Some more creative writing.
Continuing from yesterday, some more biographical fiction. Again, doesn't go anywhere in particular, just provides some background on the character and perhaps explains her motivations from a less biased perspective.


For the first third of her life, she was known as Azma. The public knew her as Princess Azma, but other than the occasional painting of her, or public appearances to give the daily scrolls something to write about, there were only three people she had regular contact with, and to them, she was simply Azma.

There was her father. When she was young, she didn't know about his no tolerance policy on PARA. She didn't know that the public loved him, even if they did find him a tad predictable at times. She didn't know that he was King Azzle to the public, or that he had only once sworn in public, when he discovered a slavery ring being run under his own nose, out of his own palace, by one of his own Vizards. She didn't know that the scrolls talked about nothing else for weeks afterwards when he had ordered his own Vizard's execution. She only knew that his beard sometimes made her face itchy when he kissed her, but his hugs were the best. She only knew him as Daddy.

There was her nanny. An elderly fairy, Nanny had been around for twenty years longer than King Azzle had been monarch. This meant very little to Azma, to whom the ages of anyone older than 10 blurred together, but it meant that Nanny had access to a wealth of stories about the time before Daddy had been king.

Nanny had stories about PARA.

While technically King Azzle's ban on PARA didn't include stories, anecdotes, fiction about the various beasts, Nanny knew that if she was caught telling stories to Azma about the mermaids, the vampires, the dragons, or the werewolves, it'd probably be the end of her cushy job in the palace, and so most of the time, Nanny kept her mouth shut.

But on the night of Nanny's eightieth birthday, she stumbled back to her quarters, and when she found that Azma was still awake, she couldn't resist telling a few tales. She told of vampires she'd known who had been around since before the God revolution. She told of werewolves she'd seen who could leap over a building without breaking a sweat. She told of the dragons who used to work in the palace kitchen.

But the stories that had Azma entranced and begging for more the next morning were the tales of the mermaids. Living underwater, trading amazing sea creatures for fairy tricks, singing beautiful, underwater songs, which you had to enchant your own head to listen to. No wings, true, but tails. Tails with scales, in every colour of the rainbow.

Instead of repeating the stories, or even conjuring up some new ones, Nanny just held some ice up to her head, and told Azma to go away.

It wasn't until Azma was a few years older than she realised why there were no mermaids in Az. Technically, the ban covered all of Thebaz Isle, but the sorcerors who lived over in Thland rarely listened to laws or regulations. Strom, the western-most city in Thebaz (the city furthest away from Byntol) was known world-wide to have the largest population of mermaids of any city, land-based or underwater. But the reason for the scarcity in Az, the province where the Princess and her father lived, was because there was a reasonable degree of respect for royal decree. And though Azma respected and loved her father, his ban of mermaids confused her. From what Nanny had said, they were wonderful beasts.

So when Azma discovered the reason she'd never seen a mermaid was because of her father's ruling, she confronted him about it. He was as angry as she'd ever seen him, asking where she had heard of mermaids, why she thought they were beautiful creatures, and when she had started becoming a rebellious teenager. Terrified at this display of anger from her mild-mannered father, she didn't answer any of the questions, and cowered in the corner until he calmed down.

He never spoke to her of this tantrum, and she never brought the matter of PARA up with him again. She did, however, learn that once Nanny had been convinced to drink a few bottles of the finest eucalpytus in the palace, or even a casket of jackaranda, Nanny's tongue loosened once more, and Azma heard story after story of the times when PARA had been allowed, even welcomed, into the palace.

Azma learned from these stories that the palace had not always been in Byntol. The capital city was not fixed, it would roam, depending on the nature of the monarch at the time. Her father was lawful good, and so Byntol, in the "good" province of Az was the capital, but Thander, the King before her father, had leant more towards the Evil end of the scale, and so the capital had been Monstro, in Th, the home of many evil sorcerors.

Nanny, though she was aware of what Azma was up to, had a weakness for fine drinks, and so it became a little tradition between the two of them that every few Fridays, when the King was away on royal business, Azma would sneak into the palace kitchen, and steal (well, it was all to be hers one day, so one could hardly call it stealing) a few bottles of euca, or a casket of jacky.

