DETAILS OF THE REALMS OF TANG

Note that this blog does not function in a chronological way as most blogs do. The postings put under each 'month' are all of those associated with a particular type of story or particular setting rather than anything to do with the order in which they were/are written. This means that earlier months are liable to have additional postings in the future as I write more stories set in those realms or contexts. If you are especially interested in stories set in a particular world it is worthwhile checking that particular month for additional stories in the future, especially as I seem to have broken the extended writer's block which has been plaguing me through 2007 and am returning to many partly completed stories.


Whilst some of my stories are set in the contemporary world of the last 25 years, many are set in alternate worlds or on other planets. This allows me to feature themes that would not be possible in our world, for example being able to transform people into different beings or their robotization. In addition, I can include societies where the enslavement and ownership of people is permitted or even expected and the typical clothing of inhabitants consists of garments made of leather, vinyl or latex and outfits including catsuits and thigh-length boots. As with many authors, the locations and cultures of my stories, thus draw on very common fantasy and science fiction themes, something I make no apology for.


The worlds that feature most in my stories are:


Xylae
This is a world where society is similar to Earth's between the Iron Age and the Renaissance inclusive, depending on which region the particular story is set in. In the cities, things are more advanced than in the less developed areas. Transport is on horse-drawn or by sailing ship. It is a very hierarchical society with numerous states ruled by monarchs and nobles drawn from rich families. Beneath them is a class of lesser nobles and gentry who rule over territories in the countryside and smaller towns. Cities often house many households of these families with luxurious homes filled with attendants such as ladies-in-waiting as well as servants and slaves. Most slaves on Xylae are kept for sexual use and can be of either gender and of any race. People can become slaves through a variety of means, some involving the process of law, sometimes just through a ruler or noble asserting their power, sometimes through actions by other groups who have certain legal rights. The most often featured setting is the city-state of Kerans ruled over by Princess Dalia. Aside from the affairs of the court, one particular group is often featured, the Bondwomen. These are an organization of female mercenary bodyguards who are employed to protect nobles' property. They have fortresses around Xylae's continents. They have particular rights under the law of most states and cities, particularly in regard to slaves.


In most aspects technology on Xylae is less advanced than on Earth. In its place some people possess powers which would appear like magic if used in our world. These are not abilities on the scale seen in many fantasy novels such as to fire out lightning or to fly, rather they are powers to control people's minds, to reshape their bodies, to produce realistic illusions and to travel to other worlds, including Earth. These abilities often do not come from an individual but work through devices such as collars for slaves, transformation chambers, hoods providing visions, transportation caskets and the classic of inter-dimension travel: mirrors.


Nemarash
Nemarash is another alternate world with a typical fantasy level of technology. However, it is ruled over by demons. Humans from Earth and possibly elsewhere live on Nemarash, but are at best market traders; many are slaves to the different demons who inhabit the planet. The planet is also home to other sentient creatures with their own cultures. Some of these species hold a similar position to humans, others are in more servile or stronger positions than them. It is a violent world but between inter-tribal conflicts, the demons live debauched lives. They use humans as playthings in whichever way they choose, but often prefer other slave species, closer in nature to themselves, and so often humans brought to Nemarash are transformed into a member of one of these species. One example are the adonides. They are like humans but with shiny olive-coloured skin and bulky hair in thick slippery strands. They cannot speak but only communicate through catlike sounds.


The demons are taller and stronger than humans and their skins are glossy. Their colouring tends to be red, maroon, dark blue or black. They have horns, large fleshy wings, their eyes are of a single colour which matches their skin; their hands and feet are clawed. Some have hair. Out of armour, they like to wear leather, some prefer light chainmail garments, and they prefer to see their slaves clad in latex clothing.

They have magical abilities when they choose to use them, notably the capabilities of being able to send out avatars to Earth, to transform things and people physically and mentally, to communicate by telepathy and to travel to different dimensions for a limited amount of times. All demons consider themselves as nobility and automatically superior to any other species on Nemarash. Rulers do rise from among them, but their reigns tend to be short-lived and contested.

