In my book Wrathful Empathies, The 2nd Raid on Harpers Ferry, I invented The Kindred to carry on John Brown’s battle for freedom. They are fighters for God that fight evil in all dimensions; physical as well as spiritual. The bible is their inspiration and the US Constitution is their mandate. I thought the battle would be more interesting if there was another group of fighters. These needed to be of another sort. They are loyal to the homeland and have roots that run deep. A sense of place and kin is paramount. Again, the area of Virginia where my story takes place provided the perfect warriors. I kept seeing historical markers informing me that I was in Mosby’s territory. If you don’t know him, Wikipedia provides the following description:
Exactly how to describe the Confederate 43rd Battalion was a matter of contention during the war, with the terms soldiers, partisans, and rangers being suggested. The Union viewed them as unsoldierly guerrillas hiding among civilians; a simple loose band of roving thieves. However, according to the memoirs of one of Mosby’s men, John Munson, Mosby himself avoided using overtly militaristic words like “troops” or “soldiers” or “battalion” in favor of the more familial “Mosby’s Men” or “Mosby’s command”. Northern newspapers and Unionists referred to them as guerrillas, a term of opprobrium at the time. Munson stated that “the term [guerilla] was not applied to us in the South in any general way until after the war, when we had made the name glorious, and in time we became as indifferent to it as the whole South to the word Rebel.”[2]
I resurrected Mosby and his men as “unsoldierly guerrillas hiding among civilians” as defenders of the Blue Ridge. I chose them because Mosby actually roamed the area by night and struck the enemy when they least expected it. After a lightening fast raid, they would evaporate back into the land. I just imagined what these men would look like today. They are the forgotten workers of an economy that was sent outside our nation without the least thought of their welfare. They are bitter, angry and hostile to authority. They survive outside the law. These modern day “Deplorables” had one last attribute that made my decision to incorporate them into my story: Mosby and his raiders never surrendered but simply disbanded. In effect, they melted back into the hills and across the valley. Even though I had not researched their ancestry to present, I assumed their descendants are still in the area. It takes little imagination to think their fighting spirit never dimmed, their love of their homeland still burns bright and their defense of kin is as strong as ever.
The evil Authority agents don’t expect them to rise up out of the misty hollows and fight. In fact, nobody really knows their unit still exist outside their tight group. The Authority mistakes them for The Kindred. In reality, these two groups wage war separately against the Authority. Of course, there is also the giant possessed Timber Rattlesnake that nobody controls attacking wildly out of the brush. That is another blog post. The new Mosby is the uncle of the teenage Orc and while his raiders seek to rescue the boy, they also seek blood revenge for the murder of kin.
As a writer, I really can’t take credit for my characters. The people of the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley have done most of the work.
