I will be unable to finish Crucible of Time #2 as planned, thanks to a health issue (arthritis) -- though I may find a way to do so in a few years using software instead of hand drawing. However, I wanted to leave everyone with a summary of what was planned for future stories. So due warning: What is below are "spoilers" that reveal major plot lines. If you'd rather not have the future revealed to you now, turn away.
Crucible of Time #2
This is the arc that deals with Sheila's travel back in time.
The story opens in Alabaster Springs. Sheila's funeral is being conducted at a place of worship. As it proceeds, word comes of a terrorist attack in the heart of the city by a group of Sk'lan. They have planted a bomb in the city hall which will devastate the entire city, and threaten to blow it up if their demands are not met or if they learn from spies placed in the nearby mountains that the city is being evacuated. Charlock asks the Range Patrol members if they wish to help respond to the threat, as he knows they are in mourning. Bimf states that Sheila would want them to help, and they all agree.
They arrive at city hall. Before any plans can be laid, a female figure with long, blond hair garbed in red and white and with a mask arrives and walks into the city hall without saying anything. It is clearly an Elapine, but no one knows who it is. The figure stalks the Sk'lan holding the building and kills them one by one. The last one sets the bomb to go off, but the figure uses sorcery to lift the bomb through the roof and high into the air, where it explodes without doing any harm. The figure returns outside and doffs her mask. It is Sheila. She tells Charlock she is reporting for duty. The Range Patrol members stand astonished until Bimf runs forward at last and embraces her. Sheila states she knew Bimf would be the first to accept that she had returned. The rest of the team asks what happened to her. She says she will explain, but she wants to go home first.
They proceed back to the station. Sheila returns to her room and gently lays her hand on the many personal items there, one at a time. She dons her old outfit and joins the rest of the team in the Ketterlings' home, where she tells the story of what happened to her.
After being sucked into Darthex's portal, Sheila finds herself in a time several thousand revs before the time Brom was dumped into. Hearthstone at that time is an Edenic paradise where the peoples all live in relative peace and serenity. Sheila comes to realize that she will be stuck in this time and proceeds to make a life for herself. She must comfort herself by calling up images of her friends with her wristband, which remains wholly functional.
Sometime later, she encounters a traveler from a faraway place. He is named D'lon, and it is whom she recognizes as Eidolon -- though he is clearly young at this time and is not immortal, much less a prophet. Indeed, he reveals himself to be something of a profligate ladies' man, and he flirts with Sheila outrageously until she puts him in his place.
D'lon thereafter gains a quick respect for Sheila, and he decides to gain her trust in more conventional ways. He explains that he is on a quest to discover a certain source of power that is reputed to grant immortality, and he asks for her assistance as a travelling companion and guide to the area. Sheila vaguely recalls the future Eidolon giving similar details of how he gained his immortality, so she agrees to guide him, while also not revealing what she knows of his future, lest she cause him to change his mind.
In time, they arrive at a place that readers will recognize as the dimensional transport station seen in Shrike Team #6 and in Sheila's vision in Range Patrol #6. D'lon recognizes that the power source for the station contains energies that will grant immortality. Using knowledge he has gained of Almanorian technology, he sets up the station machinery to create an energy beam that he can step into. He does so, and he becomes immortal.
Satisfied that she has seen the matter through, Sheila is about to make an exit point when D'lon uses his Av'nen mental powers to freeze her in place. He reveals that all this time, he had gained her trust for the purpose of also making her immortal, so they she could reign beside him as his queen. He had come to admire and respect her and believed she would be an excellent consort. He uses his mental powers to force her into the beam, making her also immortal.
