I wrote Rise of Morganna more than three years ago and until I went back to edit it, I hadn't read it since the day I completed it. In fact, when it came time to read it for my editing project, I dreaded it more than anything. Why? Well in a nutshell, I wasn't sure it was very good.
In this post, I talk about what I was trying to do with Rise, my misgivings, and mostly about the setting I sketched out in that series. All that under the cut.
At the end of the arc that introduced her, Mystic Spiral, I 'got rid' of Morganna by having Sky Tyrant blow her up while she was trying to teleport away from the West Truman Bridge. The issue and the arc ended with an ominous green portal the side of a pinprick appearing in the river below.
From that point all, Morganna's return in “A Magictech Crisis” with a group of monsters from Faerie was in the cards, but I hadn't really thought of actually chronicling Morganna's time in Comic Book Limbo. It wasn't until my friends (at the time my only readers) expressed their love for the character that I decided to give Morganna her own mini.
At the time, I was already writing the Whitecoat one-shot and the idea of The Descendants as a comic book universe with minis, one-shots and giant sized issues was already an idea I was pitching to my friends. It wasn't really that original, many fan-fiction sites like House of Ideas lay themselves out in much the same way. Even Star Harbor Nights includes one-off stories. So writing a mini, essentially a separate issue written over a longer period, wasn't an alien concept to me.
What was an alien concept to me was Faerie. The original plan was for Morganna to come back with a full villain team of non-human supers. In fact, throughout the mini, you see this forming with the motes, the spriggans and the troll being brought together. There was also going to be a daoine who later became Aenix from “Demonology”. I never intended to actually go to another world.
But my friends loved the idea of seeing Morganna so much, I was under considerable pressure to do the mini. So I started writing with no world in mind whatsoever, making it up as I went along.
There was another factor in this as well; I already have a fantasy setting I write in; Ere, and I poured most of my deeper ideas on metaphysics and magic into it; I didn't want to have Faerie steal from Ere. Not only was I writing blind, but I was writing with one hand behind my back. The memory of this is largely the reason I dreaded re-reading the mini.
In the end, I think I managed fairly well to tell the story I was telling (except that one shameful riddle about the 'e'. (I'm not good at riddles), but that I did a serious disservice to the world, which I've now given real thought to. So I'd like to use this post as to explain and retcon a few things before they're done in the Descendants Universe concerning Faerie:
First of all, Faerie is a separate dimension, also called the Green World. It has it's own physics that is highly malleable by belief and willpower. It's because of this that humans can survive in Faerie: they think they can, so they do. This also makes spellcasters, people who both possess a powerful will and are capable of more flexible belief, incredibly powerful there.
Thousands of years ago, mages traveled freely to and from faerie and visa-versa. Then an unspecified event (yes, I know what it was, no I won't tell you) caused them to leave, abandoning powerful magic in the process. It was then that a colossal, magical plant called the Thorn was planted in the Vault of the sky to strip the powers of invading humans. (I admit it. I'm a tease).
In the present day, it's even difficult for Faeries to come to our dimension (the Blue World) except in freak accidents.
Second, and this links up with the point about belief based physics: The Laws all the Faeries are so adamant about literally are physical laws in Faerie—but only because the faeries think they are. They literally can't die by violence from another faerie because neither faerie believes they can.
Morganna turns out to be exempt from the laws because she just as strongly believes that she can kill faeries and can stop trolls from regenerating. In a world like faerie, delusion can a god make.
Finally, I'd like to point out that the area Morganna landed and traveled in wasn't the whole of Faerie. It was an island roughly the size of Europe and comparable in terms of what percentage of Faerie it encompasses. The Realms are largely wild, open frontier where different groups are trying to carve out their own existence. By extension, the trolls and ogres aren't indigenous to the island. Further stories will reveal other places in the world of Faerie and the cultures therein.
These are all points that, if I was writing Rise today, would have been included, but weren't simply because when I was writing, they didn't exist. What came of this is Through the Looking Glass style randomness that now that I've reread it makes sense for Morganna.
One last note; astute readers will notice that Morganna was trained by two women who ultimately died in witch trials. Witch trials which, in the Descendants Universe, were caused by Morganna herself. Just a little tidbit I thought people would enjoy.
Until next time.
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