Goldie reached up and got a strong hand hold on a rock outcropping, nudging the rock to test its strength.  It was hard to pull herself up over the jagged ledge wearing a flowing dress, but she managed all the same.

***

Detective Tyrone Higgins frowned as he planted his face into the palms of his overworked hands.  Here he stood, in another FDA office, arresting another traitor in federal employ.  Something connected these criminals other than their affiliation in the same agency.  If he did not find that connection before too long, this resistance movement would gain enough momentum that standard law enforcement would not be enough to stop it.

Tyrone had grown concerned since transferring to Harrisonburg that the mega-city would soon be headed for military jurisdiction.  He would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.

Tyrone keyed his gauntlet display and his Virtual Intelligence, Theresa appeared on the screen.  Tyrone spoke after a long pause, “Theresa, I need you to run some numbers on the situation in Harrisonburg.  The Query: How many public incidents and law enforcement failures before the President enacts NDAA enforcement powers over the city?”

The image of Theresa on the screen winked at Tyrone, “My processor is already working to compute your answer.  Status will update periodically.  You should also know, the VI you asked me to monitor…”

Tyrone’s eye slanted queerly at the image of the Theresa VI, “What is it?”

“She exhibited some erratic behavior again, sending messages outside of the agency.”

Tyrone shook his head as he reviewed the contents of the message.  This VI had a non-standard agenda.  Technically, VI’s followed a very strict set of programmed rules.  That would mean that the programmer went out of his or her way to change the operating goals of this particular VI.  Reviewing the VI proved another fact, the Goldie VI’s creator modeled the VI after a real human.  Tyrone could possibly use that to track him down.

Theresa pinged Tyrone with the answer to another query.  After reviewing the VI transmissions, Tyrone felt it was obvious where the resistance would hit next.  He downloaded the specs from the message. Now, the time had come to head this potential catastrophe off at the pass, at Walls Tower.  The resistance was playing with fire, and only Tyrone could stop them from burning down the house.

***

Jarred worried about Kayla and Apple, how they would communicate without him, as he lay in the hospital bed.  He supposed that everyone probably worried a good deal about his survival, being that the artificial components on his heart had been stopped by the EMP.  At least that freak of an assassin wouldn’t bother anyone anymore.

***

Relief and comfort coursed through Kayla after viewing the plan of action Barry had prepared.  Kayla would work alone in the real world, while Apple handled some more virtual assignments.  If the resistance exposed what the Oathed Technocrats were up to now, the authorities would not be able to ignore them any longer.  All those wealthy and powerful men’s doors would receive knocks from the FBI with warrants for their arrests in hand.

The resistance would finally prove itself as a valuable asset to the public good, and, perhaps, the corruption in the government would be rooted and leave a gutted shell of only those who cared.

Kayla crept through the service hatch into the tunnel that led to the secured server facility of the largest, most impressive building in all of Harrisonburg, Virginia.  The reason for Harrisonburg becoming a mega-city was Walls Corporation, which ruled much of virtual space from the upper floors of this building.  The building’s architecture defied the laws of physics similar to buildings in the virtual world.  Walls Towers, built before Kayla’s birth, was known the world over.  The eccentric CEO went through a dozen groups of engineers that said what he wanted couldn’t be done.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the CEO, Fred Walls, hired a boy, just out of highschool.  That high school boy was the only creative genius that could think outside the box enough to create this unconventional design.

If Kayla got caught in here, her mission would be a failure. She would be thrown in a dark, deep prison, but, in three days, the virus program would come online and many of the people in cyberspace would effectively die in the real world.  During the last couple of days, Kayla wondered if she really wanted the Technocrats to fail.  This virus would be a wakeup call to all of the people that survived, to hopefully focus on the real world again.  Kayla imagined all of the masses protesting outside government buildings to find a solution to the “super” weed.  She longed to walk the countryside and enjoy the natural wonders of Earth.

Kayla slipped into the server room, which should have been empty according to Apple’s hacking of the security system of Walls Towers.  It was not empty, however, as there was another investigator hard at work trying to crack several mysteries of his own.

Kayla knew that she needed to act before the unknown man, who was not a security guard or maintenance man of Walls Corporation, drew his gun and ended her.  The other person must have been alerted by something; Kayla could see the gun in his hand.  She skulked down the next set of servers, each their own mountain island in a sea of office doldrums.  She waited for a moment behind the next set of those server mountains.

Kayla rushed into Tyrone unexpectedly from the side and knocked the gun from his hand.  He reacted quickly and stayed on his feet.  Tyrone tried to swing his heavy gauntleted arm around to throttle Kayla, but he did not get the gauntlet around in time to quickly end the close combat.  Kayla grasped Tyrone’s gauntleted forearm and their other hands each grasped each other, fingers locked around each other’s.

“Look.  You can’t do this!  You do and the consequences will be worse than you believe.  I’m not talkin’ bout for you either.  I mean all those people out there you are doin’ this for.  The hammer is about to smack.”  Tyrone said under the strain of trying to win the grapple.

Kayla ended the grapple with a combination knee to the groin and head butt to Tyrone’s nose.  He sailed back into another server stack and slid down.  Kayla knew that it probably would not be enough to knock him out; it wasn’t that easy.  She descended upon him and planted blow after blow on his face and chest.  Finally, Kayla convinced herself that the bloody pulp of a man would stay out of action.  Kayla returned to finding and destroying the target mainframe.

The man, Tyrone, with the bloody face could not even will himself to move a muscle.  His face looked like an unrecognizable mess like a Halloween horror mask.

***

Apple loaded her usual avatar, pink spikey haired post-apocalyptic punk girl with a shot gun in hand.

Apple imagined a totally different future.  If cyberspace was alive and could care for itself, none of these problems would be more than hiccups until the antibodies destroyed them.  Her world, the virtual world, needed to be saved from the Oathed Technocrats’ plan so that human evolution could continue in the direction she believed human evolution was destined for.  Apple felt that she was an alien on the planet Earth; she saw herself as part of the destiny, part of the evolution, beyond the physical world of Earth and into the new dimension of virtual space.

Apple finished her hack pack installations on the Walls Tower security feeds.  Kayla was now safe from discovery.  Now, only one task remained for Apple.  To stop the Technocrats from spreading this insane entrapment virus, Apple had to prevent the download of the virus to back-up servers.

She walked toward the tunnel that led from the server containing the virus to the outside virtual world.  If the data stopped here, in the tunnel at her position, the resistance would be successful.

Packets of data dropped out of the storage devices and formed into bullet shape cars. Apple watched from the tunnel vantage point as the cars started hovering down the long pathway that led to the backup servers.  Apple knew she could not let a single one of those packets out or the mission might be a failure.

Apple stepped into the middle of the data tunnel and charged at the front most bullet car in the convoy.  The car slammed into her and any normal avatar would have been shredded from the impact.  However, Apple’s tough assed avatar survived the impact with only minimal injuries.  She clung to the front of the car through no fault of her own, the momentum pushing against her keeping her attached like a victim in a spider’s web.  She pushed the muzzle of the shot gun directly against the front of the bullet car and unloaded every round she had.

The car exploded in a brilliant flash, again the Tough as Nails avatar pulled through, but not without mental strain upon Apple and physical damage to the avatar.  The remaining cars smashed into the back of each other after being dislodged by the explosion and subsequent shrapnel.

***

Finally, Goldie reached the top of the cliff.  The long, thin dress clung to her skin from the salty misty sea water that saturated the air.  She stood defiant and satisfied on a small outcropping covered in tufts of beach grasses.  Goldie looked out across the turbulent sea.  A storm brewed the water and clouds on the horizon, that familiar feeling and smell of a storm front filled the air.

Apple watched through the eyes of her avatar as it finally returned to functionality from the blast of the bullet cars.  She grew confused as she looked around and found herself on a rock ledge overlooking a beach that probably came out of one of the adult pleasure programs.

“Hello, child.”  Goldie spoke as she used a caressing hand to be sure that Apple and her avatar were alright.

“Huh? WTF?”  After the scene fully loaded, Apple’s confusion only grew.

“You have done me a great favor.  It is only right that I am honest with you,” Goldie’s soft voice enchanted Apple.

“Uuhhh…” words fell flat and Apple could not find her voice.

“Your friend, Zodi, wasn’t dead, or in a normal coma.  You see, an errant version of that virus was released when the resistance dug into the Oathed Technocrat intranet.  Zodi was trapped in that mainframe back there.”

Apple grew furious and wished to strike out at Goldie.  Apple’s avatar flailed violently at Goldie, but did not make a good attempt to land a killing blow.

Goldie’s arms reached out swiftly and grasped Apple’s wrists, “It had to be destroyed.  It was vital.”

“Who?  Kayla?  The release…” Apple always spoke in abbreviated tones, and now she had rage preventing her words from being effective as well.

Goldie only nodded an affirmative.

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 11 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Uriel (by C.E. Zacherl see more at veyer.deviantart.com)

Goldie stared out into Club InZanity, soaking in every detail just as her tongue soaked in every note of the wine.  This wine would be the first of an evening that looked to have a number of suspenseful sips.

***

The club’s bar was not stationary; it orbited the venue like the ring on a space station orbits the main body.  Small ledges lined the club so that all the patrons had a place to set their drink and their elbow, if they were so inclined.

Most of the patrons, however, wouldn’t be found leaning on the ledge.  Many of the patrons filled one of several moving platforms that rose and sunk in sync with the music, sinking and rising with more speed as the songs increased in BPM.

Another large group of patrons located themselves around three major hubs that were on sunken sections of floor.  These hubs glowed with many bright neon colors and patrons jacked into the ports of the hubs with any number of various outputs.  Many of the patrons in this part of the club had one aspect of appearance in common.  These people had wires and jacks tangled into their hair.  Some patrons had these items weaved through their normal hair, while still others had wholly artificial hair, made of tubes, some glowing.  Some conservative people and outsiders from this subculture did not consider these people fully human anymore.

The music guaranteed an almost perfect level of privacy outside of a small social bubble.  A small social bubble around a couch on the far wall from the door included Barry Lesco, Apple Edelman, Jarred Dobson, and Kayla Summers.

Barry Lesco looked out of place with his gears and archaic tech looking goggles and gas mask.  If it was not for the sound of the music, his decorations and gear would click and warble quite audibly.

Kayla just looked uncomfortable as she shifted from foot to foot, as she stood, facing the couch.

Apple and Jarred flanked Barry on the couch and were leaning forward to listen to Kayla and Barry speak.  Jarred sipped on a chemically induced alcoholic beverage.

Barry spoke at a low screaming level barely audible over the thumping, pulsing cyber-trance.  “Our inside source is active again.  We are ready to make some really big moves.  With that information you guys grabbed, we now know how to hinder progress the technocrats have spent years refining in our sector… and others.”

“Yeeeeee!” Apple squealed with glee as the feeling of grandiose importance soaked into her.

Barry smiled widely and squeezed Apple’s shoulder with a fatherly look of approval.  Apple’s hair bounced separate of her own motions.  Her hair imbibed the club style of tubing and wires, one wire of which was plugged into a music player that blared in one ear even while she listened to the club music.

***

Unfortunately for the trivium of Kayla, Apple, and Jarred, their recent break-in did not go unnoticed.  The Oathed Technocrats spared nothing on those that gained the rights to brag about hacking their systems.

Uriel could hardly be described as human.  His life belonged more to several large corporations than it belonged to him, much in the way a GMO infected crop became the property of the mega-corporations.  Wires composed more mileage inside Uriel’s body than arteries and veins.  His armored plating, partially exposed for intimidation, could stop anything short of a high caliber rifle round.  Uriel trained hard for many years between his operations, operations that led Uriel to be the assassin that he now was.

The patrons of Club InZanity would never compare Uriel, the assassin, to the stealthy ninja type.  In fact, before a weapon came into view or a scuffle even started, a small number of patrons headed for the exits.

The gang of resistance members, not in the direct meeting, was the first to lose their lives and to trigger the musical cacophony of screams that sent another half of the patrons running in panic.

First the sound of a crack of two impacting skulls, then the bone fragments from their two skulls locked together as one. The resistance member’s blood oozed between the fingers of Uriel’s two large, augmented hands.

As Kayla, Jarred, Apple, and Barry reacted to the intruder, the last of their escort took three bullets to the chest and one to the head from a small concealable hand gun.  Jarred immediately rushed Uriel and his full body weight turned out to be just enough to knock the gun across the room.  With a little help from a shove, Jarred’s momentum carried him into the ledge on the opposite wall.

Physically outmatched, Barry was next up against Uriel to stop him as the two girls attempted to strategize.  Uriel used Barry’s midsection and face as an example of his boxing ability.  Barry collapsed after stumbling back under the weight of the blows landed upon him.

The girls engaged Uriel for a few moments, ending in Uriel acquiring a broken mechanical finger after he tried to fire a neurotoxin dart at Kayla.  Kayla ended up against the wall, poised over Barry.  Apple flipped over the bar counter.

Barry still lay against the far wall, blood pouring out of his broken nose.  Kayla leaned over him and was surprised as he actually reached up and grabbed her close.  He muttered something into Kayla’s ear and she nodded, looking back at Uriel fighting with the others.

Kayla started hurriedly grabbing components from Barry’s outfit, pack, and belt.

Jarred tried his best to hold off Uriel.  He ripped off the broken metallic support he had crashed into. He swung it into Uriel, but the old ledge support dented more than Uriel dented or bruised.  Jarred grew tired from the constant frustrated swings.  Uriel grabbed onto an arm first and then lifted Jarred into the air and grasped one of Jarred’s legs.  He lifted him wholly off of the ground, bent him at an unnatural angle that caused a snapping sound, and threw him into one of the now vacant hubs.

Kayla worked furiously with the awkward components until she heard Uriel’s breathing.  Kayla turned to face him just as Apple approached from the flank with a bar knife.  Uriel waved his augmented arms, knocking the coiled tube from Kayla’s hand and the knife from Apple’s.

Uriel grunted with tired exertion and sent his gyros into over drive as he lifted Kayla up in one hand and Apple in the other.  He held the girls for only a moment as Kayla pulled an archaic grenade out and rolled it behind Uriel via the gap between his legs.

“Grab on!”  Kayla shouted to Apple and they both held on to Uriel’s arms and tucked into his body to gain shelter from the grenade shrapnel.

