Carnival World: Book One (1225cwb1)
Written by
Wayne O’Conner

Copyright 2025 (TXu002497745) for Carnival World: Book One

Carnival World Book One is a fantasy novel. It has been described by readers as a cross between Stargate SG 1 and Lord of the Rings.

The dream, where I received ideas for the three board games, decades ago, has already been copyrighted about 2014.
Special thanks to Miss Shirley Knorn,

for assistance with game play sequences for the Carnival World Board Game,
The Irish Pub Board Game, Simple Sundays Board Game,
and role-playing games, where advanced technology items are used as an alternative to magic. And creative story ideas, based on game characters from the games or book suggestions. For example, the “Baby Wayne Conner story.”

Special thanks also, Shirley, for sequences in the book that were first played on the game boards or using the role-playing rules for random generation of story lines, before being inserted into my story.
Shirley’s favorite character, Elf Princess Mystica Knorn, from the Carnival World Fantasy Role Playing Game, became one of the lead characters in the Carnival World novel!

CARNIVAL WORLD CHAPTER 1  (pages 1 -12)

My name is Raphael McKenzie. I am part Ojibwe, of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and part Scots Irish by ancestry.

My friends, and there are very few, or were, called me Rafe. My superiors and associates called me Agent McKenzie or, less formally, Big Mac. I was a member of Cryptid Team Four. We were an elite group, classified above the president, as far as level of secrecy. Was… is the operative word.

Not long after I earned the rank of Major, my superiors were shocked. No stone was ever left unturned when vetting military men and women, especially in the American world of special ops.

Very few people, even those trained and charged with personnel investigation, knew of the existence of the Collins Elite.
And no, I am not a member of the Collins Elite, wise men, who for a few centuries have quietly kept tabs on secret societies, cryptids, advanced technology, aliens, and many secret government programs from Majestic 12 to Space Command.

While Collins Elite was literally Old Testament, in their beliefs, there was a less known and more secret group, who followed a more, let’s say, New Testament bent, the McKenzie Elite. Both secret societies, knew of each other and occasionally met to discuss potential “global situations.”

While I don’t consider myself religious, and flee from dogmatism, I without reserve consider myself a Christian. Although I understand that many who I consider brothers and sisters, on earth, and on Carnival World, would call me a liar to my face or behind my back. I’ve always tried to keep an open mind.

My life kind of reminds me of the lyrics from Larry Norman’s song where he compares Jesus at his grand return to planet earth to an “unidentified flying object” and goes on to sing, “And if there’s life on other planets, that I am sure he must know. And he’s been there once all ready to save their souls.”
While I won’t make a doctrine out of that, it is a Christian song and not scripture, I am not afraid to call it what it is, speculation, and enthusiastically ponder the mystery.

I have been threatened by a few Christians, for asking questions, like those posed in Larry Norman’s song. Or been warned about subtracting from or adding to God’s word by considering John 10:16 in this light. I very much understand the narrow interpretation of “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice…KJV”
I wonder if a broader interpretation or application, such as encouraging the worship of Jesus Christ to the natives of Carnival World, is an example in point. My life experience says it is possible. It is unwise to trump scripture with experience. I get that! And yet if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck!

During most of my career on earth with Cryptid Team Four, I eliminated rogue Sasquatch, Draconians and the occasional saurian sea creature that left its secluded haunts to prey on civilized humans; my last project was to investigate New Worm Hole Tech.

I cut my teeth on investigating the primitive Stone Henge type worm holes, earlier in my career, that were an ancient and inefficient technology. I had advanced out of Cryptid Team Four and became a Cryptid & Anomaly Investigator (AIS) by the time I began investigating wormholes and other strange phenomena. I could call in one of the seven cryptid teams but worked alone as much as possible.

Most of them – the primordial wormholes- were broken and could not activate, but a few lingered here and there on lost worlds. I was sent to investigate rumors of such a device operating in the Nahanni Valley, in Canada.

The Above Top-Secret file I had accessed in the Above Top-Secret skiff, listed it as leading to a planet called PXE749559. My search found no evidence of that worm hole, but whispers here and there, from the mythos of the area, and accounts from old diaries and old newspaper clippings seemed to corroborate my file.
My latest assignment, many years later, almost two decades later, in fact, had been to investigate a more advanced technology “Star Portal,” similar to the trademarked Stargate television series. This, non-fictional “Star Portal” had been located in the depths of the Grand Canyon. While the basic artifact looked similar to the one on the award-winning television show, the chevrons were scripted in Old Enochian.

