Green Serpent 2nd version
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The Tale of a 1894 to 1905 era British coal burning
steam ship with dragon-headed people aboard her
“ fiery eyes stillness of my serpent
It's not as dangerous without the Green Serpent “
Green Serpent ( unknown songwriter/singer )
TTOA1894
Once upon a time,long long ago there lived a society of feral western dragons who yearned to be human.Since they lived long before the homo sapiens came along,it was a bit of a quirk.
They had learned magic to reshape their bodies,to become smaller,more slender,more like us. And like us that transformational magic cost money to do the changes required to go from being a four footed winged flame breather to becoming a biped perhaps ninety nine times smaller in size and weight .
So that society had evolved over time to include the poorer folk,who couldn't afford the transformational magics and went about their feral dragon affairs.
There were the lower level of the in-betweens,who could just afford the shrinking magics,that allowed them to get rid of all that feral dragon mass and bulk,but not the anatomy.
There were the upper level of the in-betweens,who were just wealthy enough to purchase the shrinking magic and enough of the other kind so that at a distance you might be fooled into thinking they were human. Get up close however and you'd notice the snouty reptilian face or perhaps the spiky tail hidden under a skirt.
And then there were the rich dragons and the aristocrats,who had achieved human perfection to the 99th degree.These folk lived happily on the upper penthouse suites and wouldn't be caught dead around a feral western.( not in public anyways )
Death however was the great leveller.For when a dragon,no matter what his/her place was ,died,the transformational magics fell apart and they returned to their natural feral western dragon shape.
However the rich folk could always arrange for a private burial service.
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It was the Age of Steam for this society,and their serpent headed iron hulled dragon boats had boilers,coal bunkers and steam engines much like what we homo sapiens possess.
Their ships had one magical-machine technology our scientists and engineers still have to discover,the dragons-egg boiler,which required the hot fiery breath of a feral western dragon to make it operate.
The dragons-egg produced a gelatinous/watery liquid the society's wizards and engineers called controlled water,for the simple reason it could be held in place without need of embankments or retaining walls.
This allowed the dragon boats to travel on land and sea alike, much like the hovercraft homo sapiens have invented.
Controlled water did have one troubling quality to it however.It seemed to produce a sort of bottomless pool beneath its watery surface. Thus any land-sea boat unlucky enough to sink in her own pool of controlled water simply was not there anymore,but had sunk out of physical existence.
The Sea Serpente Hoare Fang was one such Controlled
Water dragon boat.
***********************************************************************
Frost Fang ,a feral,was burning off a months wages from his last job on booze again.The pub was crowded with with his mates ,the Black Gang from the SS Bernadika.His daughter Gertrude Fang had run away from home again and the missus had driven Frost out of their cave with a series of healthy roaring curses,
So Mr Fang had gone to the Laidley Worm and Three Little Pigs Tavern to inquire if anyone knew where his daughter was.They didn't.Being polite honest working ferals,they didn't want to suggest that perhaps Gertrude Fang had turned to a life of prostitution or perhaps now lay senseless in a snapdragon opium den.
The guys toasted another glass to the Lambton Worm,and then turned to the matter of finding new employment .The Bernadika was in dry dock for a refit of her dragons-egg's ,which were underpowered for the shifting geography the land sailors had to overcome.
As we all know,a millenia earlier a asteroid had wiped out the dragons kinfolk,the dinosaurs,and the oceans and lands were still in violent upheaval from that cosmic collision.
It took a higher column of controlled water to flow onto the rougher surfaces, and thus more powerful magic-machines had to be invented.
This was all fine by the ferals,who had retained the ability to breath fire whilst the pig headed upper class had refused to release their soft weak fingernail grip on their human forms.
Old habits die hard.
So Frost and the other guys were out of work for at least a half year,perhaps longer,while their ship was refitted.
And in these turbulent economic times,travel was down,trade was down and other coal stoking and flame breathing poor ferals weren't going to give up their berths on the other land sailors for Frost and his mates.
There were quiet whispers about the jinxed sea serpente,the SS Hoare Fang.Rumour was the mothballed "Ghost Liner" was being brought back into service.A half century earlier,this land sailor's designer, had foreseen the continuing upheavals to land and sea,and had installed state of the art dragons-egg boilers on his new liner.
