projecteth out a wave of Ausgardian lightning to splendid effect. ‘Tis troubling that only creatures infused with energy from one of the Ausgardian realms wouldst react so explosively.”     â€œAusgardian undead,” Yuki scowled. “Why would…?”     â€œAusgardian necromancy plus an added twist of something else,” Al B. warned. “There’s some really weird signature I’ve never encountered before. I want to call it trans-cosmic energy, but…”     The Manga Shoggoth giggled. “You are very silly sillies!” he scolded them playfully. “Have I ever tol’ you how much I luvvle you all?”     â€œIs there any chance that might have some kind of effect if consumed by an elder creature?” Yuki asked.     â€œWe should all get tattoos!” the LL’s resident elder creature enthused. “I would look really cool with a byakhee on my flagella.”     Grandma M’Tumbe spat a chicken bone into her spittoon with deadly accuracy. “Flamin’ gods slumming here and bringing their undead with’ em,” she glowered. “No offence, Mr Donar.”     â€œNome taken, aged crone,” the Prince of Ausgard assured her. “‘Tis most vexing for the nonce. Yon incursion requires smiting most smitefully.”     Yuki checked the pockets of what was left of the undead. “This one was a shopkeeper in Cantrelle. That’s the point of origin, or contagion, or whatever.”     CSFB! grabbed Voodoo Vicaress for a smoochy farewell kiss, winked at her, and bounced off to fire up the LairJet.     â€œNow will you put some pants on, girl?” Grandma chided. ***     Flapjack lurched menacingly between G-Eyed, Vinnie, and the door they hoped to enter.     â€œAw, c’mon!” G-Eyed argued. “It’s my bathroom, man.”     â€œNow it’s your bathroom,” the Lair Legion’s major domo responded in a menacing growl. “Hundred and fifty years ago, it was a hallway where an innocent girl called Marie Murcheson walked, before she got sacrificed in an occult ritual and eventually came back as the Lair Banshee. She’s the prior occupant.”     â€œWe only want to talk to her, Flapjack,” Vinnie de Soth assured the protective hunchback. “We won’t upset her.”     â€œShe’s already upset. Don’t make it worse. I have electrodes.”     â€œWe only have a few questions,” G-Eyed promised. “It’s not like I couldn’t just teleport past you. Or shift you to Transylvania.”     â€œYes, you could, young sir. And I’m sure that being only a humble servant of the household and a faithful Flapjack of the Carpathians there is no way in which I might pay you back for such treatment. I am only the fellow who washes your underwear and who prepares all your food and who watches over you when you sleep. Oh yeth!”     The returning lisp was a bad sign. “Please, at least let Marie decide for herself whether she’ll see us,” appealed Vinnie. “Don’t make me fetch villagers with pitchforks and burning torches.”     Flapjack considered. “Good threat,” he decided. “You can ask her. Nicely.”     Goldeneyed knocked politely on the door of his bathroom and poked his head inside. “‘Scuse me, Miss Murcheson. May we come in?”     The Lair Banshee rose from the only seating in the room and glided over to the team’s teleporter. “I’ll come out. It’ll be a bit crowded with all of us in here.”     â€œMaybe we should do the big revelation scene somewhere with less of G-Eyed’s used jockey shorts laying about?” Vinnie agreed. “Lair Library, maybe?”     â€œWherever is convenient,” Marie offered. “I’m sorry to be curt. I have a terrible headache now.”     G-Eyed eyes flashed as he shifted them to the oak-panelled room on the east wing’s second floor. He neglected to transport the belligerent and protective butler but brought the jobbing occultist along. Sophisticated anti-teleport buffers embedded in the mansion’s fabric were programmed with exceptions for Goldeneyed’s power.     Vinnie felt nauseous anyway. “We could have just walked,” he pointed out.     G-Eyed wasn’t in a mood to wait. “Can we get down to why you freaked out over Citizen Z now, Marie?” he asked. “That girl’s lying in a coma in the Lair Infirmary. If she’s who I suspect then she’s already done enough of that!”     â€œI’m feeling rather ashamed of myself, Bry,” the Lair Banshee replied. “I’m still getting used to being dead again, and a banshee again, and an integral part of the Lair Mansion’s Celestian defences. It’s so different this time.”     Vinnie understood. “Before when you were a guardian banshee you were hardly sentient, barely coherent. This time you’ve retained your memory and personality from life.”     â€œI suppose I have. It’s an adjustment. So when I sensed that… attack…”     G-Eyed frowned. “Citizen Z attacked you?”     Marie shook her head. “Wrong word. She trespassed.”     â€œRemember how I said this Citizen Z is a walk-in spirit?” Vinnie explained to the eccentric Englishman. “She’s borrowing a body of a coma victim – with permission, she claims. She’s certainly keeping it alive by occupying it, offering it a semblance of health and vitality, maintaining its autonomic functions. Marie is Parody Island’s defence against supernatural incursions.”     â€œI am,” the Victorian lady confessed.     