The stories continued to amaze and delight her, and Azma swore that if she ever ruled the country, she'd allow mermaids back in. And dragons, and vampires, and werewolves. Until then, however, she snuck away from Nanny once every few weeks, and "borrowed" some drinks for her. Her bodyguard noticed, but it didn't seem to do any harm, so he let it be.

Oh, yes. And there was her bodyguard.

Fairies are tiny little things, standing no more than .5 of a measurement high, and that's when they're fully grown. While they're still maturing, they can be as tiny as .1 measurements, and they grow fairly steadily until they hit 16 or so.

Ogres, on the other hand, are huge. The average ogre stands 4 measurements tall, however the particularly well grown one have been known to get as large as 5. If they didn't have magic, a troupe of eighty fairies could be wiped out by one well-trained ogre, and even with magic, the odds are still pretty good for the ogre.

Fortunately, fairies are clever enough to avoid direct combat with an ogre, and ogres are rarely clever enough to be well trained.

King Azzle had never been married. The full explanation for how Princess Azma came to be had never been explained, however she bore the royal birthmark, and so no one dared to question Azzle about her. And his devotion to his daughter was unquestioned: she got everything that a fairy princess could ever want, and much more besides. Their brief conflict over the matter of mermaids was the only time that the two ever fought, there was clearly a great deal of love between the two.

And so Azzle spared no expense when it came to the matter of security, either.

Despite being nearly ten times her height, and well over one hundred times her weight, Thud was the most careful bodyguard one could imagine. Not once did he accidentally step on Azma, any of her possessions, or even the tiny little doll-houses she made out of twigs. And although he was completely incapable of stepping inside the palace (the roof only went up to his nipples) Thud managed to ensure that she was safe at all times, though he preferred it when she played out in the garden.

In the garden, he could see what was happening. When she was in the palace, he couldn't do much other than parole the perimeter (not hard for him, he could walk around the entire palace in 15 steps: 6, if he was in a hurry) and play close attention to the "Detect Magic" bucket that Nanny had so kindly enchanted for him. Magic was banned inside the palace as long as Azma was playing inside there, Thud treated any spell as an assassin teleporting inside. The day that Azma cast her first spell, he'd ripped the roof clear off. It would have cost anyone else a fortune to repair, but of course, the local roof-masters all (reluctantly) volunteered to do so for free.

Azma's relationship with Thud was as good as a .25m fairy's can be with her 4.5m, ogre bodyguard. Azma found it extraordinarily comforting that she could look up, no matter where she was, and see him standing there, making sure that she was okay. On nights when she couldn't sleep, she'd walk over to the window, and watch his enormous chest rise and fall, as he lay on the ground outside the palace, his detect magic bucket right next to his ear.

Similarly, Thud had a strong fondness for Azma. His family went back ten generations of noble bodyguarding. His great-great-grandfather, Kud, had moved to Thebaz from The Heartland, during the Human/Ogre war. Ogres and Orcs weren't popular at all in the Heartland, however while the war was over, Thud preferred fairies over humans any day. They were smaller, and you could keep a better eye on them, and they didn't hold a grudge against you for your ancestors killing their ancestors. (never mind the fact that Thud's ancestors were official bodyguards of human royalty.)

When the King had asked Thud who put the idea of mermaids into Azma's head, Thud stayed quiet. Firstly, it wasn't his place to say, secondly, he quite liked Nanny, and thirdly, if she was fired, a new Nanny would have to be hired. And Thud trusted Nanny more than anyone else. He didn't want to lose that, didn't want to be constantly second-guessing a new Nanny.

Thud was more intelligent than the average ogre, which isn't saying a lot, but what he lacked in intelligence, he made up for in patience and strength. Twenty years in Bodyguard Academy, topping every class, he was capable of protecting the palace against arrows, angels, dragons, and mermaids, all at the same time.

The one thing he couldn't protect her against, however, was magic.

Azma heard them talking about it all the time. Nanny agreed that it was unfair, but there was nothing that they could do about it. Ogres simply weren't cut out for magic - even if Thud spent a few hours every day which he couldn't spare practicing his magic, abandoned his weapon and pulled out a magical focus, and changed his God of worship to Solomon himself, he'd still only have a 50% spell chance at best. Currently, he had less than 1% chance of successfully casting a spell.

