Of Nightwalkers and New Worlds

Let's get some basics out of the way first, then I'll get to the real intent of this blog, which is to talk about the world of Traynor Island and Nightwalker and the heroes and villains on this small island and group of islets.
 
As anyone following my work in the galleries might have noticed, there's a (perhaps noticeable) lack of Among Thieves: Miles to Go and Sakita 'Cyclone' Shigota and 'Sister' Consuela Bliss.  There's also no sign of Sylvana gone Hollywood (in Captain Danger, five panels completed) or a second Bangkok book (Bangkok Nights) which was to focus on Mother Superior Fiona Duffy's stay in the Fantasia brothel.  No follow-up to Traynor Island Blues, either (and I have a handful of panels and a story started and staring at me, whining at me to "please, please tell me".)
 
The amazing thing about aging, and heavily increased responsibilities in the 'real-time' job, and a somewhat increased intake of vodka--which keeps me a little sane--is that the energy depletes.  I'm finding I can't juggle five separate stories anymore.  I like to think the energy will come back, and I'll get Nightworld and Bangkok published, Miles to Go finished, Bangkok Nights and Captain Danger started, and a few more Traynor Island Blues volumes going.  Until and unless that happens though, it's Nightwalker: Queen of Diamonds and the darker volume that will follow it.  Hopefully you'll enjoy them
 
And, uh, for those who do love Cyclone and Sister Bliss, you haven’t seen the last of them.  They'll be returning to the Nightwalker world.
 
So...Nightwalker and its environs.
 
Let's get some basics out of the way in terms of story:
 
I had initially made the old mistake of putting a year on the Nightwalker posts, then removed it during publication.  Nightwalker takes place "not here...not now".  It's not "a long time ago, etc etc..." (Yeah, sue me, George, please), it's just somewhere else.  It's a Watchman, Earth 2, Earth 5 kind of world where Russia exists and the United States exists and there was a Kennedy and a Gorbachev, but there's also an island, surrounded by islets, a little south of Alaska between the US and Asia, which is now...story now...called Traynor Island.  It's an island where plasma guns are just coming into use, and the Kruppe arms manufacturers have introduced DNA-encoded weapons that won't fire for anyone but the owner, a place where it's just possible to have a jet-cycle, but they're not the norm
 
It is, in short...
 
...my world.  And I make the rules :)
 
To paraphrase Mel Brooks, "It's good to be a god."
 
I'll close this first chapter with a little history of Traynor Island.
 
Traynor Island was founded in 1561 by a group of thirty-two disenfranchised Samurai--Ronin--and their families.  Warriors searching for an end to war.  The main island was inhabited only by wildlife, and the once-warriors named it Heiwakoku: Peaceful Country.  Diamond, gold, silver, emerald and sapphire lodes were discovered on the main island and the islets.  By 1590 Heiwakoku Sake was the liquor of emperors and kings in Asia and parts of Europe.  In 1612 the Japanese Empire officially recognized them as a 'sister' country and trading began in earnest between Japan and Heiwakoku. 
 
And eventually the others came.  Germans and Britons and Spaniards and Africans and, much later, United States Americans: all interested in trade on the surface.  All interested, in reality, in subjugating the country.  By 1700 the island was under British rule with a population of sixty percent Japanese and forty percent non-Japanese.  The year 1730 saw the election of a man who was to become the most reviled Governor in the island's history: Geoffrey Faraday. In 1741 a group of fifty-seven miners threw down their tools and blocked the entry of the Sweet Justice silver mine, demanding safer working conditions, more reasonable wages and a percentage of the mined ore.  Twenty-four of them were killed on the spot.  The remaining thirty-three with their families and the families of the deceased--seventy-two men, women and children--were sentenced to ten years in Brinten prison.  Within a week fifteen of them had been killed by their cell mates, four had been cannibalized, eleven were completely mad and twelve had been executed by hanging.  When word of this got out, Faraday was dragged from his office, stripped, tarred and feathered and dragged by cart to Brinten Prison, where he was hung on his own gallows.  The prison became known, from then on, as Brimstone Prison.
 
In 1760 pirate queen Black Jenny Wainscott invaded the island, butchered Governor Elizabeth Grace in the public square, and ruled for a single year.  She, too, met her end on the gallows of Brimstone Prison.  It has been rumored, for centuries, that Black Jenny haunts Brimstone.
 
In December of 1924 Governor Richard Elston Traynor III had Heiwakoku renamed Traynor Island, the Japanese language was banned and any history books that mentioned Heiwakoku were burned.  School teachers who dared mention the original founders of the island were admonished and, if the lesson wasn't't learned, were removed from the system.  Some of them were removed from the Island.
 
The island remains approximately 60% Japanese and mixed-race Japanese.
 
And there are those who know the history.  There are those who remember it or who have had the history passed down from generation to generation.  Sakita Shigota is one of them.
 
But enough for today.  More to come.
 
Jared Ironwolfe
19 August 2013