Category Archives: Senta and the Steel Dragon

Oops! The Drache Girl: The Buttermores

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Oops!  For some reason only the end of the post for the 8th appeared the day before yesterday.  Here is the whole thing as intended.

Edin Buttermore is a minor character that pops up from time to time to play a role in the story of Senta and the Steel Dragon.  His wife and son show up sometimes as well.  I liked the name Buttermore and just went with it.

Mrs. Melody Lanier was Mrs. Harper’s daughter and looked just as she must have looked in her younger days, with dark hair and a voluptuous figure that would turn any man’s head.  Likewise, her teen-aged daughter Wenda was a young, thin, and happy version of her, before adulthood had put the lines around her eyes or had put the grey in her mother’s hair.  Mrs. Lanier had lost her husband and Miss Lanier her father, when he was killed in a boiler explosion, while working on the Greater Brechalon and Northern Railroad.  Mrs. Harper had encouraged her daughter to come along with her and try to start a new life in Birmisia.

“You’ve heard me speak of them, and here they are,” said Buttermore.

Mrs. Julietta Buttermore was a very pretty, if frail looking woman at least ten years younger than her husband.  She had very fine honey blond hair and clean, sharp features, but dark circles under her large, amber eyes.  On her hip, she carried a chubby toddler, whose thick shock of golden hair perfectly matched his father’s.

The Drache Girl: Mother Linton

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Everyone loves to hate Mother Linton.  I don’t find her evil.  She just has a different set of objectives than our heroes.

All four men stood up as the severe looking woman approached in a black dress.  Her graying hair was pulled tightly back into a long pony tail and her lips were so thin, it seemed as though the pony tail was pulling most of the skin of her face with it.  Her black dress was not a robe, not quite, and as was almost all feminine attire, it was endowed with a prominent bustle, but had no brocade or lace, just a priestly collar at her neck, and a thin strip of white running from each shoulder to the floor.  She had a large and ornate golden cross on a chain around her neck.

“Mother Linton,” said Dechantagne.  “May I introduce Misters Staff, Merchant, and Shannon.”

Mother Linton nodded to each.  “May I speak to you, Mr. Dechantagne?”

He shrugged and stepped away with the priest.

“So what do you say about this weather, Staff?” marveled Shannon.  “Whenever I think of Mallon, I think of the jungle.  I never expected snow.”

“I suppose there is a great deal of Mallon that’s tropical,” replied Staff, “but Birmisia is cool, dry, lots of pine trees.  Even the summers are not too bad.  That’s good from a business perspective, too.  Nobody wants to muck around in swamps.  That’s probably why Enclep isn’t better developed.”

“Good man,” said Merchant.  “Always keeping business in mind.”

Dechantagne returned to the table and sat down.

“What was that all about?” asked Staff.

“It seems Mother Linton has been pegged by the Bishop of Brech as the High Priest of Birmisia.”

“And?”

“And priests are no different than anyone else.  They all want something.”  He waved to the waiter for another drink.

“And what does she want?”

“Oh, it’s all Mother Church this and Mother Church that.”  Dechantagne picked up the cigar that he had left smoldering in the ashtray when he had stepped outside with Mother Linton, and he stubbed it out.  Then he got up and walked out the door, intercepting the waiter for his drink along the way.

The Drache Girl: The Buttermores

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Mrs. Melody Lanier was Mrs. Harper’s daughter and looked just as she must have looked in her younger days, with dark hair and a voluptuous figure that would turn any man’s head.  Likewise, her teen-aged daughter Wenda was a young, thin, and happy version of her, before adulthood had put the lines around her eyes or had put the grey in her mother’s hair.  Mrs. Lanier had lost her husband and Miss Lanier her father, when he was killed in a boiler explosion, while working on the Greater Brechalon and Northern Railroad.  Mrs. Harper had encouraged her daughter to come along with her and try to start a new life in Birmisia.

“You’ve heard me speak of them, and here they are,” said Buttermore.

 

The Drache Girl: Eamon Shrubb

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Of all the major supporting characters of Senta and the Steel Dragon, I really think I like Eamon Shrubb the best.  He’s just a big lovable guy, with a strong moral compass and a stiff upper lip.  I just came up with him, because I needed another constable to work with Saba and his personality just appeared.

At that moment, Eamon opened the office door.  He paused about halfway inside, looking at his wife the way a munitions expert looks at a bomb that didn’t go off as intended.  She looked at the floor.  After a moment, the constable stepped inside.

