(back to Zool V)
Aka DARADYN v2.0, acting head of the Northumbrian/Castropolitan Mounted Patrol and of Squad 3693 'The Ghostbusters': a friendly, streetwise morphant cyborg cop of the twenty-second century with a taste for twentieth-century pop culture and a lot of combat experience.
Aka DARAKERO v2.50, Artu's less-experienced humanoid upgrade, comrade, colleague and morphant-cyborganic chum with an occasionally short fuse, especially under these extraordinary circumstances...
The embodiment of chaos and destruction, the Lady Saitra is or was a digital entity, taking great delight in toying with her victims' pain. Arriving in the home of a twentieth-century child, Sally (see Sally, The Auteuse), Saitra transformed the girl into her vessel and servant, and used her to conquer the penetentiary planet Zool as a powerbase.
Fiendishly cunning, slightly portly and avuncular cookie: an agent for the Corporation (see below).
Unfortunately named green suited official on a totalitarian parallel Earth briefly visited by Artu and Isidore during their game with The Lady Saitra.
A sentient number, a digital entity who fought alongside Captain Zap and other heroes of Zool IV, but had fallen upon hard times when encountered in Zool V.
Gorilla-like cyborg agent of Wiki working undercover on the planet Zool, practical, slightly Scottish, and not willing to suffer fools gladly if he can possibly help it. His brain circuitry is based upon the key components and software of a twenty-first-century Hewlett-Packard laptop of the same name owned by Thea Logie... it's the software which occasionally causes this sterling character some grief.
Slow, stubborn, and with a tendency to break down and become catatonic in response to new and difficult to understand situations, Prometheus is a gorilla-like cyborg agent of Wiki, whose brain circuitry is based around the core of the hard drive and motherboard of a twentieth-century PC, Prometheus II, currently resident of WJR's room in Arlington Drive.
An agent of Wiki; also an Endless who needs little introduction, save that the universe-boggling machinations of the superpowers of Zool are giving her a headache, that and the ramifications of her previous assignment...
A legend of cyberspace, a four-armed god among search engines and a holder of Real Ultimate Power. Not to mention a rather campy guy with a cheesy American accent and an allergy to bananas...
A Beatle and friend of Thomas the Tank Engine (see below): but does he have a hidden agenda?
Originally nothing more than a girl of eight years of age in the twentieth century, Sally met up with a mysterious headless figure who presented her (in Zool IV) with a glowing data-crystal, a crystal which contained the consciousness of Saitra, who over the slow course of time took over the girl and gave her psychokinetic powers beyond all imagining. Revelling in these powers, Sally, now calling herself the Auteuse and with the power to manipulate reality around her, took up the cause of Saitra and now lords it over the death planet of Zool...
The power behind all human empires, a hypermind gestalt resident on Zool, death planet... Sworn enemy of all Zoolots, especially Saitra.
Dissolute and mildly psychotic space-druggies (Gonzo being Duke's attorney) first seen as hapless bystanders in Zool IV, who will do literally anything for their next fix. They had been traversing the universe in a rather erratic Starspeeder in search of the American Dream, when a freak tear in the space-time continuum pulled them into the company of Sally, the Auteuse (q.v.) and landed them kicking and screaming on the planet Zool...
Courageous space-hero and defender of the universe from... slightly nastier bits of the universe, Captain Zap fought in the wars of Zool IV. Years later, a clone of him was created to save the universe from the menace of Zool V... unfortunately by the time Zool V's menace actually manifested itself, said clone was a little on the elderly side.
Mystical Entity associated with OUSFG and occasionally sighted by those brave and eagle-eyed protectors of society, Thea Logie and William Ramsden. See Tumble Weed. In Zool V, our heroes will learn more about the nature of the Tumbleweed, and its mysterious antipathy towards Wiki...
Amalgamate Microsoft-Starbucks-Ford Motors-Monsanto-eBay-HP-Compaq-AOL-TimeWarner... and many, many more. This intergalactic force for evil went bankrupt some time long before the events of Zool V, having expended all of its capital on one vast deep-range space mission. Now, centuries later, they have returned... with spaceships of a unique and deadly design...
