pH-Webworld

The PHANTACEA Mythos

- The Summer 2005 Collection of Character Likenesses -

Summer 2005

1. Featured Story: "The Deviant Dead"
2. Introductory Remarks
3. PHANTACEA Essentials (Lynx to illustrated mini-essays)
4. Hestia Housekeeping
5. Today's Topic
6. Latest Stories and Synopses
7. Notes on Graphics
8. Sites with Loads of Graphics
9. Previous pHpubs
10. Revised Novel Announcement

Potential front covers for 'The Trigregos Gambit' and 'The War of the Apocalyptics'

PHANTACEA on the Web

- written by Jim McPherson
- unless otherwise noted the web-design, photographs and/or scanning are by Jim McPherson
- where applicable artwork is as noted in the mouse-over text

© copyright 2005 Jim McPherson
| PHANTACEA on the Web Main Menu | Online PHANTACEA Primer | Ongoing PHANTACEA Features | Ordering Information | Serial Synopses | Contact | Web Publisher's Commentary |

Revised Novel: "The Trigregos Gambit", premise, potential dustcover, 3 sample Chapters + synopses of the Sample Chapters


[Featured Story logo done on Photoshop by Jim McPherson, Year 2002]

Jordan Tethys was glad Ferd gave him a garlic necklace when he decided to leave the governor’s staid domicile in order take a walk and taste the remarkably breathable night air of Petrograd.

It wasn’t just the night air he wanted to taste either. Now that a majority of altogether alive workers from Godbad proper were living here on a daily basis there were some great public bars in Petrograd.

Too bad he’d chosen one that didn’t have garlic garlands strung around its doors and windows. Vamps were public too.

Garlic wouldn’t do any good against Night Owl but right now it was certainly keeping Second Fangs far enough away for him to finish his getaway drawing. Which he did. It wasn’t perfect but it’d be good enough.

“Oh, don’t be in such a rush to flush, Jordy,” Janna Fangfingers fay-said, sauntering up to his table. “At least have another beer; for old times’ sake if nothing else.”

“Sorry, Fangs, but I’m particular about who I drink with. I hate being the person who’s drunk. Or haven’t I mentioned that to you before?”

-- from 'The Deviant Dead', the second chapter in the newly revised novel: 'The Trigregos Gambit'


PHANTACEA Essentials

  • The Time-Tumbling Dual Entities: The two most confounding characters in the PHANTACEA Mythos; conceivably the Male and Female Principals;
  • Heliosophos: The recurring Male Entity; in his 1st Lifetime during the 1955 & 1960 web-serials, his 11th during the 19/5938 serials and his 100th during the 19/5980 ones;
  • The Moloch Sedon: The skyborn, as in extraterrestrial, lone member of the first generation of devazurkind, the inspirations for the Gods and Goddesses of Mythology; his essence composes Cathonia, the Sedon Sphere; arguably the Devil Himself;
  • Lilith, the Demon Queen of the Night: The immortal, chthonic or earthborn daemon who must possess the birth mothers of mortal Sed-sons at the moment of their conception; without Sed-sons alive on both sides of the Whole Earth the Sedon Sphere would collapse; arguably the Devil Herself;
  • Fisherwoman: The ever-fishifying, deviant daughter of the Dual Entities who features in many of the web-serials thus far presented online;
  • Freespirit Nihila: As the firstborn daughter of Thrygragos Lazareme and the Trigregos Sisters, the eldest female Master Deva; once Harmonia, the Unity of Balance, she becomes Nihila, initially the lone Unity of Panharmonium, in the Launch sequences set in 19/5980;
  • The Celestial Superior: In both Life and Afterlife she appears (thus far) in many of the 19/5938 serials; arguably an incarnation of Serathrone Hallow, one of the two triplet, firstborn daughters of Thrygragos Byron and the Trigregos Sisters;
  • Utopians of Weir: Extraterrestrials stuck on the Inner Earth since a decade before the Genesea, the Great Flood of Genesis, those who have them can manifest gargoyles out of eyeorbs attached to the top of their eye-staves;
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Introductory Remarks

Greetings. Welcome, or welcome back.

