The Strange Days of Igor Phontain

Gregor Phontain was a trust fund baby; his grandfather Konstantin founded one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. After his parents' death when he was only six he and his sister Rebecca became two of the richest children in the world. Already in her worldly teen years, Rebecca went on to become a media darling until a drug related death six years after their parents'. She left Gregor alone and the sole heir to the Phontain fortune.

He would go on to graduate top of his class from Stanford University with dual PhDs, Molecular Biology and Epidemiology, at age sixteen. He continued his studies at Stanford Medical School, graduating with honors becoming one of the youngest MDs in history at the age of nineteen.

Yet his true passion is low budget horror films and comic books. Gregor was given the nickname Igor by his sister for his fanatic and encyclopedic knowledge of macabre factoids.

He has spoken little of his sister since her death, but in the intervening ten years, he has referred to himself only by her nickname for him.

For the past three years, he has worked for the L.A. Center for Disease control, and in his third year, for the International Brotherhood for the Protection of Humanity as well (mainly doing file work and remote consultations for the CDC since his dual employment began). While both are work he believes wholeheartedly in, it is never easy to hold down two jobs at once.

His career as a bounty hunter and monster killer on the fateful day he was called to Fort Polk, Louisiana by General McMillans of the United States Army to investigate an outbreak of scarlet fever and bubonic plague. When he arrived, he found the situation even worse than had been reported- scarlet fever, black plague, yellow fever, cholera, whooping cough, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid...every disease we had cured was spreading all around the base, and working its way through like wildfire.



It was in a regular enough pattern and had begun so suddenly that it screamed of a terrorist attack; he found shortly after that, and the facts that not only was he the only civilian doctor left standing on the base and the General's own daughter was patient zero, that the White House had approved the nuclear option at McMillans' discretion. Igor also found out that he had only eight hours before the bomb would indeed be dropped.

Igor was given the aid of a special team of men who were never labeled as such, but Igor quickly sussed the unique nature of on noticing their inclinations for not wearing helmets, or necessarily carrying firearms, and possibly being telepathic. There were many threats on his life from them as well, which he took very seriously.

After speeding around the base, interviewing the quarantined doctor (who turned out to be Igor's Stanford Medical mentor), the McMillans' girls' teacher, and the girl herself, Igor thought he'd found his terrorist- an old woman in an outlying historic town who the teenager and her friends had been abusing.



When the team and Igor reached the town, however, only signs of bloody murder presented themselves- no living people. No one living, that is, until they reached the hospital, where burlap-clad people who did not die unles shot in the head, and the old woman began killing them.

When the last survivors became pinned down in the hospital, and were being killed off in the darkness, Igor lost all track of anything but fighting, bodies dropping, and eventually, losing consciousness due to the injuries these amazingly strong people had given him.

He awoke to two federal agents telling him he was arrested until they were chased off by a jovial old southern man who congratulated him on killing things called "Huddle Folk", and surviving the bite of a "Hag". Introducing himself as Harbinger, the man explained no more, other than to invite Igor to a meeting in two weeks where all would be explained.

Igor somewhat graciously accepted, attended and was hired as a monster hunter.

Since joining the IBPH, Igor has been more busy in the last several months than he has in the last ten years. Other than proving himself a capable combatant in the field training courses and a very, very nerve-wracking rescue mission on a container ship, he began his new life-taking career by absorbing as much of the organization's library as he possibly could. Among other things this taught him, he now knows how to use magic (albeit in a very brutish fashion).

His newfound powers could not prepare him, though, for a herd of Chupacarbras, a necromancer, a berserker, AND a vampire. What began as a mission to exterminate an entire herd of the particularly disease-ridden and voracious animals called Chupacabras ended not only in their extermination amidst the savage beating of a necromancer (during which Igor had his first lesson in remembering to use his radio in combat situations) but in the rising of one of the IBPH team as a vampire and tearing the necromancer's throat out.

Igor nearly died battling the evil wizard and the chupacabras at the same time, as did the team's rabbi, and the team leader (twice),but somehow, they pulled through. Only to be confronted with the most powerful undead monster this side of a lich, one of the other team members showing herself to be some manner of fox demon, and the teammate who may or may not be the reincarnation of King Arthur himself losing his mind to bloodlust. The timely intervention of the rabbi's holy power, some guesswork on the part of Igor, and the arrival of the most powerful sorceress in the Brotherhood saved them from this horrific standoff.

The team was taken back to base immediately to have their many grievous injuries treated. Then the orcs happened.

