Due North [Episode 0]: Prologue

Water horses, sentient houses, disappearing cats, grave whisperers, semi-dead grave robbers, minotaurs, bearotaurs, satyrs, dryads, sirens, and more!

Art by Edward Adveno Brooke and Cecil Aldin

Welcome, dear browser, to the Due North vials. Trust me when I say this - you’re going to be here a while. Due North is home to one of the oldest and largest forgotten memory banks in the universe and a simple look into even one of them will make the reason plainly evident.

For now, I think it best to ease you in. Try just the tiniest bit as a precursor. There’s a high chance some small part of your brain would recognise certain names, and an equally high chance these are indeed related to your life in some way, but I wouldn’t worry too much - it could very well be one of the hundreds of others sharing your name.

That being said, the universe is a very vast, and very old place, with hundreds of memories fading from the minds of hundreds of thousands every day…

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Steadman Hirsch, premier and proudest realtor in all of Due North, stood in front of his latest job-well-done. Handy job, real estate. Supported his lifestyle quite well, what with everyone always welcoming him in with open arms and big, teeth-baring smiles.

This particular listing was a particular brand of fantastic. 8 Brook Way. Oh, if these walls could talk! (The fact that some of these walls could, in fact, talk, had no bearing on Steadman Hirsch’s use of the expression, for he was born with a rare condition preventing him from recognising any sort of irony whatsoever.)

There was the siren who turned 8 Brook Way into the hottest karaoke bar in the entire town, the witch who fireproofed the place for her litter of dragons, the harpy who added the marble cornices on the house’s back end, the oread who turned the entire house inside out and built a wildlife sanctuary like none other, the satyr who quite appreciated the oread’s work, the – oh, no matter! The house would soon show it all to the new residents! They’re out-of-towners so there’d be an adjustment period, yes, but he was confident they’d pick it up quickly.

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