Capeworld Comics

Our Story

 

It is an age of wild magic and high adventure! Corsairs navigate flying ships through the cloud-strewn trading lanes between floating city-states. Warlords decide the fate of empires with their wits and their steel. Wizards plumb the ethereal depths of the astral cosmos in search of knowledge and power.

 

This story isn’t about any of those guys.

 

This story takes place on a far smaller scale.

 

The archmage Apollonius has retired from a life of wandering adventure to devote the remainder of his existence to peaceful contemplation. In a quiet forest near a quiet town, he has summoned a bright red tower that peaks above the treeline.

 

This of course, got the attention of those that live below the grassline.

 

 And though those that live below the grassline aren’t known for their courage, they are numerous enough to always have a few brave hearts among them that have a need to slip under doors and through cracks.

 

What they found was a strange place–strange even by the standards of the giants, and the giants were strange people indeed. The halls were cooled by breezes that came from nowhere. Lanterns and candles flamed at sunset and snuffed themselves at sunrise. There were weird objects of metal and glass that seemed to serve no purpose. Plates of food stood full in empty dining rooms and their stacks of delicacies were always fresh. Not a single leaf of a single cabbage wilted. Hot soup never lost its steam. Fruit never soured.

 

Strange though the tower was, it was far better inside than outside. Food was plentiful and predators absent. 

 

They had to move in.

 

Now, the silence of Apollonius’ tower is broken by the tread of tiny feet and the skittering of little architects at work building villages from books that never run out of paper.

 

For his part, Apollonius is grateful that the mice have moved in. He is glad to see that the miscellania of his long life has a use besides gathering dust. And in watching their activities, he has come to appreciate his curios and collections in a fresh light.

 

Campion Catchflies

 

Brother to Silence Catchflies and nephew of Mayor Cardinal Catchflies. Campion was reluctant to move into the tower from the fields he called home. Mice have thrived in fields for as long as there have been mice, and giants are not always friendly. They keep cats, and as everyone knows cats are monsters. Who can live peacefully with creatures that keep monsters? But after his sister gave him a tour of the tower, he warmed to the idea of living in it (it also helped that the food was delicious). 

 

Campion now lives in Maidenhair Village in the second floor library where he works hard building the growing paper village–when he isn’t goofing around. Campion is as active as any mouse that has spent most of his life in the field and loves to play. His playfulness has made him popular with the other mice in Maidenhair but a headache for his uncle the mayor. Campion also leads trade routes between the villages of the tower and the outside forest. Unlike many of the mice that were born in Maidenhair, Campion knows how to move silently and invisibly even when the skies and trees above are filled with things that do nothing all day but watch and listen for things to eat. Sometimes Campion misses the fields, but he never misses the predators.

 

Campion is by nature cautious. After a book in Maidenhair glowed when a certain page was torn out, Campion made it his personal policy to never open a book without a stick and never without at least two other mice present. 

 

Campion doesn’t believe in exploring the tower. The weather is nice in the tower and the food excellent. Campion can’t understand why mice like his sister can’t just leave it at that. He can’t understand why they would ever want to go exploring in a place filled with objects that make no sense.

 

Why do giants have to build things so gigantic anyway? Isn’t it enough that they take up so much space just with their bodies? It’s like they want to walk on the clouds or something absurd like that…

 

Silene Catchflies

 

Silene is as adventurous as her brother is cautious. Silene has to see things with her own eyes and do things with her own paws. She’s very brave for a mouse, and her bravery sometimes makes her reckless. Apollonius is a benevolent soul, but he put everything he owned across vast estates and castles into his tower. He’s forgotten what quite a few devices are supposed to do. Even without the element of magic involved, any place filled with large objects can be dangerous to a mouse–especially a mouse like Silene who loves to climb up things.

 

Silene likes exploring the tower and mapping its contents. Map-making is an art unknown to mice. With their senses, they typically don’t have any problem going where they want to go. They don’t know why giants make maps. Given the size of their ears and eyes, mice think that they would never get lost anywhere. Silene hopes to be the first mouse mapmaker and one day have a book of her own in Maidenhair’s library side-by-side with Apollonius’ own.

 

Mayor Cardinal Catchflies

 

Cardinal is leader of the mice of Maidenhair for the same reason any mouse is leader–he’s the oldest. Whether by luck, skill, or knowledge, Cardinal has survived to an age few mice ever see.