“You nesh berk,” said Saba.  Eamon looked at him in surprise.  “You take your wife home and see to her.  I may not have two and a half months experience being married, but even I know you don’t fight with a woman who’s expecting.”

“She wanted to name the baby Yadira.”

“What’s wrong with that?” demanded Saba.

“Come on!  That’s the worst name in the world.”

“My mother’s name,” said Dot.

“That happens to be my mother’s name, too,” said Saba.

“Oh, yeah.  I forgot about that,” said Eamon.

“It’s not like Eamon’s a brilliant name.”

“I don’t want to name it Eamon either.  If it’s a boy I want to name it Darsham, and if it’s a girl I want to name it Daria.”

“Darsham Shrubb?  Why don’t you just name it ‘kick my ass on the way to school’ and have done with it.”

Eamon ballooned his cheeks out and rolled his eyes back to think for a moment.  “It doesn’t sound that good when you put it all together, does it?”

“Here’s my advice, Mr. I’ve-been-married-two-and-a-half-months.  Take the rest of the day off and take your wife home.  Make her a cup of tea and rub her feet.  Then let her decide what to name the baby.  You can go get a kitten from Mrs. Gyffington, and name it Darsham, or Daria, or whatever the bloody hell you want to name it.”

“That’s right,” said Dot, taking Eamon by the arm.  Then she said, “Rub my feet,” leading Saba to believe that she had missed most of what he had said.

“You don’t mind if I take the afternoon?” asked Eamon.  He turned his head slightly, so that his lips were not visible to his wife.  “If I rub her feet, she’ll be all rumpy-pumpy.”

“Go!”

The two left the office, arm in arm.  As soon as they were gone, Saba stepped back through the supply room and into cell number one.  Setting his helmet beside the cot, he lay down and took a nap.

The Drache Girl: Cady Gertz

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Cady Gertz is one of those characters who just show up in the background all the time.  In a way, those are my favorites, because I have their back stories that only I know completely.  If you read all the books though, you might find yourself starting to know them too.

The temporary City Hall was right next door, and with the exception of the lack of hen mesh over the windows, it looked exactly like the police station.  Saba stepped up two very short steps and into the front office, which was only half the size of his own.  Miss Cadence Gertz sat at the receptionist desk.  Her black hair was pulled back into a severe bun, she had on horn-rimmed glasses, and she wore a plain brown gingham dress.  Saba still thought she was very pretty.

“Good morning, Constable,” she said, smiling shyly.

“Good morning, Miss Gertz.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to see the mayor, if he’s not too busy.”

“Police business?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“I’ll see if he can see you now.”  She got up and walked to the door separating the twenty by twenty five foot reception office from the mayor’s office, knocked on the door, and then went in, leaving Saba for a moment, to stand and contemplate brown gingham in a way that he never had before.  She was gone no more than two minutes.  When she came back out again, she ushered him into the presence of the mayor, closing the door behind him.

“Good morning, Mr. Mayor.”

Zeah Korlann rolled his eyes, and then stood up to shake hands with the young constable.

“If I had known being the mayor meant I was doing essentially all of the Colonial Council’s work, I wouldn’t have accepted the position.”  He waved for Saba to take a chair.

“Somebody has to be the big man in charge,” said Saba, sitting down, crossing his legs, and setting his helmet on his knee.

“How is your mother?  I missed her yesterday, when I was visiting my grandson.”

“She’s fine.  And how is Miss Lusk?”

“The same.  I mean, fine.  Miss Gertz said that you were here on police business?”

“Yes, I need to requisition an item.”

“A revolver or a shotgun?”

“A typewriter.”

“Do you know how to type?”

“I’ll learn.”

“I’ll bet we could get Mr. Collit to find one for us.  Are there any funds in the police budget?”

“No.”

“Alright,” Mayor Korlann sighed.  “We’ll find the money somewhere.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Saba getting up.  “Would you happen to know if Miss Gertz has gone to lunch yet?”

Saba escorted Miss Gertz to lunch at Mrs. Finkler’s Bakery as he had done on six previous occasions.  But just like those other six times, this could not be considered a date, because Miss Gertz insisted upon paying for her own meal.  Mrs. Gertz was of the opinion that her daughter, at nineteen, was too young to be courted, and ought not to be receiving gentlemen who were Kafirites in any case.  Still, the two young people had a lovely lunch and did not mention Miss Gertz’s mother, or religion, or police work.  In fact, later, Saba could not remember what the topic of conversation had been at all.  All he could remember was thick barley soup with onions and large brown eyes.

