Legend Makers and Planet Raiders

By James Howard Potts

About the Book
Fantasy, science fiction, and adventure tales with love, humor, and horror, Legend Makers and Planet Raiders will grip you and entertain you word for word all the way through.
About the Author
James Howard Potts loves country-western, square dancing, the two-step, and waltz. He enjoyed the late Joe Diffie, lost to COVID-19. Potts rarely attends anymore but enjoys church. His pastor was Jim Garlow. Potts loves fantasy and mathematics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798888125779

Book preview

Thirty-Five Thousand Years Ago

Living in peace and prosperity and harmony away from the oceans, the tribes scattered throughout the land after the thaw. They were being slaughtered by an organized single army of the evil, wicked, and corrupt slavers, cannibals, skull counters, murderers, raiders, and burners. They’d burn villages, crops, everything. The tribes united. They formed a kingdom and started royal hierarchy.

The Genie

The genie is just an idea. It is never really there at all. Or is it? It is not just for wishes. Its powers are greatly misunderstood and underestimated. So it must be a shared idea. Because everyone can see it. Everyone except one, or maybe two. A shared idea the same to everyone but different to each. What exactly is this idea that becomes things? A power? An energy? A powerful energy? What?

There became a war with a major battle some 30 millennia ago

The Battle Song

lightning bolts and thunder

flashes in the air

when this thing starts to come down

we will all be there

thunder clouds and rainbows

dancing in the sky

when the silver lining comes out

evil has to hide

"I live in a vest of armor drusy and tarnished. I battle to the death

demons, dragons, wicked things, spells and all the rest"

lights flashing

spirits dancing

everything’s alive

When the devil runs away

his backside is whipped behind

Conflict of the Struggle

Battle of the War

In the middle of the struggle between good and evil stumbles a sunken eyed, hollowed cheeked, long, pointy-nosed, pot-bellied dwarf. Cursing in a state of mournful sorrow crawls the dwarf. Troubled, beaten, and disgraced. The dead bodies of two armies of two sides lay in a bloodied, tangled slaughter from horizon to horizon. The dwarf cries, Curse that damn Kerdo for he turned me to a dwarf! Curse this damn war! Standing in the leftover ashes of a man, the leader, the champion’s army, and he was not there to lead. He sees the immeasurable devastation of a senseless slaughter. Both armies fought for their causes timeless as the earth itself. A tale, a struggle, an existence of valor, courage, hard work, devotion, religion, and faith. Everything good and decent and right in the world against everything insane, wrong, corrupt, demoralizing, and evil. There will be many battles, but one final victory. This is a time, a place, a situation for a story to be told.

The story begins with Turrell AH Sool. The Chieftain of the Army of the White Land, which stands for everything good and decent and right in the world. Turrell AH Sool is the younger brother of the King of the White Land, the land of God. Turrell AH Sool is always addressed by his full title by everyone except the king. Turrell AH Sool’s brother who can call Turrell AH Sool anything he wants. The crown of the White Land is Turrell AH Sool’s banner and he is second in command of the whole White Land. Anyone not addressing Turrell AH Sool by his full three-name title is put to death for disloyalty. Needless to say this law has never had to be enforced. The White Land and the White Army stand fully united. Turrell Ah Sool is never allowed to marry for that would establish a new bloodline separate from the king’s and that is unacceptable and might undermine the king and his family bloodlines.

Turrell AH Sool had the fortune and misfortune to fall in love. He was two decades old and she was a bath warmer in the mountains of the White Peaks of Jagged Majesty. A favorite place for vacations and fun. Games, feasts, tournaments, things like that. Fat beasts, fowl, sheep, bison, musk ox, and llama were the favorites for the meals. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, roots, and berries grew wild with help from geothermal activity giving a warmth and wetness to the land. Turrell AH Sool’s love would bring buckets of hot water from the hot spring pools and geysers to the baths where the people liked to gather. Her name was Mara Akto, daughter of Plus Akto and she was as beautiful and blessed as a woman gets anywhere, anytime over the entire earth.

The chance meeting soon turned into fun, and laughter, and love. Knowing each other, each other’s habits, each other’s thoughts, and simply, each other’s hearts. Hearing Mara Akto might be pregnant, Turrell AH Sool vowed to keep it a secret. He left the White Peaks of Jagged Majesty. Under penalty of death, Turrell AH Sool could not marry and start his own bloodline. But a child was just another servant to the king. As he left, he broke Mara Akto’s heart, and his own. Three trips around the sun of peacetime they had spent together. War was brewing. The Army of Blackness was preparing to advance. Advance everything evil, vile, corrupt, immoral, and wrong in the world. Turrell AH Sool had an important job to do, so he’s prepared to do it. They planned one night while lying together that they would pretend that there was no love. For the best of all concerned. Especially a jealous king.