Goldeneyed thought about this. “But the Celestian defences were put on Lair Island to deal with cosmic-level threats. I should know, I spent the best part of a year hooked up to them myself - without even a bathroom break. They don’t bother with trivial stuff like supervillains. We’ve had vampires and ghouls and Lord-knows-what traipsing through here and very little of it provoked a banshee attack.”     â€œThis spirit did,” Marie insisted. “The defences were outraged at her incursion. They acted through me before I could even think. I’m so sorry about endangering everybody.”     â€œWhat’s so terrible about Citizen Z?”     The Lair Banshee’s lip curled with distaste. “I’m a genius loci of this house. She’s a genius loci of Herringcarp Asylum.”     â€œShe’s what?” G-Eyed exploded. ***     The LairJet flew low over Cantrelle. Yuki was mapping out a grid pattern for Al B.’s sensor analysis. “Looks like everything and everyone in a ten mile radius has been wiped out,” she saw. “No animal life signs at all. This was a major event.”     â€œThere’s a lot of secondary damage down there,” the Archscientist reported, looking up from his scopes. “Two different destruction patterns.”     CSFB! peered out of a viewing hatch with his gawker goggles. “Yeah, part of it was your usual zombie apocalypse insurance claims, same as with every horde from Disco Hitler to the Necromancer General. I think the rest was when Donar made all the zombies explode with lightning.”     â€œThat was soooo funny,” snickered the gooey mess slopping round the back of the aircraft. “They just go Boom! Plop! Boom-plop!”     â€œHow long is that effect going to go on, Harper?” Yuki demanded. “The Shoggoth is disturbing enough without him blowing bubbles through his protoplasm.”     â€œI’m still trying to figure what kind of energy could have such an effect on as alien a metabolism as his,” the Archscientist admitted. “Usually he just ignores our electromagnetic spectrum if it’s inconvenient to him. This is… bigger.”     â€œDark deeds are afoot,” Donar confirmed. “I feeleth it in my beard.”     â€œThat could be breakfast, big guy,” CSFB! warned. “On the other hand, it might be your old sparring pal Lord Slithis the Necromancer. Would his creatures have an Ausgardian undead vibe?”     â€œAye. Save that Slithis is smitten unto paste for his former misdeeds. He art no more.”     The wired wonder pressed his eerie earring communications stud. “Not what I’m hearing from Hallie. Breaking news is that, smitten to paste or not, Slithis has somehow grabbed a lien on Liu Xi’s soul.”     â€œThat suggests he’s still in play,” Yuki Shiro agreed. “And if so, then this incursion seems right out of his playbook.”     â€œExcept for the additional trans-cosmic energies that are supercharging the undead,” Al B. worried.     â€œExcept for that. We need to… hold on, we have incoming.”     Al B. refocused his sensors. “Birds. Seagulls mainly. All heading right for us.”     â€œZombie seagulls!” CSFB! realised. “Holy Hitchcock!”     â€œEvasive manoeuvres,” Yuki warned. “If they pile into the jet engines…”     â€œBoom-plop!” contributed the Shoggoth.     Donar summoned tempest winds to deter the avian undead. The LairJet bucked in the sudden hurricane. “There musteth be newly created since our last encounter,” he called in a voice that somehow boomed over the storm. “Our enemy must be nigh!”     Al B. struggled with his instruments, redesigning them as he went. “There’s an anomaly nearby, but I can’t pinpoint it!”     The Shoggoth sloshed against a wall of the canted LairJet. “Wheee! ‘S not n’ anomanamanaly yet. ‘S gonna be an anomananan… ‘s gonna be one soon in your silly timespace refererererences…”     â€œYou mean something’s about to appear?” CSFB! interpreted.     There was a deafening boom that overrode the storm. A powerful dimensional channel opened up right around the LairJet, sucking it through the Doom Tube and across the galaxy.     â€œNow,” Lord Slithis, New God of Undead commanded the planet of corpses he had animated for one single purpose. “Kill them!”     The bait had worked. Now it was recruitment time. ***     â€œIs this a good idea?” Hallie asked.     â€œNo,” said Vizh. “Give me a better option and I’ll take it. Really.”     â€œLet’s review the plan again,” the Mansion’s resident AI suggested. “Citizen Z – or her body – is deteriorating. The banshee managed to exorcise the indwelling spirit that was animating her body before. We think the ghost involved was an agent of Herringcarp Asylum like Marie is of the Lair Mansion. So the only way to help her is to take her back to Herringcarp Asylum.”     â€œThat was pretty much the way I heard it before I descended into nightmare, yeah,” agreed the leader of the Lair Legion.     â€œSo now you and Hatty are heading off to see the Hooded Hood.”     â€œI tried calling Lisa like Sir Mumphrey did but I just got connected to her 0900 number. And I didn’t understand all the button options.” Vizh shuddered.     â€œWhat about Sir Mumphrey and the Baroness? They were heading that way to visit the cowled crime czar last we heard.”     Hatman shook his head. “No word from them yet. I still think we need to go. We need to get to the bottom of this, and it’s the only way we might help Citizen Z.”     