 

Cardinal is a reluctant leader. He was hoping to live out the rest of his life in the fields under sunshine. But his people just had to move into a weird tower made by a weird giant where weird things happen. He could have stayed in the fields, but he wasn’t about to let his people wander into an alien land without his guidance. Cardinal’s responsibility as a leader wouldn’t allow it. His sense of responsibility is his greatest virtue–and also his greatest vice. 

 

Cardinal demands respect, especially from young mice like his nephew Campion and niece Silene. Idleness and playfulness are weak spots in his perfectly designed community. Everyone works so that everyone can eat, and nothing makes Cardinal angrier than to see young mice fritter away the hours on useless activities like trying to copy a wizard’s movements or drawing maps of a room full of crystal balls.

 

The Pinks and the Catchflies

 

The Pinks are relatives to the Catchflies known for being rather odd compared to other mice. Long ago, both clans lived in  a place known to the giants as St. Francis Abbey but to mice as Place-With-Paper. True to its name, it had a lot of paper. It’s rooms were filled with paper in long sheets and bound between leather. Sometimes the paper had drawings on them. What all this was for, the mice couldn’t guess. It was just one more mystery of the giants. But the mice became very skilled in making practical use of the paper. They learned how to use it to create transportable shelters. An entire village could be set up with paper and sticks and then rolled up and transported to move out of the way of a predator or flood. 

 

Mice could graze far and wide when their homes could be carried on their back. For a time, the mice of Place-With-Paper flourished. But one day an old hermit returned from a pilgrimage to the ruins that were his home. Long ago, he was a student of the abbey and learned how to write and draw. He learned how to live by the pen and was at peace. But then there was war, and fire, and bloodshed, and the survivors of his monastic order left for places more accepting of their ways.

 

He didn’t go with them. He didn’t go because he was as strange as the mice that he would adopt. He couldn’t leave his home, even if his home was a burnt ruin.

 

Though angered at first to find mice tearing apart books his teachers painted, he quickly forgave the mice. They did not know how precious the books were, and forgiveness was a tenant of his faith. 

 

He saw what they were doing with his paper and was fascinated. He had never seen something like it. They could lay an entire city down like one enormous piece of paper.

 

The monk wanted to show the mice something fascinating in return. He wanted to show them how to draw.

 

The mice of Place-With-Paper were just as fascinated by how the monk drew as he was by their miniature architecture. They found his drawings interesting before he showed them how they were done. They made sure to use paper with drawings only for their most important buildings. But when they saw how he took a brush and a little ink and put vivid images on blank sheets, they were awestruck.

 

The hermit taught the mice how to draw, and though they weren’t able to match the hermit’s skill they learned enough to draw on a scale he couldn’t. They were able to draw things he could barely see. In what would be a drop of ink to the hermit the mice could fill with all the detail of a page-length illustration.

 

Soon Place-With-Paper became well known to mice far and wide for it’s art. Mice were willing to trade all sorts of things to have paper homes with each wall filled with illustrations, and Place-With-Paper soon grew into a prosperous town 

 

The mice of Place-With-Paper seemed to have a little paradise to themselves amid the mossy stones of St. Francis Abbey.

 

But there was just one problem.

 

The hermit owned cats.

 

And there is no greater enmity in nature than that between mice and cats.

 

The cats were named Sunshine and Rain after the hermit’s two other companions throughout his long pilgrimage. He found them on the road and they bonded as fellow travelers.

 

He loved them like his own children.

 

Though the hermit understood the concerns of his mice friends, he would not abandon Sunshine and Rain. He struck a compromise with the mice. They would keep to the outer grounds of the abbey and journey inside only to see him draw. When they did so, he would lock the cats in a room. This way he could keep his cats and still interact with the mice.

 

The compromise worked. But Sunshine and Rain could sense that their master was paying less attention to them in favor of small bits of food with legs and grew to hate mice beyond what was usual for cats. Cats typical like mice–in a twisted, violent sort of way. They see them as toys. But Sunshine and Rain hated mice with a passion.

 

And one day, the hermit forgot to lock their room.

 

Sunshine and Rain pounced on the mice like living mountains of fur and claws and teeth. They trampled their paper city. They ate their fill of the populace and then killed for the sport and meanness of it. If the hermit did not intervene, they likely would have killed the entire town.

 

This was the cause of the split between the Catchflies and the Pinks. The Catchflies wouldn’t tolerate being so close to cats. Cats were a danger, and that was simply that. They couldn’t function with the scent of cat all around their home putting them on edge and giving them nightmares. The Pinks on the other hand believed the cats were a fair risk to endure for the hermit and his lessons. Their art allowed them to trade for whatever they needed from other mouse villages. Because of their art, they were able to live a life of ease and comfort unknown for most of those that live below the grassline. And what was more, the presence of Sunshine and Rain kept other cats away. It was better to deal with the devils they knew than the devils they didn’t.

