The Extent of a Hero
The Extent of a Hero is based in the year 3420. After a massive nuclear war, the United Nations sees the planet falling apart by the seams and comes to the conclusion that it's time to pick up and move shop, start anew, start fresh. They'd been colonizing a different galaxy for the past two hundred years, but they had never allowed many to leave. The system is called the Pax Civicus system, and the capital planet is Purpura. The mass colonization of Purpura happened on the eve of the 26th century.
Now, three hundred years later, they have prospered beneath the totalitarian reign of the council, dubbed the Founders. They are much like a group of monarchs in the way that each of them, six in total, are descended from the first six that inhabited the planet. One of them is Olivia Marshall. Her daughter, Ivy, is a psiotic. Psiotics only came into existence after the nuclear war. Just after the people of planet Earth were exposed to it, there were mutations in their DNA. Some were born perfectly normal, some did not survive the full term, but some were born with mental powers such as telekinesis and telepathy.
After the Founders took control, children born with these "powers" disappeared. No one knew what was happening to them. But, if you did not have the power to override this, your child was out of your hands. As the daughter of a Founder, Ivy was able to live a normal childhood. Normal until she hit puberty and her powers ballooned out of control. Now she's on the run. Her mother has been persuaded by a very powerful diplomat, Merrick Andrews, to send her off where the other innate psiotics are held; they both choose to send the Imperial police force after her. When she finds herself on the doorstep of a woman that knows what the government is doing, she is forced to find help. She has to find some way to control her powers, or silence them.
The Accidental Alchemist
The roots of Western alchemy can be traced back to Ancient Egypt. Over thousands of years, scientists and spiritualists alike have attempted to answer the question. These men were some of the most intelligent ever to exist. They researched. They experimented. They spent their life’s work on figuring out how to turn common metals into gold, or to create Panacea - the “Elixir of Life.”
Then, there was Llewellyn Davies. After a night of exquisitely realistic dreaming, he wakes to find himself curled in the fetal position on his desk, his head propped up by a book on botany, a phial of something silvery nestled in his palm. His patron, Octavius Church, sees the phial and almost crosses himself in glee. The modern variety of druid - meaning a millionaire with nothing to do but read books of old - Octavius knows exactly what it is. The liquid in this phial is the much sought after Panacea. His “adopted son” has created the Elixir of Life - in his sleep!
When Josephine Walden, the owner of Walden Steam, hears about this new discovery, she decides that she must have it. But, she is not the only one to hear of Llewellyn’s scientific breakthrough. Through word of mouth, airship captain Marigold Norbury hears of this bumbling young man and his “elixir.” Their attempts at persuading Llewellyn to part with his beloved phial are much different.
Josephine calls on Octavius with a proposal. Her daughter Eleanor, a striking, much desired young thing, has not yet been proposed to. If he would help the two families to merge, it would be the best for both of them.
The crew of the H.M.S. Hermia use sheer force to release Llewellyn’s grip on the phial… by kidnapping him. When separated from his new love, Llewellyn refused to let the phial part from his sight. Instead, he makes it his job to bother the captain of the ship until she lets him go.
When things go sour between Octavius and Josephine, Llewellyn is forced to pick a side. Does he fall behind the man that raised him, or does he help his new friends defeat the powerful entity that is Walden Steam?
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