It is often said, by those that had the (mis)fortune to come to know her, that the world of Tara is vast, complicated and weird, indeed.

At birth she was named the second in line to the wrong throne due to the lascivious ways of a mother that slept with a neighboring king and birthed her. A mother that would quite frankly, sell her, in an arranged marriage at the age of thirteen to a man nearly twice her age. A mother that would die, in a terrible fire, with the husband the little girl that would grow up to be called the Cockroach Killa thought was her true father. And a mother that would be spared knowing her child became every last thing she was and thensome.

During her tween years, the young girl plotted the death of that first husband, a monstrous bastard no deity would lay claim to, and succeeded in overthrowing the men that instilled themselves as regents in her native land Lanrette. She would follow the only blood brother she had that gave a damn about her to RhyDin and would become one of the most talked about females in the realms.

She later became the secretary to a man that was as evil as the concept itself yet would shield, love and protect her like no husband of hers before or after, save Nick, ever could. Together, they would baffle a generation and conceive a nation of people more powerful than ancient Rome.

She would align herself with creatures that ate children for breakfast and level villages along with the best of marauders, all in the name of Fame.

And when she was alone, very very alone, and quiet, the little girl who at nigh six hundred and sixteen years of age now, would play with the dolls she never could have had as a child. For fear of looking weakminded.

Long ago, in the time when RhyDin had more than its fair share of guilds and prominent families, Anna Marie Rynieyn, now known to most of you as Tara, married a man they called Soulights, thus becoming a member of the LeVey clan headed by Lord Grimm LeVey, his father.

In another area of town, a demon by the name of Larook "Lars" Helston, paved the way for his family and achieved a notoriety only most of us dream of. His home, House Helston, stood on many acres of land that just so happened to be adjacent the LeVey family land.

These two families, equal in social status and wealth, had grown to hate each other. Over time, because in the world of these two families there was plenty of it, the actual catalyst that brought them to the brink of war had been long forgotten. But when it got to the point where no Helston and LeVey could be within standing distance of one another, many lives were lost as a result.

In the mortal year of 2002, Tara and Lars met for the second time, but for them both they would believe this was the first meeting when, in fact, they had met many years prior, but from opposite sides of the fence. When you're old as those two are by this telling, one tends to forget the trivial things like family squabbles and long lost loves.

It was supposed to have been a match made in Hell. Lady Belial, Second in Command of Blood House Onyx, friend to both Tara and Lars, had arranged it but all would not go as she planned.

The night had gone off without a hitch. Lars had treated Tara to a fabulous dinner of leftover corpses and Astral realm surfing and toward the dawn, when both had tired considerably, they returned to Tara's palace in Lanrette for what was supposed to be a tryst but had turned out to be utter disaster.

As they were ascending the steps of her palace, intending on going to her apartments, Tara had made a fatal mistake by telling Lars her complete name. A name that included LeVey in it. Lars had, of course, taken the news badly. In turn, when Tara inquired as to what he was so angry about, Lars told her his last name.

And the feud of the two families was reborn.

There was no talking to them although many in the Bloods and Helston families combined tried. Both Lady Belial and Fiona Helston, who was Tara's best friend, tried their hardest to get the two to come to some sort of peace but neither would heed their words. It was all out war and many were fearful of what might happen.

Lars would mock and humiliate Tara in public and Tara would retaliate by sneaking into his home, putting her Taraprints on every antique in sight or scaring away potential bedmates of his. This entire mess went on for one year until Tara, while walking in the forest and lamenting over the fact that Larook did not love her as much as she did him, came upon the skeletal body of a child.

A child that had seen better days and was wearing a tiny yellow t-shirt with smatterings of blood and dirt crusted on it in places where no t-shirt should have such germs.

Her eyes lit up and she lifted the child in the air, happily singing its praises. By week's end, not only did the very dead child have a name--Norbert it was-- but he also had a father.

Larook "Lars - Please Kill Me Now" Helston.

What luck! As you might have guessed, the Demon Lord was furious when he came to find out that Tara was going around town saying he was the child's father and insisting he was a deadbeat dad. It wasn't the fact that Tara was pretending he was the dead kid's father that was the problem but that Tara was actually behaving as if the kid were alive.

Even demons had boundaries and this was one that Tara, evidently, did not share.

She was in a category all to herself and Lars had learned it the hard way.

At first he went along with Tara and restrained himself from choking the Unlife out of her --something a demon as powerful as Lars could easily do and with his eyes closed, mind you-- but when Tara didn't let up and nearly two months had passed, he knew he had to do something.

He chose to ignore her. At first that seemed to help a little because Tara feigned sadness and when she was sad, or pretending to be sad in this case, she got quiet. This would normally give her target enough time to pack up his/her belongings and skip town but no half-brained whackadoodle like Tara was going to run Lars Helston out of RhyDin. Oh no sirree! He was going to wait her out.

When she recovered and began to pass out fliers around town that Lars was shirking his duties as both a parent and a husband, he went to the Bloods to see if someone could talk some sense into her.

Sense into a Tara? Surely Lars was kidding himself if he thought this was even remotely possible but you can't blame the guy for trying. She was a member of the Bloods, he was a friend of Belial's, and he didn't need a band of whatever slavers were left in the realms all vying for his head on top of her antics. It was better to let the family she was staying with deal with her. Or...so he thought.