The usual 'Hestia Housekeeping' section is immediately below. (Click here to find out why I call it such.) The FAC ('Fantasy, of the Anheroic-variety, Coyotes') section, what someday may become the equivalent of a PHANTACEA FAQ ('Frequently Asked Questions') sheet, is now elsewhere.

Beneath the 'Featured Story' section next door are lynx to a number of typically idiosyncratic mini-essays and Character Likeness studies I've prepared over the years for on the Web. They illustrate some of the peculiar perspectives I've developed while writing the PHANTACEA Mythos.

Contact me [jmcp1749@hotmail.com] and feel free to ask any questions you might have regarding PHANTACEA. I'll do my best to answer them either directly or right here in 'pHpubs'.

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Hestia Housekeeping

Yep, I've done it again: Turned a perfectly decent, 400-500 page novel into a 700-page 'magnum opus'. At least this one didn't come back as monstrously huge as my 2002 revision of 'The Moloch Manoeuvres' did. More on the latest revision momentarily.

Traditionally I begin my 'What's New' section of pHpubs with a link to where I put its previous update. Now that that's done, we can get on with this edition of Hestia Housekeeping. So what is new in the Summer 2005 edition of PHANTACEA on the Web?

Firstly, there's three more installments of 'Coueranna's Curse'. Which, by my count, is the 9th complete novel I've serialized during the course of web-publishing PHANTACEA out here in Cyberia.

There are also synopses for the last three installments I put up. That includes one for: 'Cain, Slayer of Abel'. Additionally all three chapters to which these synopses refer should still be available for your fee-free perusal. (No synopses for the three new ones yet, however.)

What else? Sooth said I can't recall all of what's new this time up. I can tell you I added an entry in the Terms pages for Garudas and enlarged the already existent ones for Utopian eye-staves and Trigon. Also put an new entry in the Serendipity section.

Next door there's a list of lynx to mini-essays I've done or redone of late. There's also three more Character Likeness studies, as I refer to these mini-essays, down below in the topic section. There's plenty of new graphics to go with them as well.

That's about it forTitle reads The Trigregos Gambit, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005 upgrades or updates. Onto my latest revision.

For the Winter 2004/05 edition of PHANTACEA on the Web I set up "The Covers Gallery". That's where I placed an assortment of potential covers I'd designed over the years for some of my not-as-yet print-published novels.

Perhaps PHANTACEA perversely, one of the dust-covers I lodged there was intended for 'Wilderwitch's Babies, Part Two: Tsishah's Twilight', a novel I'm still in the process of writing.

(Its cover is still there. So is a new dust-cover cover for 'The War of the Apocalyptics' and the full cover for the revised version of 'The Trigregos Gambit', which follows WarPoc in 'The Launching of the Cosmic Express' Tetralogy.)

The problem was, having just written 'Wilderwitch's Babies Part One', I realized that some of the major characters I was intending to feature in Part Two (such that what inevitably happens in 'Babies Part Three' makes sense), had been given relatively short shrift in the comic books and in the Gambit serial.

There wasn't much else for it. Gambit needed expanding. And boy, even though I jettisoned both the 'Thrygragon' prelude and postlude (if that's a word) as well as the entire pregame section (the Tethys Tale of the 'Disunition of the Unities'), did it get expanded. (Those events are still crucial but they're told in bite-sized flashbacks; not complete chapters as they were the first time around.)

Saladin Devason gets more of an active role in this latest Gambit. There's also much more of Jordan Tethys, the legendary 30-Year Man, the three Sarpedons (Daddy Demios, Mama Morg and daughter Andaemyn, Tsishah's half-sister) and Thartarre Holgatson, the one-armed High Priest of the brown-robed, priests and priestesses of Sraddha.

Freespirit Nihila, the Unity of Panharmonium, takes centre stage for awhile longer than she previously did. So do a number of other devils, including Thrygragos Mithras's supposed firstborn, Tantal (King Cold) and Methandra (the Scarlet Seeress) Thanatos, and Bodiless Byron's definite firstborns, Rudra (Bestial Storm) and Umashakti (Gravity) Silvercloud.

The stars are still the stars. If anything Nergal Vetala, the Blood Queen of Hadd, is more vicious and her soldier is more godlike. D-Brig 5 (the Untouchable Diver, Blind Sundown, Raven's Head, Dervish Furie and OMP-Akbar), Ringleader, Young Death and the ever-fishifying Fisherwoman shine as brightly as ever. (Fish considerably more so, in PHANTACEA fact).

