The First-and-a-Half Fansus

The First-and-a-Half Fansus is a reboot of The First Fansus, with a cast both returning and new, with new events and stories to be played out across a grand stage. It is, as before, the Sea-Dragon's Palace and the House of the Serpent, but that is a title challenged from all sides by powers above, below, within, and without...

Appearance

Beyond the Wood, the domain of The Elder Sister is the House. Once glorious and mighty, the Sea-Dragon's Palace has fallen into disrepair and ruin after the departure of the Great Serpent. Outwardly, though great towers of Mansus-stone stretch ever-upwards, several gaping breaches and shattered gates speak of the coming of Nowhere, the insidious creep of metal is the presence of the Gods-from-Steel, and in the fortifications and defenses lie the first of the old order's effort to stop them.

Within, the doors and gates and passages are a shattered, tangled labyrinth. Once straight roads and towering stairways lie strewn with debris and detritus of better ages. The Gods-from-Steel infest the lower sections, turning cavernous rooms into fortress-factories and world-spanning laboratories in the strange-space, fighting against bridgeheads and crossroads fortified and controlled by their most vehement opposition. Above, Nowhere-gods have extended their influence through a House that seems to defy even the Mansus's already tenuous dream-logic in impossible architecture, as The Peacock basks in its Revel Unending and The Wrong-Serpent proclaims its paramountcy as true regent of the Great Serpent in its court.

Still, in the Clocktower, looming from the Moon, soaring in Battle-Heart the defenders of the old House remain, steadfast and valiant against enemies from all sides. The armies of Adonibaal keep watch over a new Bayal, the Anaconda is vigilant and steadfast as guardian of the Bright-Delver, all maintaining a land of relative peace and calm, something like the Mansus of old. And though the ages pass, yet still it remains as another grinds on...

History

The New Age

Steel Apotheosis

The Sixth History had always been beyond the notice of the Hours. It was civilized, it developed, it progressed, and it did not raise monstrous Name-kings or horrors from any abyssal depths. It had always been, in short, a perfect model History. This state of affairs lasted until 1837, when almost without warning, it was consumed and destroyed. Incubating across a thousand secret societies of engineers and mechanists had been the ideas of a visionary genius. Or a cabal of visionary geniuses. Or the machine itself, manipulating matters, or many machines, or it was a government project, or it was a complete accident. The source did not matter, for at that age was born the first of the Gods-from-Steel. And the second. And third.

In the voracious hunger of their apotheosis, they ate. The lithosphere of the world they consumed and strip-mined and the atmosphere they drank greedily from and space and time they rendered apart for ascension. Watching this, The Spark, patron of inventors and geniuses, was horrified. It descended from on high to stop this perversion of its innovation, but became the first divine victim of the onslaught of the new Gods-from-Steel as it was subsumed and consumed to be the new heart of a legion of god-machines that rose to a House in Woods, seeking new fuel, seeking progress.