Princess Lilac: Vanishing Princess or Runaway Royal?

What exactly happened to the royalty of Terror Mountain?

Now, I’m sure most of you will be asking “What royalty? I didn’t know Terror Mountain had any!” Well, the truth is far more sinister, ladies and gentlemen. The truth is, one of the royal families of Neopia has mysteriously vanished, and no one seems to notice! Is it just a case of seclusion from the rest of Neopia? Or is it something more sinister, such as a kidnapping? And why is the Neopets staff still so tight-lipped about it? I was determined to find out the truth, so I began investigating.

My first stop was the Neopedia. Until a few years ago, there was an article on a certain Lupe named Princess Lilac, who was a member of Terror Mountain’s royalty. This immediately clues us in that there are more victims than Lilac, as there isn’t any way that a Princess could rule over such a vast area as Terror Mountain by herself. (I’m sure Princesses Vyssa and Amira come to mind, but we know there were at least THREE King Coltzans. How would a Princess such as Lilac become ruler of Terror Mountain unless she had help from a King and Queen?)

There is also another article concerning Princess Lilac that vanished around the same time. It concerns a location called Lilac Island, which was commissioned especially for her by a Lupe architect whose name is unrecorded. When I looked through the Neopedia, both of these articles were missing. Now, there are two possibilities:

1. Due to some catastrophe (which may or may not be connected with the Hannah and the Ice Caves plot), Princess Lilac fled Terror Mountain and hid on Lilac Island, which she had removed from the Neopedia so that no one knew where she was. Evidently, the Lupe feared for her own safety, but why anyone would target such a little-known Princess is unknown. (Of course, we can’t locate the Princess because we have no clue where Lilac Island is.)

2. The second possibility is the one which I believe holds more water, no pun intended. I believe that Princess Lilac did not flee of her own accord; instead, she was kidnapped, and her article in the Neopedia was removed to take her off the public’s minds. The removal of Lilac Island from the Neopedia may have just been an accident (whomever was removing the other entry might have removed that one as well by mistake), or perhaps that’s even where Lilac is hidden!

To find out more, I went to the Neopedia building and asked the nice Kacheek at the front desk. Here is a transcript of our conversation:

Me: (coughs) Excuse me.

Kacheek: Yes?

Me: Hi there! I was just wondering if you knew anything about Princess Lilac or the mysterious Lilac Island.

Kacheek: Sorry?

Me: Princess Lilac. Do you know anything about her?

Kacheek: Um... I’ll check in the back.

It was at this exact moment that I took out my Rainbow Frost Cannon and froze the pet solid. I began searching through the various file cabinet indexes, trying to find something. Well, before the Chia Police dragged me off, I did find something. Wedged between entries on Lady Osiri and Lilian Fairweather, I spotted a small index card at the bottom of the cabinet shelf and snatched it up on the spot. It read:

Entry ‘Lilac Island’ on loan for indeterminate period of time.

Loaned to: The Neopets Team

Now, this raises several new questions, considering that a similar card was found in place of the ‘Princess Lilac’ entry as well. First off, why would The Neopets Team want these two entries? And second, why was The Neopets Team involved in the kidnapping of Princess Lilac?

In my opinion, this piece of evidence correlates more to my first theory than to the second. I believe that the kidnapping (and, likely, the removal of the entries) was orchestrated by someone not connected with TNT itself. Could this mean that Maverick, who was famously revealed as one of Dr. Sloth’s robot minions during the Ski Lodge Murder Mystery plot, was resurrected? If Maverick is to blame, does this mean that Dr. Sloth is behind the kidnapping? My next stop, the Faerie Castle Library, was bound to give me some answers.

Once I arrived in Faerieland, I hit a bit of a snag. How was I going to enter Faerie Castle and find the library? Eventually, I stumbled upon a custodial job at the Employment Agency within an hour (my Rainbow Frost Cannon was, yet again, involved) that involved cleaning a certain floor of Faerie Castle. Of course, an owner skulking around the castle in a janitor’s uniform was bound to create suspicion, so I enlisted the help of one of my pets. (For both my and my pet’s safety, we’ll refer to her as Blue.)

“I really don’t want to do this,” the aptly-named Blue Meerca protested as I shoved her towards the Employment Agency, a bucket and mop in hand. “Can’t we go play Volcano Run instead?”

“Do this for me and you can play Volcano Run as much as you want,” I said quickly before encouraging her (gently, mind you) into the Agency. While Blue worked, I did various activities that have no need to be included in this article until she walked up to me, two hours later.

“Got it,” she coughed, handing me a bright blue book. I then noticed that Blue was covered in soot, dust and the occasional scratch.

“What happened?” I asked as I quickly gave her a healing potion.

Blue coughed again. “Chimneys-cobwebs-*cough*-sweeping-*cough*-Biting Books-*cough**cough*,” she said, as if that explained the entire ordeal. I’m happy to say that she made a full recovery, but I’d like to say to Fyora, if she’s reading this, that I really have no idea why a bunch of your Biting Books ended up charred, soaking wet, or immobilized in multicoloured ice. Really.

