Name: Bethany Wheeler

Age: 30

Species: Human

Family: Bart Wheeler (twin brother), Rowena and Bentley Wheeler (parents, deceased), Granger Wheeler (paternal grandfather), Michaela Wheeler (paternal grandmother), Simon Wheeler (nephew, twin), Sebastian Wheeler (nephew, twin)

Rank: Viscountess of Copperfall Straits (disgraced)

Profession: airship commander, weapons specialist

Origin: steampunk/fusion-era Earth

Current Whereabouts: Ursa Caldera, north wastes

Name: Bart Wheeler

Age: 30

Species: Human

Family: Bethany Wheeler (twin sister), Rowena and Bentley Wheeler (parents, deceased), Granger Wheeler (paternal grandfather), Michaela Wheeler (paternal grandmother), Sasha Wheeler-Evana (wife, deceased), Simon Wheeler (son, twin), Sebastian Wheeler (son, twin), Caleb (son with Catherine), Malachai (son with Mirial), Tatiana and Tristan (daughter and son fraternal twins with Tory), Jaelin (daughter with personal physician Joanna), Morena (daughter with journalist Madeline)

**Alternate world offspring include Leopold and Carthan (sons, Lilian and Colette who are sisters), Aaron (son, Aria), Rudolph (son, Ravenna), Cassidy and Coraline (twins f/f, Carina); Renee, Bently and Rowena (triplets f/m/f with Baeris, go figure); Wyatt, Wynette and Bianca (m/f/f with the Wolf Queen of Dragondeep); Monsoon and Meridian (m/f twins with Mirage), Isabel (f, Ixoh), Urusla (f, Urd), Myth and Baalmy (m/f twins, Maalysa) all on Zekira; note well that Bart is hardly mortal, and most of these kids are born at around 10 to 20 year intervals.

Rank: Viscount of Copperfall Straits (disgraced)

Profession: inventor, airship mechanic

Origin: steampunk/fusion-era Earth

Current Whereabouts: Ursa Caldera, north wastes

**Story contains some adult content**

Bethany and Bartholomew were fraternal twins born during war-time, to Viscount Bentley and Rowena Wheeler while in their airship transferring from one area of their territory to another. In the heat of battle, the airship was rocked with artillery and both Bentley and his wife perished shortly after their delivery.

Granger and his wife Michaela raised their grandchildren. Granger was an advisor to the royal court, with sway enough to afford land-holds and titles. It was through him that Bentley gained his title. Michaela was an adept airship mechanic on the royal fleet, attaining the rank of Lieutenant before retiring.

With the end of the war, the numerous airships left to the Viscounts would be distributed to various captains and counties. However, one superb craft would become Beth and Bart’s. From the time they could walk, the twins learned the ins and outs of their magnificent ship.

As was the custom in the area and for their rank, suitable marriage partners were arranged for the twins. Even at the age of 6, however, Bethany was adamant that she would never marry. Bart wasn’t much more convinced, but didn’t refuse to write to his betrothed in a nearby county. Eventually the family of Beth’s intended gave up on her, though ironically later on he served with the twins on board their craft.

With careful instruction, Bethany was drawn to the weapons and navigation of their airship, while Bart took greatly to the mechanical and technical aspects of it all. However it was also in Bart’s mind to create new and innovative items, not just to fix the craft but improve on it.

While on a journey to a northern territory, a wild storm blew their ship off course, and the eleven-year-old twins and their loyal crew found themselves in a hostile land. It was there that they first discovered the presence of a mad scientist’s lair within a bleak volcanic caldera: blown to bits by his bizarre experiments and with some of the strangest monsters ever to wander the world on the loose. Massive, monstrous bears, some three times bigger than normal. It was in fighting off those bears that both twins learned a lot about survival.

They didn’t wait to be rescued, even though in the weeks they were there, over half the adult staff and guardians on the ship had fallen to the bears or the elements. The children, remarkably intelligent and resourceful, managed to repair the damage to their ship and got back home within two months. Their grandparents were frantic, but welcomed the tattered crew back into the county with a celebration.

That celebration was where Bart first was physically introduced to his betrothed, Sasha Evana. Though they were both still a bit put off by the fact that their elders had arranged their pairing, they got along well enough to continue corresponding for the next few years.