 

The Catchflies eventually left Place-With-Paper, and though they continue the traditions of papercraft and art they are said by the Pinks to continue them in a low, vulgar sort of way. Emotionally hurt by the departure of the Catchflies, the Pinks vowed that they would always outdo the Catchflies in art. To have the Catchflies outdo them would be unthinkable. How would they justify staying at Place-With-Paper then? 

 

The Pinks aggressively pushed an ornate style with complex, flowing lines as true art onto their trade routes. The Catchflies didn’t have a ruined abbey to call home. They had to stay on the move to find food and avoid predators. They couldn’t match the Pink style which required one to sit down and work for days at a time–and the Pinks knew it. They destroyed the price of Catchflies art at the cost of their friendship.

 

With the formation of Maidenhair, the Pinks are worried that they’ll soon have serious competition from the Catchflies. Not only do the Catchflies now have a prosperous city to call home, they also have the inspiration of a wizard’s tower. Not wanting to fall behind, the Pinks have sent several of their clan to Maidenhair to explore the wizard’s tower and draw the most interesting things they find. Mayor Cardinal Catchflies has his hands full keeping the peace between young Catchflies and Pinks looking to stir up trouble.

 

Lychnis Pinks

 

The Pinks are known for being strange mice, but even the Pinks think Lychnis is a little strange. She was always abnormally excited to see the hermit draw. Sometimes she was filled with such excitement that she had to go away and sit alone and think. She liked being alone. The company of others made her nervous. And when she was alone, she would try and copy in the dirt the things she saw the hermit draw–and quickly rub them away whenever someone tried to look at them.

 

Her family loved Lychnis, but she was something of a burden to them. Her quiet solitude was fine when she was a pup. It was even something of a blessing as it guaranteed she would never go anywhere near the hermit’s cats.

 

But when she grew into a young woman it became a serious problem. Lychnis didn’t want to socialize with the other girls and help them store food and prepare paper. She certainly didn’t want to socialize with boys.

 

She didn’t seem to want to do much of anything other than play in the dirt.

 

She became lonely, and didn’t know how to stop being lonely. She wanted to talk with other mice…but it was just hard for her. Very hard.

 

Her parents smiled and told her that everything would be alright. One day she’d find her place in the world–they just knew it.

 

But Lychnis was always good at watching. And she watched her parents very closely. She knew they were being kind with their words. And she knew what she was–an unsociable, unmarriageable loner.

 

When the last of Lychnis’ sisters, a girl younger than herself by a few years, got married, Lychnis fled to Maidenhair as silently and quickly as a ghost. She wasn’t sure exactly why she decided to go to Maidenhair. A lot of mice were moving to Maidenhair and she knew she had to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t where she was.

 

When she saw the magician of the tower that held Maidenhair and several other villages, she finally found her place in the world that her parents said she would.

 

She wanted to be like the magician. She wanted to be a magician. It was the answer to something that had always bothered her: mice couldn’t see in color. 

 

Mice don’t see the world like people do. They see in shades of grey.  Even though the mice couldn’t appreciate the art of coloring, the old hermit always colored his pictures. He said that they weren’t finished without color. It was something his late teachers taught him and when he did it he kept their memory alive.

 

Lychnis was always frustrated by how many colors the hermit said there were. Sometimes she thought he made up colors just to sound impressive. She wanted to make drawings like the hermit. But what was the point if she could never use all the colors he described? What was the point of tiny, colorless copies of his work? She never dared raise her concerns that what the mice were doing was merely a cheap imitation of true art. But that was what she believed in her heart.

 

But the magician could do anything. If she copied the magician, she could do anything herself–even make a mouse see color.

 

Lychnis watches Apollonius like a hawk and copies what he does. She dresses like him, walks like him, and most importantly writes like him. Whenever she thinks he’s about to look at her, she darts into the shadows. She wouldn’t know what to say if he ever saw her. She wouldn’t know where to possibly begin to explain what she was trying to do.

 

So far, she hasn’t been able to do anything magical. But she’s certain that with enough practice that something will happen.

 

Apollonius

 

Apollonius. Archmage. Grand Magus. Slayer of dragons. Keeper of secrets. In the Wiseman Canon of Thaumaturgy, there are 478 spells attributed to his name. 100 are apocryphal. The rest are legitimate.