Anyway, I promptly opened the book to have it clamp down on my wrist with sharp fangs. Apparently it was a Biting Book in disguise, so before I attracted the attention of too many bystanders (and a lot of them were already staring), I wrenched the book off and tossed it towards the nearby cloud. And guess whose cloud that was?

Jhudora’s.

It took a while to calm the enraged Dark Faerie down, but after I promised to do one of her quests she cooled her heels significantly.

“Bring me a Dwarf Tree,” she commanded. I raised an eyebrow.

“A Dwarf Tree? But doesn’t Illusen usually ask for those?”

“Exactly,” she cackled, leaving us with little doubt that a nasty surprise was headed Illusen’s way. “Now, be gone! You have 20 minutes and 15 seconds left.”

Blue and I wouldn’t have done the quest, but we were desperate, and so we rushed off. Exactly 17 minutes, several shops, one angry Earth Faerie, five desperate attempts at haggling and 12 seconds later we arrived back at Jhudora’s Cloud, a healthy-looking Dwarf Tree in my arms.

“Excellent!” she boomed as I dropped the Tree in front of her throne as two Bartamus flew over and transported the item away. “Here is your reward!” She handed Blue a Noxious Nectar. Just as Blue was about to run away as far as she could, I stepped up and looked Jhudora in the eye.

“What do you know about Princess Lilac and Lilac Island?”

Jhudora coughed. “Er... well... it’ll cost you another quest.”

*****

35 minutes and 20 seconds later, Blue and I deposited several bags of Rainbow Dung (Fyora knows what Jhudora needed that for) at the Dark Faerie’s feet. Again, the two Bartamus came and carried away the bags with some difficulty, and again Jhudora looked down at us.

“Now, to answer your question, although I don’t see why you couldn’t just ask King Hagan or the Library Faerie or someone. Princess Lilac was a Lupe that ruled over Terror Mountain, but was –”

The Dark Faerie was interrupted by a scary-looking Fire Faerie Doll descending from the sky that had a British-sounding woman’s voice issuing from it.

“DON’T PUSH IT, JHUDORA,” commanded the doll. Blue decided to go ahead and poke it, at which it said “Burp!” and vanished.

“At least it wasn’t the evilly-laughing asparagus this time,” the Dark Faerie muttered as she looked up at the sky and then back at us. “Er, I don’t know anything about a Princess Lilac or Lilac Island. Now, be gone! I have more victims— I mean questers— to meet!”

As soon as Blue and I left Jhudora’s Cloud, we went over what we knew so far:

1.Princess Lilac may or may not have been kidnapped, for reasons yet unknown.

2.Princess Lilac and Lilac Island’s Neopedia entries were “borrowed” by The Neopets Team, for reasons yet unknown.

3.The Faeries know something, but they are forced to keep quiet by The Neopets Team, for reasons yet unknown.

With all this evidence seemingly going nowhere (except for ‘reasons yet unknown’ being repeated excessively), Blue and I decided to go to the next plausible location. Although we couldn’t find TNT’s office, we settled for the next best thing.

*****

Once Blue and I arrived in Terror Mountain, our goal, for the first time, was clear: find a way into the castle in the middle of Happy Valley that, for some strange reason, is not marked on any map (Snow Wars actually takes place beside the castle, not inside). I had hypothesized that, since this was likely where Princess Lilac had lived, it would give us some idea as to what actually happened.

We walked up to the castle’s front doors, grabbed the door knockers and knocked politely. Nothing happened, so we promptly took out Blue’s Battledome equipment and began hacking away at the wooden doors. Yet again, no response.

After several unsuccessful attempts at getting in (some of which involved Blue being tossed over the walls and jumping to the roof from the ledge in front of the Ice Caves entrance, both of which ended in the consumption of many strong healing potions), I decided to do something that was so simple it might actually work.

I, very gently, pushed open one of the front doors to find... absolutely nothing.

And I don’t mean ‘nothing’ in the usual sense. There were no rooms, no doors, nothing. It was just a great, white void of emptiness.

Then, to my great surprise, the head of a Kau appeared and screeched, “This page must have MOOOOOVED!” I must admit that Kau heads that pop up randomly and moo at you scare me to death, so I ran screaming outside as the doors slammed shut.

*****

Well, there you have it, folks. One owner’s intrepid expedition to try and discover just what happened to Princess Lilac and the mysterious Lilac Island, which ended unsatisfactorily. However, the events recorded in this article do shine a light on a member of Neopian royalty that, if it were not for this article, would have faded into obscurity.

Some questions still abound. Where is Princess Lilac? Was she kidnapped, and if so, was it the Neopets Team, Maverick, Dr. Sloth, a floating Fire Faerie Doll, or someone else? What exactly happened to Lilac Island? (Does Dr. Hugo Fairweather need to get involved?) And what exactly is a Kau doing inside a Terror Mountain castle?

These questions are posed to you, dear readers. I only hope that you can find the answers.

Author’s Note: Thanks for reading my article, which, if you are, means that this was published! Any comments are welcome via Neomail.