Once upon a time I casually said “Yeah! Let’s blow up Vulcan!”

I actually wanted to. The problem was, we had no Vulcan. I considered Oshinurd for a while, but all of the characters we have that actually care about it are either long since retired, or severely backgrounded. To blow up Vulcan, one needs a Spock. I toyed with the idea of making a new, more relevant dimension or working out a way to make Oshinurd relevant again, but got bored before I figured anything out.

Then, when I was in constant brainstorm mode with Wolfson, I came across an old site I’d browsed before and forgotten: How To Destroy The Earth. In its opening paragraphs, it says it’s not talking about ending the world, not a mass or total extinction like normal apocalypses have.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

In my head, Wolfson bounced around like a thrilled puppy, and ideas cascaded.

Time travel and alternate realities and our heroes chasing Wolfson and his crimes through them. One original world. A bit of a strange one- no human population, and very distinctly not Earth. The fifth planet of their solar system.

This is where Wolfson would’ve had his fortress, and a reign of terror that would’ve gotten our heroes allies amongst the natives and help in attacking him. A great place for the kinds of epic wars we couldn’t have had in the middle of Los Angeles. Armies marching, cities laid to waste, shiny things like that.

A conveniently placed astronomy buff would’ve given hints about the true identity of the fifth planet, by remarking on the nearby gas giant with its gigantic red spot, the more distant gas giant with its rings, and the interesting properties of the third planet- water and life.

For as long as humankind has been able to observe the solar system, we’ve observed an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

This is where Marvin the Martian would have come in.

Not that Wolfson would’ve let Marvin destroy the fifth planet, creating the asteroid belt. Marvin would’ve just been useful in figuring out how to. Wolfson wanted that glory for himself.

I’m not sure what would’ve happened in the end. There were a handful of tempting possibilities. But, inevitably, the world where we’d had glorious victories and bitter defeats, made dear friends and bitter enemies, would be reduced to rubble to the soundtrack of Wolfson’s laughter.

This started, as many things did, on Facebook.

Wolfson would’ve had a cat. A white longhair, specifically to hold in his lap and stroke while talking about his evil plans.

The cat, however, would not have cooperated. She’d leap out of his lap to chase shadows in the middle of monologues, happily rub up against the shins of people he was trying to intimidate, and- this is where Facebook and Sims Social really contributed- dragged rubber duckies into his Chamber Of Doom to play with them.

Wolfson would’ve been playing at being a person just like he was playing at being a villain. His bathtub would’ve had a rubber duckie because that’s what people do. He wouldn’t have expected his Villain Accessory Cat to adopt the duckie as her favorite toy, and would’ve been baffled at her preferring the duckie to traditional cat toys.

But, for reasons beyond his comprehension, he would’ve found himself buying her more and more duckies to play with. The corridors of his Fortress Of Doom would have been strewn with all manner of novelty duckies.

The thing about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world annoyed the hell out of me.

So I decided that it annoyed the hell out of the Mother, too. She of all people would know that it wasn’t an apocalypse, just the beginning of a new Long Count. And I decided that she’d work to stop any apocalypses that anyone tried to start in 2012.

Wolfson, on the other hand, loves cliches. He’s exactly the type to end the world on December 21, 2012 just because a bunch of people think that’s when it should end.

Our heroes, naturally, would want to keep that from happening. So would the Mother, and every Ak’abian loyal to her.

Enemies teaming up against a mutual enemy sounded fun.

The characters I’d decided to steal for Wolfson’s army were as follows:

From Middle Earth: Smaug.

When I got bored while watching the Hobbit, I imagined Wolfson sitting next to me, and imagined chatting with him about who to take from this world. The pale orc was a candidate, mostly because I think he’s a very pretty monster, but at the very end, a shot of the inside of the Lonely Mountain made Wolfson gleeful.

I’d already been mulling over the idea of a fortress for Wolfson, a place for our heroes to possibly attack and have a really hard time breaking into. What better first defense than a dragon?

Not that Wolfson could control a dragon. I wanted him to be powerful, but not that powerful. There would’ve been a truce between them- Wolfson would build his fortress under Smaug and his horde, promising to act as a line of defense, fighting off anyone who tried to raid Smaug’s horde from below. In return, Wolfson would get a a dragon blocking one of the ways into his fortress.

From Breaking Bad: Gustavo Fring.

He’s just… mmm. He doesn’t look like he should be as terrifying as he is- slender, well dressed, wears glasses. Immaculate about his clothes, too. Carefully changed out of his suit and into a protects-against-hazardous-chemicals apron before slitting a man’s throat. Took the time to remove and fold his suit jacket before forcing himself to vomit up a poisoned drink (it was a rare alcohol he was giving a rival as a peace offering, which he’d poisoned to kill the rival and his people- he drank some to “prove” it wasn’t poisoned, and had his people rush him to the personal doctors he’d arranged to be set up nearby to treat him). When he eventually was killed, he straightened his tie as he was dying.

