"History and Background," otherwise known as "What the heck are these things?" Ah... but where to start? Well, in 1998, I guess, with this...

"You have no idea how difficult it is to look threatening in pink." - Alis, Conversations Within Elsydeon

There it is. The first and most popular Conversation Within Elsydeon, reproduced in forum sigs of people I've never heard of all over the internet and prime contender for event most likely to be stamped heavily upon by the first time travellers.

Alis Landale is the main character of the first Phantasy Star game, a series that has been seen on the Master System, the Genesis, the Sega CD and the Dreamcast, and is now spreading cross-company to the Xbox, the GameCube, PCs and the Game Boy Advance. It details what I tend to call the Millenial Wars: the attacks upon the three planets of the Algol star system by a recurring demonic power called, in various instances, Dark Falz or Dark Force. In Phantasy Star 4, the beast was killed no less than three times and the heroes of that millenium went on to confront and destroy the source of the malignacy in her own inter-dimensional lair - the Profound Darkness.

Of course, all fans of fantasy know you can't keep a good (and profitable) villain down and Dark Falz has recently returned in the massively multi-player online role-playing game Phantasy Star Online.

Which, all in all, explains very little about...

"You have no idea how difficult it is to look threatening in pink." - Alis, Conversations Within Elsydeon

In Phantasy Star 4, we were introduced to Elsydeon, the mystical laconian sword in which resides the souls of the departed heroes of previous fights against Dark Force. It seems likely that it was the unnamed laconian sword aquired by Alis in Phantasy Star 1 as it his her statue that holds Elsydeon and her spirit that passes it to Chaz Ashley, the hero of the fourth game.

So, we have a sword, in which are the souls of dead heroes from four seperate eras, harking from a total of four planets and one spaceship.

What do they talk about?

Well, you can forget spiritual philosophy and otherworldy wisdom. The Conversations Within Elsydeon are played for laughs. The original incarnation was one-liners such as the example given - quotes from the various Protectors (as they are called) to one another. "You have no idea how difficult it is to look threatening in pink," was actually a phrase bouncing around my head long before I thought up the Conversations. As best-selling author Terry Pratchett has said: A source of gag ideas is to take the illogical premise and examine it logically. Exactly how terrifying would a sixteen year old girl dressed in pink actually be?

It was the one that kicked the things off and still my favourite. The first ten or so - added to the end of my forum posts at the Phantasy Star Discussion Board - passed without comment and I was dreadfully worried that people were gazing at them blankly and wondering what they were. Not the case, as it happened, and there are now around 600 of the textual gag variety, many of which were invented by other people whom I dragged down to my level by sheer example. I had to pause occassionally to rebuild my list and I religiously collected those done by others, eventually creating a master list. The evil twin to Elsydeon, Netrdeon, which contained the souls of Phantasy Star's villains, was dragged screaming and kicking from Chris Vogel's fan story "Descendants" and given over to my bad humour. Cloud made a wrong turn, two incarnations of Death turned up, Doctor Who made an appearance after slipping sideways in time and even I, the humble creator, was eventually noticed sitting outside the sword with my tape recorder.

Then, in 2001, after struggling for a time, I ran completely out of ideas and retired the Conversations Within Elsydeon.

At least, in their original form.

At the beginning of 2002 the Conversations mutated into a webcomic, the idea being that I could practice my drawing whilst inflicting further bad jokes and awful puns on others. I gave them their own website design, logo and generally tried to hide and excuse the fact that my drawing was pretty awful. It improved, mind you, and in 2005, I ended the comic and moved on a new and more interesting comic (with actual plot!) called "Like the Wind".

This site contains the master list of all the text-based Conversations Within Elsydeon, whether done by myself or by others, as well as the newer Conversations Within Elsydeon Webcomic.

Annnd... for anyone who wants to link the Conversations, here's a banner you're free to use to do so. It's a touch under 7.6KB.

Finally, my email address is joelfagin@hotmail.com and I tend to hang out on the Phantasy Star Discussion Board if you want to come along and bug me.