Today:
ACƐ -15 – THE VODUN HERE AND THERE
It has begun. While Issac Washington, the Arcane Wizard keeps Une in his spell, the Vodun spring into action. Jo and Gu man the Smiting Chamber as the central command of the Fonlands’ defenses, while Sakpata continues his efforts in the multiversal structure. Agê, Xêvioso, and Fâ storm the Une-verse with a large contingent, hoping to kill thier enemy where she sleeps. But things go very, very wrong.
THE DIVINE ESSENCE – THE SECOND UNREST – 37 – INSIDE THE ENEMY
Following the catastrophe with the Vodun, the many members of their forces find themselves adrift in enemy territory. Pultine is among them, and she held tightly to Alia so she is not alone as she navigates the strange existence of the Une-verse. Pultine is the strongest warrior of many existences, and together with the Hyperion, she is nigh unstoppable, but will that hold true in the new strangeness?
THE DESCENDANT – 4 – UNEB ENRAGED
Une is two; Unea, who is tied up at the moment in the aether outside of Aido Hwedo, and Uneb. Uneb was denied an easy victory on Earth of the Hyperion universe, but she is persistent despite the resistence. And that resistence is strong. Kevin Blackmon, the Magician, and Nebuchad Abed, the Earthling Kazi, lead a second effort against a renewed Uneb who has come for her revenge.
SNAGARUDY – 2 – JOURNEY AND HER DAD
Journey’s back and she’s having a heart to heart with her Daddy.
DISC OF JO
Excerpt from the Manual and Reference of the Fonlands.
‘YOUNG’ VODUN CHRONICLES – JO’S RIVAL
Jo and Damballa have a love-hate relationship, but the Luminaries keep the peace.
Welcome back to Volume 6 as we present the March 2026 Issue that kicks off the 2026 Crossover Event, The Second Unrest. The crossover will likely take us to the end of Volume 6, which means this is the last big crossover of the Fonlands Saga. It’s bittersweet to be here after so many volumes in the Fonlands and I can’t believe that soon it’ll be done. Or, maybe not done done, maybe just dormant. If the Hyperion Epic is any indication, we will be writing the Fonlands for many years to come. But Volume 6 does mark the end of an era, and the Second Unrest has been brewing since the Dead of Winter, the 2022 Interim Shorts period.
The last story of the 2022 Interim Shorts was Shuffle – Playlist 2 – 5 – Unrest II (Brandee Younger), by VIV and it featured a character named Carol who called a Yumbo named Sene her auntie. The story is about Carol’s connection to a magical land separate from Earth where the Yumboes dwell. Sene appears at Carol’s home to tell her about the arrival of a Fae man in the Land of Yumboes. Carol doesn’t travel into adventure with Sene, though, she has attachments and habits that she just can’t leave.
This was not the Fonlands as we know it today. The story from 2022 is from the serial Shuffle where PRL Contributors hit shuffle on our massive Shuffle master playlist on Spotify, then write a story inspired by the song that plays. VIV’s story is inspired by the Brandee Younger piece called Unrest II that is instrumental jazz, so they had a lot of leeway in the conception of the story and decided to write an Unrest that the main character decided to avoid.
When this story was produced, we were discussing the narrative to replace the recently completed Hyperion Epic, and I had the idea of black fairies long ago before I attempted actually writing something. I wanted to be thoughtful because I didn’t want to just put black characters into the mythologies of cultures that don’t traditionally have black people. Not to say that what I described is neccesarily problematic, but I was hesitant because it felt like an opportunity to explore African folklore and I wanted to see if there was an African equivalent to European folklore about fairies specifically. I attribute my fascination with fairies to the game Magic, the Gathering because my favorite decks contain fairies of the black and blue variety.
What I discovered in our joint research efforts here in the PRL offices is that there is no African fairy exactly. There are stories from around the continent about little people that are similar to fairies, but none have wings. There are plenty of forest-dwelling creatures who hold secrets of the forest, some are tricksters, some live in termite hills, though they don’t conform to the western conception of the Fae. Researching the Fae is interesting and its roots in Irish culture are the most fascinating to me; the Fae have become conflated with the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology. We had discussed the Fonlands story as a battle between the fairies of Europe versus the fairies of Africa, and Unrest II could have been a way into that conflict, but we pivoted hard once we discovered the Mmoatia, Azizas, and so many other mythological beings. We didn’t feel the need to include fairies at all.
We decided to make up the story of the Fonlands in a way that was informed by the countries of origin, but filtered through the reality of the contributors of the PRL. We are children of the diaspora with genetic ties to Africa, though many of us are just now beginning to discover the literary traditions of the continent; so much of our aesthetic is influenced by western culture. The Mmoatia of the Fonlands Saga are inspired by the mmoatia of Ghanaian folklore, but they resemble the fairies of European folklore with their glorious wings. We want the Fonlands to be a product of all of our influences because we aren’t interested in telling authentic Ghanaian or African folklore. We are not Ghanaian, our connection is distant and we want to center that influence, but when I write a character like Tracia, I am inspired by characters like Morgan Le Fey of Arthurian Legend and Tenar of the Earthsea series, complex characters with a long and complex history. But in reading more stories about African characters, I have discovered Anyanwu of Octavia Butler’s Patternist series whose characterization definitely informed the poised but always calculating Supreme Mmoatia. We write what we know and as we learn more, the pool of influences increases.
I am nostalgic because we are starting to contemplate the end and to create a satisfying conclusion, we have to remember what brought us to this point. Also, Roy asked me to reconcile the Shuffle story with the current Fonlands, so there you go. It’s not the same story we tell now,but it is the start nonetheless. We were nervous to tell stories from cultures that we don’t know first hand, but we’ve approached it with infinite curiosity to hear or read as many stories as we can find, and thanks to the serial format, the retcon is always a viable tool to correct as we learn.
PRL Serials 