Notes from Small Planets

by Nate Crowley

  — TESTIMONIALS —

  I had a lovely week staying with a Sorcerer who’d converted the bottom of his tower into a B&B. It was a bit weird when I went to the kitchen for a glass of water at 3 a.m. and found him sewing a hyena’s head onto a man’s body, dripping glowing fluid onto the stitches. But everyone’s got to have a hobby, you know?

  — Rex Blap, 42, Sales Consultant

  By Grum, it’s hard to remember there was another life, once. I was weak then; a fool, in thrall to some manner of recruitment business. A few of ‘the girls’ decided to go on holiday to celebrate Siobhán’s divorce; thought they’d go somewhere with lots of oil and muscles. Pah! They knew not the glory of Grondorra! And yes, muscles and oil are a large part of that glory, but there’s so much more. Those so-called friends betrayed me: I ended up enslaved, chained to a millwheel for ten years, where I developed my astonishing physique. But it was not only my magnificent thighs that grew strong during that gruelling decade: so too did my mind. I learned the error of trusting in your friends – of trusting in anything except the steel in your own heart. Eventually, I grew strong enough to break free, using the millwheel itself to crush my captors, and now I wander the world, using this mighty disc of stone to secure everything I desire. Life on Grondorra is what I make of it, and so life is good! Now give me all of your possessions, or I will flatten your head with my millwheel.

  — Janet the Batterer, Headwoman of the Crimson Jackals

  1. WELCOME TO MUNDANIA

  Once upon a time, this was one of the most picturesque, charming – dare one even say ‘twee’? – destinations among the Worlds: an ordinary place full of ordinary people, with a secret mirror-world of Wizardes. A fabulous tapestry, begging the curious to tug loose threads. Alas, that tapestry has … unravelled a bit. But the resulting mess offers a unique blend of grit and whimsy.

  Why Mundania?

  Mundania’s population has always been divided, thanks to its unique position as an entirely non-magical world laced with hidden regions where magic is emphatically real. The inhabitants of Whimsicalia, the magical world, are known as Wizardes,[1] and have always referred to their disenchanted counterparts as the Mundanes.

  The real beauty of the situation was always that the Mundanes (with the exception of a regular trickle of gifted young people chosen to join the Wizardes) had no idea of the splendour existing right under their noses as they went about their drudgework, while the Wizardes could flit in and out of concealed Whimsicalia at will. To be their guest was like attending a speakeasy on a planetary scale: a drab exterior, revealing utter fabulosity to those with the password.

  Alas, nothing lasts for ever. The awkwardness that transpired a few years ago was certainly unfortunate,[2], [3] but few would disagree that it was bound to happen sooner or later. And besides, with the ceasefire having held for more than a year now, and most Mundanes returned to blissful ignorance of their situation, tourists are once again free to enjoy the best of both worlds.

  WHY MUNDANIA IS MAGIC TO ME

  By Jenny Moonwish, Demolitions Expert for House Wurblyflop

  I always knew deep down that I was special, but I didn’t realise just how special, until I got the letter. Looking back on it now, it seems unreal: I’d dropped out of college and was working at a recruitment consultancy, and one day this bat flies in and drops a scroll in my coffee. Says I’ve been summoned to a place called ‘Greeblewhoz’ (a magic school, apparently – how mad is that?) and that I’m to enrol as a matter of urgency. So I quit my job and head there, and I’ve not been there five minutes when this talking Skeleton gives me a scarf and tells me I’m in House Wurblyflop. I told the headmaster I thought I was a bit old to be starting school, but he said something about ‘making up the numbers’ and went back to frowning at his map. I’ve gotta say, my education was pretty brief – just a few weeks – and mostly focused on blowing stuff up. But it was blowing stuff up with magic! Floyd’s told me to skip over what happened after basic training, and that’s fine with me – our field trips were really scary. But things are looking up now; the trouble’s over, and me and my surviving housemates are proper Wizardes! We get to hang out with all kinds of magical creatures and get all the bunglebean juice we want. It’s a great painkiller. I know I can’t ever return home, but the way I see it, my real family are all here in Whimsicalia, and I’ll kill for them again if I have to.