Azma was amazed when she discovered this. Her failure rate was less than 1%. If she entered a magical duel with Thud, he'd only succeed as often as she failed, and to date, she had never failed a spell. No wonder he was so nervous about magical attack: if he didn't get to the perpetrator in time, no amount of shields or weapons would stop it, and she'd be...

She'd be dead.

Azma didn't really understand death. Daddy had told her that her mother had gone far far away, but she had assumed he simply meant somewhere like Narcarbia, the Pirate homeland. When she asked Nanny about this, Nanny hadn't been able to shed any light on the matter: for all she knew, that's where Azma's mother was.

But Azma did know, from some of her lessons, that once you were dead, you weren't coming back. And if Azma died before Azzle did, Azma would never get to be king. And Azma very much wanted to be king.

So Azma wondered why her father didn't listen, why her father didn't do what Thud suggested, and just ban magic. If no one could cast non-approved magic, then there would be no chance of assassination. Besides which, it didn't seem fair. Magical creatures, like Fairies, Angels or Elves - why should they be allowed to cast magic, when people like Ogres or Orcs could not?

Daddy had simply suggested that Thud invest in a Dispel charm of some kind, and had moved on to the next item of business, before Thud could explain that since he couldn't cast a dispel spell, he'd have to get a dispel amulet. And dispel amulets didn't work, because they dispelled the spell they were casting on the dispel amulet in the first place.

So Azma thought about it, and decided that when she was Queen, she'd simply outlaw magic without a permit. While some people would certainly be unhappy about this, after a few years, they'd work out that it was the only way to go. Besides, from the stories, she'd learned that mermaids, vampires...any kind of PARA, in fact, were completely unable to do magic as well, and so really, it would just be creating a more equal world.

Princess Azma was 19 when her father died. For the first few days, she didn't really understand. Everyone was crying, and Nanny was refusing drinks to cheer her up. Thud was still patrolling the palace, but he had a huge, conspicuous black arm-band on. In the colourful land of Thebaz, nothing stands out more than a big black arm-band (except perhaps the ogre who wears it.)

She had been learning more and more about politics and what her duties were to be over the past three or four years, and so she knew that the public would welcome her, as a breath of fresh air to a dying monarchy. What she didn't expect was that everyone would be so sad at her father's passing. Sure, he was gone, but it wasn't like he'd done a huge amount when he was alive. At least now he was in Narcarbia, with her mother.

Following Nanny's advice, however, she gave the public a week to mourn, before accepting the crown, and the responsibilities that came with it.

As she suspected, her policy changes were widely celebrated. Less tax, more holidays, and the rewelcoming of mermaids into fairy society. Six months into her rule, the people threw a party in her honour, and she took that happy occasion to introduce some news which might not at first be as well celebrated; as well as mermaids, dragons, vampires and werewolves were allowed to become citizens of Thebaz.

She knew that there would be an initial outcry, but was confident that everything would sort it all out. She was the Queen. Queen Azma, ruler of Thebaz, the latest of the royal line that descended right back to the beginning of creation itself. There were some who believed that she was actually descended from the Gods. She was the Queen, and thus anything which she decreed could do nothing but benefit Thebaz.

She had a plan. And so far, it was working: the citizens were happy, tourists to Thebaz had significantly increased (many of them mermaids: they were now known for celebrating diversity!) and she was loved.

So Queen Azma wasn't worried when people reacted badly to her declaration that PARA were welcome in Thebaz. She knew that they would come around.

When she had started as Queen, she had taken Nanny's advice. But once she had been monarch for a year, Nanny was dismissed. Still welcome to live in the palace, she was sure to be rehired once Queen Azma had royal children, but ruling a country was work for those of the royal bloodline, not those hired to watch babies.

Nanny accepted the offer to live in the palace, but took to leaving her room less and less, while the piles of bottles that the servants snuck out every morning grew more and more.

Thud had disapproved of her letting Nanny go, but while Azma had nothing but respect for his work as a bodyguard, he was hardly of her superior intelligence. She knew what she was doing when she let Nanny go, and his attention was better focussed on making sure that no one killed her. She couldn't afford to die, not when she still had a glorious plan to continue.

Queen Azma waited for the ruckus to settle down before introducing the next part of her plan. It took longer than she expected, but then, most people weren't of royal bloodline. Most people couldn't immediately see the brilliant simplicity of her actions. They weren't to be blamed, just pitied.