What the twins didn’t mention was that they had discovered a cache of technological wonders that the inventor living in the wastes had created. Building from them and experimenting to recreate numerous fascinating items, Bart was able to expand his own skills tremendously. Beth on the other hand got the opportunity to exercise her defensive abilities to keep prying eyes off her brother’s work. From the time they came home until the present day, Bart obsessively returned to his laboratory aboard the airship to make more and more interesting devices and inventions.

Among the creations that Bart allowed out of his lab were a pair of robotic assistants. Far from being humanoid in shape, the medical and repair bots were built in the form of a pair of raccoons! Though they cannot speak, they communicate via a series of clicks and cheeping, beeps and humming. With a bit of effort anyone could learn to decode this language, however Bart does make adjustments now and then to keep any ‘trade secrets’ safe. The repair ‘bot often can be found patrolling the ship, while the medical specialist carries bandages and first aid supplies when summoned.

Enrolled in the royal military academy by virtue of their family’s titles, Bethany was always more aggressive and physical, compared to her highly intellectual brother. She kept her skills honed enough that by the time they were fourteen she completed most of their military training’s physical challenges with flying colors. She could easily disarm even an experienced swordsman, as well as use her tactical knowledge to organize large numbers of troops. Though he too was a member of the royal fleet officer’s school, Bart’s attention was generally on his devices and scholarly pursuits. That said, he was also an adept enough swordsman, though nowhere near as dedicated to the skill as his sister.

During their teen years the twins traveled widely across their territory on mapping and patrol missions. Between those week-long flights would be a month or so of classroom education and elite mixing with other high-ranking families. Much though she hated to admit it, Beth looked quite stunning in her formal officer’s dress during those events. Bart always enjoyed looking his best, and from his adolescence he began to tower over his peers, growing as an adult to stand well over 6’4”.

As the twins grew into their own skills and personalities, they hardly noticed that their grandparents were beginning to get more distant from them. Understandably this could be explained away as royal aloofness. After more than fifty years in the service of the royal family, Granger had likely picked up some of their habits. Regardless, Beth and Bart continued to enjoy their formative years exploring and learning.

While Bethany’s activities were largely concentrated on ship-based combat tactics, personal fighting, and officer’s training, Bart’s were difficult to assess from an outsider’s perspective. Though Michaela was as adept as Bart in terms of ship-based engineering, even she couldn’t understand the unusual experiments and inventions that he created. On at least one journey with their carefully selected crew, Bart decided to test out a specific invention that he’d been saving up. With it, while over a bleak, deserted portion of their lands, he activated a miraculous device that turned nearly half their airship invisible! The device was part of the cache discovered 6 years prior. It, along with two smaller versions, were a jealously guarded secret – and would remain so thanks to the crew’s loyalty to the charismatic pair. With effort and a large amount of tinkering those other two items were worked into rings for each of the twins. Using the rings allowed them to secretly amass more information and goods.

Because they were still young enough to enjoy such subterfuge, but also too young to know much of the consequences, they got into their fair share of trouble. They were just as good at getting out: Bart’s adept mind and detective work, along with Beth’s strong sword-arm always kept them one step ahead of the game.

They also established a fine rapport with the local community, with one group in particular owing them quite a debt. Bart’s excellent observational skill allowed him to retrieve a stolen treasure and return it to its elderly owner. The ‘Golden Goat’, along with its owner, was then presented to an equally elderly tavern woman... A tavern that inherited the name, as well as a reputation for harboring the Twins later on.

Though Beth and Bart would never be parted for long, most comfortable as a team or at least in communication with each other, there came a time when they did have to give each other some space. More accurately: Beth needed to allow her brother to enjoy his honeymoon. The 19-year-old Bartholomew and his new wife Sasha had a reasonably small ceremony at the family keep and a thoroughly noisy reception at the Golden Goat.

What better way to show his wife that though they were betrothed as a political agreement, Bart wished only to respect and please her, than to offer her the blessing of the skies? On one of their prior visits, Sasha had expressed her worry that she would be bound to a life of dull service and loveless days. Until they took their vows and began a tour of the territory, Sasha had never been in an airship – Bart offered her the freedom and excitement of the skies, and found an eager student in her to explore the world. Sasha never went back to embroidery and dullness!

Sasha proved to be a quick learner and rapidly grew into her role not only as a wife, but as Bart’s assistant in his lab. It was also Sasha’s first time wearing ‘men’s clothing’ of trousers and shirts – it just wasn’t practical to have a fashionable dress become ruined by the grease, oil and occasional smoke in that lab. Her relationship with Beth was never tense, though also never truly close. Beth patiently allowed the much more fashion-conscious woman to dress her up for the required social events they would attend, but Sasha avoided the airship’s bridge and weaponry areas out of deference to her sister-in-law’s busy schedule and fiery temper.

