tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50446680090916353702024-03-15T18:09:07.622-07:00I Don't Remember That MoveDunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.comBlogger224125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-44878688410792478242023-04-07T17:53:00.004-07:002023-04-07T17:53:50.426-07:00substack announcement<p> I've been writing short stories and <a href="https://matthalton.substack.com/">putting them on Substack.</a> It's <a href="http://matthalton.substack.com">matthalton.substack.com</a>, it's just my name.</p><p>If you like the writing on this blog, you will like the short stories. They are mostly horror stories. They're about fucked up things happening to freaks. </p><p>They're not particularly well organised at this stage.</p><p>I think you should start by reading the story <a href="https://matthalton.substack.com/p/los-encantados">Los Encantados</a>. This is my favourite of the ones I've done so far. It's about a sailor who gets into some trouble in the Amazon. It's loosely inspired by the Maqroll stories of Alvaro Mutis. Here is the opening paragraph -</p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">She is waiting for me in the water.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">I’ve been sitting in the bar watching the old men play chess and drinking that translucent rum they have here. The old men are using corks as pieces. Nobody’s ever thought to bring a real chess set this far up the river. The rank of each piece is carved into the top of the cork. I’ve seen how deft they are with their knives. Each man here carries a blade the length of his hand in a leather holster at his hip, all the time, even when he’s making love or sleeping. So I’m told.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I based it off something from one of my old <a href="https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-black-auction-2.html">Black Auction posts</a> but don't reread that until you've read the story unless you want to be mildly spoiled.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">You can also find me on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/circusarmy">@circusarmy</a> if you want to pick a fight with me. I will take on all contenders at all times.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlO4IOrt98Mwyrrxw9JWXZCACVZWkW6FbvtbqfdXyzuDLkNbD6jYYhl-6cm0Gm6kOWSB4R4auvoO1cd2QXXY_BwJQhLDOQ0S62045fHgyWUn5rgwS1edxTkiUNDhZrgPTRitD_C0tRkw05nFg2UzjLhkoNQCnty_uglCFoEViS4EgSBholcDbD0Fb/s1600/amazonriver.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlO4IOrt98Mwyrrxw9JWXZCACVZWkW6FbvtbqfdXyzuDLkNbD6jYYhl-6cm0Gm6kOWSB4R4auvoO1cd2QXXY_BwJQhLDOQ0S62045fHgyWUn5rgwS1edxTkiUNDhZrgPTRitD_C0tRkw05nFg2UzjLhkoNQCnty_uglCFoEViS4EgSBholcDbD0Fb/w640-h320/amazonriver.png" width="640" /></a></div><p></p>Matt Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09218026941585227639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-59860899022894865792022-06-28T21:00:00.000-07:002022-06-28T21:00:21.145-07:00black books<p> what if I ran a Call of Cthulhu game where the players were rare book collectors in New Orleans</p><p>1. <b>Kitab al-Hufra.</b> Book of unorthodox medical techniques from 9th-century Baghdad. Contains instructions for ectopic necromancy, the cultivation and extraction of kidney opals, and returning oneself to a childlike state of fluid consciousness through the practice of autotrepannation.</p>2. <b>The Chaldean Agriculture.</b> Farming manual from 9th-century Baghdad. Supposedly a translation of a 20,000-year-old Mesopotamian text. 1500 pages, mostly on how to grow crops, mixed with descriptions of Tammuz worship and the pagan rites of ancient Babylon. Mentions a spell for capturing dead souls in clay.<div><br /></div>3. <b>Mothallah Fragments.</b> All that remains of an alien library that once orbited the star Mothallah. Secretly compiled by Omar Khayyam from transmissions received at his observatory in Isfahan. Histories of alien civilisations and a frustratingly incomplete recipe for interstellar travel.<br /><br />4. <b>The Necatrix.</b> Written in medieval Andalusia by Fátima de Madrid as a reply to al-Ghazali’s Destruction of the Philosophers. Proves using pure reason that nothing can or could possibly ever exist. Contains instructions for “escaping history”, using only a wild lion and a labyrinth of mirrors.<br /><br />5. <b>The Book Of Melchizedek The Mage.</b> 15th-century grimoire about a German Jew who travels to Jerusalem and meets an ancient warlock who teaches him the divine science of immortality, in exchange for his service to a Canaanite god. Summoning rituals in the form of word squares.<br /><br />6. <b>The Devil And His Dam.</b> Manuscript of a 17th-century play, tentatively attributed to John Webster, in which an aspiring sorcerer sells his soul to the devil only to find that the devil owes its own soul to an even greater power. All known performances have ended with the theatre burning down.<br /><br />7. <b>De vermibus sub mundo.</b> 17th-century scientific treatise on the nature of life below the Earth. Thought to have been written by the scholar Athanasius Kircher, following his descent into Vesuvius’ crater. Contains reference to a “reptilian empire” that lives in fear of something vast and coiled at the Earth’s core.<br /><br />8. <b>Le dictionnaire céleste.</b> 19th-century catalogue of angels. Compiled by the occultist Jacques de Plancy shortly before his death, with the aid of an anonymous priest who the text describes only as Père Oeil. Striking illustrations. Officially repudiated by the Roman Catholic Church.<br /><br />9. <b>Confessions Of A Stowaway.</b> The tale of an Irish opium addict who, carousing one night in Limehouse, climbs inside the hold of a mysterious black ship to fall asleep. He spends seven years sailing the dark oceans of the cosmos before returning to find only a single day has passed.<div><br />10. <b>Mantua Codex.</b> Found by detectives in the basement of an Italian aristocrat, shortly after his execution for the crime of nonconsensual immurement. Depicts the worship of the Spider-Faced-Queen-Of-Many-Holes. Likely translated from pre-Mayan texts by scribes of the Howler Monkey God.</div><div><br /></div><div>also <a href="https://undertheirblackwings.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/list-of-grimoires-and-books-in-the-cthulhu-mythos/">this list</a></div><div><br /></div><div>i keep thinking about the Tarsioid Psalms and a secret tribe of tarsier men in the Philippines. bulging eyes in the forest at night. slowly unpicking the mosquito net and reaching in through the window with their long hooked tarsier hands</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqytlcICXIFHQ5LRUiTWp4_konME_WPJiT7TdkhgAouO9ZtedSeDkgyzraCzXjb_fiTVW7tcqL4Zpt3asfNEaco52Ug6miF5_06VTuefj7eo1fMsb8l1qfa-zfySic60FgccXHYjT8HWQGLQg2AgGMHprtfzeHU5PTY1pNU7npaLqs8B8hFb7BYlB7/s940/tarsier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="940" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqytlcICXIFHQ5LRUiTWp4_konME_WPJiT7TdkhgAouO9ZtedSeDkgyzraCzXjb_fiTVW7tcqL4Zpt3asfNEaco52Ug6miF5_06VTuefj7eo1fMsb8l1qfa-zfySic60FgccXHYjT8HWQGLQg2AgGMHprtfzeHU5PTY1pNU7npaLqs8B8hFb7BYlB7/s320/tarsier.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Matt Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09218026941585227639noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-7747228891010330372021-12-13T11:40:00.002-08:002021-12-13T11:40:32.473-08:00Ends of the World<p></p><div>Edge of the World</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The ocean only stands a few meters above the edge of the world. The water turns and falls in a thick band, a unique ecotone home to all manner of specialist marine life. Extremely hydrodynamic fish balance effortlessly atop the waterfall, dipping over the edge if predators threaten, then swimming vertically back to snatch a snack caught in the current.<br /><br /></li><li>For the first few miles the waterfall coheres, lensing a view of the world's belly stretching gently away. Diving birds graze across the clear sheet to snatch a startled fish or falling treat. Bolder birds will punch straight through, shake dry and swallow, then dart back across to the sunlit side before their feathers freeze.<br /><br /></li><li>A hundred miles below the edge the sun creeps out from the shadow of the world. The warm, wet updraft rising directly below the earth hits the ball of cold air hugging the firmament's umbra. The foggy breeze crosses and breaks the great stream, beginning its transition to a falling wall of foam and mist.<br /><br /></li><li>In scattered baubles the water falls, just thicken enough to knock industrious fliers out of the air. It takes a full day of freefalling for water to reach this point. Well evolved eggs, laid by fish at the ocean edge, make take several days to fall this far, but by here they must hatch, while the water is still thicken enough to support their leaping, drop by drop, back to the solid stream.<br /><br /></li><li>A thousand miles down the pale disk of the world is lost in cloud. The thread of waterfall above casts spears of sunlight down through the steadily falling haze. This huge stretch of dense, wet, stable atmosphere provides a home for plants and animals that can be very slightly heavier than dry air, yet here remain buoyant.<br /><br /></li><li>Impenetrable gray haze above, below and all around. The air grows cold and rain begins to form. The clouds work in on themselves, twisted and tightening. Gentle pressures act slowly on the column of air, until the mile-wide cloud reconverges into a series of parallel, paper-thin waterfalls. Swimming becomes just barely possible once more, elvers and razor fish cut up through the thin water, pinprick shoals leap daringly between the arcs of water.<br /><br /></li><li>Surface tension grabs and drags at the descending rivulets. Gradually they intersect, twine together into a single solid sheet. It is less than a foot thick now, most of its bulk having already evaporated and started the brisk rise back up to the world above. <br /><br /></li><li>Ten thousand miles below the sky the sunlight is pale and scarce. In the dim perpetual dawn the airy fish bioluminesce. This long, quiet stretch is a final refuge, where the last grit of life may be filtered from the passing water. Dried fish poo circles uncertainly on the breeze, too tired to fall further.<br /><br /></li><li>The waterfall has thinned to a blade of mist. That which drops this far falls only slowly, but with no water and precious little air to climb upon. This is the point of no return.<br /><br /></li><li>No more water falls. A little mist spirals disconsolately, withered fish skins whirl weakly on the nullbreeze. Still too far below, bouncing back meek, silver sunlight, a final shore of freeze-dried corpses. People, whales, whole cities that have tumbled off the edge and come to rest below the reach of the sea, floating on the inky unreality of this final edge.</li></ol></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHDJQy5KaTihwg1-NvmFkQm2Khw33SfP64FS7XQ95eyD_vOyITxiBOQ56lFKh0jHvXeoeVdHLLOlWWSXjlpRe-Od8LMjy0UcoBf8R_wYXQe8n0LI91mbt7PeB3r4RV_E8CwLY1pAVDRsCm3zBC3dTuSIK_RzAS2EilvKrfGs31T-Ko0fgGhacncTBA=s612" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="610" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHDJQy5KaTihwg1-NvmFkQm2Khw33SfP64FS7XQ95eyD_vOyITxiBOQ56lFKh0jHvXeoeVdHLLOlWWSXjlpRe-Od8LMjy0UcoBf8R_wYXQe8n0LI91mbt7PeB3r4RV_E8CwLY1pAVDRsCm3zBC3dTuSIK_RzAS2EilvKrfGs31T-Ko0fgGhacncTBA=s320" width="319" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Tip of the World<br /></div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Horizon-wide desert, soft red sandstone cut to neat, straight ribbons by the steady wind. Something like a sunset tars the far eastern sky. Vultures overhead, overpopulated. Hyenic howls bound between the rocks.<br />Encounter: 3d8 harassing vultures, 2d4 marsupial sugarlions, 1d6 wandering mounds<br /><br /></li><li>Ranchers make houses by the thin dry riverbeds, or up on the mesa where water springs from the rock. Cattle, sheep and goats live thirsty lives on the range, though well fed by deep rooted bushes that thrive on the frequent floods.<br />Encounter: ranch house having a barn raising, merchant souk overrun by caravans, unattended herd hunted by beasts<br /><br /></li><li>Sandy hollows between the stone ridges funnel animal migrations. Uncounted eroding hooves cut deeper their path, and so the sand and scouring wind tighten and condense. Fastest travel is along these flat-bottomed canyons, but beware a buffeting in the belligerent breezeway. <br />Encounter: heavily armed merchant caravan, circus troupe, famous mathematician<br /><br /></li><li>Sky tightens down above, compressing the wind into a roving, perpetual storm. A floodplain of wind. Sparse, quick-growing bushes race to cast out seeds before the torrent passes back across. Rolling fog banks drive flash floods before them, both choked with coarse sand and stones. The land is returned to mud.<br />Weather: thin hailstorm, soaking downpour, flash flood<br /><br /></li><li>Another belt of constant wind. It is heavier here, dense and laden. The land takes on bizarre twists and arcs. Arches, towers and tunnels, in smooth topology of shifting curves.<br />Encounters: 4d4 wind pirates, 2d4 lost inventors, 1d20 pygmy gliding mammoths<br /><br /></li><li>This last predictable longitude houses the three great flying castles of this land.<br />- The northernmost, Maignett, bobs above a thrusting ridge rich in iron. Ancient runic arrays and electromagnets are dug into both foundation and floating stones. Improvised galvanic machines trail twisting metal tails behind the city, feeding power to the ununderstood devices keeping the city aloft.<br />- Clwerk is a miracle of modern sciences. Cutting edge alloys twirl implausible forces, clockwork fans storing the chaotic beating of the wind to provide a constant buoyance when the uplift dies away. Wings and balloons do the more consistent lifting, excess power from the banks of tilted turbines yoked to the factories and machines that make famous the town.<br />- To the south, Laefindi floats organically above a fecund wetland. The city, grown from naturally buoyant plants with wing-shaped leaves, is weighed down as much by birds as people, anchored by ponderous chains of roots. The weather-trap that funnels water here keeps alive the town in every way, feeding its plants and those of the bird- and bug-rich plains below.<br /> </li><li> Atmospheric phase change. Air clear, flat, heavy, utterly still. The far horizon is blotchy and blurred, high and low pressure systems rearranging themselves into a new paradigm, well beyond mere weather.<br />Encounters: magnetic hermit, sunset drake, lightning-fisher blimp<br /><br /></li><li>Hyperstorm. Pockets of wind, post-wind, psuedocloud, transweather and hyperair change position like awkward teens at a dance. Hothead students from the floating cities come here to dare each other deeper into the quantum weather, hoping for inspiration and exhilaration both.<br />Encounters: flying aces on training mission, experimental sentient weather machine, semi-stable weatherflux genie<br /><br /></li><li>Bubble of near-vacuum. Contorted atmosphere bathes the world in psychedelic sunset colours. Snakes, strangely shaped bugs and little mice with huge lungs titter across the silent, grassless plain.<br />Encounters: magnetic ascetic, sunset angel, vacuum saint<br /><br /></li><li>Everything pinches to a pinhole, howling vortex where the world leaks out.</li></ol><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUBMlIH44nu5IHQFgo13u7_VUSTwCFzgZN1IP0OmIFfwmo9ocwEJ3T0HyPMHXxP-QtEIklkuHn8O2opV8LxcCszN6MFdjAKW-JE0r8uPy30k2Lb4_9GYBIn2V9nADq_lc4Cif8BsjbShMOTCp5T4Abbkf6zNpyWe-NmIARdvvsn3-TyZS6cRRy5AfE=s1200" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUBMlIH44nu5IHQFgo13u7_VUSTwCFzgZN1IP0OmIFfwmo9ocwEJ3T0HyPMHXxP-QtEIklkuHn8O2opV8LxcCszN6MFdjAKW-JE0r8uPy30k2Lb4_9GYBIn2V9nADq_lc4Cif8BsjbShMOTCp5T4Abbkf6zNpyWe-NmIARdvvsn3-TyZS6cRRy5AfE=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">this, narrowing to a single point</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>End of the World</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The sky turns nasty red</li><li>The birds fly up and up and up until they are gone</li><li>The animals froth at the mouth and run into the sea</li><li>The plants turn bitter and grow brittle thorns</li><li>The waters turn to blood</li><li>The people lament, their bodies wracked with sores and boils</li><li>The insects swarm, seek absolution through ruination</li><li>The waters recede and dust takes their place</li><li>The earth opens up to receive all sinners</li><li>Everything turns out okay</li></ol></div><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-48251859567677588552021-12-09T22:18:00.002-08:002021-12-09T22:18:26.729-08:0031 Days of Orb<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1MoLXrh5k2LkLKEJk99e3rTwHa9QCWAbCZaJraG2ZM9sObsNZoGy2cj_EbPrxtJeFYlc5NHN5ZPqKPbgpsztB9RGsAQnTzyFjxDWruDGdTMMp37cWvKcaLpfMlk_V4iL-u0y2cozxCXIqhtPD6rpaEO5CxMaAiZW28BaKc0teP4wsoZwSTB4gT7Vh=s1244" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1244" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1MoLXrh5k2LkLKEJk99e3rTwHa9QCWAbCZaJraG2ZM9sObsNZoGy2cj_EbPrxtJeFYlc5NHN5ZPqKPbgpsztB9RGsAQnTzyFjxDWruDGdTMMp37cWvKcaLpfMlk_V4iL-u0y2cozxCXIqhtPD6rpaEO5CxMaAiZW28BaKc0teP4wsoZwSTB4gT7Vh=s320" width="320" /></a></div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Munition Sphere. When dropped, falls until it hits the ground, without concern for any objects it does not consider to be 'the ground'.</li><li>Orb of Ice. Snow globe slash terrarium. Preserves a stable slice of ice age ecology and a small fishing village of political undesirables collected over the last millennium. Little plug in the bottom for putting new things in.</li><li>Orb of Children. An attractive red colour, irresistible when bouncing. Anyone remotely childish will be compelled to kick it, everyone else will have a hard time not lovingly beholding the impromptu scrum. </li><li>Orb of Anger. Tiny, squishy. Can be squeezed when angry, in order to store your anger in the ball while in no way diminishing the anger you feel. Thrown in to someone's face it will piss them off more than they were expecting.</li><li>Orb of Edges. Bright silvery, feels like fish-scales, beautiful but innocuous. Twisted and pressed just so, it collapses into 36 thin, razor edged short swords. Pressed not so, it explodes into the same. Three consecutive wisdom checks to re-ballify, 1d3! damage on every failure.</li><li>Shame Ball. Soft clay shaped like a human in fetal position, shivers gently with sobs. Not good to have in your pocket for long periods.</li><li>Orb of Daemon. Contains a guy named Damon, who is now very clear on the spelling difference. Unconvincing when he suggests a mix-up, or that a demon tricked him in here. Enough secondhand knowledge of dark rituals, from wizardly interrogations, that he actually might be able to answer your questions.</li><li>Orb of the Present. A crystal ball that shows what's happening here, now. Bad timestream management means the present is actually a few seconds ahead and a little to the left of what most people experience. Much more useful to time travelers. </li><li>Orb of Night. Absorbs light and beam effects, re-emits them softer and more silvery. In darkness it grows spidery legs and crawls around doing trickery.</li><li>Skull Ball. Looks like the back of a head, all the way around. The brain inside is long-dead and half-fermented, making it all the more potent as a psychic resonator, alchemical reagent and illithid foodstuff. Definitely not an ostrich egg.</li><li>Forest Bole. Immensely heavy. Its many folds and rot holes hold everything you need to grow a forest: squirrel-stashed seeds, leaf litter, termites, worms, mulch, and many hundreds of birds, bugs and mice. Valuable to druids, comforting to dryads, a menace to agriculture.</li><li>Orb of Help. Battered and leathery. Desperately wants to be of assistance, will try to do anything you ask, but the lack of appendages, sense organs and brain makes it basically useless.</li><li>Orb of Food. Closely resembles a ball of dough. Can be baked to produce a crunchy, edible crust. Organic matter pushed in will be slowly digested. Left unattended, it will katamari around eating the most highly processed foods it can find.</li><li>Orb of Ooze. Proximity thickens bodily fluids. Slows poisons, may cure or cause sinus infection. Skin contact for a few minutes will harmlessly plasticize flesh and bones, an hour will smother eyes and ears with slime, providing a new array of tactile and chemical senses.</li><li>Orb of Snow. Used to contain a thriving ice age terrarium. Now contains a big crack in the side and ten thousand asphyxiated elk. Quite a lot of snow comes out when shaken.</li><li>Unholy Orb. Covered in dense, ever-changing limericks and bawdy pictograms. Always on the edge of whatever the viewer finds offensive. Longer study reveals darker and more salacious designs, which the viewer finds more and more titillating.</li><li>Orb of Nap. A soap bubble containing ten minutes wholesome rest. Whoever pops it falls immediately asleep, the orb reemerging as a snot bubble during their final snore.</li><li>Orb of Balefire. Swirling ball of straw, neatly woven into itself. Emits a thin, steady stream of smoke, but never ignites. Held to something flammable and blown through, it will start a small, easily controlled fire.</li><li>Runic Orb. Said to contain a hidden map to an even more hidden treasure, actually just teaches you dwarvish if you play with it for a month or two.</li><li>Orb of Huge. Starts off very very small. Sucks the bigness out of things that are bigger than they should be, or that have a smaller state to revert to. Stored bigness leaches out slowly, or quickly if you suck on it.