An-Kil-Lye
This world is a science fiction one. The reader does not know where it is located in the universe or when it is set. However, the implications are that it is sometime into our future when humans have settled across the Galaxy, but names and culture are quite like the current USA on our Earth. To explain further the unique position of An-Kil-Lye in this future, these are the details taken from the first story I set on the planet:

GG Readout: SpArMi-0547 - An-Kil-Lye
Environment:
Oxygen 26%, heavy dust content; moisture located only in dead volcanic vents, rest of planet a colourful mix of mineral sands; simple indigenous life, human population 5-6 million, visitors up to 5 million per year.


History:
Discovered over 200 years ago by mineral prospectors, An-Kil-Lye was seen as a barren, though beautiful planet. Off the main space lanes, it was of little concern to the major consortia and was registered by a syndicate of only moderately-successful business concerns. The 15 original bosses formed the planetary government as an oligarchy they called The Syndicate. Each Syndic was a lord in his own 'fief' usually located on one of the large dead volcanic vents where the planet's minimal water collects. Within each 'fief' the Syndic is the final authority. Since its registration the number of Syndics has risen to 23.


Given the proclivities of the majority of the initial Syndics, slavery, gambling and combat sports were permitted on the planet making it unique in much of the galaxy and attracting a particular kind of settler. The rich mineral wealth of An-Kil-Lye, mined entirely by machinery, allowed the planet to ignore pressure to 'civilise'. In the past 60 years, aware that however vast their mineral reserves are, they are not infinite, the planet has successfully diversified as a gambling and gladiatorial resort, with attractions centred on the capital Masterton.


Society:
All An-Kil-Lye's inhabitants are either 'Owners' or 'owned', i.e. enslaved. Without need for heavy labour, slaves are kept for domestic duties, as pets and to work in Masterton's gambling houses. Owners have the power of life and death over their owned. 'Visitors' form the only other category of humans and these are almost exclusively tourists with a few traders, entertainment executives and mineral dealers making up the rest. Citizenship as an Owner can be bought by the wealthy. Anyone can offer themselves to become owned, a process handled by the Syndicate Enslavement Bureau (SEB). Visitors are encouraged to make themselves aware of the laws prevailing on the planet which are very different to those of most other settled worlds.

Pegras
Pegras is another science fiction setting that I have used in the background of a couple of short stories, though in these only a spaceship from the planet has been seen, not the place itself. The inhabitants of Pegras, the Pegrasons, are a humanoid race with glossy black or chocolate brown skin, pointed ears, almond-shaped eyes and pointed tongues; their hair is like long and slippery cords, imagine dreadlocks made of rubber. They tend to be like muscular humans in size and stature. Their society is hierarchical, slave-owning and highly sexualized. They are aloof rather than arrogant, and travel the universe the way wealthy people on Earth might tour around Europe in sports cars stopping wherever they fancy and buying or taking what they want. Thus the Pegrasons have no interest in conquering Earth but do enjoy taking and enslaving humans who can fetch a good price on Pegras.

Humans are particularly easy to transform into the sex-slave species, 'nubiles' that the Pegrasons like to own. In human form they seem too dull and desexualized and lack the glossy skin that Pegrasons value. It is cheaper to take a human and transform them than breed the slave species. The Pegrasons account for a number of abductions from Earth by extra-terrestrials each year, though they are far from being alone in this activity.


The Lands of the Feylin
This world lies alongside and often bissects with our own Earth. It uses another common fantasy theme, a world where cat-like humanoids are dominant rather than us, ape-like humanoids. In my stories, their world is a lot less developed than our own, with technology like our early medieval period. Society is tribal with some settlements being more hierarchical, overseen by barons. Feylin are more in tune with their environment than humans and so their world is a lot more lush than ours because of less agricultural exploitation, better use of water resources and no industry beyond village-level blacksmiths and weavers.