As for that perpetually smiling fellow I kept forgetting to mention in my original synopses, he gets an opportunity to demonstrate that, while PHANTACEA is now, forever has been and always will be Anheroic Fantasy, even really, really bad guys sometimes have redeeming qualities. (He does play a pleasant panpipe after all; still uses his breed brothers' severed heads as bongo drums, though.)

Lynx to three of the revision's sample chapters and the synopses that go with them are next door. You'll note they're out of sequence for a change, with no representative from Game-Gambit.

The first sets the stage for some early bits in 'Tsishah's Twilight' . The second gets a tad Biblical in that it includes the PHANTACEA version of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The third is non-stop action in the tradition of the 2003 revision of 'The War of the Apocalyptics'.

Feedback encouraged. And, as always, good reading.

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Stories and Synopses

'Coueranna's Curse'

'The Trigregos Gambit'

  1. Pregame-Gambit 2: "THE DEVIANT DEAD"
  2. Pregame-Gambit 7: "SEDON’S STOOGE"
  3. Endgame-Gambit 5: "PSYCHO SOUL GRENADES"

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Jim McPherson's Latest Collection of Character Likenesses

The Smiling Fiend (Aka Smiler, Ahriman, Sodom, Rhadamanthys, Judge Druj) / The Trigregos Talismans (The Three Sacred Objects, what may hold the secret to controlling devils and therefore Sedon's Head) / The Cretan Snake Goddess (Who dresses a little like Pyrame Silverstar, the Perpetual Presence, partial mother of the Sed-sons)

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The Smiling Fiend (Aka Smiler, Ahriman, Sodom, Rhadamanthys, Judge Druj)

The Smiling Fiend is the ambitious, endlessly manipulative Mithradite Master Deva no one can remember unless he manifests himself physically in front of you. He's the devil I kept forgetting to mention in my synopses a few years ago now. Like so many of my characters, he's myrionymous; has many names.

In the 'The Launching of the Cosmic Express' Tetralogy he was almost exclusively referred to as 'Smiler'. In the revised version of 'The Trigregos Gambit', he's as often addressed as 'the Judge'. Certainly 'Judge' is what his fellow devils call him whenever he's in their presence. They did in the now-concluded serialization of 'Helioddity', which was set in 1938, as well.

Fanciful gif of Bad Rhad with pipe-like snake and the head of a Costa Rican crater, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005Throughout the PHANTACEA comic books, however, I called him Rhadamanthys. On these webpages I still do, though more often than not I refer to him as Bad Rhad nowadays.

He appeared on the front cover of Number Six. That entire book was titled: 'Rhadamanthys Revealed'. Indeed, in the comic book series I referred to the disaster that befell the Cosmic Express, and much of what happened thereafter, as the results of 'The Rhadamantine Scheme'.

So where did I come up with his name? From mythology. That's where I come up with most of my names. In this case it was the Greco-Cretan cycle of myths. Therein Rhadamanthys was one of the three sons of Phoenician Europa by the Great God Zeus. The other two were Minos and Sarpedon.

In the related Theban cycle of myths Europa's brother was King Cadmus of Thebes. He's the fellow who brought the alphabet to Europe, which was named after her. He was also the mortal who married a lesser Olympian Goddess by the name of Harmonia, a daughter of Ares (War) and Aphrodite (Love). So much for myth.

In the PHANTACEA Mythos, King Cadmus was the Male Entity, in his Second Lifetime, whereas Harmonia was, and is, a devil, a firstborn Lazaremist, the Unity of Balance. (In late 5980 YD she decides to start calling herself Freespirit Nihila, the Unity of Panharmonium.)

By my reckoning, the mythological King Cadmus would have lived circa 1500 BC, which makes it circa 2500 Year of the Dome (2,500 years after the Moloch Sedon raised the Cathonic Dome in order to protect the Hidden Headworld from being inundated by the Genesea, the Great Flood of Genesis). That also makes it roughly 500 years after the destruction of the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Circa 1500 BC, in the PHANTACEA Mythos at any rate, Crete itself has been divided into three decidely distinct districts for most of those 500 years.The human-dominated area is in the northwest, European section of Crete, around Knossos. Its king is always known as Minos.

