And now, the origin story. Enjoy.
Imaginary Friends
Fairplay, Colorado
16 June 1985
Sam was kind of a weird kid. Not a bad kid by any measure, but if Leo and Betty Wildman had any real issues with their son it was that he wasn’t as outgoing as they thought an eight-year-old boy should be. Instead of playing with the other kids in town, quiet and bookish Sam was content to wander out around the fields reading material in hand, looking for a nice comfortable place to let the day pass.
It was on one of these expeditions that Sam first found the tree. It was a cottonwood, old and gnarled and standing out in the valley like a lone sentinel from the tree-covered slopes. To the mind of an eight-year-old, this discovery was simply the greatest thing ever. He climbed the tree, getting halfway up and perching on a branch to see if he could see his house from there. He swung from the branches, taking care to avoid the ones that seemed a bit creaky (the tree was quite old, after all – best to watch for rotten wood) and laughed as he pretended to be Tarzan, coming out of the jungle for the first time to track elephants on the savannah. And when he was finally done jumping about the tree, there was a nice, mossy hollow in the roots just perfect for sitting back and reading.
On his third trip to the tree, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Sitting alone in the hollow, the sun dimmed for just a second and Sam looked up to see a girl looking at him in some mild confusion. She was about Sam’s age and height, coppery-tan skin and dark eyes set in a round face and dark hair coiled up in a bun, wearing a funny kind of dress that he’d never seen before even in books. He blinked and the girl jumped a little, apparently surprised that he could see her. That was a little weird.
Well, Sam Wildman was raised to be polite, so he scrambled to his feet and stuck out a hand like his dad meeting somebody new. “Hi!” he said. “I’m Sam! Nice to meet you.” The girl looked at him blankly, cocking her head a little and then she said... something. Sam couldn’t make it out. It sounded a little like Spanish.
“Uh, sorry,” Sam said sheepishly, putting his hand back down. “I don’t understand you.” The girl frowned a little, apparently deep in thought. She then put her hand up, one finger raised directly at him. Sam picked up on the intent and mirrored the girl’s action.
Their fingertips touched and Sam could feel something electric jump from her finger (the touch was so light as to be almost insubstantial) and race down his arm. He didn’t jerk back, though, instead keeping the contact as well as he could. Girl and boy moved together, tracing a circle in the air between them. The girl smiled a little for the first time, it was small and maybe a little awkward but Sam decided with the incontrovertible logic of the small boy that he thought this girl was nice, no matter that she spoke some kind of not-Spanish moon language. He picked up his book and gestured at the tree’s hollow. The girls smile widened a bit more and she produced a book of her own.
Trimontium, Vesperian Empire
23 August 2741 a.u.c.
Flavia was an odd child. Everybody in Trimontium knew it, though none would dare say it out loud. The Nepos gens was a respected pillar of the community and to say anything against Atia and Marcus Nepos’s eldest daughter wouldn’t end well. But whispers echoed in the stillness of the valley: when she got emotional sparks would fly from her fingertips, when she entered a shop in town strange things would happen. While her parents were sure that at least some of this was exaggeration, it was clear enough that young Flavia was a witch and Marcus knew that he’d have to send her away sooner rather than later.
Two weeks after her birthday, Marcus and Atia decided the time was ripe and sat their daughter down to talk about this situation. Her powers, her need to learn how to control them and how it would mean leaving the valley for Ostianova or one of the other great cities of the Empire. They were gentle, they were saddened by the necessity but in the end they were unyielding: it was going to have to happen no matter how Flavia thought about the situation.
Flavia for her part took the discussion with stoicism, far more than anybody could have ever expected from an eleven-year-old. At the end of her father’s lengthy explanation of the situation she stood and said in a calm voice that almost broke her mother’s heart, “I understand, if it needs done then we should do it. May I be excused?” Her mother could only nod and Flavia strode from the room.
She managed to get to the villa gate before breaking into a run. Down the road, into the fields and towards the ancient cottonwood tree that stood alone in the heart of the valley, the one rock of true stability she’d had the last three years. Flavia approached the tree and saw with a mingled gladness and dread that her mystery companion was already there engrossed in one of his books. Flavia often wondered about the strange foreign boy who spoke no language she’d ever heard of, all sunburned pale skin and unruly brown hair. As her powers started to emerge she wondered if maybe he’d been summoned or conjured by some passing wish.