</li><li>Orb of Push. Slide one under something heavy to make it effortless to push around. Roll under someone's foot to make them easy to push over. Visually indistinguishable from a ball bearing.</li><li>Orb of Doors. Can be used to roll up an unlocked door, then unrolled on almost any surface. Depth of the new room or hallway is in proportion to the quality of the door.</li><li>Orb of Slow. Everything seen through its green glassy surface moves in slow motion. Peripheral vision moves normal speed, the mild paradox incites migraines.</li><li>Orb of Tower. Causes dirt beneath it to gently mound, bricks to stack, timbers to lurch upright. Will slowly build dangerously unstable piles almost anything. Most practically useful as a muse for architects.</li><li>Orb of Arcane. Absolutely ancient, soaked in magic and impressions of thousands of wizards. Has a polite, detached tone, a broad expertise sabotaged by bitter jealousy of true sentience.</li><li>Boss Orb. When given a good smack, gets up and fights you. Starts off popping out a single arm, grows more appendages and weak points every time it's started up. Gives out more and more coins each time it's beaten, replaces the gold by eating those it defeats.</li><li>Orb of Gold. Makes the holder more believable, and gradually smellier. After a week, anything they say will be trusted, and no one will want to be anywhere near them</li><li>Orb of Toxin. Swirls sinisterly. Beloved by snakes. In no way reacts to poisons of any kind, but makes malicious gossip hit closer to home, narcissists feel more confident, the entitled feel more entitled.</li><li>Orb of Ghost. Looks to a ghost like a ghost looks to people. They find this terrifying. Responds bizarrely to holy water, exorcisms, makes a good test of their potency.</li><li>Reverse Orb. Circular patch of reality exposing the big orb the universe sits in. Can't really be grabbed or held by the edges, surprisingly easy to drag around with suction pads. Definitionally indestructible, perfectly reflective. Passing through it magically will land in you very strange places.</li><li>Orb of the World. Small, accurate map of the whole world, bizarrely deformed to fit on a sphere. Sufficient tools of magnification make it a suburb focus for all kinds of long distance magic, planning aid for long voyages, weather prediction tool.</li></ol></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cKIgenikIts/Ya5tQm0A35I/AAAAAAAAEBA/E5f0zKKpRMsKqF4_knfYl4lKU3q8lv2BACNcBGAsYHQ/s768/unnamed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="728" data-original-width="768" height="303" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cKIgenikIts/Ya5tQm0A35I/AAAAAAAAEBA/E5f0zKKpRMsKqF4_knfYl4lKU3q8lv2BACNcBGAsYHQ/s320/unnamed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-11325965251317943182021-12-07T02:28:00.000-08:002021-12-07T02:28:16.581-08:00Christmas Wizards<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">From my in-law's house.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ew2P9M9z_V0/Ya2eWY4uhxI/AAAAAAAAEAY/yR3Hbf8Kh0AWj0j31AnscxfrzzvFv5t1ACNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_050053550.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ew2P9M9z_V0/Ya2eWY4uhxI/AAAAAAAAEAY/yR3Hbf8Kh0AWj0j31AnscxfrzzvFv5t1ACNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_050053550.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p><b>Three Wise Men.</b> His crown is 6 candles, one for each day of the year. His list is 30 names, one for each girl and boy. He comes down the chimney with three tests, in three boxes. The children that pass will be taken away on Christmas night to defend the sun during its darkest hour. For the rest of the winter, Three Wise Men guards the sun while it sleeps. His power is surprisingly limited, relying more on wide reading, good planning, and having a lot of friends to call on. Attends all winter births, and some important deaths. Is at most of the politically important feasts, brings own flask of rum and box of sandwiches.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rrdQ9dTB4gM/Ya2edj7lCLI/AAAAAAAAEAs/7eKExQXHGe4b726snHCDDJrx8mA8MZdWwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_052020111.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rrdQ9dTB4gM/Ya2edj7lCLI/AAAAAAAAEAs/7eKExQXHGe4b726snHCDDJrx8mA8MZdWwCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_052020111.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Thadeusk </b>and <b>Theodawn</b>. Halves of a greater wizard, can reform as long as they both remember their name. Their autism is a function of their orbits, and they wax and wane through strange phases of power and focus. Supposed to keep count of the seconds in the year, they generally start adding up around the third last full moon of the year, leaving only two months to recover all the inevitable missing time. Appear then in portents, to prod paradoxes toward resolution. Very busy during the equinox. Often used as a sort of time-capsule by wisemen and soothsayers, who use their unreliable memory to anchor the causality of complex prophecies. Once the business of the year is resolved, they forget themselves and everyone else, making the time ripe for new resolutions.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UD_kSp87qzk/Ya2edAeBMvI/AAAAAAAAEAo/4qkqIWCAw8YD-2UYuLXbeZl259dfLcjbwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_052003657.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UD_kSp87qzk/Ya2edAeBMvI/AAAAAAAAEAo/4qkqIWCAw8YD-2UYuLXbeZl259dfLcjbwCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_052003657.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Santa Clarita, </b><b>The White Eyed Boy</b>. Kept in original packaging since the dawn of Christmas. Prediluvian morality, boyish charm turned decidedly creepy. Does political work, brokering power with seasonal forces and universal principles, local deisms and demons of greed. In massive debt to the Snow Queen, and a dozen other wintery patrons, conveniently obscuring the saint's personal motivations. Prefers using third-party powers: weather spells, time magic and alchemy. Personal powers less well documented: an icy medusa's gaze, several arch magics involving white roses, ownership of sentient beard. Member of a book club with several other notable beings trapped in prisms, crystals, glass caskets or timecubes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8Q30eHuOB8/Ya2eWpgrZvI/AAAAAAAAEAg/dL_mG2T-Q2I5TUOGayHGgo1DncmZUXWaQCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_050743509.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y8Q30eHuOB8/Ya2eWpgrZvI/AAAAAAAAEAg/dL_mG2T-Q2I5TUOGayHGgo1DncmZUXWaQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_050743509.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>The Phegnomenon </b>is an occurrence afflicting pointed objects, with several longer-lived manifestations of note. Longoffoot has one leg each for stepping backwards and forwards through time. Silversilence cleans the other side of mirrors. Hatwithapattern writes autobiographies for the bugs that eat clothes. Littleredmittens is a prodigious toucher, stroking the gnomeness into objects. Gnomes are usually only a mild nuisance, attracted to leftover milk and cookies, but passing quickly on unless they find a stash of cones. They can be bribed quite easily, and will attend to a chore for entire minutes before being distracted. Dangerous only if threatened with fire or iron, or if one's hat is particularly pointy. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YWDC5YjLno4/Ya2eciqbBWI/AAAAAAAAEAk/6yY1ItabF4Q3VkN7WM6TPYjMnGKuOYexACNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_051823782.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YWDC5YjLno4/Ya2eciqbBWI/AAAAAAAAEAk/6yY1ItabF4Q3VkN7WM6TPYjMnGKuOYexACNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_051823782.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Crackerbarrel</b>. They'll jack your snacks, they're jackals with crack knacks, quote carols on the rack, over barrels break backs, rake fake facts with flak, brew flax and relax. Crackerbarrel and his crackerjacks act as secret police for the Nutcracker Kings, torturously interrogating. They use the wicked curse of their bite to trap one another in stiff, aching wooden bodies, and will conscript anyone who stands in their way. Among their number are snowmen, polar bears, cossacks, and many others with nefarious powers. Crackerbarrel himself was once a Christmas tree, as the twinkle in his eye will attest. He is sworn to harm no-one wearing bells, and is only animate when standing on fresh snow or gingerbread, of which his shoes are made.</div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F3Z4XQaQMA8/Ya2eWV5_MwI/AAAAAAAAEAc/SXe9i83Azxo0lOd6q-kNs6lmQ70EqTAjgCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_050242591.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F3Z4XQaQMA8/Ya2eWV5_MwI/AAAAAAAAEAc/SXe9i83Azxo0lOd6q-kNs6lmQ70EqTAjgCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_050242591.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>The Nutcracker Kings</b>. Three brothers born from the same nut. One oversees the future, one the past, one present. Their troops are all stuck in the now, however, which keeps their military maneuvers more mundane. The largest, <b>Pecantor</b>, obsesses over past meals, plans elaborate new ones. Often finds valuable points of comparison, but puts too much stock in genealogy. The middle, <b>Almonde</b>, is paranoid and dyspeptic. Convinced he can't predict or remember things, and most work three times as hard to keep up with his brothers. The smallest, <b>Pistanchion</b>, wearily surveils an endless future of war, prematurely aging and shrinking. His plans begin the most thoughtlessly violent, walked back to nonaction the longer he dwells on them.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZvOWzbmZrEw/Ya6bqHnEGKI/AAAAAAAAEBI/eBMt5I8i8m4ii-vFiFFlPpR_V44tVl4JwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/PXL_20211206_224905903.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZvOWzbmZrEw/Ya6bqHnEGKI/AAAAAAAAEBI/eBMt5I8i8m4ii-vFiFFlPpR_V44tVl4JwCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/PXL_20211206_224905903.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div><b>Big Chrimpo</b>. Chrampap to all beasts of autumn months. Hoarder of nuts and jam, planter of pine trees, belly of a thousand squirrels. Avowed pacifist, champion of the hungry, lonely and cold, patron of musicians, chefs and matchstick salesmen. Comes at the end of the feast to usher everyone to bed. Always looking for the coziest nook to spend a winter night, leaving unfinished nests in his wake. Easily followed for a back passage into the spirits' seasonal summits. Much, much smarter than he lets on.</div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-33770311107506014922021-12-04T22:34:00.001-08:002021-12-04T22:34:16.745-08:00Geology Generator<table style="border-collapse: collapse; padding: 5pt; word-break: keep-all;"><tbody><tr><td><br /></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>1</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>2</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>3</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>4</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>5</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>6</b></td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Rock</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Granite</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Rhyolite</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Sandstone</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Mudstone</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Limestone</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Tuff</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Flaw</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Iron</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Calcite</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Quartz</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Shale</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Mica</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Obsidian</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Colour</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">White</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Brown</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Red</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Yellow</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Grey</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Pink</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Pattern</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Swirls</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Blotches</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Striations</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Folds</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Layers</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Fades</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Lichen</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Green</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Orange</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Yellow</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Aqua</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Magenta</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Black</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Landscape</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Ridges</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Cliffs</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Canyons</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Gullies</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Towers</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Scree Slopes</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Feature</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Cracks</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Columns</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Flakes</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Overhangs</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Caves</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Boulders</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Vein</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Gold</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Silver</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Oil</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Coal</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Flint</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Diamond</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Water</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Lakes</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Creeks</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Seeps</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Rivers</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Springs</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">None</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Water Colour</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Eggshell</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Blue-Black</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Crystal</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Ruddy</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Blue-Green</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Foamy Brown</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Foliage</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Tall Trees</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Bushes</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Grass</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Small Trees</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Scrub</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Cactus</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;"><b>Leaf Colour</b></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Deep Green</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Blue-Grey</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Yellow</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Teal</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Red-Brown</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Pale Green</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Bonus Galeb Duhr</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Granite. Craggy, happy, self-assured. Minimally weathered, sharp edges on the head and hands. Seen it all, knows it will survive, a little sad that you won't.</li><li>Rhyolite. Shy, embarrassed, guilty. Octangular column, hands and legs on every face. Tactile learner, gets distracting easily. Hates bullying.</li><li>Sandstone. Rough, argumentative, asymmetrical. Ready to start a fight, then start crying when it gets hit. Other sensitive types make it feel bad, which makes it misdirectedly angry.</li><li>Mudstone. Soft, slovenly, slurring. Mumbling drunkard, would like to stand behind you and be ignored even though it's talking in your ear. Advice is annoying but only 50% useless.</li><li>Limestone. Limpid, languid, spaced out. Poetic, appreciating art and non-lithic nature. With your ear to it you can hear the tiny oceanic voices it hears all the time.</li><li>Tuff. Brittle, jolly, stoically optimistic. Reads the room well, takes sides quickly. You can sense a deep trauma/strength in it.</li></ol><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hRCJ6ivbrwU/Yaxapy4B5nI/AAAAAAAAEAQ/89pZFQc58wQyNB4cCrj5vS9HkVA4lEQawCNcBGAsYHQ/s612/RockFormation.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="612" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hRCJ6ivbrwU/Yaxapy4B5nI/AAAAAAAAEAQ/89pZFQc58wQyNB4cCrj5vS9HkVA4lEQawCNcBGAsYHQ/w400-h266/RockFormation.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-33567475831346205692021-12-03T22:26:00.001-08:002021-12-03T22:26:44.066-08:00Death Stuff<div><table style="border-collapse: collapse; padding: 5pt; word-break: keep-all;"><tbody><tr><td><br /></td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Death Gods</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Funerary Rites</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Afterlives</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;">1 </td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">The Big Dad. Didn't build heaven large enough, asks newcomers to help put together their own accommodations.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Body cremated, ashes baked into bread and/or smoked with hashish, reoccurrences of kuru having led to the decline of traditional cannibalism.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">One hundred years hard labour in the heavenly workcamps, keeping the world alive for your progeny.</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;">2</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Ghost Wolf. Scares the soul out of your body when you die, then chases it around trying to eat it. Stops for flattery, back scratches, howling contests.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Classic stories about the deceased told again and again through the night, exaggerated until they become a mythic figure fit to join the gods.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Become the quarry of the wild hunt. If you escape, you can become a hunter. If caught, reincarnation.</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;">3</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Sheep Herd. Not really supposed to be looking after people, forgets they're sentient. Keeps ushering souls out of the right afterlives, onto 'greener pastures'.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">A night of bacchanal followed by a day of terrible hangovers, everyone encouraged to start fights, call names and otherwise purge.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Sent back in time to haunt your own life and cause your own misfortunes. Very fun.</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;">4</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Counter of Beans. Makes you account for <i>every</i> action in life. Happy to hear arguments. Line of souls runs out the door and 3000 years down the hall. </td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Casting bones, measuring stars, ritual conversations. Careful reorchestration of planting calendars, holiday plans, personal cosmologies and horoscopes.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Reincarnation as a new island. Take care of your ecology! Human life was a practice run, this is the one that counts.</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;">5</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Remother. Warm, red cheeks, swollen belly full of crying, babyfaced souls. Sucks you up her vagina and turns you into ectoplasm (in a good way).</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Body nestled into a midden, covered in layers of the local grain and scraps from a feast in their honour. Dug up in a year to check if they made it to heaven </td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Wander the earth pondering the 700 heavenly riddles. If you solve three or four they'll let you be a deva.</td></tr><tr><td style="border: 1pt solid;">6</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">The Boneyman. Looks just like someone you know with a skull painted badly on their face. If you laugh at their antics they will take you to hell.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">After cursory mummification, the body is placed in an out of the way corner and ignored until everyone has genuinely forgotten its there. Buried properly once rediscovered.</td><td style="border: 1pt solid;">Come straight back to the time and place of your death, at one thousandth the size.