A photo of a faerie stuck in a tree taken by Jim McPherson in Vancouver Canada The area around Malia, east of Knossos in the Asian third of Crete, is dominated by Utopians, the ancestors of those who live in the present day Weirdom of Cabalarkon, the majority of whom are congenital idiots. Its ruling family are the Sarpedons.

The southern, African third of the island, centred around Phaistos, is an area dominated by devils. Its devic overlord is none other than our pal, Bad Rhad, whereas its devic overlady, who styled herself Queen Tanith throughout much of the matriarchate, was his bosom buddy, Pyrame Silverstar.

I understand the Goddess Culture so prevalent in the Mediterranean Basin flourished historically between 2000 and 1500 BC. Its centre was Santorini or Thira, an island in the Aegean Sea that was very nearly destroyed in a volcanic eruption around, you guessed it, 1500 BC. In the PHANTACEA Mythos, I refer to it as Strongyne, the Island of Strong Women.

Although I've never actually made up my mind about this, I expect Strongyne's primary goddess was Mediterranean Athena. That'd be Methandra Thanatos, the Athenan War Witches' nominal patron. Certainly, along with Nergal Vetala, the Blood Queen of Hadd, Freespirit Nihila, as Harmonia now refers to herself, Rhadamanthys himself, and her immediate sibling and husband, Tantal Thanatos, Cold to her Heat, Methandra was the main devil to appear in the serialized version of 'The Trigregos Gambit'.

Fanciful gif of Bad Rhad as a tree sprite, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005Mythology has it that both King Cadmus and Harmonia were turned into snakes. I have found no reference as to what became of Europa. However, along with the mythic Minos, Rhadamanthys 'the Just' , who apparently had blond hair, became one of the three judges of Hades.

That isn't why devils address Bad Rhad as Judge, though. It's because he's the 'A' in the VAM Entity; 'A' as Ahriman or Aryanman. As detailed elsewhere, in the Zoroastrian Faith Ahriman is identified as Judge Druj and, as Bad Rhad admits to Jordan Tethys in one of the sample chapters of Gambit's revision, Druj means 'the Lie'.

As for the two fanciful images in this section, 'Bad Rhad's a regular snake' can be taken to refer back to the days when Crete was a hotbed of the Goddess Culture. As below, Cretans were prone to representing one of their deities as a Snake Goddess. I'm not committing myself as yet but, because of events depicted in the Gambit revision, I suspect the Snake Goddess will turn out to be none other than Harmonia, before she fell for Heliosophos in his 2nd Lifetime.

The other digitally dicked image in this section proclaims: 'Smiler is just a faerie'. That's because, as is also revealed in the same sample chapter referred to above, Bad Rhad, the skyborn devil, fused with Daemonicus, the earthborn, pre-Sedon King of Daemons, at the time of Ragnarok, which took place around 230 years prior to the Genesea. Daemons, like faeries, are chthonic creatures. That means they were literally earthborn, as in Mother Earth was their mother.

[NOTE 1: Have a look on the Serendipity webpages for more on Bad Rhad; specifically: October 1997, Autumn 2003 & Winter 2003/4.

[NOTE 2: When quoted Bad Rhad and a large number of mostly male characters refer to this extended period of time as the Mad Goddesses' Middle Sea Matriarchate.

[NOTE 3: In the revised versionof 'The Trigregos Gambit', the two surviving members of Thrygragos Byron's firstborn litter of three, Rudra and Umashakti Silvercloud, have more significant roles to play than they did in the original serial or, for that matter, in the comic books.]

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The Trigregos Talismans (The Three Sacred Objects, what may hold the secret to controlling devils and therefore Sedon's Head)

Three female faces in one head, reminiscent of the Trigregos Sisters; taken in hostel in Granada, Nicaragua by Jim McPherson, 2003In both the comic books, notably pH-6, and in the original, serialized version of 'The Trigregos Gambit', the Trigregos Talismans are referred to as the Three Sacred Objects. Because they can be used to kill devils, the devils themselves refer to them as the Three Accursed Objects.They were, and still are in the Gambit revision, a curved blade, a mirror that can be used a shield, and a bloodstone tiara. By name they were and are the Susasword, the Amateramirror and the Crimson Corona.