The boy looked up and smiled in greeting, then looked puzzled as instead of taking her usual spot against the tree Flavia carefully knelt down in front of him. “I know you don’t understand me,” she said carefully, “but I need to talk about this to somebody.” She gathered her wits and sighed. “I have... a gift. A power. Father says it’s a gift from the gods, talks about our grand and glorious heritage as descendents of Vulcan and Thunderbird and maybe he’s right, I don’t know. But I know that the power is... it’s growing, and I can’t control it like I used to. Like I should.
“Father plans to send me away to a temple where I can learn how to harness this power. I, I don’t want to go, but I need to go.” Flavia looked up and saw the boy’s concerned face. She smiled sadly. “I think this is the last time we’re going to see each other. I want you to know that even if we can’t talk to each other, you’ve been a good friend.” She held out her hand, pointing at him like she did on their first meeting and he matched it. She felt the strange electric tingle as they connected and moved their hands. Nodding sharply, Flavia stood up and brushed the dirt from her gown. “Goodbye,” she said.
Flavia left the tree and the boy behind her, not daring to look back.
The Negev Desert
3 April 2005 Mobius synchro (2758 a.u.c local)
“Don’t see anybody out there, so we probably managed to lose them.” Sam shivered. “Jesus, I forgot how goddamn gold the desert can get at night.” Flavia looked at him oddly, the tiniest hints of a smile on her face. Sam blinked. “What did I say this time?”
“You’re a very strange man, Samueli,” she said. “You swear by Christ, but you’re like no Christian I’ve ever met.”
“You’ve met many Christians?”
Flavia shrugged. “A few. Antioch and Alexandria have their share of course, and there’s more than a few back home. Nice enough, if a bit…” she shrugged a little. “Stern. They don’t like saying oaths by their god, not like you do.”
Sam winced a little like that, always the little things that marked one as an outsider. “Ah, I was raised in the faith,” Sam said, trying to laugh it off. “We parted ways a long time ago, but old habits.”
“Do you believe?”
“That gods exist? Never met one, but I’ve been in the life long enough. Do I worship? No. Haven’t found one worth the trouble. You?”
Flavia shook her head. “When I was little, I’d go to temple for the high days with my parents,” she said. “After that, I make offerings now and then but I don’t suppose I really worry about it too much. Too busy, both me and the gods. Besides,” she added wryly, “it’s a little odd to worship Minerva when she asks you to call her ‘grandmother’ in the middle of a rite.” Sam chuckled, then laughed and Flavia felt herself start to laugh a little. It wasn’t really that funny all told, but after the long day they’d had even a weak joke sounded really damn funny.
“Yeah, I suppose there is that,” he said, settling down next to her in the low lantern light. “My aunt used to talk about having a close personal relationship with Jesus, guess there is such a thing as too close for worship.”
“Your family,” Flavia said, perking up a little. “Tell me more. How does a Briton with a Christian name end up in the middle of the desert?”
“Not much to tell,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Just a poor country boy looking for adventure.”
“A familiar story,” Flavia said knowingly. “I came from the Montes Magna, from the interior of Vesperia. The beating heart of the Empire, my father used to say. It wasn’t really,” she noted, the faint warmth and low light letting her mind drift back. “Just a small village deep in the mountains.”
Sam smiled. “Sounds a lot like where I grew up, little town called Fairplay, just a wide spot in the crossroads, but it was home.”
“Yeah, little Trimontium, a cluster of buildings tucked into a hollow at the edge of a valley…”
“Mountains everywhere in all directions, framing this great green bowl…”
“The sky! The sky was so big and blue, bigger than any other sky I’ve ever seen, clouds racing past on the west wind…”
“No trees down in the valley, just grass and cows and little streams…”
“Except for one,” Flavia corrected him. “One lone tree, standing against the wind in the middle of the valley.”
“Yeah,” Sam’s voice came low and confused. “I remember that. That big… old… cottonwood.”
“And every day,” Flavia continued, “I’d go outside to the tree and I’d… I’d…”
“I’d meet with my…” The two adventurers stopped. Twisting around in the blanket, for the first time since Alexandria they actually looked at each other. Sam Wildman took in the scars and tattoos on the woman next to him, fitting her face and eyes to the faded mental picture of a girl he’d imagined knowing twenty years before. Flavia Nepos narrowed her eyes and compared the stocky, bearded man beside her to her memory of a pale boy she’d long convinced herself was a dream or an artifact of her power.
They pulled back, out from under the survival blanket, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Sam held out a trembling hand, and Flavia matched the motion. Their fingers barely touched, and moving together traced a circle in the air.
“Oh my god,” Sam murmured. “It wasn’t my imagination.”
“Dispater,” Flavia whispered. “You’re real.”
