Hitherby Dragons Storytime

The Gibbelins’ Tower Theater Company

Jane usually shows up in legends as a young girl with Martin as her brother. Since she currently is a young girl and Martin is currently her brother, she doesn’t have to master the finer points of acting.

Martin usually shows up in legends as Jane’s slightly older brother. He thinks suffering is necessary for wisdom. He makes unsettling inventions. He’s more cynical than Jane, in part because he’s usually wearing cynicism goggles.

Mr. Schiff is a geology teacher. According to legend, he falls a lot.

Mrs. Schiff comes out when the performance isn’t ready and narrates stuff. Every theater needs a Mrs. Schiff! Her first name is Parvati.

Iphigenia drives the sun across the sky. Not every legend with her in it is about this, but she does.

Sid and Max hang out. And then they fight! It’s probably something that happened to them before they joined the cast at the Gibbelins’ Tower. Like, a basketball game gone bad, or Max locking Sid in a box or something.

Meredith is one of the stock players at the gibbelins’ tower. She has brown hair and an association with the sea.

Broderick is a rat who lives at the Gibbelins’ Tower. He can play all kinds of animals so sometimes people think he’s actually a parrot or a gazebra.

Clair, Saul, and others are stock players. If you see a name repeated a lot, it usually means that someone in the Gibbelins’ Tower crew is playing the relevant roles. It seems to take more effort for them to adopt new names for the sake of a performance, so the theater crew only does that when they have to.

Other Important People

Ink Catherly deserves special mention, but won’t get any.

The monster is not a very nice person, but he has a shiny tie. He descends from the House of Atreus.

Tina tortures people for the monster. She doesn’t have a tie or any kind of fancy heredity. That’s too bad for her!

The shadow used to be Karen, but then woglies ate the integrity of her world. Now she’s just the shadow.

Mei Ming is a girl the monster pulled from the shadow’s womb. She lives in the tunnels. Martin wants to rescue her, but she’s scared of the light.

Jenna was one of the people of salt. To evade the monster, she died, revived herself, and hid in the tunnels. At some point, the monster found her. He renamed her Jane. Unhappy, she fled to the firewood world and tried to make her life there. It didn’t work, and sometime between then and now, Martin found her and remade her. He kept the name Jane.

The hero, Sebastien, was Jenna’s brother. He is somewhat dubious about Jane, what with all the dying and coming back to life and transforming into different people and all.

Liril is one of the people of salt; that is, a child of the line that is the monster’s natural prey. The monster put the Thorn That Does Not Kill through her neck, stealing her volition, but circumstances have recently conspired to return a certain dynamism to her life. This is almost as much her story as it is Jane’s, except she doesn’t put on 250 shows a year explaining her perspective on things.

Micah is Liril’s brother. She created him to defy the monster, most likely in the moment when she no longer could.

Tainted John is something Liril made out of an abused boy who she thought would otherwise turn out to be another abuser. He has no eyes and no heart.

Priyanka is one of the people of salt. She was prey to 1968′s monster. She refused to save Tantalus from his punishment.

The Angel Four wear jackets with holes cut out for their wings. Actually, pretty much every angel in this story wears a jacket, and almost everyone noted as wearing a jacket is an angel. Evasive A is uncatchable, Forbidden A is best not thought about, Magic A has a nonzero chance of accomplishing anything, and Realistic A can provide a realistic assessment of any situation.

Ninja Tathagata is probably that aspect of Tathagata Buddha who is a ninja. He might also be the scion of a clan of ninjas who adopt the names of classic Buddhas when they achieve Ninja Nirvana. It’s hard to say without infinite wisdom.

Dukkha is the world’s fundamental tendency to include hostility and anguish in everyday life. He fights a neverending battle with Ninja Tathagata.

Maya is the illusion of material existence. She’s also Lot’s wife, adoptive mother of the lines of the monster and the people of salt, and Queen Mahamaya, mother to Prince Siddhartha. She gets around.

Daniel, Lisa, Thess, Alan, and Bob were each at one time Jane’s brother or sister. They did not work out very well and had to be replaced.

Persephone, Tantalus, and the Greek Gods (Zeus, Nemesis, etcetera) are more or less as the myths describe.

Nabonidus was King of Babylon, and a monster.

Mylitta fought the monster at Babylon, but lost.

Belshazzar is a god Nabonidus tore from Mylitta at the Temple of Sin.

Vicious Lily is a robotic assassin made to advance the cause of Impressionism.

Strange Entities

• Angels answer emptiness with hope.
• Chimerae cause boolean expressions to evaluate as neither true nor false.
• Contemners impose judgment to divide their prey from the pack.
• Cynosures are fixed points in the chaos.
• Death solves problems through extinction.
• Demons teach acceptance.
• Fairies reflect the chaos outside the world.
• Fetches are secret-keeping gods.
• Fiends answer hurt with madness.
• Footsoldiers question pie to achieve their goals.
• Flying carpets take you from the confines of your world.
• Ghosts cling to your memories.
• Heroes can kill monsters.
• Ii Ma, the Warden, keeps the place without recourse.
• Imps eat the soul that you cannot bear to keep.
• Kings of the Unforgivable Dominions break the covenant that holds together the pieces of the world.
• Libellatici (also called succubi, incubi, and rakshasa) are the enemies of the gods.
• Lincolns ind things together.
• Melomids lack the power of intention.
• Merins help make sense of the world.
• Mer-nymphs open the world.
• Ragged things catch you up, at the wrong place, in the wrong time.
• Siggorts vivisect people innocently.
• Sirens dissolve others into the greatness of the world.
• Woglies devour the integrity of the world. They are shaped like a torus and have two winky eyes. Inside of a wogly it’s empty.