Woodlands are often a gateway to their world and some humans and some feylin can move between the two dimensions with greater or lesser ease depending on the individual. Items such as mirrors, rings and carved chairs can aid movement between the two worlds. Activity in our world and theirs does impact on each in a muted way and among the feylin are guardians who seek to stop humans corrupting and damaging their world, and to assist considerate human visitors. Humans who have been born and brought up around particular woods have a greater ability to go across but most humans can make use of the items for opening gates. Some feylin and some humans have the ability to change into the other form and so changed may become trapped in that form. There are rules controlling passage and transformation, explored in the stories. My stories set in this world are less sexual and more romantic in nature.


The Earth of the Demi-Demons
This one is an alternate version of Earth and was influenced by the movie (and in turn the graphic novels) 'Hellboy'. As in the movie, efforts by the Nazis during the Second World War allowed them to create portals to other dimensions. In the movie only one demon, Hellboy, is brought across and comes into control of the Americans.


In my world many demons and other creatures were brought to this version of Earth. The Siege of Stalingrad in 1943 was ended when German winged demons snatched away the bulk of the city's defenders and the following year the Allies' D-Day fleet was swallowed by a huge serpent in the English Channel. The Nazis struggled to keep control over the forces they had unleashed. Heinrich Himmler ousted Adolf Hitler as ruler of Germany at the end of 1944 but the war ground to a halt as Europe and the wider world began fighting the creatures unleashed the best they could. The demons did not stay long but by breeding with humans created 'demi-demons' with a variety of powers, particularly the power to 'gift', i.e. alter humans. They created a loyal class of 'gifted' humans to serve them and subjugate the rest of the population. Whilst Nazi-run Germania, controlling most of Central Europe collaborated with the demi-demons other regions reacted differently.


Those areas with a strong Celtic connection and standing stones like Cornwall, Wales and Brittany revived forgotten skills to fight back as did those regions of Europe where Catholic and Arabic mysticism had not been forgotten such as around the Vatican in Rome and in Spain. Initially there was a reaction against technology and a return to using old names like Albion for England. However, then with no Cold War to distract efforts into nuclear and space technology, electronics and computing advanced faster than on our Earth existing alongside the magics of the demi-demons and their opponents. The climate is different, affected by the links to other dimensions, the sky is often purple and it rains more often than in our Earth. Being a parallel Earth, at the same year as our own, so currently 2007, many of the same people exist there as do on our Earth but of course with very different outcomes to their lives.


Concubivores, Vampires and Opacities
I have featured vampires in a number of stories and am likely to include them again in the future. In my stories they are far more the kind that appear in movies such as 'Underworld' and 'Blade' rather than the type you would find in Hammer Horror films or in Victorian novels. These vampires can be destroyed by sunlight and ultraviolet light, though not instantaneously unless they receive it in huge doses. They can be injured and killed by carbon weapons or those emitting ultraviolet light. They are not hampered by religious symbols but they are damaged by faith. This can be faith in any religion, which then imbues the symbols with power or it can be faith in a political viewpoint, e.g. Communism or faith in a person, usually in the form of love. They can live on the blood of any creature but tend to prefer human blood. They are very clannish and their is rivalry between the various 'houses' though councils of vampires, such as the Cuvant seek to regulate their behaviour. They have a long-standing rivalry with werewolves and other shape-shifters and will challenge other supernatural creatures such as demons who may seek to disrupt human society to such an extent that it will harm the vampires' use of humans.


Concubivores are a variant on vampires and like a lot of approaches I use, are not my invention, but are common in a lot of fantasy writing. As vampires live on blood, concubivores are sustained by sexual energy. Like vampires they can live for centuries and have the power to control people's minds. They take pleasure in interacting with humans. Each individual human has a different 'flavour' to concubivores and some are highly sought after to have their energy drained like a fine wine is sought by human connoisseurs.