Over time it did strike the two-turned-three that they had hardly been given much in the way of official duties aside from air patrol and the occasional meetings with dignitaries. They didn’t know the reasons behind this, and unfortunately that would come back to haunt them later on. In the meantime, Bart and Sasha began making plans for their own family.

It could be said that Bart was a bit of a geek, spending far more time in the lab than sharing raunchy stories with other young bucks. It was much more likely that Beth knew more dirty jokes than her brother! Even so, Sasha claimed to Bethany that she had absolutely no complaints regarding quality or quantity of his affection.

Two years went by in a flash, and by the time Bart and Beth were twenty-one, Sasha was clearly pregnant. Before that Summer was done, it was also clear that Sasha was carrying more than one baby. Preparations were doubled, and Beth’s jokes about her brother’s virility were doubled as well.

When the time finally drew near, Bart agreed that the best place for Sasha to give birth was on the ground. His robotic raccoon assistant seemed frantic but Bart attributed that to the fact that it hadn’t seen a pregnancy before. The labor was short, only a few hours. However due to the fact that it was twins, that labor was still quite hard on Sasha. So hard, in fact, that shortly after she had delivered the pair of identical boys, her heart stopped beating. As a terrified Bart held on to her, Sasha’s life ended just as their sons’ began.

Beth had never seen her brother in pain like that. He’d been wounded before, from explosions in his lab and that one swordfight he got into, but those were nothing at all like the emotional ruin that showed on him. Bart composed himself enough to allow others to do more detailed examinations to his wife’s body. Also he made an unusual decision to have her remains cremated and shared between her family and his own. His reasoning was that she could never be parted from the ground and her parents, but should never be taken from the skies.

It was more than two weeks before the young boys were named by their distraught father. Simon, the first-born, and Sebastian, born just minutes before his mother’s last breath. While Bethany had always been known as the ‘dominant’ sibling in the family, Bart became quite fierce when dealing with anyone coming near his sons. They delivered Sasha’s ashes to Count Evans and his wife Sarah – and learned something quite disturbing: that Sasha’s grandmother had also died shortly after bearing Sarah, in extremely similar circumstances. Not from the typical bleeding-out or too-long exhaustive labor, but from her weak heart.

Though it was normal that Bart was seen as the ‘smart’ sibling, it was Beth that began wondering whether they ought to be a bit suspicious... But of whom, she could not be sure. She, as well as everyone else around, put any signs of unease aside in order to better help raise the boys. They were educated by Bart and only those he trusted implicitly to get near them. At Bethany’s insistence, however, their contact with Granger and Michaela was limited. If the grandparents noticed her odd behavior, they didn’t mention it.

It took almost three years before Bart truly smiled at anyone other than his sons and sister. Simon and Sebastian’s education mostly occurred in the airship: they learned to ring communication bells before they could walk, had no fear of the great heights the craft ascended, knew how to recognize landmarks from both the ground and skies.

By their fourth birthday the boys’ personalities had begun to assert themselves. Simon, firstborn, took after their aunt Beth: aggressive and bold, very physical. Sebastian predictably showed aptitude in tinkering and observation. Bart was suitably proud of them both, even (or perhaps especially) when his half-built experiments were strewn around the lab and ship’s corridors.

With the fifth anniversary of his wife’s death and the birthdays of his sons growing closer, both Bethany and Bart noticed how oddly their grandparents were acting in those days. They were taking numerous trips and utilizing tight-lipped curriers to move messages and packages to and from unknown persons. Normally in the past, any important papers and items would be handed to the Twins for transport. It seemed very queer that Bethany and her brother were no longer being trusted for such things. After all, their airship was the fastest in the skies, not to mention the safest what with Beth’s keen eye and deadly aim with harpoons.

The airship became more important for the adults and their young companions, and almost unconsciously Beth and Bart began to move possessions from the ground into it. Just as they were finishing up, and a mere month before the boys’ sixth birthday, Granger and Michaela asked to have the boys over for a more private celebration. Only after watching the children walk to their great-grandparents did Bart and Beth realize their mistake. For they watched the boys vanish into their old home – at the sharp ends of the King’s guard bayonets. A compliment of highly-trained soldiers escorted the children and elders to a royal coach and away from the pair.