â€œCouldn’t we just post CZ back there. Or maybe call EEE?”     â€œI think this is part of my job now,” Visionary worried. “Besides, most of the time the Hood doesn’t do anything really bad.”     Behind the possibly-fake man Vinnie winced. “Ouch. Karma-quake,” he squirmed. “Is it too late to go and fight zombies instead?” ***     Sir Mumphrey Wilton reduced the front doors of Herringcarp Asylum to ancient dust, aged a million years in an instant.     Baroness Elizabeth Wilton shrugged noncommittally. “I still say a nuclear strike from space would have been just as effective,” she sulked.     â€œThe Hood would just have retconned it. If he hadn’t just shifted his lunatic asylum somewhere else again,” the eccentric Englishman grumbled.     â€œOr you could have sent in that superhero team you play with. What’s the point of feeding them if you can’t command them to a suicide attack against your foe?”     â€œWinkelweald has tampered with the histories and backstories of damn near every Legionnaire. He’s shaped their origins or convinced each of them to do story-critical things at various times. Even saved their lives. If they tried to fight him now all he’d need to do was let go of some retcon or other he made just for this contingency.”     â€œI agree that’s the way to do it. But what if he looses his Purveyors of Peril on us and we didn’t pack a super-team?”     Mumphrey made a throaty noise suggesting that he would be unimpressed with such unsporting behaviour. Besides, today he had not come equipped with only his Chronometer of Infinity. In affecting the Keeper of the Chronometer’s background, the Hooded Hood had transgressed cosmic law, which meant that Mumphrey was able to draw upon the Higher Powers available to his office. His present equipment included his seldom-used Inverness Cape of Singularity, the Cane of Destiny. and his Fountain Pen of Causality, which respectively boosted his resistance to change, magnified the energies available to his timepiece’s functions by several orders of magnitude, and allowed him to do dramatic things to local timespace. For neatness’ sake Mumph had eschewed the items’ outer forms and folded them all inside his regular pocketwatch.     â€œHerringcarp Asylum is an endless labyrinth,” Elizabeth noted as they strode into the gargoyle-festooned entrance hall of the dusty institution. “What was your plan for finding Ioldabaoth?”     â€œWinkelweald, you pestilent pustule!” Sir Mumphrey roared up to the vaulted roofs. “Come out and face me like a man, you arrant blaggard!”     â€œAh, that plan,” sighed the Baroness. “Squirt testosterone over his walls until he feels the need to stop it.”     â€œCome on, Hooded Hood! Crawl out from whatever dank hole you’re cringing in and face the music!”     A bubble of vibration coalesced around the Wiltons and shattered in rainbow sparks.     â€œRetcons?” shouted the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. “Not likely. I’ve put my defences up now. Cowardly backstabbing attacks can’t touch me. Come out and take your thrashing!”     â€œYes, do stop being tedious, Ioldabaoth, and explain yourself,” the Baroness insisted. “I object to being married off without consultation. Ask my Uncle Otto.”     Another, stronger wave of retrospective continuity crashed upon the barriers around the Chronometer.     â€œDash it, Hood, you’re wasting my time!” Sir Mumphrey objected. “Not like you to miss a gloating opportunity, you noisesome bounder, so get out here and face the music!”     One end of the hall blurred and shifted. That side of the chamber was now filled with ornate gothic columns supporting elaborate coffered ceilings over a huge, carved throne.     A grey-cowled figure sprawled upon it, smirking at his uninvited guests. “What is it, Wilton? I’m busy, Make an appointment.”     Sir Mumphrey scowled over at the man who occupied the chair. He had the mantle and powers but…     â€œWho the devil are you, sirrah? Where’s Winkelweald?”     â€œOh him,” scorned the throne-sitter. “He’s gone now. Out of date. Retconned. There is no Ioldabaoth Winkelweald any more. Never was. Only Iscanean Went: me. The new Hooded Hood.”     And his eyes burned green. *** Next Time: Planet of the Recruiting Undead! The Secret Secret Origin of Citizen Z! The siege of the Bean and Donut Diner! And the New Hooded Hood! It’s all in UT#350: One Of Our Archvillains Is Missing!, coming to a Parodyverse board near you on December 25th! Don’t miss it! The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom (for previous stories by HH and others) Who's Who in the Parodyverse (slightly outdated yet again) Where's Where in the Parodyverse (for some location guides and a pretty map) *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2015 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2015 to their creators. This is a work of parody. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works are in fair-use parody and do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. Any proceeds from this work are distributed to charity. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