  I would be the last person to pretend this isn’t a destination with some wounds,[4] and I must stress that sensitivity to the recent upset should be at the top of anyone’s mind when touring Mundania. However, with the right paperwork and a good instinct for avoiding trouble, visitors will find this a singularly enchanting place, where anyone – or at least those with the right powers – can do amazing things.

  ‘Can’t Miss’ Experiences

  1 Attend Wizarde school

  The famed Greeblewhoz Academy has been training young Mundanes into magic users for centuries, and is a cornerstone of Wizarde culture – all the most famous Wizardes studied there, and nobody gets far in magical society without a ‘Greebs’ education. The institution isn’t quite what it used to be – the recent unpleasantness rather curtailed its curriculum[5] and saw the fabled halls become a little more austere – but things are slowly getting back to normal, under the steady hand of Headmaster Candleflash. Tourists shouldn’t miss the chance to be sorted into one of Greeblewhoz’s ancient Houses by Mr Grinnywithers, the school’s famous talking Skeleton.

  2 Discover fantastic beasts and get trashed with them

  While the Mundane world is covered in a dismal patchwork of commercial farms and suburban sprawl,[6] its magical pockets are full of deep, pristine forests and gleaming mountains, still thronging with the magical creatures that always lived there. What’s more, many of these ancient species are highly intelligent, from hybrids such as Centaurs and Taszraks to Klatterlings, Bogberts and other strange peoples. All are long-term allies of the Wizardes, and – with the notable exception of the ancient Faeyrie, who have retreated into the deepest woods of late – they always tend to be up for a shindig.

  3 Cast your first magic spell

  Whimsicalia is absolutely dripping with magical energy, and tends to reveal at least a modicum of thaumaturgic capability in most offworld visitors. Even better, the magic itself isn’t that hard to use: under the watchful eyes of a Greeblewhoz tutor you can go from being a complete novice to levitating a small hound in a little under a week.[7] Of course, the magic won’t stay with you when you go home – but isn’t that as good an incentive as any to go back?

  4 Play Grunche

  Of all the games and sports that have evolved across the Worlds, perhaps none is more celebrated than Grunche. This joyfully anarchic pursuit requires a panoply of skills, as participants are levitated around the pitch in cauldrons by their teammates, barging into their opponents in an attempt to … well. OK. The rules take a good while to explain, but once you get the broad idea and realise that 90 per cent of play is irrelevant to who wins in the end, it’s an utter hoot to spectate.

  Region by Region

  In this guide, we’ll focus on the island of Albionus, the heart of Wizardely society. There are other countries, of course, but they seem mostly there to add flavour and frankly aren’t as important.

  1 Lundowne

  Lundowne is the Mundane capital of Albionus, and – since the peace agreement outlawed unsanctioned portals – the only place tourists can travel between the Worlds, on the famous Dead Toad Road. It’s also home to the official Wizarde ministry, the concealed Department of Magic, where simpering mages in brightly striped suits act as a figurehead government for Whimsicalia.[8]

  2 Greeblewhoz Academy

  Rebuilt and extended by countless generations of Wizardes, the once-humble castle of Greeblewhoz now sprawls over countless acres of pristine highland in the far north of Albionus. That may seem a little big for a school that only takes in a few-hundred students a year,[9] but those students are very
special people, and they deserve it. Besides, Greeblewhoz is more than just the Academy: it’s the de facto capital of magical society.[10]

  3 Chumbleton

  Although it was razed to the ground during the war, the Wizardes made it a point of pride to rebuild the charming village of Chumbleton even more beautifully than before. On the edge of the Enchanted Forest, just a few miles from Greeblewhoz, its wonky, timber-framed cottages provide an ideal location for the Academy’s elites to kick back with the rest of magical society.

