A Different Kind of Ghost Hunting Assignment

I was called to the home of Darrel Marks and Tracey Gonzalez the other night, they had a problem with a ghost.  Darrel, if you remember, was my first high school crush.  And Tracey is his current girlfriend. 

It wasn’t just any ghost.  It was one of those ghosts in Medieval dress.  And she was not happy with me.  This was my toughest ghost yet. 

She was difficult to catch, too.  My first attempt to zap her with the Banshee Blaster was an abysmal failure.  Even though I am a Level 8 ghost hunter, I can and do fail first attempts from time to time, painful as it is for me to admit.  So, she approached me. 

“You are a lack-witted cur for doing this to me,” she said in a haughty accent that sounded a little like Old Simlish and a little like British and a little like French.  By the accent, I could tell that she had been of the nobility. 

Finally I attempted for the second time to vanquish this pesky ghost.  By the time I was done it was two in the morning and I was exhausted. 

Despite myself, I gathered a name, Alys de Montfort, and a cause of death, a wizard’s spell gone awry. 

The next day at brunch I brooded over Alys de Montfort.  I had to find out everything I could about her. 

While on a visit to my parents’ I grabbed my laptop and typed in “Alys de Montfort”…

Alys de Montfort had been of Norman heritage through her father’s side of the family.  She ascended the throne of the kingdom of Arkovia after her father, King Edward, had been killed in a swordfight by his own nephew, Prince Michael.  When she was a young girl she had been subjected to lessons in etiquette and manners given by her father’s aunt, Cordelia, but she also secretly took lessons in magic and wizardry from a visiting alchemist.

Alys de Montfort was a very scholarly and learned queen.  She built what was then the largest library on the continent in her castle.

She sought to secure and consolidate her power by issuing edicts.  Her first edict was that her murderous cousin was not allowed to set foot in Arkovia again. 

Realizing that her hold on the throne was tenuous until she married, Alys cleverly held off all her suitors, constantly telling them that she would consider their proposals even though she had no intention of ever getting married.  The most persistent of her suitors was the Merchant Prince of Tredony. 

Alys enjoyed long jaunts through the forests surrounding her castle, where she would occasionally hunt bears.  Her advisers hated this and constantly complained about it. 

She was noted for having a bit of a temper; her advisers hated this and called it ‘unladylike.’ 

She also had some skills in sword fighting.  She once had to defend herself against a bandit. 

When she asked for money to build a magic laboratory in the castle, her royal advisers refused; instead she appropriated some of her dowry money to do it.  

A magic experiment gone wrong is the generally accepted reason historians give for Alys de Montfort’s death; attempts to revive her failed.  After her death, Arkovia fell to the Nimbans from the far north; the kingdom was never fully the same. 

After the medieval period, most of the provinces were split up and boundaries realigned.  I didn’t realize Sunset Valley was this old.  Apparently it was built on the ruins of one of the ancient provinces. 

A thousand Sim years ago, a remarkable woman named Alys de Montfort became queen of a distant land.  How did her ghost wind up in Sunset Valley, at the home of my ex-crush and his current girlfriend?  

With those questions in mind, I began the draft of my third book. 

More from Satis

In the old stories of Egypt, Satis was the goddess of the floods of the Nile River. My name means "she who shoots forth." According to the books, she was a war, hunting, and fertility goddess who was seen as the mother of the river. Our mother, Fatima, named me and my twin brother Imsety after Egyptian gods. I suppose she meant us to become god like.
I don't remember much about her or our father, Samir. Mom told us that he was a major crime boss in a company called MorcuCorp. We were little when we were adopted and smuggled away from Egypt and neither of us have been back since.
It has been a struggle for us to hold on to our Egyptian language and customs since arriving in Sunset Valley. When Halima was here she helped with that, but now that she is gone all Imsety and I have of Egypt is each other. I miss her, a lot. I'm sure Imsety does, too.