Then Hoare Fang had impaled the Leviathon in a midships collision, and after the bigger Hoare Fang had reversed her engines.the Leviathon had capsized and sunk into her own bottomless pool of controlled water.
The Leviathon had left no trace.
But shortly after the tragedy,passengers aboard the Hoare Fang reported slimy weed covered dead feral dragons,the crew and passengers of the lost Leviathon,were somehow squeezing themselves through the portholes on moonlit nights and bedding with the terrified rich folk.
The SS Hoare Fang had become a ship plagued by her victims.The boat ruined the company operating her.After the bankruptcy the jinx ship had been towed to a weedy patch of land ,her engines shut down and she'd settled to the ground,apparently abandoned.
Times change.
****************************************************************************************
Gertrude Fang,a feral,stood on all fours outside Madam Peluda's Cabaret.She had spent her entire young life around the ferals her mum and dad hung out with,She'd never realized just how tiny were the buildings and entrance ways of the in-betweens.
As a feral female,all Gertrude could expect as a adult was to lay eggs,hunt and raise dragonets.Her society frowned upon women working in the big feral decks of the dragon boats.
Not that Frost would have let his daughter join him in the stinking coal dust clogged and hot steamy bottom feral deck of a dragon boat.
She'd hoped to get a job as a waitress in one of the in-betweens establishments,However that kind of shrinking magic was beyond a working poor feral family's financial ability.
Rumour had it amongst the girls that if you were willing to sacrifice your maidenhood and become a hooker,there were pimps in the in-between red light district who could supply the gold or the magic you needed to get into in-between society.
Briefly Gertrude considered making that choice,but when a sleazy looking in-betweener approached her,she hastily backed away, roaring
" No no no" as she charged off in a galloping gait out of the in-between quarters.
*********************************************************
Frost had downed his glass of Boothe's Finest 68 and was puffing on a fag,staring at the Laidley Worm's other patrons. The cosmic collision a thousand years earlier had affected peoples the dragons hadn't even been aware existed,
With all the upheavals overseas some of those landless
refugees had hitched rides on land sailor freighters back to
the dragon ports.
As usual,the government had fallen over backwards to accommodate the Grimmsland folk,even though the government could barely cope with the needs of its own native dragon citizens.
The Grimm's hadn't posed much of a threat to most of the
draconic job market,but if you were a merchant or a tavern keeper
watch out.The Laidley Worm's owner,a honest hard working
in-betweener named Meg,had been forced by the tough times
to take in three Grimms as co-partners.
The three pig brothers,who had added the signboard
“and the Three Little Pigs”,were busy serving to the
Laidley's new clientele,fellow Grimms.
Frost watched as one of the oinking little porkers
waddled up to one of the smaller tables,where a wolfish
fellow with a beat up hat sat drinking away his sorrows in
a shot glass of '68.
Most of the Grimm's wouldn't touch Boothe's
feral booze,but this Big Bad Wolf had come in a hour
ago wailing about his marriage breakdown with some
Grimm lass named Goldilocks.
The little pig oinked as he came to the wolf's table
and said
“ Say,do I know you from somewhere? “
*********************************************************
Maximillian Morgan,a upper level in-betweener ,had dragon
diabetes.
As we all know,the humanizing transformation magic the
dragons use ends upon death.However even the most potent
pure white powder that the rich folk use only lasts a month
before its effects wear off.
For a in-between like Max,the prescription employee benefit plan offered by the Institute for Controlled Water Studies allowed him to buy the three or ten day tri-paks at a decent subsidized price.
However because he had dragon diabetes,the humanizing transformative magics in his body tended to either be too high or too low if he didn't keep track of his levels.( too high or too low glucose-magic )
He'd had instances where he hadn't eaten enough before
a reversion,had a collapse in the magic,and awakened in his
natural feral form unable to lift so much as a talon.( hypoglycemia)
The reverse had also happened,where in feral form Max the Controlled Water engineer-officer had eaten what he considered to be a dainty meal.Then after taking the magic and shrinking ninety nine times in both mass and volume,that 'dainty 'meal's energy had kept him bouncing off the walls with excess zip for days afterward.
After he'd taken another combined shot of insulin and
a Homopure 3 from his medicine chest,Max got ready for his
lecture to the students of Icey Woo ,as the Institute was
nicknamed by the faculty and students.