    

I'm glad to see you haven't lost your touch with the PVMB stories - while your novels carry a lot of the style there is still something different in the execution. (I have just finished re-reading the Mumphry Wilton one as well).

I'm not sure that we have had to deal with a drunk Shoggoth before - but none the less, cue the happy drunken singing.

Oh, and Flapjack is on form.

About 40% of the story was written back in 2010 as part of the intended ongoing series at the time. What I'm doing is bringing forward a few things I might originally have strung out a bit longer with a new overall villainous plot to legitimately accelerate them.




I shall be sure to include some. Next issue: Shoggoth with hang over.




I remembered that Flapjack and Marie have had a very Quasimodo/Esmerelda relationship before so it seemed right that he would be protective of her now. It would be a horrible mistake to deny his abilities.

On a technical matter, I've been trying to update the archived material on The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. I notice that a lot but not all of the pages I call up from older parts of the PVB site have garbled codes instead of speech marks, apostrophes and ellipses; e.g. http://parodyverse.strike-two.com/app/show.php?msg=parodyverse-2011042616263265&layout=thread

Another issue is that the latest pages on the site must call up background in a different way, because ported to my site they all have white default backgrounds; e.g. http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/hhstories/untold%20tales%20of%20ll%20348.htm

My attempts to globally edit the rogue text using a find/replace programme have only had moderate success and have actually screwed up other, older, already-working archived pages. Given the problem occurs on an estimated 1,300 of the 4,500 pages on my site I'm not keen to try manual individual fixes. Any ideas?

It looks like these are things like smart quotes (generated by Word, amongst other things). The only thing you can really do is identify the exact binary representation of the character in the offending web page, and do a search and replace using that.

Also, you need to replace the longer strings before the shorter ones in case the the shorter string appears within the longer one - that will really muck things up...

It may be possible to fix this by switching the page character set but it hasn't worked for me so far in my tests.




This one is easy, by the look of it...

Each HTML page has a {body} tag in it - this needs to be changed to {body bgcolor="black"}.

(The braces should be angle brackets, but they won't render properly, and I can't remember how to force it)

When doing the search, make sure the strings are specified with both open and closing angle brackets just in case the body tag already has other elements (which will usually include a bgcolor element)




Depends on how you are doing the search and replace, and exactly what is going wrong with the working pages. If it is a straight file-age-related thing then you could copy the offending files to a working directory, update them, then copy them back.

As noted, you may also be hitting the case where some of the odd strings are subsets of the other - for example if one code was ABCD and the other was ABC and you needed to map ABCD to WXYZ and ABC to MNO, you would have to remap ABCD first. If you remap ABC first you would end up with a lot of MNODs.

The way it is represented in text is:

Substitutes ’ for ' (that's a-circumflex, euro, trademark if the board auto-translates it to something else)

Substitutes “ for " (that's a-circumflex, euro, joined oe for opening speech marks)

Substitutes ” for " (that's a-circumflex, euro, box with a smiley face in it for closing speech marks)

Substitutes €¦? for ... (that euro, vertical line broken in the middle, question mark for ellipses)

Unfortunately, when I try to fix this using a global find/replace it almost solves the problem pages (leaving only one square box character instead of the whole jumble) but adds that same character to all the pages that were fine before. My problem is seperating out which of the vast number of pages on the site need treatment, lifting them out of their existing file structure, treating them, then replacing them where they were.







When patience allows I'll try copying over some of the garbled body text to a non-garbled page body and see if it sorts itself.










I'll see what can be done about that. I'll need to check I'm not doubling up on older pages where that line is already there, or else identify exactly when the change in scripting happened and try and find a way of doing a date-sensitive find/replace; except again it seems to be intermittent, dating back to at least June 2008.




Noted. This time round I didn't try and adapt the macro you sent me many years ago but turned to a bulk text editor program called "FAR - Find and Replace".




Looking back at the archived version of UT 310-327 it looks like I manually edited them individually to cut out all the board-specific gubbings at the top of the page (links to make replies, print etc. and a repeat of the title) and replace it with a much simpler header and first line of body text. I may have to look at doing that for other pages, but its a very tedious job given the volume. Unfortunately the one line I do need to keep from the header is the title line, so a bulk edit gets even trickier.




I'd have to identify the longer string first, though, and that's where I'm coming up blank.

I should have seen that ending coming, because the whole read-through I was thinking "wow, the Hooded Hood has gotten sloppy with his work". That's because it's a different Hooded Hood. And sloppy because a direct attack on Sir Mumphrey will no doubt jeopardize his other plans.

Lara would be impressed that Al B Harper actually made use out of her previous misfortune. At least until he starts scanning her again, then she'd just be annoyed.

