Hello! Welcome Back to the Archives of Fabella daily. The only podcast that takes you deep inside the history of a magical world. Today is March 22nd, equal to Aries 2nd. Books are available on Amazon. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts and hit that subscribe button for more great stories right in your feed.
March 22nd, 5924, is the date The ocean liner RMS Olympic collided with the smaller liner Fort St George in New York City. The damage required repairs to the extent of which had never been attempted on a ship the Olympic’s size before.
A world away in the mystic realm of Fabella, a con woman goes toe to toe with death.
I’m Dillon Foley, and this is Archives of Fabella.
Beyond our world, there is love
Beyond our world, there is war
Beyond our world, there is life
Beyond our world, there is Fabella.
Aries 2nd 5924 FY, Fabella Year equal to March 22nd, 1924 AD Earth Year.
On Aries 2nd, 5924 FY, Chelsea Ellen Hawthorne’s body lay in a church surrounded by candlelight. The soul attendant at her funeral was a man so villainous and surrounded by death; people throughout the world called him “The Grim Reaper.” So, who was this elderly woman, and why was her only mourner a man regarded by history as the angel of death?
The year 5924 is deep into the Domination Age, where the evil Bloodborne Empire rules all of Fabella with their suffocating might. Everyone across the world dealt with hard times, none more so than Chelsea Ellen Hawthorne. She was an elderly woman in Camelot, rendered destitute by her husband’s death in the first Continental world war that tore Fabella asunder and has lost the last of her sons to disease. She was all alone. There was only sickness, homelessness, and extreme poverty in her future.
Despite all the hardship she endured, Chelsea Hawthrone was a fighter. She was a survivor. Her home, money, and family, were gone but her shrewd, calculating mind was still well intact. She needed a way to make money and fast, so she decided to take desperate measures and become a con artist.
She assumed the identity of a blind seer, able to foretell the future. Now, this power in Fabella was very real. Seers were normally employed in warden departments — Fabellan police for those of you who are new to this — to predict future crimes and news media to deliver their takes on future events. Fortune telling wasn’t an exact science. The seer did not get to choose who or what they saw. They just did their best to read the signs in tea leaves and animal entrails. A severe seizure normally accompanied visions. Furthermore, the future the seer saw was not necessarily set in stone. It was like predicting the weather. Instead of a 10% chance of moisture, you had a 10% chance of meeting your soulmate.
Chelsea was a sadru, meaning she was a non-magical person without any supernatural power. This didn’t stop her from lying in wait against the brick facade of buildings like a spider, waiting for a fly to get itself stuck in her web. When she saw a wealthy goblin coming her way, that was when she struck.
Chelsea reached out with her withered old hand to seize the goblin by the ankle in her vice grip.
“AH! Get off me! You pesky urchin!” screeched the goblin.
“Oh sir!” said Chelsea with eyes as big as saucer plates. “You are in grave danger! For I have foreseen you being run over by a train.”
Naturally, this response gave the goblin quite the scare. “When is this supposed to happen?”
Chelsea knew she had him and answered him with another question. “How much is your life worth, Sir?”
“I see what this is,” returned the goblin as he kicked himself free of Chelsea’s grip. “You’re just a grifter. Well, no petty homeless old hag is going to rob me. I’m on to you, sister, away with you!”
Chelsea’s first plan may not have worked, but every good con artist has a plan A, B, C, and D. There were plenty of homeless people in Camelot like Chelsea, willing to do anything for a little money. Chelsea promised a good friend of hers on the streets a share of her dough if they would help her.
So as the goblin approached the platform for his train, Chelsea and her accomplice took their places. The accomplice ran past the goblin as if he was being chased and shoved the goblin into the path of an oncoming train. The train would have run the goblin over had Chelsea not swooped in to quote en quote “save” his life.
“You — you were telling the truth!” exclaimed the goblin in a state of shock. “Good lady, I am forever in your debt. Tell me, what more do you know of my future?”
“My services are not free,” said Chelsea.
The goblin started dipping his hands into his pockets, pulling out wads of cash to hand over to Chelsea. “Please, take it all, just tell me.”
Chelsea snatched the money from his leathery hands. “On Tuesday next, you will meet the child who is to become your son.”
There were many orphaned boys on the streets; Chelsea found one in need of a good home and put the youth in the path of the goblin, who was expecting to meet his son. The goblin swept the boy into his loving arms, and the two of them departed as a family.
Chelsea continued this ruse, using her connections with the homeless community of Camelot to scam people out of their money by orchestrating future events that she had direct control over. By observing people’s predictable habits from the shadows, she was able to pick her victims out one by one. Word of the seer on Main Street grew exponentially with every victim she fooled. Soon she didn’t even have to wait for victims; her victims were coming to her, offering vast sums of money just for a little taste of what the future had in store for them.