They sat there for a long minute, neither sure what to say. Sam cleared his throat. “I think,” he said a little awkwardly. “I think we haven’t been properly introduced.” He stuck out his hand again. “Hi, I’m Sam. Sam Wildman. I’m a strange visitor from another world who just met his childhood imaginary friend in a cave in the desert.”
Flavia blinked, then smiled. “Well met, Sam Wildman,” she said, taking his hand. “I’m Flavia. Flavia Julia Nepos. I’m a practicing war-witch who just met her childhood imaginary friend in a cave in the desert.”
Our Heroes
The card in front of you is perfect. Subtle off-white coloring, raised lettering, the tasteful thickness of it. Even a watermark. Christian Bale would murder your entire family for one of these. It reads:
![[Image: VnqXlmM.png]](http://i.imgur.com/VnqXlmM.png)
Sam Wildman and Flavia Nepos were born the same year and day within a mile of each other in two completely different universes. Sam was a nerdy country kid from Zero-Zero who expected to fall into a life of general obscurity once he got out of college, only to end up pulled into the original Mobius operation by his internet buddy Deidre. Flavia was the oldest girl in a family of Vesperian cattle merchants who probably would’ve been married off if she hadn’t inherited a gift for magic and a thirst for adventure from her family’s heroic ancestors.
The two would meet (again, according to their account which to be frank nobody else really understands) when Sam went searching for a missing archaeologist in the fringes of the Vesperian Empire and hired Flavia as his native guide. The missing-persons case quickly ballooned into a mad situation involving the SS Raven Division trying to acquire the (fully armed and operational) Ark of the Covenant from the Sinai. Several weeks later, the archaeologist had been returned to his university, the Time Nazis thoroughly spanked, the Ark restored to the temple in Jerusalem and Sam and Flavia walked out of her timeline to Zero-Zero with an unshakeable bond. From this bond the team Nepos & Wildman, Acquisitions was born, specializing in the dangerous and the ridiculous missions. Whenever Mobius has to stop Dr. Gravitas from imploding the Sears Tower on Parallel 129, or the United Nations needs someone to infiltrate Mid-Childa, or a pro-bono mission to root out Draka incursions, or simply moments where they’re in the right place at the right time, Nepos & Wildman have the skills, the experience and the rep to step up and get things done.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Imaginary Friends
Quote:“Time travel within our own worldline, as opposed to sidestepping to historical echoes, seems to be if not impossible then at least well beyond our capabilities for now. And yet there are moments and flashes that suggest telluric energy is not as limited as we are. Inspiration echoes in all directions.” ~ Deidre Griest, The Axis of Infinity
Fairplay, Colorado
16 June 1985
Sam was kind of a weird kid. Not a bad kid by any measure, but if Leo and Betty Wildman had any real issues with their son it was that he wasn’t as outgoing as they thought an eight-year-old boy should be. Instead of playing with the other kids in town, quiet and bookish Sam was content to wander out around the fields reading material in hand, looking for a nice comfortable place to let the day pass.
It was on one of these expeditions that Sam first found the tree. It was a cottonwood, old and gnarled and standing out in the valley like a lone sentinel from the tree-covered slopes. To the mind of an eight-year-old, this discovery was simply the greatest thing ever. He climbed the tree, getting halfway up and perching on a branch to see if he could see his house from there. He swung from the branches, taking care to avoid the ones that seemed a bit creaky (the tree was quite old, after all – best to watch for rotten wood) and laughed as he pretended to be Tarzan, coming out of the jungle for the first time to track elephants on the savannah. And when he was finally done jumping about the tree, there was a nice, mossy hollow in the roots just perfect for sitting back and reading.
On his third trip to the tree, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Sitting alone in the hollow, the sun dimmed for just a second and Sam looked up to see a girl looking at him in some mild confusion. She was about Sam’s age and height, coppery-tan skin and dark eyes set in a round face and dark hair coiled up in a bun, wearing a funny kind of dress that he’d never seen before even in books. He blinked and the girl jumped a little, apparently surprised that he could see her. That was a little weird.
Well, Sam Wildman was raised to be polite, so he scrambled to his feet and stuck out a hand like his dad meeting somebody new. “Hi!” he said. “I’m Sam! Nice to meet you.” The girl looked at him blankly, cocking her head a little and then she said... something. Sam couldn’t make it out. It sounded a little like Spanish.
“Uh, sorry,” Sam said sheepishly, putting his hand back down. “I don’t understand you.” The girl frowned a little, apparently deep in thought. She then put her hand up, one finger raised directly at him. Sam picked up on the intent and mirrored the girl’s action.