As things are wont to go, I received a mission to verify a new artifact. A wealthy and influential man named Patrick Conner, and his brothers Fred and Alex, contacted one of my superiors, up the chain a bit, so to speak. They wanted to trade the knowledge of an ancient Druid’s tale, about the device, in a cavern below an Irish castle and a sister device, that, according to their family legend, was hidden in the Grand Canyon of the USA.

In trade for the information, and ancient tattered documents that had he located by funding a few archeological expeditions, Mr. Conner offered a surprising and interesting trade. To be honest, I was shocked that my superiors agreed to his request, rather than just silencing him, or sending him and his brothers to one of many black site prisons.

The Conners asked to be given permission to make a “West World” type amusement park, but without motorized realistic robots, on that world, if their Enochian address proved genuine. My loyalties were divided. I decided to contact the McKenzie elite, which I did first, before contacting my superiors.

I did not follow in my father’s footsteps and become a card-carrying member of the McKenzie elite. You’ll have to forgive my dry sense of humor. The organization was too secretive to carry such an identification card. I knew how important the organization was to Dad. If Mom and Dad had not been deeply devoted to each other, I probably would have lost my, noos, my father, when I was yet a toddler.

Some of my mother’s tribe, even though everyone loved him, said that if he couldn’t tell her what he was doing, when he’d need to disappear for weeks or months at a time, that she should divorce him. We knew Dad loved us, but his organization was literally like fictional super heroes, with secret identities, who might save the world on any given day. That was one reason I always shied away from getting too close to women. I love women, especially pretty ones, and I don’t want a girlfriend, a wife, or children to experience the loss I had.

Well, back to my story. Dad had placed a figurine of a buck and doe jumping over a log and sat it upright in my parent’s bedroom window. He told us that if he was gone on a mission, and we were in trouble, didn’t have food, or needed money to pay a bill, to place the buck and doe figurine on its side. Within the space of a few hours someone would come on behalf of the organization and do everything they could to take care of our situation. Usually, our tribal regional income from the casino would be enough, but not always. And Dad was not always around to do his fishing and hunting guide job.

They wouldn’t be able to tell us where he was or what he was doing, but if we needed money or a ride to a doctor, we would be taken care of more than satisfactorily.

Several times when Dad was gone, we had used the signal, and they had helped us out, when we were short of food, or had a bill to pay.

Once they even arranged for Mom to get hospital trips and paid her bill throughout her hospitalization and rehabilitation. After that, they purchased a new car to replace her dead, never to be resurrected, blue Chevy Impala.

Once when Dad had been gone four months, we signaled them, and they came, but were unable to help. All they could say is that Dad was missing in action, and they could not provide details. They promised us that if they were able, fifty years from now, or longer, if we used the signal, they would do their best to help us as they had in the past, and that we would always be in their prayers. And that was whether or not Dad returned.

After sending my analysis summary to my military superior by my usual courier, I had gathered a few supplies, filled my pack, and then I used one of the three Carnival World Star Portal coordinates that I had tested previously.

So, after some debate, because they had been faithful to help us in our times of need, my mother and me, I decided to honor that and contact them first.

I had withheld the information on the address to the gate where I had planned to escape. I did provide it to the McKenzie Elite, but that address I purposely withheld from my superiors. Once I left home in Hayward, Wisconsin, I had been given my own secret method of contacting the McKenzie elite and used that to make a drop of my findings. However, once I came to Carnival World, I never heard from the McKenzie Elite…Well, technically that is an incorrect statement. I did not hear from them for a very long time.

So, I sent the gate addresses for the artifact at what today is known as Conner’s Carnival Theme Park City, in the western Borderlands, and the other one, on the other side of the continent, the eastern Borderlands, now known as Irish Pub Theme Park City. Like I said, I did not give my superiors my secret portal address. I gave them two out of three portal addresses.

The two Star Portals located on the surface were fancier and much larger than my secret portal.

I did find the one in the Grand Canyon on earth, but the one in the bowels of the old Irish castle, had been, at least the exposed section, cracked, broken, and buried in rubble.

Not sure how that happened. The castle, no problemo. Those gates are practically indestructible. Alien D.E.W? I don’t know.
Several people, or even one of the Atlanticean scout ships, on Carnival World, could use those larger models to gate through. The one in the secret room in the caverns of the Goblin Caves is small and only one person of my size – I stand 6’3 in my woolen socks – can use that gate at one time. Although I suppose several people could use the device at one time, if they entered while lined up one behind the other.

Like I had so many times before, I assumed a new identity, but not a temporary one, and am no longer a United States citizen, even though I dearly love that country and my tribe from Hayward, Wisconsin.