Uriel landed hard on top of the girls as the blast threw them through the air.  Everyone left in the room crawled along the ground, stunned, trying to recover and find an advantage in the fight.

Kayla gathered every bit of remaining willpower she could muster to roll sideways over to the coiled tube she had been working on with Barry’s instruction.  She exerted her labored muscles in a groaning, painful effort as she pulled two metallic objects out of her pocket and placed a final archaic grenade into the tube.

Kayla cooked the grenade and dropped the two metallic objects into the tube.  With only seconds to spare, as Uriel rose to his feet and sparks flew from his shoulder, she half tossed, half rolled the awkward tube to Uriel’s feet.

The small contained explosion did very little damage beyond the tube.  The pulsing wave of energy that thrummed out from the jury-rigged device brought a halt to Uriel (the mostly machine man), the music, the platforms, and the hubs.  In perfect time with the EMP wave, most of the lights went dim, like a localized apocalypse.  Briefly, the darkness concealed everyone’s fate.

Uriel was a smoking hulk of lifeless electrical parts and fried flesh.  Kayla couldn’t believe the make shift EMP device had worked, but she swore to whatever was holy a thank you for the affect.

The music was dead; the lights were dark; heavy breathing ruled the sound waves.  Then, a violent thumping sound came from Jarred.  Barry used the wall as leverage to force his body up off of the floor.  He pulled a device from his belt and wound it up.  Light emitted in a tight beam and flowed across the dark, motionless room.

Kayla shrieked as the beam of light landed on Jarred, laying prone on the floor.  His body convulsed in a violent chaos that looked like a seizure.

They hoped Jarred would survive, but the revelation that he had an electronically augmented heart did not bode well for his chances at survival.

Apple cried and Kayla did her best to appear strong, but really the fear of failure started to creep back in to her mind.  Fortunately, Barry quickly went to work with his tinkering knowledge.  He would be the only chance that Jarred might have.

***

Goldie swished the red, silky liquid around the beautiful, bell shaped glass.

Too long wine had been her only comfort, but soon, she would be safe.  Soon, everything she had meticulously planned would come to fruition, and then, she would be able to enjoy the wine again, rather than use it for escape.

Previous

From the beginning

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 10 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Stories in the Ether, Issue #4

We’re very proud to present Issue #4 of  Stories in the Ether. It is available now for ANY and ALL eReaders from DriveThruFiction.com and Smashwords.com for only $2.99. In the coming days and weeks, it will also be available directly from Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Nook, etc – but why wait? Our files from DriveThruFiction.com and Smashwords will work on your Kindle, Kobo, Nook, or iPad today!

In this issue you’ll gaze upon the gorgeous artwork of Paul Hagwood and get to enjoy eleven compelling stories of steampunk, fantasy, and science fiction. The whole issue clocks in at nearly 50,000 words, a great body of work to enjoy a week’s worth of daily fiction over your morning coffee.

The complete table of contents includes:

• The Gorgon’s Love, by Martin Shelby
• The Stars at Night, by JC Hemphill
• Big Heart, by David J. Fielding
• The Chase, by J. A. Gonzales
• A New Beginning, by Colin W. Campbell
• The Mechanical Turk, or All’s Well That Ends, by Tucker Cummings
• Shelled, by M. R. Williamson
• Exodus, by Eric Staggs
• The Emerald City, by Per Wiger
• The Occurrence of the Cavalry Horse, by Teel James Glenn
• Empyrean Skies, by David Gaither

… with artwork by Paul Hagwood.

So, jump over and sink your teeth into this today. We’ll be back in a few weeks with even more fiction – Issue #5 is in the works!

Visit the original post, Stories in the Ether, Issue 4 Available Now, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass, her second novel and a sequel to her critically acclaimed Shades of Milk and Honey, returns readers to her alternate version of Europe in the 1810s. Diverging from the Jane Austen style story of the first book, it explores married life, the magical art inherent in her world, and the politics of France under the shadow of Napolean.

Set in a world where the Prince of Wales serves as Regent over the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Faerie, and Ireland, England breathes a heavy sigh of relief while Napoleon lives in exile on the island of Elba. Against this backdrop, Jane Vincent finds herself needing to adapt to many new things in her life. She has married the love of her life, but now must learn to handle the everyday challenges of marriage as well as the change in social status in becoming an artisan who works with the ephemeral magic known as glamour.

For their honeymoon, Jane and her husband take a working holiday to Belgium just as Napoleon escapes from his exile in Elba. Jane soon finds that Belgium is split regarding their feelings about Napoleon, and her ability to trust anyone quickly becomes uncertain. She must use all of her wits and talent with glamour to save her marriage and escape the continent before Napoleon’s forces sweep the countryside.

Glamour in Glass is meticulously researched, drawing upon the language of the period to tell a more modern style of story. It is not flawless in its accuracy, as Kowal will admit, but for those like me who are not experts on the Regency era the effect is astounding.

Its intimate perspective is also distinctive from common fantasy fare. Though there is action towards the end of the story, most of the book revolves around the internal drama of Jane Vincent. The early chapters center on inner parties and conversations around sitting rooms. Kowal handles these scenes with deft skill, illustrating the tension and peril of these situations through Jane’s perspective. Kowal manages to make these scenes look relatively innocuous while also seeding the novel with plot elements that weave together tightly as the plot unfolds.

The pacing on the book starts out very slow, so impatient readers may not be willing to wait for the slow and consistent acceleration that occurs as the plot progresses. Those who are expecting another Austen-esque plot in this sequel may also be surprised, as this book revolves much more around domestic life and international intrigue than concerns of obtaining a suitable spouse.

Those considerations of individual taste aside, I found the book to be an excellently crafted gem. Kowal’s talent with the craft comes through as all the pieces fall together in an expertly woven narrative. She has further sequels already contracted and I look forward to their arrival.

As a small side note, the book that was printed was not exactly the final manuscript Kowal and her editor sent to the printers. Several mistakes had crept back into the book and the first sentence disappeared entirely. Errata for the book, and the first sentence of the book, can be found on in this blog entry.

Visit the original post, Clockwork Reviews: Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

mechaspyder (by C.E. Zacherl, see more at: http://veyer.deviantart.com/)

Apple arrived at the load point for Kayla newb with her recent Necropotens avatar.  She sported the same long, hot pink, greased, liberty spike hair.  The unrealistically large holster, which would never work in reality, carried a rune carved blunderbuss-like shotgun.  A set of duel machetes with ritualistic hand wraps crossed on her back, were the only items covering the majority of her tattoos.

Jarred loaded up his most expensive and powerful avatar.  When it came to defying real world physics, Jarred definitely preached as a member of the kitchen sink strategy, carrying a gadget for every occasion.  He donned heavy power armor from head to toe.  His gear included weapons and tools for every occasion.  Due to the way his armor shone, some of the true old-school nerds used glitterboy to describe his avatar.

Kayla’s avatar shimmered as she let out another long string of curses.  In virtual space, Kayla looked like the most generic middle aged white woman someone walking down the street  could imagine.  She was almost no better than a basic 3D visualized human anatomical drawing.

Apple let out a long sigh which reflected on her avatar’s face as a yawn.  “Ugh, not kewl.”

The Kayla avatar’s seizures were a clear sign that she smashed at her keyboard and control systems.

Jarred made an attempt to calm her down and not damage the real life equipment which resulted in a quick and bitter, “Shut up!” from Kayla.

Jarred believed that not only did the virtual interfaces frustrate Kayla, but that she still held a grudge toward him.  The break-up status had taxed Jarred’s happiness.

Apple explained all the functionalities of Kayla’s virtual avatar and Jarred translated so Kayla could understand.  Kayla continually berated Jarred, showing her feelings, while also trying her best to grasp every detail of the virtual tutorial.

Kayla’s avatar, Apple explained, would be a basic 1.1 version iAvatar-Wellsian model.  She would have standard speed travel modes.

Kayla’s combat mode loaded as a simple hand to hand port that would allow Kayla’s basic martial arts knowledge work in cyberspace.

It took some major deviations from standard tutorial and avatar building to get Kayla ready for anything more than a stroll down the side of cyber highway.  At one point, Kayla almost stuck her head out into the dataflow and nearly got it cleaved right off.

The exertions that Jarred put forth to get Kayla to be comfortable had worn him out.  Her constant harsh tone with him did not help the matter at all.  Kayla wore her anger and bitterness for Jarred like a soldier’s patches revealed alignment and pecking order on their sleeve.

Apple did so little to actually modify her communication style that she barely noticed the endeavor.  Her superior skills in cyberspace showed in comparison to Kayla’s like the difference between a cheetah stalking prey rather than a Chihuahua biting uselessly at a thug’s ankles.

With some old Massive Attack jams keeping her cool, Apple stepped off the end of the pathway and onto a secondary route.  Her body started to disappear and join the cyber highway.  The near instant acceleration of her bodily form nearly gave Kayla vertigo.

Kayla now stood at the end of the pathway, something she would consider a sidewalk or merging lane.  Jarred nudged her arm and reached out a helping hand in assurance.  Kayla scowled, but she looked around and saw little other choice than to calm her nerves before literally jumping into the highway.

Kayla took Jarred’s hand and he stepped off of the end of the pathway into the bright streaking lights of the cyber highway.  The lights fluctuated, looking almost like a night street view recording of car lights with time dilation.  Kayla felt an unnaturally strong tug compel her toward the bright lights.

The information and speed overwhelmed Kayla’s senses.  Her reality became like a blurred fast forward of a video tape.  Mere moments passed, she felt a yank at her hand like being pulled up from the ground while staring into the light of the sun.  A yank turned into a tug as she moved from the incomprehensible transformative light of the cyber highway to a large solitary platform that seemed to hang in the air on its own.

“H with B’s on,” Apple screeched in a high pitched gleeful voice as she started to strut down to a set stairs that hovered in the air moving down off of the platform.

Kayla looked quizzically at Jarred and his armored shoulders shrugged and clanged, “Sometimes even I can’t tell exactly what she is saying.”  Kayla noticed a tell in Jarred’s walk as he dragged his feet a bit more than usual.  He knew full well what Apple said.

A few minutes later, they found themselves beyond the stairs, through a dark tunnel and to an area with a peculiar light coming through two sets of cracks that wrapped their way around the hexagonal tunnel shaft.

Apple and Jarred both stopped to examine the cracks.  Kayla leaned against the tunnel wall and closed her eyes.  She started to envision herself in verdant grassland with a cool breeze blowing over her face and her hair loose in the wind.  Kayla felt a dog licking her hand and enjoyed the blissful feeling of the warm flem on her cold skin.  Then, the dog growled as it bit into her flesh!

“R U Da?” Apple’s words uttered mere inches from Kayla’s face as she snapped out of her fantasy and noticed then Apple’s grasp on her arm.

“Yes.  Right here.”  Kayla said rather matter of fact.

“Don’t let yourself drift like that.  If you had the right software installed, you could teleport to a place like that or change the tunnel.  That would alert the spam-bots.  Now, steady yourself, I am gonna blow a way through the firewall for us.”  Jarred said as his armored suit braced itself and the cannon across his back pulled itself up over his shoulder.  It fired with a massive krak.  The tunnel roof over the creased lines exploded and crumbled down.

Jarred leapt above the rubble into a black void that Kayla surely thought would be solid cave rock, but the space above the destruction contained just empty void.  The small thrusters in the armored legs pushed Jarred over the rubble easily.  He landed with a thud and a micro quake on the other side.

Apple pulled a small box out of her side satchel and pressed a button on it.  The box amazingly transformed, bit by bit from box to gear to propeller to cockpit.  It looked like a steampunk helicopter.  She got on board, activated the controls, and moments later landed on the other side of the fire wall.

Kayla stood and glanced around the rubble to her two friends.  “And what the hell am I supposed to do?  Why don’t I just wait here?”

Apple and Jarred browsed over the rubble.  Apple sighed, “GOI.”

“I’ll just jump through this crap,” Kayla expended the last bit of her fear as she started to run and leap through the rubble.

“No wait!”  Jarred sounded panicked and he looked it as his face plate on his armor retracted revealing his pained features.

Digital flames leapt from the ground and up the walls where the creases hadn’t been blasted to bits.

***

Minutes later, the three found themselves cruising in digitized sailing ships through the virtual sky.  Each only possessed enough space for two passengers.  Apple and Kayla traveled together while Jarred sat in a second ship.

Kayla’s bruises, scrapes, and burns ached beyond what she thought feelings could convey in the virtual world.  Even though she knew she wasn’t, she felt as if she could be suffering from a gun shot wound.

Jarred wondered why Kayla blamed him or at least both of them for her injuries from the firewall.  In Jarred’s eyes, Apple didn’t seem to care one bit what happened to Kayla, where as he did care.  He now sat in the second ship, ostracized from the two girls by necessity.  He kept his armored helm open to feel the soft breeze against his face.

Apple frowned as the ships arrived at the first node after several sharp, gut wrenching turns that likened after the paths on electronics.  She disembarked from the ship and studied the various bits of simulated hardware.  The untrained eye saw something like a random mass of factory machinery at these kinds of raw nodes.  Apple’s eyes almost felt less strained seeing such contraptions in cyberspace than they felt viewing a tree in the real world.

Jarred looked to Apple for direction.  After a brief sweep of the node room, she shook her head and looked for another platform to grab another set of sailing ships.

Minutes almost seem to drag into hours to Apple.  She took in information so quickly that time really stretched out for her in moments of boredom.  Normally, Apple would just go afk and use a second avatar to do something, but the significance of this case needed her full attention.  Apple giggled to herself and thought, or at least she’d have to give it the fullest attention she ever gave to a single task.  A Mind.in.a.box song started to sing through her music player and she swayed from side to side, causing the sailing ship to swing a bit.

“Hey!  What are you doing?  This is freaky enough, please, don’t rock this thing.”  Kayla asked in a pleading, almost nauseous tone.

Finally, after what seemed a countless number of useless nodes, a major memory hub came up on the horizon.

Jarred’s sailing ship took the lead this time from their previous node jump.  He made sure the girls knew they were coming up to something major with a flare ejected from his armor.  He took a powered leap onto the shore platform of the memory hub.  There were numerous vaults running along the far side of the platform.  Each would have its own security measures and secrets to reveal.

