Brian K. Vaughan is a comic book and television writer best known for several seasons of Lost and the comic series Y: The Last Man and Saga.  Vaughan is also indirectly responsible for the existence of the Benevolence Archives series, and if I ever meet him I’m giving him a copy of the books whether he wants them or not.

I read an interview with Vaughan just after George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney, just before the Saga series launched, where he pointed out that instead of getting mad at Lucas for selling what was, after all, his own property, we ought to use Star Wars to inspire us to create our own stories.  This got me thinking about what would have happened if Han and Chewie hadn’t come back at the Battle of Endor, and soon after Brazel and Grond were real.  The earlier Benevolence Archives stories are very clearly (and deliberately) Star Wars homages, and while the series is moving away from that as it becomes more mature the influence is still clear.  If reading that interview hadn’t led me down that path of thought, the series might not exist.

You should be reading Saga, by the way.  It’s excellent.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Untkaar.

 

Untkaar is a planet, the setting for the short story “The Debut,” which will appear in Tales from the Benevolence Archives.  This is another one of those entries where I’m cheating, because I didn’t have a U, and I totally pulled the same move I did with F and named something so that I’d have a letter in this Challenge.

Telling you stuff about Untkaar is all spoilery, so I’m not gonna.  It’s totally a planet, though, with planet stuff on it.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Overmorrow.

 

It’s the last Sunday of April!  Have the final special Sunday supplement of the A to Z Challenge.

Overmorrow is an elf, the parent of Asper.  Xe appears in The Sanctum of the Sphere.  Overmorrow is a general of the Noble Opposition, a user of magic, and controls the spaceport called Roashan.  Overmorrow sets the events of The Sanctum of the Sphere in motion when xe hires Brazel and Grond to steal something from … well, we’ll call it a train.  It’s close enough.

In keeping with Elvish cultural tradition, Overmorrow’s name is a noun; the word means “the day after tomorrow.”  Did you know there was a word for that?  I didn’t, until I found it, and then I had to use it as a name.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Tunnelspace.

 

Tunnelspace is The Benevolence Archives’ way of getting around the fact that space is mind-bogglingly big.  The exact technical process behind entering tunnelspace and how it actually works has been (deliberately) left obscure, as has how fast one actually travels while in tunnelspace; it does not necessarily match up to lightspeed.  Ships can enter tunnelspace anywhere outside of a large gravity well, and it is possible for a Benevolence vehicle called a “blockship” to pull a ship out of tunnelspace involuntarily, a process that is excessively painful for any biological organisms that may be on the ship when it happens.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Sirrys ban Irtuus bon Alaamac.

 

Sirrys ban Irtuus bon Alaamac is a troll, first introduced in the story The Contract from The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1.  He is Rhundi’s head researcher and a scholar of the Benevolence.  He is also a fairly capable gearhead, and has been able to circumvent Benevolence technology locks on more than one occasion.

Trolls may be the oddest of the races in the Benevolence Archives.  Trolls are limited shapechangers; they cannot change their overall mass or the basic arrangement of their bodies, but their limbs and bodies can change in length and thickness radically, and a troll can grow from shorter than a gnome to taller than an ogre in the blink of an eye, or extend an arm much longer than normal in order to reach something.  Further, trolls appear to have multiple personalities, and often a different body configuration may respond to a different name and act very differently than the same troll at a different size.  In Sirrys ban Irtuus bon Alaamac’s case, his “tall” form is known as Irtuus-bon, and is the form most people know him in.  His shortest, widest incarnation calls itself Sirrys, and is much more petulant and childish.  If he has a form that calls itself Alaamac, he does not use it very often.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Rhundi.

 

Rhundi Tavh’re’muil is one of the three main characters of the Benevolence Archives series.  Rhundi is a gnome, and is married to Brazel and Grond’s employer.  She is a few centimeters taller than her husband– typical for gnomish females– and her fur is a few shades lighter brown in color.  She is fond of using dyes to alter the color of her fur, and is especially partial to the color green.  She and Brazel have fourteen children together.

Rhundi also owns the resort on Arradon that serves as the main characters’ base of operations.  As such a large part of her income is now legitimate, but she is the source of most of the jobs that Brazel and Grond end up taking.  She prefers to work behind the scenes rather than going out in the field herself, but is far more capable than most of taking care of herself when the need arises.  See the story The Contract from The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1 and The Sanctum of the Sphere for additional details.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Queris System.

The Queris system is the setting for the first part of the story Remember from The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1.  The Queris system is not terribly memorable or important, composed of four planets, only one of which is named, around an average star.  None of the planets are terrestrial in nature and if the system is inhabited at all it is by either pre-starfaring societies or small groups who are not interested in being bothered.

My theme for this year’s A to Z challenge is my series The Benevolence Archives.  You can learn more about the series by going to the Amazon page for Volume 1 here or add it to a Goodreads shelf here.  

Previously: Prescott.