When Legea was a mish-mash of original characters and Middle-Earth and whatnot, there were a lot of Weird people, with a capital W. Some of them we managed to alter suitably to fit a more toned-down role in Legea, but some just got dropped altogether.

For instance, one of our Fellowships that traveled to Mordor was a family called the Boogibogs. (Don't ask me where I came up with that name.) Dad was Gandalf (I think), no clue which one the mom was, but anyway, they were all over-the-top, exaggerated characters bordering on insane. Legolas Boogibog was a mental teenager who had a thing for hot pink tunics, and one time he got turned into a toad by some other Gandalf and went around dripping stinky drool onto people. He collected some of this drool, and after he got turned back into a human continued utilizing the noxious drool for his own gross purposes.

Frodo Boogibog was not the oldest, but claimed he was. (I have a paper doll of him wearing a T-shirt that claims, "I am the oldest and I am the Ring-bearer. Obey me!") He was a little more than stuck-up over his role as the special snowflake Ring-bearer.

Arwen Boogibog was possibly the oldest child (I can't remember very well... this was ages ago) and a hopeless romantic. Kind of like Anne of Green Gables gone off the deep end. She was always talking about "the fairy prince" that she saw "in the sunset" and acres of dreamy adjectives describing said handsome prince and the landscape around him.

Gimli had a full blue beard, surprising in a 12-year-old. If my memory serves me right he also had orange skin, but that was the most impressive thing about him... I don't think he was much of a character at all. And there were other people in the family, but they weren't interesting either.

The Boogibogs faded out of Legea pretty quickly. However, some of the later families had characters who stuck around for a much longer time. I have a notebook in which I would write down each family, and all the members and ages. Written beside each family at a much later date are the people who I eventually kept. It's kind of shocking to see how many I chopped out.

For instance...

The Earle family went from seven children to five. Lobelia Sackvillenesia-Baggenesiana Earle was pointless, having zero personality. Lithe Earle had disturbingly enormous green eyes and her only purpose was to creep people out. We shed them without a tear.

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Banea Boccin and Giggy King(yes, a sister of Braegon) were two insane young teenagers of sixteen and fifteen who went around threatening people with pistols. Do not ask me why they did this, because it's not like they robbed anybody or even ever killed anybody. (We weren't that callous) They only disturbed the peace.

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Llewellyn King, another sibling of our current beloved King trio, was one of Giggy's fellow triplets. He was on the run from the law, smoked horrifically, and had a habit of nabbing random passersby and demanding that they play cards with him. He called everyone "Watson" for inscrutable reasons.

"All right, Watson. Let's deal out the cards. Don't you smoke? Well, I don't care, Watson... I'm going to smoke anyway and poison your lungs, Watson..."

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The other King triplet was called Willabella, and she was not particularly interesting, but she did fib a lot.

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Arwinar Stafford was the oldest child of Edrach and Kireda Stafford, who survived. Arwinar did not.

Arwinar was Fred's bully. His sole purpose in life was apparently to emphasize the fact that Fred was good and he was bad. He literally had no conscience, and would do anything if he believed he would get away with it. If he did not believe he could get away with it, he would say out loud, "I'm not going to do this because I might get caught. I am a coward. But I would love to do it all the same."

His bullying tactics on Fred were mostly verbal. He rarely did anything to him physically. Instead he went around doing mean things to other people to show off how bad he was to Fred.

The guy was certifiably insane, I'm pretty sure, and Fred was at that annoying stage where he passively watched everything happen and whimpered about it sometimes and breathed an atmosphere of "pity me, pity me, I'm so helpless". Once, and once only, he actually punched Arwinar; that was when we were having some romantic tension between him and Fiona and Arwinar came up at this party like, "Hey, Goody-goody. Where's your girlfriend?" For some reason this pushed Fred over the brink and he smacked Arwinar a good one in the jaw.

Not that it did Arwinar any good.

2 years later Verity be like: "Arwinar -- down the tubes."

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Fred was kind of "my person"... but Mordred was "Mercy's person". So, Fred had a bully? Well, Mordred needed a bully too! Because what is there in life except to torture one's favourite characters... #shamelesstruth

Phineas Kenhelm was a big, meaty, mean guy two years older than Mordred. As a person he had slightly more character than Powhatan, but it was the same pointless "Why-do-I-even-exist-I-add-nothing-to-the-plot" kind of thing. He was a tattletale when they were at the orphanage, but after they escaped he seemed to manifest himself by more physical methods. During the journey to Orden, Mordred said something to infuriate him (I cannot remember what it was, but I wish I could... it was probably rich) and Phineas never let him forget it.

Phineas hung around Ceristen, waiting for Mordred to go off alone so he could find him and start punching him around. He insisted for Mordred to "take it back", whereupon Mordred would return coolly (classic Mordred): "I can't even remember what I said, so really you can hardly expect me to take it back now." This happened innumerable times until finally Phineas retreated to the Wilds of Thiranu and lived on raw meat in a little cave. He's presumably still there... although he doesn't officially exist in the books.

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For some reason, when these families came to Ceristen, we didn't want them to live all together. Literally, Bardrick used to live in one house while Fiona and Marcus shared another. Peony didn't even live in Orden then. Fred was apparently unwilling to share his house with anyone except Gwenda, and thus Electra(later Cecelia) went away to eke out a living as a governess to the Greyhame family.

The Greyhames sat around doing nothing useful in Ceristen until we wondered what they were even doing there, and we decided to make Mr. Greyhame involved with illegal drug transactions. Mordred (being the snoopy curious person he is) prowled around the house until he found out too much, and Mr. Greyhame kidnapped him and left him for dead in a random alleyway.

Does this sound mildly familiar...? The black house plot was eventually loosely based off it.

Dorothy Greyhame was a character from a story that my sister -peaces- once wrote, who somehow ended up in Legea and married this guy. She was a flirty and flippant person who didn't care about her kids or her husband and was only slightly interested in his illegal business.

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I think I might make a sequel to this chapter... called "The People Who Don't (Officially) Exist".

And another cool Legea thingie!