No amount of pleading, arguing or threats could budge the royal guards, who had apparently been instructed not to allow Bart and his sister to follow the coach – on the ground or in the air. It was obvious where the coach would end up, but a simple warning in the form of a note penned by Granger kept them from attempting a rescue. From that moment, Bethany and Bartholomew were outlawed.

The siblings fled to their airship as soon as they could – after a brutal fight with those royal guardsmen. Though Bethany was careful, she did kill two of the men. The other four were left in varying states of injury and unconsciousness. Bart walked away with another wound in the same shoulder he’d been hit through before, but he was so furious he barely noticed. It was only after being given a large dose of sedatives by his raccoon-bot that he stopped screaming obscenities and could even be treated for his injuries.

Though he attempted desperately to get Beth to guide their ship toward the center of the kingdom, Bart was distraught as she insisted they turn the ship’s cloaking system on and escape the city. Inconsolable, Bart had to be carefully watched lest he do anything too rash. They had to formulate a plan of action, but that had to wait until his pierced shoulder was healed. If Bethany thought that her brother had felt helpless when Sasha died, he was far from that emotion now. Anger had replaced it; anger and determination.

Since they had all played roles in raising Simon and Sebastian, the crew of their ship pledged their loyalty to the siblings. But it would take more than oaths and fond memories to keep the ship supplied and fully functional. For that, they relied on the smaller invisibility ring technology and headed to the Golden Goat. Anything that Bart and Beth needed could be gotten through the elderly couple there.

In the next months, they watched invisibly as their grandparents came and went in their former home. But any sign of the boys was elusive at best. As time went on it became apparent that the twin boys were living in royal luxury at the King’s palace. But why? This became the focus of Bart’s attention for nearly a year. After that long, however, it seemed that the royal guard was instructed to be more diligent in their searches for the missing siblings and their crew. They had to be increasingly careful on their forays into cities. Finally Beth decided to head out so they could compose their plans in a more isolated location.

Years before, they’d been stranded there by accident. But this time the siblings carried their airship into the inhospitable northern wastes on purpose. They located the large caldera where they’d holed up and found the remains of inventions and experiments. No one else could have followed them, not only because the ship was invisible, but because no one in their right mind would do so into the storms along the way.

No one else would have been prepared for the bears, either. The monstrous animals looked like they were polar bears once. However they were more than three times the size of those already big bears, and at least three times as mean. With the right equipment (found on board of course) hunting those bears kept the area reasonably safe for those in the caldera proper. Their pelts could serve as furry tents; their meat, while a bit bitter, fed the entire camp for a fortnight. One good harpoon to the head from the airship’s forward guns and those bears went right down.

Roughing it for the next year or more toughened everyone up, and allowed Bart the chance to think more clearly about what was going on with his sons. What they didn't know was that a good number of other noble families around the territory were experiencing difficulties with the royal family as well. On their first foray back to civilization in many months, Bart and Beth heard whispers of guards invading keeps, abdications of duty, even exile and outlawing of dukes, earls and counts – just like the siblings.

But why were Bart's sons abducted? They would have to find out, they would have to find the boys. And, pray that they weren't already brainwashed or forced into forgetting their true family. If they really were being held at the royal palace there would be very few options for locating them, let alone rescuing them. They considered attempting to send a spy inside the palace, but realized that would simply endanger yet another person and their family. Against Beth's wishes and better judgment, Bart decided to allow himself to be captured in the hopes that he might see Simon and Sebastian once more.

Bethany carefully arranged for her brother to be found near an abandoned farmstead. The airship rested low over the nearby forest, invisible to any ground forces: the King's guard didn't include an air corps since the end of the war which killed the Wheeler's parents. Bart carried the smaller invisibility ring device with him, knowing that it would be mistaken for nothing more than a keepsake of his family line if found. Beth's firm instructions to her brother included a lengthy session about ‘not getting killed' from losing his temper and forgetting that his sons needed him alive.

Bart put up enough of a fight that the guardsmen didn't suspect he was simply giving himself up. It took weeks in the dank dungeon within the palace before Bart was allowed an audience – not with the King, but with his own grandfather Granger. Though he never quite got a straight answer from the man regarding why it was his sons being used by the King, Granger did callously inform Bart that he “was of no further use”. It appeared, however, that King Ronaldo had other plans for the man. For hidden in that same dungeon were two of the King's supposedly-dead wives. Women who could bear heirs: ones which the King himself was unable to sire.