The PXE name of this new planet is of no consequence. The Conner Family Corp call it Carnival World. I call it home.
It is a wild planet, in the Borderlands, much like the colonial United States was at that time, not only by environment, but in size and shape. Mammoths and a few dinosaurs roam what are called The Badlands. Occasionally smaller mammoths or even a few small dinosaurs have wandered up from the great Southern Ocean far south of the Badlands. No mountain range separates the Borderlands from the Badlands, in the south, as it does in the north.

Besides humans, in the Borderlands of Carnival World, there are Dwarves, Catlings, Ratkins, more than one kind of Elf, Feyhoomon, Hobbits, Orcs, Half Elves, Fey, Fey Mantis, and Crystalins. The mountains, both the north and south ranges and the long, coast to coast eastern and western range, are a sanctuary for Sabe and Dog Men, both the genetically engineered descendants and the natural humanoid – read that as mostly genetically pure, highly intelligent kinds. Although tribes of Barbarian humans, who from time to time voluntarily took mates among the humanoid Sabe and Dog Men, or not so voluntarily forced by the beastly types, are also present. Trolls and giants are allowed to stay in the Badlands, but following their banishment, following a short killing spree, about a thousand years ago, are to be executed on sight if they cross into the Borderlands. This is one of the jobs of the Dark Lancer Satellite, who monitors and the “Sheriff” ground troops that may only leave the mountains with permission.

There is a blend of human and Draconian humanoid, also known as the Ophidians, that can decide to grow into a snake humanoid or a human with microscopic scales, minus the snake oil stink of the Naga. They are supposed to stay on Snake gods’ Mountain, but they have found a way, different than the beast Sabe and Jackal-Heads, to undertake brief missions into the Borderlands. I read in an old scroll that they – the Naga Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Assassins – have a stolen scout ship and an off-planet base, shaped like a swastika. The Naga Assassins, who have a religion that is half death clown cult and Nazi White Supremacy, speak Ophidian (a British and Hindi language with hisses and rattles) and 1930’s earth German.
Travels, by foot and with carriages are too dangerous, in the Badlands. And quite dangerous, but survivable, in the Borderlands.

One “West World” type facility has within its walls a small village with a posh hotel, a five star as good as any on earth, in America, and has a larger-than-life carnival game. This is where I live now, when not out on a bounty hunt or when I take a short vacation or business trip at the other theme park, “Irish Pub City.”
That other facility, a short trip by the “skip jack,” an ancient Atlanticean advanced technology scout ship, or two days by blimp, houses a facility known as The Irish Pub Game. There is a rumor that each of the original Conner brothers has a clone that lives in the Irish Pub City. I don’t know. I have left Carnival City after talking with Patrick or Elfred and then talked with them again while in the Irish Pub Theme Park. Elfred will scowl and quip, “it’s a damn lie” and then add, “Don’t you go falling for that superstitious mumbo-jumbo, too, Orlando Bard.”

Patrick is a bit more diplomatic than his brother. He will just smile warmly, flip that long white pony, stare off into the distance momentarily, and say, “Don’t let your conspiracy meter give you a false reading, Orlando.” And if you press him, then he will change the subject or reply, “Cool Man, but this cat must go. I’m late. I’m late, for a very important date. See you when I get back from Wonderland!” Then Patrick the Blarney man will wink at you as he briskly walks away or enters a locked door inside his cathedral and terminates the visit.

The Atlanticean race of ancient humans seem to be the same fabled race of humans that we on earth refer to in our myths and legends as the Atlantis Colony.
My name of course is no longer Rafe “Leaping White Buffalo” McKenzie. I am now known as The Bard or Orlando Bard. My friends call me Orrie, Orlando, Lando or Bard. I am an adventurer, bounty hunter and bard. And the owner of a fine library with materials from Earth and Carnival World.

Like I said, if I am not in Carnival Town or Irish Pub City, I travel the Borderlands between The Badlands and the Carnival City Theme Park, owned by the Conner Corporation. Never, in my journeys, have I traveled on foot to the Irish Pub Theme Park facility, which is on the other side of the continent, not too far from the sea. You won’t see the sea with your eyes, unless you are a Dog Man Sheriff with eyes like an eagle, but… maybe with a good pair of binoculars?

There are four special ops teams assigned to each facility, and once they were no longer needed to guard each facility, switched duties to explore and survey missions in the Borderlands. The Airborne Ranger I think of as Cigar Man, has a small crew on one of the skip jacks, that monitors the four away teams attached to Conner’s Carnival Theme Park.