Jarred scanned the right end of the platform and then the left.  There, on the left side of the platform, his gaze dwelled.  A structure that looked much like an upright CPU fan started making a whirling mechanical sound.  He took only a few steps towards it when four figures, in sequence, launched out of the fan-like device.  They flew a hundred meters into the sky before tumbling down and landing in front of him, only meters away.

Each of the figures landed expertly and a resounding triple thud brought Kayla and Apple to a heightened state of alert.  Their sailing ship approached the memory hub.  Kayla and Apple braced themselves for danger.

Amongst some large fist sized craters, the three removed their fists from the ground where they had landed and stood at attention.  Jarred closed down his face plate and started activating his combat systems.  His cannon servos pulled the lumbering agent of destruction (what the game engine called his gun) to its shoulder post, and the suit braced to fire.

The men looked like a cross of blank grey humanoid and spider.  Two split off and started to the vaults on the far side of the memory hub platform.  The final grey spider charged towards Jarred.  Just as the cannon started to spool up its firing sequence, the spider vomited a gooey substance that sealed the firing circuits of the cannon.

Alarms rang throughout the inside of Jarred’s armored suit.  The move surprised him and he didn’t have a backup plan.  In those moments of hesitation, the grey spider leapt in a speedy way that reminded Kayla of the jumping spiders that used to live in the wild.  Grey spider one, as Jarred’s HUD named it, landed on Jarred’s shoulders and, with acrobatic ability, wrapped itself completely around Jarred’s torso.  Jarred already had limited mobility, now he became effectively paralyzed.

Apple and Kayla watched, nearly helpless as the second and third grey spider now approached Jarred from his right flank.  If they slammed into him with enough force, they could knock him right off of the platform!

Apple pulled out a tiny cube and tossed it up in the air in front of the sailing ship.  She climbed up the mast of the ship, and before Kayla could protest, she leapt off of the mast and started to fall below the ship.

Kayla’s nervousness came nearly to the point of a heart attack until she saw Apple hanging on to a spoke of her gyrocopter with one hand and steering up towards the platform with the other.  “Holy fuck!”  Kayla exclaimed.

“I’ve got adds!”  Apple screamed over all the myriad action sounds.  With those words, she steered away from Jarred to another part of the platform.

Apple triggered her music player to a hard hitting Angelspit/Combichrist playlist and activated her combat attunement program.  Apple’s shotgun, no longer in its holster, readied to engage the dark, invisible figures that Kayla and Jarred couldn’t see.  She whispered a silent blessing to her ViewerPro App.

“What in the hell?  What does… Help Jarred!  Now I know why I’ve got to be in this shit.”  Kayla spluttered out phrase after phrase of confusion like a student caught napping by a dutiful teacher.

Kayla, forced to wait for the ship to reach the platform, watched as Apple landed and immediately came under attack by dark, classic spy looking figures that only Apple could previously see.  Apple would have her hands full with her own fight.  Kayla’s eyes darted back to Jarred, who futilely attempted to knock his attackers off.  The three grey spiders were nimbly ripping off his armored plates off, piece by piece.  Kayla cringed as one of them bit his arm and tore at his flesh.

Kayla slid off of the side of the sailing ship just as it edged onto the platform; a second sooner and she would have slid to the nothingness below.  Without a second thought, she charged towards the position occupied by Jarred and his three assailants.

Unable to reach the spider on Jarred’s back, Kayla pushed off of the ground and shouldered right into the biting spider that was grasping one of Jarred’s now exposed arms.  The grey spider spun through the air in a ballet-like routine from the impact.

Kayla did not stop there.  She continued to barrel towards him once her feet made contact with the ground.  She stomped on the grey spider before it could regain composure and then dived into the rolling figure to pin it.

Still helpless, Jarred gasped as the non-grappling grey spider dropped to the ground and moved to assault Kayla.  He resolved that he must do something.  In cyberspace, Kayla’s abilities were not yet equivalent to those in real life.  He looked over his controls and thought about his programs.

The armored suit waved a single arm towards the memory vaults in what looked like a useless gesture.  A small thunk was accompanied by a zip line flying in the direction of the upper vault walls.

Jarred felt the line go taut, activated his power leap App and howled  as the suit propelled rapidly towards the walls of the vaults.  The resounding splat signaled the end of the grappling grey spider, and though the blow hurt his exposed arm, he felt very satisfied.

He turned around to see that Apple was finishing off the last of the previously invisible anti-spies with her shotgun.  Kayla took to her feet just in time to avoid and nearly deadly snap at her neck.  She took several steps back towards the platform ledge.  The grey spider that she stomped, only now returned to its feet while the other started to slowly close on Kayla.

“Duck!”  Jarred yelled out as he raised his remaining armored arm towards Kayla.

Kayla looked around for only a moment.  A compartment on the armored suit opened, exposing a rocket.  Rocket fuel ignited as the small device began to fly towards its target.  Kayla fell backward off of the platform as her two assailants closed on her position.

“NO!”  Jarred screeched as he heard a high pitched feminine voice echo his own, Apple.

The rocket impacted and obliterated the two grey spiders, leaving a smoking crater.  The satisfaction just did not come for Jarred. He blew away a couple of programs only to fry a friend.  In here, she would not come out whole again on the other side.

Apple motioned for Jarred to come closer to the edge.  As he approached, he saw Apple extend an arm down, off of the platform.  Another arm embraced Apple’s and, inch by inch, Kayla slowly appeared.  She had simply hung on to the ledge to avoid the blast!

With the fighting over, the group overlooked their bruises, cuts, scrapes, bites, and burns.  Apple quickly got to work on hacking the secure vaults.

Opening the first secure vault revealed tidbits of information that explained just how Representative Arthur Bachman was being paid off.

The second secure vault contained communication records between Gary Jones and several other unidentifiable members of the Oathed Technocrats.  A quick analysis revealed the astounding plans that the technocrats had prepared several secure servers with new coding.  The new coding would pull online users into a portion of cyberspace that allowed only one way travel.  Once there, the innocent virtual users would never be able to return to their real bodies.  They would effectively be in a coma for the rest of their lives.

There wasn’t time for all the numerous vaults.  This data would be damning enough.  People needed to know about this data, and they must be the messengers to carry it to the public.

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Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 9 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Post Apocalyptic Love (by CE Zacherl)

Detective Tyrone Higgins finally called off the surveillance to turn in for the night.  Apparently he had been wrong about the janitor, Jarred Dobson.  He must not have been involved in the break in at Representative Arthur Bachman’s office.  The secondary surveillance team was already on its way home after having witnessed several hours of Jarred Dobson frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.  He took some powerful drugs that would put him out for the night, from what that team reported.

The bloody footprints that led to the janitorial closet must have been a coincidence.  The boots that made the print were a common brand and an even more common size ten.  Detective Higgins would have to find a different explanation.  It could be as simple as one of the culprits hiding in the janitor’s closet while a security patrol rushed to Bachman’s office.

“Jarred…” the sound of his name echoed down the long hallway from some beautiful goddess-like voice.

“Jarred…” this time the echo was a sultrier and haunting lure.

He worked his way down the long hallway until he arrived in the foyer.  The two side tables that flanked the doorway were both covered in a number of his favorite foods, his eyes first landing on the General Tso’s chicken, the real chicken not the synth stuff.  Sitting next to it, New York style pizza that had so much pepperoni on it, he couldn’t even see the cheese that he knew was there, ready to melt in his mouth.

“Jarred… don’t keep us waiting…” the first goddess-like voice spoke again echoing but louder this time.

The sultry sounding woman giggled in a youthful way that sounded out of character for her.

He opened his mouth wide and took a massive bite out of the end of the pizza and wiped his hands on his pants.  He savored all the flavors as the pizza dissolved in his mouth and kept walking.

Finally, he threw the doors open, and there was his bed, his eyes widening to take in the massive unreal expanse of the bed.  The sheets were spun up and around two young, nubile women.  They were naked and playing with each other, Kayla and Apple.

His heavy eye lids finally stopped squinting.  The light from the room soaked into his irises.  He was laying in his recliner with a half full bottle of beer in one hand.  His computer was beeping at him.  The little medicine bottle clattered to the floor as he reached for his computer interface.  The pretty little pills responsible for sending him to that other world rolled across the tile floor.

“Idiot!  Where the hell are you?  We’re supposed to pull that job now.”  Kayla sounded frantic.

Jarred looked over at the clock; and with his head still in a haze, he moved into rapid autopilot to get dressed and presentable.

Jarred rubbed the scruff on his chin as he rode the rail car toward his rendezvous and mission with Kayla and Apple.  Nervous sweat clung to Jarred’s top as his mind connected the dots of the fantasy girls to the two girls in Jarred’s reality.  Those visions haunted him and enticed him.

Jarred could smell the musk on the mass of people that stood tightly around him on the rail car.  It certainly seemed like all the people were pushing in around him on purpose, much more than they needed to fit in the small elevated rail car.

As the train pulled into the station, Jarred saw something rather strange going on.  He rubbed his eyes and blinked furiously for the false vision to clear away.  He hoped to figure out just what the hell his brain was changing over to the Dalek-looking robot wheeling around the station floor.

Jarred Dobson rubbed his eyes one final time as the elevated rail car pulled into the sky scraper station.  The Dalek bot was gone.  He forced his way through the crowd, rudely bursting through some people.  He sensed the angry eyes of those that missed the train by a split second jerk.  He received a slew of curses as he travelled through the business men leaving work and maintenance men getting ready for the late shift.  Jarred’s lucid state made moving through the obstacles of people as challenging as knocking the pinball into the grand prize slide.

Their meeting place was a couple of benches between a McDonald’s 3-star sit down joint and a stinky Abercrombie store.  Jarred did not see Kayla or Apple.  Did they abandon the mission, choose to go without him (not likely), or somehow get a vibe from Jarred that revealed the content of his recent hallucinations?

Before Jarred got all the way to the benches to have a proper sniff out, he felt a very strong arm curl around his left bicep.  An insidious murmuring voice echoed in Jarred’s ear, “Just keep walking and don’t act like anything is outa sorts.”

Jarred glanced at the man who now forcefully tugged him along.  No more words were needed to articulate the point.  In a glance, Jarred was sure that he noticed some form of armament concealed in the man’s belt under his rain coat.  The two rounded a couple of hallways until confronted by only a lonely, unattended candy kiosk, another man briskly walked to the pair and pitched a dark hood over Jarred’s head.

A quick trip to a nearby platform and he was riding in the back of a hover van.  These things weren’t exactly cheap.  Government maybe, Jarred thought.  Had they figured out that he was in on the recent break-in at the congressional office?

Apple and Kayla both perched next to Jarred in the back of the van.  Low voices spoke queries and instructions at the front of the van.

With no visual stimuli, Jarred’s other senses seemed heightened by his recent drug use.  One of the voices said, “Then we’ll dump them in a service ditch near the weeds.”  Jarred heard another voice respond, “The boss wants them to suffer first, starting with the girls, so the guy has to watch.”  Jarred started to panic, he flailed around uselessly with his hands and feet tied.

Kayla was calm and collected.  She hummed to herself and contemplated just how she would get herself and her two friends out of this mess.  Thoughts of doubt oppressed her mind.  She was trying to be a resistance cell leader, but what kind of leader led her crew to constant failures?

Apple felt great anxiety, the feel made real by the feel of the veins on her head pulsing blood through rapidly.  Her heart was going to explode.  Apple hated to be cut off from the masses.  When not in cyberspace, she found the need to be constantly surrounded, never alone.  Here she was alone in her own head, and the sight was frightful.

It was only a few minutes removed from all the chaos, the hoods were removed from all three of them and they were surrounded by curious archaic looking gadgets.  Was this really just the home of a dweeby steampunk enthusiast?

“Barry Lesco.”  Kayla enumerated after taking a short look around.  With the name came a great sigh of relief.  As her shoulders lost tension, Jarred followed suit in relaxing.  Apple still looked around wide eyed and obviously nervous.

“I know that you wanted to help the resistance.  You are not ready to lead your own cell.  You have tripped and stumbled over each task that you have charged yourself.  Step back.  Let me give you some direction,” Barry Lesco stated very matter of fact.

“And I’m not done…” Barry waved his hand across his body to halt all interjections.  “Kayla, I know and understand that you dislike technology.  I know that your goals and purposes for fighting this fight are not the same as many of our mainstream goals.  I don’t shun you for that.  However, much of our battle will be carried out in cyberspace.  You MUST learn how to use it,” Barry stated that last part with a strong emphasis.

“What the hell man?  We’re on the same side?  Why the prisoner treatment?  I thought a noose was next on the list for my evening attire,” Jarred was fuming.

Barry glared at Jarred, “do you realize that if you showed up on time tonight, you’d be rotting in a jail cell right now?”  Jarred looked down to the ground in shame.  Barry continued… “You, Jarred, were under surveillance tonight.  For whatever reason, Detective Higgins believes you have some connection to the Resistance.”

“And Kayla, the last task that you performed for me went so well.  You spliced the Oathed Technocratic intranet and we got a nice data packet of a lot of the projects and goals they have.”  Barry let his archaic brown leather coat fall open as he leaned back in his chair, facing the three.

Kayla nodded in agreement and looked up to the ceiling, avoiding eye contact.  Jarred still looked at the ground.  Apple stared at Barry and he finally turned his attention to the youthful girl.

“You are the new proportion that I have yet to fully understand.  I invite you to help us in this fight, but you have not gotten in so deep that you have to stay.”  Barry reached out and stroked her hand in assurance, “there is no embarrassment in backing out of such a dangerous cause at such a young age.”

Apple shook her head and her wide eyes receded into a determined squint.  “IM.  For Zodi, an’ now Kay n Jar.”

Barry left the room for a few minutes to allow the situation to sink in and the embarrassment to wear off.  Barry’s guards untied the hands and feet of all three.  He returned to the room after a short amount of quiet banter.  “So, do I have a little Trivium Resistance Cell to add to my Order of Battle?”

The three looked to each other and locked eyes one after another and all of them nodded.  They described everything that happened up to the here and now.  He laid out a plan of action and the three of them left Barry’s residence with a new confidence.