As to where I got their names from, as with Rhadamanthys, above, they came from mythology. This time, though, the mythology was Japanese. Gif used on back cover of potential dustcover for 'The Trigregos Gambit', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005,  There's a reference in 'Japan - from prehistory to modern times' by John Whitney Hall (the ninth printing of which I have, as published by Dell/Delta Books sometime in the mid-Seventies), to "three treasures" passed down by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu to her grandson "as symbols of his authority".

Hall does not specifically state what these three treasures were but, a couple of pages later on, he states: "his authority was both hereditary and sacerdotal and was vested in certain symbols, for instance, a mirror, arrow, or precious stone." Be that as it may, in the PHANTACEA Mythos, the Trigregos Talismans are, were and forever-after will be a sword, a mirror and a crown.

Gif entitled  'The Trigregos Talismans', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005,In the serialized version of Gambit, there was a prelude that was finished off in a postlude, if that's a word, entitled 'Thrygragon'. There was also a pregame section entitled 'The Disunition of the Unities'. Neither Thrygragon nor Disunition made it to the revised version of 'The Trigregos Gambit' but the stories presented in the serialized version haven't changed. They're also referred to occasionally in the revision. The lynx provided will take you to their synopses.

As noted on the dust-cover I prepared for Gambit's revision, everyone who plays a Trigregos Gambit loses. There's just many more characters prepared to play one in the revised version. Three of them, and this might surprise you, are highborn Master Devas.

To boot, all three are female. Presumably, like Nergal Vetala, the butts they want to boot are primarily male. Sooth said all three of them think they're firstborn-thirds of the third generation of devazurkind: a Lazaremist, a Byronic and a Mithradite. Turns out only two of them are, however. (The real Mithradite firstborn? Sorry, I've spent years forgetting to mention him and can't change that now, in the Summer 2005 edition of pHpubs.)

Is the result any different this time? To judge by another of the sample chapters I've left out here in Cyberia it may well be. Mind you, 'PSYCHO SOUL GRENADES' isn't quite the end of Endgame-Gambit. It is full of action, however. Check out its synopsis if you need a tantalizer before you read it.

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The Cretan Snake Goddess (Who dresses a little like Pyrame Silverstar, the Perpetual Presence, partial mother of the Sed-sons)

Logo reads "A Peculiar Perspectives Photo Essay"Yes, Bad Rhad really does say "Take a memo, Morg. Invite to coronation!" in the revised version of 'The Trigregos Gambit'. And, yes as well, he really does want it all. Mostly he wants Mediterranean Athena, Methandra Thanatos, Heat to her husband and immediate sibling's Cold. (Morg's the Morrigan, Morgianna Sarpedon, the Hecate-Hellions' Superior in Gambit; she wears an invisible demon.)

Smiler's desires are not what this 'Peculiar Perspectives Photo Essay' is about, although one of his alter egos, albeit after the destruction of the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, does play a part in it. That'd be Rhadamanthys himself, the mythological son of Zeus by Phoenician Europa.

Jpeg entitled 'The outstretched, grasping hand', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005Long time readers of the PHANTACEA Mythos, particularly of this website, will be aware that a large number of its featured characters consider themselves to be Etocretans, that is to say 'True Cretans'. There are so many of them I even set up a webpage dedicated to them.

Among them, most notably, is Kadmon Heliopolis. In the PHANTACEA comic books and graphic novel ("Forever & 40 Days, the Genesis of PHANTACEA"), we discovered that the time-tumbling Male Entity, Helios called Sophos the Wise (Heliosophos), believes he spent his first lifetime as none other than that selfsame Kadmon Heliopolis, who was born in 1940. Hence the recurring plot line in most of the 1938 serials being presented out here in Cyberia.

(Herr Hel Helios, as the Male Entity was often referred to in those bygone days, started his 11th lifetime in 19/5908. He was a busy guy for more than 40 years but, by the time it ended in 59/1950, he still hadn't succeeded in killing either of Kadmon's parents. In PHANTACEA fact, young Kadmon, not quite 10, killed him; for the duh-the-dogfish 11th time.)

