Lolita
Lolita was a sentient humanoid timeship and the sole member of House Lolita, who became not only the Homeworld's War Queen but also (as Charlotte) queen of the United Kingdom and (as Lola Denison) President of the United States. She appeared in Michael Brookhaven's film Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom as Lady Wakai, and she appeared to Richard Francis Burton as Lady of the Last Night.
Biography
Before the War
When Lolita was only hours old, she understood what the war with the Yssgaroth "actually meant" and was able to bring it to its conclusion. (PROSE: Toy Story)
Lolita had a sister. When they picked pilots, Lolita chose "the dangerous-looking one", while her sister chose one Lolita described as "the cuckoo". Lolita didn't stay attached to her original pilot, though, instead letting him use other timeships. She had him modify her so that she could make herself humanoid.
Before the War, Lolita and her sister both discovered who the enemy would be. Lolita also tried to convince her sister to become humanoid like her. (PROSE: Toy Story)
In Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom
Lady Wakai was the villain of Michael Brookhaven's film Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom, the events of which were driven by her centuries-long plan to secure the throne for herself and her children. In the script, Wakai was said to have murdered her sister, the most renowned and benevolent sorceress ever known in Shogunate society, and she appeared in the script as an attendant at the court of the blind and dying Shogun-King Senso, she seduced one of the King's sons and spread fear about "witch" attacks in an attempt to gain Senso's ear.
At the same time, Wakai was assembling a horde of hundreds of bestial and mal'akh "witches" to attack the small, peaceful village of Chikyu. Baron Amatsumara and Wakai's warrior niece Awaremi defended Chikyu and defeated the witches, so Wakai sent a goblin-horde to attack Amatsumara's homeland, the Ghost Kingdom. After the kingdom had fallen to the goblins, Wakai consumed the Kingdom. The only survivors were Kodomo Kami, Kithijoten, and Baron Nichiyobi.
However, when Chris Cwej began to interfere with the filming of Mujun as part of his investigation into Michael Brookhaven, the new character he played upset the balance between the others, and anomalous scenes began to appear in the filming. A few of these pertained to Wakai: Wakai appearing before the witch horde, dressed in a silk butterfly-robe and wearing a white porcelain mask, as the mother of all monsters; Wakai removing her mask while consuming the Ghost Kingdom, revealing a diseased, agonised, and vampiric face; and finally, Wakai insisting that her prisoners "have their legs broken and [be] impaled on spikes", a line which was cut for threatening the film's PG rating. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
Against Faction Paradox
During the War, Lolita created her own Newblood House. It was called House Lolita, and she was its only member. All future places in the House were reserved for her own progeny. (AUDIO: In the Year of the Cat)
Lolita allied her House with House Tracolix, (PROSE: The Book of the War) and with Lord Ruthven, she went to the Eleven-Day Empire to reconcile House Paradox with the "proper" Houses on the Homeworld. Her real plan, however, was to destroy the Faction, starting with its Eleven-Day Empire. To that end, she turned on Ruthven and the Seventy-Ninth Sontaran Assault Corps, destroying both; after reaching an accommodation with the Empire's loa, she "swallowed" the Eleven-Day Empire into her internal dimensions. Only Cousins Justine and Eliza escaped. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, The Shadow Play)
Lolita attempted to use the Osirian Sutekh to get rid of the last of the Faction. (AUDIO: Body Politic) First, he destroyed their reproductive equipment in Pompeii. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust) When Anubis and the Faction tried to recreate Osiris as Horus in a remembrance tank from Cousin Eliza and Osiris's scavenged biodata, Lolita alerted Sutekh and advised him to use the information to get the Osirian Court on his side. While the Faction was distracted by their confrontation with Sutekh and the Court, Lolita slit her own wrist with a fingernail and dripped some of her own blood into the remembrance tank. (AUDIO: Body Politic) Lolita was able to channel her own weapons systems through the nascent Horus, allowing him to cripple Sutekh at their next fight. Lolita actually intended for Horus to gain the throne, so that she could use him as a puppet.
When the War King tried to sabotage Lolita's plans with his own ambassador, Lolita consumed him. With him out of the way, Lolita was able to become War Queen of the Great Houses. However, she had forgotten an important detail: before his death, the War King had given Cousin Justine a safe channel to the Homeworld. Justine sent a group of mal'akh obtained from Sutekh to attack the Council chambers. The attack was really meant as a warning, rather than a serious attempt at takeover. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities) The real attack came when Horus brought seven hundred Osirians to the Homeworld — who "officially," according to history, were fighting Sutekh — to deal with Lolita. Afterwards, Horus claimed to Justine that Lolita would not be a problem again. (AUDIO: Ozymandias, The Judgment of Sutekh)
As the Lady of the Last Night
Upon being inducted into Faction Paradox during a mission for the Star Chamber to rescue a book from the Mal'akh, Richard Francis Burton was told that the Woman of the Last Night could answer his questions about the Mal'akh, though she was cold and evil and often lured men to their doom by giving them exactly what they wished for.