 

Apollonius. Very old, and very tired.

 

Apollonius is older than the trees, but not as old as the mountains. He spent his long life doing as much good as possible. He knew the secret ways of things and could make things better for people. He made crops grow. He made waters flow. He healed the sick. Those feats aren’t shared by the bards like his dragon slaying and dream-walking, but those are the feats he’s most proud of. They helped so many people. And he liked helping people. He spent his life traveling from place to place helping whoever however he could. 

 

Sometimes he would stop and rest and command the rocks to form a home around him. He filled these homes with things he thought were interesting–stuffed crocodiles and dragons’ teeth and mirrors and books–lots of books. He made hallways that led to rooms in other homes for the sake of convenience, but when it was pointed out to him what a boon this was for trade he opened his homes to the world leaving only the newest for himself. 

 

He created things in his homes that he didn’t have any particular use for but thought guests might like–plates of food that were never empty, tiny gardens that felt like the outside even when enclosed with stone, and jugs of water that never went dry. No one ever abused his hospitality. The most bellicose warlords in all the land dreamed of taking just one of his homes under their banner. But none ever acted on their desires. It was not just fear of Apollonius’ powers that halted them. It was fear of all the people that loved him.

 

As the years went by, Apollonius found himself needed less and less, but he was glad to see himself diminish in prestige if it meant people were bettering themselves. New devices and new farming techniques meant he had to tell fewer plants to grow. New medicines and new theories about the human body meant he had to tell fewer bodies to heal. People were well and people were fed. That was all Apollonius ever wanted. Even his hallways were being used less and less by people as they created carriages that moved without horses. Someone even created a flying machine that looked like a bird with stiff wings. He still helped in the rare cases that he was needed. Sometimes medicine spoiled. Sometimes crops caught disease. Sometimes he was needed–but not anywhere close to most of the time.

 

One day, Apollonius came to a town and was surprised to hear the locals talk about his last visit where he drove sickness from their homes. He couldn’t remember ever visiting that town, but still the locals had a statue of him by the town well. They said he touched the water with a stick and black miasma slithered away from it like a snake. 

 

He couldn’t remember ever doing that.

 

That was when Apollonius felt old. He had been old for a long, long time. But that was the first time he felt his age.

 

He realized that he was closer to his end than his beginning and decided to take inventory of his life and plan for a world without himself.

 

In the forest outside the town that made him feel old, Apollonius called his homes to where he stood. One by one they stacked atop each other until he had a tower containing all his things–all the books he read, wrote, and never got around to finishing, all the treasures and gifts people gave him for his actions that he had no idea what to do with, all the things in chests he lost the keys to, and all the things that made his life.

 

Apollonius planned to go through all his things and reminisce. He wanted to remember as much as he could before he couldn’t remember anymore. Then when he had a good idea of who he was, he wanted to find a pupil to pass on his skills to. It would be their duty to carry magic into the age of technology.

 

While going through the contents of his life, he was surprised one day to discover mice building villages in his tower. He found their activity first curious and then inspiring. They understood little of the things in his tower and applied their own imagination to make use and sense of them. His library of self-repairing books became the raw material for a village of paper buildings. The stuffed crocodile on the third floor became a launching pad for brave mice with parchment parachutes. His collection of crystal balls were used as part of a game played atop his pools of ever-frozen ice. The walls of the tower’s staircases became staircases inside with miceways, and the sounds of skittering echoed through his lonely house like rain. He was so happy that there was always a little noise in his giant tower.

 

Apollonius has let the mice know they are welcomed in his home, but he hasn’t interacted with them beyond that. They seem to be apprehensive around him–which is understandable. People his own size find his presence a little intimidating. It’s that magic. It follows him around like a shadow.. Apollonius doesn’t wish to cause his guests distress, and so he watches and listens from a distance. 

 

Yes, he can listen to the mice.

 

Apollonius learned the many languages of animals long ago, and he is fascinated by the things the mice have to say about his tower. They think his crystal balls are fruits. They think his garden is a shrunken forest. They think his collections of skulls are his–as in they think that he from time-to-time takes his head off and places a fresh skull on his neck.

 

Their ignorance, their imagination, their creativity–they have things that Apollonius feared left his being years ago. There is a youthfulness to those that live below the grassline, and Apollonius is thankful to be able to see that youthfulness in the twilight of his days.

 

And there is one mouse in particular that watches him diligently when she thinks he isn’t looking. She’s caused Apollonius to ponder a question he never conceived in all his years–can a mouse learn magic?