So here I am busy preparing graphics for the Summer 2005 update of this very website. I've just finished revising 'The Trigregos Gambit'. I'm also contemplating doing a 'Character Likeness' study on Pyrame Silverstar, the Perpetual Presence, who, prior to her being cathonitized in 5950, was the partial mother of the Sed-sons.

A Cretan Snake Goddess, images put together by Jim McPherson, using PHOTOSHOP, in 2005(Although she doesn't show up in Gambit, the Smiling Fiend does mention her in one its chapters. The graphic I prepared for her is at the bottom of this space. There's a mite more about her in the Notes on Graphics section below.)

Pyrame's as myrionymous as Smiler. Has lots of appearances as well. Been around forever. Primarily, as in when she looks like herself, she's body-beautiful with a pyramidal (as in quadrangular or tetrahedral) head. Has a single eye staring out of each of its three top-sides. Wears a flounced, sheathe dress that bares her breasts.

(I'm basing this last on the Snake Goddess figurines found on, you guessed it, Crete: the aforementioned ancestral home of so many of my characters.)

I've been to Crete a couple of times so I've seen the figurines. Until I scanned-in one of them I didn't realize her dress was daemon. I do now, though. And so do you. Don't believe me? I isolated the breasts and sheathe dress on both the upper graphics featured in this space.

The daemon's head, breasts as eyeballs, is in the hood of the Bad Rhad like garment. I realize it's not black, like the Smiling Fiend's outfit, but it supposedly is the raiment once worn by a member of the Spanish Inquisition during the Conquest of Mexico so it seemed appropriate.

A daemon, by the way, should be distinguished from a demon, without the 'a', in that, according to my trusty Funk and Wagnalls dictionary, in Greek Religion a daemon was not considered evil. In fact, the ancient Greeks considered a daemon a guardian spirit or genius.

Collage of Pyrame Silverstar as 'The Perpetual Presence', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005In my handy-dandy 'Guide to Cretan Antiquities' (first published in 1976 by Eptalofos S.A. Athens - Greece), its author, Costis Davaras, Ephor of Antiquities, claims that Cretan daemons 'walk upright and behave exactly like human beings'.

They don't always do a ditto in the PHANTACEA Mythos, where they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. When Smiler tells his story to Jordan Tethys in Gambit he makes a point of using the word 'daemon' rather than 'demon'. The former are chthonic creatures that worship Mother Earth while the latter are anything except life-beneficent.

Among the 'Indescribables' who feature in the revised version of Gambit are Rakshasas Gatherers of the Dead, the mirrored Klannits, Gobble Stone Rockheads, heinous hyenas, and my favourite, the Ghasts, who terrify young Thartarre, age 5. He calls them Hankering Hankies.

The Morrigan (Superior Sarpedon) uses them as well, when she turns on her devic ally in the Panharmonium Project, Mediterranean Athena.

[Note: Have a look on the Serendipity webpages for more on Pyrame Silverstar; specifically: October 2001.]

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4. Graphics: Footnotes and off-page links:

  1. The swap-over in the masthead at the top of this edition of 'pHpubs' consists of potential covers for a pair of novels belonging to 'The Launcing of the Cosmic Express' Tetralogy. They are 'The War of the Apocalyptics' and 'The Trigregos Gambit'. A variation of the WarPoc cover can be found in the Covers Gallery.

  2. The 'Alt Txt' mouse-over for the front cover graphic for 'The Trigregos Gambit' in the Hestia Housekeeping section of pHpubs is: "Title reads 'The Trigregos Gambit', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005"; a smaller version of the Ian Fry drawn Vetala figure can be found in the Summer 2002 pHpubs; the complete potential dust-cover can be found in the Covers Gallery;

  3. The mouse-over behind the 'Bad Rhad's a regular snake' graphic reads: "Fanciful gif of Bad Rhad with pipe-like snake and the head of a Costa Rican crater, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005"; the image of the parrot snake is taken from a postcard I bought in Costa Rica in 2003; the photography credit is given to M y P Fogden; the website listed on the postcard is www.icarcr.com; I bought the postcard of the Costa Rican crater around the same time; there is no website listed on its back but the photographer is given as Steve Pace; Bad Rhad's body is taken from the the front cover of pH-6; the artist was Verne Andru; the reason I say that about Bad Rhad can be found here;

