Hello, reader. I guess this is like a "setting bible" for my favored original setting. I've been meaning to write this for a long time. It'll definitely be a work in progress, but the timeline is the most important part so I'll start with that.
Somewhere by the west coast, there exists a wooded hill, a big slope really, whose thick tree coverage is broken in places by patches of rocky cliff. The air beneath the towering old-growth canopy has a vital energy to it, cool, moist, quietly alive.The breeze sets the branches swaying and the leaves shuddering and flickering, sunlight streaming through to create an atmosphere of shimmering green, an emperor of emeralds. Something small and furry darts through the web of twigs - an acorn drops off and breaks on the gables of a one-story wooden house. It has carved shutters, a porch with an eave but no screens, and no fence. A few trees were cut down to make and make room for this house, and the pool of light surrounding it has filled with ferns.
In the attic, a desk has been placed in front of a circular window, with a blank book on it. In front of the desk sits a woman wearing a blue dress and a sweater. She has long hair, curly and an unnatural cloud white. She loves jewelry, and proclaims her love of ostentatious wealth with bravado, but right now her earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and hairpins are all of steel and river stones. The forest outside is not reflecting properly in her grey eyes. There is a long moment as another acorn explodes off the roof, then she takes up a quill pen from beside the book. A longsword is leaning against the chair - she draws it out a few inches and sharpens the quill on the blade. It clicks loudly going back in. She dips the pen in an inkwell, taps it a few times, and begins to write.
I am Empress Elizabeth Ostergaard, sovereign of the Empire of the Sun and holder of more titles than I care to list here. I woke up yesterday to find that my youngest son, Maxwell, with some help from the servants, had constructed an elaborate masterpiece of cardboard, crayon, and glued macaroni as a birthday present for me. Little round-faced figures representing me, him, and my other children Gerald and Whitney stood in a garden with towering colorful presents, a sky he got bored and stopped coloring halfway, and a red blob he informed me was a rocket ship, added after the original composition was finished and he was waiting for me to wake up.
I really can't properly express how adorable it was.
Later that day, after the traditional speech and the traditional media bonanza and the traditional but much more comfortable private celebration I put Maxwell's masterpiece in a portfolio I keep around for just such a purpose, and put it up on a bookshelf I keep for holding just such portfolios. As I stood on the tips of my toes trying to fit the folio on the only remaining spot on the shelf, I felt a terrible symbolism creeping over me.
You see, yesterday was my one thousandth, four hundred and thirteenth birthday. Yes, despite the persistent rumors that I have been dead for centuries and replaced by a succession of doppelgangers controlled by some sinister cabal, the simple, and official, stance is the correct one - I've been functionally immortal since I was in my forties, as a side effect of the sort of power you'd need to run a globe-spanning empire. In that time, I have given birth to, adopted, or constructed through arcane or technological means one hundred and seventy children. All of them I raised as best I knew how, though my knowledge has changed considerably over the past millennial and a half. Some of them grew up to be great heroes in their own right, others, perhaps more miraculously, grew into decent human beings. Others failed, devoting their lives to frivolities and their own insecurities, though I like to think they at least lived happily. A few rejected me, due to legitimate objections to my rule or an adolescent rebellious impulse, I'll probably never know. Twenty have tried to overthrow me. Of these, seven have died trying, three by my own hand. Some found a measure of longevity similar to mine. Most did not. And every single one I loved with all of my being.
And every single one I remember, just as I remember things that happened four hundred years in the past as easy as things four years ago. All of these treasured memories I've managed to hold on to, and through this all my children still have a place in my heart, my joy in them undiminished by having been experienced countless times before. I try not to question how my memory seems to defy neurological limits. But, as I teetered on the edge of a footstool, trying to squeeze a portfolio of crayon drawings and fingerpaints onto the highest shelf, well. I decided I should start writing things down.
So here I am, in a private retreat in the hills of Los Angeles, trying to decide what parts of my life I can't live without. I'll add to this document over time, and probably make it publicly available when it's somewhat complete. At least, once I've thought of a name.
History
I suppose I should start with a brief overview of my life. I'm sure you will find all of this information in grade school history texts, but some people are picky about primary sources and all that. Probably the same people who always insist on exact dates. Anyways, my official birth date is October the 21st, 1985. This isn't entirely accurate - that was the day I was taken in by the orphanage, though the doctors report insists I was only a few days old at the time. In my early years I thought much about who my parents could be, making up truly incredible people in the process (it was obvious my parents were martian royalty who spent their time fighting pirates, after all, who else could have spawned me? Or perhaps my parents were fairies, who sent me to the human world in trade for a human child? It sounded quite silly, in those days). Eventually I realized all of these fantasies ended with my imaginary parents showing up to rescue me from whatever misunderstanding the cruel world was inflicting on my adolescent soul, and made peace with the fact that I'd never know for sure.
But I digress. I was discovered in a basket on the doorstep of Marble Gate Orphanage one October morning. Cliche, but given that the Gate was a converted Victorian-era mansion run by nuns, cliche was the name of the game. It was in the hills not far from Los Angeles, around the area I'm writing this actually, though the forest has been built over and regrown several times since then. The head nun was called Mother Mayi, which we tormented her endlessly about. She had skin that looked more and more like gnarled wood with every passing year, and smoked cigarettes from a long holder. She did it around all us kids, too, which probably screwed some of our lungs up awful. I later learned she'd had the orphanage taken from her after an embezzlement investigation. Still, whenever I think of her I call her "Mother," just as I did back then. It's strange how your opinion of someone can be colored by having cried into their lap as a toddler.
Anyways, my early life was...well, it was everything to me, but this is the sort of subject that forming an objective account of can be difficult. I once got lost in the same stretch of woods three times in a row. I thought my elementary school math teacher was a vampire, and one day hung a cross on the door of the classroom to keep her out (again, it seemed ridiculous in those days). There exists a picture of me with pigtails and a bright pink pair of overalls with a flower on the chest, which I can only hope has been obliterated by time. I got a bad cold once, and spent an entire weekend playing a game on my Playstation non-stop, while delirious with fever (I don't remember what it was called). People made fun of my hair, which started light blonde and got lighter instead of darker as I got older, which led to one of the lap-crying incidents. In middle school I was a nerd, in high school I was a goth, and after graduation I spent awhile as a thuggish vagrant before I decided I'd rather be a pretentious art school student. I changed my major from writing to theatre to painting to music and finally to "graphic design," which I assumed was the same thing as visual arts but paid better. Angeleno, angelican, adorable angel...it all seems like another lifetime, and yet so intimately familiar. I should have been a poet instead.
It was in 2004, when I was 19, that things changed.
Timeline
Bla bla bla
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