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by Vic Broquard (Author)
Carmen Valen continues her revenge plots, designing more apparel to hobble both women and now men as well. The novel begins around 1207, covering some forty years. A new alien Sector ID Minister Emeryk Donat arrives, replacing the disgraced Lech, but he is unmarried. Lord Valen, Carmen's uncle, takes advantage of that, inserting Adelina into the minister's life. Within a few year's time, Carmen's plans of hobbling the key ruling men and women become widely adopted. She also brings her fourteen year old granddaughter Nita into the business, setting her up as the teen fashion model. The lords bide their time, knowing that they cannot go against the emperor until the deaths of Amy and Jan. By 1243, Carmen's revenge was complete. She retired to Valen castle to die, leaving Elegant Fashions Inc to Nita. Nita refused to marry, but did have a son and daughter, Inez, who at fourteen she turned into her new teen model, just as she had been years ago. Thus began the Age of the Lords, who now ruled all of Tierra as they once had. However, Lord Paco Valen now ruled the Westerlings and he began Valen's conquest goals once more. Why? He alone of those on Tierra desperately wanted to open up the world to the aliens, importing their vast technology to bring his world into the modern era. His first goal was to retake the areas around Oakham and Haverhills whose dead zones had finally sprung back to life. To further his plans, he and Nita Valen devised a diabolical plan to make all the powerful lords, ladies, and mentales gifted hobbled and crippled up. They invented a "virus" that infected hands and necks, one whose only known cure was to have the hands removed and to wear tight-fitting neck rings, immobilizing the head. Further, Nita introduced lip plates, golden and bejeweled disks some five inches in diameter. With these fancy ornaments, their speech was almost not understandable. Lord Valen managed to hobble up the powerful leaders of Tierra. Also, Brom Tower noticed that over the last fifty years, children who should have been born with the gift didn't have it, resulting in a drastic drop in available mentales gifted people! In fact, they estimated in less than a century, no more telepaths would be born. Additionally, Marisol and the Underground discovered the wholesale deterioration of the mentales gifted as a whole. Once they were proud, powerful people, using their gifts to help all others survive the climatic upheaval several centuries ago. As time went by, they had dropped down into antagonistic ways and then even lower towards hate and anger, fighting hideous, devastating wars. Later on, with the wide implementation of the very sexy outfits for the women and later the body modifications that had all manner of sexual twists in them, they had, as a group, dropped even further down the scale of life with their almost frantic sexual drives. With the betrayal of Lord Valen and Nita known, many dropped down into grief and apathy, since their bodies were nearly helpless. Somehow, Marisol and the Underground wanted to reverse this decline before all was lost. Further, Marisol and her katalyein uncovered something startling. They were removing the mental blocks that prevented some from having their mentales gifts. The incident that they were removing in children and teens who had Verge Sickness was that time when Amy had forced all mentales gifted to experience the horrors of the nuclear detonation that Valen unleashed on one of the cities. However, that happened a century ago! How could a five year old have this as his or her mental block, since this happened a hundred years ago? Conclusion: everyone was actually an immortal spiritual being who had a mind and occupied physical bodies. Finally, they began to realize their own spiritual nature. Did this have anything to do with the penta-pantheon of Tierra's gods?