From Futurama: The Hypnotoad.

All glory to the- ahem. Wolfson wouldn’t have been immune to the Hypnotoad (to whom goes all glory), just smart enough to never, ever look at it and carefully arrange for it to be in the same place as an enemy he wanted disoriented.

From Doctor Who… I don’t know.

So. Many. Choices. But while I was watching some old school Who, I decided that Wolfson would’ve adopted characteristics from a certain Time Lord. Curly hair. A British accent. The habit of wearing a scarf.

From Arrested Development: Lucille Bluth.

She’s revealed to have been behind every crime George Bluth ever committed. And she’s Lucille Bluth. ‘Nuff said.

From Looney Toons: Marvin The Martian.

For reasons.

One idea I had for Wolfson was time travel.

That began, as many things did, on Facebook. There’s a game called Gardens of Time, and while the game mechanics had nothing to do with time travel, the story around it did. And when you earned coins from playing, you could use them to build your Time Garden- shop from a selection of things from all throughout history (from monuments to people to animals), and arrange them into something that stuck me as a cross between a garden, museum, and zoo.

I imagined Wolfson with a collection of things from all over the world and all over time. Not even missing things- one millisecond of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, trapped and looped so it appeared to always be in his collection even though it was only missing from its rightful place for a millisecond.

And I imagined time travel. Weirding up the timeline by having the events filed under 500-07-09 take place after the events filed under 1836-04-26. Making new timelines to track each character’s personal timeline.

Collecting moments would only have been part of it, for Wolfson. He resented his name, Wolf’s son, hated being defined by a father who’d been defeated. I imagined his quest to claim the name of Wolf by insinuating himself into the origins of all the wolf myths he could. Becoming Wolf by becoming every wolf. Stealing the identity of the she-wolf that nurtured the founder of Rome. Stealing the identity of a wolf fathered by Loki and destined to kill Odin at the end of the world.

Causing enough trouble along the way that our heroes would have things to stop him from doing.

I imagined using time travel to finally get the IC date to the current date by having the final battle involve a current event, and plot device it to keep the characters there. I would’ve already established time travel dead zones, stretches of time where time travel doesn’t work (and worked out with you how that affects Tesqas). And, to save everything, our heroes would’ve had to travel to sometime in 2013, knowing they wouldn’t be able to go back for however long it would take for them to get settled in enough to not want to go back (I would’ve asked).

I imagined a line for Wolfson:

“You can tell a lot about a person by the first thing they do with a time machine, don’t you think? Some try to kill Hitler. I took violin lessons and went to Rome.”

I had this in my drafts. I wanted to come up with a few more names before I posted it, and put together a pretty photoset of Trance Gemini, Aeolia’s PB. I had a collection of images, they just needed to be picked through and edited.

Then I lost interest.

I regained some interest when I had the thought that Wolfson might bring the manifestations of She into play. In my head, he resented the Wolf, but was allies with his mother. They both knew that he would only remain allies with her for as long as he thought he couldn’t defeat her and claim her power, and they both thought that was a healthy and caring mother/son relationship.

Aeolia, if given a glimmer of what Wolfson meant to the being she was part of, could have been useful in smoothing things over with Thrace, who otherwise might have had a problem with a new player gathering power.

The Wolf’s son is a playing child, brother. Allow him this indulgence, and you may one day find him a worthwhile ally.

**********

My true name is Aeolia. I hold the title of First Governance, in remembrance of the beginning. The time when I was Governance, the only leadership known to the world. Even then, I bore other titles. The reverent named me the Golden Goddess. Enemies who feared my blades named me Deathblade, and enemies who feared my command of lightning called me Stormcaller.

I exist now within the shell of an elf named Tursiel. I am shrouded in the flesh of her, her mind infects me at every turn, and at times I am broken by the prison of her carcass. I speak with her voice, think with her mind, respond to her name.

And yet, I am the First Governance. And though far removed from my true power, I am still the Golden Goddess, Deathblade and Stormcaller.

I am Aeolia.

I am…

I am She Of Many Names. These are but a few.

I imagined the following:

Reynaldo would complete the golem, and the golem would listen carefully to his explanations about names and genders. When the golem heard about Rory’s suggestion of “Rocky,” it would giggle and say it would take it into consideration.

Eventually, the golem would choose to be female, and decide on the name Roxy.

Wolfson never read the reports the people in his facility wrote. He had people for that, and people for dealing with those reports without bothering him.

He recrossed his feet on his desk and steepled his fingers, hands against his chest. “Linda.”

Linda stopped reading out one of the very few reports that Wolfson did have to bother with.

“I think I’ve come close to making myself useless here. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Linda gave him a cautious look, and nodded.

“Excellent. I’m tired of playing doctor.” Wolfson pressed his lips into a thin smile. “I think I’ll try something new.”

Dibs!

Sherlock’s homeless network. Stealing it for Evelyn.