Their fingertips touched and Sam could feel something electric jump from her finger (the touch was so light as to be almost insubstantial) and race down his arm. He didn’t jerk back, though, instead keeping the contact as well as he could. Girl and boy moved together, tracing a circle in the air between them. The girl smiled a little for the first time, it was small and maybe a little awkward but Sam decided with the incontrovertible logic of the small boy that he thought this girl was nice, no matter that she spoke some kind of not-Spanish moon language. He picked up his book and gestured at the tree’s hollow. The girls smile widened a bit more and she produced a book of her own.
~***~
Trimontium, Vesperian Empire
23 August 2741 a.u.c.
Flavia was an odd child. Everybody in Trimontium knew it, though none would dare say it out loud. The Nepos gens was a respected pillar of the community and to say anything against Atia and Marcus Nepos’s eldest daughter wouldn’t end well. But whispers echoed in the stillness of the valley: when she got emotional sparks would fly from her fingertips, when she entered a shop in town strange things would happen. While her parents were sure that at least some of this was exaggeration, it was clear enough that young Flavia was a witch and Marcus knew that he’d have to send her away sooner rather than later.
Two weeks after her birthday, Marcus and Atia decided the time was ripe and sat their daughter down to talk about this situation. Her powers, her need to learn how to control them and how it would mean leaving the valley for Ostianova or one of the other great cities of the Empire. They were gentle, they were saddened by the necessity but in the end they were unyielding: it was going to have to happen no matter how Flavia thought about the situation.
Flavia for her part took the discussion with stoicism, far more than anybody could have ever expected from an eleven-year-old. At the end of her father’s lengthy explanation of the situation she stood and said in a calm voice that almost broke her mother’s heart, “I understand, if it needs done then we should do it. May I be excused?” Her mother could only nod and Flavia strode from the room.
She managed to get to the villa gate before breaking into a run. Down the road, into the fields and towards the ancient cottonwood tree that stood alone in the heart of the valley, the one rock of true stability she’d had the last three years. Flavia approached the tree and saw with a mingled gladness and dread that her mystery companion was already there engrossed in one of his books. Flavia often wondered about the strange foreign boy who spoke no language she’d ever heard of, all sunburned pale skin and unruly brown hair. As her powers started to emerge she wondered if maybe he’d been summoned or conjured by some passing wish.
The boy looked up and smiled in greeting, then looked puzzled as instead of taking her usual spot against the tree Flavia carefully knelt down in front of him. “I know you don’t understand me,” she said carefully, “but I need to talk about this to somebody.” She gathered her wits and sighed. “I have... a gift. A power. Father says it’s a gift from the gods, talks about our grand and glorious heritage as descendents of Vulcan and Thunderbird and maybe he’s right, I don’t know. But I know that the power is... it’s growing, and I can’t control it like I used to. Like I should.
“Father plans to send me away to a temple where I can learn how to harness this power. I, I don’t want to go, but I need to go.” Flavia looked up and saw the boy’s concerned face. She smiled sadly. “I think this is the last time we’re going to see each other. I want you to know that even if we can’t talk to each other, you’ve been a good friend.” She held out her hand, pointing at him like she did on their first meeting and he matched it. She felt the strange electric tingle as they connected and moved their hands. Nodding sharply, Flavia stood up and brushed the dirt from her gown. “Goodbye,” she said.
Flavia left the tree and the boy behind her, not daring to look back.
~***~
The Negev Desert
3 April 2005 Mobius synchro (2758 a.u.c local)
“Don’t see anybody out there, so we probably managed to lose them.” Sam shivered. “Jesus, I forgot how goddamn gold the desert can get at night.” Flavia looked at him oddly, the tiniest hints of a smile on her face. Sam blinked. “What did I say this time?”
“You’re a very strange man, Samueli,” she said. “You swear by Christ, but you’re like no Christian I’ve ever met.”
“You’ve met many Christians?”
Flavia shrugged. “A few. Antioch and Alexandria have their share of course, and there’s more than a few back home. Nice enough, if a bit…” she shrugged a little. “Stern. They don’t like saying oaths by their god, not like you do.”
Sam winced a little like that, always the little things that marked one as an outsider. “Ah, I was raised in the faith,” Sam said, trying to laugh it off. “We parted ways a long time ago, but old habits.”
“Do you believe?”
“That gods exist? Never met one, but I’ve been in the life long enough. Do I worship? No. Haven’t found one worth the trouble. You?”
