Gome World

Desperandum-The-Great

If you enjoyed meeting Bluebeard-The-Pit-Bing-Gome in Blackhope Scaur, and thought that he was scary wait till you meet Desperandum-The-Great.  He appears in the first chapter of Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1).  I got the inspiration for this character when I visited Barcelona a few years ago and was surprised to see how much graffiti was scrawled everywhere in the city.  When I visited Parc Guell there was even graffiti on random rocks lying on the ground.  I imagined that for a gome spending time in Barcelona it would come in handy to be covered in graffiti so that you could blend in...

Throughout the city there is graffiti scrawled on anything that stays still ong enough to get the attention of the "tag artists."  Store fronts, the sides of vans, yellow post boxes... I even saw graffiti on a cactus leaf!  

Desperandum may look like an ugly and uninteresting rock when he is lying around but as Alina discovers he can do some amazing things:

A split appeared at one end of the graffiti rock and formed two sturdy legs.  The rock walked stiffly to where the tortoise lay on its side, put a hand under the tortoise's shell, and began dragging the entire sculpture towards the park gates a few feet away.  The power and strength of this "living rock" was quite terrifying... the creature began to change shape again.  The top third of its body grew a little taller and thinner.  It seemed a little less stiff, a little more fluid, like soft clay wobbling on a potter's wheel.  It began to move directly towards Alina, its cold yellow eyes never leaving her face.  The middle part of the creature's body became thicker, and seemed to quiver with excitement and anticipation.  It seemed in no great hurry; confident and complacent as it moved closer and closer.  A rippling wave fluttered up and down its length in a rhythmic pulse that turned Alina's blood cold.  When it was about ten yards in front of her Alina thought she could see an evil yellow smile forming in the rocky surface below its eyes.  It slowly arched its back, threw back its head, and opened its mouth... And then it spat.

If you would like to hear me reading the opening chapter of Twilight Cave: The Scourge Of Catalonia (Book 1)  where I describe this scene with Desperandum go to this weblog posting: http://gomeworld.typepad.com/gome_world/2008/03/the-scourge-of.html

The Inscrutable Jade-Tsi-Dong

In Twilight Cave: The Depths Of BarcelundaHadley and Wullie must travel deep underground to try to find and rescue Finn who they believe is being held in a jail in the vast and dangerous gome city of Barcelunda.  Luckily they meet a few old friends of Wullie amidst the thousands of hostile gomes and humans in the city.  One of these is the master magician, Jade-Tsi-Dong.  Here is how Hadley first meets him:

As she approached the high wooden counter Hadley could not see Jade-Tsi-Dong at first.  Wullie, who had clambered up onto the counter at Hadley's head height, was addressing himself to a silk and bamboo parasol that seemed suspended in mid-air behind the counter.  but just as Alina joined her the parasol moved up and away so that the girls found themselves staring face-to-face with the strangest gome they had ever seen.  Like a pale green icicle his thin pointed body glistened with a polished shine.  A sky-blue silk robe flowed behind him.  The parasol appeared to be attached to the back of the robe to shade his eyes, which shone with a penetrating yellow glow from within narrow slits in his face.  A long nose and turned down mouth completed the picture of sad intelligence.  his arm, hands, and fingers were long and thin.  In one he held a small mallet; in the other a small chunk of brown rock.  Hadley had never been face-to-face with a gome whose face was at the same height as her own.

Jade-Tsi-Dong is a fierce and scary character who rarely smiles and does not seem to be very nice to Hadley and Alina but he is a loyal friend of Wullie's and helps them tremendously with some magic potions.  Here he is at his workbench:  

You will see more of Jade-Tsi-Dong in the story I am working on right now.  It is called Chondrite Vaultand takes Finn, Hadley and Wullie on an adventure that goes from a remote Scandinavian island back in time to ancient Peru...

Bluebeard-The-Pit-Bing-Gome

You will read a lot about Bluebeard in my stories.  He is Wullie's nemesis, his arch enemy, a gome who hates Wullie so much that he can hardly think about anything else.  Bluebeard is a very "colorful" character.  He has grown larger and more important in my mind and in the stories the further I have taken the adventures.  I wrote in another blog entry about the technique of creating a character summary for each of the main characters in your own stories.  Here is the character description that I started with for Bluebeard that brought him to life.  I can't fill out everything about him for you or it would spoil the stories too much, but I hope this gives you a flavor of what he is like:

Age: timeless; Place of birth: a coal mine in Ayrshire, Scotland; Residence: an abandoned mineshaft near Muirkirk; Occupation: His full time job is figuring out how to destroy Wullie-The-Mahaar-Gome and strike back at humans everywhere; Appearance: Large (by gome standards), about three times taller and half as thick again as Wullie (so about 24 inches tall and eight-to-ten inches thick).  He is black and sooty, like a large lump of coal, but has deep set red angry eyes and streaks of cobalt blue metal in his beard (of which he is very proud).  Globs of black oily spit drool from the sides of his mouth.  Dress: He occasionally wears a dirty tartan sash or belt or cloak for ceremonial purposes.  Strengths: Physically very strong and mentally sly.  His body contains stores of poisonous coal gases which he can use as weapons.  Weaknesses: His obsessions make him very narrow-minded.  He can be fooled if you are smart enough.  He does not like being out in bright light.  He prefers dark, damp, scary places.  Obsessions: Defeating and destroying Wullie-The-Mahaar-Gome  Ambition: To destroy the human race and rule the world.  Work habits: He never rests... even when he seems to be resting in his petrified state his evil mind is scheming about new ways to get at Wullie.  Hobbies: He has no time for such frivolous activities; Illness: None that we are aware of; Family: None; Friends: No real friends but he is willing to hang out with anyone who will help him to defeat Wullie and to scheme about hurting humans; Pets: He treats Baldo-The-Bladderwort like a pet; Politics: Totalitarian Dictatorship (he wants to rule the world!); Tics (or mannerisms): He spits oily black gobs of spittle when he gets mad; Favorite food: rocks of all sorts EXCEPT coal; Drugs: Like most gomes he likes alcohol and smokes cowdie; Favorite books: The only book he reads is his own little black book where he records his successes and tallies up who owes him what; Favorite movies: I am sure he would like horror movies where humans get eaten by monsters but he has no time or interest in seeing movies, really.  There aren't any movie theaters down abandoned mine shafts; Favorite music: Badly-played bagpipes because it is so painful for most humans to listen to this; Desires: To destroy Wullie and grind him to dust on the floor; Fears: That he will be burnt to "final death," and that humans will rip out all the coal on the planet and burn it along with other Pit-Bing-Gomes; Most traumatic event: I tell about this in The Blackhope Scaur stories so I can't give the answer away here!; Most wonderful experience: Watching Baldo-The-Bladderwort poking out Hugh McDougall's eye in the cave in Wigtownshire; Major struggle (past or present): Against Wullie, on many, many occasions...

There, I hope that gives you a sense of this charming and lovable character. I would love to see how you imagine him.  Send me your drawing of what you think he looks like.  I bet he won't be smiling.

Here is a great set of pictures from the story that Taylor, one of Kim Storey's TAG kids in Bend drew including an angry and unhappy Bluebeard:

Baldo-The-Bladderwort

In the last chapter of The Rusty Pelican Hadley and Finn are reflecting on the adventures they have had with gomes. Finn asks, "Are there girl gomes?  I never asked Wullie.  All the ones we've seen were little men."  Hadley replies, "I don't know about Baldo.  The Bladderwort seemed more like an "it" if you ask me."

You might agree with her after reading the description of Baldo-The-Bladderwort crawling out of an oil drum full of water in the cellar of the Rusty Pelican barge.  Baldo lives in the sea where he has not learned to speak English (or any other language) but instead shrieks and wails with fury if he does not get his way.  He devours the shells of shell fish and then throws their flesh and guts away.  Like so many gomes he has grown to look like his surroundings.  He looks like a discarded lobster shell that is now covered in seaweed.  He can move fast in the water, propelled by the flipper feet on his back limbs, but he is very awkward out of the water.  He crawls forward using his two front limbs, making a rhythmic heave-clunk-heave-clunk sound.  For although one arm and hand is vaguely human in shape his other hand ends in a huge lobster claw with jaws of different lengths.  The bottom jaw of the claw extends as a vicious bony spike that he uses to stab his enemies.

He has two large fish-like eyes and a mouth that is a perfect circle made up of several rows of curved needle-like teeth, like you see on blood sucking leeches and lampreys.  The strands of seaweed hanging off his head look like dreadlocks which add to the odd and wild look.  Here is a rough sketch that my son, Roderick, did of what he thinks Baldo might look like. 

I think Roderick put the lobster claw on the wrong hand.  And what happened to the rest of his body?  What do you think Baldo looks like?

Here is a picture of what I think he might look like:

Big Sandy

Gomes live for a very, very, very long time (unless they get crushed or smashed into pieces that can't be repaired...) and over the centuries they begin to adapt characteristics of the geographical area that they inhabit the most.  They overhear the local humans, too, and gradually adopt some of the habits and mannerisms of those locals.  A good example of this phenomenon is Alexander Clambucket Targomshie, a coastal sandstone gome who comes from the area near the Calanais (pronounced Callanish) Standing Stones on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.  Known as "Big Sandy" to his friends, he is indeed very large for a gome.  Almost two feet tall and two feet wide, with massive hands, he strikes a remarkable figure in the gome world.  When he is solid he has a pinkish-brown, smooth, sandy surface.  His body seems to be organized into oblong blocks of rock.  He is very comfortalbe in the water.  His eyes are close set, small, and limpet-like.  His mouth is large, moist, and gloomy.  Coming from the Western Isles of Scotland Sandy has adopted some of the characteristics of this part of the world.  Sandy is a morose, gloomy, pessimistic, and fatalistic creature with a lilting, soft Highland accent.  He is weary at how wicked and violent the world is.  He pronounces his "j's" like a "ch," and his "v's" like "ff's" so that he might well say, "The world iss a terrible, wicked, depressing place, so it iss.  People is always r-r-rushing and hurrying efferywhere.  They neffer haff enough time to chust sit still and share some amusing stories, and maybe a choke or two."

Sandy is one of Wullie's oldest and closest friends.  They have had many adventures together, only a tiny amount of which we have been told about, so far.  Although Sandy seems to move and think at a very slow pace he is a deep thinker, and is afraid of nothing.  He has absorbed a lot of water inside himself and can quickly turn parts of his body to a sandy slushy mixture while keeping the rest of his body hard.  He can use this as a defense mechanism to confuse his enemies.  He puts this to good use when he protects Finn from being attacked by Baldo-The-Bladderwort on the misty beach near the Invertoshan military facility.  Big Sandy is a reliable and dependable friend to Wullie, and is someone whom you would like to have on your side when things look bleak.

Here is a picture of what I think he might look like walking along the beach on the Island of Lewis brooding about something. I am not the world's greatest artist so forgive me if this is not what you think he looks like!

I wonder what Big Sandy looks like to you, in your imagination...