Todays class was about “What Lies Beneath the
Surface? “ and the labs would be giving the newbies a
chance to walk on the surface of Controlled Water and the
lucky few would (with safety harness on) take a dip below
the materials calm surface,and into another dimension.
**************************************************************
Sloan's son was making the deliveries in the West Side
of the In-between quarter.His dad,Sloan the feral tough guy
crime boss,wanted his son to learn some more about the
family business.
A business that included the distribution and sale of
nerve burning nine hour and three day unlicensed magic,as well as
a franchised chain of Diabolique Relicque speakeasies where
various walks of dragon society came to unwind and be a little
daring.
Many a feral dragoness,tired of the 24 hour cycle of
hunting,baby making and baby raising,made use of Sloans
product to become a in-between,and then show their wares
on a Diabolique stripper platform to the hoots and jeers of
the mostly male dragon crowd.
Though the odd Grimm crocodile ,pig or wolf visited
the dirty dens as well.
*************************************************************
Edward Morgan was the brother of Maximillian Morgan
During the day he was a manager for a troupe of vaudeville
dragons and dragoness's.
Due to his brothers diabetic condition,and the
practical economics aspects of keeping a troupe of
nine dragon entertainers supplied with humanizing magic,
Edward had self taught himself on how to manufacture
the magic .
He had a illegal crystal-magic laboratory in one of the seedier parts of the feral quarter.He made small batches of 9 hour and twenty four hour homopure.
On the feral streets he went by the name of Fast Eddy.
Fast Eddy didn't know Gertrude Fang,but he did know her ex-boyfriend,Sloan's son.
***********************************************************
Robert L. Boothe,one third owner of the beached land sailer passenger liner SS Hoare Fang,was having a bad day.
Though he was rich enough ,through the sales of Boothe's Finest 68,to buy the best in humanizing magic he steadfastly refused to go all the way to achieving human perfection,as most of his fellow dragons aspired to.
Instead the whiskey baron settled for the kind of magic the
upper class in-betweeners used.Thus Robert L.'s magnificent
human physique was jarred by the placement of a rather
snouty ,sharp toothed and fin eared dragons head on top of
that Adonis like body of his.
His two co-partners,Fafnir,King of the Southern Dragons
and Fu Manchu,the Dragon Emperor of the Eastern
Empire,looked with distaste upon Robert L. as he snarled
grunted and tore hungrily into a lamb burger some Grimm
named Mary Bo Peep sold out of a concession stand
sited in the Grimm squatters camp that had sprung up
around the Hoare Fang.
Robert L. was all for hiring some feral tough guys to drive away the squatters,but Fu Manchu and Fafnir had opposed the idea.
Even though the camp would be wiped out if the
Hoare Fang's dragons-egg boilers ever got warmed up,
the Grimm squatters did receive government refugee
cheques,and some of that money was flowing into Robert L.'s
business partner's bank accounts.
The Hoare Fang might be a gold mine in the
future,but the refugees were a more immediate source of
wealth.
*******************************************************
The land sailor herself might never be returned to
a serviceable condition.
The older land sailers had used flat bottoms,and when
they were shut down,lay upright on the ground.The Hoare Fang's
designer however had given his land sailer a deep V bottom in
order for her to better move about in a turbulent land and sea in
distant parts of the globe.
When the jinxed passenger liner had been quite literally
grounded decades earlier no one had thought she'd ever be
returned to service.No provision had been made to keep her
in a upright position when the dragons-egg's were shut down.
Hoare Fang lay on her side.It was anybodies guess whether
her natural buoyancy would raise her back upright when the
Controlled Water lake rose around her.
She might just lie there,Controlled Water pouring in her
hatchways and portholes,and she'd slip beneath the surface of
a bottomless Controlled Water lake.
What feral dragon coal stoker and flame breather
would want to be down in the lowest of the Hoare Fang's
lower decks,breathing fire on the dragons-egg's,just to
perish when the Hoare Fang vanished from the face of the Earth?
Robert L. Boothe mulled over that question.
*************************************************************
It was approaching evening when Frost Fang and the others finally left the Laidley Worm and the Three Little Pigs.Frost stood off in a corner and finished off his fag.
The rest of the Black Gang of the Bernadika,somewhat more inebriated then their fellow feral,staggered off down the street singing
“ what do you do with a drunken sailor,what do you do with
a drunken sailor,what do you do with a drunken sailor earrlie in the
morn-in?”