And I had a stray thought about what happens to the Psychic Samurai when someone messes with continuity like that. Somewhere, she has a massive migraine as her senses try and keep up with the changes.

Liu Xi better get that lien taken care of, those tend to follow you around from one lifetime to the next.

If you look in the source this actually translates to 9 characters (oe, more accurately, bytes), and I suspect that the search and replace code will need to know those characters.




I use a utility called FrHed to dig these details out - essentially it is a hex editor/viewer.

Not following you there. When I look at the source in notepad I see the three-character string that the PVB software has translated the original characters unto.







How can that help with the details? Is it something I could use?

I'm glad you were able to pick up on the different modus operandi. One of the things that got me thinking like that has been the "reimagining" of certain well-established villains like Lex Luthor and Victor von Doom in rebooted comics continuities or for movie versions, where I felt that the "improved new" versions lacked the timbre and authority of the earlier ones. It seemed like something worthy of parody in the Parodyverse.




I suspect Dr Harper didn't see it as misfortune, just as an unparalleled research opportunity. Another aspect of Lara's previous adventures folds into the wider plot as this story develops.

It's also worth noting that this and the two subsequent chapters of Untold Tales follow on directly from the place in continuity the LL were at when the Untold Tales series left off, except for obvious alterations that are explained in-plot. I've tried hard to ignore foreknowledge of stories that were plainly set after this moment.




For that matter, as we have seen, the cast of World Class get a whole new soft reboot.




Given that the villain responsible has just sucked half of Liu Xi's team into a death trap it's probably fair to assume there will be some development on the issue soon.

Back when I assembled that particular line up of Lair Legion I made sure that each had member one or two plotlines specific to them. What I'm doing with this short series is crashing quite a few subplots together to get closure for them.

Just so long as it's not another New Lair Legion. We tried that already.





That would annoy Lara, too.





Speaking of which, I have to dust off a story I was going to post back in 2013 before things went slow, and I ditched it mid-plot. It has a really good start, doesn't really relate to this Untold Tales. I might post it in pieces so I can drop it if it doesn't work.








Wrong Asian with a sword, that's Keiko. Chiaki Bushido is the Psychic Samurai.

Though yes, World Class *also* got a new soft reboot. It's being redone in a semi-novel format.

I'm tempted to also post a piece of the semi-novel format "Traders", which is an entirely new story with some familiar names in it.





At some point she's going to lose her temper with all of these claims on her soul. Someone with access to the elemental magic and void isn't good for pissing off.





I can probably help by reminding you where everyone was parked at the time:

- Faite was last a teenager going to a private boarding school to hide there from the Hooded Hood. She didn't specify which one.

- Lara Night disappeared and went home shortly after the warden at the time of the Safe tried to kill her and imprison her for the killing of Doorman while he was trying to escape. She did it out of sacrifice so the Lair Legion would have no reason to fight him anymore.

- Nena and Anna are assumed to be still in the Lair Mansion somewhere.

- Shen Rae is assumed to have gone home. She's also in "Traders" mentioned above, but somewhat different.

- Chiaki Bushido (Psychic Samurai) is, according to the unfinished story, dealing with the fallout of Antony Vendredi driving out Akiko Masamune and forcing her to flee back to Japan.

I've managed to black out the many traumas of line-up reshuffle poster negotiations.







Al B. is not known for his sensitive social perceptions.







I was surprised in revisiting the folders where I kept my PVB work to find that I had several part-finished stories in progress that I had forgotten all about, that I had posted some stories I no longer remembered writing, and that there was even one complete tale I just never got round to putting up!







No, I wasn't confusing them. I really was referring to your novel-style retexturing of Keiko and co. After all, Keiko herself had a sojourn in the Parodyverse once upon a time, long before Chiaki ever saw print.




I'm told that the market for e-novellas has never been better. I know that Amazon Kindle keep sending me royalty cheques for some I've done.




It depends what you want to do with it, and whether you think feedback/possibly little feedback from the relatively quiet board would encourage or dishearten you. On the one hand it can be a good focus group; on the other it could be "firing your powder" ahead of time. Only you can judge.

I'd be happy to see it here, though.







As I recall, I dug up the Void Spectre (originally a minor secondary poster character of a poster who had more or less left off writing before I even started in the Parodyverse) because I wanted a villain who could test Liu Xi by forcing her to push her boundaries to overcome him.

The Void Spectre was one of those massively powerful supernatural types - think something like an evil version of DC's Spectre. At one point he blew up the moon for reasons that were never properly explained. When it became clear that his story wasn't going to progress, and back during my early-years fervour for tidying up continuity in a shared universe where continuity is always going to be a tangle, I wrote a storyline where the Hooded Hood tricked him out of existence (and therefore the moon was never destroyed, and was available for the Librarian to sit on it). But it was clear that the Void Spectre was meant to be massively powerful, terribly alien, and set on doing something that required access to a universe where he did not belong.

