Punchinello writes...

Hello greg and Gorebash.

Punchinello, here, with another question. I was thinking recently of the phoenix gate. It had always seemed to me that the design of the gate was odd, in that it's form reflected a specific history. One that you never had the chance to elaborate upon. Or never chose to. Let me explain.

The gate was identifiable as one of three magical objects that played a role in the series. The Grimorim. The Eye of Odin, and the gate. Of these three, the origin of the book seemed to be the least perplexing. Even if you had intended to develop a more involved history for the book, had the series continued, one could still reasonably conclude that it was the product of many magicians, who passed it down over generations, each making their own contribution to the knowledge within the text. The revelation that the eye was the actual eye of Odin was well recieved by myself. I think there is actually some kind of precedent for the body part of a god or magical figure being represented within a culture by an artifact (but as the literal body part). I am uncertain what it is I recall, of this sort, but the Osiris myth and various christian mythos come to mind.

The gate was given no historical origin. The rather robust histories of the other two artifacts, and what you intended with the "Timedancer" series, (which I had no idea about prior to finding this web site) incline me to believe that something more was intended with the objects origin. Further, the gates physical appearance struck me as being more that the arbitrary design of one of the show's artists. It's appearance was strangely deliberate. The heraldric profile of the bird. It's form reminiscent of a shield? The gate seemed to have had some function. (Perhaps before it became the phoenix gate.) So...

Was the gate something with an origin you intended to elaborate on?

Was it possibly part of some larger artifact? (I had the notion in my head, that it was a component from some other fictional artifact. Something from the same mythos as the Arthurian legend, perhaps. That it had been broken off or otherwise removed.) If that were the case then...

Was the artifact from which it came something that we might recognize? That is, something not too obscure? Something with it's own surrounding mythology like Excalibur or the holy grail?

I am thankful for any insight you can offer. Otherwise I just wont be able to get to sleep tonight.

Punchinello.