Regardless, Burton went out into the Arabian desert with only a loincloth, found a specific tall plant, and stayed in its shadow for three days, keeping himself awake and sustaining himself only by drinking the juice of the plant's succulent leaves. At dawn on the third day, the fabric of spacetime tore and opened to the vortex with the sound of a thousand screaming animals, revealing the Lady, wearing a black gown and headdress and carrying a book and a sleeping baby.
The book was The Thousand and Second Night, which she gave to Burton, telling him that it contained the secrets of the world and its future. She also said that she had dealt with the Mal'akh and that they would no longer bother the British Empire or the Eleven-Day Empire. When Burton challenged the idea of fortune telling, the Lady threatened to feed him to her baby.
Years after translating The Thousand and Second Night and defecting to the Eleven-Day Empire, Burton identified the story as pure propaganda, designed to sway the reader in the War, and he regretted translating it into English. He suspected that the Dark Lady's aims were not aligned with the Faction, the Great Houses, or the enemy, and he feared that they were inimical to all life, since she was not alive in the way that humans were. (PROSE: Head of State)
As Lola Denison
As Lola Denison, Lolita was elected by the State of Arizona into the United States Congress as a Republican, but, after being criticised for her many centrist-libertarian positions, she dropped her party affiliation and was reelected as an Independent, backed by the Libertarian Party.
Democrat-turned-Radical Party Presidential candidate Matt Nelson picked Denison to be his Vice Presidential running mate. Though she admitted that they had some political differences, but she said they shared far more political similarities, like a focus on removing laws and government regulations that restricted people from trying to live their lives as they wished. Policies that were personally important to her included geothermal energy and childcare, but she had no position on abortion, since it didn't affect her own life. She refused to call herself a feminist, though Dave Larsen thought she was a "feminazi". During the campaign, she attracted tabloid attention for her "glacial beauty" and her public breastfeeding of her infant daughter.
The Shift brought Dave Larsen's attention to a string of murders of young girls in their twenties, all of whom had been found with their bodies drained of blood and all of whom were associated with the Nelson campaign. The victims included Louise Perry, Joanne Nyman, and Janine Hanning. Based on apparent similarities between the Nelson campaign and The Thousand and Second Night, Bill Hunter and Dave Larsen concluded that Nelson was a vampire and responsible for the murders, but the Shift was adamant that Nelson was not the Mal'akh. Rachel Edwards wondered if the murderer might have been Tom Benson, but she concluded he would never do such a thing.
At Nelson's inauguration, Denison took the Vice Presidential oath of office with a smirk on her face. In the shock and confusion after Nelson was assassinated, Denison gave an appeal for calm and took the Presidential oath of office. In the following speech, she immediately placed restrictions on the media to suppress dissent, promising any challengers to her rule that "we have seen history shift today. Pray that you do not find yourself shifted along with it." Despite this, she asked not to be addressed as "Madame President" but instead as Lolita.
During the speech, she also announced Project Caldera, the "Manhattan Project of geothermal energy", as a way for the United States to achieve energy independence by drilling into Earth's crust. The Shift, who had been turned into a Shift when he tried to interfere with Lolita's plan, feared that this was an attempt to tap into Earth's caldera. (PROSE: Head of State)
Appearance
Richard Francis Burton described the Lady of the Last Night as about thirty years old, with an "aristocratic aspect". She wore a large headdress and a black gown of strange material. Her skin was supernaturally pale, but her hair, lips, eyes, and garb were all pitch black.
Lola Denison was described by many American tabloids as a "glacial beauty". (PROSE: Head of State)
Behind the scenes
- In Toy Story, Lolita says she was modified by her previous owner, who is heavily hinted to be the Master; in The Book of the War, the War King is mentioned to have self-modified his timeship in a similar way.
- In Lawrence Miles' character notes for Lolita in AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire, he describes Lolita as, "Aristocratic, but with no respect for tradition. Dangerous. Utterly amoral. Apparently in her thirties (though she's not human, so her actual age is open to debate). Political. Manipulative. Believes herself to be superior to most other life in the universe — as it turns out, there's a good reason for this - and regards everybody else with quiet amusement. Hard to imagine her taking anything seriously: everything she does is pre-planned, and therefore there's never any reason for concern. Gives the impression of being "untrustworthy" rather than "slimy". Doesn't really care one way or another."
External links
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