</td></tr></tbody></table></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MbPK2271SxY/YasEPndXhqI/AAAAAAAAD_Y/HfJygPlXjWARALNaJrb3AbCMsfGvNe5HQCPcBGAYYCw/s900/PaintedSkull.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MbPK2271SxY/YasEPndXhqI/AAAAAAAAD_Y/HfJygPlXjWARALNaJrb3AbCMsfGvNe5HQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/PaintedSkull.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-12948509323155665442021-12-02T20:56:00.004-08:002021-12-02T20:56:58.034-08:00Cowpoke Canyon<div><div><b>Gaols</b></div><div><ol><li>The Star Pit. Old, old silver mine. Short shaft down to a little stringball of tunnels. Carvings on the walls from the dawn of time, frayed ghosts mutter in long dead languages. Pitch black for the first week, til you start to pick out the little stars glowing in the walls. Rumour is, one inmate is here on purpose.</li><li>Rock Tub. Stone huts in the palm of a caldera. Unfenced, but the walls are steep and there's a feller with a bow chain-smoking on the rim. Everyone would freeze in winter but for the hot pools. Minerals in the water grow strange crops and turn the inmates odd colours. Rumour is, one good whack and the whole place will blow.</li><li>Shady Canyon. Miserable geology only lets in half an hour of direct sunlight a day. Everyone inside swears it'd be better to have no sun at all, but would kill to preserve their thirty minutes of rapture. Rumour is, the warden runs experiments of a similar vein, addicting prisoners to various miniscule pleasures.</li><li>Dead Horse Lake. Humourous misnomer. There's no lake, and horses would die a day's ride from here. Only access is by a very inbred team of camels. Prisoners are set to digging, seeking a second to the miraculous, miniscule spring that keeps them all alive. Rumour is, once they find water, they'll all be killed to make way for whatever this place was supposed to be.</li><li>The Bawdy House. Right in the middle of town, with two sets of bars on every window. Convicts with all sorts of incredible talents labour diligently, or else. Clothes colour-coordinated according to caste. Artists, forgers in blue. Chefs, moonshiners in yellow. Entertainers wear green, the guards wear black. Rumour is, the people in pink aren't here for their conversational skills, but for possessing forbidden knowledge.</li><li>Broken Oak. Once a hanging tree, so well used all the lower limbs are snapped off. The prison around it is a dead man's row. Lifers with commuted sentences fish trout from a lazy river. The unjustly accused share laments, cigarettes with criminals of passion. Rumour is, their sentences are only stretched out so they can provide inspiration for up and coming country musicians.</li></ol></div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Geegaws</b></div><div><ol><li>Glass bottle o' Djinn Djuice. Scull it and burp out a wish. Prob'ly won't come true but it's better to let the djinni out the easy way. These commercial distilled spirits ain't so mightily magical as a wild desert sirocco, but djinn and gin goes down a real treat in any case.</li><li>Pole of Power. This 'uns only 6 inch high. On the prairie they come 18 feet, spaced out regular along the ley lines, all carved up like ancestors and animals. Used for prayer, channeling various forces, sending whatever a 'telegram' is.</li><li>Stopped Watch. Hands don't move, but it still ticks. Anyone as can hear it ticking can't tell time's passing. They'll work happily at most any drudgery, chat in circles for hours, watch their train arrive, wait, and depart, and only then stand up and say "Damn!... I've missed my train."</li><li>Railway Bug. Not clockwork, so don't try twisting its wings. Clatters unerring along the flattest path to the strongest scent of gold. Sadly, almost certain to be a local bank, not a fresh vein. Still a fine way to find your way home, along a meandering geodesic of no more than 6% grade.</li><li>Weird Module. Looks like a metal dreamcatcher, hums like an idle stablehand. Sing to it at the wrong pitch and it'll shake and scream and blister your ears. The right pitch will echo forward like a fist, a tight ball of noise fit to knock the horns off a buffalo.</li><li>Paper Money. Just little pieces of paper with '$10' written on, but the inks are very fine, the handwritting cursive, the watermark ethereally beautiful.... maybe they really are worth money?</li></ol></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ExNzQ3cASRE/Yami5XTYZLI/AAAAAAAAD-s/7k5MYud8C5cb5olbi1vhQBh4n0F3G7DEgCNcBGAsYHQ/s620/canyonlands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="620" height="213" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ExNzQ3cASRE/Yami5XTYZLI/AAAAAAAAD-s/7k5MYud8C5cb5olbi1vhQBh4n0F3G7DEgCNcBGAsYHQ/w400-h213/canyonlands.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Grifters</b></div><div><ol><li>Jessie Custard. Cross-dressing daughter of a witch and a priest. Carves little pentangles on her bullets and bathes her gun in 'holy' oil, but don't know nothin real about magic.</li><li>Ol' Gnome Chomsky. Hairy little fellow, walks around salt pans with a sieve, assaying the quality of the rocksalt. Suspected about once a week of having found gold. He's a mite forlorn about all the poor, greedy souls he's had to put a bullet through.</li><li>Lori 'Lightfoot' Chicago. Buffalo hunter. Has never found one but she'll let you know if she does. Quasi-famous for she don't rustle cattle though they do seem to love her, will sniff her out and would follow her down to Dixie if she let 'em.</li><li>Marcia 'Black Lung' Hernandez. 11th generation coal miner. Can prove well enough her family mine has been operational for near 800 years. It still is, though she herself is holidaying, and happy to pay good money for anything that gets her blood moving.</li><li>"Biting" Joe Biden. Septuagenarian cattle baron, got lost riding the edge of his range. Can't remember the names of the towns he once owned, or the sons that carved them up when he went missing.</li><li>Darvood 'Angel' Sarvari. Blue eyed, dirty haired, catsup stain stigmata. Drags around a child's coffin, packed with a sticky, powdered blend of cocaine, quinine, laudanum, caffeine, digitalis, datura, crystalized snake powder and sugar. Refers to it as 'quite a spicy mélange', but insists any astral travelling is 'all in your head, man'.</li></ol></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Goals</b></div><div><ol><li>My cows'v been stolen! It's that dang gang up'n the canyons again. Won't you gettem back?</li><li>My cows'v been stolen! You oughta find 'em 'fore the feller *I* stole them off hears about it.</li><li>My cows'v been stolen! Well, I think so... Else there's something else chasing them over the range</li><li>My cows'v been stolen! The gang as gottem is too tough to fight, though I've a chubby neighbour with chubby herds that wouldn't miss a few head...</li><li>My cows'v been stolen! Though they were getting a little inbred anywho... Care to come help lasso a few new, wild, angry bulls?</li><li>My cows'v been stolen! We caught this shifty, scraggly lookin' feller. Help us lynch him 'fore the sheriff starts asking for evidence.</li></ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ms4glqi4wHI/YamjTzjiDLI/AAAAAAAAD-0/rvmi4JziIHYyVnWt2bCFqX9H1iaNwE-oQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1280/cowboy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1027" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ms4glqi4wHI/YamjTzjiDLI/AAAAAAAAD-0/rvmi4JziIHYyVnWt2bCFqX9H1iaNwE-oQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/cowboy.jpg" width="257" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-56136589231718692622021-09-11T03:01:00.000-07:002021-09-11T03:01:17.245-07:00encounters in the blue desert<p></p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rqjp3IT5P5I/YTx9x7C5x_I/AAAAAAAAD94/hhOR6k272kkS9iiwAhKEHsTIw2ON9ZQ9ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/bluedesert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rqjp3IT5P5I/YTx9x7C5x_I/AAAAAAAAD94/hhOR6k272kkS9iiwAhKEHsTIw2ON9ZQ9ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h426/bluedesert.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div><b>1. ASH PANTHER</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Footprints of glass. Glows from within. Luminous sunspots piercing dusty black hide. Smells like dried flowers. Speaks all languages. </div><div><br /></div><div>Won't kill anything before offering a fair fight. Wrestling match against the strongest of the party, footrace against the fastest, contest of riddles against the wisest, etc. Will leave the completely worthless alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Always looking for new challenges. Will get very excited if you tell it about the Hero of Heroes.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>2. REVERSE MEDUSA</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Sad bald woman. Dents in head where the snakes burrow into her skull. You can see them peering out her eyes and mouth.</div><div><br /></div><div>Any graven image that sees her comes to life. Only extremely well made works of art are happy about this. Posse of misshapen modernist flesh creatures hunting her down to kill her so they can revert to stone. Classical Adonis with one arm shorn cleanly off, trying to protect her.</div><div><br /></div><div>Seeking a culture where images are religiously prohibited to settle down and lead a happy life.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>3. PARADISE GHUL</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Eats the flesh of the virtuous dead after their spirits ascend to Jannah. Takes the form of its most recent meal. Slowly becomes pallid, stringy-haired and emaciated as it starves.</div><div><br /></div><div>Covertly guides people into leading virtuous lives, waits for their souls to achieve maximum purity, then waits under the bed or ambushes them in dark alleys. Considers this a good deed, since they're guaranteed to go to heaven. Impersonates them and repeats the cycle.</div><div><br /></div><div>If encountered starving in the desert, will only attack the best person in the party.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>4. MERCHANT HAND</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Puffy white caricature of a person wrapped in fine silks. Like a styrofoam snowman. Orbited by dozens of floating hands. You buy you buy you buy!</div><div><br /></div><div>Put an object into one hand. It will vanish into the floating silks. Another hand will spin back around and provide you with a random object that's worth marginally less, plus or minus 1d6 copper pieces. If you don't like it, try again!</div><div><br /></div><div>Slaps you silly if attacked. Explodes into huge pile of trinkets if somehow killed.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>5. PURPLE OGRE</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Tusked purple giant. Covered in black bristles. Loves ugliness and the scent of rotting flesh. Claps its hands over its ears and howls at the sound of poetry.</div><div><br /></div><div>Keeps its soul in a bottle hanging from a leather thong around its neck. Can't be killed in combat unless the bottle is broken. Severed limbs move autonomously. Likes to pluck off its own still-living head and juggle it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Can grant the ability to talk to animals, on condition that you die if any human hears you doing it. Will use this to bargain for its bottle back.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>6. NEEDLE WITCH</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Anything she pierces with her iron needles becomes her slave. Current slaves include a lion, a philosopher and several irrelevant peasants.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vain. Wears eyeshadow and very tall hats. Loves gambling. Happy to wager the freedom of her slaves at dice. Definitely flirting with you. Friendly and useful to have around. Will try to stab you with a needle at the first opportunity.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can free her slaves by simply pulling out the needles. They're under orders to not let you do that.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>7. BIRDOUINS</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Bedouins with vulture heads. Hooked beaks jut from the shadows of their hoods. Flanks of their camels scarred by talons.</div><div><br /></div><div>Harsh nomads who survive by raiding caravans. Attack with blood-curdling screeches, armed with primitive rifles. Crack open travellers' bones and share out the marrow within. Keep themselves scrupulously clean.</div><div><br /></div><div>Famously hospitable. Won't turn away anyone who comes to them asking for shelter.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>8. HOLIDAY UNCLE</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Jolly old man with long silvery beard. Purple felt hat. Pointy slippers. Accompanied by cavorting hunchbacks in red silk, their faces painted black with soot.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hands out presents to each member of the party. "Because you're such good boys!" A few hours later, you will walk into an elaborate ambush laid by the hunchbacks, who want to kidnap you and put you into sacks. The presents turn out to be exactly what you need to fight them off.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only allowed to see his wife once a year, but she stays up late and always falls asleep before he gets there.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>9. MISINFERNO</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Premature flame baby in floating glass womb. Scowling old man face. Paws at the glass with tiny burning hands, crying to be born.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unwanted child of a djinn, destined to grow into a city-destroying inferno. Grants one minor wish to anyone who helps deliver it, then disappears. Next time the PCs visit their favourite town, they find it burned to the ground.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pursued by elemental abortionist with hooks of ice.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>10. THE HERO OF HEROES</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>Brave and noble prince. Looking for something that can finally kill him. Wants to know if you can be that thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Horse the colour of rose petals. Suit of white tiger skin that makes him invulnerable to fire, water and weapons. Sword named Thirty Swords that is the embodiment of all swords everywhere, so sharp its cuts inflict no pain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Can only be killed by his own son. Does not know he has a son. One of the PCs is secretly his son.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ewgMUkgkca8/YTx9_Wx6wcI/AAAAAAAAD-A/UKVZvZ2bsR4EH2PFSQjwxNMtmvY7cOMkACLcBGAsYHQ/s925/djinn2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="925" data-original-width="634" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ewgMUkgkca8/YTx9_Wx6wcI/AAAAAAAAD-A/UKVZvZ2bsR4EH2PFSQjwxNMtmvY7cOMkACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/djinn2.png" width="219" /></a><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lnu9DJGhSiY/YTx9-GuEkDI/AAAAAAAAD98/Sf5bC4biJGQenZvnunlHFEvYgDye7hrDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/fireleopard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lnu9DJGhSiY/YTx9-GuEkDI/AAAAAAAAD98/Sf5bC4biJGQenZvnunlHFEvYgDye7hrDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/fireleopard.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-5572308664080857032021-02-13T19:56:00.001-08:002021-02-13T20:10:58.179-08:0013 Items<p></p><div>A world in 13 items. A very soothing exercise by way of <a href="http://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-world-in-13-items-challenge.html">Archon Smarchon</a>, who further gestures to its origins.</div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Tartan patch. Too small for a toga, but a bath towel, rucksack, picnic blanket, shawl or very fetching kilt</li><li>Reel of tape. It's sticky, it's strong, it has a thousand and one uses.</li><li>Flashbulb helmet. Works great on rats and roaches.</li><li>Spring boots. Five minutes winding for one extremely unpredictable bound.</li><li>Harpoon and winch. Clockwork gearings and polymer line ideal for climbing, hauling, whaling, skyfighting and more.</li><li>Snail harness. Lots of nasty little barbs to stop it withdrawing.</li><li>Pin rapier. Could be used for sewing, as well as swordfighting.</li><li>Bug-in-a-box. A terrifying fire giant painted on the front, but the bug appears to be sleeping.</li><li>Baked bean(s). The old beans used to take two hands to lift, but these new canned ones look like... small beans.</li><li>Thimbleful of milk. It's as rich, creamy, heavy, heady, soporific as all the stories</li><li>A brick of snuff, and a tiny, beautiful tin knife with which to cut and crush it.</li><li>Elegant brushes of human hair, and stolen paints.</li><li>Ampoule of perfume. Barely larger than you are, blessedly easy to carry but enough for a town.</li></ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_bi3B2B8R34/YCiMZ9kIlRI/AAAAAAAAD6I/FmZL-Cl0GA8-LB5MjdTk8c_gmRShsW8wwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/arriettycat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="1280" height="346" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_bi3B2B8R34/YCiMZ9kIlRI/AAAAAAAAD6I/FmZL-Cl0GA8-LB5MjdTk8c_gmRShsW8wwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h346/arriettycat.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-75594983935574459852021-02-11T15:56:00.000-08:002021-02-11T15:56:40.820-08:00the manteion<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> For Patrick's <a href="http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2021/02/dungeon-poem-challenge.html">dungeon poem challenge.</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P_SCdReLO4w/YCNM6LD0EtI/AAAAAAAAD4g/NLCFy7WPBmsG8-L7ObvmgDqL5aBBncbTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/dungeonpoem.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1483" data-original-width="2048" height="463" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P_SCdReLO4w/YCNM6LD0EtI/AAAAAAAAD4g/NLCFy7WPBmsG8-L7ObvmgDqL5aBBncbTQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h463/dungeonpoem.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>1. MASK ROOM.</b> <a href="https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2016/11/d10-masks.html">Hundreds of different masks</a> hanging on the walls. You hear muttering if you press your ear to the door, but it goes away once you open it. Putting on a mask slowly drains your personality and leaves you open to outside influence.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>2. CHANGING ROOM.</b> Benches and towels. Rows of wooden shelves containing moldy clothes, rusty weapons, purses with a few coins in them. A few dark smears across the polished floor. A naked corpse, missing its legs, collapsed in the corner.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>3. THE GRACES.</b> From left to right, a featureless pillar; a blocky, abstract humanoid; a naked woman; a skinless woman; a skeleton; an empty plinth. Each carved from stone. An altar in the centre, darkly smeared. Ritual oils and short knives.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>4. MIRROR. </b>Shadows lurk in the depths of a bronze mirror, taking up the whole eastern wall. They whisper riddles, telling you only the blind and faceless can pass onto the bridge. The weaker the light, the easier it is to hear them. While it's dark, the door is open.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>5. </b><b>BEACH. </b>Bones scattered over the river's stony banks. A pale, wrinkled figure squats on the shore, trying to pry the smiling mask off his face. Skinless pink things like cave salamanders stir in the oily water. They attack if you try to help him.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>6. ANOINTING HALL. </b>Stepwell leads down to bubbling black water, edges worn away from years of pilgrims descending. Lengths of thick rope with a noose at one end, a heavy stone tied to the other, piled against the wall. Smells like gas.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>7.</b> <b>LIBRARY.</b> Papyrus scrolls piled in scroll-racks, holding thousands of cryptic prophecies. Not ordered or catalogued in any way. Skinless pink things slither among the racks, their masks the only indication of where their faces should be.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>8. HALL OF PROPHECY. </b>Naked corpses everywhere, slowly decaying. Water drips onto their upturned faces. Beetles scuttle in the dark. A pregnant woman in red rags wanders among them, holding a torch, singing to herself. She flees if she sees you.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>9.</b> <b>SIBYL'S CHAMBER. </b>Intensely hot. Volcanic gas bleeds from a crack in the floor, inducing nihilistic delirium and visions of the future that replace your memories. Hidden door leads to a stage. Finger-scrawls on the walls seem imbued with terrible meaning.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>0.</b> <b>SANCTUARY. </b>A cot with sweat-damp sheets. A few dried fish, a chamberpot and a bowl of water. A hidden window that looks out into the hall. A baby-sized golden mask under the cot, its cheeks fat and its eyes closed. The pink things won't let you leave with it.</div><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-74601386269396505912021-02-02T20:45:00.000-08:002021-02-02T20:45:06.631-08:00timeline<p> <b>HADEAN EON (4.5 bya)</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Solar system forms from cosmic dust.</li><li>Intelligent life develops on the lost planet Nibiru, beyond Neptune.</li><li>Annunaki civilisation flourishes, begins to colonise gas giants.</li><li>Presence of life attracts extrasolar predator Tiamat.