  4. The 'Alt Txt' mouse-over for the tree sprite type reads: "A photo of a faerie stuck in a tree taken by Jim McPherson in Vancouver Canada"; Graphic that reads" 'Sometimes faeries get stuck in trees', prepared on Flash by Jim McPherson in 2002I wasn't going to reprint the original shot I diddled with in order to come up with Smiler's head in the next graphic down for fear the tree sprite might be shy (he or she certainly isn't at all communicative) but, as is the case with folks who don't vote, I decided silence amounted to acquiescence; as noted a number of times over the years I've been web-publishing PHANTACEA, sometimes faeries do get stuck in trees;

  5. The mouse-over behind the 'Smiler's just a faerie' reads: "Fanciful gif of Bad Rhad as a tree sprite, prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005"; as above, Bad Rhad's body is taken from the the front cover of pH-6; the artist was Verne Andru; the reason I say that about Bad Rhad can be found here;

  6. The 'Alt Txt' mouse-over for the corner graphic prepared for 'The Trigregos Gambit' dust-cover is: "Title reads 'The Trigregos Gambit', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005"; most of the images that went into this collage were taken from the web; the green-skinned Vetala was taken from the front cover of pH-5, artwork by Verne Andru, colour by Ian Bateson; the aircraft seemingly coming through the teleportal, the mirrored egg, the corona around the mirror and the mirror itself, they're all pertinent to Gambit; additional explanations as to what went into the collage and why can be found here;

  7. Much the same holds for this one; its 'Alt Txt' mouse-over reads: "Gif entitled 'The Trigregos Talismans', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005", the only image I didn't take from the web was that of the Susasword; it was taken from the front cover of pH-5, artwork by Verne Andru, colour by Ian Bateson; the reason I used a moon-mirror is because, in the revised version of Gambit, Thrygragos Byron's last surviving, firstborn daughter, Umashakti Silvercloud, succumbs to the allure of the, to devils, Three Accursed Objects; in that respect she's no different than Freespirit Nihila and Methandra Thanatos;

  8. Logo reads: "A Peculiar Perspectives Photo Essay"; there's been plenty of them since I started 'pH-Webworld' in 1996; here's a link to a list of some of them; my favourite, and most personal remains: 'Sedon's Head - Inspiration or Destination';

  9. This collage was prepared as a giveaway card for 'The Trigregos Gambit'; it has two names; the first is reflected in its mouse-over: "Jpeg entitled 'The Outstretched, Grasping Hand', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005"; the line comes from a Motorhead song called 'Orgasmatron'; the other name would be 'Bad Rhad Wants It All'; the big, black and white drawing of Bad Rhad is by Ian Fry, circa the late Eighties; the little shot of Bad Rhad's head behind it is taken from the front cover of pH-6; the artist was Verne Andru; the demon figure and his head in a hood is as here; the Nihila figure is as here; the Grasping Hands are from a photo I took of a statue I spotted in Ankara, Turkey, in 2003; the line "Take a memo, Morg. Invite to coronation." comes from 'Endgame-Gambit 5'; the woman tee-shirted on the Inquisition-era brown robe is suggestive of the Morrigan (Morg, Superior Sarpedon), who wears a de-brained demon in both 'Ringleader's Revenge' and Gambit; it is, my notes indicate, from a painting by Lord Leighton; the little gargoyles in the bottom left hand corner are from a postcard I found in Oxford, England; the triangular stick-woman is the Delos-Pyrame;

  10. The 'Alt Txt' mouse-over for the graphic featuring the Cretan Snake Goddess figurine reads: "A Cretan Snake Goddess, images put together by Jim McPherson, using PHOTOSHOP, in 2005"; I scanned in the figurine's image from the cover of a book I bought in Crete circa 1995 ('Knossos', by Antonis Vassilakis, Adam Editions, no date or photo credit given); the hood and brownish robe worn by a priestly sort belonging to the Spanish Inquisition during the course of the Conquest of Mexico was taken from a photo I snapped during one of the more recent 'Travels in my Pants'; the brown-robed priests and priestesses of Sraddha would wear something similar in Gambit;

