Geppetto

### Beginning

Geppetto is the creator of Pinocchio, the wooden boy who was ultimately, after a series of adventures, turned into a human boy by the Blue Fairy. However, it transpired that his conversion to human form had not cured Pinocchio of his wanderlust and the boy repeatedly left on adventures, often disappearing for years at a time, leaving Geppetto behind to wait in lonely solitude for his return.

Geppetto's solution seemed obvious, to create new children, initially older sons, operating under the assumption that they would prove more mature than Pinocchio, then turning his hand to daughters. The Blue Fairy continued to visit, and, every now and then, would take a liking to one of the children and turn them human. Having also been hurt by Pinocchio's vagabond nature, she altered her magic to include bonds of loyalty to Geppetto and of fealty to hearth and home. The two gradually fell in love.

### The Wardrobe

However the time came when the Blue Fairy revealed that a curse cast by an evil Queen would bring several lost people back into the world. She wanted Pinocchio to aid in helping "The Savior" break the curse cast on the town. Geppetto refused at first but eventually complied. The Blue Fairy told Gepetto that a magical tree would find its way from the world of Narnia in 1900. Fearing he would not be alive to see the plan through, Geppetto constructed a wooden form of himself which was brought to life to fulfill the role of the original. When the time came the Wardrobe was constructed on the behalf of the British Government and Pinocchio was placed inside so that he would not experience the passage of time. He soon after vanished, with an alternate version of him and Geppetto being created in EverRealm.

### Start of the Empire

Life continued in a generally happy fashion until Geppetto was approached by the elders of the local community who were growing increasingly concerned about the erratic behaviour of the local Count. They proposed that he should be replaced; that Geppetto should create a double for the Count, persuade the Blue Fairy to turn him human, then, at some suitable point, replace the Count with his double. Despite initial misgivings, as the plan clearly had to involve the murder of the real Count, the switch was made and sanity settled back into the land. The new Count ruled wisely, but eventually the time came for him to pass away. His son was highly incompetent, so the decision was made to repeat the procedure.

As time passed, the process became habitual, and it wasn't too long before every major ruling official within range had been replaced by one of Geppetto's duplicates, and thus, through the Blue Fairy's magic, all of them were loyal to him. However, the Fairy ultimately tired of the game, putting Geppetto in a problematic situation. With his co-conspirators hungry to expand the territory that they controlled, the inability to turn the duplicates human was a problem. Unfortunately, Geppetto could not continue with the magic himself and asked the Blue Fairy to take him to EverRealm. He got his wish and began to learn magic from the Blue Fairy. Within a short period of time, Geppetto came to understand how the Blue Fairy performed her magic, but he lacked her unique magical nature, which acted as her power source. During her next visit, he solved that problem by attacking her and hooking her up to a system that allowed him to create elixirs from her body that could turn his duplicates human. He soon began to replace several officials and Leaders. He realized the Fables of EverRealm were constantly reenacting the same stories and found a way to free some of them by replacing them with Wooden duplicates. Many of the lords under his control had court magicians in their service and were able to send them to Geppetto to instruct him in the ways of magic, making him a powerful sorcerer aided by the fact that he was not human but a magical living being.

### Becoming Emperor

Geppetto now faced up to the problem of his co-conspirators. Too many people knew about what was happening and he felt that it would only be a matter of time before one of them revealed it. Some obligingly died of old age, but others were of Fablekind and refused to age. Acting entirely alone, Geppetto proceeded to kill and replace the remaining conspirators, while also continuing to replace local government officials from the surrounding areas. Without him really realising it, Geppetto's empire was well under way.

Expansion became the key to maintaining his empire, and Geppetto had by now developed a taste for ruling, taking the view that it was better that he should be in charge than someone who might prove to be less benevolent. However, a new problem had arisen. His empire had expanded to the extent that the nearby leaders were complete strangers to him, so it would not be possible to surreptitiously replace them. Subterfuge was no longer an option. Fortunately, by this point, Geppetto had control over a considerable military force, through the various lords under his control. Augmented by magically summoned creatures, his armies were able to overwhelm most opposition with some ease, especially since few (if any) expected the attacks. Geppetto also created the figure of the Emperor, a massively imposing figure, heavily armoured, to be his figurehead to inspire martial loyalty and to strike fear into enemy forces.

Geppetto himself tends to stay out of direct control, allowing his sons and daughters, now numbering in the tens of thousands, to handle the day-to-day running of the empire. Geppetto prefers to remain in his cottage workshop, only occasionally getting involved to set policy and broad goals for the empire.

At the beginning of the 1940s, the empire has absorbed all of the European Fable worlds (with a few exceptions, such as the kingdom of the North Wind) and is beginning a new expansion cycle, launching an assault on the Arabian fables.

Once more Fable worlds fell under his control, Geppetto instituted a system for conquest. For 50 years, his army would conquer new kingdoms. Following that, there would be 50 years to consolidate his new worlds.(Which began in the 1950s and resumed in the 2000s) By modern times, Geppetto's Empire was massive, having conquered all the European Fable worlds. Geppetto had also begun a conquest against the Arabian Fable worlds, hoping to be ready for conquest against the Asian and African Fable worlds in a mere few centuries more.

Needing more wooden soldiers and aids crafted at an ever increasing and expanding pace, he employed junior and senior craftsmen to help him carve more sons and daughters, personally overseeing each craftsman's progress so that his wooden offspring would always be to his liking, not realizing that Frau Totenkinder had infiltrated his workshop using her sources and began to gather intelligence on his Empire.

Sometime after the conquest of the Arabian Fable worlds started, Geppetto was contacted by one of his wooden soldiers fighting in the conquest, Rodney. The soldier and his escort, a female wooden puppet named June, informed their creator that they were in love and wished to marry, asking Geppetto the transform them into real people. After a brief conversation, Geppetto decided to allow the two to become real people and used the Blue Fairy's magic to transform them.