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Book 1

Page history last edited by Isidra Francis 12 years ago

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The Elemenstor Cycle, Book 1: The Fires of Mount Windice

 

 

A flash of lightning tore through the tumult, illuminating the grizzled Elemenstor and his ambulatory dresser.

 

First released in the United States on November 12, 1996 by Realmworlds Publishing. ISBN 0-133699-016-X.

 

First edition book cover:

 

Dust Jacket Notes

Outside Cover

Book One of Tycho Brahe's Elemenstor Saga is centered around a young Tribbit named Horatio and the events that lead him into the icy doom of fire that is Mount Windice.

 

Follow the mis-adventures of Horatio and his dark companion as they make their way to the icy Fires of Mount Windice for a colossal conflict of good versus evil! Who is the mysterious Bibee and how did she arrive under the Wargnle Plate of Duke Alfamarma? What manner of Pixlie deceit could corrupt the mind of a young Tribbit? How can a simple Mucksucker survive the peril of Mount Windice and plunder the Mosaic Platter of Ronard? Find out in the first installment of Tycho Brahe's EPIC novella series: The Fires of Mount Windice!

 

Inside Flap (front and back)

Horatio of the Luskfish bloodline of Tribbits is the son of Julio and Arch-son of Hermes (The Obtuse). As Horatio's tale begins, Brahe paints a deep and vibrant portrait of the simple life of a Tribbit. The reader is flooded with rich imagery of The Dank, a peaceful swamp inhabited by the Luskfish clan of Tribbits, among many. Horatio and his brood work The Dank as Mucksuckers, making their living by scraping gelatinous matter from the backs of the Dooblegnards, the largest of The Dank's many unique inhabitants.

 

But Horatio's destiny is not to grow old as a Mucksucker. His fate suffers an odd twist one afternoon while scraping the back of Duke Alfamarma, one of his least favorite Dooblegnards. As Horatio reached under the Duke's posterior Wargnle Plate to removed the muck, a mysterious and ill-tempered orange Pixlie named Bibee darted out, now freed from her Dooblegnard prison!

 

Over the next few years, the malicious Bibee filled the young and impressionable Horatio's head with cruel lies and mis-information, slowly corrupting him into her subservient drone. Robbed by the Pixlie of his capacity for conscience and reason, Horatio becomes a tool for Bibee's devious intent. She has set into motion a plan concocted in her twisted mind all the many years she lie in muck beneath the Dooblegnard's plate: to steal the Mosaic Platter of Ronard!

 

Note: Copies of this book printed after the publication of Book 13 differ greatly from previous printings. These changes are apparently to reconcile the beginning of the story with the end, and to correct some continuity errors that crept in during the cycle.

 

Jacket quotes

 

"I have seen the future of fantasy, and his name is The Elemenstor Saga" --Clive Barker

 

"After reading this (book), I see that (my) life has been wasted." --Robert Jordan

 

"This book filled me with a deep admiration for the author's audacity to spring this upon an unsuspecting public." --David Eddings

 

"Dear Mr Brahe, I'm not going to give you a jacket quote. Please cease all correspondence immediately." --David Gemell

 

"You've clearly put as much effort into this as I did into The Phantom Menace." -- George Lucas

 

"A thirteen book epic fantasy, huh? Think that makes you a big man? Think that makes you better than me? Huh? HUH?!?" --Stephen King

 

"Your thirteen book epic, a word which here means "a very long story", differs from my own thirteen book epic in one important respect: I like yours." --Lemony Snicket

 

"My God, it's full of -hrrrrkkarrrgh" --Arthur C. Clarke

 

"It's a bunch of bloody rubbish." --Neil Gaiman

 

Notes

In the famous "Fire Sale Edition" (fully a third of the volumes sold), the first chapter is missing, torn cleanly from the book and the front cover replace with a color photocopied facsimile.  In this edition, the book begins with Horatio telling the story of Harbinger Portent to a group of youngling Tribbits. From there the action takes off when Horatio discovers Bibee, and meets a grizzled Harbinger named Omen. At the same time, the book follows a dual narrative of Harbinger Portent, and his early experiences with the Starborn Gem.

 

In the full edition, the first chapter begins with the same iconic sentence as the second chapter, hence the confusion for many people.  The first chapter begins with pickled food loving Gendoman Ovelkus making his way through The Dank as a storm brews.   Without this first chapter, it is less clear who Gendoman is when he arrives in chapter IV to give Horatio some key guidance.

