Felarya: On the Origin of Species. A recap!

Felarya: On the Origin of Species. All you need to know.

This is the story about Elenore, or as some of her friends are privileged enough to call her; Elli. It’s a story about personal growth. Yes, in all possible meanings of the term.

Elli was born an aristocrat, fostered to be a presentable young lady by her strict aunt Solveig on a large estate, somewhere in northern Scandinavia. Outwards, the skinny, green eyed, freckled little redhead was always courteous, the perfect daughter. Inside, however, she was silently rebelling against what she perceived to be a life without choice or freedom. When first opportunity presented itself, she left home to study abroad at a mere twelve years of age. Only occasionally did she returned home after that, to celebrate Midsummer or join her family and friends on the traditional elk hunt.

Her parents had wanted her to study finance in London but she chose fashion design in Paris, much to their disappointment. They had tried to steer her in a direction worthy of the family name, yet she had avoided any such attempt, instead traveling around the globe, constantly on the move, partying on Ibiza and having lunch in Rome the very next day. It became an ingrained part of her; to never settle down, neither in a location nor in a relationship. This was until her family wanted her to come with them to the United States, where they intended to buy a wood chip company, the trade upon which the family established its fortune some three hundred years ago. Reluctantly, more out of fear of losing access to her substantial trust fund than anything else, she signed up for one semester at the local university and packed her Yves Saint Laurent bags. Little did she know that this first class ticked to the New World would turn out to be just that, in an all too literal sense.

And so it begins. While out on a field trip, Elli and her classmates where sucked into a cosmic anomaly and spat out on an unknown world: Felarya. Regaining consciousness but feeling like she lost her sanity, the redhead found herself more than a thousand times bigger than her now tiny classmates, standing over a hundred feet tall. One of them she had accidentally caused the death of, having mistaken the tiny person for a bug, and the following weeks became a struggle for survival for them all. Being many times larger, she did what she could to help find water and food, but what would constitute enough to feed the twenty or so classmates was barely a mouthful for her. When priorities had to be made, the tallest drew the shortest straw, the many small won over the gigantic few. Though they depended entirely on her for their survival, they were slowly but surely starving her in the process.

The alteration in physical size had been instantaneous and evident, but there were also more subtle changes. As time passed and the struggle became more difficult, Elli started feeling light headed, and in this haze she began to see her fellow classmates as not merely physically different, but more as different beings entirely.

Needless to say, the situation would prove itself unsustainable. Once more she was left out. Elli had found and plucked a large piece of fruit, juicy and tasty-looking, big enough to feed the group for days, if only Elli would refrain from taking a bite. Grudgingly, the malnourished giantess did as asked. While they danced around an open fire in celebration, their stomach’s comfortably full of tasty fruit, Elli kept to herself. Knowing the mood she was in, she didn’t trust herself around them.

That was when the tiny boy approached. Michael, a complete asshole in every right and like all other boys, he had been witlessly attracted to Elli from the first time he had seen her. The feeling wasn’t mutual, but the giant woman’s attention was drawn to something the tiny boy had brought with him: a peace offering of sorts, in the form of a chunk of the fruit. When the boy withdrew his gift last second, the ravenous woman tried to grab it anyway, only to end up unintentionally squishing it, covering the boy in all its juicy goodness. Angry, she tossed the whole fruit covered boy into her mouth, intending to suck the fruit off him. The feeling of food in her mouth, the delicious weighty mass on her tongue, was like ecstasy. Before she knew it, she had swallowed him along with the fruit, sending the protesting boy kicking and screaming down her slender neck and into her empty tummy. There was a witness, however. A tiny girl, shouting and running back to tell the others. Elli would not remember it until many days later, but in the minutes that followed she not only chased down and ate the witness. In a feeding frenzy, she ate them all.

When she woke up the next morning, she remember almost nothing of what had happened, and the clueless giantess roamed the forest the following days, calling out for her classmates. Little did she know that they were inside of her that whole time.

When she finally did encounter someone, it wasn’t one of her classmates, rather an indigenous little human, caught in hole in the ground. She interrogated him, especially wanting to know where the nearest road to civilization was. Before he had the chance to be of any use to her, one of his tiny friends stabbed her in the foot with a poisoned dagger. She limped away in soaring pain, still having new clue where she was and what had happened to her classmates. Neither did she know that the small prick in her skin would eventually numb her foot, and leave her vulnerable to predators, if not treated.

This is where the path of our second protagonist crosses hers, and a good thing to, for his knowledge of nature and medicine was what saved her life. His name was Sir Charles Starwind.

Stop! We need a little of his background, don’t we? It’s very important for the rest of the story, so bear with me as we briefly go back a little more than thirty years in time, and to a different universe entirely, while we’re at it.