It therefore seemed like a good thing to pit him against Liu Xi. Where the UT continuity is, she had recently erased her "grandfather" from existence and has therefore become a bit of an anomaly. That and her affinity for void have attracted the Void Spectre's attention as a means of clawing himself back into existence.

It was my intention in making Liu Xi's use of void terribly dangerous for a while to be able to showcase her skills with other elements, and to show her problem-solving and other qualities that were not dependent of her powers. Unfortunately the series got derailed by circumstance so I was never able to follow through - until now.










I think this one comes a little after the current UT. From the team's point of view,the new members got inducted, they've had about a week underground on a team-building mission, and this is their first day back from that, and straight into another crisis. There are a couple of scenes and events you chronicled which perforce come (presumably shortly) after the issues the team has to deal with in the present story.










There's possibly not enough information to place this since I didn't follow on with the Deadeyes series, but I think that Deadeyes #6 or 7 features Vinnie as an LL member, so that must be after the present Untold Tales too.

You forgot to mention Violet the Part Time Cat, but don't worry since she's in the next issue of Untold Tales.

That's the point. Notepad is a windows product and is doing at least some of the character conversions. At the very least it is doing a Unicode conversion. What you see as three characters is actually stored as 8 bytes.

If you are using basic ASCII you use a single byte per character, and the letters of the alphabet all map on to specific numbers. To use foreign characters you have to muck around with code pages whereby a subset of the characters are changed depending on which code page you are using.

In UTF-8 (which is what we are using here) the standard alphabetics are still represented by the same single bytes (to be backward compatable with pure ASCII) , but the more esoteric characters are represented by multiple bytes - usually two or three, but can go up to five. Thus:

York’s

is represented by the following bytes (in Hexadecimal, read straight out of FrHed):

Y - 59 (Same as Standard ASCII)
o - 6F (Same as Standard ASCII)
r - 72 (Same as Standard ASCII)
k - 6B (Same as Standard ASCII)
’ - C3 A2 E2 82 AC E2 84 A2 (Actually 8 bytes describing three characters)
s - 73 (Same as Standard ASCII)

What has happened is that C3 A2 E2 82 AC E2 84 A2 is probably also the sequence to identify a single quote in one or other character set. Somewhere along the line a character conversion goofed and the bytecode was misinterpreted as, and now saved as, ’.

If you look using an editor such as PFE (or, indeed, FrHed, which explicitly operates at the byte level) you will see the underlying characters.

(The above is why I stay well away from character set issues - what you are reading there is the very simple version! Jason may threaten to unload the complex version on you.)




It would allow you to identify the sequence(s) of bytes being used (as above), which you could then feed in to the editing software. It is easy enough to use, and you would only be reading the files, not trying to edit them.

For example, you would want to replace the byte string C3 A2 E2 82 AC E2 84 A2 with an apostrophe.

I got some way with this then stalled after a frustrating two hours.

And then I discovered something even weirder. Take one of the pages that doesn't have a character conversion problem but does have the white instead of black background problem. Say http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/hhstories/untold%20tales%20of%20ll%20341.htm If I manually correct the html file using Notepad ([body] to [body bgcolor="#000000" text="#ffffff" link="lightblue" vlink="white" alink="gray"]) the thing is fixed nicely. If I try a batch text program it fixes the background but actually replicates the character conversion problem of the other files!










Do these programs work on batches of files or would I have to do each one seperately?

I had similar negotiations...which is why I started writing PVB stories that only peripherally involved the original LL.





Oddly enough I only had TWO left, and the other one wasn't finished enough to bother with, so I deleted it. I'd been posting mostly World Class when the board was slow.





Yes, she did. I thought you were relating the two events.





I hope so, because I'm going to have two of them eventually.





Here I'd probably just post the first chapter to see if anyone wants to comment on it.





She's a fast learner, though. The more they make her learn, the more dangerous she gets for the rest of them.





I probably should hold it for a bit longer then, which is ok because I want to add more to it, and actually finish it.





She's usually just working at the Bean & Donut and providing free entertainment for the customers.

I recently updated the archived material on the Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. I was impressed by the body of work you've done for this place.







The keys seem to be pricing and publicity. A "non-brand" author's sweet spot seems to be either with a $1.99 15-20k novella or a $2.99-3.99 30-40k novella. The latter price allows more options on Kindle but I don't recall exactly what; that stuff is usually done for me.

Marketing is really important for sales these days. An Amazon "Author Page" is free when you're selling work on their site. Mine is at http://www.amazon.co.uk/I.A.-Watson/e/B00E47RJFE There's also an option to do a short-life giveaway of, for example, the first volume in a series. Reviews noticably boost sales, those on review blogs vary from really effective to no difference - still worth sending a free copy in the hopes of a review (note some reviewers will only review a print edition). Interacting with sites like Goodreads also seems to work for some people.