The Carnival City exploration and survey teams are responsible for half of the Borderlands and the Irish Pub Theme Park teams are responsible to explore and survey that area of the borderlands around their theme park facility.

The Star Portals are kept in a locked, internally guarded building, next to the Conner’s Inns and Suites building. The portals were housed and locked up about a year after the Conner Corp Advance Team secured the park. The Inns and Suites building was partially prefabricated on earth, then shipped through the Star Portal for reassembly, and built from the bottom up. The framework was designed with a special three-dimensional printer owned by the military and would not be available, commercially, to the public, for use on earth for over a decade.

About the time the Carnival was up and running, and the Ranger teams began mapping and exploring the planet they began finding advanced technology in the Atlanticean research facilities scattered through the plains of the Borderlands. They discovered a continental teleport system in one of the Atlanticean research colony ruins, but, like I said, that was after they finally were able to get buildings and Carnival areas finished.

Not all of the Atlanticean teleports between colonies work, although the Advance Team, Delta, I think it was, who found a working medical tag crafter that will teleport its subject, if deceased and reanimate or craft a new body. The Advance team took the teleporter and med tag machine and moved them to the Conner Memorial Hospital, which is the back wing of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But that did not happen until after they had operated the Star Portal facility for more than a few years.
So, except for yearly inspections, that started three or four years after I had met the Advance Team, we rarely see or interact with the special ops squads and their six-to-eight-man Ranger and scientific support team. But, when Zales or the Conner brothers are in a pinch, even years following my residence in Carnival City, they are not afraid to tap me for special missions, which I charge through my Bounty Hunter’s Guild that is attached to the back of my inn.

Occasionally, I have run into one of the teams, but that is rare, and I have been on Carnival World for about thirteen years now. I left earth in about 2011. I was here on my own for almost a year before the first advance team of special ops and scientists arrived inside of the Star Portal edifice.

I have sailed in the Atlanticean blimp, several times, to visit The Irish Pub Theme Park. The American Above Top-Secret crowd own the gates, and the Atlanticean Scout Ships, and it is nigh impossible to requisition them.

It is a bit easier to get permission to use the Star Portals. Earth visitors exclusively use the Star Portals. Delivery trucks constantly use the secret underground highway on earth to access the Grand Canyon USA Star Portal.

Driven from the American Underground Tunnel System, they, military drivers, use the tunnel to bring military personnel and equipment, as well as earth goods. They deliver the trucks right through the Star Portal, into the warehouse that is part of the new Carnival World Deep Underground Military Base.

The Star Portal facility is connected to and underneath the Conner Inns and Suites building. Earth visitors are always escorted by the military, from the enclosed Star Portal Military top floor base, into the five-star Conner Theme Park Motel. There are several floors under the top area which has the Star Portal. What activities go on in the levels under the Star Portal level, which is the same level as the first floor of Conner’s Inns and Suites, I have no idea.

Well, maybe Patrick, Elfred, and the mysterious and elusive Ambassador Alex, who stays in the top floor of the Conner Inn building can occasionally get permission, if supervised by a squad or two of the special forces advance teams, to use a skip jack.
When I first came to Carnival World, two skip jacks rested on top of the Cyclopean wall, in the airport, next to the blimp. Within a year of my joining Carnival City, the military had finished, iron mole excavating of the D.U.M.B. command center in record time. Although the upper building of that command center was only a rough shell of its later glory, prior to forming an alliance with Carnival World’s master builder Dwarves.

That command facility, once completed, became sturdier than America’s infamous Fort Knox and as patrolled as Area Fifty-One. Rumor had it that much of the underground area, using the iron mole machines, had left behind perfectly tubular tunnels of glazed rock and would eventually be finished. Carnival World, especially under the mountains are riddled with underground tunnel and cavern systems. There are gems and algae on the cave and tunnel walls that emit a feeble light and oxygen. The Sabe, Jackal-Heads, trolls and giants have large eyes that can emit their own light or adjust to see in the dark. So, they don’t need the light in the same way a human does, to walk underground or walk topside at night. Catlings, although their eyes are small, do not need much light either, to navigate in darkness.

One thousand years ago, Padre’s grandfather had been visited by a man. A mysterious man. And by description, one of middle eastern descent. The bearded man, with long snowy white hair, stood just shy of six feet tall, with many scars, although not much of his body had been visible. Between the golden sash and white robe, what skin that had showed was a medium brown tone with a coppery red shimmer, but not anything like the Naga. His eyes burned with an intensity, or so the story is told, that made it hard to keep eye contact with him. For all of that, the man seemed kind and humble but had the presence of the most powerful earthly king.