The charismatic and cunning woman scammed rich, gullible people out of thousands.
A few years later, having amassed enough money to get her life back on track and live an honest life, Chelsea was ready to retire from her con artist career. But, like a gambling addict at the table, she couldn’t leave without one big score.
The wealthy target on her mind is none other than famed bounty hunter Anubis. He was known by many as the “Grim Reaper.” Equipped with his trademark scythe and a long black cloak over bone-white armor impervious to magic, not even warlocks stood a chance against this villainous mastermind. Long since fallen from the grace he once had a standing shoulder to shoulder with heroes, Anubis was the highest-earning bounty hunter in the business. He earned most of his money by working directly with the villainous empire, delivering pirate scum to numerous jail cells worldwide. Anubis answered to nobody, but himself, which made him the perfect target for Chelsea’s devious scheme.
Chelsea knew that duping Anubis wouldn’t be easy. He was famous for sniffing out hucksters, con artists, and so-called seers. Fooling him would be Chelsea’s crowning achievement.
Her cunning method was slow and well thought out. Over the course of a year, Chelsea orchestrated events in Camelot such that Anubis would hear of her rumored talent and come looking for her. Almost a year to the date since Chelsea singled out Anubis as her target, the grim reaper was seated across from her in a dilapidated home she’d bought with her stolen money.
“Rumor has it that you are capable of seeing great things, my lady,” greeted Anubis as he lowered himself into a rickety wooden chair.
“You come to the right place,” said Chelsea with a crooked smile. “Come, give me your hands so that I may see what the future has for you.”
Anubis tore off his gloves and set his hands on the satin table cloth.
Chelsea did as she had prepared to do and told him, “On Aries 2nd, a bounty of yours will escape his holding cell.”
She had it all planned. A homeless minotaur, whom Chelsea didn’t particularly like and considered a waste of space, agreed to be paid to steal jewelry from a store. Months earlier, the mayor of Camelot himself had sat in front of Chelsea where she told him to hire Anubis to apprehend this minotaur at the crime scene. Chelsea organized a few other undesirable homeless folks to perform a heist to break the minotaur out of Anubis’ holding cell. Whether or not the heist went according to plan was no concern of hers. Fortune telling predictions went wrong all the time. It was no big deal. All Chelsea had to do was ensure a prisoner would be in Anubis’s clutches on Aries 2nd, and a heist had been organized to break that prisoner out of containment. All the pieces would be there for Anubis to believe her prediction, and she’d have conned a man who claimed to be too smart for a thief like her.
However, as Chelsea retracted her hands from Anubis at the fortune-telling session, the bounty hunter’s bone-white armored hands suddenly closed around her wrists in a tight vice grip. “I didn’t come here for news on a petty bounty, dear lady. I do not need wealth, pride, or gluttony. All I want is her.”
Chelsea tried to escape his clutches to no avail. “I have no idea who you speak of.”
“Then use your power to find out,” challenged Anubis. “I will come to meet you every day. You have until — what date did you give before? Aries 2nd. Produce accurate information on the woman of my affection on that day, or I will hunt you down like the wretch and cheat I know you are and drain the life from your body.”
Aries 2nd was only two weeks away. Anubis stayed true to his word and visited Chelsea Hawthorne every one of those fourteen days. She tried to run, but he still found her. There was no way to escape this master hunter. Not by train, cable car, airship, or sea. Everywhere Chelsea ran, the grim reaper found her, counting down the days she had left to find the one woman he desired.
“Seven days.”
“Three days.”
“One day.”
With so little information to even begin a search through historical records, there was no way Chelsea could produce Anubis’s love out of thin air. The crown of being the greatest con artist in the world was slipping away from her grasp. With one day left until Aries 2nd, there was only one thing for Chelsea to do.
As soon as the clock struck midnight on Aries 2nd, 5924, Chelsea Ellen Hawthorne was found dead in a city park. A mysterious assailant had struck her with a killing curse, taking her life before Anubis could collect his debt. Whether or not she was a true seer could not be confirmed. Scattered rumors of the incident hypothesized that Chelsea had paid off a wizard to murder her. This theory was also unconfirmed.
So it was on the night of Aries 2nd, 5924, while Chelsea’s little old body lay in an empty chapel, Anubis hovered over her, paying his respects to the greatest con artist the world ever knew.
That’s going to do it for us today. Tune in tomorrow to see what happens when an atomic bomb is found in a magical world. Subscribe now to get more new episodes right in your feed. Rate and review the podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. Send your questions to archives of fabella@gmail.com.
Archives of Fabella is created, produced, and hosted by Dillon Foley with music by Garret Ferris and Audioblocks. Books are available on Amazon in ebook and paperback, as always, “Look outside of what is possible and think about what might be.”