Finally, an e-book needs a cover. Lots of people sweat about getting amazing art, but sometimes its better to go simple and have the title in big bold letters that show up in tiny sales thumbnails. Covers do count, though; I've had some less than fantastic experiences with shoddy cover production, including one that was so bad it has sold less than 70 copies.







If you want feedback for a specific purpose, like "does this serve as the first chapter of a standalone novel?" then you'll need to be clear when you post it. What makes a good PV story or even a good episode of an ongoing series is different from the demands of a grabber novel opening, so folks may review it differently if they know its intention.







In the middle chapter of the current UT trilogy, Liu Xi doesn't use her powers at all as far as I recall. Everything she does is intellect and character driven.







I don't know that I'll be returning to that series any time soon.







Noted.

Elizabeth as wife of Sir Mumphrey? How humbling. Here she had schemed to collaborate with him and then overthrow him, as the pinnacle of Zemo perfidy, and now this new Hooded Hood blithely transcends that plot.

Congratulations to the Hood on creating a hypergolic alliance; I await the shrapnel with keen interest.

To be fair a lot of it wasn't all that good, but I felt like I had to keep things moving so I kept going.





That's about where I thought it would be.





Marketing is always my weak point. With everything. Partly because I have unusual tastes, so I can't really look at something and predict what everyone else will like.





If I sold 70 copies of something I'd be amazed.





Mostly a combination of giving people here a taste of what it will be like, if they choose to read it, and also to see if I might have missed an opportunity and didn't notice.





That should completely confuse her enemies.





I mean more to avoid confusing people reading both at once, and trying to make sense of the timeline difference. I did notice that happen before - when I posted something too far out of time with other posts on the board, people started questioning how can this person be here and there at the same time.

I mainly came here since I got an e-mail so... here I am, reading up on what been going with the Legion. Seems like nothing much has changed for them

Has it really been 5 years since the last UT? Have 5 years past in story & then retconned away or has no time past for them & we are just on the 5 year delay?

I'm not sure the old Hood is really gone. He did continue to be in stories long after his death. Then there is also Mr. Spooky, the is he or isn't he supporting cast member from the Chad & Ronnie stories who seemed to exhibit a number of Hoodish traits.

Holy Retcons Hatman!

Nice to see this series return. Better than Star Wars? We'll see. It has zuvembies thought, so that's a +1 already!

You've certainly done well in getting this set up so that it's easy to just jump right back in.

I'll always be impressed by the way you can have multiple teams doing multiple things simultaneously as the plot weaves its way around them all.

You know...the Baroness and old Mumph make an interesting couple...let's keep that going for a bit 'eh? #TeamBaroness&Mumphry

Naked Voodoo Vicaress is always a treat. Although Grandma M’Tumbe was a little heavy on the stereotype.

I feel like 'Iscanean Went' should be more meaningful to me. I'll need to borrow Hatman's Thinking Cap for a while.

Looking forward to more come Boxing Day (my time).

Al B.

Interesting - I'll try and look at that this afternoon (going out to lunch shortly...)




I can't speak for the program you are using to do bulk replacements, but PFE and FrHed are editors and will pretty much be one file at a time. However, you only need to use them to identify the strings, not to make the actual changes.

Literally, as it turns out next week.




Well, Mark Hamill has aged a lot since "A New Hope". He may be a zombie by now.




I decided that I probably needed to remind people of situations more than characters. Anyone coming new to the characters can be as baffled by the cast as the rest of us, for that full Parodyverse experience.




That's how trilogies get out of contriol.




Well, they're going on a date to Herringcarp Asylum. How much more romantic does it get?




Yes, I worried a bit about that, then decided it was nothing like as offensive as how the board characterises the French.




Jolly good.




Excellent. Did you ever get to see a copy of The Transdimensional Transport Company?

That's comic-book time for you. Its hard to keep ages and dates reconciled. For example, Mumph's grand-daughter debuted aged 11ish and Kerry Shepherdson debuted aged 15ish about twelve real-life years ago. Now Sam is about 14/15 and Kerry is around 18/19. It;s the Franklin Richards paradox. Ask Al B. about it if you dare.




Well, timewise it's about two hours since the previous chapter ended. I'm trying not to reference or contradict things people have written about since, but in comic-book-time it's about ten years since the LL formed, about fourteen months since the Parody War, about seven days since the new team lineup was announced. A few tie-ins where the new members are mentioned as being serving Legionnaqires are due to happen a short while after this arc, assuming the world isn't destroyed in a shock retcon.




There are a number of relevant stories wherein this plotline is set up, some of which I will reference in chapter three of this trilogy. I might even repost the appropriate material of I'm feeling enthusiastic.

Meanwhile, in the retcon waves, it was clever of you to foresee the changes and do the old and new Catherine stuff etc. The Hood's power easily reaches into our dimension.