Just as this is done, the dimensional gate opens and a group of about 20 K’rek’skran come pouring out, including their leader M'l'strom. They capture and hold D'lon and Sheila and announce their own plan to take possession of their bodies and use them to foster their own rule. They successfully inhabit D'lon but find they cannot inhabit Sheila. Sheila breaks free in their surprise and conjures up a polarium rang from her wristband. Before she even throws it, the polarium rang's energy burst snares one of the K’rek’skran, who finds he cannot escape from it, and he is then blown into pieces. With horror, the K’rek’skran realize that unlike any other weapon they have encountered, the polarium rang can kill them. They all try to flee in various directions except M'l'strom, whom Sheila must drive back through the portal before closing it down by destroying the station machinery. In the confusion, a frightened D'lon escapes, leaving Sheila alone.
Realizing she had been tricked by D'lon, Sheila thereafter wanders the land in despair, knowing now that she will live forever and it will be tens of thousands of revs before she reaches the world she knew. She makes her way to the continent of Nullabor, which at that time is uninhabited and covered with primeval forest. Using her wristband’s global positioning mechanism, she finds the exact spot where the future Range Patrol station will be and plants herself on the ground, determined to wait for time to change around her until the world she knew returns.
Several thousand revs pass with her sitting there unmoving. Then the meteor which impacted the Northwest continent streaks directly overhead. It gets her attention. It causes a great tsunami which washes over the Nullaborian continent, sweeping Sheila away with it. She is swept into the depths of the ocean, where she remains unconscious.
Sometime later, she awakens to find herself on a beach. Her wristband is still functional, but the image of Beamer informs her that the system’s nanites are repairing it. Some ways off, she sees a figure sitting at a fire with its back turned to her. She approaches to discover that it is Eidolon, who is now the prophet she came to eventually know in the future. He explains that shortly after he left her last, he had a visionary experience in which he was called to be a prophet, and he has repented of his former ways. He also admits that had he known at the time that he would be called as a prophet, he would have rejected immortality, but he knows now that it was part of his destiny and the reason he was born. He says that he realizes he cannot expect Sheila to forgive him for what he has done to her, but she does so. He explains what has happened since they were last together, noting that the world is now a place of chaos and violence, and it is up to them to take the lead in remaking it. Sheila comes to regret her own actions in planting herself in Nullabor, now learning that Brom had been around and that she could have been rescued. Eidolon offers to show her the secrets of the Almanorian civilization. At that moment, Sheila realizes that for her entire life, she too has been a prophet, and that her calling was for the purpose of being in that time and place so that she, together with Eidolon, have been called to wield their influence on Hearthstone to make it the world it would become. The story closes with them entering a transmission gate together.
The Weather Cycle
I have only broad outlines in mind for this series, in which an arctic race known as the Mangrasarian takes control of the ancient Almanorian weather control devices and uses it to try to turn the whole of Hearthstone into a deep freeze suitable for their habitation. Among the key scenes/concepts:
The Breaking of the Gates
The general idea for this series was that the K’rek’skran had found some way to release themselves from behind the dimensional gates that had been sealed by Sheila's microliths. I have not developed any specific stories for this arc, but in general I envisioned the rogue K’rek’skran being captured and imprisoned by the Range Patrol and Shrike Team members "Ghostbuster" style.
The Final Future
This arc takes place in the distant future of Hearthstone. Sometime after the prior story arcs, a Tilkrig scientist had used Sk'lan technology to devise genetic therapies which enabled anyone to acquire the characteristic of any other race they chose, and also produce custom-tailored children. The result ten thousand revs later is that the population of Hearthstone consists in this future age of only three major races: 1) the Sk'lan, who have refused to accept the therapies, knowing how in the past playing around with genetics corrupted them; 2) the Patchworks, a sort of "Mad Max" race that looks like failed genetic experiments and is extremely violent, living in the ruins of what was once Hearthstone's great cities; 3) the Optums, a generic looking and rather stupid, indolent people who live in relative luxury and are served by computerized drones who see to their every need.
Sheila serves a sort of caretaker role over the Optums in Nullabor, who nevertheless treat her with contempt and indifference because she is not an Optum. She coordinates supplying the continent with food from the northwest, where the Sk'lan have made their own continent a sort of breadbasket.