One thing Mom and I have in common is we both love to read.  As soon as I got to Sunset Valley she gave me her own Simlish primers first, then I moved on to more challenging books, including her own aunt Meg Plumb’s Moon Colony series.  My love of reading is the reason my Simlish is much better than my brother’s.  I’ve been complemented on my good diction and penmanship. 

The house next door to ours on Pinochle Point had been vacant for as long as I can remember, until very recently, when a family moved in.  The best part is the family has not one, but TWO girls our age! 

The oldest of the two girls, Carrie Phillips, asked if she could ride the bus home with me.  I didn’t refuse. 

School has not been easy for me or my brother.  We’ve been teased for our heavily accented Simlish and I’ve often sat alone in the cafeteria, or if Imsety has the same lunch period, he’d come sit by me.  “My parents thought a change of scenery might do us some good,” Carrie said as she sat next to me.  I didn’t know what that meant.

I followed Carrie into her home, and she explained that they hadn’t quite finished packing yet, so there were boxes all over. 

Meanwhile, I took a glance outside the window and I saw Imsety running toward our house with Carrie’s younger sister, Amy.  Amy has a blond ponytail, while Carrie’s hair is darker. 

“Satis,” Carrie said, “you have an unusual name.”

“It’s Egyptian,” I told her. 

“Wow, you’re from Egypt?  Where all the pyramids and stuff are?”

“You got it.”

Carrie told me her father Peter and her mother Elizabeth decided to move the family for a change of scenery.  Then, Peter got a job at Landgraab Industries and Elizabeth began working at Doo Peas in journalism.

I got the feeling there was something Carrie wasn’t telling me.

Guest blogger - Satis!

Hallo! It's me, Satis Plumb.

I am a teenager, living in Sunset Valley. It's a nice place. Not as hot as home, but no place can be as hot as Al Simhara, Egypt, where I'm from.

My twin brother, Imsety, and I were adopted back when we were kids by Savannah Plumb. We don't remember much about it, and Mom has not talked much about it, either. We were told that we were adopted and we just excepted it.

When we were little, we had an Egyptian nursemaid, Halima Meshkenet. She spoke both Egyptian and Simlish to us.

I love to read. In fact, I think my love of books is the reason why my Simlish is much better than my twin brother's. Since coming to Sunset Valley, I read a lot of books and most of them were in Simlish.

One evening we were in the kitchen where my brothers, Sety and AJ, were eating lobster thermidor the butler had cooked.

"Have either of you boys done your homework?" I asked them while they ate. When they didn't answer I knew they had not done it.

The only thing on their mind seemed to be the fishing trip to Pinochle Pond they were planning for the weekend. Sety was explaining to AJ about the types of bait needed to catch goldfish. Whatever.

AJ is my little brother. He's the son of Savannah and her husband, Andrew. That's why he is called AJ, for Andrew Jeffery. He had Halima as a nanny too and because of that, he speaks very good Arabic. He mostly talks to Sety in Arabic and me in Simlish. AJ gets very high marks in school. He is in the elementary school section while Sety and I are in high school.

Mom's Surprise Announcement

Don't ask why but I decided to pay my mother a visit. And my mother has this hare brained idea to run for the at-large seat on the Sunset Valley city council.

I mean, I understand it's something to do and she's bored now that Bassy and I are out of the house... but still, it's a little surprising, considering we're decidedly apolitical.

Digging further, though, it's not so surprising that mom has political cajones. Her paternal grandfather, Sir Henry Bellingham, was a member of the British parliament. Even further back, another ancestor was a special aide to one of the British kings.

"Dear, sit and look pretty for the cameras," she told me as I sat next to dad. Talk about awkward. I'd rather be in the bottom of an Egyptian fire pit.

I don't know about mom's chances for winning. She's running against a pretty formidable candidate, Christy Gustafsson. Apparently Ms. G is well established in political circles. Mom has name recognition as the former conductor of the Sunset Valley orchestra so she has going for her. Ms. G's politics are pretty strange, though. She once led a protest against marriage in front of City Hall.