As soon as Apple took the elevator down to retrieve her car, Kayla spun closely to face Jarred.  He moved in to embrace her and she pushed him away, a scowl across her face.  “We’ll work together in the Resistance, if you intend to stay on.  You left Apple and I hanging out to dry.  You have too many problems, problems that I don’t need in my life.  Outside of our duties in this, I don’t want to see you anymore.”  Kayla laid down the law and barely waited for a retort as she turned from Jarred and headed for the rail station.

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Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 8 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Cybertheft (by CE Zacherl)

Jarred blew the smoke away from the barrel of the 9mm Pistol.  He always imagined that when he learned to use a real weapon, it would be something a little more high tech.  The high tech doodads were kept under lock and key by the upper level scraper residents.

Ness Mutt chuckled at Jarred’s stereotypical action to blowing at the end of the gun.  “You know, there’s no reason at all to do that.”

Jarred shook his head, “It’s for effect.”

Kayla hopped down from her perch on top of the exhaust shaft.  Apple was still in another world, sitting with her Virta-Goggs@ strapped to her head and an old keyboard across her lap.

“Feel a little safer now, Jarred?”  Kayla spoke as she swayed over to him.

Jarred nodded after handing Mutt a wad of cash.  Mutt walked around the corner to deposit the cash in his suitcase that used to carry a 9mm and two mags but still carried another firearm.

Kayla leaned into Jarred, her weight against his, “He’s not the guy who taught me, but the resistance is stretched pretty thin right now.  He seemed to know what he was doing…”

“Damn right I know… If you want to make sure you’re safe, just bring me along next time.  I was SpecOp for the India-Pakistani War,” Mutt bragged.

“Well, now that you mention it.  We’ve got some work to do, very soon,” Kayla stated as a challenge.

Ness Mutt grunted as if he didn’t care, “I got dropped deep behind the lines in Pakistan to secure some chemie when those Ay-rab commanders went ballistic.”

Apple, Jarred, Kayla, and Mutt were crouched behind a long prefab plastic desk.  Beyond, they could see the heavily fortified clear doors and the Enviro@ chamber beyond that was the foyer to this sky scrapers lowest level greenhouse.

Apple glanced back out of the wall length window as she set up her laptop and leaned against the desk.  It was a long way down to the ground.  She shivered and tried to dig her butt into the floor in hopes of preventing any chance of going out the window.

Apple felt a strong squeeze on her shoulder and turned her head to look eye to eye with Jarred.  He gave her a reassuring nod.

Jarred looked to his other side, Kayla was sweating like a flu-victim.  Kayla was usually the confident, strong leader; now she seemed shaken.  Wendell’s gory death was having a profound psychological effect on her.

Mutt, on the other hand, was smiling with a sick confidence.  He leaned over to the nervous looking girls.  “Once, I lost my section-mate right before he and I were supposed to quietly kill two guards.  I killed them both, all by myself.  I just made the first one such a horrific kill that the second guy was stunned.”

Kayla smacked his chest and turned red with embarrassment, “Shut up.”

“Okay, let’s get this over with.”  Jarred walked around the edge of the desk in a slouched fashion that made his height only barely more than the desk.

Gary Jones was in another world.  It was an alien beach, and that alien beach was covered in a wide assortment of alien babes that appeared to be in various forms of undress.  The huge variety of aliens; made it difficult to determine if they were naked or if they just had minimalist clothing.

He approached one of the shortest aliens that wore nothing except its own orange-red skin.  He was just about to sling a cheddar pick up line when the whole beach started to float away from him.  No, he was sinking into the sand.  No, who the hell is this?

Gary’s Virta-Goggs@ clattered to the floor as the girl removed her fingertips.

The girl’s hair was unkempt, wild and beautiful in its chaos.  Her outfit was a form fitting navy blue dress, cut in all the right places. The outfit didn’t quite match her temperament.  In a way, the awkwardness was even more a turn on to Gary Jones.

“Well, well.  Is it my birthday?  Christmas?  Why don’t you come have a seat on Uncle Gary’s lap?”

The girl obeyed gingerly and innocently batted her eyes.  Gary did not notice the knife and syringe the girl kept tucked in the back of one of her long, black leather boots.

“After all hell broke loose and the big guns laid waste to both countries, we had to find places to hunker down and stay out of sight.  Just like this.  I was hiding out in a barn and had to kill five men that found my spot.  I stacked them up like cord wood,” Ness Mutt bragged in a low voice as he and Jarred Dobson crouched in the enviro-chamber outside of the greenhouse levels of the sky scraper.

Jarred shook his head subtly and tried to get a better view of the inside of the greenhouse.  He hoped that Kayla was okay and wished he was some big shot war veteran like Mutt.

Suddenly, the yellow lights in the chamber started flashing and sirens started to whoop.  A small door on the upper wall opened and a nozzled device popped out and faced the inside of the chamber.  A robotic voice started repeating, “Contaminant, contaminant, contaminant, purge inevitable.  Safety measures disengaged.”

Both of the men looked at each other for a moment and then there was a sound like a lighter firing up and they both slowly looked back up to the nozzle.  There was a small pilot flame at the front of the nozzle.

Mutt paralyzed in place, eyes wide with shock and fear.  Jarred managed to drag Mutt out the door right before the flames engulfed the room.  Jarred forced Mutt’s body down to the ground and proceeded in his own stop, drop, and roll.

Apple’s computer was slung in a side bag and as she helped Jarred to carry the gibbering Mutt out of the immediate vicinity.  Surely, security personnel would be arriving soon.

Mutt, Jarred, and Apple were at the rendezvous point for only a minute or two, time to catch their breath, when a clacking sound alerted Jarred and Apple.  It didn’t sound like feet or shoes, more like the pad of a heavy security robot.

“Why in the hell do we keep finding ourselves running away all the time?  I feel like it’s all I ever do.”  Kayla spat out, “And what the hell is up with Mutt?”  Apple and Jarred tried to interject, but were tongue tied.

Jarred sighed with relief as Kayla bent to remove her tattered and broken high heels.  “He freaked out; I barely got him out of there as the shit hit the fan.”

“Weird.  Flashbacks I guess?”  Kayla said during a heavy exhale as a theory and shrugged her shoulders.

Apple finally got the chance to speak, “Let’s GTFOOH!”

The group made its way out of the sky scraper, avoiding the security response.  They watched from a ground car as red and blue flashing lights filled the skies around the sky scraper greenhouse levels.  Instead of travelling to their normal meeting place, Apple drove the group outside of downtown and to the edge of the suburbs.

Apple pulled the car up along the paved concrete that formed a vast flat barrier to the massive greenery that was the city limits.  They could barely see the Shenandoah Mountains in the soft moon light.

Apple turned the key in the ignition and got out her laptop, turning on multi-frequency white noise, “sup?”

Apple looked back over her shoulder at the distressed Mutt and the calmly breathing Jarred.  Kayla’s gaze followed Apple’s.

“Are you all right Lt?”  Jarred emoted to Ness Mutt as his hand landed on Mutt’s shoulder empathetically.

Mutt shrugged the hand aside and muttered something inaudible.

Kayla fully turned around in her seat, “Okay, speak up, what’s the deal?  What happened with you back there?”  She stared intently at Mutt, still waiting for an answer, “You know, when we are in the shit like that, we are relying on you to be the type that stands strong when others are weak.  What’s the deal?”

Mutt started crying, tears rolling down his cheeks, his choked up words were almost incoherent.  All three of the other car passengers tilted their heads to try to better hear his words.

Jarred gasped as he finally managed to put together the words and looked up toward Kayla and Apple.  He again tried to put a hand on Mutt’s shoulder to show him support, but the pathetic man nudged away from it again.  “He seems to be saying that his stories are all made up.”  Mutt nodded, Jarred continued, “so apparently he has never seen action and he obviously seems to have the nerve of a tormented house cat.”

Kayla stared at Mutt and just started to shake her head, in utter disappointment.

Apple did not have much of a reaction; she simply turned back to the car wheel and moved her hand to the ignition.

Jarred frowned at the reactions of Kayla and Apple and tried to yet again put a comforting hand on Mutt’s shoulder.

In response, Mutt collapsed down, his body limply hanging in the foot rest area of his seat, his whining and moaning dying down to a whimper.

“Srsly?” Apple started to turn the ignition key, but before the engine caught, Kayla put a hand on Apple’s.

Apple looked to Kayla and Kayla spoke up, ignoring the whimpering man, “So that is not all we have to share, one of us actually did something useful back there.”  As she said this, she looked into the rear view mirror at Mutt.  “I got some good bits of information out of Mr. Jones.  He is such a sicko.”  She shivered and shook her hands.

Jarred did have to admit to himself that Kayla looked pretty nice in the sultry outfit she was still wearing.  She looked uncomfortable in such a dashing, dressy style, though he thought that almost made her seem the innocent, attractive type.

Jarred shook his head rapidly to clear the thoughts and get back on the topic of Gary Jones, “Is he the worse for wear now?”

“Nope, except for a few bruises and a slice on the hand, he’ll live,” Kayla was quick to respond to leave no doubt that she did not murder him.  “While he was the CEO of Walls Corporation, he personally oversaw some work that is not in the corporate records.  Looks like a full room server install with maximum physical and virtual security algorithms.  With cry baby over there, there is no way we could hope to break in to that server room.”

“Not IRL anyway,” Apple added as her head leaned back and she smiled with satisfaction.

Kayla looked at the young girl quizzically and moved on, “There is something important about whatever is on that server, something specifically put in place for the Oathed Technocrats.  It seems to be some sort of byway for their intranet to move data out onto the internet or some computer mumbo jumbo.”

Jarred could see that Kayla felt awkward by the technical complexity, “I think it may be about time that you discovered the virtual world, Kayla, and I know just the teachers for you.”  He patted Apple on the forehead as her head leaned far back across the front seat headrest.

“Ugh, and be one of those gamer slash addict types.  Well, well, we’ll see.   Maybe you two can pull off an infiltration without me,” Kayla was trying to piece together plans and leadership in her head in real time while conversing; it was not easy.

Having discussed future efforts and the fate of their brief Resistance cell member, Ness Mutt, Apple finally turned the key.

As Apple pulled her car into its parking space in the basement levels of her home sky scraper, a curious news report played via her streaming radio, “Kal Killmon here, wealthy industrialist, Gary Jones, was found dead in a nearby greenhouse, apparently poisoned with a complex toxin.”

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Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 7 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Dead Iron by Devon Monk is the first book in The Age of Steam series. A seamless blend of magic and old west steampunk it’s an absorbing read, told in a true storyteller’s voice. This is not meant to be read at a breakneck speed but rather savored for its lyrical rhythm. The setting, a quaint town called Hallelujah, Oregon, is a character all by itself. I could see, smell, and taste the dust billowing along the trails. But the book’s true strength is in the flawless character development.

Told from various points of view, the reader is treated with rare insight into the passions that drives each character forward.

At the forefront is our reluctant hero, Cedar Hunt.  A cursed man, he is living in the shadow of guilt over his brother’s death. Written with depth, the reader is at once drawn into Cedar’s plight. He possesses great brevity and a will to help others find justice, despite his own personal battles. When he overhears the blacksmith’s son has been taken in the middle of the night, he offers his services to find him. The search doesn’t prove easy, as he is thwarted at every turn.

Mae Lindson, a witch with deep-rooted magic in her blood and troubles of her own, senses her husband’s demise and sets out on a journey to find his killer. But this doesn’t come without a price. For what she will need to confront the killer rests with the Madder Brothers, a curious lot who one isn’t certain if they are to be trusted. They seem to hold in their possession the precise devices and instruments that she needs, though their fee and the favor requested is questionable.

There are a host of other characters to liven up the town such the vibrant Rose Small, the enigmatic Shard Lefel and Mr. Shunt, and the soulful Jeb.

An underlying tension is present throughout each page of the book. A foreboding sense of Strange. This Strange is a powerful entity that brings ruin to anyone who comes crosses its path. Along with the Strange are the endless secrets that are discovered, and like being caught in a spider’s web, each of the characters become entangled within it.

The dialogue is thought-provoking and arresting. Every word written is for a reason. The events that unfold come together with a climactic ending that left me breathless. Much of Dead Iron is steeped in magic, but Steampunk enthusiasts will appreciate the inventive steampunk elements sprinkled throughout.

Devon Monk is also the author of the popular Allie Beckstrom series. Stop by her website, Devonmonk.com, to stay updated on the next book in The Age of Steam series, Tin Swift. The sequel is scheduled for release on July 3rd, 2012. I look forward to the continuing story of Cedar Hunt and the cast of characters I’ve come to know from Dead Iron.

Visit the original post, Clockwork Reviews: Dead Iron — The Age of Steam, by Devon Monk, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

What scares your PCs? I mean, what truly scares the bejeezus out of them?

RPGs are filled with scary creatures. As a DM, you have an obscene amount of riches when it comes to adversaries that would send most humans in the real world running in the opposite direction, their pantaloons a little less dry. In the relative safety of the gaming table PCs see these types of baddies day in and day out. At some point, players become immune to the scariness that is a dark creeper or an Orcus underpriest.

Even death doesn’t hold much fear factor for PCs, most of the time. Sure, people can get really attached to their characters, but sometimes the excitement of building something new and shiny can prompt suicidal tendencies at worst,  or reckless behaviour at best. This is a challenge to any DM who is building adventures three to four sessions (or more) ahead of time, based on the assumption that his current set of players will make it through in good enough shape to carry on.

In light of these challenges, it seems to me that this is where the great DM shines. When mechanics, tools and saturation leave your PCs feeling untouchable, context becomes king. Choosing the proper background music as your group investigates a haunted house, dimming the lights or going by candlelight as they delve into the catacombs of a long-deceased king, or simply using the proper words to describe a dark, foreboding forest  can do a much better job of immersing your players into the environment.

Loss of control is another tool in your fear arsenal. As an example, the whirlpool trap in Keep on the Shadowfell was a terrifying experience for my PCs when two of them fell victim to it. For those who have never played KotS, a trap triggers a force wall and confines those stuck within to a 6×4 area as water rises to become a whirlpool. It thrashes the PCs against the walls, leaving them powerless to do much.

Luckily for my players, they figured out how to disable the whirlpool creating device. They looked relieved to have merely survived the encounter. It went beyond fear for their character’s lives – they were having a human reaction to the loss of control in a given situation, and they felt vulnerable and more importantly – fear had shaken their confidence.