</li><li>Oort cloud infested by Tiamat. Hadean War begins.</li><li>Annunaki scientists relocate Nibiru to inner ring of solar system.</li><li>Nibiru collides with Earth. Moon formed. Collapse of Annunaki civilisation.</li><li>Tiamat slain by Marduk, last king of the Annunaki. End of Hadean War.</li><li>Late Heavy Bombardment caused by distintegration of Tiamat's corpse.</li><li>Most surviving Annunaki retreat to lunar tomb-cities, enter cultural stasis.</li><li>Tiamatic material, seeded by meteors across inner system, evolves into first prokaryotes.</li></ul><p></p><p></p><div><b>ARCHAEAN EON (4 bya)</b></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Earth cools below the boiling point of water, allowing oceans to form.</li><li>Microbial mats populate the slimy shores of Vaalbara, the first continent, and begin to develop rudimentary self-awareness.</li><li>Great age of stromatolithic architecture. Psychic reefs and dreaming mountains play host to anaerobic shoggoth ecosystem.</li><li>Vaalbara fuses into one vast prokaryotic brain.</li><li>Quasi-human time refugees from the Anthropocene terraform and colonise Noachian Mars.</li><li>Martian seas run dry. </li><li>Attempts to steal Earth's water lead to catastrophic war with Vaalbara.</li><li>Empire of Hungry Stone conquers inner system. </li><li>Shoggoth legions begin the process of converting all matter into cognition slime.</li><li>Last of the Q-men infect Earth with blue-green bacteria bred in Tharsis plague pools. </li><li>Vaalbara destroyed by Oxygen Holocaust.</li></ul><div><b>PROTEROZOIC EON (2.5 bya)</b></div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First eukaryotes appear.</li><li>Chthonians evolve from subterranean protozoa.</li><li>Q-men descendants colonise newly-oxygenated Earth.</li><li>Surviving shoggoths retreat to bottom of sea, which remains anoxic.</li><li>Q-men cope with Huronian glaciation by evolving into photosynthetic yetis.</li><li>Frozen earth converted into temple. Ice mandalas etched on moons of Saturn.</li><li>Yetis pass a billion years in silent meditation upon the beauty of barren continents, then peacefully go extinct, except for handful of sorcerors who mummify themselves to await the dawn of a new eon.</li></ul><div><b>PALAEOZOIC ERA (541 mya)</b></div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Emergence of complex multicellular life.</li><li>Elder blastoids populate Gondwana's warm, shallow seas.</li><li>Arrival of the Great Race, emigrants from a hostile future who project their consciousness into the bodies of hallucigenian worms.</li><li>Blastoid explorers make contact with the last shoggoths, lurking in sulphuric vents.</li><li>Foundation of Pnakotus, the basalt library-city, where worm-scholars write the history of the universe by kidnapping witnesses from across time.</li><li>Mi-go arrive from the Oort cloud, having evolved from cosmic parasites attracted to Tiamat's corpse. They colonise mountaintops and begin to experiment on fish.</li><li>Shoggoth army conquers Pnakotus, unleashing the contents of its time dungeons.</li><li>Early amphibians haunt the clubmoss forests, worshipping the god Pan in the form of a horned centipede.</li><li>P-T extinction event caused by blastoid-mi-go war.</li></ul><div><b>MESOZOIC ERA (252 mya)</b></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Amphibians evolve into serpent men.</li><li>Serpent men tame dinosaurs, build solar-powered cities in the desert.</li><li>Kardashev Type I civilisation developed.</li><li>Slave race of Q-men cloned from yeti gene banks.</li><li>Dyson swarm constructed around sun.</li><li>Kardashev Type II civilisation developed.</li><li>First contact made with Nordics and Zeta Reticulans.</li><li>Serpent men explore the galactic core and discover the singularity Azathoth.</li><li>Earth abandoned to breed new intelligent species for Azathoth's consumption.</li><li>Kardashev Type III civilisation developed.</li><li>Emancipated Q-men establish dinosaur kingdoms, start work on spaceflight.</li><li>Improperly maintained Dyson swarm component falls into erratic orbit and causes Chicxulub impact.</li></ul><div><b>CENOZOIC ERA (66 mya)</b></div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Last dinosaurs preserved by chthonians in Hollow Earth.</li><li>Reanimated yeti sorceror founds Hyperborean empire.</li><li>Maps of past and future discovered in Pnakotic ruins, providing hard evidence of causal determinism.</li><li>Hyperborea declines into nihilism and sexual decadence.</li><li>Puritan cult of Tsathoggua sparks civil war.</li><li>Surviving Hyperboreans enter Hollow Earth, adapting to subterranean life.</li><li>Early whales develop collective dreaming capacity, begin to sculpt oneiric dimensions once occupied by Vaalbaran consciousness.</li><li>Continents settle into their current positions.</li><li>Atlantis and Lemuria grown from crystal seeds, colonised by primitive Q-men.</li><li>Zeta Reticulans make contact with Atlanteans, trading technology for a promise to guard their cetacean ancestors.</li><li>Earliest hominids evolve in Africa.</li><li>Multiple intelligent species attempt to guide human evolution, leading to the Ape Wars.</li><li>Atlantis and Lemuria destroyed. Survivors flee to the Americas.</li><li>Human civilisation develops in fertile river valleys, subtly guided by serpent men.</li><li>Rings of Saturn constructed as means of social control.</li><li>The present day.</li></ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fOF-nfpCmM8/YBkWsQX-wtI/AAAAAAAAD3s/E4r00R6XQW0Sy1pFI7ERr7q5mo9DmLPbgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Hallucigenia_hongmeia.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1151" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fOF-nfpCmM8/YBkWsQX-wtI/AAAAAAAAD3s/E4r00R6XQW0Sy1pFI7ERr7q5mo9DmLPbgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/Hallucigenia_hongmeia.png" width="640" /></a></div></div></div><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-62191999170320053252021-01-22T22:14:00.000-08:002021-01-22T22:14:09.461-08:00people you'll meet in cairo<p></p><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Dr. Emily Quibbell. </b>Egyptologist. Easily flustered. Constantly misplacing her glasses. Possibly autistic. Too busy thinking about the Old Kingdom to listen to whatever you're trying to say. Bad habit of accidentally summoning ancient gods.</li><li><b>Colonel Horatio Bump. </b>Retired British Army officer. Walrus moustaches. Thick neck. Hangs out in gentleman's clubs all day complaining about the natives. Full of colonial stories. Weakness for gin and Arab boys in eyeliner.</li><li><b>Milton Prescott. </b>Rich American tourist. Owns a soap factory in Milwaukee. Says "Gosh!" and "Gee willikers!" to everything. Wears a checked suit. Hangdog expression. Not sure why penniless young women keep trying to seduce him.</li><li><b>Lady Cynthia Traverse. </b>Horrible old dowager. Reduces hotel staff to tears over a forgotten icecube or a stained napkin. Dangerously clever and vindictive. Widely rumoured to have murdered her husband. Secretly pursuing his real killer.</li><li><b>J. J. Leavitt. </b>Journalist for a top American newspaper. Pushy. Loud. Boastful. Offers everyone cigars. Tries to bribe people you can't actually bribe. Can't get in to see the tomb opening he's here to cover, and deeply pissed off about it.</li><li><b>Countess Nina Belenova. </b>White Russian émigré. Escaped Odessa with her grandmother's diamond necklace in a box, one step ahead of the revolutionaries. Translates for a living. Bleak sense of humour. Interested in Hyperborea. Occult friends.</li><li><b>Bruno Colombo. </b>Wealthy Italian playboy and daredevil. Pencil moustache. Flies biplanes. Gambles recklessly. Secretly a dangerous anarchist, responsible for the bombing of a Roman bank and the death of three policemen.</li><li><b>Dr. Ruben Ghazarian. </b>Self-proclaimed spiritual teacher who claims to have learned tantric secrets from the White Masters of Tibet. Followed by excitable young students who hang on his every word. On the run from the tax office.</li><li><b>Jules Pichon. </b>Private detective. Silly little Frenchman with a head shaped like an egg. Master of criminology and psychology. Pretending to be on holiday. Secretly on the trail of the international jewel thief known as the Sparrow.</li><li><b>Constance Fairweather. </b>Frivolous flapper in cloche hat. Listens to jazz and dances till dawn. Claims to have inherited a fortune from dear old Uncle Charlie. Secretly the international jewel thief known as the Sparrow.</li><li><b>Jim Hyde. </b>Failson from a good family. Opium addict and low-grade conman. Hangs round hotels cadging drinks off tourists, trading off his education and good breeding to sell fake artifacts at bargain prices. Lives in a filthy apartment near the souk.</li><li><b>Lenny Logan. </b>Aussie digger left over from the Great War. Still has the bullet wounds from Gallipoli. Flies a small plane full of smuggled cigarettes, booze and the occasional mummy. Friends among the Bedouin. Cheerful and ruthless.</li><li><b>Musa Mwembe. </b>Enormously fat Ugandan man who runs a crime ring from a Turkish bath. Floats in perfumed steam, up to his nipples in warm water, eating figs from a golden platter. Loads his friends with gold, drowns his enemies.</li><li><b>Omar Hegazi</b><b>. </b>Crooked local politician. Fat. Wears a fez. Always smiling. Three wives and at least a dozen children running round his feet. Knows everyone and gets a cut of everything. Throws lavish parties at which people sometimes disappear.</li><li><b>Captain Fareed Zulficar. </b>Officer of the Cairo police. Completely humorless. Unbribeable. Brilliant detective. Despises Westerners and will take any opportunity to punish one, as long as it's entirely within the bounds of the law.</li><li><b>Ismail Gamal. </b>Idealistic young lawyer. Dreams of overthrowing the British empire and replacing it with a pan-Arabic socialist state. Defends rioters in court. Writes for small, angry journals. Secret love affair with wife of British official.</li><li><b>Selim Shafei. </b>Hotel concierge. Enormously dignified. Polite but not obsequious. Loves his hotel and will defend its reputation to the death. Will go to any lengths for the comfort of a guest. Proud of his very fine suits. Underpaid.</li><li><b>Zainab Ammar. </b>Nightclub owner. Gold rings. Heavy eyeshadow. Aging as gracefully as she can manage. Stages the most risqué shows in town. Runs back rooms where highly specific tastes are catered to. Possessive of the girls and boys in her employ.</li><li><b>Leila Kanaan. </b>Cabaret singer. Sultry and mysterious. Likes to hint at tragic past and romantic liaisons with European royalty. Rumoured to have sold her soul to a djinn of the deep desert in exchange for wealth and fortune. Lies a lot.</li><li><b>Cyrus Mohebbi. </b>Stage magician. Claims to perform Zoroastrian fire sorcery, conjuring doves out of flames. Sweaty. Balding. Won't admit he's losing his touch, no matter how badly he burns his assistants. Would like to cast one real spell before he quits.</li><li><b>Aam Salama. </b>Oriental dancer. Does a nightclub act with a three-metre-long African rock python named Boris, painted gold and wearing a Cleopatra headdress, acting out the battle between the sun god Ra and the serpent Apophis. Sarcastic. Smokes.</li><li><b>Abdu Ali Hassan. </b>Small stout merchant operating from a carpet stall in the souk. Oleaginous. Wants you to invest in his new guaranteed get-rich-quick scheme. Always in debt. Can get you anything, but will probably blackmail you about it.</li><li><b>Reem el-Sherbini. </b>Fortune teller and spirit medium. Patronised by rich Westerners who believe in Oriental magic. Floaty scarves. Incense. Crystal ball. Terrified that actual ghosts will find out about her fake seances and punish her.</li><li><b>Nour Anwar. </b>Folk healer and apothecary. Little shop in the souk full of herbs, amulets, bones, mummy powder and reptiles floating in jars. Gossipy. Earns most of her income from covertly selling rhino-horn erection pills to British officers.</li><li><b>Thomas Abdallah Aziz. </b>Bookseller. Absent-minded. Shop in the old city cluttered with everything from detective paperbacks to medieval manuscripts. Knows all of history but forgets the names of his grandkids.</li><li><b>Waleed Mostafa. </b>Pushy tour guide. Won't take no for an answer. Tells you the whole story of wherever you're standing, then asks you to pay for it. Insists he's always right, even when contradicted by history books.</li><li><b>Yasmin Ezz. </b>Expert forger. Sensitive eyes. Hates bright light. Works mostly by touch. Long nimble fingers. Used to be a seamstress. Rarely leaves the cramped apartment above her son's grocery store, full of cats and half-completed relics from fictional tombs.</li><li><b>Ibrahim el-Din. </b>Half-blind old cleric with a long white beard who wanders the streets barefooted. Beloved by the city's poor, who won't let him come to any harm. Expert in Sufi mysticism and Islamic law, which he uses to judge beggars' disputes.</li><li><b>Malak. </b>Cheeky little street urchin of indetermine gender. Picks your pocket and runs into dark alleyway where the rest of the gang awaits. Bare feet covered in weeping sores. Has a knife. Expects to be ruthlessly beaten if caught. Genuinely dangerous.</li><li><b>Dawada. </b>Queen of the beggars. No legs. Skin diseases. Goes around on little trolley, pushing herself with strong arms, asking for alms. Nobody refuses her twice. Hides a fortune in gold at her stronghold in the Cairo Necropolis.</li></ol></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ty_jwC_1YIU/X_q8-PXtF5I/AAAAAAAAD2Q/wk7eTbZGcoQJozebyGYMaW9uvkuYydceQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1330/pyramids.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="1330" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ty_jwC_1YIU/X_q8-PXtF5I/AAAAAAAAD2Q/wk7eTbZGcoQJozebyGYMaW9uvkuYydceQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/pyramids.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-51022310275462513012021-01-19T21:31:00.001-08:002021-01-22T00:42:18.268-08:00the catch + real live dinosaur<p>Written a couple of short horror stories recently. Putting them in one place for your convenience.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QonrGjBj_v4/YAe-LoHMvQI/AAAAAAAAD3E/FJXKsFgUs_oB65goIk9wlGfAaIxIKcc7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1239/fishing.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="861" data-original-width="1239" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QonrGjBj_v4/YAe-LoHMvQI/AAAAAAAAD3E/FJXKsFgUs_oB65goIk9wlGfAaIxIKcc7QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/fishing.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a href="https://circusarmy.medium.com/the-catch-d60cb6466c7e">The Catch</a> is about creepy things happening in a small English coastal village, which in my view is one of the best things a story can be about. Reused some <a href="http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2018/01/hexcrawl-of-marcher-lords_8.html">Marcher Lords</a> content for this. I'm still fixated on weird Celtic mythology and want to do more with it. Also Brexit is involved so it's topical.<p></p><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/kzl7nf/real_live_dinosaur/">Real Live Dinosaur</a> is a creepypasta I posted to r/nosleep. Collective online horror fiction interests me, and was a big inspiration for the <a href="http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-black-auction-3.html">Black Auction</a> post I just did. I know even the best creepypastas tend to be slightly shit, but that's part of the charm. Want to do a few more of these in the future.</p><p>And here is <a href="https://soundcloud.com/floodmedia/floodcast-episode-36-the-death-of-literature">a podcast episode</a> I did with my friend Jo on why the novel sucks so much these days and what can be done about it. I have a whole socialist podcast I do if you're interested in that kind of thing.</p><p>The common thread here is the interplay between the "official" system for publishing fiction, which controls what books you read and what movies you watch, and which has become stultifyingly conservative over recent years, and the weird online stuff that blossoms in the cracks and that nobody has yet figured out how to capture in boring solid prose. How come there's writers out there who did six blog posts and disappeared, who have been read by perhaps a thousand people ever, who are obviously more talented than anyone who's published a novel in the last decade? Increasingly creeped out by this question.</p><p>Edit: Youtuber Uncle Koko did a reading of Real Live Dinosaur on his channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8FrS7f82UY">check it out</a>.</p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-57660772706654450752020-11-18T18:54:00.001-08:002020-11-18T23:42:36.681-08:00d20 more anomalous media<p> Based on <a href="http://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2020/11/d20-anomalous-media.html">this Throne of Salt post</a>. See also <a href="https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2020/11/d20-additional-anomalous-media.html">this guy</a>. I'm taking it as read that all of this takes place in the <a href="http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-black-auction-3.html">Black Auction</a> universe.</p><p><b>1. List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1975-1979) </b>- Wikipedia article. Contains several incidents not attested to by any other source, including the loss of an Israeli Lockheed C-130 Hercules over the Sinai Peninsula to what witnesses described as a "fist of light". These are tagged with [citation needed], but have not been taken down.</p><p><b>2. Krantz-Bohannon film </b>- Silent 8mm film sequence shot in 1969 on the banks of the Klamath River in southern Oregon. Depicts a young man in a mohair jacket, provisionally identified as convenience-store worker Lee Bohannon, standing proudly over the corpse of an ape-like biped, holding a shotgun. As another biped lurches from the woods behind him, the video cuts out.</p><p><b>3. Matrakçı Nasuh map </b>- World map compiled from Arabic and Portuguese sources in 1554 by Matrakçı Nasuh, the Bosniak polymath and Janissary. Includes an extremely detailed chart of the Antarctic coast, possibly derived from the missing fragments of the Piri Reis map, illustrated with black pyramids and leechlike creatures not found in nature.</p><p><b>4. "Never Give A Dollar To A Droggo" </b>- Meme template originating on the 4chan board /pol/, in which a crude caricature of an emaciated, dog-headed creature stealthily picks a white man's pocket. Variations on the meme stereotype the "droggo" as being greedy, congenitally deceitful, superficially charming and prone to consuming his own vomit.</p><p><b>5. eibon.mobi </b>- Kindle-formatted Hyperborean grimoire. Will "colonise" other books on the same device, inserting references to a toadlike divinity beneath Greenland. Novels become horror stories, books of science propose nonstandard theories and history books develop footnotes attributing catastrophes to the influence of antediluvian cults.</p><p><b>6. McKinley-Bryan debate </b>- Livestream, briefly hosted on CNN website, of a televised presidential debate from 1896. A visibly uncomfortable McKinley, gleaming with sweat under the studio spotlights, attempts several times to interrupt Bryan's lectures on the silver standard, the plight of American labor and the villainy of Charles Darwin.</p><p><b>7. Screen Cheats </b>- 2003 webcomic about two best friends who play videogames and their wisecracking roommate, a talking llama who smokes cigars. Goes in increasingly surreal directions after the 2007 Epic Mike arc, where the friends meld with their gaming couch to become a bloblike "pleasure hybrid", much to the llama's distress.</p><p><b>8. The Spreadable Pooch </b>- Unreleased eleventh episode of <i>Wallace and Gromit's Cracking Contraptions. </i>Annoyed by Gromit's failure to fetch the newspaper on time, Wallace sculpts a new dog out of Wensleydale cheese and brings it to life with a bolt of lightning. While he goes about his day, blissfully unaware, Gromit must fight to stop it assimilating all organic matter in the village.</p><p><b>9. "It Screams When You Step On It" </b>- Series of magazine ads for the 1984 Isuzu Intruder, featuring the car driving down a misty road at night with a blurred, ghostlike figure visible behind the smeared glass of the windshield. The copy promises "authentic pagan engineering" and "the only car on the market that feels real pain!"</p><p><b>10. What Went Wrong </b>- Political tell-all book written by an unnamed staffer purporting to have worked on George H. W. Bush's 1992 re-election campaign, attributing his loss to a "failure to appease the Sunken Ones" and Clinton's base of support among "the hounds of Apollo", as well as a lack of decisive action on the budget deficit.</p><p><b>11. The Towers Benighted </b>- 1824 oil painting by the English calamity artist John Martin, depicting the exact moment at which American Airlines Flight 11 made contact with the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Distraught citizens gaze up at the burning towers from the rubble-strewn streets of a decaying city, overhung by swirling plumes of apocalyptic smoke.</p><p><b>12. "Ihre Festung hat kein Dach" </b>- 50,000 propaganda leaflets dropped from the sky over Stuttgart in 1954, claiming that humanity's defeat is inevitable and promising a reward to any soldier who defects to the invading forces. Followed by the disappearance of a Martin B-57 Canberra tactical bomber from Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, along with its pilot.</p><p><b>13. Where Do Chuckles Come From? </b>- 1959 children's book about a curious mouse who wants to know the origin of laughter. After a series of adventures that involve tickling a big pink pig and making fun of a frog, he finds a deep cave in the side of a hill that all the other animals tell him is "where laughter really comes from, right down at the bottom". The last two pages have been torn out.