  4 The Enchanted Forest

  Much of Whimsicalia is swathed in enchanted forest, but this stretch of primeval woodland is particularly … foresty,[11] and particularly enchanted. In its sun-stippled margins, one can enjoy lazy afternoons watching jewelled bees gather sparklepollen from the carpet of flowers, their low hum harmonising with the susurrations of the leaves. Just … stay in the margins. The heart of the forest remains the domain of the Faeyrie, and even Greeblewhoz headmasters are in the habit of asking permission before going too deep in.[12]

  5 Crickledale

  Crickledale, a county of chilly, rain-slick hillsides where the sky is enchanted into a permanent state of gloom, is the ancestral home of the Dark Wizardes. Here they gather, with their velvet capes and astonishing bone structure, to mutter about their own superiority to everyone else over meals of black wine.[13]

  THE HOUSES OF GREEBLEWHOZ

  BOLDERBIFF

  Despite pages of rather unconvincing denial in the Academy’s prospectus, this is where Mr Grinnywithers puts all the most heroic students. Bolderbiff members are brave, strong, handsome and charismatic, and tend to have brilliant self-esteem. They were natural choices as officers during the recent bother war.[14]

  (House Sigil: an owl with muscular arms instead of wings)

  JAGGLETON

  Generally likeable but a bit awkward and far too smart to like yourself? You’re a classic fit for Jaggleton. The house for high achievers and nerds, Jaggleton supplied many of the finest minds in Greeblewhoz’s R&D dungeon, as well as many of the spies who worked behind Mundane lines during the … war.[15]

  (House Sigil: an octopus with horn-rim spectacles)

  SNYX

  One look at the logo of House Snyx tells you all you need to know – this is the house for Cool Bad Guys. It’s virtually impossible to be taken seriously in Dark Wizarde society without being a Snyx alumnus, and graduates favour an overabundance of capes and black leather in their aesthetic. During the war, Snyx trained assassins, saboteurs and commandos.

  (House Sigil: a spider smoking a cigarette)

  WURBLYFLOP

  With a body of students outnumbering all the other houses put together, House Wurblyflop has always been a sort of catch-all bucket for students with reasonable magic potential but few other defining characteristics. During the war, Wurblyflop alumni were what an unkind commentator might call cannon fodder. (House Sigil: a slightly ill-looking hound)

  6 Blacklox Prison

  Rising from the storm-lashed waters off the northern coast, Blacklox prison was built at the war’s end by a combined force of Wizarde and Mundane engineers, and remains under shared control of both of Albionus’ governments. War criminals from both sides are incarcerated here, but two in particular are especially notorious, kept in clammy cells far below sea level.

  7 Drungsleydale Memorial Power Facility

  The DMPF stands where the Mundane city of Drungsleydale used to, before a spell of terrifying magnitude turned it into a glass-floored crater. Now this defiant hulk of a structure provides electricity to most of northern Albionus, and forms the centre of an extensive research complex, kept under a veil of total secrecy by the Mundane government.

  2. UNDERSTANDING MUNDANIA

  A Brief History[16]

  You know much of the history of Mundania already: a world divided, with the bulk of humanity toiling away in brutish ignorance of the realm of magical bliss lying just under their noses. Meanwhile, an elite slice of the species, chosen via genetic lottery, enjoyed access to this other reality, as custodians of its wondrous bounty. It was a totally fair situation and should have lasted for ever.

  Deathwish and Miller

  The situation couldn’t last for ever. A sizeable faction of the Wizardes – the Dark ones – wanted to openly subjugate the Mundanes, while the ‘Light’ Wizardes simply wanted to manipulate them in secret and never share their stuff with them.[17] After simmering for centuries, this tension seemed certain to boil over when an ancient Crickledale aristocrat known as Baron Deathwish squared up to Beatrix Miller, a Greeblewhoz sixth former prophesied to be the champion of Light Wizardery. The seemingly inevitable conflict was averted, however.[18]

  The paragraph Eliza has forced me to write[19]

  All right, then. It wasn’t so much that the Dark/Light conflict was averted as made irrelevant by a much bigger crisis. Which was a bit to do with me. You see, around this time there was all sorts of rubbish in the press about my buying personal favours by selling guns to the Bison King on Mittelvelde. It was all a complete misunderstanding, but I was getting a lot of flak for the proxy oppression of Orcs and it was highly embarrassing. My solution was quite elegant: I made a public trip to Mittelvelde, found an underprivileged Orc that one of our freelancers had visited – Benedict, he was called – and offered him a scholarship, funded by my good self, at Greeblewhoz. I thought he’d love it, and the press would too.

