The Iron Realm

I'd like to meet:

Alex

...Alex lay back on his bed and looked about him, everything looked the same. The mess on his bedroom floor, books, magazines, cola cans, the occasional pizza box, a few sweet wrappers and several slightly more organized piles of computer games, in and out of their boxes, lay more or less the way he had remembered them from the night before. The posters on the walls remained haphazardly stuck up with bits of tape and drawing pins. Not quite straight faces staring down at him. Placebo looked cool and Marilyn Manson still looked scary...

Dante and Azrealle

...He held his breath in amazement as a young man walked in, followed closely by a young woman. They were probably only about two or three years older than Alex but there was a confidence in them that made him feel so much younger in comparison. They walked over to one of the many bookcases and leant casually against the rows of straight books, smiling curiously at each other. They were without doubt two of the most striking individuals that Alex had ever seen. Very alike, yet with obvious differences. A perfect male and female version of the same being...

Marigold

...Alex looked at her properly for the first time and noticed a certain strangeness about her. She was small, probably only about seven or eight years old, wearing a blue and pink floral dress that stuck out mushroom-like, obviously due to the many stiff, frilly petticoats that lay underneath. Matching ribbons held her far too shiny, almost yellow blond hair neatly away from her perfect face. She smiled broadly at Alex through rosebud pink lips. Her huge saucer eyes shone far more blue than was surely normal...

The Professor

...He turned to see a tall, rather slim man dressed in an old fashioned tweed suit coming towards him with an out-stretched hand. "Very pleased to meet you my boy”, he said, grabbing Alex’s hand and shaking it firmly...

Mrs Pudding

...Mrs Pudding was sitting quietly in the kitchen, with her feet up on the table and a book on her lap. ‘Love in the Dust’, it was called, apparently all about two young lovers who got lost in the desert and almost died searching for water. A sequel to ‘Love in the Mud’, which was also about two young lovers, only that time they got lost in a swamp filled with man eating crocodiles. A best seller by all accounts, or at least it was in the Underworld...

Lord and Lady Bramley-Dun

...We’d been sent down to correct the balance and to help restore the harmony of the Peninsula and the like, when Lady Bramley-Dun slipped into the Great Crevasse whilst charming a twisted fire monkey with a Romeasion charm stick. Those bloody monkeys can be so disruptive you know. Anyway, she slipped and Lord Bramley-Dun jumped in after her. It was true love you see...

The long extinct Rhinoplasma Dictora

...The introductions over, the Professor explained that seeing as there was not much on in the way of trouble in the Underworld, the First Gate Protectors were at present helping the Underworld Archaeological and Relic Society Explorers, or U.A.R.S.E. for short, in their search for the bones of the long extinct Rhinoplasma Dictora. Apparently, these huge prehistoric creatures once roamed in great numbers in the Dust Bowl, but no evidence, other than a few old hand written documents, as yet exists...

The High Priest of the White Sorcerers

...He who holds the highest of all of the levels of the white magic. The keeper of the great ring of the First Lords. The forger of the sacred amulet. The direct descendant of the most honourable Lomitherous of the Mystical Chargers of the Mages…Dave, I think his name is...

Little Bob

.... They entered the shop and immediately, a huge man, naked from the waist up and showing off a multitude of faded tattoos and a pierced left nipple, rushed to great them. He thrust forward a large grimy hand and bowed low, revealing another tattoo, one of a fat leggy spider, right on the top of his bald head. He was drenched in sweat and smelt terrible...

Captain Rosie

...Captain Rosie was very entertaining, and when she wasn’t busy captaining, she would play old sea songs on a battered guitar, and encourage everyone, both crew and Protectors, to join in. Alex taught her some songs from the world above, but many of the lyrics didn’t sit too well with the Underworlders, Heavy Metal being totally wasted on the crew...

Tennant

...Tennant was there, seated on a battered throne of scrap metal, raised up several feet in the air, with rusting steps and bent scaffold poles as banisters. His blond good looks were distorted and twisted with evil magic, and his body was painfully thin, almost skeletal, as the power within devoured him and sucked on his flesh and spilled out, fizzing and spitting all around. It was as though he was seated inside of his own electrical storm, at one with it...

...and of course...

Guardian Axis

...The City of the Mystics was by far the wealthiest, the most advanced and the most stunning city in all of the Underworld. It was home to many tribes as none were ever turned away. Even the lowliest Dust Bowl dweller was made to feel welcome. It was also the most spiritual of places, as the great Guardian Axis, and all of her many other Guardians, were openly worshipped in special services on Sundays...