The Drache Girl: Tabby Malloy

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Tabby Malloy is the local prostitute in Port Dechantagne and appears as a minor character in The Drache Girl.  An older, married Tabby also makes an appearance in The Two Dragons.

Walking north on the gravel road, which was officially Bainbridge Clark Street, Saba passed a road crew of five lizardmen and their human foreman.  They were moving very slowly in the cool morning air.  Within a month, most would stop showing up for work at all, and the repair of roads, building of sewers, and installation of gas lines would be suspended for the winter as the few Lizzies who did show up would be put to work on the docks.  Saba thought it fitting that the reptiles were repairing Bainbridge Clark Street, as Bainbridge Clark the man had been instrumental in stopping the lizardman army of King Ssithtsutsu, when it had attacked the colony.  He had later been Saba’s sergeant in the militia, and a friend.  Sadly, Saba’s first call as a constable had been to find Clark’s dead body, in bed, at the home of Miss Tabby Malloy; better than taking a lizardman spear or being eaten by dinosaurs.

Bainbridge Clark Street didn’t actually end at the Emergency Wall, because there was a road on the other side of the wall, and it too was called Bainbridge Clark Street, but the two were separated by the thirty foot tall structure.  Thirty feet to the left though was a small unobtrusive door that had been cut into the wall about two years before, after a particularly nasty problem with tyrannosaurs.  The door had been placed there specifically to allow emergency workers to move from one side of the wall to the other, without having to go all the way to the town square and through the big gate.  Relatively few had keys to the locked door, but Saba was one of those who did.  He unlocked the door, passed through, and then locked it once again with the key.

On this side of the wall, the road sloped down a hill toward the dock area.  A few small buildings, offices mostly separated it from the shoreline, while on the right were numerous warehouses and supply buildings.  At the top of the hill, Saba stopped to take in the view.  The Mirsannan freighter S.S. Meninia Impertinenta was docked and two large cranes were lifting freight from its cargo hold and setting it down onto the ground.  Half a dozen lizardman work crews were ferrying the freight from there to two different warehouses.

Walking down the hill a little way, the young constable turned from the bay and walked between a large warehouse on the left and a long row of small apartments on the right.  This area was the lowest rent district in Port Dechantagne.  The little two-story, four apartment buildings were constructed all of wood with dimensions of twelve by thirty six feet.  Each of the apartments had one room, either with a wood-burning stove, or a fireplace, and the entire block of apartments—one hundred buildings, four hundred apartments—were serviced by a block of twenty water closets.  When the apartments had originally been built, they had been built with outhouses.  Two years ago, these had been replaced by small block houses, each of which had six WCs and all of which had the latest running water facilities.  Saba stepped inside one of the WCs to relieve himself.  He luxuriously washed his hands and face, and then stepped outside to find a woman waiting.  She was slightly older than he was, about twenty, with bright red hair and a brightly painted face.  Under her pink dress, he could see she clearly wore no bustle.

“Miss Tabby Malloy,” said Saba.  “I was just thinking of you this morning.”

“Oh?  What were you thinking about me?”  She put her hand on her hip and struck a pose.  She really was attractive, considering—clean, nice, and as far as Saba knew, not a thief.

“I was just thinking about… well, about how pretty you are.”

“You know I would do a pretty young lad like you, a virgin and all, for free.”

“And you know I’m saving myself for marriage.  But it’s good to see you’re doing well.  Have a lovely day.”

“You have a lovely day yourself, lad,” she said.  “I expect to be seeing you soon, whether it’s before marriage or after.”

The Drache Girl: Saba Colbshallow

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Saba is an important character in Senta and the Steel Dragon and in The Drache Girl, he has perhaps his bigget part.

Suddenly he heard gunfire erupting from directly in front of him.  One, two shots.  Then a pause.  Then one, two, three, four, five, six, pause.  He looked up above the trees and saw a flash of steel shoot across the sky.

“Oh, bloody hell!” he shouted and ran at top speed in the direction of the gunfire.  That he carried no other weapon than a heavy truncheon, worried him not a bit.  Two men with military issue service rifles, but wearing expensive hunting clothes stood in the middle of the gravel road.

“Guns down!” yelled Saba, as he skidded to a stop in front of them.  “Drop your guns now!”

“See here chap,” said the first man, his accent labeling him as plainly as if he had worn a placard that he was from Old Town Brech.  He must have been very new to the colony, because Saba made it a custom to get to know everyone, and neither of these men he recognized.