Here’s one thing you need to be real careful about: integrating your players’ real life phobias. My fiancée, who is also a player at my table, has a real fear of spiders. Sure, I could build an encounter full of eight-legged foes and describe it to a “T”, hang Hallowe’en-style spiders over the table  and make her truly uncomfortable. Is that the point, though? I’d argue that making her squeamish using something that really terrifies her would wreck the illusion, and probably make it a gaming session she’d rather forget. It’s a fine line, I know. My advice: find the things your players fear, rather than things that make them uncomfortable.

How much does fear factor into your DM style? What methods have you used to instill fear in your players? Alternatively, can you share the instance where as a player you felt the most fear?

Visit the original post, Your Character’s Worst Fear, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Go to sleep (By CE Zacherl)

A set of guttural laughs punctuated the late night silence.  The stillness of the air was given a wafting cigar smoke addendum.  The swishing of rocks on glass added percussion to the laughter.  The shiny plate of Representative Arthur Bachman titled the setting of the late night meeting.

Jarred listened only half heartedly at first, still thinking of his last date with Kayla.  She was a convincing woman.  After all, she drove into his head that he should ‘keep his ears open’ while working late in the night.

So here Jarred was.  Stereotypical spy tales always showed the spy masquerading as this stereotypical job that Jarred enjoyed doing day in and day out.  The only awkwardness was that janitorial work was Jarred’s primary duty, and the spying was just something he was doing on the sly.

The voice from the office carried into the hallway.  “I was a little surprised.”

The other voice in the office responded.  “A director from the FDA?”

“Those guys are usually blinded, their heads are so far up your asses.”

“Well, this one wanted to get tossed away with no key to the gate.”

“The other Oathed Technocrats will owe us a favor if things keep going this way.”

“That would be unexpected, but it wouldn’t be turned away!”

Jarred perked up and nearly pushed on the mop so hard that it slid out of his grip.  He barely caught the edge of the wooden handle before it tumbled to the ground and drew the attention of the office residents.  Kayla would want to know about this.  Either the congressman or the one he is talking to are part of the Oathed Technocrats.

And after Jarred walked out of hearing range, Representative Bachman said to his associate, “The resistance has already started to do its part, they spliced that intranet.”  He audibly filled his lungs to capacity with the sweet cigar smoke.

Kayla and another young member of the resistance, Wendell, followed Jarred into the levels of the skyscraper that were off limits at this time of night.  Jarred’s key card let him in at all hours to do his cleaning duties, though usually his trips were solitary excursions.

The two followed Jarred’s cues, who knew the guards’ patrol patterns fairly well.  Jarred also knew the staff that tended to work into the night and when those people normally went home.

At two intersections, they waited for employees to pass out of sight, and one other Jarred was forced to improvise a distraction.  The three of them arrived at Representative Bachman’s office.

Fortunately for the crew, congressmen were so old school, they still used a lot of hand written devices to keep track of their work, including calendars.  Rifling through the Representative’s appointment book revealed the guest he met with the previous night: Mr. Gary Jones.

Evidence under Representative Bachman’s desk revealed more.  Unless there was some very kinky hanky panky, it was obvious that the two men were not alone, the night they met.

Even in this situation, the revelation took Jarred’s mind to places it shouldn’t go.  It was drawn back to reality by a low buzzing in his ear.

Apple spoke to them via small wifi receiver ear buds, “You’ve got adds! OAO.”

Kayla and Wendell looked to Jarred for clarification and he barely whispered, “Adds…  Incoming people.”

They heard whistling and heavy clacking footsteps of… business casual loafers, rather than combat boots.  Jarred ducked behind the desk while Wendell and Kayla went to opposite sides of the door.  Kayla flipped to the section of the appointment book for today and blanched.

Representative Arthur Bachman entered the office.  His whistling continued up until the moment that Kayla stepped in front of him, and right before he could speak, Wendell wrapped one big arm around his throat and put him in a head lock.

Kayla got close up to the face of Rep. Bachman.  “Well well.  You’ve come for your appointment.  How nice.  How about we refocus your meeting to a new topic tonight?”

Bachman was making a strange hacking sound, Wendell eased his arm back a bit.  It then became apparent, Bachman was laughing.

“Resistance members I assume?  Or are you some petty trans-humanist terrorists looking to further the greater human condition?”  He smiled and then wretched as Wendell tightened the head lock again.

Kayla launched into a deluge of questions as Wendell loosened his grasp and let go completely.  In an instant, a woman shimmered out of nothingness to Bachman’s left flank.  She was wearing a strange, reflective looking outfit, and she held a massive dirk.

The scene was too chaotic to focus on the magically appearing woman as Bachman took a step to her side and Wendell collapsed to the ground, the back of his head and shoulders sliding off in a different direction from the remainder of his body.  Blood was absent for almost a split second and then started to fill the doorway.

“Holy fuck!”  Kayla looked on in shock.  Jarred was frightened.

A super loud buzzing sound pierced both Jarred’s and Kayla’s ears.  It was Apple.  “GTFO!”

Jarred summoned all the strength he could muster.

“Looks like I’ll be asking the questi…” Bachman started but was interrupted by the office chair flying toward him from across the room.

The dirk carrying woman stepped in front of the congressman as the lights to the room went out.  Jarred thanked Apple for her quick cutting of the power.  He grabbed Kayla’s arm and they both leapt over the body of Wendell.  Their shoes were slick with blood.

The initial move down the hallway was a slide rather than a step.

Jarred turned one way and pointed the way towards the exit, “I’m supposed to be working tonight.  Head that way.”

Kayla nodded, still in shock.

Jarred just went round the corner and Kayla took her first steps towards the exit when one of the security guards stepped between her and freedom.

She did not have long to think and not long to react.  That was probably a boon, in her state of shock, adrenaline forced action.  Instinct was there and so was her training.

The man was bigger than her, not a monstrosity, but certainly large enough to be a security guard.  He reached out with his stunner as he saw her rounding the corner, but her hand was faster than his arm.  The stunner did go off into the far wall, but her pointed hand jabbed him in his unarmored throat.

As the guard leaned over, dropped the stunner, and grabbed his throat, Kayla’s knees cracked up into the man’s crotch.  He started to keel over and Kayla finished him off with a double elbow to the back.

Jarred breathed heavily and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his towel.  He pushed his cart out of the closet, and trying to look casual but he simply panicked from all the chaos going on.

“I would have liked to question one of them.  I suppose a post mortem is the best I’ll get tonight.”  Bachman pressed out the wrinkles in his suit.  “Give the specialists a call.  Oh and call that Detective who arrested the FDA director.  He might prove useful.”

Detective Tyrone Higgins entered the skyscrapers political chambers.  That’s strange.  There was a streak of blood headed in and out of the janitorial closet.

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People use the tunnels to avoid the winter snows.

Running under the Ouroboros University are tunnels, and at least one tunnel touches every building on the campus. Naturally, they have their own story…

What People Know

Characters learn more about the system of tunnels with the right skill checks. Appropriate skills include Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (history) and Knowledge (local).

DC 14: A system of tunnels runs under Ouroboros University and at least one tunnel touches every building on the campus. Most of the tunnels are clean and well lit, with “You Are Here” maps at junctions.

DC 14: Local Winters are brutal and the summers punishing – people employ the tunnels to move around the campus because they are dry and remain at a fixed temperature.

DC 14: Smoking of “the tobacco” is illegal on campus but goes on in the tunnels.

DC 14: A popular rumor states the tunnels spells out a dire message or possible a rune of terrible power.

DC 16: The exceptions to cleanliness and well-lit areas are dead ends, stacked with files, records and similar documents that smell moldy. Walls here are often home to graffiti.

DC 16: Students enter the tunnels to study, as the network offers places to do so in relative peace… assuming they are not too close to the Financial Aid Office or William Laud.

DC 16: Some tunnels date to the time of the first chapel, an older version of the city destroyed by a war the nation narrowly won.

DC 18: There are three or four “chambers of tragedy” in the tunnels, rooms dating to the old city during a war. Here survivors waited for inevitable death and carved final messages into the walls.

DC 18: Some tunnels come from an aborted plan to extend the city’s sewer system. The area created did not tie into the existing sewers.

DC 18: As many dead ends and cul-de-sacs are stacked high with publications from professors, papers from graduate students and similar documents, people say the tunnels are still full of crap.

DC 20: The tunnels do not spell out anything in particular.(1)

DC 20: At select points, locked iron doors lead from the tunnels to the actual sewer system, “private” tunnels for neighboring houses and the Necropolis.

DC 20: Among the final messages in “chambers of tragedy” are last letters between lovers, from parents to children and children to parents and so forth. Some of these messages reference the “parene utre.”

DC 22: The tunnels are among the few places where a meeting away from the watchful eyes of the owls is possible.

Neighborhoods

Tunnels passing under a particular college possess the tone of that college. The tunnels under the theater are home to racks of costumes, make-up stands (in use during a performance on one of the stages above), cabinets of props and masks and so forth. Passages under the seminary are whitewashed, stylized images of particular saints and angels adorn the walls, prayer mats are neatly stacked in corners and holy symbols adorn each door lintel. Even if the “You are Here Signs” and switched about or gone, ample clues show under which college a tunnel passes (Perception DC 14 to pick section of university, Perception DC 20 pick the specific tunnel).

Iron gates stand between the seminary, theater, wizard’s college, fighter’s school and general trade school sections of tunnels. The gates are usually open. Even if closed, and locked, they do not strand anyone in the tunnels, given the access to the buildings.

Encounter Tables

Roll a d20 and consult the below table when the party spends an hour in the tunnels to determine a random encounter;

1. Students rooting through records.
2. Students studying.
3. Students (or faculty or staff members) smoking.
4. Maintenance staff fix leaks, plaster the walls, removing or place stacks of files and paint over graffiti.
5. Animate puppets doing battle when they think no one is looking.
6. Students from the fighter’s school battle with soft wooden weapons.
7. Children are playing games of hide and seek in the tunnels.
8. Someone has closed and locked the gates and changed the location of the “You Are Here” signs.
9. During rushing, for entry into a fraternity or sorority, students are sent naked the tunnels.
10. The corpse of a murder victim in an otherwise well patrolled a lit area.
11. People having sex.
12. Someone trying to set fire to a sack of records and books.
13. An imp rooting through paperwork for a contract that bound its master to service and which has since been lost.
14. Several (1d4) fire creatures of some type free basing on ice cubes.
15. People tagging the walls with graffiti.
16. Books flying and flapping around like bats caught indoors.
17. Indigents seeks shelter from extreme weather.
18. A befuddled professor who has lost track of their entire class.
19. An apparently mentally ill person who says they are “looking for a door.”
20. An apparently mentally ill person who says they are “looking for the well.”

Visit the original post, Ouroboros University; Tunnels Part One [4E D&D], at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Sure, we in North America just “sprung forward”, but I experienced something in my last D&D session that turned the clocks back years.

When an old friend and former D&D player started making noise about possibly joining our D&D session at the end of March, I was feeling pretty smug about the surprise we would spring on my group. Turns out the joke was on me, as he was simply laying the groundwork to show up on my birthday, ready to play with my regular Monday group.

I asked him to relay his experience for this blog. Also, I asked one my new D&D players to write about the events of that night, from his perspective.

Denis Gagnon, Halfling Monk-For-A-Night “Krigg Hicklestone”, Veteran D&D Player:

Several years ago I had the opportunity to start playing D&D again with a group of mature players, all of whom were 10 to 15 years my senior. I had given some thought to being the DM but was always reluctant, so when 4E came along it seemed like the right time to take the leap. To keep things simple I ran the first three pre-packaged campaigns and it went well. I struggled as a DM with the complexity, but I didn’t know any different. Once those campaigns were done I opted to be a player again. One of the veteran DMs, who was a player all through the three campaigns I ran, took the reigns and purchased a nice new adventure. It only took a few months before he lost patience with 4E and we switched over to Pathfinder. I played for a little while longer, but then last year I decided to take a break and I haven’t gone back.

Shortly after I quit playing, my high school friend (Théo, who lives 740 km away from me) decided to jump back into the world of D&D and started asking me for input and advice. I provided everything I could, including Keep On The Shadowfell to help him and the group ease into the world he was beginning to create. He proceeded to round up a group of players and the adventures began. I would get regular updates from him and one of the other players (another high school friend from the old group) on how things were progressing with the story as well as all the comic relief and interactions between the players. At this point I was getting a little jealous because my old group didn’t appear to have the same connection and level of interesting activities when I was a DM or a player. They frequently mentioned that I should participate in one of their sessions and my desire matched their willingness to have me join.

I kept looking ahead on the calendar to see when I could fit a 1500km round trip into my personal life. Finally, everything lined up and it just happened to coincide with Théo’s birthday. Letting the birthday boy know I was coming didn’t seem nearly as fun as making it a surprise. I told him I would be coming two weeks later which gave us reason to chat about creating my character and integrating with the rest of the group. I in turn worked with his fiancée (also one of the PC’s) to be at the house on his birthday and surprise him. The plan worked out spectacularly and was a huge success!

The highlight for me was after the surprise. Having the opportunity to meet the group, make one new friend (Rémi) and participate in an evening of D&D the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since high school. It dawned on me that my old group simply went from encounter to encounter systematically, using all the mechanical aspects of the game to move the story forward without using any elements of emotion and imagination that make a true D&D session come to life. For three too-brief hours I got to be a stoic monk helping a band of adventurers, one of whom was a halfling rogue who didn’t have the attention span required to appreciate my eloquent speeches (he would start whistling to himself after I’d say a few sentences – a brilliant and hilarious bit of roleplay).

It was an outstanding evening that I will not soon forget. Consequently, I am insanely jealous of the entire group, who have the spirit and sense of humour to make a great game incredible. All of the characters have come to life and leap off the pages of the table top encounters with wild gestures and reenactments – this is role playing at its very finest. I only hope now that I have the opportunity to return in the future to experience another three hours (or more) of the best game in town.

Rémi Savard, Regular Monday Halfling Rogue “Dolen Reevebed”

Playing D&D  requires many things (as in any other game), amongst which are imagination and suspension of disbelief. But above all else, I think, comes chemistry. When this group first got together in the Fall of 2011, it took us time as a group to develop that sense of belonging, of fitting together, but once we got the ball rolling there was no stopping us.
The fights got more organic as the mechanics became more familiar to everyone, the roleplay involved more interactions between player characters as we (and they) got to know each other better – this was D&D to a T.