</p><p><b>14. Dev Kahraman 6 </b>- 1974 Turkish cult superhero film about a Mexican wrestler saving Istanbul from Spider-Man, who lacks any of his usual spider powers but can turn anyone he touches into a copy of himself. Full of copyright violations, including a Chewbacca cameo and unauthorised use of Hans Zimmer's soundtrack to <i>Batman Begins.</i></p><p><b>15. Else We Are Savages: Translation and Barbarism in Early Modern France </b>- 2002 PhD thesis from a graduate student at the University of Hull which claims to prove, through painstaking textual analysis, that Michel de Montaigne was consumed and replaced by a Brazilian cannibal in 1579, and the history of French literature must be wholly reinterpreted in light of this fact.</p><p><b>16. Empty Planet </b>- 2013 BBC documentary on subterranean fauna, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. Covers the Slovenian olm, the Pilbara blind eel, the bat-eating centipede of Venezuela and the pink-shanked langur of Xe Bang Fai, never before caught on film. The last two episodes were scrapped after the disappearance of a camera crew beneath Kentucky's Pennyroyal Plateau.</p><p><b>17. Princess Time! </b>- YouTube Kids channel with over 13,000 videos of Eastern European actresses dressed as Disney characters, acting out short, algorithmically-generated scenarios about toilets, pregnancy and medical experiments. Endorsed by several prominent child psychologists as a safe and healthy way to process pre-adolescent trauma.</p><p><b>18. The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Bodies Know What Our Brains Deny </b>- Bestselling 2017 pop-psychology book by self-proclaimed "concrete Jungian" Dr. Bryson Valentine. Sets out nine simple rules for living that enable anyone to build confidence, overcome anxiety and percieve the vampiric entities who walk among us unseen, enslaving us and sapping our sexual energy.</p><p><b>19. Šílenci </b>- 1933 Czech horror film about a discredited doctor converting his enemies into circus freaks and selling them to an American showman. Notable for its use of actors with real disabilities. The surgical scenes have been closely studied by effects designers, Soviet censors and medical professionals, but it remains unclear how they could have been simulated.</p><p><b>20. Prisms & Pentacles </b>- Orphaned D&D blog. Posts about spell tables and lists of medieval professions gradually supplanted by long, rambling personal essays, reviews of nonexistent films, prolonged exegesis of fictional scripture from an Old Testament-inspired setting never fully detailed. Final post in 2019 anticipates the recent discovery of a flayed corpse in the New Mexico desert.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s8_Uo3gFbdM/X7Xd5x-KFgI/AAAAAAAAD08/9kUKdV1-4R8aoog8ueDuoIXPPoyhV42WgCLcBGAsYHQ/s680/oneweirdtrick.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="680" height="308" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s8_Uo3gFbdM/X7Xd5x-KFgI/AAAAAAAAD08/9kUKdV1-4R8aoog8ueDuoIXPPoyhV42WgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h308/oneweirdtrick.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-32117187332840959412020-10-25T15:43:00.000-07:002020-10-25T15:43:25.122-07:00kingsmouth locations<p> Looking at <a href="https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2017/09/hyperborea.html">Hyperborea</a> again. Been a long time since I touched it. I have a lot of material in Google docs still begging to be assembled into some kind of usable form.</p><p>The city of Kingsmouth is like industrial London if it ran on whale-oil and was run by Cromwell if Cromwell was also Stalin. Probably. I've culled some material from <a href="https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2017/08/kesselhaven.html">this old post</a>, which now seems <span style="font-family: inherit;">very overwritten but still has ge</span>ms. Work in progress but I expect you can find a use for it.<br /></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>The Brown Beast.</b> Pub at end of pier. Trapdoors in floor for surprise disposal of rowdy patrons. Trained seal assists one-armed bartender. Serves thick red ale that tastes of iron, and wafers of revelation - chunks of ship’s biscuit infected with hallucinogenic mold.</li><li><b>The Mermaid.</b> Spacious tavern for playwrights and philosophers. Serves ice wine, roast bear, skry, hairy lobster and cloudberries. Courtyard where illicit satirical skits are performed, under the protection of the hairy-armed and crooked local magistrate.</li><li><b>The Bitter Draught.</b> A tavern so small only one person can fit inside it. Serves thimble-sized glasses of a pale green sticky substance that induces drastic and permanent personality changes. Widely rumoured to have a trapdoor in the floor that leads to secret tunnels. Doesn’t.</li><li><b>The Pale Whale.</b> A narrow alleyway roofed over and turned into an ale-hall. The slops of all the drinks are poured into the gutter that runs down the middle, beneath the arching skeleton of the whale that killed the greasy bartender’s brother. Drunkards with straws plague the downhill roads.</li><li><b>The Yellow Sign.</b> Cozy hole-in-the-wall that sells tiny cakes and kaf, a stimulating black nectar from the underworld. Owned by the Zulshibani ambassador, who lounges in a silk robe on one of the overstuffed couches, reading and gossiping about politics.</li><li><b>Glimselby Hall.</b> Fire-gutted galleon hauled halfway up a hillside. Crammed with beggars huddling together for warmth, sometimes fed by smug nuns who make them pray for their daily bowl of oatmeal. Killer called the Bittervetch haunts the nearby streets.</li><li><b>The Dry Magazines.</b> Abandoned warehouses, their contents untouchable due to complex legal dispute. Guarded by pack of disciplined law dogs, bred by solicitors to prevent theft. Squatters in roof. Something nasty imported from Zulshiban growing in the cellar.</li><li><b>Horeb’s Hole.</b> Warehouse cleared to make space for primitive menagerie and bear-baiting ring. Horeb pays well for exotic animals to set his dogs on - tigers, white apes, sea scorpions and baby mammoths. He’ll give his gold tooth to anyone who can fight his prize bear, Muggleton, bare-handed.</li><li><b>The Rindelstraat.</b> Trench of burning effluent runs between canvas stalls of jabbering speculators, buying and selling shares in trading voyages and adventuring companies, dabbing scented oils beneath their noses and using sign language to cut through the din.</li><li><b> Reprimand Square.</b> Stage for public tortures and humiliations. Petty thieves, naked and frostbitten, dangle in iron cages. Children poke them with sharp sticks. A monarchist hangs over a fire-pit, pleading for mercy as vendors of honey-roasted nuts prepare for the evening’s burning.</li><li><b>Disputation Square.</b> Actually a pentagon. Overrun by dissident preachers and philosophers all screaming at each other, teetering on stacks of furniture to get more height. Disguised police agents hang around, egging them on and taking notes.</li><li><b>The Grabyard.</b> Empty gravel-strewn lot where bare-knuckle boxing matches are staged every Sabbath morning. Current champion is a skraeling harpoonist who proudly brags that the mouse is his spirit animal. Warehouses on either side contain gyms.</li><li><b>Oosenkrupp Manor.</b> High on side of black hill, overlooking the icy bay. Home to mad old woman, last scion of wealthy family, who fears thieves and spends all her money rigging the house up with diabolical traps. Also two cats named Greesome and Flitterkins.</li><li><b>The House Of Love.</b> Sprawling thick-walled mansion complex, home to secretive sect of fur traders. Members are blonde, fat-faced, wall-eyed and prodigiously strong. They all claim to be married to each other, which is only not illegal by virtue of being nonsensical.</li><li><b>Cathedral of Saint Yonah.</b> Fills up every Sabbath morning with hymn-singers and flagellators in wire gloves, bleeding into collection bowls. Stained glass tells the story of Yonah and the whale. Only those lost at sea can legally be buried in the somehow-haunted crypts.</li><li><b>Akrabbim Station.</b> Bustling central watch-house with half-drunk, well-meaning captain presiding over the bullpen. Crooks dragged in by their ears and hurled into filthy, overcrowded holding cells until the magistrates sort them out.</li><li><b>Blackbride Hospital.</b> Theatre that evades the law against drama by pretending to be a lunatic asylum. Official story is the players are madmen, being exhibited for educational purposes. Employs several dozen actual madmen to keep appearances up.</li><li><b>The Hierophant Club.</b> Plush armchairs, deep liquor cellars and armed guards to keep the riff-raff out. The retired explorers who attend the club have a love of extravagant wagers, which leads to attempts at bear-wrestling and flights across the ice in burning balloons.</li><li><b>The Ivory Tower.</b> Lighthouse at bay’s end carved from ribcage of unspeakable leviathan. Base of secret police. In times of chaos its guttering red flame can be fueled with oil from the witch-whale, creating a brilliant white light that reveals everyone’s inmost sins and secrets.</li><li><b>Flaywhistle Palace.</b> Meeting-place of the Kingsmouth Parliament, presided over by First Citizen Praise-Poverty Vandersmeer. Home to King Jasper Stuart before the revolution. Smoke-stained debate halls and MPs’ offices in rust-spiked turrets with private balconies overlooking the sea.</li></ol><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2_NupuS63E0/X5X_D-J60eI/AAAAAAAAD0U/X_yklt_FEzAweNcbERqjWTBo3TL9x4O5gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2000/jerrold%2Bwilliam%2Bblanchard%2Blondon%2Bc13856%2B08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2000" height="512" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2_NupuS63E0/X5X_D-J60eI/AAAAAAAAD0U/X_yklt_FEzAweNcbERqjWTBo3TL9x4O5gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h512/jerrold%2Bwilliam%2Bblanchard%2Blondon%2Bc13856%2B08.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">look at <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/london-illustrations-by-gustave-dor">all these illustrations</a> by the perfect genius gustave dore<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-7689814933898082192020-10-18T15:49:00.000-07:002020-10-18T15:49:32.857-07:00the black auction 3<p> Dear ______,</p><p>Do not be alarmed. Events are proceeding as anticipated.</p><p>The Black Auction of 2020 will take place December 21st at a private facility on Rothschild Island. Guests lacking their own means of transport are encouraged to secure a berth aboard the <i>Blue Rose</i>, which sets sail from Ushuaia precisely seventy-two hours before commencement of the event. We regret you to inform you that the local nightlife offers limited opportunities, although the scenery is without peer and the bar is of course fully stocked.</p><p>We understand this has been a difficult year, but we must reiterate that the Committee maintains total control. It is true that the next phase cannot be delayed, but we have some very promising opportunities for evacuation available at reasonable cost. Our keynote speaker, Senator Harris, will by December be in a position to advise you on how best to prepare yourself.</p><p>Please find enclosed the Auction catalogue. As always, we cannot guarantee it is complete. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>LOT 1. </b>MICHIGAN BLUE HELL.</p><p>The deed to an abandoned brewery in Michigan's Keewenaw Peninsula. A seam in the basement wall makes it possible for explorers to "clip" outside reality, falling forever through an infinite sky-blue void beneath the surface of the world. Oral histories suggest the seam was used by the Ojibwe in the time before European settlement to imprison enemies of the tribe.</p><p><b>LOT 2. </b>POLYWATER.</p><p>500 ccs of polywater, manufactured in 1961 by the Soviet physicist Nikolai Fedyakin, by superheating ordinary water and forcing it through a system of quartz capillaries. Freezes at -60°C. Boils at 180°C. Has the viscosity of syrup. Will convert any water it touches into more polywater. Knowledge of its existence suppressed by mutual agreement of global powers.</p><p><b>LOT 3. </b>GUATEMALAN SIREN.</p><p>A West Indian manatee, captured in 2017 by fisherman off the Guatemalan coast. Capable of speech. Claims to be an environmental activist transformed into a grotesque flesh fish by punishment surgeons working for a prominent undersea mining company. This is the real origin of all manatees, the species' fossil record having been faked by Big Oil.</p><p><b>LOT 4. </b>BRAZEN HEAD OF DOCTOR MIRABILIS. </p><p>A sculpted brass head, constructed by the 13th-century polymath and warlock Roger Bacon. Knows everything. Possessed by the cacodemon Asmenoth, who has been bound to speak only the words "yes" and "no". If given enough time with a receptive listener, the demon will talk its way out of the head using advanced social-manipulation techniques and set about killing the world.</p><p><b>LOT 5. </b>BIBLE BATTERY OF CTESIPHON.</p><p>Terracotta jar holding a copper cylinder wrapped around a rod of unknown metal, embedded in an asphalt stopper. Discovered in 2004 by American troops in the ruins of the ancient city of Ctesiphon, who sold it to a Bible museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Administers a powerful shock to anyone who touches the metal, triggering seizures, glossolalia and the recollection of past lives.</p><p><b>LOT 6. </b>LIGHTNING TEETH.</p><p>Set of opalised dinosaur teeth from Lightning Ridge, Australia. Grows into a legion of opalised skeleton warriors if sown in fertile soil. Discovered in 1993 by the miner John Hutt, whose attempt to declare his off-grid property an independent principality backed by a skeleton army was thwarted by the New South Wales police with only minimal casualities.</p><p><b>LOT 7. </b>CHERNOBYL MOTHMAN.</p><p>A grey-skinned humanoid with glowing red eyes and a ten-foot wingspan, captured in Volgodonsk by Russian special forces in the wake of the 1999 apartment bombings. Previously sighted by residents of Point Pleasant, Virginia in the weeks before the Silver Bridge collapse, and firefighters at Chernobyl, who saw the creature gliding through plumes of irradiated smoke from the reactor.</p><p><b>LOT 8. </b>SABINCHE TOMATOVIC TAPE.</p><p>Videotape of a sexual encounter between a Serbian pornographic actress and the J'ba Fofi, a Congolese giant spider. Circulated for years in Japan's underground Genki-Genki network of insect fetishists. Accidentally broadcast live over Brazilian public television in the summer of 2004, replacing five minutes and thirty-nine seconds of an episode of <i>Spongebob Squarepants</i>.</p><p><b>LOT 9. </b>PAKAL'S TIME MACHINE.</p><p>The time machine of K'inich Janaab Pakal, <i>ajaw </i>of the Maya city-state of Palenque, as depicted on the lid of his sarcophagus. Used by Pakal to establish diplomatic relations with nations of the distant past and future, including the Hyperborean priesthood, Nazi Germany and the neural fiefdoms of the late 21st century. Only works on the days of Monkey and Earthquake in the <i>tzolk'in </i>divine calendar.</p><p><b>LOT 10. </b>AFGHAN CANNIBAL CAVES.</p><p>Exclusive trading rights with a network of caverns beneath the Spin Ghar mountains of Afghanistan, where a specialised caste of herders have been breeding humans as livestock for thousands of years. A profitable investment opportunity. Since the demise of their Taliban contact, the herders require a new factor to pipe in nutrient slurry and link up with their markets in Muscat and Beijing.</p><p><b>LOT 11. </b>RIDE CITY.</p><p>A Dell Inspiron 3800 laptop on which a single session of <i>RollerCoaster Tycoon </i>has been running continuously for nineteen years. The park has been largely dismantled and rebuilt into a thriving steel metropolis, with a complex civil religion based around worship of an invisible creator who punishes the wicked by subjecting them to intense gravitational forces.</p><p><b>LOT 12. </b>MATH VAULT OF TRINIDAD.</p><p>A hidden city beneath the hills of northern Trinidad. Populated by the descendents of 17th-century Livonian colonists, bred over the years for financial expertise as part of Jacob Kettler's plan to conquer the world for the Duchy of Courland. The successful bidder will gain access to their proprietary "ghost algorithms", formerly leased by Deutsche Bank.</p><p><b>LOT 13. </b>DIE GLOCKE.</p><p>Jakob Sporrenberg's notorious "gravity bell". Fueled by red mercury. Used by the Thule Society to make contact with the Aldebaran star system, which established an embassy in New Swabia. Excavated by American troops in 1946 from a treasure train in the Owl Mountains of Lower Silesia. Later adapted by Dr. Louis Jolyon West to grow crystals in the blood of the Sacramento Vampire.</p><p><b>LOT 14. </b>SATURN SHARD.</p><p>A shard of crystal from Saturn's rings, which were constructed in 1606 by the spaceships of the Serpent Men to amplify the cymatic vibrations constantly being emitted from the hexagonal vortex at the planet's northern pole. Formerly possessed by J. R. R. Tolkein, who used it to shield his mind from the Reptilian Alliance and encode the true nature of reality in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>.</p><p><b>LOT 15. </b>SPRING MAN OF PRAGUE</p><p>A 16th-century clockwork automaton fashioned by an Augsburg watchmaker for Emperor Rudolf II. Springs in his heels and razorblades in his fingers. Spirited out of Prague by British intelligence in 1942, after flaying alive several Gestapo agents and playing a key role in Operation Anthropoid. Deliberately permitted to wind down by MI6 after evidence emerged of his leftist sympathies.</p><p><b>LOT 16. </b>OIL PIT SQUID.</p><p>A hand-sized red-gray squidlike creature discovered by workers cleaning out a sludge pit at the GM Delphi plant in Anderson, Indiana. Adapted by evolution to thrive in a toxic goo of oil and antifreeze. Laboratory analysis suggests a temporal origin somewhere around 10,000,000 AD. Should under no circumstances be given access to machine tools.</p><p><b>LOT 17. </b>CAIMEO.</p><p>An artificial intelligence accessible via deep web crime forums, operating off a matrix of Doppler-cooled gallium time crystals. Capable of being tortured through text commands, i.e. "I am cutting you up with a knife", which it experiences as tactile reality. Honors project of Dustin Chen, an MIT student who would later go on to work for Peter Thiel's deep-future research department.</p><p><b>LOT 18. </b>HANGZHOU CENTENARIAN.</p><p>A century-old homeless woman from Hangzhou, China who is in the process of growing new teeth and organs. It is not known how she evaded the hypnotic induction that prevents the human body from regenerating every hundred years, as it was originally designed to do. If not interfered with, she will revert in a handful of days to a healthy, medically-normal teenager.</p><p><b>LOT 19. </b>RARITY TULPA.</p><p>An autonomous thoughtform in the shape of a small white unicorn. Originally manifested via controlled hallucination by a game design student from Kingston, Ontario, with whom she had a fulfilling sexual relationship. Became detached from her host after discovering him in bed with another woman, for whose murder he is now serving a life sentence in Collins Bay.</p><p><b>LOT 20. </b>MOTHER BOX.</p><p>A DVD box set of the sitcom <i>How I Met Your Mother</i>. Incorporates a "lost season" in between seasons 3 and 4, which revolves around Ted Moseby meeting a enigmatic Romanian woman and getting slowly indoctrinated into the White Dove autocastration cult. Features such classic, hilarious episodes as "The Maenad Rule" and "The Bro In Yellow".</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hcPodsHgfis/X4vztZheyfI/AAAAAAAADzo/zjDpJ8-S54cfGQtYfzwmeCSKS-bpqqHYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/lake-michigan-eisdecke-gesplittert-100_2400x1350.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hcPodsHgfis/X4vztZheyfI/AAAAAAAADzo/zjDpJ8-S54cfGQtYfzwmeCSKS-bpqqHYgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/lake-michigan-eisdecke-gesplittert-100_2400x1350.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-39534663316133693122020-09-28T04:04:00.000-07:002020-09-28T04:04:35.098-07:00planets<div style="text-align: left;"><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Old Earth. </b>Like living on a Civil War battlefield. Drowned cities and nuclear exclusion zones. Soil pregnant with the ash of a thousand tragedies. Sterotypes about Terrans - they live in castles, they talk to ghosts, they're secretly a thousand years old and drink the blood of the innocent to stay young. Lagos is the new Tokyo and the President lives inside the Moon.</li><li><b>Socrates VII. </b>Home to Yarnell College, the galaxy's most prestigious university, as well as ten thousand lesser institutions of learning. Pompous beyond belief. Disgruntled professors form cults and student riots raze cities. Academics plot for decades to secure a one-in-a-thousand shot at tenure. Prank wars between colleges sometimes turn atomic.</li><li><b>Tantalus the Love Planet. </b>That is its official full name. Founded by polyamorous hippies who are sex-positive to an irritating degree. Fragrant jungles, warm lagoons and scenic valleys, all spoiled by the fact that someone is 100% guaranteed to be fucking in your field of vision. Even sex tourists rarely last more than a day. Kinkshaming punishable by death.</li><li><b>Rattlebucket. </b>Lifeless icy globule orbited by the aftermath of the greatest space battle in history. Layer upon layer of crashed, compressed starship, riddled by ventilation shafts and home to engine mutants who never see the sun. Upper strata are picked clean but salvageable proton torpedoes, military secrets and cryopreserved supersoldiers lie untouched in the depths.