The Prehistory of Oz

[drelmo]

 So driving to the game last week, I started putting together an Oz story in my head, in which the story main characters get zapped back into Oz's far distant past, before it was a fairyland. Probably Dorothy and the Glass Cat, because the one is a great heroine and the other is my favorite Oz character

Comments

[womzilla]

That's a pretty cool idea. Our dancing stuffed smilodon, Smiley, approves.

I will note that "Tertiary" is now a deprecated term for the geological period following the Kretaceous; it's been divided into the Paleogene and Neogene.

[drelmo]

Thank you. Also, I guess I wasn't aware that Tertiary had been officially deprecated; I guess I probably would aim at a Neogene sort of environment.

It occurs to me that the correct way to structure the story would be to mimic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That gives me a whole lot to work with. The Glass Cat fills in for Toto. Instead of the Scarecrow, an artificial shepherd, who was made to defend a herd against troodontids. The Tin Woodsman becomes, oh, a creature who was fossilized a little bit at a time. The Cowardly Lion becomes, as noted, the Happy Smilodon. Then you have Wizard, Witch, and Glinda analogs for antagonists and plot-movers, and reasons to travel to the different regions of pre-Oz.