Turrell AH Sool always had the sharpest blades, the tightest strung bows, the most accessible knives, and throwing tools. His quivers began full and he had the swiftest sword, most powerful blow, quickest wits and reactions, cunningness, adroitness, and was all around the best and greatest warrior the world will ever see. His best friend was not imaginary. Yet was never really there at all. Or was he? His best friend a genie. Genies are real for all to see but only in imagination. They are never really there. Or are they? They only exist in our minds. And thus in the genie’s mind. Turrell AH Sool is now in need of his friend he hasn’t met yet, the genie Jaiuhawan. His army is smashed, the Army of Blackness is reinforcing, and he is a little dwarf. Turrell AH Sool turned dwarf by Kerdo the Black Army’s genie. Turrell AH Sool stumbles up a creek bed away from the carnage. Mumbling and cursing, he slips on some moss and stumbles down the creek, tumbling and slipping over a boulder waterfall, and damaging and bruising his body.

Down into a hole in the rocks he tumbles into a cavern. Amongst stalactites and stalagmites and bubbling pools of mud and water he finds himself stunned. Faint light of sunbeams from somewhere above gives him light for sight. He sees something, something in the shadows. Something round. It’s a coconut from the palm trees above. Must have fallen down something like himself. He ponders on the coconut. Food! Suddenly a puff of liquidly smoke whiffs by. Then laughter, then a figure. It’s a man. A man with markings and drawings on his flesh.

Who are you? asks the figure. That was the moment, the first moment Turrell AH Sool met his loved friend Jaiuhawan, the genie.

Turrell AH Sool answers, I am the Chieftain Turrell! AH Sool. Who in blue blazes are you?

The genie, who must answer when called upon, states, I am Jaiuhawan, the great genie of God! Both stared at one another.

Turrell AH Sool thought, This is the famed genie?

The genie thought, This is the famed Chieftain, Turrell AH Sool? He’s a dwarf!

Turrell AH Sool spits out the words, Can you change me back to my former self?

Jaiuhawan states, Why yes I can.

Turrell All Sool stares at him for a length of time, then screams, Well, do it!

Alls you have to do is ask, says Jaiuhawan. In less than an instantaneous instant the dwarf becomes sinew flesh, muscle, and stature. A naked full-figured man aching in agony and his hands bound by chains strapped over his shoulders and under his groin and around his legs down to his ankles. His whole body of pumped rippling muscle aching and pounding, breaks and shatters the chains in a crashing thunder. Turrell AH Sool is restored to his regular, normal self.

He asks the question, Alls I have to do is ask?

Jaiuhawan liking what he sees says, Yes. Just ask and I will serve you. But remember, once called upon I can do as I please.

Turrell AH Sool thinks about what just took place and asks, Where do you live?

Jaiuhawan answers, Anywhere I want.

Turrell AH Sool says with authority, Good, get in this coconut! We go now!

Jaiuhawan starts to communicate with Turrell AH Sool while he’s inside the coconut without words. Turrell AH Sool grasps what is happening immediately.

Please give me my clothes and weapons and the rest of my gear. Or is that too much to ask? You restored my stature; can you bring me my gear?

Jaiuhawan starts a parable. God created man in God’s own image. A man stands at the edge of a pool of water seeing his reflection. The man’s image. Take away the man and there is no image. Take away God and there is no man. Man is only here because the eternal God freely gave it to man. Thus God creates man in the image God decided to. God’s image. Turrell AH Sool thinks of the perfect God. Then how we are so imperfect and somehow think that we are not. God created man, or us, in the image God decided for us to be in. God’s image, God is perfect. We are not. God did not create another perfect God.

Then Jaiuhawan wants to tell Turrell AH Sool a story about what the world looks like to God. He says, "There is a man who bakes his hams in the stools of the mammoth. The town folk called them shit baked hams. At the other end of town, another man baked his hams with bark and honey. The town folk called these hams honey-baked hams. Some of the youths thought the baker of the shit-baked hams’ hat was funny-looking. The baker of the honey baked hams had a good-looking hat. Then they said the hat that was funny-looking was like a shit-baked ham because it was like a ham, but it was baked in shit. They said the good hat was a honey-baked ham because it was like a ham that was baked in honey.