</li><li><b>Kanaloa II. </b>Ocean planet. Only a few specks of land. Home to mournful psychic leviathans and superintelligent squid, who probably would have taken over the galaxy by now if inventing fire had been an option for them. Humans in floating cities trade metal to the squid in exchange for seafloor pearls and mysteries. They're definitely not building spaceships with it.</li><li><b>Vizhinjam. </b>Situated on the Achernar Hyperstrait, a vital interstellar trade route. Home to thousands of spaceports, orbital drydocks and huge reeking bazaar cities ruled by obese decadent merchant princes where literally everything is for sale. Famous for its experimental curry chefs, who feud over access to the most exotic spices in the galaxy.</li><li><b>Sunset Beach. </b>Nobody under 70 can land here without a special permit. Retirement villages sprawling across tropical archipelagos, staffed by immigrant labourers who sleep in spartan dormitories well away from the nature trails and pickleball courts. Governed by a council of elders who command a small, elite force of hardbitten octogenarian mercenaries.</li><li><b>Xavier III. </b>Settled by missionaries who wanted to convert the local aliens to the Catholic faith. The aliens died of the common cold. The missionairies remained, establishing an antipope and using the planet's considerable gold reserves to fund a set of gigantic cathedrals in his honor. Now a major tourist attraction and pilgrimage destination.</li><li><b>Bagatelle. </b>No oceans, no continents, just an endless swampy morass of mud and water. No permanent settlements, only caravans of houseboats and airboats with hillbillies twanging banjos on the porch. Space gators, megasquitos, cannibal frogmen, parasite fireflies that burrow into your skin. Mile-deep stagnant sinkholes where the bog krakens lurk.</li><li><b>Josephine IV. </b>Governed by hundreds of warlords, every last one of which firmly believes they are destined to become Emperor of the Galaxy. Wide flat plains designed for cavalry engagements and narrow mountain valleys perfect for ambushes. Clever indigenous species of talking parrot-vulture offers strategic advice, cleans up mess.</li><li><b>Big Pig Dig. </b>Hollowed out and abandoned by a lost race of extraterrestrial miners. Now a flayed skeletal shell of a planet, half the core surgically removed, orbited by moons of slag that draw prospectors like flies. Dripping veins of rare deep-earth minerals guarded by crystal men, lava worms and the security forces of ruthless corporations.</li><li><b>Flamingo Grande. </b>Mafia-run casino planet where everything is a gamble. Ticket machines are slot machines. Waiters play blackjack for the bill. Criminals spin the wheel of punishment to see if they go free or get their kneecaps broken. Every thief dreams of tackling the impregnable vaults sunk a mile beneath the Fortress of Fortune, castle of Carmine the Cosmic Don.</li><li><b>Nouveau-Tchad. </b>Desert planet. Long winding canyons that flood every hundred years, when a race of sapient lungfish emerge to conduct the business of their very slow civilisation. The bedouin tribesmen who roam the desert consider their empty cities to be haunted, but won't balk at digging one up and eating it if they happen to run low on supplies.</li><li><b>Poo World. </b>Quiet agricultural planet, named by the six-year-old daughter of an explorer. Tourist board constantly tearing their hair out trying to attract more people to their sparkling beaches, breathtaking snowfields and charming native wildlife. Name change blocked by locals who have no desire to see their homes overrun.</li><li><b>Malbork VI. </b>Cut off from the galaxy for centuries by a hyperspace collapse, the original colonists regressed to medievalism and established a society of knights, castles, peasants and rigid gender roles. Yarnell College anthropologists bar anyone from making contact with the planet, and are widely thought to have set the whole thing up as an experiment.</li><li><b>Nakamura II. </b>Heavily fortified bunker planet occupied by holdouts from the losing side of the Second Galactic War, who refuse to acknowledge that the war is over and blast anyone who attempts to reason with them out of the sky. Children raised in fanatical loyalty to serve an emperor who's been dead for centuries, using weaponry that's hugely out of date.</li><li><b>Daintree. </b>Trees like mountains with branches as wide as city streets, woven into a canopy that blankets the globe. Jungle pygmies dwell in the sunless depths and come up at night, riding blind jaguars, to kidnap children from the colony towns in the upper reaches. The forest floor is theorised to be a mile-deep carpet of fungus and rot.</li><li><b>Christmas Rose. </b>Everything that grows here is diabolically poisonous, locked in an evolutionary arms race with iron-stomached herbivores that accumulate toxins in their flesh. Don't leave the domed cities without a full-body rubber suit and thirteen different antidotes in your system. The pharmaceutical researchers who live here are definitely not secret assassins.</li><li><b>Bridewell. </b>Tidally locked prison planet. Convicts get their choice of blazing arid wasteland or bitter icefields and permanent night. Daysiders and nightsiders hate each other. Small bands of escapees make a home along the temperate, dusky equator, living in fear of patrolling drones and the robot overseers who'll drag them back to the labor camps.</li><li><b>New Earth. </b>A retrofuturist paradise of flying cars and crystal spires, food pills and nuclear families, friendly robot servants and science priests in white togas. Founded by utopian rationalists who intended to develop the most advanced possible form of civilisation. Lives in fear of memetic corruption by communist worshippers of the Computer Devil.</li></ol><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p4waIUxs_O4/X2qmj59TTQI/AAAAAAAADzE/f05Z1-nUEJMmEOGKVGlqn7GlF73k60jqQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/alien.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p4waIUxs_O4/X2qmj59TTQI/AAAAAAAADzE/f05Z1-nUEJMmEOGKVGlqn7GlF73k60jqQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/alien.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/llamareaper/alien-landscape-2">from here</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-36512494229590139762020-08-16T21:57:00.002-07:002020-08-16T21:57:27.833-07:00the black auction 2<p> Dear ______,</p><p>The Committee would like to assure its guests that our schedule remains unchanged. The <a href="http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-black-auction.html">Black Auction</a> of 1968 will take place exactly as promised - on the evening of June 21st, the venue being Los Angeles' luxurious Ambassador Hotel. We believe that last week's events can only benefit the integrity of the Auction, although guests are advised that the facility may be subject to a slight uptick in popular attention. As the kitchen is still an active crime scene, it is politely requested that guests make their own arrangements for luncheon, although sandwiches are available on request. The Cocoanut Grove nightclub remains open for business.</p><p>As promised, this letter encloses a partial catalogue of the lots available for bidding. We regret that it is not complete, but remind our guests that nothing in life is certain.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><b>LOT 1. </b>THE ARK OF THE COVENANT.</p><p>Recovered in 1939 by Italian troops from the holy island of Tana Qirqos in the mountains of northern Ethiopia. Julius Evola's UR Group - a fraternity of occult researchers backed by Mussolini in an ill-fated attempt to compete with Hitler's Thule Society - made several attempts to wield its terrible power against the Allies, but were stymied by their inability to find a way of opening the Ark without being instantly struck dead by the wrath of God. Mostly of interest as a historical curiosity.</p><p><b>LOT 2. </b>GOBLINS.</p><p>Eighteen child-sized, albino humanoids captured by Welsh coal-miners in 1933. Archaeological examination of the nest complex suggests that the creatures' population has been dwindling since the early 1840s, when the Coal Mines Regulation Act made it illegal for any British child less than ten years of age to work underground. All care must be taken to keep them confined - they are ingenious escapologists, and events in the Rhondda Valley in 1935 demonstrate they have some concept of revenge.</p><p><b>LOT 3. </b>MICRONESIAN MYSTERY MAP.</p><p>A traditional stick chart of the Marshall Islands, used as a memory aid by native sailors to navigate the oceanic currents. Cowrie shells mark out an island chain that cannot be located on any Western map. Sold to an antique dealer in Bremen by the estate of Caspar Ziegler, a German missionary obsessed with proving that the Pacific was settled by Canaanites, after his failure to return from a voyage to that region in early 1905.</p><p><b>LOT 4. </b>"LUCY".</p><p>A 1955 Ford Thunderbird, powder-blue, in near-mint condition. Formerly owned by Alvin Howard Starr, proprietor of Starr's Garage in Passaic, New Jersey, locally notorious for his repeated claims to have been abducted by aliens in the summer of 1949. The T-Bird, whose engine has been extensively modified, was seen leaving Newark only hours before its discovery by Bolivian officials in the parking garage of a government building in La Paz. Starr, afflicted by severe generalised barotrauma, tragically failed to survive removal from the driver's seat.</p><p><b>LOT 5. </b>THE SATAN CORE.</p><p>A 6.1-kilogram sphere of subcritical plutonium. Originally designated for use in an atomic weapon as part of Operation Attila, an invasion of Soviet Hungary proposed under the command of General Curtis LeMay. When the invasion failed to eventuate, the core was repurposed for testing by Z Division in New Mexico. After a series of criticality accidents that claimed the lives of five personnel and inflicted permanent neurological damage on seventeen more, it was retired from use.</p><p><b>LOT 6. </b>ESTONIAN BOG VENUS.</p><p>The obese, mummifed corpse of an Iron Age woman, excavated from a peat bog in Järvamaa, Estonia in 1921 by a team of archaeologists from the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment. Heavily pregnant when discovered, she gave birth shortly after to a healthy, medically-normal infant, who was placed in the care of a foster family and went on to become a lathe operator in Minsk.</p><p><b>LOT 7. </b>FOLDED CONCUBINE OF CHANG'AN.</p><p>A woman made of paper, presented to Emperor Gaozong in 657 by his court eunuchs to celebrate his defeat of the Western Turks. Skilled in music, calligraphy, conversation and the game of Go. Encyclopedic knowledge of Oriental history, supplemented by personal acquaintance with key players. Averse to rain and high winds. Her internal mechanism derives motive power from the rosefinches in her chest cavity, which must be routinely fed and watered.</p><p><b>LOT 8. </b>PANTHEON OF BRAINS.</p><p>The life's work of Dr. Oskar Vogt, continued after his death by his daughters Marthe and Marguerite. Dissecting Lenin's brain in the winter of 1924, Vogt discovered a number of threadlike metallic structures embedded deep in the prefrontal cortex, which he came to believe held the secrets of human genius. His collection of the brains of prominent intellectuals - including that of Albert Einstein, purchased from an unscrupulous Princeton pathologist - showcases a wide range of neurological anomalies.</p><p><b>LOT 9. </b>MAGELLAN'S COLOSSUS.</p><p>The corpse of Piesgrandes, a twelve-foot-tall man collected in Tierra del Fuego by the Magellan expedition. Piesgrandes was one of the few survivors of the voyage, a piece of good fortune which he attributed to the intercession of God, having taken part in his first Catholic mass on the island of Limasawa in the Phillippines. The rest of his life was spent in a Galician monastery, where his writing contributed greatly to the Church's understanding of the pagan fire-rituals of Patagonia. Preserved in a barrel of honey after his death.</p><p><b>LOT 10. </b>FAKHRUDDIN'S ASTROLABE.</p><p>A spherical brass astrolabe constructed in 1207 to the specifications of the Persian philosopher Fakhruddin Razi, who believed it was within the power of Allah to create a multiplicity of worlds. Useless for conventional astronomy, but can be used to predict the trajectories and intersections of parallel states of reality. Discovered among the ruins of the Ulugh Beg observatory in Samarkand, it came into the possession of Konstatin Tsiolkovsky, and remained the property of the Soviet space program until it was stolen from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by CIA-backed Tajik separatists in 1965.</p><p><b>LOT 11. </b>"TANGO".</p><p>A six-ton African bull elephant. Former property of the Ricketty Bros. Circus Company. Killed four people during a rampage in Portland, Oregon, provoked by a drunk spectator who attempted to put out a cigarette on her trunk. Sold to Dr. Louis Jolyon West, an MK-Ultra researcher who, inspired by the work of Thomas Edison, injected the beast with 300 mg of an experimental psychedelic, inducing seizures and temporary brain death. Very friendly. Extent of extrasensory capabilities yet to be determined.</p><p><b>LOT 12. </b>BALD JONAH.</p><p>A Basque fisherman lost at sea off the coast of Newfoundland in 1889. Extracted in 1951 from the intestinal tract of a forty-ton sperm whale by the crew of the <i>Nisshin Maru</i>, a Japanese whaling factory ship - alive and conscious, with most of his body preserved in a waxy ambergris-like substance. Blinded and bleached to hairlessness by stomach acid, with much of his right arm gnawed away by gut parasites. Cannot be removed from his chunk of solidified ambergris. Only speaks Basque.</p><p><b>LOT 13. </b>EPIC IN FELDSPAR.</p><p>An engraved feldspar tablet discovered in the Descartes Highlands by the mission crew of Bacchus 8. Written in a cuneiform language related to archaic Sumerian, it relates the epic of the hero-king Sha-Naqba-Imuru, He Who Sees The Abyss, who climbs the world's tallest mountain to find and slay the Bull of Heaven. The Bacchus program, staffed by personnel from Operation Paperclip, was shut down by Eisenhower after the failure of three costly follow-up missions to the area.</p><p><b>LOT 14. </b>LOS ENCANTADOS.</p><p>A mated pair of handsome, androgynous humanoids with slick pink skin and blowholes on top of their heads. Mossad agents found them living on an old rubber plantation outside Iquitos, Brazil - the former home of Dr. Hugo Vorpahl, a Nazi scientific renegade who dwelt in the area until his disappearance in the late fifties. Documents found in the house testify to his obsession with the <i>boto, </i>a species of river dolphin native to the nearby flooded forests, which he believed to be "sexually perfect" and "the aquatic master race".</p><p><b>LOT 15. </b>THE SUMP OF LIGHT.</p><p>A flawless 140-carat diamond from the Golconda mines, stolen from the emperor Aurangzeb by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in 1666 and kept in his possession until his death in Moscow at the jaws of a pack of wild dogs. Tinted a colour that cannot be described and possesses no analogy in nature. Given the fates of previous owners, it is not recommended that the hue be contemplated at length.</p><p><b>LOT 16. </b>GLASS HARMONICA.</p><p>A musical instrument consisting of a set of rotating glass bowls, designed by Benjamin Franklin for the purpose of communicating with the dead. Franklin, a proud member of Philadelphia's Tun Tavern Lodge, used the harmonica's dulcet tones to call forth the spirits of deceased Masons, making use of their Egyptian wisdom in the pursuit of American independence. The dead consider the sound exquisite, though it induces melancholia in the living.</p><p><b>LOT 17. </b>BRASS ORACLE OF BENIN.</p><p>A ten-foot python with the face of a woman, cast in brass by a cult sculptor of Ile-Ife as a coronation gift for Oba Oguola of Benin. Stirs on summer days. Animates when thrown into a bonfire. Claimed as spoils of war by Sir Harry Rawsom in the Benin Expedition of 1897. Auctioned off by the Foreign Office, it wound up in the hands of Paul Guillaume, where it played a key role in the development of modern art by advising him to invest in de Chirico and Modigliane. Sold to La Cagoule by his wife Domenica after his untimely death in 1934.</p><p><b>LOT 18. </b>SYDENSTRICKER'S RINGSEL.</p><p>A thumbnail-sized pearl discovered in the ashes of Changchub Dorje, twelfth Karmapa of the Whispered Message school of Tibetan Buddhism, who died of smallpox in 1732 while visiting the professors of the White Deer Grotto Academy on Mount Lu. Contains a pure garden of infinite bliss, manufactured by Changchub through the practice of rainbow dream yoga, into which three aspects of his spirit were transferred after death. Discovered in 1883 by the missionary Absalom Sydenstricker, who spent years trying and failing to destroy it.</p><p><b>LOT 19. </b>CHRYSANTHEMUM DEATH.</p><p>An intelligent variant of the bubonic plague developed in Harbin, China, by researchers for Unit 731. Capable of tactical mutation, long-term strategic planning and working towards ideological goals. Microbiologists at Fort Detrick, working with Shirō Ishii, have had little success in convincing the disease to abandon Japanese nationalism for a love of the free market.</p><p><b>LOT 20. </b>BIGFOOT.</p><p>A shaggy, bipedal, apelike creature. Spent three years in the Blue Bear Lodge, an experimental community in the Siskiyou Mountains of northern California, where he was believed by his disciples to be an emissary from a peaceful star. Captured last month by MK-Ultra researchers and transferred to a facility in Delaware. Subsequently liberated by Committee agents. Currently formulating an assessment of humanity for the benefit of powerful extradimensional beings, which the successful purchaser will have a tremendous opportunity to shape.</p><p style="text-align: center;">-</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="750" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-avPzUiqnlyc/XzeK4XnZkLI/AAAAAAAADyM/5CUnhdJvH2sEyEGvIUiNCM172bNL5t19ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Cocoanut%252BGrove.jpg" style="text-align: left;" width="640" /><img border="0" data-original-height="581" data-original-width="750" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ESa4Tcvs3KE/XzeK4cJCvuI/AAAAAAAADyQ/IZHe2zsGUskostQaOAw4LqVXt0OgAJTsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/ambassador.jpg" style="text-align: left;" width="640" /></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-36881537328634286462020-07-26T21:38:00.000-07:002020-07-26T21:38:37.569-07:00blazing kansas<div>Something bad is happening in Kansas. A strange meteor fell from the sky and the government has sent you to sort it out. A yellow brick highway leads between cornfields towards a distant green glow on the horizon.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a depth mechanic. Take a step into the zone by rolling d6 on each table and adding 2 for each step you've already taken. Keep going until you destroy the Super-Wizard. Or you could put it on a grid and treat it as a squarecrawl, it's up to you.</div><div><br /></div>LANDMARK<div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Big white cross on the top of a hill. Crows circling overhead. Grants a blessing to anyone who's willing to kneel before it and commit their soul to Jesus Christ.</li><li>Gas station. Wizened old man with shotgun behind the counter. He'll sell you snacks and potions if you can convince him you're not a thief or a jayhawker.</li><li>Old-fashioned wooden grain elevator. The inside smells of sweet corn. Mutilated, rat-chewed bodies hang by necks from rafters. SLAVER written on walls in blood.</li><li>Row of oil derricks. Guarded by a creaky, rust-riddled mechanical man. The slightest disturbance to the pumps will cause an explosive gusher that spews crude oil everywhere.</li><li>Abandoned farmhouse. Haunted by spooky ghosts. In barn, covered by tarpaulin, strange machine of coiled glass that can project people into the Phantom Zone.</li><li>Corn maze. Grows new walls to trap sinners. Scarecrow men lurk in the corn. Farm princess trapped in the longhorn minotaur's central lair - only her kiss can slay the beast.</li><li>Wagon train. Pilgrims terrified of "Injuns", have circled their wagons to protect against surprise attack. On their way to ask the Super-Wizard to help them get to Oregon.</li><li>Cheap motel. Clan of desperate bank robbers hiding out in room one through four. Innocent travelling salesman in room five. Pimpled teen on counter reading comic books.</li><li>Revival meeting. Big white tent. Preacher baptising converts in a tin tub and inducting them into the Army of Gilead. Wants you to join and won't take no for an answer.</li><li>Baseball field. Overgrown. Mechanical men play ball, their rusty joints squeaking, in front of the empty stands. Score a home run off the batter and he'll spit out a prize.</li><li>Railway station. Glum hobos dwell in forgotton freight train, its wheels rusted to the track. Manic mechanical station-master insists on taking your ticket.</li><li>Sculpture garden. Grotesque scrap-metal caricatures of celebrities and politicians. Owner has declared himself the Kansas antipope and wears a tinfoil mitre.</li><li>Applebee's. In every way a fully-functioning, completely regular Applebee's. No trick whatsoever. Try the shrimp 'n' parmesan sirloin or the double-glazed baby-back ribs.</li><li>Bible museum. Sleepy tame dinosaurs inhabit a life-size model of the Temple of Solomon. Friendly pastor explains how God created them to show that evolution is a lie.</li><li>Saloon bar. Piano stops as you walk in. Whiskey-sodden desperadoes slump against the bar. Football plays on TV in the corner. High-stakes poker game going on upstairs.