Soldiers under the second Captain Zap, despite Private Frasier's pessimism, Private Crane believed that they could beat the curse of being bit-part characters only included for a cheap Pop Culture joke, and survive. Did they succeed? Read on...
Forum for much of the action of previous Zools, space has been travelled through by the ships of the Corporation, by Thomas the Tank Engine, and by our heroes. Space's opinions on the current galactic situation are unrecorded.
Space-borne warriors summoned across the Net/Reality divide to do battle with Google.
Wiki Zen Master, exiled to the (thus far) mysterious AI Six of One Prisoner Convention. His motivations and allegiances remain obscure...
Number Two at the Six of One Prisoner Convention, a cyborg of advanced design and advanced faults, prone to addressing one and all as Neddy and suffering the misfortune of accidentally being the spitting image of Peter Sallis, after an unfortunate spelling error on his design specs. Cruel, sadistic, and urbane, Grytpype-Thynne wears a university scarf and hides a terrible secret...
Henchman: we'll let him speak for himself for once...
We attempted to interview Marvin for "Zool Weekly: Beard without a Hobbit", the glamourous magazine of everyone who's anyone on planet Zool. Our interviewer returned to the office, sat down, said "Oh, he's so right", stood up again, drank twenty bottles of Scotch Whisky, swallowed a pharmacy, then threw herself out of a forty-thousandth storey window, landed on the railway tracks, and slithered into the river, taking the interview notes with her. Marvin's agent tells us that Marvin is a cheerful fellow with a sunny disposition who absolutely loves his current job.
Member of the mysterious 'Fiction', a cheerful-faced author from the neck up, a skeleton from the neck down. Possibly the single most downright disturbing image Zool has come up with so far, Doug Death seeks to recharge the Fiction's ship with What? energy, generated from logic-bending absurdity, but privately feels they would have done better to have gone with Bistromathics.
Troopers fighting for the mysterious 'Fiction': their form was picked out for the simple reason that they were the first sensible noun to appear in the dictionary as a plausible soldier-type being...
Scientist with a liking for lab-coats and a dislike for trousers, in charge of the sensory deprivation pools aboard the Fiction Fellow Ship. His name may possibly have been Phillip K Dick. Either way, he is now quite comprehensively mad.
Evil Plush Toy, whose interest in the affairs of the pan-dimensional Saitra are scarcely likely to be benevolent.
The Supreme Being and the very first author in existence (ghostwritten by several authors in many, many bestselling editions). Omnipotent, omniscient, ineffable... and somewhat absent-minded.
Supreme Leader of the Ooze-Fugue, a mysterious organisation from the Elder Days, now sequestered in the ruins of New Oxford. Like Secretary, Treasurer, and Librarian, President is effectively immortal, his personality long since distilled into a digital recreation of the most essential tenets of Ooze-Fugue presidency and implanted into each new organic body as the one before it ages and dies. President, for some reason, has an echo.
Administrative Commander of the Ooze-Fugue (See President for more details), i.e. the one who actuall does the work. Charged with organising the organisation, Secretary might do better if it was not perpetually doing a Yoda impression.
Financial Officer of the Ooze-Fugue organisation. Treasurer is efficient... one might almost say too efficient...
Harassed, has had to put up with the OozeFugue holding a perpetual meeting on his or her floor for the last five centuries since the destruction of New Oxford, not to mention their insatiable demands for tea.
One of the sillier results of SPAHWG experimentation, one of these, See No Ilev, led our heroes right into trouble when a predictable flaw in his design led him into an encounter with a tree.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft, the Enemy of Humanity, traditionally just called The Federation. With the Corporation bankrupt, Earth under threat from Google/Cthulhu, and the universe in Chaos, a new and deadly power seeks to arise...
The God, or 'Geek' of an anti-universe. Not conspicuously more competent than his equivalent chez nous. Possesses a Portaloo.
Sinister secret society, believed to be at once one with and the deadly enemy of the mystical Ooze-fugue.
Native of the planet Bottlebrush Minor, and widely regarded by those who know him as the silliest man in the universe. His possession of the universe's only plumbed-in wristwatch may seem to support this, however, as his only acquaintances are the five hundred thousand lettuces he grows every year for conversation and their military and strategic value, it is believed that the voting may be slightly skewed.
Go on to Zool V Chapter One
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