The backstory of Return to Blue Mountain picks up where ElfQuest Hidden Years #7 left off. For those of you who haven't read HY 7, here's a quick primer. Timmain and the other members of the Circle of Nine - Aerth, Adya, Sefra, Haken, Kaslen, Kalil, Deir and Gibra - are ambushed by humans at the "front door" of the Palace. Adya is murdered - the imfamous first elf killed by humans. Other Firstcomers die all around them, and the eight survivors take to the mountains. Timmain starts to shapechange and eventually settles on wolf form. Haken heads back to the Palace, sneaks inside, and finds all his old friends brutally murdered. Haken sets himself up as Master of the Palace and starts murdering the humans. Timmain attacks Haken and tries to drive him away from the Palace, fearing what he will become if left their. Timmain wounds him, but Haken escapes and returns to the Palace. He then sets himself up as "God" to the humans. When Kaslen is injured and the elves try to take her to the Palace for a healing, Haken bitterly attacks the elves with black sendings. When he won't back down, Timmain turns back into wolf form and rips off his left arm. Haken flees. Two years later, Timmain has given birth to a young daughter (Aerth is the father). Gibra and Deir have Recognized, and Gibra has given birth to a boy named Vol. She takes the baby and goes off in search of Haken. She is never seen again. As Timmain's daughter grows up, Timmain disappears off into the woods as a wolf. Several years later, she gives birth to Timmorn Yellow-Eyes. Haken is presumed still alive, and many people figure he and Gibra founded Blue Mountain - and whatever canon says, very few people believe that Vol and Voll are different elves.

Well, you know I can't let an opening like that go unexplored and unwarped. So in the Alternaverse Vol is conclusively proven to be Voll (he got the extra L because Haken liked to draw out the sound). Haken survived his almost-fatal wound with the help of the Preservers who follow him out of the Palace (they were genuinely fond of him, I think). Gibra found Haken, as it seems she did in canon EQ. But she didn't find him alone.

The Madcoil Five
 (Featuring Sun Girl's coloured version of the Madcoil Five to sync up with our vision for their Alternaverse versions)

Early on in the story, it became clear that Haken needed some more followers. No matter how genetically hardy elves are, Haken, Chani, Gibra and Voll could not be enough to get Blue Mountain rolling (especially since Chani - like Rahnee the She-Wolf - never Recognized anyone but her lifemate). And then I thought of those elves in Book One who accidently created the patch of magic that would breed Madcoil. Quickly dubbed "the Madcoil Five," this quintet became my next project in pure ElfQuest thievery.

They are (in the Alternaverse, at least), from left: Berith lying in the snow, Dauri, trying to light the five, Sunan and Tillin in each others' arms, and poor Mora, the frailest of the men. In canon ElfQuest these Firstcomers died a few hours after this panel, since they couldn't start a fire. But in the Alternaverse, Haken arrives about thirty minutes or so after this panel and finds them all semi-conscious in the snow. He saves them all and has his band of Preservers wrap them up until the weather turns. They form their own tribe and set up what Two-Spear later discovers and dubs "The High Ones' Throne Chamber."

Berith was the frailest of the elves initially, but she took to the World of Two Moons remarkably well, and becomes the chief hunter of their initally unnamed tribe. She Recognized Haken, Dauri, Sunan, Mora, and probably a few others, but after several years she and Dauri became lifemates.

Dauri, the best rockshaper of the Madcoil Five, became one of the founding shapers of Blue Mountain. His initial protectiveness of Berith took a few decades to bloom into full-blown lifemating. The two became ruling elders of Blue Mountain after Haken disappeared, and presumably died several centuries later.

Sunan was the first elf to coin the term "Rootless Ones" as the tribe name, though Haken never took to it. He and Tillin were the first elves of Haken's tribe to become lifemates, and perhaps the first elves on all of Abode to lifemate (if you don't count Timmain and her wolf).

Tillin was the first woman of Haken's tribe to Recognize and was understandibly terrified by pregnancy (which she likened to harbouring a parasite). She Recognized often, and bore children to Haken, Sunan, Dauri, and Aosir - Sunan and Berith's son. She was the gatherer and garment-maker of Haken's tribe. She died when the ancestors of the Hoan-G'Tay-Sho attacked Blue Mountain. After her death, Sunan and some of his followers left Blue Mountain to form the Rootless Ones. Haken and Tillin's daughter Vreya was great-grandmother of Savah.

Mora might well have become Berith's lifemate had he survived, but he died in Haken's second failed attempt to retake the Palace. It was after Mora's death that Voll and Haken dreamed of rebuilding the Palace in Blue Mountain, rather than risk further deaths in another war with the humans.

Haken's Descendants

While it's widely suspected that Haken is the father of the Gliders in EQ canon, in the Alternaverse he holds the honour of being the unknowing patriarch of both the Gliders and the Sun Folk. After Tillin is killed by humans, her lifemate Sunan and several of his followers decide to leave Blue Mountain. Sunan, who had come to call the tribe "the Rootless Ones" sees that Haken has "put down stone roots." Sunan wants a different life now that Tillin is gone, and takes sixteen-odd followers with him, including Aosir, his son by Berith. Haken's daughter by Tillin, Vreya, also leaves Blue Mountain, much to Haken's grief. The Rootless Ones head further south to escape the ice. Sunan never takes another mate, but Vreya and Aosir Recognize several times. They are both Savah and Yurek's great-grandparents (Savah and Yurek are second cousins in the Alternaverse). Thus Haken is the great-great-grandfather of Savah, and (as fans have always suspected) the direct ancestor of Rayek. Go here for a family tree of Haken and Chani.

Chani

What's a madman without his fair damsel? Though initially I imagined he and Gibra lifemated, after some instant messages with Sun Girl, it became clear that Haken needed someone else. Sun Girl suggested that unnamed daughter of Timmain, and suddenly the entire story changed. Initially Haken would rise up from the catacombs just to steal back the Palace, pretty predictable villain stuff. But now he had a new mission - to revive his dead lifemate, who just happened to be the first elf born on Abode, and Timmain's estranged daughter! Bingo. Chani was born!

We see Timmain's daughter (unnamed) in HY 7. She is the first elf born to Timmain's tribe, and probably the first elf born on the World of Two Moons. Aerth is the obvious father, though it's never clearly stated. What is clearly stated, however, is that Aerth is heartbroken when Timmain leaves the tribe for longer and longer periods, becoming a wolf and living with her wolfpack. Aerth wants Timmain to be his lifemate, but she is no longer a real part of the tribe. In the picture above, from HY 7, Chani is looking up at her father as he says that "Timmain is a part of us all." It seems very likely that Chani only occasionally met her mother, most often in wolf form. And one can imagine from the look she is giving her father that she could well harbour some resentment towards her mother for "abandoning" them both. Ooohh, a dysfunctional family. So I pounced on that poor little picture.

Time passes. Chani is twenty-four years old. Aerth has since lifemated with Sefra (they always seemed tight), and Chani views Sefra as more of a mother than Timmain. By this time Timmain only rarely assumes elf form, and most often communicates with the tribe through slightly-garbed sendings. Chani resents Timmains' absences, and comes to view this new proto-Wolfrider way of life with a growing animosity. Timmain preferred mucking in the forest and playing at being a wolf to being a mother and a lifemate. The stage is set for Chani to leave the tribe and seek out the now semi-mythical Gibra and Haken, who are believed to live somewhere to the south...