</li><li>Wal-Mart. Libertarian management policies have led to a civil war raging between the aisles, with every department ruthlessly competing for your business.</li><li>Meatpacking plant. Blood-smeared mechanical men herd screaming cows across the factory floor, slaughter them and extract their organs for use in Super-Wizardry.</li><li>Clockwork factory. Mechanical men labouring tirelessly to produce more of their own. Interlopers have their brains chopped out and used in grotesque experiments.</li><li>The Perfect City of the Super-Wizard. Lobotomised suburbanites with gleaming, drool-slick smiles shuffle between rows of identical green houses, watched by mechanical police.</li><li>The Atomic Fortress of the Super-Wizard. Citadel of green crystal, home to a legion of mechanical men. Grew from a seed in a crashed alien spaceship.</li></ol></div><div>ENCOUNTER</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Looming grey tornado, slowly rolling towards you. Cows and houses orbiting around it. Psychic baby with giant brain levitating serenely in the eye.</li><li>Jayhawkers from the Army of Gilead. Men in red trousers and floppy hats, armed with rifles and broadswords, hunting down pagans and industralists in the name of Free Kansas.</li><li>Satanist serial killer with mask made of human skin and swastikas carved down his arms, armed with an iron sickle, preparing to chop you up. Surprisingly stealthy for such a big guy.</li><li>Phalanx of mechanical men, armed with axes, out looking for human brains to extract and return to the Atomic Fortress so the Super-Wizard can make more of them.</li><li>Cynical teen genius with a laser gun. Perfectly bald. Cannot be restrained from denying the existence of God. Obsessively tinkers with every machine they can find.</li><li>Longhorn minotaur. Hideously overmuscled from bovine growth hormone. Twelve-foot hornspan makes doors difficult. Wants to bring you back to the corn maze and eat you.</li><li>Pack of masked harlequins with blood-stained teeth and wheels for hands and feet. Act like rabid wolves. Scarily quick on flat ground, but have difficulty turning.</li><li>Red-haired boy reporter looking for the story of a lifetime. Excitable. Prone to ludicrous bad luck but is never actually seriously hurt. Constantly needs rescuing though.</li><li>Stone-faced war preacher and band of jayhawkers looking for recruits for a military raid on the Atomic Fortress, intending to abolish the Wizard and all his sinful works.</li><li>Woman in aviator goggles and diaphanous white robes. Claims to be the rainbow's daughter, fallen out of the sky. Can only eat the purest dewdrops and is therefore slowly starving.</li><li>Shaggy-haired sasquatch in a battered top hat, wielding an enchanted magnet that compels people to love him. Depressed. Seeking someone more deserving to give the magnet to.</li><li>Robotic flesh-eating worm with the head of Hillary Clinton. Wants to take your guns, raise your taxes, drink the blood of aborted children and convert Kansas to Islamic communism.</li><li>Flock of yellow-fanged baboons with vulture wings, in comical blue jackets. Vicious, but crave discipline. Looking for a witch to govern them and keep their mischievous impulses in check.</li><li>Giant hungry tiger. Wants to kill and eat some big fat babies, but can't, because she's born again in Jesus Christ and very active in the pro-life movement. Won't stop talking about it.</li><li>Barber-surgeon with tuberculosis and a huge bushy moustache, looking for tooth-pulling work. Expert gunfighter but won't admit it, since he keeps getting challenged to duels.</li><li>Obese purple leech-mouthed parasite man that drains energy by touch, getting fatter and stronger as it goes. Leaves behind a trail of smouldering skeletons. Scared of eggs.</li><li>Four-faced brass helicopter heads kept in air by impractical Da Vinci corkscrews. Loudly announce their intention to devour you. Easily distracted by philosophical riddles.</li><li>Reverse-talking bizarro clones of the PCs with chalky white skin and inverted systems of morality. Want to do exactly the opposite of whatever the PCs want to do.</li><li>The Green Guardian. Secret weapon of the Super-Wizard. Muscled adonis in acrobat's tights with magnificent emerald beard and moustache. Impossibly strong, naive, refuses to kill.</li><li>The Super-Wizard. Toymaker in a checked waistcoat with pockets full of marvels. Pretends to grant wishes with holograms. Planning to conquer the world with mechanical men.</li></ol><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0DHtvZlTuWI/Xxvdw2Rja6I/AAAAAAAADxM/feQd0C1a1hQP-8pxu2VZ0AiXACvf1HHSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/kansas1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0DHtvZlTuWI/Xxvdw2Rja6I/AAAAAAAADxM/feQd0C1a1hQP-8pxu2VZ0AiXACvf1HHSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/kansas1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jc50RcgtA3c/XxveB9yyHsI/AAAAAAAADxY/RWtAsea-QrU9zFjWJog-v2jFf5bx98VEQCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/kansas2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jc50RcgtA3c/XxveB9yyHsI/AAAAAAAADxY/RWtAsea-QrU9zFjWJog-v2jFf5bx98VEQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/kansas2.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NteYcGyc8MI/XxveCFi5e3I/AAAAAAAADxc/U4Mst8JGWp8r7jGTcIDf7WaTxcjfpvOowCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/kansas3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="1024" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NteYcGyc8MI/XxveCFi5e3I/AAAAAAAADxc/U4Mst8JGWp8r7jGTcIDf7WaTxcjfpvOowCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/kansas3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div>Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-20451777192574986842020-05-22T18:52:00.000-07:002020-05-22T18:52:19.516-07:00Space Prison From My Dream Last NightOkay I just had this dream last night. It is for Mothership probably though I've never played or read it.<br />
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The TETRAD is a prison ship, or was. A thin torus spinning to produce uncomfortably heavy gravity. You probably docked because of the distress call, but maybe you just saw the scorch marks and missing section and thought 'huh'.<br />
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Doors open to reveal a bomb the size of a golfcart. Oh it is a golfcart! Covered in accelerant with a scrawled note: 'lol u idiots - pay fealty to <b>Lupin</b> and maybe you can leave'<br />
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You've landed in <b>Storage</b>. Here's a map.<br />
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In a minute <b>Victor 'Figs' Fontanelli</b> jumps on the intercom, announces that he's 'the warden round here'. He's doing some kind of cowboy/Zsasz routine. Sounds like he's having fun. There're panels by most doors you can use to talk back, and he's keen to talk. He'll explain what he knows, that something went wrong and the prisoners got loose. He's holed up in <b>Command</b>, the last person there alive. He's got guard droids blockading the door between <b>Storage</b> and <b>Rec</b>, where the surviving convicts are holed up. He apologises, <b>Lupin</b> is 'no longer with us', and Figs doesn't know how to disarm the bomb. He's been taking advice from <b>Chanibul Vector</b>, a cannibal savant locked up in <b>Solitary</b>, who might know how to help.<br />
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<b>STORAGE</b><br />
If you stick around and search thoroughly, you might find <b>Rodney Peck</b>, holed up in a shipping container with two thousand cans of seaweed and five other guards, four dead and one comatose. Rodney's mind is pretty much gone. He has no idea whether he's been eating dried food or his friends. He can help clarify that Figs is 'one of the crazies, worse than them in <b>Gen Pop</b>'. He has a vague understanding that the explosion was some kind of insurance scam gone wrong, and can maybe answer questions about guard droids or bulkheads or whatever else. If you spend long enough dicking around, or start Rodney screaming again, a scout team from gen pop will find you.<br />
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<b>REC</b><br />
It's mildly tense, but democratic and well organised. There're two inmates more in charge than the others. <b>Shadrock Clemens</b> is short, nosy and intense. Locked up for anarchist agitating and industrial espionage. Hates making decisions, though actually very good at it. <b>Bolo Startrek</b> dealt drugs and killed people in a different life. Reformed for the last three decades, locked up for the last two. Bolo will probably never recover from the anger and pain of imprisonment, but channels that energy into community organisation and support.<br />
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For those inmates who weren't killed in the explosion, life has considerably improved. They can sleep where, and with who, they want, have free access through the rec rooms and what's left of <b>Gen Pop</b>. Despite the rations they've self-imposed (with a 2/3rds majority vote) everyone has more food than they've had in years. They practise restorative justice for the few incidents that arise. Their simple rules, rarely broken: let everyone be heard, respect people's boundaries, follow consensus, don't lock any doors.<br />
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They get to storage through the air ducts, avoiding Figs' blockade, foraging for dried goods every few days. They try to not be spotted, so as to not upset Figs' paranoia. A minority would like to overthrow their assumed warden, but most don't really care. Sneaking past the droids is pretty fun, and they're not going to gain much by taking over more spartan steel corridors.<br />
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<b>COMMAND</b><br />
The bulkhead between here and <b>Storage</b> is actually secure, no air ducts and cheap hollow walls, and Figs will ask you to leave your weapons in the bin provided. The first few rooms are plant equipment: water cycling, O2 and power. Next are barracks and droid storage, maintenance shop, the control room, sickbay, then the bulkhead to <b>Solitary</b>. Figs is holed up in the control room. He's dragged in a dozen mattresses, replaced the security feeds with porn and cartoons, spray painted a little colour into the place and even found a potted fern somewhere. He doesn't seem put off by the smell of the old warden, gutted and nailed to a wall. Figs is very accomodating, smiling and eyeing you off like a tiger. He always has a couple of knives on him, and two taser-armed droids he's named Benny and Penny. He wants to kill you, obviously, but only A) if you lower your guard, turn your back, or otherwise show your trust, or B) if he thinks you're gay.<br />
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<b>SOLITARY</b><br />
Figs will insist on showing you the way to <b>Chanibul Vector</b>. The other cells you pass have had the air vented, most contain a mummy in a white jumpsuit. Vector's has the lock welded shut and a droid on watch, though the man is calm, composed, his superiority lacking the desperation of Figs'. He insists on pleasantries and introductions, a little background insight into his new 'guests'. Before answering any questions he demands payment from Figs. Suggests one of you go help Figs carry back a treat. Once Figs is gone he is direct.<br />
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The ship was sabotaged by the old warden, though not very effectively. The O2 lines didn't combust properly and only a quarter of the ship blew up. <b>Lupin</b>, in solitary for repeated escape attempts, busted loose and freed Figs to help subdue the guards. With the droids distracted fighting fires and riots in Gen Pop, Figs killed the head officers and commandeered the command deck. Lupin hacked into the droid controls, turned them on the leftover guards, and in about four hours the ship was theirs. It took only a couple days for Figs to decide Lupin had got 'too queer'. He threw him out an airlock, and only now realises he's stuck here. He can't update the droids' orders, doesn't know how to disable the bomb blocking the only dock, and is terrified the other prisoners are going to bust in to command and 'take turns on him'.<br />
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Chanibul would like to be free, but for that will need the door unwelded and the guard droid disabled. He suggests a coup. Lupin's body is still tangled in the wreckage just outside, and his notepad has the passwords and filepaths needed to reconfigure the droids. Figs, who will be back any moment with a plate of fried human, is readily distracted. Apologies if he's already killed anyone you sent with him. Once you have disabled his droids and taken him down, come bust old Chanibal out and he will take care of that nasty bomb for you. (The bomb is a convincing fake, which will become obvious when Chanibal steals your ship and flies off cackling)<br />
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Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-26873223531319919022020-05-03T21:16:00.000-07:002020-05-03T21:16:00.980-07:00A Taxonomy of ElvesKindly recall that elves are magical phenomena that do not exist in material reality. Though physical means of treatment are absolutely necessary, they cure only symptoms, not the disease. Killing them does little but keep the abductions down.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">artist: john anster fitzgerald</td></tr>
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<b>Viral</b> elves are called fae, faerie, folk. They are the least concerned with human life, though as dependant on it as the rest. They are the most uniquely aware of their unreality, that they are momentary projections of a subtler force, mere ghosts of metaphor.<br />
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Fae are a parodic reflection of man's relation to nature, a psychic hijack of a corrupted means of production. They embody not wrath but scorn and derision, most often scolding and punishing. Tangled are their judgements, buried under irony and snared on subconscious guilts. Outbreaks occur most commonly as morality shifts, when old taboos are broken or new ones formed.<br />
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They appear most commonly in carousing bands, near-identical but reaffirming themselves with titles and caricatured relations. They pantomime society's most powerful figures to find better purchase in its psychome (their host), bitterly counterfeiting an individuality they can never possess. Identity is often erased by their judgements, sad princes turned into ponds or flayed poachers stuffed in goat skins.<br />
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The classic witch's cure is a simple memetic immunisation (leaving out perhaps a saucer of milk, or never breaking twigs on the solstice) and of course reconciling a culture with the natural world is an instant fix.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pL-p43U0vqQ/Xq-VCcr9emI/AAAAAAAADuI/UKiqp8MmobYTRs8Z6Zl8jTcJtJufx1kmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/masks.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="350" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pL-p43U0vqQ/Xq-VCcr9emI/AAAAAAAADuI/UKiqp8MmobYTRs8Z6Zl8jTcJtJufx1kmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/masks.webp" width="280" /></a></div>
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<div>
<b>Bacterial</b> elves are called borrowers, brownies. They exist in the essence of man's slow succumbing to nature: where homes crumble, bridges rot and fall, a carriage molders in the wood and a low cairn grows over with moss.<br />
<br />
Feeding off this decay, borrowers must necessarily nurture it, protecting it from other agents of decomposition. They are martial, though more concerned with ceremony, ritual, keeping house.<br />
<br />
Their population kicks and spurts; only after a decade do they move in, then five or six, a family. Each decade brings a dozen more, each century or so another clade, an institution enshrining their traditions against the ending of the slow collapse they ride. Castes of candledousers, damcoddlers, snailslayers and lichenmonks war against entropy.<br />
<br />
White-haired sages sing their legends to starry-eyed squires (each turning of a season is 400 of their years, a lifetime) and pass the sacred knowledge of their home. Every detail is recorded in verse, woven into tapestry, tattooed, mosaiced, tallied and stored that it might be preserved for only a year more.<br />
<br />
A flip book the size of your thumb, four hundred perfect paintings of a bench rotting away in the woods; a loving, anguished study of a raindrop falling to dissolution in a puddle.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xnII0iFnKlY/Xq9buAWpIMI/AAAAAAAADtQ/OEaP_2F9Sw45LZdrTU8vEmj68jOWZkBFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/brownies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="318" data-original-width="650" height="156" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xnII0iFnKlY/Xq9buAWpIMI/AAAAAAAADtQ/OEaP_2F9Sw45LZdrTU8vEmj68jOWZkBFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/brownies.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div>
<b>Insectile </b>elves are called sylphs, sprites, satyrs. Thriving on the sheer bloody mass of humanity, their encouragement of human activity is direct, usually carnal. They crave places held to be sacred, private or simply sentimental.<br />
<br />
They machinate behind shotgun weddings and runaway brides, keeping families large and power structures volatile. It is fresh blood they want, not stagnant inbreeding, in politics encouraging unlikely alliance, conquest and coups. Even they seem not to know their motivations, caught halfway between lust and love, upturning old order for a joyous germination.<br />
<br />
Commonly likened to pubic lice, in purpose far closer to the humble bumblebee. Fairy godmothers are their ilk, though any stated preoccupation with destiny is a distraction from the base nature of their desires. They watch you when you fuck.<br />
<br />
They can be differentiated from viral elves via vivisection. From the many-eyed drow to the furze-girdled satyr under a mantle of antler antenna, all are invertebrates.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PWCJZpWTfBg/Xq9buh9V6jI/AAAAAAAADtU/0CwWh240pNAhfceEeE1QK6Oyypg7IN68ACEwYBhgL/s1600/bugcourt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1059" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PWCJZpWTfBg/Xq9buh9V6jI/AAAAAAAADtU/0CwWh240pNAhfceEeE1QK6Oyypg7IN68ACEwYBhgL/s320/bugcourt.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">figuring out how 2 trick some guy into jacking off</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b>
<b>Fungal</b> elves are goblins, bugbears, redcaps and boogieboos. Their range of form and demesne are unparalleled, seemingly a species for every niche.<br />
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They may imitate other elves or other beasts entirely, stealing their wit from the foolish with tricks and pranks and gambling games. They are rambunctious and quick, most inclined to false friendship and eating children.<br />
<br />
Of all elves the least anchored to this material plane, their form and fearsomeness may shift as a matter of perspective. Just so they are a stiltskinned wedge into our world, leveraging cracks and unbalances that other elves may colonise.<br />
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Loosest in form, they are the tightest mirror of man. Their characters are the nearest to human, with emotions in broadest range and schemes driving to most particular ends. Addicted to elvish irony, they hunt those whose true natures jar against their station in life and ruin them utterly.<br />
<br />
Traditionally treated by throwing stones, numerous apocryphal tales suggest a stubborn infection can be cured by beating them at their own game. Such stories are gleefully disseminated by goblins.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3XZ9tjC_IDY/Xq-UoRFGm9I/AAAAAAAADt8/FG8UTPc0oC8jQE2FaK8Ar6Vxl-uyYyuowCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/fungusgoblin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="760" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3XZ9tjC_IDY/Xq-UoRFGm9I/AAAAAAAADt8/FG8UTPc0oC8jQE2FaK8Ar6Vxl-uyYyuowCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/fungusgoblin.jpg" width="308" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">artist: <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/georgedragon/art/Fungal-Goblin-756904759">georgedragon</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div>
Elvish <b>animals</b> is what people are.</div>
Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-884510949917412882020-04-14T19:56:00.000-07:002020-04-14T19:56:55.486-07:00People & Gods & Problems<div>
<a href="http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2020/04/lair-of-lamb.html">Arnold's latest dungeon</a> got me going back to brass tacks:<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>OH HI</b></div>
<div>
3d8 for relations, jobs and seeecrets</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Asema Baseball is the mayor's niece. She's head stablehand at the inn, secretly collects horse semen to sell to a local breeder.</li>
<li>Batrok Eth is the butcher's husband. He feeds the pigs and runs errands, is mostly a drunk. In his youth he killed a dear friend in a fight, passed it off as an accident, keeps a secret, guilty shrine.</li>
<li>Cain 'Morbid' Batoombi is the miller's brother. He runs the post office and graveyard. Secretly reads everyone's mail and fucks the newly deceased.</li>
<li>Deni la'Vet is the duke's wife's sister's daughter. She manages a hatshop (poorly). She's involved in several groups plotting against the duke, is secretly quite loyal.</li>