 

Plot elements explained

 

Please note that there will be some spoilers following in this section, unavoidable given the in-depth discussion of elements of the storyline of Book 1.

 

There is much discussion of the discrepancy between the end of Part 1 of Book 1, where Horatio causes the destruction of Thithithmihos under Bibee's control, and the beginning of Book 2, where he returns home free of Bibee's influence as if nothing had ever happened. While this apparent incompatibility lends credence to the theory that Books 1 and 2 may have, in fact, been written by different authors, with no sense of canon between the two novels, it is important to note the following extract:

 

 

Horatio's mind swirled with unfathomable confusions, rending thoughts into mere fractions of cognition that jumbled together into nothingness as Bibee's machinations confounded his senses. Nothing seemed real any longer; all that remained was Bibee's mellifluous voice consuming his every decision.

 

"Go!" she cried, her high-pitched Pixlie voice intoxicating the enraptured Tribble further. "Now is the time! Seek the Platter!".

 

Lightning seemed to crash thunderously around Horatio as his feet moved of their own accord, splashing rambunctiously through the murky depths of Thithithmihos. All seemed as a dream to him, and time passed like an egg upon the waves of an ocean; slowly, inexorably, uncomprehendably, the red haze of Bibee's rage enfolded him and he lost all sense of self as horrendous destruction followed in his wake. When next Horatio regained his mind, there was nothing of Thithithmihos left save a small stone in his ear from the foundations of his house as he tore it to the ground, and the scent of icy burning in his nostrils; there was no turning back any longer.

 

It seems as though Brahe's writing is deliberately ambiguous; it is never stated outright in the books (even in the revised edition) whether Thithithmihos was actually destroyed, and Horatio himself is obviously bewitched and unable to tell for himself anyway. Bibee leaves him to draw his own conclusions from what evidence remains, and I believe Brahe may have intended something similar given that there was no indication that the novel series would necessarily be popular enough to entail a sequel.

 

One also wonders what the fate of the Mosaic Platter of Ronard is after Horatio peddles the platter for 20 Curld at the Coach Station for enough Coach fare to get back to The Dank. It is supposed by many that the stranger who purchases the platter is none other than the Dark Master, although the exact series of events that moved it from this transaction into his sinister possession is unclear.

 

Another puzzling element is in the books climax, Horatio has reached the summit of Mount Windice, just as Harbinger Portent had when he had his epic conflict with Char Reyarteb at the critical moment of the Unsundering.  How these acts tie together is somewhat unclear.

 

 

First-Person Perspective Rewrites

For the 10th anniversary of the original publication, the book saw three rewritten versions appear with significantly altered plot elements and dialogue changes within them.

 

The official in-canon explanation for these drastic changes is that the rewrites are all first-person perspective views of the story from three different characters - and they remember and percieve events as being different from reality due to their individual personalities. The original narrative form of Book 1 remains the "canon" record of events, however.

 

As there are significant events that happen in the diverging storylines that end up being very important overall and answer several loose plot threads in the ELoTH franchise, readers are encouraged to read all four versions to get the "full" story.

 

The rewritten books are:

  • Book 1: Extreme, which is told from the point of view of the bloody-minded Bibee is an action and violence-heavy tale.
  • Book 1: Romance, which is told from the point of view of the dreamy Horatio, and is presented as an Epic Romance.
  • Book 1: Epic (of which the fewest copies were printed), which contains two versions - the original, unedited manuscript, and a version told from the point of view of an unknown person who is probably Tycho Brahe himself, although there are a few alternate theories.

 

Book 1: Extreme and Book 1: Romance were briefly available in a discount package advertised as the Epic Legends Bloody Love Commemorative Edition.

 

There are reports of an incomplete, unpublished fourth 10th anniversary edition of Book 1, Book 1: Crap, written in the style of L H Franzibald.

 

 

 