It all began innocently enough. A violent argument between two brothers- one an orc pilot for the Brotherhood, and the other the berserker half-orc of the Brotherhood- in the infirmary quickly escalated to the edge of murder. Igor attempted to cow the more violent pilot with magic, and managed to spark a civil war between himself and the orc tribes of the United States, as well get himself crowned a king. All due to his lack of knowledge of Orc society and politics...and of hand to hand combat. The pilot brother, Skippy, had lost an eye. In Orc culture, that happens to be an insult of almost the highest order.

Three days later, he had gotten himself two orc knights in persons of the berserker -Eddie- and his cousin, the "squire"- Dar, then transferred his lands and title to Eddie with the aid of the Rabbi, after learning enough about orc culture from Eddie and Harbinger to do so, and that Harbinger had the ultimate Orc weapon, the "Stone Fist"- the weapon of the king of all Orcs, and only the king. Eddie (now King Alexei) picked it up, and wielded it as his own, which was enough for him, and seemingly, for all of the orcs in the United States, perhaps even Canada. It could not be wielded by anyone but the king. It was good enough for all of the Orcs, except for the Orcs who had sided with and left with Skippy, and the U.S. government.

There came a great deal of celebration, and important events in the newly vitalized culture: the knighting of Dar, the acceptance of the new law that the crippled can fight, and the betrothal of King Alexei to three Orc wives from the three Orc tribes who traveled to be near him, as well as two of Igor's team-mates- Daisy, his drinking buddy, and closest thing to a friend in the whole compound, and Kim, the woman who had spoken little, and up until then mostly to Igor, who was now inexplicably showing herself to be a werefox, or fox demon. Igor himself was also wed by the King himself to Alexei's own Aunt, a half-human woman named Magda. The Rabbi was even named royal Shaman (much to his surprise). Everyone was happy, content, or at least resting.

The next morning, right after the federal government served the IBPH with cease and desist papers, the elves moved in. Responding to heavy gunfire, the team moved in to the newly established Orc village on the Harbinger's land. They were greeted by two armored personnel carriers, four fully armed humvees and a tank opening fire with wild abandon into the Orc tribes. With Harbinger's help, even though Alexey ran in with no armor and took heavy wounds, the team made short work of killing the attackers.

Helicopters nearly got the drop on them, but another IBPH team coming in through the woods in turn took the elves by surprise and blew both helicopters out of the sky. It was too late for the Orc people however. Out of over 1,000, barely over three hundred remained; the rest murdered or fled.

The rest of daylight was spent burying the bodies of the Orcs and destroying the bodies of the elves, as well as treating the wounded. Alexey was nearly killed by a waiting elf assassin, but was brought back from death's door by Kim, Igor, and the Rabbi. The teams were tired, beaten, and disheartened, but King Alexey had been saved, and a few Orc survivors returned.

The U.S. government stepped in again, this time in the form of the first lady and a small team of senators bringing an offer from the president that rang too much of deals made with American Indian tribes. They were accepted, but only with acceptance of the terms including little things like federal agents are NOT allowed on orc land, and the United States government has no rights whatsoever to move the Orc people. That finished, everyone heaved an internal sigh of relief. These were not bad negotiations for people who had only come to political power last month, and had no lawyers present.

The sniper's timing could not have been more perfect as he shot at the Rabbi. He was shot and killed by a sniper from the returning team before he could finish his work, but the damage had already been done. No-one was wounded, but all of the Orcs' wargs were dead, except for Alexey's own mount, the warg that had been his best friend since childhood. She had been mortally wounded, so Igor's wife Magda and Alexey's betrothed Kim went to immediate work to stabilize her while Alexey's other human blooded fiancee Daisy tried to soothe the poor animal.

The rest of the home team went to investigate the sniper's body at his position a mile and a half away, walking right into a trap. Elf wizards, followed by elf knights, followed by more tanks, and yet more helicopters. Luckily for the IBPH teams, the elves had accidentally run across a U.S. Army artillery division and had already been engaged in combat, so both the human and elf soldiers were already battleworn. The yet more brief, but even more brutal battle was joined by not only the Army, but the remaining Orc warriors, and Harbinger once again. The elves were again routed, but at high human casualty cost.

Back at the IBPH compound, the mortally wounded were being written off by medics, and while Igor attempted to aid with the lesser injuries, the Rabbi healed everyone- even the dead (much to his surprise). It was at a price, however. He had asked Yahweh for help in healing all of these men, but had not known what he was asking, but Dar, Alexey's cousin and Magda's nephew did, and offered himself in response to Yahweh's asking of a life for everyone else's lives.

Alexey was distraught, and Dar's father was heartbroken. Magda did not yet know; she was so distracted by her own work. The soldiers, not fully aware of what he had done, rejoiced.