The Opacities are shadowy creatures who have been expelled or fled from another dimension to Earth. They feed on anguish and use their abilities to encourage people to suicide or to cause car accidents. Old people have insufficient energy to feed on so they target teenagers and people in their twenties and thirties. The vampires hate opacities because they disrupt society and cause the death of people vampires could otherwise feed on. Opacities can be killed by the use of crystal weapons such as daggers (including obsidian ones) and special crystal-tipped bullets. It is the fragmentation of the light rather than the light per se which disrupts their forms on Earth and casts them away from it in a dispersed form, unable to recover.


I have also featured shadowy demons who seek to drain life essence from humans and are harmed by weapons of pure iron.


Kastrosklavon
So far Kastrosklavon has only appeared in the short stories illustrated by various images I have found on the internet of the kind that feature on the Hypnotics Collective website. I have left the details vague, but it appears to be an island, possibly in the Mediterranean or maybe somewhere more tropical, which may be in our world or can be accessed through portals from our world. People from Earth may arrive there by accident, by being shipwrecked on the island, being abducted there or coming through a portal, so it blends the realistic and fantastical in a way which is intentional as I want a place less pinned down by particular rules. It is a slave-owning society, which though it benefits from modern technology, has a historic approach to both architecture and culture. The name comes from the Greek for 'Slave Castle'.


Contemporary Europe
Many of my stories are set in the world in which we live, particularly the UK but also France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Russia, places which I travel to for work and holidays. The difference to our real world is that in my stories people are drawn into circumstances in which they come to belong to other people, they may have their identity, their careers and their sexuality altered and certainly will have their outlooks changed especially in terms of how they should dress and behave. There are individuals and clubs who own people and seek to recruit additional ones. In this version of our world there is also the Domme Meme, a way of thinking which encourages people with initiative to become owners of others.


Thematic Realms
Transformation Stories
Falling into the category of Contemporary UK/Europe are stories which I categorise by themes rather than places. The first group of these are 'Transformation' stories, which sometimes will include a mind control, fantastical or magical element in them as well, but not including any of the other worlds I have listed.


Office Stories
Over the years probably because I spend a lot of time working in offices many of my stories are in that setting. I also think it is an environment which power is often wielded in subtle or no so subtle ways. In addition, there is also a lot of sexual tension in the average office. Combined with that the clothing that especially women wear, in some offices, can be very sexy, especially these days with leather clothes and long boots making an appearance in the office environment. As a result a number of my stories are set in offices, sufficient in number to warrant a sub-category of their own.


Leather Stories
I also include 'Leather' stories as a sub-group of Contemporary UK/Europe stories. These may not have any sexual element in them, but are about people altering the clothes they were to leather. Many of these were inspired by the now defunct Lotsa Leather website which I think was unique in including all kinds of stories about men and women, straight and gay, wearing leather.



There are criminals who seek to behave like some of the actions portrayed in my stories in reality and I certainly condemn any action of that kind. It must be borne in mind that everthing I write is fiction and is based on fantasies for dramatic effect. In this respect they are no different to a spy, crime or gangster story you might read.

In fiction we can explore things that interest and excite us but that in reality would cause discomfort and be criminal. If you are unable to distinguish between the two or are offended at even the discussion of such fantasies, do not read these stories.


Other Authors' Worlds I have Explored
I have been very privileged to have been given permission to set my stories in worlds created by other authors.


Arouz
This was created by the excellent fetish author, Witchman. It is a science fiction setting a tropical planet which is home to the catwomen. These are very carnal feline humanoids who with their cries can mentally enslave humans to comply with their wishes. Males and some females end up as their slaves. The atmosphere of the planet is heavily filled with a pollen which if inhaled by human women can trigger off a transformation into a catwoman. Given the desirability of the catwomen, many are tempted to try to capture a specimen leading to complicated if predictable outcomes. Another author Mare Vir also has an internet posted story based on this world.


The World of Mistress Cassandra
I was impressed by a story written by the fetish author, Hypnoslut, 'The Bank Robbery' and was given permission to produce a sequel. This is another version of Earth in which humans have the ability to entrance and enslave people with the authorities seemingly unable to prevent them, providing opportunities for very sexy stories of dominance, servility and shiny clothing.