  11. The 'Perpetual Presence' collage has as its 'Alt Txt' mouse-over: "Collage of Pyrame Silverstar as 'The Perpetual Presence', prepared on PHOTOSHOP by Jim McPherson, 2005"; I spotted the mosaic that forms the background to this collage on Delos, in the Aegean Sea, in 2004 (a small, full shot of it is in the collage's bottom left hand corner; it's also at the bottom of the giveaway card discussed above); it's something like 2,500 years old and when I saw it I immediately realized it has to represent Pyrame as she often appears, with a tetrahedral head; serendipitously enough, as noted above, for something like 500 years Pyrame co-ruled Phaistos in Crete, which isn't all that far south of Delos, as the Lady Tanith;
    the 3-eyed woman blowing on the globe is from a photo I took in Mexico City of an advertisement of some sort; in my experience photos of men or women with three eyes are exceedingly rare so I couldn't resist snapping it; similarly the single eye-frame was also taken in Mexico City in 2005;
    in 'Pregame-Gambit 7' the Smiling Fiend claims that the Pyrame-Lilith two-thing (the joint, possessive half-mother of the mortal Sed-sons so essential to the Moloch Sedon maintaining the Cathonic Zone that separates the Inner from the Outer Earth) was Queen Gomorrah to his King Sodom; that during the Male Entity's 7th Lifetime, the demon-devils Sodom and Gomorrah survived an assassination attempt by asteroid; and that, self-evidently, their eponymous cities didn't do so well; be that as it may, the Pyrame-Lilith two-thing isn't (aren't?) doing at all well in 'Coueranna's Curse' 9: "Cry Helios";
    for even more on Pyrame check out these two gold-mining boxes;

  12. Finally the tiled image I'm using on this edition of pHpubs for its background is a digitally dicked shot of Supernova 1987A; I also used it on the new dust-cover for 'The War of the Apocalyptics' as well as for the full cover of the revised version of 'The Trigregos Gambit', here's a link to a note as to the significance of 1987A in the PHANTACEA Mythos; a nearly unimpeded vision the background image can be found in the section immediately below;

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5. Sites with Loads of Graphics:

Google.ca supplies what amounts to a pH-Webworld web gallery. Just go to http://www.google.ca/, hit the images link and type in PHANTACEA. Pasting into the address area of your browser the following Url might work as well: http://images.google.ca/images?q=phantacea&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&start=100&sa=N&filter=0

PHANTACEA on the Web is chock-a-block with visuals. Good places to ogle artwork from the comic books and graphic novel are One to Six, 'Twenty-Five Years Plus' and what began as 'The Genesis of PHANTACEA' webpage. Most of the other graphics are scans I did of my own photographs or material I put together using PHOTOSHOP. All the essays are loaded with images. Try out the framed version of the Main Menu. You won't go anywhere else but, then again, you won't get lost either.

  • The PHANTACEA Mythos: Beehive Ghost Houses

  • The PHANTACEA Mythos: Heliodyssey

    WARNING: Graphic Summary -- Might take awhile to load!

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6. Latest List of Lynx to some previous Web-Publisher's Commentaries

| Winter 2004/5 | Summer 2004| Spring 2004 | Autumn 2003 | Summer 2003 | Autumn 2002 | Summer 2002 | Autumn 2001 | Spring-Summer 2001 | Winter 2000/1 | August 1998 | Samplings from other Not So Recent Commentaries | June-March '97 | February '97-July '96 |

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Ordering Information for the first-ever, all prose PHANTACEA Mythos novel: "Feeling Theocidal"

Downloadable order formLogo read Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA

Current Web-Publisher's Commentary

Jim McPherson's Worldwide Email Address -- jmcp1749@hotmail.com

PHANTACEA: THE WEB SERIALS


Last Updated: Summer 2009

Written by: Jim McPherson -- jmcp1749@hotmail.com
© copyright 1996 - 2009 Jim McPherson (PHANTACEA on the Web)
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Websites featuring, at least in part, Jim McPherson's PHANTACEA Mythos

phantacea.com: http://www.phantacea.com/
PHANTACEA on the Web: http://home.istar.ca/~jmcp/index.htm
Jim McPherson's Travels in my Pants: http://members.shaw.ca/jmcptimps/index.htm

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