“We’re doing nothing illegal,” said the second man.  “Just shooting some pests.”

“What exactly were you shooting?”

“We heard from some of the neighbors that these velocipedes….”

“Velociraptors,” Saba corrected.

“Yes, them.  They’ve been a menace lately, to the point of endangering the local children.”

“Quite,” said the first man.  “We went out to put a few down and found a small group digging right into those garbage bins.  We shot a few and killed two, I think, but one took off and flew into the trees.”

“If you listen to me very, and I do mean very, carefully,” said Saba.  “I just might be able to save your lives.  Lay your rifles down on the ground.”

“But I don’t under…..”

“Do it!”

The men leaned over and carefully placed their weapons on the white gravel road.

“Nobody told you velociraptors don’t fly?”

A loud whomp made all three men jump, and they found themselves standing next to a pony-sized reptile with twenty foot wings, and more importantly a mouth open large enough to swallow a human head.  Steel scales reflected the light from the winter morning sky like shields and swords on a forgotten battlefield.  The steel dragon let out a huge roar, rending the air with a noise that must have been heard all over Port Dechantagne.  Little puffs of smoke flew out of his mouth at the two men as well as bits of saliva which burst into little sparks in the air.

“They bloody shot me!”  The dragon’s four word sentence disintegrated into another roar of rage.

One of the hunters started to bend over for his rifle.  Saba stepped on the gun and put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Let me see your injury, Bessemer,” he said.  The dragon folded its left wing, and held out the right wing showing an ugly lead mark on a shiny steel scale about midway between the first joint and the shoulder.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” said Saba.  “And you know this was an accident.  They were trying to knock off some velociraptors.”

“So was I,” said Bessemer.  “I didn’t expect it would get me shot!”

“It was an accident, honest and truly,” said the first hunter, shaking a little.  “Maybe we can make it up to you.”

“There was a time,” said Bessemer.  “When the only acceptable payment for this type of transgression was a virgin given at midnight on the full moon.”  Then he burst out laughing.  “Of course I didn’t mean you, Saba.”

The two hunters laughed, a bit nervously, along with the dragon, happy that the anger he had arrived with seemed to be going away.

“Well, no harm then,” said one.

“You daft fools,” said Saba, looking down the road.  “He’s the least one of your problems.”

Author’s Note Concerning Languages

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Author’s Note Concerning Language and Words

The reader will no doubt note that The Two Dragons is a work written in English.  As such, English words are used to describe the people, places, and events in the story.  Therefore it appears that the people in the story speak some form of English, a notion possibly supported by slang which may appear British.  This is not the case.  The language for most characters in the story is Brech.  Brech is not English and English in not Brech.  However, of the many languages at use in our world, English is probably closest to Brech, and the material culture of England and America, particularly of Victorian/Edwardian England, is probably closest to that of the United Kingdom of Greater Brechalon.  Likewise Freedonian is not German and Mirsannan is not French.  I have used those languages, because of the languages available to me; they probably reflect the flavor of Freedonian and Mirsannan languages and cultures best.

The vocabularies of our languages are filled with indicators of people and places in our collective cultures.  Many times this is forgotten.  For instance, few remember that Port, the fortified wine, derives its name from Portugal.  Somewhat more obvious is the fact that prehistoric utahraptors were first uncovered in Utah.  The world of The Steel Dragon is filled with creatures that, for us, are extinct and only seen in fossilized form.  Senta can see creatures walking, flying, or swimming around her world that we must travel to a museum to see.  Rather than supply the Brech names for these creatures, which would be meaningless, or give long descriptions of their specifications, I have simply used their common English names.  So, while the people of Birmisia would have no idea where Utah is, they have a very clear idea of what a utahraptor is.

The Drache Girl – Amadea Jindra and the Marchonds

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Though Amadea Jindra makes a small appearance in Book 0: Brechalon, her only real part of the story is here in The Drache Girl.  If however, I ever get around to writing a sequel series, she will play a part in it.

The Marchonds are just a couple that happen to fall into the story at the right point.  Both make an impression in Radley Staff’s life.

The waiter brought steaming bowls of chicken soup and a large plate with thickly sliced dark bread and thinly sliced gingerbread.  As soon as they were finished with their soup, the bowls were taken away and large bowls of salad in light vinaigrette and topped with orange slices were distributed.  The three had almost finished with the salads when a fourth diner arrived.  It was the raven haired woman who had been playing the piano in the lounge.  Both Marchond and Staff stood as she was seated.