Whilst on the shoulder of one of the drunken dragons perched a equally inebriated Big Bad Wolf,singing off key and out of sync
“Hie ho and up she rises.hie ho...”
The tavern's door opened and out came the three pig brothers,happily oinking as they carried along a sack of gold, silver and aluminum coins.
One of the porkers noticed Frost and waved a hoof at Frost calling out “ Good Evening to you Mr Fang”
So Frost trundled back to the cave,expecting to get a earful of angry roars from the missus about coming home late again.
The cave was silent and dark,except for a muffled
sobbing off to one corner.Frost was alarmed and puzzled.
Normally the cave was awash with light,so that the missus's
collection of Grimm swords,shields and armoured suits ( which
she polished daily) could be presented in the best light.
What horrible horrid thing had happened?
Frost rushed on all fours to his wife,and asked her
'Gertrude?”
Mrs F. Fang nodded and pointed her snout towards the closed iron door that led to their daughter Gertrude's private cavern.
Frost noticed the bright light leaking out along the bottom of that iron door.
“magic “ the missus whispered in a hoarse croak
“Damned human MAGIC” she got out a second time with a bit more force and a better semblance of her fiery dragoness nature.
Mr F. Fang approached the door with caution,and said
“ Gertrude? Are you in there honey? “
In response he heard the scuffling soft pitter patter of
her feet.
Then silence.
“Gertrude,I'm coming in” said Frost,and then he pushed open
her cavern door.
She was nowhere in sight.Then remembering what his wife
had told him,the big feral dragon lowered his gaze to the height a
in-betweener might stand at.
There was no Gertrude,in-between or feral.
“ Asphodel,Beelzebub Ariel” Frost exclaimed in shock as he caught sight of the tiny in-between girls clothing lying in front of Gertrude's dressing mirror.
From behind her curtained closet he could hear her
frightened sobs,not quite as loud as they normally were.
********************************************************************
After Gertrude had accepted a philter of the magic that the cagey dude named Fast Eddy had given her,a magic he told her would only last for nine hours,the trial size,Gertrude Fang had done a little shopping in the in-between womens clothing stores.
She still hadn't been certain if she would try the humanizing magic on herself.Her dad certainly wouldn't approve.
She'd had to walk home,since she only held a beginners license to use her feral wings out in less congested areas.
Her mom had been home,and Gertrude had mulled asking
her mom if she'd ever played at the in-between lifestyle.
However she hadn't, worked up the courage to ask that loaded
question
and when Mrs Fang said she'd be out for a
few hours babysitting the kids Gertrude's cousin Synthia had laid
and hatched last year,Gertrude made up her mind.
She was going to do it!
After her mom was out for the day Gertrude went into her
room ,snapped off the top of the glass philtre and downed the
white powder down her long snout and even longer throat.
Within a minute her bones ,skin,scales,teeth ,muscles
and blood were creaking,tearing,re-arranging and compressing as
the magic crunched a few tons of feral dragoness into a hundred
pounds or so of in-between.
It hurt like hell and Gertrude was too busy writhing in pain on the stone floor to immediately appreciate her altered body.
Finally however the burnt nerve throbbing died away and
Gertrude marveled at the small growth of fur that had sprouted
from the top of her reptilian scalp.Next came the discovery of
the two lumps that hung from her still lengthy torso.
She slowly got up off the floor on all four legs and immediately realized something was wrong.Her skeleton seemed off somehow,somewhat off balance.
She of course had known during the transformation that
her wings had shrunk out of existence,her tail had stayed
a perfectly normal dragon's tail,and her horns and big boned
physique and muscle had melted away.
Yet something was still off that she hadn't cottoned
onto.She swung her still lengthy neck and looked and sniffed
away at her in-between body.
Her hind legs,and her pelvis.They were not normal.Shaped like something a biped would have. Gertrude slowly raised herself upright on her hind legs and whistled in amazement as she lurched about like a duck learning to walk.
She was a biped.
Would wonders never cease?
She began playing with her in-betweener girls clothing
and the hours flew by.
