Dray Prescot Series - Storyline

Storyline

The series features the story of Earthman Dray Prescot, an English sailor of Nelson's navy, and his miraculous teleportation to the planet Kregen. There he is trained as an agent for the mysterious Savanti, an apparently benevolent secret society devoted to improving the lot of humanity among the many intelligent species of Kregen. The Savanti are the guardians of a miraculous pool which both heals wounds and extends life, similar to the Fountain of Youth in Earth legend. Prescot falls from grace for using this pool to heal Delia, an injured supplicant to the Savanti, and incidentally the princess of the island empire of Vallia. Thanks to their immersion in the pool Prescot and Delia gain extended natural lifespans of a thousand years, but by violating the sanctity of the pool both are banished back to their homelands—in Prescot’s case, Earth.

Returned to Kregen through the agency of the Star Lords, an even more mysterious rival group of unknown motivations, Prescot becomes a pawn in their schemes, sent willy-nilly to various locations on the planet to serve their ends and capriciously returned to Earth when his task is done or when he manages to offend them. Despite this handicap he usually rises to a position of power in whatever society he is thrust into, and is able to renew and further his relationship with Delia. Eventually they are able to wed and found a family.

Aside from carrying out his missions for the Star Lords, securing his place on Kregen, and winning (and returning) to Delia, Prescot’s ongoing goals include the suppression of slavery in Paz and building a coalition against the marauding Shanks, a Viking-like race of fish-headed Diffs who raid the coasts of Paz from a base in the opposite hemisphere of Kregen.

The text is ostensibly a transcript by “Akers” of a series of audio tapes recorded by Dray Prescot on periodic returns to Earth, which come into his hands by a variety of means over a number of years. Supposed gaps in the tapes allow the author the opportunity of occasional jumps in the narrative, leaving teasing mysteries for the reader as to just what might have happened in between.

The cycles into which the sequence is divided form substories within the overall storyline, sometimes arranged topically and sometimes by setting. These sequences include:

• The Delian Cycle, which relates Prescot’s earliest sojourns on Kregen, introduces a number of the main Kregish settings, and resolves his initial quest for the hand of Delia.
• The Havilfar Cycle, set on the continent of Havilfar, unseen in the earlier cycle, which deals mainly with Prescot’s quest to learn the secret of manufacturing vollers, or airships, a monopoly of Havilfar’s expansionist empire of Hamal.
• The Krozair Cycle, which returns Prescot to the Eye of the World, a Mediterranean-like locale first visited in the Delian Cycle, where he is now outlawed for having failed to aid his fellow members in the warrior brotherhood of the Krozairs of Zy (he was on Earth at the time).
• The Vallian Cycle, which plunges the empire of Vallia into civil war, which only the exertions of Prescot can resolve.
• The Jikaida Cycle, which finds him as a sort of gladiator condemned to fight in living games of Jikaida, ordinarily a chess-like board game played by the peoples of Kregen. The game of Jikaida was inspired by Jetan, or Martian Chess, invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs for his Martian novels.
• The Spikatur cycle.
• The Pandahem Cycle, dealing mainly with the affairs of the island continent of Pandahem.
• The Witch War Cycle, concerning Prescot's efforts to combat a magical curse placed on Vallia.
• The Lohvian Cycle, set primarily on the continent of Loh.
• The Balintol Cycle, set primarily on the subcontinent of Balintol.
• The Phantom Cycle, the final group of Dray Prescot novels.

The story never catches up to the present, although from Prescot’s mysterious appearances and disappearances in the present day it can be presumed that his role as a pawn of the Star Lords continues. Prescot learns more of the rival Star Lords and Savanti as the series progresses, though their mysteries are never fully resolved.

It was Bulmer’s expressed intent to resolve the sequence in volume 53 by having Prescot and Delia experience a sort of apotheosis, possibly raising them to the level of Star Lords themselves, to be revealed in a final visit to Earth by their son Drak, thus accounting for the unfinished nature of the narrative. This volume remains unpublished in English.