She is clearly vexed. It is not unknown for her to express her vexation in some manner.




Most sensible folks would scramble for cover.

First rule of being a writer: write. Often. Every day if possible.

Second rule of being a writer: self evaluate. Kill your babies.







There's even a button on the Kindle uploading site now that you can push to get Amazon's "suggested price".

There's also a decision to make on opting in to "KDP", a programme where you make your work available for lending and for download as part of a bulk-purchase package. I'm registered for that but it doesn't give me much (you get a proportional share of the whole income pot divided by reads); I think my biggest monthly cheque has been $12. On the other hand, it does get my name and work seen so there's no way of telling if that factors in to other direct sales.




Marketing is every waiting-to-break-through writer's weak point. If there was a certain route it would have been found by now. It almost definitely isn't those companies that charge an upfront fee to "promote" your book.




A lot of publishers are really cagey about sales figures. Royalty statements don't usually come with any explanation for the total, not even to say which book or books they are for. I've had to really push to get an idea of what actual sales they represent.

One reason is because a lot of contracts these days give the author a back-end percentage (usually 60% net sales in my experience). If there's an advance its usually small (I've never had one over £3000) but those are rare in small-print publishing and getting rarer.

The "net" part is important though, because before calculating your share of profits the publisher gets to deduct expenses - production costs, complimentary giveaways, advertising, admin etc. The best contracts I've had specify what is eligible as a cost on the gross and cap how much it can be, either by a fixed sum or as a percentage of gross. Most contracts don't and you have to rely upon the publisher's honesty not to sneak a finger onto the scales.

To be fair, many reputable small press companies do play fair in their own opaque way. On the other hand, I've had stories in a couple of anthologies where I've never seen a penny because they have "not yet recouped expenses" (e.g. the cost of the publishers going to ComiCon).

I reckon that's partly why publishers are reticent about sales figures. They don't want authors doing the maths. They also sometimes don't want to upset authors with how poorly books have sold or else to inflate the author's expectations because things have sold well. Finally, they don't want other publishers to know what brands and which authors sell well because that's commercially valuable information.







My advice then, is to write at least three chapters/12,000 words then go back and revise chapter one before posting. In long-form prose you will inevitably have a better grasp of your style and story a bit further in and it will demand changes to your opening.







I was concentrating of the other side of Liu Xi's demonstrated personality, a selfless tendency to put her own troubles aside and support her friends.







People ask that about comic book series too. Then again, how many places can Wolverine be in at the same time?

After replying to this message I'll be heading off to a Christmas party and don't expect to be home until tomorrow night, so I won't be back online until then.

Great idea, not always practical. Sometimes I spend several days rushing to finish stuff for work both AT work and at home.





I do. Often. The outside world probably only sees half to three-quarters of what I actually write.





I believe that's based on word count or page count, but not sure.





Not just with books, with software, too. I'm stuck in that hole where I look up how to market my software, and apparently it's done with raising money via kickstarter etc and spending it all on a huge advertising budget. Except to raise money via kickstarter, you need to do promotion and marketing. Which takes money for a huge advertising budget. Grrr...





I'm not looking for it to be a primary source of income or anything. I worked on Merdeces Lackey's web site, and realized the huge volume of work it takes to be self-supporting, and I'm nowhere near fast enough yet.

A little extra would be nice, though.





I have something like 7 chapters done already. Not happy with them all yet, but they're there.





True, but they have an excuse - each writer generally writes completely independent of the others.

OK - I think I know what has happened. The single quote is encoded as E2 80 99.

When you make the change by hand, the only thing you are changing is the [body] tag.

When you do it using the batch converter, the converter reads in the file, makes the change, and then writes it back. I suspect that the character set encoding that the converter uses then sees and translates that into three separate characters (as if it is reading the file in as pure ASCII, then trying to output a multibyte equivalent when it saves the file).

All I can suggest is that you look at the settings on the batch converter and see if it has anything on character encoding for input and output.

Oh, and I had a very fine Pate, Sausages and Mash and Trifle, washed down by a very engaging pint of Aspals. I hope you meal was as good...

The only of my characters I know exactly how old they are is Ham-Boy. The rest of my characters it's a general thing, "this character is generally this age" sort of thing.







Last night I started to write a bit more of a Ham-Boy story I started writing back in March & it was the first "new" Ham-Boy story since 2011. It takes place in 2015 & has Ham-Boy thinking back on his life in the last 4 years. Ham-Boy thinking back is basically me just filling in the gaps. Lots of stuff was going on with him four years ago.










The whole Old/New Catherine thing was because I was thinking about DC's whole "The New 52" thing & that was the result.

I should someday finish off the story I last wrote featuring the Chad & Ronnie cast back in 2013. They were last seen in a Limbo like state. Since I never finished that story, they are more likely still there, waiting.