They saw a boy they liked to make fun of and who ate his soup funny. The youths looked at each other and said in unison, ‘shit-baked ham!’ They saw a man ride a horse by swiftly dressed in silks. They said in unison, ‘honey-baked ham!’ Jaiuhawan explains, Man sometimes sees a shit-baked ham or a honey-baked ham in judgment of one another, while God sees everyone and everything, Gods creation, as one giant sweet, honey-baked ham. Sometimes peoples’ habits, the hats they wear, the way they wear their clothes, can be termed a shit-baked ham or a honey-baked ham.

Turrell AH Sool says, Yes, I see what you mean. Suddenly, as Turrell AH Sool’s eyes meets the full sun out of the cavern, his clothes and gear are in a pile and he crawls out the hole in the earth to daylight. He packs his gear after dressing in his deer and bison skins. He attaches his hat to his head. A crown made of silver that’s been tempered, some blue, darkly hued gemstones, and ivory of gargantuan seal tusks ground down to block the sun. He put the coconut in a pouch and started towards the river of the Blue Spawning Fish.

Quest For the Dragon

Turrell AH Sool unpacks his heavy gear. He takes one knife belt, his heavy sword, and his micro-bow, leaving his breastplate that was heavily tarnished giving him cover in the night. He leaves three knife belts, his axe, and his four-foot bolt bow, his throwing weapon belt, and his medium bolt bow, which expelled a two and a half times a man’s foot bolt. He goes to climb the rocks of the hill to find part of his destiny. His whole destiny only God knew. Something just drove him to take this quest. Grabbing a root that breaks, he slides into a crevasse only halfway up the hill. An aroma of a stench he was familiar with caught his nostrils. A dragon stench. This particular dragon was extra stenchy.

He draws his sword and, looking around, sees no dragon. Coming around to the right of the crevasse the fun begins. The foul-stenching dragon lay in a dormant and weakened state. Turrell AH Sool thinks to himself, I could stalk him and send my sword spiking through his head. Then he thinks, Somehow I feel pity and respect for this awesome creature. A puff of fire shoots from the dragon’s nostrils and leered him back from the beast. Cautiously he encroaches the dragon puffing his breath so as the dragon could scent his odor. He could tell through understanding that the dreaded beast was starving to death. Searching his heart for what to do, he went down to the river. He used the groping technique and seized many great fish. He stood in a pool and slowly and cautiously slid his hand behind the gill of the large fish and hauled it up to the bank and crushed its head with a rock. Leaving it immobilized.

He tied the fish together and slung some over his right shoulder and some over his left shoulder, then went back up the rocky crags and slopes of the treacherous terrain. He also brought a bunch of herbs and herb roots dug from a decaying log. He lay the would-be feast at the dragon’s suffering, troubled-looking head. The dragon slowly began to come to scenting the odor of the food. The gash he bore on his right side of his tail was maggoty and stenchful. This creature knew he would die without this food as Turrell AH Sool knew too. A reckoning was at hand. So the two came to an agreement.

I will bring you food if you do not eat me. I will spike my sword through your head if you try. The two bonded a trust. A reckoning of personalities. After seven suns coming and going, growing strong Turrell AH Sool climbed up the tail right up centrally balanced atop the forward haunches of the dragon.

He cries Gloriasteria! After his sister who was taken by Jeol Der Sum. Taken when he was seven years old. Gloriasteria was his closest family member. Gloriasteria was fourteen years old when she was taken. The two spent most of their days and nights together. Turrell AH Sool ducked a sword as Gloriasteria was swept to horseback screaming. He will love her to eternity never knowing what happened to her. Gloriasteria! Gloriasteria! He screams standing with a tether under the dragon’s neck and over his ear. As a stand-off run surged through Gloriasteria, Turrell AH Sool was jolted. This jolted his jaw and muscles. Through the trees and over rocks ran Gloriasteria grunting. Turrell AH Sool’s arms wrapped the tether once around gripped by wrists of muscle and strength. Running hill to hill for half a day the two ran. Puffing and blowing, Gloriasteria was ran out.

Turrell AH Sool’s arms and bodily muscle were worn out. Then it was like Gloriasteria was asking, Are you going to stay up there? He ran off running again. To a swamp with moss and palm trees. Gloriasteria started eating coconuts. Crunching and grinding the coconuts lying abundantly on the ground. Then Gloriasteria walked toward the water and Turrell