The Great Troll War

38 Crossing over into the Cambrian Empire. He was saved by Perkins, who turned him to rubber before he hit the ground – and he remained as rubber for the next few days. See The Eye of Zoltar for the full story.

Breaking the Spaniel Barrier

39 Whether they meant in general or just Subterrain-specific, I never did quite find out.

Inside Shandar’s Tower

40 Bergerac wasn’t there. I checked.

41 Homing snails are technically Helix velocitas pomatia, and are both male and female, hence the ‘they’ and ‘them’ pronouns. I could have written ‘it’ but that would be disrespectful.

42 You need to look this guy up.

43 As you might imagine, ‘ectomy’ is a medical term relating to the removal of something, in the case of ‘Soulectomy’, a soul. The word can also apply to tonsils (tonsilectomy) or bone (ostectomy).

Wedding bells

44 She was previously a scruffy solicitor who was fired for sloppy property conveyancing.

Kevin sees it all

45 I’m still not referring to Sir Matt Grifflon as ‘King’.

The Worriers

46 From the Italian slang for a group of people who constantly worry. Pronounced: ‘fret-a-rar-tee’.

47 Granting ‘dodgy pardons’ for cash was the sole form of income for the diminutive duchy, along with jam-making, and exorbitant tolls on a 126-foot stretch of the Kennet and Avon canal.

48 It is actually a lot more complicated than this, as the methane is mixed with pure oxygen and hydrogen, which is generated in a gland above the Dragon’s throat. The resultant mix, sustained for long enough, will indeed melt armour – yet if controlled precisely and directed at a frying pan, can be used to make a very refreshing omelette.

49 Cloud Leviathans, Australopithecines, Ralph and Evolutionary Master Resets are all fully explained in The Eye of Zoltar.

50 The British Thermal Unit. Simply put, just how much energy would it take to carbonise a human? It’s only of relevance to fire-breathing Dragons. I don’t know where he went to get the figure.

Cloud Leviathan

51 A single average-sized Angel’s Feather has an uplift of two pounds, just under that of the average house brick. You can find out more about the uplifting power of Angel’s Feathers in The Eye of Zoltar.

The One True Monarch

52 Spanish for ‘The Charisma’. Unlike ‘La Calienta’ (hot) or ‘Las Llamas’ (The Llamas), which are all well known, ‘El Carisma’ has only been mastered by three known princesses. No one knows why they are all named in Spanish.

Humans v. Trolls

53 Molly, the fifteenth, was with us. She never did go home.

54 It’s the nearest star to ours, about 4.2 light-years away. If Shandar was planning on getting there in thirty-seven years, he was going to have to circumvent some pretty big physical laws.

55 This is a geeky in-joke reference to early Volkswagens. You can safely ignore it.

We say goodbye

56 A ‘transfer gearbox’ is the secondary gearbox that engages four-wheel drive and lowers the gearing ratio.

Jupiter and Beyond

57 ‘Going nova’: an exploding star. Shandar’s idea of a firework display. I don’t suppose he cared whether that sun was home to a friendly system of planets.

58 Named after the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, this salad is made of apple, celery, walnuts and grapes on a bed of lettuce, liberally drizzled with mayonnaise.

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