The Whispering Mage

Creator: Alan Lance Andersen
Age rating: Everyone
Amantha le Pard, a young wizardess, transfers to a wizard academy in New Orleans to help authorities capture a wizardly serial kidnapper. She encounters a rich, multicultural magick community. Amantha becomes bait in a subtle trap laid to ensnare "The Whispering Mage."
Project collaboration: Open
Full synopsis
Synopsis: LOGLINE

Amantha le Pard, a young wizardess, transfers to a wizard academy in New Orleans to help authorities capture a wizardly serial kidnapper. She encounters a rich, multicultural magick community with black, Creole, and Cajun influences, swamp monsters, and rival students from a gothic punk magick academy. Amantha becomes bait in a subtle trap laid to ensnare "The Whispering Mage."

SYNOPSIS

The scene opens at the Bayou of Bittersweet Death, surrounded by fog and Spanish moss. The Whispering Mage conducts a forbidden ritual on his latest kidnap victim. He pulls the child's soul from its body and stores it in a vial. The scene switches to New Orleans. Malcombe Portière, a black Federation of Magick agent who wears traditional African robes instead of wizard gowns, is lecturing students on the dangers posed by the serial kidnapper known as the Whispering Mage. Amantha le Pard is a student from Scheherazade Academy, a school of magick in London for juvenile delinquents and wild talents. Unlike other wizardlings from her school, she is the daughter of a noble family and exhibits none of the outward antisocial attributes usual to her classmates. She has transferred to The Sazerac to be with her cousin Madelaine, who was one of the Whispering Mage's victims.

Amantha is befriended by a colorful team of New Orleans wizard students -- both black, white, and mixed blood -- notably the handsome black captain of the swampboard team Leroy Carver King; the irrepressible Abrianna LaCroix; the lovely Aamiah Duvernay, who is from Africa; and Amantha's own two cousins, Madelaine and Petit-Jean Delacott. She makes an enemy of Lamar Brown, who plays nasty jokes on her using voodoo. This animosity culminates in Amantha and Lamar fighting a formal duel of magick at New Orleans' famous Dueling Oaks. Lamar unleashes five deadly magick attacks, which Amantha parries easily. She then holsters her wand and disposes with Lamar using nothing more than a gesture hex with her little finger. Meanwhile, a rivalry has sprung up between the Sazerac swampball team and the "Gravediggers" -- the gothic wizard students from Dreadlore Manor. There is an action-packed sports game on Barataria Swamp with team members on flying surfboards. The rivalry culminates in an adventure-packed swampboard race through the monster-laden Bayou of Bittersweet Death in which Leroy is nearly killed by a Finneytribe. (Swamp monsters from Louisiana folklore replace the traditional dragons, gryphons, and suchlike found in most wizard fantasies).

There are a number of enigmatic things about Amantha:

* Amantha hates getting wet -- but can swim like a champion to rescue her cousin from an alligator attack

* The Headmaster locks her in the donjon overnight (for Detention) to test her ability to control her "wild talent. But only he and Amantha seem to know what that mysterious talent consists of ...

* Amantha periodically loses her appetite for vegetables

* Although normally sensible and practical, Amantha sometimes takes terrible risks without seeming to be aware of the danger

* This sweet twelve-year-old girl sometimes comes across as downright dangerous ...

Clues to Amantha's secret are frequently given throughout the story (unknowingly) by the instructors of her magick classes. Amantha and her cousins visit their ancestral plantation, see the family ghost, and inadvertently trigger plot elements which will figure largely in the second story in the Amantha le Pard series. The story culminates in Amantha falling into the clutches of the dreaded Whispering Mage. After being imprisoned in the villain's rather eccentric townhouse in the French Quarter, she is taken to the Bayou of Bittersweet Death for a chilling reenactment of the opening scene of the story.

Only this time, things don't go quite as the Whispering Mage expects when he learns too late what Amantha's wild talent is. As he falls into the chilling trap laid for him by Special Agent Portière, the Mage discovers that Amantha is more than just the bait ...

Latest Work

  • Script 1 - Alan's Original Draft
    12/14/10
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    Creative Notes:
    Magickal Television Series for Children & Teens

    An important factor in choosing a new fantasy series is location. Louisiana — and New Orleans in particular — overflows with magic and supernatural lore. There is Voodoo and Witchcraft in the city and Bayou Monsters in the swamps.

    The State of Louisiana offers a 30% Tax Credit for motion pictures produced in Louisiana.
    RTF