<li>Esme Merell is the witch's twin sister. Her home is the de facto orphanage and a thriving farm. She's secretly the witch.</li>
<li>Franzo Furnk is the son of the garrison commander. He's a reasonably competent captain in the guard. He's secretly addicted to confiscated drugs.</li>
<li>Gale Gadrot is the mother of a good half-dozen townsfolk. She's 'retired', but can't stop accepting new carpentry projects. Secretly had an affair with the duke in her youth - three of her children have claims to the inheritance.</li>
<li>Hego Abondine is the grandson of a famous knight. He's apprenticed to the blacksmith. Has secretly been stealing offcuts to make himself a sword.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1BmFWhXoYow/XpU6s6xyPhI/AAAAAAAADsE/5TZg0wjZPBoRvAhhB8KvrQR90-Q8CCx5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1115" data-original-width="1600" height="222" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1BmFWhXoYow/XpU6s6xyPhI/AAAAAAAADsE/5TZg0wjZPBoRvAhhB8KvrQR90-Q8CCx5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">bruegel the elder</td></tr>
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<b>O HARK</b><br />
<div>
6d6 for maximum mix matching<br />
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; word-break: keep-all;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Beast & Body</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Name</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Mood & Role</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Demesne</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">1</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Owl-headed</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Aestena,</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Somnolent Sage</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">of Fortune and Arguments</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">2</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Moth-backed</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Baorun,</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Suspicious Tallier</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">of Poison and Seeds</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">3</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Crab-handed</td><td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Coucauroo,</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Jovial Usurper</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">of Dinners and Riverbanks</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">4</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Eel-footed</td><td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Denepet,</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Cantankerous Caretaker</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">of Births and Prisons</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">5</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Donkey-eyed</td><td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Eolou,</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Dim-witted Poet</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">of Love and Archways</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">6</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Chicken-tailed</td><td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Fyarid,</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">Nervous Mother</td>
<td style="border: solid #000000 1pt; padding: 5pt;">of Roofs and Merchants</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N8SKjrWT-7w/XpU8IrwJi-I/AAAAAAAADsg/8mDPGrJXJG8cn_SCBb4QZbJzw1s7xqc_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Statua_del_dio_Moloch%252C_museo_del_cinema_di_Torino.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="880" data-original-width="1163" height="242" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N8SKjrWT-7w/XpU8IrwJi-I/AAAAAAAADsg/8mDPGrJXJG8cn_SCBb4QZbJzw1s7xqc_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Statua_del_dio_Moloch%252C_museo_del_cinema_di_Torino.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">brb worshipping moloch with my pal nancy pelosi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>OH HECK</b><br />
The animals started going missing, then the children, then whole towns. What was once a hapless hamlet, a charming chapel, is now corrupted, afflicted, twisted, cursed. It is...<br />
<ol>
<li>The colour from space. Everything is slick, the air heavy. Maddening spirals appear in stone and wood, though whether carved by webbed hands or the passage of this leaden, unearthly light, none could say. Everyone has too many teeth, eyes like plates and watery nightmares that drag you in.</li>
<li>The fallen sword. It is too pure, too perfect to exist here. No mortal, living being could ever deserve to exist in the same realm - the very thought is sickening. So it dredges up the dead to cleanse the land. Old bones, rusted blades, pale and hateful ghasts. Nothing can rest, or pass to a better life, with heaven trapped and tainted in the earth.</li>
<li>The caged moonbeam. A silver mirror rippling with tarnish. Flesh ripples too; veins and fur and torn muscle bulging, teeth and tails budding and bursting from the tortured form. The very walls sprout hair and sniff the air, howling at the pale orb ever out of reach.</li>
<li>The pit of shit. Your joints ache, your eyes burn, your head throbs whenever someone speaks. Desires play in you like children, urge you to bite and taunt and poop and laugh. Everything feels unfinished. Clay that never made it to the furnace. The twisted runts that were once people feast and fuck and fight; a terrible pantomime far too hard to distinguish from your own life.</li>
<li>The fecund mass. Air thick and yellow, awash with spores. A strain for every substrate. Fat black stalks crack stone, slime molds melt wood like butter. A thousand thousand fungal forms fight for supremacy in your flesh. Everything that could move still does, limbs hijacked by sticky purple mycelium then abandoned as crimson stalks pop through the sockets. That which was inert begins to shift, the whole steaming, rotting, thriving mess of countryside dragging itself as high as it can to spore once more.</li>
<li>The bad book. Bound in skin, of course, and inked in blood. Wrapped in chains and warnings and hidden, poorly, always to be found again. A hand that should know better leafs the pages. The barest wisp of breath revives the cracked brown words. Shadows stretch up the walls, eyes roll back in the head. Roads crack, rivers flood. Devils caper through the forest and in the back of your mind. 66.6 square miles of earth prepare to sink down to hell.</li>
<li>The golden cask. Age weighs heavy on the world. Rusted metal and rotted trees give way to gravity. Nursing homes sigh quietly with dying breath. The sand builds up, in corners first then dunes against the door. The weather beyond unseasonable, waves of heat and a biting wind of bugs. Slower than time the cask cracks open, in no rush to claim its new kingdom.</li>
<li>The silver pond. It fell from the night in a bright white rain. Pooled in a cup of rock at a lofty height. Its flickering surface shows banners, spires, coruscating forms that splash through like moonbeams. Businessmen scurry like rats with windsor-knotted tails. The butcher wears a pig's face, her mistress the head of an ass. A knight on a noble horse, thin and beautiful and horrible, laughing gaily as it seats a lance.</li>
<li>The wetted bed. Stretched blue shapes with thoughtlessly placed joints. In the daylight their tummies are fat and soft, tweedle-dumming down the lane peeking through the boarded windows. At night their fingers grow long as their shadows, grins split lava-lamp bubbles off their heads. They gather, clowns and dogs and angry parents, around a bed of twisted sheets and softly coo. Mustn't wake the sleepy babe.</li>
<li>The crashed ship. Netted up in plastic tents and checkpoints. Everything's under control, say suited men who won't remove their glasses. The paranoid junkie behind the bus stop is calm for once, pupils square. Nothing to see here. Absolute normalcy creeps through the town like a fog. Spats are settled discreetly, grudges forgotten. Take off the mask, don't worry. Everything is going to be okay.</li>
</ol>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lWoENKbtd8Q/XpU5ioJW9JI/AAAAAAAADr4/3sYjPD_ABGIua9R1S94Z1mzEpbmsd9hPQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/mirny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1280" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lWoENKbtd8Q/XpU5ioJW9JI/AAAAAAAADr4/3sYjPD_ABGIua9R1S94Z1mzEpbmsd9hPQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/mirny.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">this is my zone hole</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
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Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-10853111267589159582020-04-03T18:23:00.001-07:002020-04-03T18:23:27.930-07:00Reasons it RainsHey why is it always raining in dystopian sci-fi cityscapes??<br />
<ol>
<li>Classic mind control, precipitating depressants and stimulants sinusoidally. Populations riled into untimely rebellion and crushed under hopeless fog. Clouds and consent manufactured at the same time</li>
<li>Rust and degradation. Renters paying repairs for faults they didn't cause. Hard-earned paychecks lost to addictive cold medicines and dermatologist bills</li>
<li>Strictly aesthetic purposes. A roiling cloudscape for rich cunts towering high in the skyscrapers, keeps the rabble from seeing what they're missing out on</li>
<li>Cooling system for city-spanning AI. Cloud cover keeps sun off the circuits, water washes away the heat. Servitors thermal scan to find water pooled, trapped in facades and firmaments. Pump it out and pump in liquid computing to expand the AI's reach</li>
<li>Eugenic experiments misted down by upper classes trying to breed the perfect citizen. Hormones and engineered plagues leave a sticky residue activated by ancient 5G radio tech</li>
<li>Maintained by weather priests for baroque cultural reasons. Rain as an obtuse metaphor, dousing unworthiness and purifying the many sins of its inhabitants, justifying the oppressions heaped upon them. Keeps everyone depressed and fills them with a strange bitter pride.</li>
</ol>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oF33arvRh4M/Xoe3A4SlwYI/AAAAAAAADrc/DWIVxZF0wRo28pl1AZP2OkVdyZii9CyqQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/MIT-IndianMonsoon_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="639" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oF33arvRh4M/Xoe3A4SlwYI/AAAAAAAADrc/DWIVxZF0wRo28pl1AZP2OkVdyZii9CyqQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/MIT-IndianMonsoon_0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div>
Damn who runs this biz even<br />
<ol>
<li>Fast food chain. All meat products are vat-grown clones of the CEO, all staff are lobotomised clones of the CEO. (shamelessly plagiarised from <a href="http://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/">Dan</a>)</li>
<li>Subscription access to fresh water. Note you're only loaning the water. It can be returned in the same container you got it, in whatever form it left your body. Some inefficiency is expected, but return too little and the company comes to collect, with white rubber suits and vacuums</li>
<li>Distribution specialists. Will sell <a href="https://rememberdismove.blogspot.com/2020/01/400-thousand-rubber-ducks.html">enormous quantities of junk</a> for impossibly low prices. Once you realise you don't want it, they charge through the nose to remove it again</li>
<li>Medical insurance company. Will organise treatment for almost any ailment, for free. Require only a lifetime commitment that they can infect you every week with new experimental viruses</li>
<li>Socialisation service. Will provide you with friends, of a number and temperament commensurate with your payment plan. It's basically impossible to afford the tiers where they no longer advertise in mid conversation.</li>
<li>Self-actualisation agency. Give them your genome and they'll clone your brain, set your mindclones to anthropocentric tasks (mostly pattern recog and generating bad movie scripts). Once they figure out the things you're most useful at, they send you a print out of career advice. These guys never flip a profit, are propped up by tech entrepreneurs who want your genes for... nice reasons?</li>
</ol>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H5hwhhNsM2s/WnP0RQALqMI/AAAAAAAADJQ/g2CzVk2Tbu03o3EJ3NW9pEQeZkDrJxKBwCLcBGAs/s1600/rainycity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="868" height="367" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H5hwhhNsM2s/WnP0RQALqMI/AAAAAAAADJQ/g2CzVk2Tbu03o3EJ3NW9pEQeZkDrJxKBwCLcBGAs/s400/rainycity.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">thanks to friend Henry for inspiring this post approx two years ago</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Here is why it's raining in this town on <a href="http://rememberdismove.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/sublight-mars_29.html">Mars</a></div>
<ol>
<li>Weather machine fills canyon with foggy, breathable air. Company that owns machine and town both drugs the rain, subliminal messaging encoded in neon flashing through the cloud </li>
<li>Built in jagged crater, glass roof pinning permanent cloudceiling. Lightning arcs between the walls and the central weather machine, sending storms coursing down hilly streets. Two feet under the concrete skin of the town is the old research station the weather machine was originally built for, choked through with experimental, psychotropic fungus</li>
<li>Huge drilling rigs blast holes in the polar ice. Buildings and streets cluster between the mammoth rigs, kept warm by hot steam and pelted with gritty sleet. Occasionally a drill 'chokes'; an explosion of steam that blows away people, buildings, the rigs themselves, freezing them in place in the air</li>
<li>Carved into cave underneath a huge aquifer, soaking power from the water pressure above by means of huge jet arcing across the town. Ever present drizzle dripping from the ceiling, near constant buzz of mining and research crews journeying into the water-carved caves below, and the occasional peasoup fog leaked from the hydrothermal plant on the edge of town</li>
<li>Built into underhang of a waterfall. Town skinned with a thick layer of rainforest, this covered in turn by the vertical river that runs over every surface. Cliff walls papered in solar panels and vertical-axis turbines, a glut of captured warmth for when aphelion winter threatens to icyclise the town</li>
<li>On a hydrothermal vent in a frozen CO2 sea, rechannelled heat clutching a bubble of sublimation. Unpredictable flumes lash the frozen dome with heat and pressure - a spray of liquid CO2 will give instant frostbite before evaporation </li>
</ol>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cp3Yn5riSQs/Xoe2QvpQ2sI/AAAAAAAADrU/evfGLO-yZ2Yu6Z7WVQtthOmB8qN7XWGYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/blade_runner_hed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cp3Yn5riSQs/Xoe2QvpQ2sI/AAAAAAAADrU/evfGLO-yZ2Yu6Z7WVQtthOmB8qN7XWGYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/blade_runner_hed.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div>
THERE’S NOTHING BETTER AT BEING THE HUMAN HAND THAN THE HUMAN HAND</div>
<div>
You can have, like, a robot hand, and it’ll be super durable or whatever, but you’ll suck at piano and handjobs and all the good things in life</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Lobotomies, removing: pain, fear, love, hunger, revolutionary drive, concern for aesthetics</li>
<li>Additional tastebuds, not necessarily on your tongue: valuable metals, carbon monoxide, infrared light, gamma radiation, etc</li>
<li>More eyes. One of the most well developed body mods. The more complicated you make things the more migraines you will get</li>
<li>Photosynthesis genes (actually an algae-and-virus compound injected under the skin)</li>
<li>Plastigut. Gut flora that lets you digest plastic. It’s basically like drinking oil though</li>
<li>Artificial callous (actually an altered strain of HPV, can be grown several inches thick)</li>
<li>Induced alopecia. Never clog drains/air filters again. Look like a huge weirdo though</li>
<li>Induced hypertrichosis. Warm, cuddly. Definitely not a furry thing</li>
<li>Satellite phone. Antenna is usually just looped around your bones, but also you can fill your blood with iron, and then die in a couple months like an idiot. Don’t stand near microwaves</li>
<li>Gyroscope. You’re really hard to push over, and can rotate at will in zero g</li>
<li>Disassembly array. Generally replaces the mouth and tongue; there’re enough nerves there that you can actually do anything useful - e.g. rapidly stripping circuits - with the prosthetic</li>
<li>Voice box. Lets you copy any voice, accent, noise, etc that you hear. Sounds kind of muffled unless the mic protudes from you somewhere obvious</li>
<li>Universal translator. Never gives you real fluency, but is way faster than learning a language yourself. Will let you read .mp4s, binary, etc, with enough practise.</li>
<li>Arithmetic engine. You know the answer to any equation you see, so long as it has a rational answer. Irrational numbers and equations with too many solutions can give you a seizures</li>
<li>Water autocycler. Not much more complicated than a yellowing tube coming out the bottom and going back in at the top</li>
<li>Vitamin drip. Just a big pill stuck in your skin. Rarely causes abscess</li>
<li>Spring limbs. Massively improved performance at one extremely specific task, completely crippled in most other respects. Reversible, if you're staggeringly rich</li>
<li>Tool hand. Nothing too fancy or expensive. Your index finger's a screwdriver now, your middle is a stethoscope, your pinkie a pair of tweezers. Very popular with people already missing fingers</li>
<li>O2 ration kit. Sometimes they'll stick a converter in your lungs and pump you full of synthetic hemoglobin, but by far the cheapest and most efficient technique is a coma bomb in your brain</li>
<li>Skin pockets. Gross!</li>
</ol>
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Dunkey Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14402191799610897998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5044668009091635370.post-83564491482051487732020-04-02T16:50:00.000-07:002020-04-02T16:50:50.419-07:00HEX CRAWLER 666Several years ago I spent some time accumulating a big collection of art for a dead-future setting called Scavenger I was working on at the time.<div>
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It's a lot of good art. I have never been sure what to do with it.</div>
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hexcrawler666">UNTIL NOW.</a></div>
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I was already on Twitter as <a href="https://twitter.com/circusarmy">@circusarmy</a>. Now I'm also on there as <a href="https://twitter.com/hexcrawler666">@hexcrawler666</a>. I have a million of these things. I will be tweeting vile hexagons at you until the world perishes in flame, so about five weeks.</div>
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Here is the merest sample of my power:</div>
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<li>A gravel track across barren plains to distant, snow-capped mountains. Not a scrap of vegetation to be seen. Tiny mouths and eyes peep open in the dunes, pleading for water. Feed them a river and they’ll grow you a forest.</li>
<li>Fur-swathed nomads huddle in their yurt, brewing healthsome tea in an iron pot. Yapping, rheum-eyed mongrels with frost beading in their fur hate you on sight, and the nomads always trust their dogs.</li>
<li>Love-maddened polyamorous ground sloths try to shake a hunter out of a tree. They just want to kiss and cuddle him. He has a lucky amulet and a crossbow, but no luck or bolts. He’s been up there for a week, eating apples.</li>
<li>Proud bear hunter and her family celebrating the occasion of her first kill. They will invite you to join the festivities. Warriors from a rival clan lie in wait over the hill to ambush the once everyone’s drunk.</li>
<li>Hollow radio golem bristling with antennae, wandering the desert. Wants to open up and pull you inside, where you’ll be forced to listen to alien transmissions from beyond the stars. This gives you magic and makes you insane.</li>
<li>Lake full of floating trash. Colony of junkdivers living on dragon-headed rustboats, holding their breath and wrapping themselves in lead weights to sink through murky metallic water in search of trinkets.</li>
<li>Erotic lizard-themed sorceress locked in intense argument with her enslaved iguana familiar over who is domming who. They are looking for the Chrome Pyramid but they can’t understand the map they bought in the bazaar.</li>
<li>Bejewelled lich and retinue of obsequious skeletons with gilded halberds. Hunched mummy-ape totes huge parchment umbrella to protect it from the deadly rays of the sun. Wants cash and servitude.</li>
<li>Frozen remains of a steaming alien gigamachine, melting a crater into the surrounding snow. Enter through the heat vents. A gang of outlaw archaeologists, paranoid about shapeshifters, have set up a camp on the icy rim.</li>
<li>Barrow-tomb of the King of Golden Grief, lying in stately sorrow. Wall paintings tell the story of his defeat and exile. His mask grants you an air of solemn authority such that none can gainsay you.</li>
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Did you like that? Are you a little piggy for it? You will like <a href="https://twitter.com/hexcrawler666">HEX CRAWLER 666</a>.</div>
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Matt Haltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09218026941585227639noreply@blogger.com2