Allow me a side-story. My wife makes a killer shepherd’s pie. At its core, it’s not the most elaborate meal – four, maybe five ingredients – but it’s good. I like it, anyway.
One day, being the adventurous cook that she is, she had the brilliant idea of introducing one, only ONE new element to it: curry powder.
At first, I didn’t quite recognize the smell emanating from the oven. “Shepherd’s pie”, she said. But it couldn’t be, could it? And I looked at it, and hell, it looked like a shepherd’s pie. It tasted like Shepherd’s pie. And yet… something was off.

That’s exactly what happened when, one night, a new player was introduced to the gaming session. I had never met the guy before. “Well,” I thought, “that’s gonna be different.” And it was.
Right off the bat, some fears form in the usual player’s brain, taking the shape of questions: How does he play? What character does he like to roleplay as? Will he fit in? Will he be a spotlight hogger?
And, I think, the most important one: How long will it take for us to learn to play TOGETHER, as this new entity, this new D&D – Modified Shepherd’s Pie Edition (look for it on the shelves soon!)?

Short answer to that last one: fast.

Aside from an unlikely lack of insight by our DM in adding a real jerk to the table, chances were we were going to get along (we’re good people). He was not a jerk; a real nice guy.
Once that new ingredient’s introduction had bid its time, once recovered from the Freudian Uncanny, it was “Game on, Baby!”. We quickly got to learn to work as a group again – faster than I thought we would.

Now that it’s behind us, I know for a fact that I’ll miss the player (and the character). Already, a chemistry was brewing. I’m also wondering if the next session will be clouded by a sense of « withdrawal », haunted by the ghost of this player’s short but impactful presence. It turned out very well, a lot of fun, really, and it could become some kind of handicap, perhaps.

I learned to love the Wife’s Shepherd’s Pie 2.0. This game night I loved right away.

Thank you, D&D curry powder, thank you.

From my perspective, it was one of the best birthday surprises I’ve ever received. On a personal level, I got to see an old friend who is dearly missed. On the gaming side, bringing in a guest star for a session really energized the group. How have your experiences with guest players gone? Do you think they add or hinder the playing experience?

Visit the original post, Time-Shifting: A Revenant Crashes My Birthday D&D Session, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Detective Tyrone Higgins, (Art by: C.E. Zacherl)

Of course, he didn’t feel his age.  Pharmaceutical technology brought the treatments.  They brought his body to a feeling of youth that people 50 years before could have only dreamed of.  Internally, he was youthful as well, but there were triggers in the brain that aged and could never be turned back.  He therefore, thought about subjects like a 70 year old and had the opinions similar to that of a 70 year old.

“Theresa, what are we dealing with here?”  Detective Tyrone Higgins as he stepped up from the hover car gingerly onto a support beam that was covered in cables and wires.

“One of the only possible junctions for the Oathed Technocratic intranet and the rest of cyberspace is here, Tyrone.  Whoever did this paid a large sum of money or made a friend with very sensitive information.”  Theresa spoke from the device on Tyrone’s arm.

“Theresa, thank you.  Now give me a minute to look around.”  Detective Higgins travelled a short distance down the support beam to the splicing box.  “We need to get a maintenance team here immediately, the damage has been done, but there’s no reason to leave this splicer here.”

As the hover car pulled away from the skies around the IT support beam, Tyrone watched replays from the holo projector on his gauntlet.

Theresa interrupted the broadcasts of the chase scene from two days ago.  A male voice came across the vocalizer on the gauntlet, “Doc Higgins.  A couple of my boys got somebod’ mi’ have sumfin to do wit your crime.”

As he walked along the ground level street outside of downtown, the condos all featured peering eyes through the blinds.  As he turned to gaze at each directly, the blinds quickly shut as if the houses themselves were blinking.

His destination was an alleyway between a condo building and a closed department store.  The wall was sprayed, as if carelessly with red spray paint.  The bits of teeth on the ground by the wall said a different story about the spray paint.

Tyrone’s eyes were drawn to the beat cops with extended batons and their victim, a youthful looking miscreant.  The miscreant was bruised and battered, evidenced that the ‘spray paint’ and teeth were his.

“I told your sergeant I wanted him in one piece!  I’ve got questions for him.  Fuckers.”  Tyrone said clearly and deliberately.

The two cops backed off and retracted their batons.  They moved back as if to leave the alley as the Detective passed them.

I’m not letting you boys get off that easy.  Tyrone put a hand on the tougher ones shoulder, “Take off your jacket.”  We’re supposed to be defenders of the peace, not brutal thugs.

The two cops exchanged glances, but they did not argue.

A few moments later, they left the detective and the miscreant in the alley, one complaining to the other about being shirtless.

Detective Tyrone Higgins shook his head and tossed the white under shirt over to the miscreant.  “You can use that to clot the bleeding.  It shouldn’t be too sweaty, from the complaints, I think I just ruined what is a very long shift to come for that pair.”

“Thanks.”  The brown spiky haired boy with the bloody mouth and the don’t beat me mum look responded.

Tyrone learned that his name was Mark and after chumming up to the boy a bit, learned that he was fairly liberal and hardly a street urchin.

Fortunately, the two beat cops already performed a pretty strong bad cop routine.  Tyrone’s good cop routine was so practiced, so pristine, it was like a shiny, new hover car.

Detective Higgins slipped the impressionable Mark a card and turned to leave the alley, going his merry way.

“Young and naïve boys will someday grow to be men, but not today.” Tyrone said as he lifted his gauntleted arm and allowed his VI to launch a drone the size of a fly.

Tyrone entered the local branch office of the Food and Drug Administration the next morning, after a long night of sleuthing.  He was followed by two uniformed police officers.

The local director was quite shocked when the three of them barged in on his meeting.  The others were promptly dismissed, but not without a great level of annoyance registering on the director’s face.

“You better have a damn good reason for busting in here like this.”  Bio enhancement and cyber modification fell under FDA jurisdiction and made the agency and especially its directors, quite bold.   The fact of the matter is that the FDA of 2049, and its directors, formed one of the most powerful agencies of the federal government.

“You’d better believe I’ve got a good reason.  Reason to believe that you are involved in anti-government terrorist activities.  I’ve got every right to lock you up, call in the military, and throw you into a deep and very dark hole.”  Tyrone smiled smugly.

The director quickly asked for an explanation as the cops escorting Tyrone flanked the director and cuffed him.

Tyrone gladly replied and started describing his previous day’s activities.  “Mark acted exactly as I expected, going right to a friend that would help the detective, that’d be me, uncover another bit of the mystery.

“The best news that I got out of the surveillance was that Mark’s friend, Ingrid, is a junky.  Not just that, but also the type of dope she was craving.

“Just brought her a bit of what she needed and the information flowed like the toys used to flow out of the brick and mortar stores at Christmas time.

“That is what brings me to your door.  Your screen name is the name used as the source on the inside providing this rogue cell with data.”  Tyrone nodded with the satisfaction of solving another crime.

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Blade Runner (courtesy of kk.org)

When I started to prepare for this story series, I was just getting my feet wet with twitter.  So, I decided, in order to promote The Trivium Proportion in an interesting way, I would reveal tidbits of the history.  I did this a single tweet at a time, one per day, for about a month before the first story was released.  Since, at the time, no one would have actually known what the posts were about, and I had very few twitter followers, the tweets were slightly useless.

Now that there are some people actually interested in the story, I thought I would provide the posts here for your pleasure.

Here are the posts, in order of release (more or less in their twitterized form):

December 21 2012 Apocalypse parties interrupted by announcement of medical breakthrough #2012 #fiction #shortstory #triviumproportion

Jun2013 Congress,Key Military and Intelligence personnel are treated with the new mech tech #biotech #fiction #shortstory #triviumproportion

Nov2014 Product Launch: Virta-Goggs@ by Walls-Wells Corp j-i-t for the holidays #virtualreality #shortstory #triviumproportion

Aug2015 #Riots #Protests breakout over med tech distribution #NDAA is used to #arrest #UScitizens for the first time #triviumproportion

Apr2018 India-Pakistani War begins.  Peace keeping forces, special forces deploy in both countries to secure WMD sites #triviumproportion

May2018 India-Pakistani War ends in catastrophe when commanders panic and utilize #WMD before they are captured #triviumproportion

Jun2018 #stockmarket plunges on fears of global #war and Walls-Wells Corp becomes the strongest stock to avoid the crisis #triviumproportion

Jan2019 Interview with Fred Walls, #CEO of newly split Walls Corp, the #richest man in the world. “#future of life is #virtual” #triviumproportion

Aug2022 #GMO crops create super #weed that takes over the farm lands, #congress acts too slowly to prevent #catastrophe #triviumproportion

Jul2022 Rural areas evacuated as the new weed grows rapidly out of control.  #Starvation and #riots take US by storm #triviumproportion

Jan2037 #Politics US Congress is dubbed the dynasty congress by popular media as the power stays within same hands #triviumproportion

2042 #urban #population equals nearly 100% of US total population, Harrisonburg, VA new #metropolis #fiction #shortstory #triviumproportion

Dec2048 no new incumbents enter #congress, new #cyberspace control #legislation passes, blockades form #virtual #fiction #triviumproportion

You could even do the project and myself a huge favor by tweeting these silly lines yourself.  A couple of them go just slightly over the character limit, but I’m sure you can modify that accordingly.

I’d love to hear more comments from people with substance on what they really like or don’t like.  The story is planned through to conclusion, and as of now, Part 9 is just entering the editing phase.  Some elements could still be modified going forward from that based on your input!

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion: Developer Diary One, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Champagne Toast on the yacht (courtesy of flickr)

Now announcing, The Trivium Proportion!

Seth Rogan has already agreed to play Jarred Dobson.  Charlize Theron will hopefully be signing on to play the venerable Kayla Summers.  Finally, Zooey Deschanel may be the perfect choice for Apple Edelman.

It won’t be on the big screen, but getting the story onto television with such an all-star cast is such an amazing accomplishment.  David Phillips said, “My luck in such a short time just amazes me.  Here’s to a future of exciting possibilities.”  He said this as he raised a glass of champagne on his newly purchased yacht from the seven figures he was given for the initial contract.

The illustrator for the series, C.E. Zacherl, was overheard excitedly mentioning that he, “could now support his long desired methamphetamine habit.” When approached, he refused to confirm this comment.

One big fan, Tony Young, says, “I can’t wait to see Kayla come alive on the big screen!”

Look forward to more news coming soon on this exciting achievement.

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, The TV Show, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Jarred focuses on his next task. by: C.E.Zacherl (see more at: http://veyer.deviantart.com)

It took a while to track down the avatar of all the recent blogging hate mail.  Finally, Jarred figured out the patterns and hunted the avatar down to one of the big MMO games, Necropotens, that all the kids and Jarred the middle aged (for that matter) were playing these days.

She was right there in front of Jarred’s virtual eyes.  Kayla sat nearby in his real world apartment asking constant, annoying questions that she could answer herself if she would just put on his spare pair of Virta-Goggs@.

Jarred and Kayla’s target avatar wore a pink spike Mohawk and long hot pink bangs with pride.  There was a sawed off shotgun strapped to her leg, and her outfit was skimpy enough that it couldn’t stop a knife or the prying eyes of a peeping Tom.

The pink punk hocked her wears in the market quicker than Jarred could roll a die sitting around the table with his friends on many other dark nights like this one.  She must have an advanced macro set up for selling, this pink punk was smart or rich.

Beyond the market, in the wastes of the ruined city, the pink punk spun to face Jarred.  “Are ya LFG or SLT?”

Jarred was taken off guard by the sudden approach, but he knew the lingo well enough.  “Something like that, yes.  We’d better find somewhere more private to talk.”

“YSIC?”  The girl repeated, her avatars mouth not moving in time with her speaking.  Like a never-ending series of virus spawning pop-up windows, Kayla continued to pester Jarred as to the meaning of the pink punk’s words.

Jarred cleared his throat, an action that didn’t show on his sleek, attractive avatar, “You need to care, because I’m on your side, irl.  Also, you could be in danger.”

“Irl?  GFY.”  She pulled her flechette shotgun and targeted this mystery avatar named Bob Howard.

“Not from me!”  Jarred’s avatar, Bob Howard, pulled out a rubber chicken, equipping it to both hands slots.  “See.  No harm.”

Pink punk girl was silent and the avatar just stood there with the shotgun aimed at Bob Howard.  She fired a shot suddenly that caught Bob in the gut.  Bob took some damage, enough to guarantee Pink punk girl a win in a stand up fight.

“CTFO.”  Pink punk girl, Mad Maxine, said.

Mad Maxine back peddled the whole way to their destination, keeping Bob in her sight constantly.  She had demanded that Bob Howard not heal himself at all.  They skirted around the edge of some really tough bad guys and were now at the back of an urban monastery, filled with junk.

It didn’t take long for the exchange of words to result in the flechette shotgun being holstered.  The rubber chickens finally were changed out for a medical pack to heal Bob Howard’s wounds.

Jarred continued, “We should meet in person.  I have a friend that would like to know you.  It sounds like your struggles may be against a common enemy.”

The sky scrapers of Harrisonburg, Virginia dominated the horizon.  The term concrete jungle really could be transposed onto this city, Manhattan wasn’t the only one on the East coast anymore.  Apple held on tight to one of the hanging straps since she was too short to reach the bars.  The trains squealed out of the lower level stop, where she boarded and screamed onward to its next destination.

The young girl faced a middle aged, out of shape man and a young woman wearing utilitarian clothes.

Apple croaked, “Y not just PM me?”

“PM?”  Kayla did not grasp the strange terminologies this girl used.  “Jarred, maybe I had the wrong idea.  How could we work together if we can’t even communicate?”

Kayla pulled on Jarred’s arm.

“WTF?”

Jarred continued facing Apple and did not budge.  “I’m Jarred, this here is Kayla.  I take it your name’s not actually Mad Maxine.”

“Apple.”

The accommodations in the maintenance duct were cramped like a Enterprise Jeffries tube, except filled with rust and mechanical devices.

Kayla finally gathered her courage, “We need to bring people back to Earth.  The cyber world has pulled people away from all the horrible events that occurred over the past three dozen years.  Sure, escapism is fine, when that escape doesn’t completely blind you to what happens out here in the real world.

