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Writer's pictureNathan Foley

6/22 - Printers and Baby Kidnappings

Good morning.


I’m waiting for this delivery to happen in WPA, so just kinda sitting around to start the morning.


Once I got Kieran down last night he slept for seven and a half hours, which is pretty great for a baby. He’s been getting big chunks of sleep like that recently, which has been very nice for us, allowing us to actually sleep for significant stretches.


I’d like to brainstorm for a few minutes here on some Ankora related things. I know I haven’t been the most diligent with its development, but like I said yesterday, I need to just live the creativity in a more natural manner instead of constantly trying to force perfection. If I just let it flow, the creativity will come.


Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the idea of healer-type magic users like priests or shamans. The setting I want to go for is something more ancient/medieval, and the idea that these healers have extraordinary powers to mend wounds and illnesses is something I want to explore a little bit. They have a knack for being in tune with the body and soul, so they have a sense for what to do and how to influence the ebb and flow of the life forces within. They aren’t just placing their hands on the infirm and magically healing them but instead are like primitive surgeons, getting dirty, elbow deep in the muck. They are more spiritual than magical, if that makes sense. Magic exists, but it isn’t like fireballs and summoning, but incantations, seances, supernatural type stuff.


Another angle that I’ve been exploring in my head is that of pregnancy and birth. I want to read about what that is like in ancient Rome and then subsequent eras. How are the women treated? What is thought of the process? How is it done?


Not only has Kieran influenced that train of thought but I’ve done a little preliminary research on Georgia Tann. She ran a child kidnapping / adoption ring for decades out of Memphis from the 1920’s through to her death in 1950. She operated the adoption agency Tennessee Children’s Home Society. They kidnapped children from their porches, yards, and neighborhood parks. Most of the children were stolen from poor families and then sold to wealthy people in places like California and New York.




Excerpt:




Sallie Brandon is different from Jennings and many other Tann victims. She was about 3½ years old when her mother gave her and her two brothers to Tann, so she remembers Tann and the home.


"I remember the day I met Georgia Tann," said Brandon, who now lives in Huntsville, Alabama. "I was born in 1945 in Lake County (Tennessee), and my mother had a hard time feeding us after our father died. She dropped my two brothers and I on the courthouse steps in Tiptonville. We were just sitting there when this big black limousine pulled up and this smiling lady gets out and says 'come with me.'


"We were herded into the car and brought back to Memphis. When we got here, they dropped my two brothers at another holding place and they took me to the house on Poplar. I remember the parties, when they would dress up the children and take them downstairs for a meet-and-greet. Some of the children would come back, some wouldn't."


It was more than 40 years before Brandon saw her brothers again. She found them through adoption records finally available for release. The state in 1996 opened the records of all adoptions and attempted adoptions through the Tennessee Children's Home Society.





Now imagine this type of scenario but within an ancient / medieval type of era:


An evil shaman is enslaving stolen children or a priest is selling them to the elite, where the children can be discarded if they do not conform. I’ll keep mulling it over and see where that goes.


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