  It was all Benedict’s fault

  Unfortunately, Benedict did not play ball. He made it to his first formal dinner before stamping demonstratively on his Wizarde hat and storming out. I tried to follow him,[20] but he’d gone straight to Chumbleton and portalled to the Mundane city of Drungsleydale. There, he went to a pub, climbed up on a table and told the crowd that on a nearby industrial estate lay a gateway to a world where the solutions to all humanity’s problems were being kept out of reach by a cabal of magicians. The crowd would have reacted in disbelief were they not being told this by an Orc. As it was, they went completely apeshit, formed a mob and rampaged through Benedict’s portal to burn Chumbleton to the ground.

  The War

  As magical boltholes were discovered all over Albionus, mob incursions spread like wildfire. The Wizardes were quick to retaliate, enacting magical guerrilla violence across dozens of Mundane cities. The Wizardes were outnumbered, but their mastery of portal magic – and their willingness to fight with fanatic Greeblewhoz-trained teenagers – gave them the upper hand. After two years of vicious fighting, things came to a head when Beatrix Miller was captured, imprisoned at Mundane central command in Drungsleydale and scheduled for public execution. Then the unthinkable happened.

  The Girl Who (Crucially) Did Not Die

  At dawn, as the firing squad lined up, Baron Deathwish himself came screaming out of the sky in a flying cauldron, leading a squadron of elite Dark Wizardes. Despite being Miller’s sworn nemesis, the Baron found the prospect of the Mundanes winning the war unthinkable. He threw a magical shield around the girl Wizarde right as the first bullet struck her chest – earning her the moniker ‘The Girl Who Did Not Die’ – and had his minions form a protective circle around her as Mundane soldiers rushed in.

  The Atrocity

  Outnumbered and faced with the certainty of death or capture, the Baron suggested a monstrous gambit, and the pure-hearted Miller reacted with horror. She begged the Baron not to go through with his plan, but he did it anyway: siphoning the younger Wizarde’s power and adding it to his own, the Baron unleashed a blast of energy that annihilated the city and its inhabitants. The exertion left both mages unconscious at the centre of the devastation, and when horrified Mundane reinforcements arrived, Miller and the Baron were captured.

  Mundania Today

  The Drungsleydale atrocity ended the war. The Mundanes couldn’t stand more losses on that scale, and the Wizardes couldn’t risk losing both their leaders, not to mention the hundreds of prisoners (wizoners?)[21] already incarcerated. A ceas
efire agreement was signed, under the following stipulations:

  Miller and Deathwish were to be locked away under the newly constructed Blacklox Prison.

  All portals between Mundania and Whimsicalia enclaves were to be shut down, except sanctioned gateways in Lundowne, ending free movement between the magical and non-magical worlds.

  99.9 per cent of the Mundane population were to have their memories of the war, and of the existence of Whimsicalia, magically torn from their brains,[22] with only a thin sliver of government figures and military personnel permitted to remember on a need-to-know basis.

  Vague promises were made by the Wizardes about ‘sharing some of their stuff’.

  It’s now been eighteen months since the ratification of the ceasefire, and peace has once more returned to Mundania. There are tensions, to be certain, and plenty of rumours of trouble to come, but while neither side has a strategic advantage over the other, the ceasefire endures.[23]

  Climate and Terrain[24]

  Albionus has a climate best described as underwhelming, and the landscape is mediocre at best, comprising spiderwebs of suburban sprawl and tracts of soggy farmland bracketed by carrier-bag-haunted motorways. Whimsicalia, however, is the country Albionus wishes it was, and which Mundane pensioners swear it used to resemble. Lush, dark forests blanket the land – broken here and there by pristine mountains – and cradle wide swathes of idyllic meadows. The weather is glorious in summer and dramatic in the colder months, with midwinter bringing a gorgeous spell of frosty stillness.[25]