See Also: Vasthar. S'yrf'yl the Immortal. The Fourteenth Manuscript. Sad Harbinger Portent in Snow (Card). Montykins. Wendybell. The Story That Is Built One Sentence At a Time By Those That Read It. Harbinger Omen. Epic Legends Bloody Love Commemorative Edition. Johan. Xaphod. FrontPage2. The Disilluminati. Great Elemenstation War. The Harbinger Cycle. Bibee. L H Franzibald. Parable of the Swimming Rabbit. Book 2. Vortivores. Book 7. Tyrose. The Chamber of Darkening Darkness. Attack of the Bacon Golems. Gorsald the Pedantic. Dark Hoovers. Wikibook Content. Vernynut-glue. The Invisible Hat. Book 1: Extreme. Ablongox the Particularly Unusually Long Lived. N00B page. Mosaic Platter of Ronard. Malatox. Thashkay S'Bichaa. Book 11. Help Wanted Archive. Dundersville. Mort and the Unusually Big Cow. The Tribbit Fishers. farts. The Elspinster Saga. Book 1: Epic. Elendendium. Bag of the Not-so-Endless Void. The Elemenstor Cycle. FrontPage. ELotH: TES - Pen and Paper RPG. Book 13. Duke Alfamarma. Your First Addition to the Wiki. Availability. Image Comics Presents: The Fires of Mount Windice. Canon or non-canon. Excerpts from the cycle that are recounted here. Fregor the Untruthful. Remember that One Thing Archive. Temporary Notice Archive. Battlestaff. Horatio. The Twelve Scourges of Battal. Quotable Quotes. Cryoclasm on Aeropyre Peak. Law 126. Pixlie. Mucksuckers. Rings of Canon. Kristian Tenge. The Song of the Sorcelator. RealLifeTimeLine. Tribbits. Notable Common Phrases and Idioms. The Sword On The Cover Of Book One. Elemenstor Cycle Timeline. Gunt the Half-brained. Toasty. Cloud Arrows.

 

 

Discussion

 

Note: This is clearly an allegory of the whole ELOTHTES canon. Bibee is the power of Elemenstation, and Horatio is Harbringer Portent. He releases her, for good and ill, leads to destruction of the world (Horatio's village), and spends rest of his life undoing what he has done. - Jake

 

Very stupid newbie question: Which Elemenstor is being referred to in the opening line of the book?
It actually turns out to be a quote from an epic legend that Horatio is recanting to a bunch of youngling Tribbits. The line (famous throughout Battal) references none other than Harbinger Portent.

 

I always wondered about that last dust jacket quote... Anyone have any ideas as to what happened there?
In his later years Clarke really started fading. You could talk to him for 20 minutes and then he'd have no idea who you were. Sad, really. -TychoCelchuuu

 

In this book Horatio gets a haircut by Ubziz Forelock... doesn't anyone find this a little unusual? -tim
I've always explained Ubziz's appearances as eulithian resonance vector-related hiccups in timenes--Koopa

 

PLEASE! SOMEONE TRY TO FIND THE TABLE OF CONTENTS!!! The only thing I remember is the last Chapter being the one with the Swimming Rabbit thingy.
I was unaware that fiction books included a table of contents. Maybe it was added in one of the extra-special mega printings that I was unable to buy due to lack of funds. -TychoCelchuuu
I know that, but I mean that I want a list of the chapter titles, for completions sake of the Wiki. One of the other books has one on its entry.

 

Where can we get a hold of these books?
From any fine book seller... If you can't find them.. you can at least get the guide to them. info on ordering that is found here: http://elothtes.pbwiki.com/The%20ELotH%20WikiBook
So is there a store in particular that they can be found in? Amazon didn't seem to have it and they're just about as big as any book store out there.
The wiki book isn't in large-volume circulation yet, and Amazon actually yanked their ELOTH:TES material after someone objected to the overtly scatalogical chapter in Book 7. Apparantly they'll be putting edited versions up once the legal proceedings are finished, so ... a couple of months, I guess.

 

Anybody else planning on picking up the 10th anniversary edition of this in Nov? -Tim

 

Dude... can anybody believe what they did for the 10th anniversary... three completely different rewrites of Book 1? I picked up Book 1: Extreme, but not the others.
There's nothing I wanted to see less than a torn-shirt Horatio with giant pecs, clutching a giant-bossomed Bibee on the cover of Book 1: Romance. Does anybody know what the the third rewrite was and who was the main character? They were sold out at my bookstore. lawyers
I will agree with that. Did you see the 3rd book though? It looks like it might have the original unedited manuscript in it and then a re-edited possibly more epic version by Tycho Brahe! I was going to grab it but a fight broke out at the release party at the bookstore because they apparently didn't order enough and I barely managed to get out with my life. Although I did manage to grab the 10th Anniversary rerelease of the original edition, which will replace my 5th Anniversary Edition.
The Epic edition is definately the most popular, and in high demand. They really didn't print enough. From what I've heard, its the unedited manuscript along with a rambling, stream-of-conciousness narration that seems to be a record of Tycho Brahe's notes during the creation of the original story. It also adds some stuff in too, what with the narrator being even more omniscent and omnipotent than a regular narrator. Very meta - it is both a "making of" version, as well as a story told as if by a God.

 

 

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