One day after helping an ungrateful Optum escape from a Patchwork mob, Sheila discovers a child wandering the street. He looks like an Optum, but unlike the Optums he is both intelligent and polite. He does not know who his parents are and can remember nothing of his past. Amazed by this, Sheila adopts him and names him Joash.
Some time later, Sheila visits the remains of her old Range Patrol complex and is saddened to see it turned into a tourist trap which features accounts of her adventures that are badly distorted. She angrily informs the Optum caretaker who she is and what is wrong with the accounts presented. The Optum caretaker politely thanks her and dismisses her.
Later, while doing her routine business, Sheila gets an urgent call. To her surprise, it is Brom, though he has disguised himself as an Optum. He begs to see her. At first she believes it is a trick, until Brom reminds her of things she said to him long ago that only the two of them heard. She agrees to meet with him.
Brom explains that he has been alive all this time as well, not immortal as Sheila is, but having the ability to continually regenerate like a plant. He lived in his sister’s household for generations, first as a welcome guest, then as a tolerated oddity when the therapies turned them into Optums. Eventually, he frightens one of the children by his appearance, and he is driven from their home. Word spreads of him, and he is also driven from inhabited areas, so that he had to disguise himself as an Optum to make his way to where Sheila was. However, after being driven from civilization in the east, he first finds refuge among the Chet’lyn in the great forest. Later, he receives a visit from Eidolon, who is in a state of panic and despair. Eidolon explains that he has been mourning the passing of the former world, and one night he had a vision of himself sitting upon a throne ruling as a cruel dictator. He believes that this vision was somehow inspired by M’l’strom, so he decides to confront M’l’strom directly at the ancient gate station (from Shrike Team #6).
He does so, and he discovers that the K’rek’skran have created a device they call the Soul Stealer, which they use to extract Eidolon’s spirit from his body so that M’l’strom can inhabit it instead. However, the Soul Stealer is unable to prevent Eidolon’s body from slowly decaying as it turns out that it is no longer a “whole person” without Eidolon’s spirit. This causes it to slowly lose the power of immortality, and bits of it break off and crumble into dust over time.
In the meantime, since he does not know what has happened to Eidolon, the visit prompts Brom to seek out Sheila, which is where the story picks up. Brom and Sheila rekindle their old romance and becomes husband and wife, with Joash as their adopted son. Together they continue doing what they can to make the world better. However, in the meantime M’l’strom has used Eidolon’s decaying body to ill, having conquered the Eastern half of the world. Word of this reaches Brom and Sheila when they see a report that the forest of the Chet’lyn is being systematically destroyed. They arrive in the East and see what they are up against. M’l’strom offers them a one-sided truce: They can control the West half the world while he keeps the East. Realizing they ultimately cannot destroy Eidolon’s body, they decide to wait for it to decay away. However, M’l’strom has tricked them and instead moves to invade the territory of the Sk’lan, whom he exterminates. It is also revealed that he is destroying plant life as a way of robbing Brom of his power.
In a final battle, M’l’strom kills Brom and Joash. He confronts Sheila and pledges that he will destroy the entire world to defeat her, if need be, and he will also take her body to replace Eidolon's. At that moment, Joash is raised from the dead, revealing himself to been the incarnate Logos of the One. He holds M’l’strom in place and directs Sheila to use her dimensional rang (a weapon left over from the earlier Breaking of the Gates cycle) to send him into the void. She does so. This ends the era, and the Chet’lyn are restored as masters of the world (in their Almanorian form) while the believing peoples of Hearthstone are resurrected to join them.
The Immortal Sheila Rangslinger
Stories of Sheila’s adventures in time. The only two I have firmly fixed in terms of plot are:
Karushi Av'nen – stories of Eidolon’s medieval team. I have no stories plotted for this as yet, beyond it being set at the time the Av’nen are exterminated.