Mrs Fang had come in quietly.The altered smell coming out of their home had alerted her to 'something'
So Gertrude was just opening a package containing
a weird piece of undergarment the sales lady had told her
she might need if she took the magic ( since Gertrude didn't
know what the magic would do to her physically she'd
overbought )She was trying out the BRA ( as the thing's
manufacturer called it ) on her tail <were the two foam cups
meant to protect two spikes on her tail ,how impractical a BRA
was>
“Ger-tie,what have you DONE to yourself”
roared a shocked Mrs Fang,whose wings flapped spasmodically in sympathetic shock to what the missus's mind was witnessing.
The gust of wind and hot sulfurous breath that Gertrude's
mom blasted into her daughter's room was followed seconds later
by a loud
“Boooooommmmm” as the heavy iron bedroom door
slammed shut.
Thus did Gertrude realize her dad would be even more
shocked and angry when he came home from the dock
district.
**************
Frost stared down at his now rather defenseless looking daughter.He'd seen the homopure 0003 philtre lying smashed near the BRA's box.
Being a streetwise fellow,he knew the magic would
wear off in a few hours time.So,when his frightened daughter
looked up, up and up at him,and said in a mousey squeak
“daddy?”
All Frost said was …
( Let the reader continue the tale )
Public Cel Animation license ( tentative and informal )
People are hereby invited to do a heck of a lot more then just write in this open story universe,but also to claim the above as their own story,tear it apart,rewrite it,analyze it,add dialog to it,etc
As for why someone might want to write in this open story
universe and perhaps rebuild TTOA1894... ?
Because chunks of the story/universe already exist as
short animated clips and drawings and raw inventory
Hence anyone writing
in TTOA1894 could be rewarded some day by seeing their
piece of literature morph and grow into a animation complete
with music,voice acting,visuals or perhaps a RPG video game or
even a Top 40 hit on CHUM 1010.
Public Cel Animation Contacts
Larry Barron knot_disclosed ( at ) yahoo.com
He has about 800 Mb or so of the animations he
planned to run as a torrent
Me the Pioneer queenofprussia2006 ( at ) gmail.com
Pioneer has seriously limited bandwith.However if
folk just want a cel from a clip or one of the
.jpeg visuals of the Hoare Fang, Frost, Gertrude for
research/diddling about,send Pioneer a e-mail and
time permitting I'll send a pinup of Guitar Gertie
or whatever to the interested party
Sources of raw PCA inventory
clips and cels for Gertrude Fang ( Guitar Gertie )
exist in both in-between and feral form in
the archived files of Hoare Fang Rock
and the source Dragon Crypt.Pioneer has cels
of Gertrudes tattered framed photo on the mirror
in the passenger cabin of a sunken land sailer.
clips and cels for SS Hoare Fang as a sunken wreck,a moving
land sailor and various visuals exist in the archived files
Pioneer has visuals of a broken wreck,complete with
dark black cavernous holds showing through the rotted
deck plating.
Mr Frost Fang exists as a visual of a feral
heading down the street from the Laidley Worm and the
Three Little Pigs tavern.Pioneer has cels of Frost
bursting out of buildings ,roofs,etc
Robert L Boothe is a visual in Pioneers PCA collection.
Fast Eddie is the in-between in tha visual of Guitar Gerie
in the archived files.Her stripper version.
Controlled Water-View it as a upside down moving
bowl of jelly on top over which floats the land
sailing dragon boats.The archive has concept
drawings of a land sailing dragon boat.
The Wreck: a file in the PCA archives.That little 32 second
video assumed feral dragons used magics to reshape
themselves into human forms.Then disaster strikes
and having human shaped bodies becomes a
double edged sword for the dragon-headed people.
The archive has the silent video.Pioneer has the
32 cel series broken down into .jpeg format.
SS Bernadika: there should be a Youtube video of
SS Bernadika where a ship officer-cadet
shows some homo sapien guest the heavenly
upper decks of a dragon boat.In that video the
pilothouse is located in the head of the ships
serpent figurehead.Due to a R/L tornado,much
of the original paper drawings got turned into mouse
nests and soggy mush.
Gertrude Fang's Transformation:the archived files will contain
both the anthro-Gertrude >> feral-Gertrude tf clip
and a Cellular TF series.Enough to animate a clip
from feral dragoness >> in-betweener dragoness
feral westerns breathing fire and dragons-egg boilers
separate clip and visuals of the above items exist
in the archived files
“fiery eyes..stillness of my serpent” : Pioneer has the
cels and perhaps the Green Serpent signature
tune converted to a .wmv internet format