Flavia shook her head. “When I was little, I’d go to temple for the high days with my parents,” she said. “After that, I make offerings now and then but I don’t suppose I really worry about it too much. Too busy, both me and the gods. Besides,” she added wryly, “it’s a little odd to worship Minerva when she asks you to call her ‘grandmother’ in the middle of a rite.” Sam chuckled, then laughed and Flavia felt herself start to laugh a little. It wasn’t really that funny all told, but after the long day they’d had even a weak joke sounded really damn funny.
“Yeah, I suppose there is that,” he said, settling down next to her in the low lantern light. “My aunt used to talk about having a close personal relationship with Jesus, guess there is such a thing as too close for worship.”
“Your family,” Flavia said, perking up a little. “Tell me more. How does a Briton with a Christian name end up in the middle of the desert?”
“Not much to tell,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Just a poor country boy looking for adventure.”
“A familiar story,” Flavia said knowingly. “I came from the Montes Magna, from the interior of Vesperia. The beating heart of the Empire, my father used to say. It wasn’t really,” she noted, the faint warmth and low light letting her mind drift back. “Just a small village deep in the mountains.”
Sam smiled. “Sounds a lot like where I grew up, little town called Fairplay, just a wide spot in the crossroads, but it was home.”
“Yeah, little Trimontium, a cluster of buildings tucked into a hollow at the edge of a valley…”
“Mountains everywhere in all directions, framing this great green bowl…”
“The sky! The sky was so big and blue, bigger than any other sky I’ve ever seen, clouds racing past on the west wind…”
“No trees down in the valley, just grass and cows and little streams…”
“Except for one,” Flavia corrected him. “One lone tree, standing against the wind in the middle of the valley.”
“Yeah,” Sam’s voice came low and confused. “I remember that. That big… old… cottonwood.”
“And every day,” Flavia continued, “I’d go outside to the tree and I’d… I’d…”
“I’d meet with my…” The two adventurers stopped. Twisting around in the blanket, for the first time since Alexandria they actually looked at each other. Sam Wildman took in the scars and tattoos on the woman next to him, fitting her face and eyes to the faded mental picture of a girl he’d imagined knowing twenty years before. Flavia Nepos narrowed her eyes and compared the stocky, bearded man beside her to her memory of a pale boy she’d long convinced herself was a dream or an artifact of her power.
They pulled back, out from under the survival blanket, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Sam held out a trembling hand, and Flavia matched the motion. Their fingers barely touched, and moving together traced a circle in the air.
“Oh my god,” Sam murmured. “It wasn’t my imagination.”
“Dispater,” Flavia whispered. “You’re real.”
They sat there for a long minute, neither sure what to say. Sam cleared his throat. “I think,” he said a little awkwardly. “I think we haven’t been properly introduced.” He stuck out his hand again. “Hi, I’m Sam. Sam Wildman. I’m a strange visitor from another world who just met his childhood imaginary friend in a cave in the desert.”
Flavia blinked, then smiled. “Well met, Sam Wildman,” she said, taking his hand. “I’m Flavia. Flavia Julia Nepos. I’m a practicing war-witch who just met her childhood imaginary friend in a cave in the desert.”
…and so they met again…
Our Heroes
The card in front of you is perfect. Subtle off-white coloring, raised lettering, the tasteful thickness of it. Even a watermark. Christian Bale would murder your entire family for one of these. It reads:
Sam Wildman and Flavia Nepos were born the same year and day within a mile of each other in two completely different universes. Sam was a nerdy country kid from Zero-Zero who expected to fall into a life of general obscurity once he got out of college, only to end up pulled into the original Mobius operation by his internet buddy Deidre. Flavia was the oldest girl in a family of Vesperian cattle merchants who probably would’ve been married off if she hadn’t inherited a gift for magic and a thirst for adventure from her family’s heroic ancestors.
The two would meet (again, according to their account which to be frank nobody else really understands) when Sam went searching for a missing archaeologist in the fringes of the Vesperian Empire and hired Flavia as his native guide. The missing-persons case quickly ballooned into a mad situation involving the SS Raven Division trying to acquire the (fully armed and operational) Ark of the Covenant from the Sinai. Several weeks later, the archaeologist had been returned to his university, the Time Nazis thoroughly spanked, the Ark restored to the temple in Jerusalem and Sam and Flavia walked out of her timeline to Zero-Zero with an unshakeable bond. From this bond the team Nepos & Wildman, Acquisitions was born, specializing in the dangerous and the ridiculous missions. Whenever Mobius has to stop Dr. Gravitas from imploding the Sears Tower on Parallel 129, or the United Nations needs someone to infiltrate Mid-Childa, or a pro-bono mission to root out Draka incursions, or simply moments where they’re in the right place at the right time, Nepos & Wildman have the skills, the experience and the rep to step up and get things done.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"