“We have an obligation to this place that we call home.  Hell, what about the types that don’t like to escape into cyberspace.  Where does that leave us?  There’s just about nothing left for us.

“This technocratic grab for power is what sucked away the life of your Gimli.”

Apple looked up at her, “Zodi.  His real name was Zodi.”

“Exactly.”  Kayla approached Apple while Jarred looked on.  “Help us reveal the darkness that lies in the souls of the Oathed.”

Apple nodded.

Jarred smiled and hoped he wasn’t getting too far in over his head.

Once they went their separate ways, Jarred was sure he saw surveillance bots follow both of the girls, and not just the normal ones that the cops used.  He looked over his left shoulder, then his right.  He couldn’t be sure, but one probably followed him too.

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From the Beginning

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 4 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

This is the first novel that takes place in the IP of the Android universe by Fantasy Flight Games. It’s originally a character focused detective story board game. (If you’re interested, there is also a card game coming out based on this IP) This novel reads just like I imagine that games of Android would work.

I enjoyed the book and it was pretty easy to get through. I never found myself missing a detail or wondering who a character was. Maybe nobody has those problems and I am revealing what a foolish simpleton I am. I think not!

We’ve got a first person story from the eyes of a detective in the New Angeles PD. He’s a war veteran, and he’s usually a desk jocky. A big case has come along that requires his personal attention. It’s a murder!

The characters are enjoyable and the detail of the setting is nice. The story does seem quite a bit scripted, A event leads to B response leads to C event. The protagonist finds a clue that leads him to his next spot. Rinse, repeat, until near the end.

There were a few scenes in the book that really drove it home for me. I imagined watching Venus Wars or similar old school anime. I imagined a sequence from a 007 movie in another. These scenes were definitely my favorite in the book. Also, scenes like these were probably the main reason that I would suggest this book to other readers. I wouldn’t say that the book as a whole was amazing, but there will be a few moments along the ride where you will probably see some homage played to a movie, show, or book that you love from some other part of your life.

The segment right before the finale was probably my least favorite part of the book. There is a very long, detailed sequence that I will not spoil in any way. It is a sequence that would be awesome to witness if this was a screenplay and we got to actually watch the events unfold.
Unfortunately, we are checking this story out in book form, and it that form, this segment falls very flat.

That being said, the book as a whole is quite an enjoyable detective yarn. Anyone that enjoys detective stories will probably find a nice home for this book. It’s even possible that a reader that isn’t a big sci-fi fan could still enjoy this book. Though, if that non-sci-fi loving reader wasn’t a little bit read up on science, they might have a little bit of comprehension trouble.

Visit the original post, Clockwork Reviews: Android: Free Fall by William H Keith, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Column of Giants Bane

There is more to the Chapel of Saint Alberic than the physical building.

Stone Columns

There are six ancient columns stand inside the chapel. Each column is of granite, about a meter across and five meters long, weathered and hosts worn carvings and inscriptions.

The columns are “documents” important to the creation of the nation;

• Four of the columns are treaties with the great fey courts of the seasons, mandating the seasonal assortment of lords and ladies move on at a certain time and return at another time (1),
• One column determines the boundaries of the nation and promises martial prowess for its army,
• The last forbids giants from entering the country,

Each column is an artifact of considerable power and weight.

Column of Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn
Aura strong abjuration and conjuration; CL 20th
Slot none; Weight each about 8 to 10-tones.
Description

Columns of the seasons mandate the change of seasons with little fuss and bother.

• All members of a seasonal court suffer a cumulative -1 penalty for every week they operate inside the country after the official end of their season.
• If it is not their season, then members of the seasonal courts are unable to rest properly when they operate inside the country and thus cannot renew abilities, spells or powers requiring rest.

Column of Giant’s Bane
Aura strong abjuration and enchantment; CL 20th
Slot none; Weight each about 8 to 10-tones.
Description

Column of Giant’s Bane imposes penalties to any giants entering and operating in the country.

• All giants suffer a cumulative -1 penalty for every month they operate inside the country.
• All giants are unable to rest properly when they operate inside the country and thus cannot renew abilities, spells or powers requiring rest.

Column of Martial Power
Aura strong abjuration and transmutation; CL 20th
Slot none; Weight each about 8 to 10-tones.
Description

Column of Martial Power grants bonuses to any soldier or sailor operating in the country, providing they have taken an oath of loyalty to the country and are in the military.

• If so, they enjoy a +1 to all rolls for the military.
• Soldiers and sailors are considered rested after six hours, renewing any abilities, spells or powers normally requiring eight hours of rest or sleep.

Door Number Five
Aura strong conjuration and evocation; CL 20th
Slot none; Weight about 40-pounds.
Description

In the bitter parliament is a simple wooden door bearing an inscription reading “#5.” Based upon the structure of the chapel, this door should not open anywhere – however, it actually opens to an extra-dimensional space.

The extra-dimensional space is a cube, 580-feet to a side (116 squares by length, width and depth, creating a floor space of 13,456). Walls, ceiling and floors are closely fitted stones and each interior side possess its own gravity. Door No. 5 opens into the middle of the “floor” of one of these sides. There are no native light sources, but lanterns, torches and magical illumination function normally. Owing to the magic used to establish the place, color drains away leaving the inside black and white.

The gold dragon which helped establish Ouroboros University set up extra-dimension spaces, each accessible via a dedicated magical door. Of the five original doors, two are lost. Of the three remaining, the one held by the seminary leads to a library home to a copy of all the mundane books, scrolls and documents possessed by the church as an institution – it is a security measure for the church, providing copies should the originals e destroyed. Canon Mraz permits into the library only a handful of clerics and paladins – i.e. members of the clergy loyal to him. These church members periodically file new documents and retrieve old documents, but do not regularly staff the library.

Strix regularly staff the library. Cardinal Ludd and Canon Mraz seek to establish a secret police force, led by themselves. Their first step in the process is to employ the Strix as silent spies – people rarely think much about observation by birds – and to record interesting activities. The Strix do so, and at any time a dozen Strix are in a far corner of the library, carefully noting what they have seen. These owls use open/close to access the library and mage hand to write out what they have seen. Canon Mraz and his trusted paladins and clerics check these records frequently. The portion where the owls work is the only one keeping regular illumination.

Canon Mraz check on the records kept by the strix or assigns this task to some clergy member he trusts. He is also searches the library for information on the location of the two Wells of Souls. The locations were once well known, but now are obscured or missing.

Door #5 will open to this space from any wall or doorway to which it is affixed.

Canon Mraz keeps guards (usually 2 clerics 2nd level, 1 paladin 2nd level) posted at the ground floor entrance to the bell tower, something attributed to his own security as his office is above the ground floor and below the “abandoned” bell tower, further the door to the bell chamber itself is kept locked (DC 25).

Adventure Hooks

How Did They Manage That?: The real reason Canon Mraz replaced the former canon is while that man headed the seminary, someone stole the top portion of three of the columns; the column of spring, the column of martial prowess and the column of giant’s bane (2). Recovering them is not Canon Mraz’s responsibility, that falling to a senior order of paladins and the country’s military and intelligence forces. The theft is a state secret and mundane replacements for the stolen sections are now in the chapel. Spring is due in several weeks, and no one knows what will happen without the column of spring to enforce the abdication of the winter court. The party learns of this somehow. What do they do?

What Were You Thinking?: At some point the party learn the man behind the theft of the columns  is none other than Cardinal Ludd. The Cardinal is normally a frighteningly politically astute man of murky ambition. His critics assert he dislikes arcane magic and “technology,” (3) holding a possibly exaggerated view of the piety of the country in the past. In any event, working through proxies and puppets Cardinal Ludd orchestrated the theft of the columns. However, events are spiraling out of his control as the great fey winter court is striking an alliance with frost giants and spring is weeks away.

(1) Great fey courts “represent” the seasons. Each court acts as an anthropomorphic representation of the season and for ages, fierce battles (with considerable collateral damage) marked the change of seasons, a violent tradition ended by the creation of the column of the seasons, marking the beginning of a peaceful transition.

(2) The old animate murals and the sentient pipe organ know this has occurred.

Visit the original post, Ouroboros University: Chapel of Saint Alberic, Concluded, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

The best way to shut someone up, by: C.E.Zacherl (see more at: http://veyer.deviantart.com)

The girl was on the verge of the unconscious world.

Jarred Dobson looked around as thoughts raced through his head and landed on the nurture response.  He grabbed a blanket and rushed back to the girl.  She was sitting up against the wall, eyes wide with shock.

“Are you… are you okay?”  Jarred held his arms out in front of him disarmingly with the blanket.  The girl quickly grabbed it out of his hands and wrapped it around the front of her.  She gasped and breathed heavily before screaming in pain and grabbing her left shoulder.

Jarred looked on with concern as the girl eyed him suspiciously.  He again broke the silence, “I’m Jarred, what’s your name?”

“Kayla… Kayla Summers.”  She was not sure if she should be using her real name, but it was too late to change that now.

With introductions out of the way Kayla quickly pressed on Jarred the need to get away from the window to somewhere safe.  Jarred was a lonely guy and a sucker for a pretty girl in trouble.  It was hard to resist when one landed in his lap.

They found themselves in a large supply closet.  Kayla was a little freaked out when Jarred closed the door and they sat in pitch blackness surrounded by smells of ammonia, bleach, and stale water.

“Why do you have the key to..?”  Kayla started to ask.

“Why should I be helping you?”

“Why not?”

“I could get in big trouble.”

“Me too.”

“You could be a criminal, a killer.”

“Too late to turn back now.”

“So you are a criminal?”

“There are human rules that override…”

“Ah shit, you are a criminal.”

“Shh…”

“Shit shit, damn it.”

“Security bots are nearby.”

“It’s not too late.”

“NO!”

Jarred went to stand and turn towards the door.  Kayla grabbed him with her one good arm and pulled him back to her.  With all else failing, she resorted to what any desperate girl can fall back on when the future of her life is at stake.

Kayla kissed Jarred.

Rays of sunlight pierced the corners of the supply closet door.  A burst of sunlight filled the room as the door opened.  Kayla jerked up with wide eyes, still in shock.

“Sh.  It’s just me.  I brought you some breakfast.”  Jarred didn’t have a convenient way to carry the breakfast here, such as a tray.  He was carefully balancing all the elements.

Kayla wiped away the grime from her eyes and blinked, adjusting to the light.  “I must have passed out.”

“Yeah, it’s almost nine.  I don’t usually get up this early.”  Jarred set down the various elements of the breakfast he brought onto the ground beside Kayla.

Kayla gulped down a swig of orange juice to give her courage, “So, I guess I owe you an explanation.”

Jarred was gone for longer than Kayla expected.  He seemed to have taken her explanation pretty well.  The bloody bucket of rags next to her started to make her feel nauseous.

Kayla left the janitorial closet and left the door open just a crack so that she could get back inside without Jarred’s help.

The loud crashes ahead shook Kayla out of her dazed state.  There were elevated voices screeching between some of the crashes.

Jarred was lying across his recliner, now with both it’s arms broken.  There was a man standing over him with a 2×4.  Their builds were similar, except that the man standing above Jarred was all muscle.

Jarred put his arms up in a defensive manner to shield his face.  His lip was bloody and his arms were both black with bruising with marks obviously made by the 2×4.

“Please, you don’t need to hit me again.  I get it!  I’m still trying to find the package you left.”  Jarred’s voice was stressed with fear.

A shattering sound echoed through the room and Jarred cringed as the big man fell across Jarred’s legs.  He quickly pushed the man off of him and slid out the back side, landing on the floor next to the chair.  The whole affair looked like a tangled puzzle of man and chair.

Kayla stood over the scene, breathing irregularly and heavily.  She held the end of what used to be the only heavy glass vase that Jarred owned.  Of course, it was filled with tchotchkes and not flowers at the time.  They were now littered across the room.

Jarred was relieved to see Kayla, “Oh god.  If you didn’t show when you did…”

She collapsed down with fatigue, “Don’t worry about it, I owed you anyway.”

The thug groaned.  He wasn’t down for the count.  The thug did not have much more to add in his stunned state.  He padded off in his daze.

Now it seemed that Jarred needed to do some explaining as well…

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From the Beginning

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 3 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

They watch you sleep.

There is more to the seminary of Ouroboros University than the physical building.

What People Know

Characters learn more about the chapel and the seminary with the right skill checks. Appropriate skills include Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (history), Knowledge (local) and Knowledge (religion).

DC 14: The current chapel saw construction 800 years ago, following a war where dwarves, elves and humans fought side by side. At the time, the chapel was dedicated to the “best” god of the dwarves, elves and humans. The chapel itself was a reconstruction of an earlier one, burned in the war.

DC 14: All the bell towers are square rooms, with large openings on each wall. The north-east and north west-towers serve as homes to three bells each and a clergy member strikes the bells at various times, in keeping with church tradition.

DC 16: Following a war 500 years ago, the dwarf and elf clergy withdrew from the chapel and the human clergy rededicated the structure solely to their deity. At this time, the clergy titled it Saint Alberic, the first canon at the chapel.

DC 16: The previous canon allowed maintenance of the chapel to slip and the plaster along the inside of the dome collapsed recently, and the southern bell tower decayed enough to necessitate the removal of the bells. This supposedly provoked the former canon’s removal.

DC 16: There are six ancient columns forming a circle at the edge of the dome, one at each of the three entrances (south, north-east and north-west) and three more at the remaining three cardinal points of the compass (east, west and north). Each column is of granite, about a meter across and five meters long, weathered and hosts worn carvings and inscriptions.

DC 16: Podul Mraz is the current canon and is a follower of Cardinal Ludd, the notorious head of the church in this country.

DC 16: For almost a year, a host of screech owls has come to roost around the chapel, though they fly all over the campus and city. Canon Mraz refuses the removal of the owls and set up a rookery in a defunct bell tower several weeks ago.

DC 18: The canon 20 years ago allowed the instillation of Pipes, a “creature” popular with the students, but not with Canon Mraz.

DC 18: For safety’s sake, Canon Mraz ordered the removal of the bells from the southern tower early in the winter. It has sense been covered into a rookery for the screech owls. The southern tower has earned the nickname of “the bitter parliament” after the owls that now call it home.