“Miss Jindra,” said Marchond.  “I was afraid we weren’t going to see you this evening.  Allow me to introduce Mr. Staff.”

“Call me Amadea,” said Miss Jindra.

“Miss Jindra is a sorceress of some renown,” said Mrs. Marchond, smiling at the reaction she received, as the young man’s face went unaccountably blank.

Rare prime rib was served for supper with baked potato and Staff gave over talking to tuck in.  He hadn’t had a meal this fine in years.  He certainly never managed prime rib in the officer’s mess.  Dessert was trifle, and also ranked highly among all the food that Staff had eaten in some time.  It reminded him though of his days spent ferrying a group of colonists across the ocean on the battleship H.M.S. Minotaur, and of the nights he spent dining with a strangely commanding woman with almost hypnotic aquamarine eyes.  His mind wandered from there to the evenings spent strolling along a distant shore and a few stolen moments of frantic lovemaking.

With dinner over, he excused himself and walked outside.  He leaned over the railing and watched as a pod of ichthyosaurs raced along beside the ship.  They were so much like the porpoises of home waters, except for the vertical tails.  After a few moments, he felt a warm body next to him and turned to see Miss Jindra in her deep purple dress.

“Mr. Staff,” she said.

“Miss Jindra.”

“I gathered earlier that you had a rather poor opinion of practitioners of the art.”

He shrugged.

“Have you known many?”

“I’ve known a few—a few sorceresses and quite a few wizards.  You run across a lot of wizards in the service.”

“And you don’t like them?”

He shrugged again.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.  I guess I find them to be self-important.”

“Is it self-important magic wielders who bother you?  Or self-important women?”

He shrugged again.

“Birmisia is not the place to go if you don’t like powerful women.”

“Don’t I know it?”

“Is it magic you are afraid of, Mr. Staff?  You know there is a sorceress in Birmisia who may be the most powerful in the world.  She is said to have destroyed an entire city with a single spell.”

“That’s probably exaggerated,” said Staff.  “She didn’t do anything particularly amazing when I knew her.”

“You know her?”

“Knew her.”

“So you really are not afraid of magic.”

“I’m not afraid of magic.  I’m also not afraid of a steam train.  That doesn’t mean I would stand in front of one.”  He tried to change the subject.  “You have an interesting accent, Miss Jindra.”

“My father was a Brech, but my mother was from Argrathia.”

The Drache Girl – Merchant and Shannon

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Merchant and Shannon are the owners of a steam ship line and a coal company and other things in Senta and the Steel Dragon.  Hence they are at work in the background of the story, though the appear in The Drache Girl.  Their names come from Moet and Chandon Champagne (like in the Queen song).

Two men dressed in expensive evening suits entered the lounge and made their way across the room to stand next to the former naval officer.  Both were in their late fifties, the first with thinning grey hair and a thick black mustache.  The second man was clean shaven, with jowls that shook when he talked, and had a thick pile of white hair.

“Two glasses of fortified white,” the first man ordered from the bartender.  Then he turned back to his companion.  “I’m telling you now Shannon, you won’t be sorry you came and you won’t be sorry we brought our crew with us.  There’s no time to waste.”

“I know,” said the jowly man.  “I just hate traveling in Hamonth.  It’s bad luck, you know.”

“No.  It’s bad luck to start a journey in Hamonth.  We’re already at sea.  Did you ever hear that it was bad luck to start a journey in Kafirius?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go.  If anything, it’s good luck.  We’ve got to move quickly too, you know.  The latest report is that the railroad will reach Port Dechantagne by the end of Festuary.”

“That soon?”

“Yes.  Say,” the first man tapped Staff on the shoulder.  “Don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Staff, keeping his eyes on the piano player.

“But you’re a navy man, right?  An officer?”

“I was.”

“Did you serve in Birmisia?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.  Allow me to make an introduction.  I’m Alastair Merchant, and this is my partner Wendell P. Shannon.”

“Merchant and Shannon,” said Staff, turning to shake hands.  “Like the shipping lines.”

“The very same.”

“Radley Staff, late a commander in His Majesty’s Royal Navy.”

“A pleasure to meet you.  We’re on our way to Birmisia to conduct a little business and we could use a man who knows the lay of the land.  Somebody who’s been there, knows how things are done.  Say, I’ll bet you even know the royal governor.”

“We’ve met.”

“Fantastic,” Merchant turned to Shannon.  “It looks like fortune has smiled on us again.”