He went to the Bloods and this is what he said: Not only was he not that dead kid's father, but he was also not Tara's husband. Why he had a wife, two, in fact! One for each of the dual parts of his anatomy that was for Procreation and which most men only had one. He called them "The Lads" and no woman alive or undead, once seeing them with her own eyes, would ever look at their respective love interest the same way again. As they say, that's for damn sure.

The only problem with having the two wives that Lars did was that those two in particular were not readily available but oh how Lars wished they weren't vacationing in some remote part of Hell so they could aid him then in his darkest hour. It is said he tried every which way to contact them but knowing Perish as one does, she only ever arrives when she's damn good and ready, not a second before. As for the other wife, suffice it to say she was more interested in shopping than saving Lars's sanity.

Afterall, when the going gets tough, grab his wallet and make for the mall!

Lars was up the creek without a paddle and sinking fast. He exhausted all his options. He even tried pleading with the half-pint menace to have some mercy on him but Tara wasn't going to settle for anything less than Lars as her husband and him acknowledging Norbert as his own.

So Lars did what no one thought he would.

He stood up on a chair, put a noose around his neck and jumped. Belial saved him. Lars cried.

When that didn't work out, he tore a hole in the atmosphere and opened his arms, expecting to be sucked in. Tara saved him and called him a quitter. Lars drank himself into a self-induced coma.

Then, because he just could not take that little hellion, not a second more, Lars got his gun.

His "boomstick" in fact.

If you're a fan of the Evil Dead film series, you will know that a boomstick is a shotgun used to annihilate undead creatures that never seem to go away no matter how hard you try.

In the two and half years that Tara tormented and stalked Larook "Lars - I'll Pay You A King's Ransom If You Kill Me Now" Helston, he shot more holes in her than anyone else in his entire lifespan. And yet, Tara still was there.

By all accounts, Lars was screwed.

He had tried to be nice and get her to stop the gentleman's way and he had failed. He had tried to kill himself, thinking at least in Hell he'd be free of her for a little while and had failed. He had even tried to rid RhyDin of Tara Rynieyn a.k.a. Da Cockroach Killa many a time and even that hadn't worked.

Just as all hope was looking lost, Lars had an idea. It was a crazy one, he must've thought at the time, but he didn't know what else to do. So he went up to Tara and he told her, in the most loving of words, that he loved her and what do you think Tara did?

She fainted.

When she awoke, she was mad. Not mad that Lars had taken that long to fess up but mad that he would even think of loving her when he had two wives of his own! What did he think she was, a link on his chain?! A passing fancy? Yes, Lars unlocked one of Tara's greatest mysteries in a single sentence. In suggesting he loved her, she would become one of his mistresses, a comparison that Tara felt most closely resembled a slave. That was something she absolutely, under no circumstances, would ever be again.

Around the same time, Perish Helston returned and Tara went to her to tell her all about Lars's philandering behind her back. Perish, upon meeting the girl she'd come to call "FlufferNutter", hid her amusement and warned Tara to stay away from Lars. Tara obeyed.

Then, one night, when Tara was alone again and reflecting on the time she had spent chasing Lars, and demanding he make payment to her for the skeletal child she was convinced they created together, Tara couldn't find little Norbert.

He wasn't anywhere she usually placed him, or what she referred to as his "hiding places", though, to tell you the truth, Norbert never could walk on his own, and Tara became panicked.

She searched for her little boy high and low. She even enlisted the help of the one she tormented: Larook "Lars - Damn It's Great To Be Me" Helston but even he couldn't help find him.

At first she was depressed and all that knew her comforted her. Corm, a man that is known to frequent the Red Dragon on occassion, and someone you might know, even sat with Tara outside the tavern and holding her in his lap, calmed her down with a story that caused her to fall fast asleep. Even The Watcher, Talitha Lee, had a kind word for little Tara who most days got on her last nerve.

In time Tara forgot about Norbert. Not forgot as in completely, but forgot where he wasn't on her mind twenty-four-seven like mostly all of her obsessions were. But all that was about to change, now wasn't it?

It just so happened that this particular night the Queen O Mean was on her way into the forest for some blackberries she heard grew there. Nick, her husband, was a fan of them and she wanted to collect enough so that he could enjoy himself.

She brought along the Sprout --her very much alive and one that had a father, child-- and was just finishing up collecting as many blackberries as she could fit in the basket she held, when her eye caught sight of a flash of yellow in some leaves nearby.

Going over to investigate Tara was both horrified and elated to see Norbert laying there. Pointing frantically to the dead kid, she looked to the live one, and declared...

"Sprout, it's yer brother, Norbert, back from sleepaway camp! Oh, do tell us, fearless son, how you spent yer time?!"

The live kid looked to the dead kid then back to his undead mother and made a face.

If he ever lived long enough to be able to convey his constant and overwhelming fear of what the little redhead with the pigtails and violet eyes would say or do next, he vowed he'd relay it all.

Blow by bitter blow.

Until then, like Larook "Lars - I Broke Free of Tara and For Twenty Gold I'll Show You, You Can Too!" Helston, he was so very screwed.