Hitherby Dragons

In the old days, they didn't know very much about the world. But they made maps anyway. If they had to map something they couldn't, they just drew whatever they felt like and wrote, "Here there be dragons."...
 We still don't know very much about the world; and there are things to map of it besides its surface.
 Can broken things be remade?
 Can destinies change?
 Is it worth the risk of hope?
 Important questions, but one can only shrug, you see:
 Here, there be dragons.

Hitherby Dragons is a series of online short stories written by Jenna K. Moran (formerly known as Rebecca S. Borgstrom), who also created the Tabletop RPG Nobilis.

A girl called Jane, her brother (sort of) Martin, and a cast of others tell stories in the Gibbelins' Tower to make sense of their own existence, to amuse, and to understand the nature of the world around them.

Hitherby has a set of story Canon, set in a strange variant of our world, telling of the current characters, as well as variants on the stories of Tantalus, Buddha, Belshazzar, Confucius, Lot and Persephone. The mythologies it creates concern the powers of suffering, the imprisonment of personal uncertainty, and the relationship between oppressor and servant.

However, many of the stories are individual legends, and can generally be read without any further context. A large number of the legends are warped combinations of pop culture with philosophical, political or religious motifs. Some are reflections of the mythology of the world, and some are whatever complete nonsense blasted out of the author's mind that morning before coffee. Stories where Jesus pilots a Humongous Mecha, the wars of gods are fought with Sailor Moon attacks or the Buddha can be summoned from a Pokeball are by no means atypical.

From a troper's point of view, there are several legends that work by playing the tropes either completely out of context, much straighter than even the original or even tropes that function as rules of the universe.

Hitherby Dragons had a long hiatus. but started again in 2011. A list of all the stories that make up the first three chapters can be found here.

The story starts here

Tropes used in Hitherby Dragons include:
  • Aesoptinium: Part of the main Canon concerns how causing emptiness is a way to create gods.
  • Anachronic Order: The story, while roughly in chronological order, can skip around from modern day to the Biblical era to Ancient China and so on.
  • As the Good Book Says...: There are quite a few scenes based on Biblical scenes and a few characters have Biblical names. One even quotes the verse with his own name on it.
  • A Boy And His Siggort: The Sid and Max storyline, beginning here and continued in scattered posts.
  • Dark Fic: A lot of pleasant stories are rewritten to be very dark, often even sinister.
  • Dissimile: Seen here:

Cho takes the viper step. It’s the kung fu step a viper would take, if a viper knew kung fu
and had legs

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