So when it became apparent that people weren't going to see what she had planned, she decided to simply wait 500 days, a full year, before carrying out the next step in her plan.

Thud wasn't surprised when Azma declared magic illegal. As her constant shadow, he was privvy to all of her private meetings. He wondered how the sweet little girl he'd seen grown up had turned into this parody of an insane monarch. He watched as she cut taxes repeatedly, until the palace coffers were empty. He knew that his sense of honour meant that he'd stay as long as he got food, even when his pay ran out, but he also knew that he wouldn't be the only one. He watched as she transferred what was left of the budget into a "defense force", political jargon for "army". He couldn't do anything but watch as his most trusted friend, Nanny, drank herself sick every night, blaming herself.

He watched, because the last time he'd tried to interfere, Azma had made it abundantly clear that if he did so again, he'd soon find himself out of a job.

But when he watched her declare magic illegal, he very nearly considered quitting. He'd have to be awake for 9 hours a day to stop them now. Assassination of monarchs was much, much more common in Thebaz than Azma knew. She thought that she was the only one left of royal bloodline, but Thud knew that the second she was found dead, ten people would turn up claiming to be of royal bloodline, and not all of them would be wrong.

The first year after the new ruling was the toughest. The people of Eb were the most shocked. The neutral land between Az and Thland was full of all kind of misfits, most of whom had moved to Thebaz partly for the beautiful land, but mostly for the constant presence of magic that could be found here. Houses built by hand were extremely rare, with most fairies and new Thebazians living in flowers, magically grown by the magical builders. To get a licence under Azma's new rule was costly, and could take anywhere up to 400 days.

And so, being Neutral people, they had no qualms about getting rid of this threat to their freedom. The bounty on Azma reached epic proportions, and Thud's prediction of 1 hour sleep per day wasn't met for several months. He had to survive on a few minutes whereever he could get it. He had to call on the army several times, though they were busy killing anyone who broke the new magic law. Azma wanted to make sure that people realised she was serious.

The bounty on Thud himself at one point reached half the size of Azma's, such was his skill at preventing Azma's death.

Azma, of course, remained blissfully unaware of this. Her focus was on people who refused to fall into place in her plan, her glorious plan. It was working, of course, she knew it would, it just wasn't working very well yet. Rather than realise the brilliance of limiting magic, people were rebelling, and the only way to make them fall into place was by making examples of those who refused to.

And then there was Frankel. Azma had been raised on the Uncle Chum and Aunt Lovely scrolls, though her father vaguely disapproved of her reading about humans. At first, she had thought she had found an ally, someone who was actually behind her new regulations, someone who realised that the royal bloodline was more than just a Blessing from the gods, it was an assurance that she knew what was best for her country as well.

But then he had played a nasty trick on her, putting a thinly-veiled character into one of his scrolls, whom mocked her at every turn. Where Azma was clever, this character was stupid: where Azma was dedicated, this character changed her mind whenever the wind changed, with her whims being carried out in a haphazard way completely unlike Azma's plan.

And worst of all, the little Peedling had snuck out of town before she could have him executed. If you were going to slander someone's name, the least you could do was hang around for your punishment.

She had declared him dead, and rounded up a Peedling of her own: Plumley, who had never written children's scrolls before, but had worked for her father's propaganda department for a good ten years. Admittedly, her father hadn't used a lot of propaganda, but then, he had never had someone putting him in a scroll and making fun of him, either.

Azma didn't even notice when Nanny stopped leaving her room. She didn't even notice the black band around Thud's arm. No, Queen Azma had a plan, and she didn't have time for anything else. She would need the co-operation of every fairy in Thebaz, and if that meant killing anyone who refused to cooperate, then so be it.

Queen Azma had been born in Thebaz, and she would order one thousand executions, and watch one thousand fairy deaths before she let an inept public ruin the country she loved.



Woo, that was a long one, wasn't it! I think that it works rather nicely with Frankel's. Similarly weak structure, but as I said, I'm just getting back into the hang of writing. That's the end of their little mini-story, at least until I actually sit down and write the Vizard of Az. Tomorrow I'm going out to see some improv comedy, but the day after that, I'll start writing about a different group of characters: a Dwarf, a Gnome, a cursed Demon, and an enchanted Human.