The mysterious man said he had a message from Creator, for the dwarf, Padre’s grandfather, that was to be given to the peoples of his world. Very specific words, but a different one for each people group. It sounded a bit like the Isaiah 13 of the Septuagint version and the King James section of the seven churches. It was a warning as well about Crisper Tech that was being experimented with, by some Atlanticeans, after being bewitched by the snake gods and their servants. Every people group, from the Nordic Elves to the Sabe, to the humans of the mountains and the smaller humans and humanoids of the plains and forests, had their own individualized message from Creator.

Two glowing humanoids, tall, well-formed, handsome men, that had accompanied the mysterious man, had been left with Padre’s grandfather, Ayneegh. Or sometimes he was called Aynoch. When the mysterious man had simply vanished, one man, with golden hair and a van dyke, introduced himself. “Call me Jazz.” The man’s electric lavender eyes glistened with an inner light as he grinned and gave the short dwarf a slight bow.

The other, Jedd, glowing emerald eyes beaming with hidden laughter, bowed ever so lightly as well. Jedd, with his dark, Gypsy features, chuckled. He tossed his dark brown hair, almost black, to one side, grinned infectiously and offered, “Call me Jedd. I am honored to meet you, Ayneegh of the White Dwarves. My Master has spoken well of you. And he has. I am not just speaking diplomatically.”

Jazz then continued the dialogue, “We are here to guard you as you walk from the White Dwarf Mountains to the bottom of the Snake god mountains of the central northeast.” Jazz twiddled with the point of his dark blonde van dyke and continued, the humor fading from his handsome, almost Scandinavian features, “Be warned, Ayneegh. There are several places where we will open a portal and you will appear, but mostly you will need to walk to each destination. While you will be able to see us, most people will not. We will protect you from any man, humanoid, animal, beast-man, hell hound or snake god who would think to endanger your life.”

Bard stopped his tale briefly, and said, “I suppose, kitties and doggies, I should break in to explain, since most of you, my audience tonight, are visitors from Earth, the specific cryptid beast that citizens from your world would refer to as a a dog man is also known as a hell hound. Although the rangers told me that they have heard dogmen also called jackal heads. The angels of Jesu call the dogmen or jackal heads, hell hounds, or so it is recorded in the White Dwarf history texts.”

Bard went back to sharing his evenings bard’s tale.
Padre’s grandfather had been sent to the interdimensional land of the Crystalins. He had not been sent to the clans of the little people, except for the small goblins, and a few tribes of Puks, of good behavior, in Puk Mountain, northwest of the future Irish Theme Park City. He did visit many Fey groups, but words to them were more encouraging. Except for a few groups that were promised future judgments. If they did not repent, those that survived the War of Monsters, “a time where men’s hearts would grow frozen with fear as hordes of beast-men, savage and with giant strength would jump from the air and climb from holes in the ground to devour whole villages and cities.” There was also a warning to the Fey that, in the days of their children’s children, those whose hearts chased after evil would become mentally reprobate and grow horns and hecked tails.

Ayneegh had not been sent to the Octopus Queens, or their fish-tailed servants, the Mer, in the marine Kingdoms or the Badlands. The Marine Kingdoms were to be considered off limits and under a curse, just the same as the Badlands. If beings did come from the sea, and stayed for more than a day, they would change into a human form. If they acted evil, they were to be banished or executed. Otherwise, they were offered a chance to return to the Borderlands, and become human again, especially if they had not voluntarily submitted to mermaid, sea man, or sea creature transformation.

Giants and trolls were not offered such a mercy. Ayneegh had been given a prophecy for all the peoples. He had not been told what the prophecy had meant. “Following the quick and violent rise of the Monster Men, after Creator once again has offered mercy, the land will be cleansed. When the beast men at last fall, divine judgment from land and sky will protect the remnants who survive the purge.”

That, however, is part of Padre’s story, and I will share it at another time.

The spare skip jack had been moved off the Cyclopean wall port into the heavily guarded facility that topped the underground D.U.M.B.

Once the new enclosed gate room and seven level underground base had been established, the small advance team tent city had been moved. Later the old military and scientific post became the town of Carnival City that comprised about one quarter of the entire theme park. One quarter of the enclosed Cyclopean wall comprised the military base. Another quarter was reserved for the Carnival Grounds. The final quarter of the space was left as a park-like lawn reserved for future expansion such as rental units and a second hub of inns and shops.

page 12 end of chapter 1