From those two, Bart learned much about the reigning King. His first two wives had ‘fallen ill' and died, but according to these two, they had been executed by the King in one of his rages. Whether that was because neither produced an heir, or simply that they angered him, their successors didn't know. The latest in line for his abuses was still in the palace, and still not pregnant according to her handmaids. The other two, Mirial and Tory, asserted that it was merely a matter of time before poor Catherine was sent down to their dungeon chambers, or worse.

But with Bart there to complicate things, they were no longer sure what would happen. What did happen in the meantime was that King Ronaldo drunkenly entertained himself by commanding Bart to rape Catherine. Obviously this was hardly to their liking, and it took guards threatening them both before they complied. This became an almost-nightly event for nearly a month. Unsettling enough, but he was then paired with Mirial and Tory in turn – until each of the women could be confirmed pregnant.

Perhaps it was because she was a woman, more likely because she still had enough conscience left after all this, Michaela sent a message to Bethany who had been beside herself for the last four months. Bart was to remain a ‘guest' of the King until the genders of those bastard children he'd sired were known. As Ronaldo had stated: pray for girls, if he wanted another short lease on life. A boy from Catherine would mean a quick execution, and not just for Bart. The revulsion in Michaela's voice when she and Bethany finally spoke in person was apparent. Apparent too was the need to get Bart and the boys – and possibly the ‘dead' queens – out of there.

What started as a fairly straightforward rescue mission to take Bart and the boys back, ended up one of Bethany 's triumphant moments. Her mastery of tactics and warfare had hardly ever been challenged in her whole life, but an assault on the royal palace... that was something no one could expect. She used distraction and sheer guts to bring most of the guards away from the central palace courtyard. That done, she placed the airship in close proximity of the ground. Due to the unusual nature of the invisibility devices, Bart became aware of the rescue attempt by the trembling of his ring. One twist of the darker metallic ring around its lighter core rendered him invisible as well. That allowed him to get past the remaining guards as everyone was attempting to figure out what was going on.

Bart found his sons, both of whom seemed healthy and happy to be reunited with their father. More than that though, Bart sought out the women he'd been forced to impregnate. Catherine was too well-protected to bring her out, but the dungeons were blasted open by one stunning explosive-tipped harpoon hit. In the chaos, two of Beth's crewmen were killed, along with Michaela as she attempted to board. Before boarding himself, Bart turned on his grandfather Granger. Harpoons didn't need to be flung from the ship's guns to do deadly damage. Bart retrieved one of those weapons from the ground and ended Granger's life with a grim warning to those guarding the King standing nearby. They would return, and they would change things here.

The ship, bearing its precious cargo, escaped, vanishing into the evening sky. They didn't take a direct route back to Ursa Caldera, of course, wanting to make sure that they could not be followed or discovered. Once there it was a somber scene, mourning Michaela and the crewmen's deaths. Soon enough it was obvious that Bart had been injured in the battle, but also on several occasions before then. He allowed only Beth and his medic-bot to aid him after they discovered deep cuts, whip marks, and most notably a major burn in the center of his chest. It was Mirial that explained: Bart's refusal to cooperate gave him each of those painful injuries.

Simon and Sebastian knew only that their father was with them once more. Too young to understand why the other women were present, they would have to adjust to a new life in hiding and later to their new half-siblings. The women had little difficulty with that same task: they'd both been living in the dungeons for over four years each. Camping out and keeping watch seemed particularly pleasant, rather than horrific, after all that!

Obviously if the Wheeler siblings and their craft weren't already outlawed, this event drove the point deeper. Their vow to ‘change things' was taken seriously by everyone. By the time Mirial and Tory had both given birth it was known across the land that Catherine's child was a boy, Caleb by name. The King kept his charade up, attempted to claim that the Wheelers had been trying to usurp the throne and kidnap ‘his' son. But more and more people had started to suspect that those things were not true. None spoke out for fear of being silenced, but still word spread of the brave acts of the Wheelers.

In the seclusion of the Ursa Caldera, Bart along with his now almost-10 year old sons had time to develop new and intriguing technology. One thing Bart wished to make for them was some way to spy on the King, or to move through space without being caught. Not just invisibly, but without physically being endangered. A portal, a view port to distant places? Some of the technology that had been left behind by the last inhabitant of the caldera contributed to this odd invention of Bart's.

With it, he could ‘tune in' to distant places. But some seemed wildly different from their own lands. Were they even on the same continent? In the same world? What would they find, and could it help them overthrow the horrific and unfair ruler they despised?

Only time and exploration would tell!