Charles Starwind was born on the icy and oceanic planet of Silshire, as the son of the renowned and much beloved Sir George Starwind, Captain of the legendary Silitar Fleet. His mother died in child birth, leaving him to be raised by the collective crew on the deck of his father’s flagship; the Orca. Though very unconventional, it was a happy childhood. Even if he didn’t have the natural affinity for seaman- and leadership as his father, the young Charlie found his calling in the thrill of exploration and discovery. They sailed across open space, encountering new worlds and new peoples, and his father successfully carried out his royal mission of convincing these new worlds to ally themselves with Highland, the flourishing center of power and culture in the multiverse-spanning Colonial Empire.

Times were good. The Colonial Empire grew vast and in return for the taxes the new worlds paid to the High Crown, they received multiple times that in riches brought on by trade, exchange of culture and technology. Unexpectedly, times changed. High King Aerthur the Wise died, like even good kings eventually do. Unfortunately, so did his eldest son, under suspicious circumstances I might add. He was known to be a humble young man, gifted as his father and much beloved by the people. This left the throne to be inherited by Thenry, the youngest brother, a reclusive boy of unknown talents, of which few had anything nice to add.

Thenry’s first command as High King was not a popular one. He dismantled his father’s High Council and instead opted to replace it with a single person, an old friend as his advisor. Now known as High Lord Deurath, before having risen through the lower ranks of the military, he began as a Lowborn soldier (Lowborn was anyone born on the planet Lowland, the warm and heavily industrialized neighboring planet to Highland, part of the Great Highlands). He had garnered a reputation as an effective yet ruthless commander, which had stopped him from climbing any further in rank under the old High King’s rule. Thenry immediately granted him the status of High Lord, in one stroke effectively making him the second most powerful man in the Colonial Empire. Needless to say, these untraditional decisions were not well received among the populous.

Unrest spread across the multiverse. Fearing that some worlds might try to break off from the Empire, the High King ordered that all fleets be united into a single armada. Previously, every world had provided their own fleet, commanded by their own elected leaders, but the High King demanded that they now sail under a single banner and command; his. Few resisted. The ones who did faced the wrath of High Lord Deurath and the newly built royal flagship the Charcaradon, the biggest and deadliest warship the multiverse had ever seen. They all soon fell in line.

All but one. Captain George Starwind, when given a direct order by High Lord Deurath himself, refused to carry it out. No one really knows what happened next, but word spread across the multiverse that the Captain had betrayed the High Crown, attacked the Colonial Fleet unprovoked, destroying several of its ships and killing hundreds of innocent soldiers in the process, before being annihilated in an epic battle with the mighty Carcharadon.

The young Charlie, left stranded on an unknown world during the battle, did not mourn the father he had lost. Instead, he refocused all his efforts into trying to clear the now tainted Starwind family name, to stay loyal to the High Crown, and regain his honor. He volunteered for the most dangerous missions, sailing his own ship the Beagle into the complete unknown, discovering and cataloging never before seen worlds and species. As a grown man, he became known throughout the Colonial Empire as the foremost explorer and naturalist, bringing home a wealth of scientific information, and holding immensely popular lectures on his many significant discoveries.

In an unusually secretive way, he was given an assignment directly from the High King himself, to accompany a military detail to an uncharted world, one unlike anything he had ever encountered before. Why was The High Crown so interested in this particular world, and why bring an armed escort? He didn’t know and they wouldn’t say. All Starwind was told was that this mission, if carried out successfully, would lend him more fame and glory than all his previous combined, perhaps even saving the Colonial Empire from crumbling, and would restore the Starwind name to its former glory. All that was good, but Starwind accepted it simply out of pure curiosity. By Aerthur’s beard, what must be down there?

After only a few weeks on the ground they found out. The ship was attacked by three enormous beasts. Giant creatures that, astonishingly, were morphologically identical to human women, though giant in stature. The three giantesses destroyed the ship, ate most of the crew and carried the rest away. Starwind, who had remained hidden in the undergrowth, took up pursuit but lost the trail in heavy rainfall.

His ship was destroyed, the research gone and his crew lost. Yet his mission remained.

And that’s how they met. Starwind accidently stumbled on Elli’s trail and had been following her for days, witnessing all that transpired, and knew that she would eventually succumb to the poison. The first rule of the naturalist was to observe, never disturb, and not once had he broken that rule. Yet, for her, he did. He confronted her and proposed, in exchange for giving her immediate medical aid and helping her continue to survive on this hostile world, that she would help him track down the she-giant who had carried away his crew, keep him uneaten for the foreseeable future, and perhaps help him with his mission. She agreed, but what began as a simple arrangement for mutual benefit, would over time grow to something more.

Together, this unusual duo will embark on both small and cosmic adventures! Elli wants to find a way to go back home, Starwind needs to finish his mission and clear his name, all while the Colonial Empire wants to regain power and control over the multiverse, at whatever cost. It will be fun, it will be tough, but most importantly, it will be a fight for survival, not only for themselves but for the new friends they’ve come to know and love…