Stage Fright - The Perdix Family Troupe

Shirlei Jonest and Krask Perdix found love at an early age.  They built a home, and started a family – eventually raising three beautiful children.  Though they found many joys together, their idyllic life would come crashing down after an unfortunate accident took Shirlei’s life, leaving the family without their matron.

Try as he might, Krask had an incredibly difficult time rearing their kids alone.  Shirlei was the backbone of the family, and a stern disciplinarian.  Without her influence, Krask could only watch as their children: Janis, Tyndyl, and Mortabelle found their way into greater and greater mischief.  Seeking solace in the music Shirlei used to love to play, Krask decided to unite the family into a traveling performing act and found that, for a while, the venture seemed to bind the family together.  As their success and fame took hold however, the youths fell deep into their vices, and began a downward spiral Krask could not seem to halt.

Mortabelle, whose voice was as golden and magnificent as the elegant yellow silk sash she wore around her waist, indulged her pride to outstanding degrees –seeing all those around her as disgusting untalented vermin.  It is said that Krask himself had to lead her around most everywhere, since her nose was routinely firmly upturned to an extreme degree.

A slight young woman draped in a cloak as red as the long hair that fell to her waist, Janis the flutist was prone to drunken fits of jealousy infused rage.  Being the middle child, she often felt lost between the beauty of Mortabelle and the raw explosive talent of the youngest Tyndyl. 

Never without his guitar (or his extravagant feathered cap), Tyndyl regularly indulged his lust for the flesh and found his debauchery nearly as legendary as his musical abilities.  Janis and Tyndyl fostered an extreme distaste for one another, and even in the same room would refuse to ever meet eyes and thus acknowledge the other.

As this all continued, Krask had reached his wits end.  His faculties were dwindling, he had nearly lost his eyesight and was forced to wear a set of ridiculously thick-rimmed spectacles, and he feared soon his health would fade.  Desperate to save his family from themselves, Krask believed the only person capable of righting the family ship was Shirlei.  Late one Autumn night, as the family troupe slept heavy after a particularly lively set played that very evening, Krask decided the time had finally come to unite the family together again the only way he knew how…

When his body was found early the next day near the mutilated corpses of his slaughtered children, a note he grasped in the rigor of death held the only known clue at the time to his motives.  It was the outline of one last song, a ballad entitled: “The Fruit That Fell from the Rootless Tree.”