DC 20: Cardinal Ludd appointed Canon Mraz to the seminary following some secret failure of his predecessor – beyond the chapel maintenance.

DC 20: Canon Mraz is looking for something on the grounds of Ouroboros University.

DC 22: The columns are powerful artifacts magically enforcing age-old contracts.

DC 24: There is an unusual door in the bell tower turned into an owl roost.

DC 24: The owls are sentient.

DC 28: Portions of three of the columns were recently been stolen.

Bitter Watchers in the Night

Inky eyes, carrying a hard and bitter stare, gaze at the world from what appears to be normal screech owls… until it screams or speaks.

Strix Owl CR 2 (600 xp)

N Tiny magical beast
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +8 Defense
AC 17, touch 15, flat-footed 14; (+3 Dex, +2 natural, +2 size)
hp 22 (3d12+3)
Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +5
Immune paralysis, sleep; SR 14
Offense
Spd 10 ft., fly 60 ft. (perfect), swim 30 ft.
Melee bite +4 (1d3)
Space 2 1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks scream, nightmare aura
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 3rd)
3/day greater invisibility (self only)
Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 2nd)
1st (2/day)— sleep (DC 14)
0 (at will)— ghost sound, mage hand, open/close
Statistics
Str 9, Dex 17, Con 13, Int 17, Wis 13, Cha 14
Base Atk +3; CMB +8; CMD 17
Feats Acrobatic, Dodge
Skills Acrobatics +8, Bluff +9, Diplomacy +9, Fly +19, Perception +8, Sense Motive +13, Stealth +17, Use Magic Device +9
Languages Common, Draconic, Elven, Sylvan; telepathy 100 ft.
Ecology
Environment temperate and mountainous forest, temperate urban settings.
Organization solitary or clan (2–8)
Treasure Value 550 gp
Special Abilities

Scream (Su): When a Strix owl screeches, all creatures except other neutral magical beasts within a 300-foot spread must succeed on a DC 12 Will save or become panicked for 2d4 rounds. This is a sonic mind affecting fear effect. Whether or not the save is successful, an affected creature is immune to the same strix’s scream for 24 hours. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Nightmare Aura (Su): If a Strix has tasted the blood or watched a creature of 5 HD or less sleep and dream, when that creature enters in a 60-foot radius and looks at the strix, that creature must succeed on a Will save or become frightened. Creatures with 6 HD or more must succeed at a Will save or be shaken for a 12 rounds. A creature that successfully saves is immune to the same strix’s aura for 24 hours. This is a mind-affecting fear effect.

Strix (plural and singular) are dour sentient owls who fled some catastrophe in the future, flying through the Realm of Dreams into the history of their world… to the present of the campaign. To survive the Strix are mercenary, clannish and dedicated to the survival their own survival. If they discuss the catastrophe, their relatively alien nature – as neither humanoids nor mammals – means the specifics of the catastrophe remain unclear.

Strix as Familiars

Though self-serving, a Strix may potentially be a useful familiar. Spellcasters wishing to take a Strix as a familiar must take the Improved Familiar feat, possess an alignment within one-step of neutral and must not have attacked Strix in the past. The character must have an arcane spellcaster level

Adventure Hooks

I Saw What You Did: Canon Mraz is working with Cardinal Ludd to employ the Strix as part of a secret police force, where they watch what is going on and report to Canon Mraz and keep track of people’s behavior. However, what neither Canon Mraz nor Cardinal Ludd realize is the city’s thieves’ guild has already subverted the owls (by simply paying them better) and is getting a copy of all of this information. While Canon Mraz and Cardinal Ludd are hording this information for the moment, the guild is already blackmailing people… including the PCs. What do they do?

This is Wrong: One of the clergy working for Canon Mraz falls into a crisis of conscious and decides the monitoring of people is wrong. He tells the party this is going on. What do they do?

Visit the original post, Ouroboros University: Chapel of Saint Alberic, Continued, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Apple in the Ether by: C.E.Zacherl (see more at: http://veyer.deviantart.com)

Meanwhile… only minutes before Kayla’s plummet from the beam that held her mission objective and before Jarred sipped upon his Miller Synth…

Here Apple sat, in her bachelorette pad in the opposite sky scraper from Jarred’s.  In front of her lingered an expansive electronic set of computers, scanners, ipad, and complex gadgets.  The rig looked more like a space ship than a desk top.  She rarely saw it herself, instead seeing the virtual world every moment she spent in her home, away from her parents.

“I’m def da, d00d!”  Apple Eddelman said as she viewed the virtual room through the eyes of her most recent creation.  This avatar’s abilities weren’t up to the type of tasks her play-video-games-as-a-life avatars possessed.

Apple knew the ins and outs of cyberspace.  And she used that knowledge to make money.  As soon as she got this avatar to a high level state, she would finally pay off last month’s rent check.  She thought this time was going to be like the rest, but it hadn’t turned out that way.

“I ned to grief that EFT tonight!  WTF?!”  Apple screamed out into virtual space to her partner in crime, Zodi.

“Okay, hang on just a sec, I needed to get another soda.”  Zodi’s avatar went from frozen in place to doing a series of strange dance moves that repeated over and over again.

Suddenly, his avatar burst into action and headed straight for the final room of the dungeon.

“Wtf?  Could have BAK?!”  Apple had always been very vocal with few manners, and this translated to her interactions in cyberspace.

Apple quickly charged into the room after Zodi’s avatar, Gimli the Great.  He was so original with names.  At least he wasn’t actually playing a dwarf, or even a fantasy game, but he still went with the same name he always did.

Apple charged into the room firing her Flechette shotgun, quickly closing the distance with the Boss as the needle like pellets left the barrel of her gun.

The sound channel of her cyberspace connection was connected to multiple feeds that would distract the average human.  One segment of her brain hummed along to the pulsing beat of some old Daft Punk song.  Another segment listened to the 24 hour streaming news station.  “Senator Hal Ida is announcing that he will step down in the coming weeks with just enough time for the Democratic party to find his replacement.  And that seals the deck in the house of cards.  The Dynasty Congress is complete.  Let’s look at a breakdown.”  Pause.  The Boss was already down to half its hit points; it looked like the end of the fight was inevitable.  “The last member of Congress that is not connected via family by one generation in either direction will step down.  If your last name isn’t Hatch, Gingrich, or Frank, look elsewhere for your future.”

All the bits of information flowed through Apple like she was just an extension of the machine that she was so intimately familiar with.  If only her teachers could see her now, they would wonder why she had failed so miserably on all the assignments they gave her.

“WAD, 0wned.”  Apple practically yelled as she cheered over the crescendo of the Daft Punk song.

Zodi (Gimli) slashed at the boss with his mono filament katana and the next blow would be the last one.  Apple’s song stuttered and made a bunch of loud bleeping noises that interrupted her concentration.  The news casters words were stuck on, “da da da da da da…”  Her body froze and she felt helpless.

Lights flashed before Apple’s eyes, pixilation of the colors that once made up the digital world in her vision pounded her head like a jack hamer.

Apple fought through the bleeding pain in her ears and the searing heat on her retinas.  “WITFITS!”  The thought of the easy ability to leave that painful world and return to the real one didn’t even cross her mind.

A solid minute must have passed, but Apple didn’t budge from that virtual world where she really felt alive.

The song picked back up again, the news squeaked ahead like an Alvin and the Chipmunks reunion, and the colors returned to normal, but Gimli wasn’t standing there like he should have been.  The Boss had disappeared, not even a body remained.

Gimli had disappeared from the knees up and pixel by pixel, the rest of the body vanished.

“Weird…”  Apple looked around for Gimli.  “Zodi? Srsly, WAYN?”  Apple waited for several minutes and got no word, no voice, no e-mail from Zodi.  She felt naked and alone.  She headed back to a social zone as if nothing but a tiny little glitch had hampered her load bar.

Apple didn’t hear from Zodi after that either.  It was not until two days later that she learned from Zodi’s roommate that he was now lying in a hospital, dead to the outside world.

Horror and shock only started to cover her feelings, and it was at that moment that Apple vowed to discover a way to help Zodi or get some vengeance.

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Kayla leaps to escape the pursuing bots. By: C.E.Zacherl (see more at: http://veyer.deviantart.com)

Kayla Summers walked cautiously, one foot in front of the other in a tight line. The fear pulsated through her body and left it via the sweat that soaked her face. Like a 20th century daredevil, she was taking to this beam.

Ahead of her was the first sanctuary for her tired leg muscles. The sanctuary was made of massive cables lying across the long sky corridor between the two massive sky scrapers. The wires were of varying sizes and tangled in and out of each other like a disturbed Cthulhu beast. With one final leap, she crossed the last bit of distance, no longer wanting to complete the tight rope routine.

She lay for only a few moments amongst the tangled cords. The security bots would be on her position any minute now. They would come swooping in from above, below, and from every direction, like a pack of hounds and hawks working together to surround some poor fox with only moments left to live.

She glanced further ahead to the other sky scraper that she would approach to get to her objective. A sense of vertigo filled her as her eyes were drawn down, following the length of the support beam that she now sat upon. It was about fifty yards from her position, but the dizzying heights to either side of the thin support beam made it seem like a thousand. The tangle of cords and wires were lying there along the beam like some cruel trickster just hoping to tangle a foot and watch the splat show of the thirty story fall.

Kayla pushed herself back up to her feet with her hands on the edges of the support beam. Her heart was pounding along with the sound of some high story skyscraper techno club. Her training led her to the next few moments. The memorized layout of all the cables lying on this beam drew her feet to each spot like reflex.

Her legs froze up in place and her heart out sped the beat of the distant thumping. The thrum thrum thrumming of a hovering vehicle filled her left ear.

Over the sound of the thrumming, a radio tuned into a talk station, “The Dynasty Congress is at it again. Vance Gingrich spoke out today against several tech companies which dominate the political spectrum of the Northeast.”

Kayla sighed in relief that the hovering sound was not a security bot, just a hover car docked perhaps at the edge of the dance club she could just faintly identify by the thumping bass. She could feel that thumping vibrating through her legs like it would shake the beam apart. Sweat dripped down her brow as she lifted her foot off of the ground and threw her leg over the thickest cable that was held by the support beam.

Kayla shimmied along the cable that was easily twice as wide as her body. She now saw the spot for which she was destined.

Kayla pulled the old style carbon photo out of her small fanny pack. She held it in front of her face alongside the tangle of cables and wires. She nodded and grinned. Here were the wires that she sought. She pulled a strange looking box with several slots and a laser wire cutter from her pack.

Distant flashing lights alerted Kayla to the closing security bots. It would now be a race between her splicing skills and the hovering bots. The laser wire cutter made short work of two targeted cables. The small box was quickly delivered to the floor of the support beam. With the greatest of brevity, she latched both ends of each of the cables to the splicing box and tightened all four latches.

The lights now played off of both skyscrapers and the shrieking siren sounds were followed by the higher pitched thrumming of hovering security bots.

“Come on, come on, come on.” Kayla chanted like a Buddhist mantra, trying to remain as calm as monks with the imminent capture that would soon follow her hopefully successful mission. A small LED flashed from green to red.

“Yes.” Kayla murmured with focused concentration. Kayla pulled away a tab from the side of the box and turned to face the skyscraper opposite where she had come from. Her first step was like that of a baby unsure of how to walk. Her foot caught on the very cables she was just splicing. She could see her fate of tripping off of the beam and plummeting, but it did not happen.

“Fuck!” Kayla caught her falling body with her outstretched arms, grabbed the cables and pulled herself forward and back up to her feet almost as if she was climbing up the cables vertically.

“Here goes.” She started to run, each step more practiced than the one before it. She got into her zone, like playing that old system game, Mirror’s Edge. She remembered trying it just to practice moving through urban environments virtually before she ever needed to in reality.

“My…” huff, “hero…” puff. Kayla was starting to run out of steam during the dash to the sky scraper when two security bots flanked the beam up ahead.

“Time to die.” Kayla pulled a metallic cord from her utility belt as the bots started to blare out instructions to surrender and to ask for her lawyer if she didn’t want to blah blah blah. Kayla hardly cared.

“And…” Kayla held her right hand out with the cord in it. It slid rapidly down like a squid’s tentacle reaching for a treat, below the bottom of the support beam.

“Bingo.” Kayla Summers hit the button on the buckle of her belt with her left hand and the cord flew around the opposite side of the beam to connect up to the buckle, forming a lasso around the support beam when she was mere yards from the sky scraper.

“Aa, yah!” Kayla leapt off of the support beam. She had practiced this move many times, she dreamt of it, but she was still scared to death. Thirty stories was a long way to fall.

“Wooahahh, Damn!” Kayla yelped as she smashed into the wall of the sky scraper, having miscalculated her leap and the distance that her momentum would carry her forward. There was a bone crunching snap as her arm dislocated.

The security bots above turned and beamed lights down in her direction, struggling to keep up with her rapid maneuver. Four more security bots joined the other two.

Suddenly, the cable she hung from snapped and Kayla plummeted!
It was only a dozen yards fall as she crashed onto an electric suspended rail car travelling slowly out of a nearby station.

The security bots surrounded the rail car and followed it from all sides, shining their recorders, lights, and microphones into Kayla’s car, or her coffin, depending on how she looked at it. Kayla wasn’t moving, still as the dead.

As the suspended rail car pulled up to its next stop at another series of sky scrapers and the doors opened. Several of the security bots flew in, almost knocking over an unsuspecting business man just about to depart.

The bots surrounded the figure. In silence, the bots watched and reported to police headquarters as they saw the life-like replica of a person dissipate line by line into a digital holographic device. The form of Kayla that was lying on the floor of the rail car was gone, just a tiny little bit of technology.

***

Jarred Dobson smacked his modem yet again. He cursed to himself. Damn thing always throws up a Code: 909 error whenever he got to the good parts.

Jarred’s cigarette ashed over the front of his stained grey Dungeons & Dragons shirt with a one eyed floating creature on it. “Shit.” He brushed away the hot ash before it could burn through the shirt.

He sat back in his recliner, staring at the red blinking lights on the modem that proved to him that his character would be dead by the time he logged back in to cyberspace again.

Jarred thought about getting up from the recliner, but it was such a pain with the one arm broken and slouching over. It just wasn’t worth all the effort to go get a Miller Synth, the newest release from Miller Brewing Company, it almost tasted like a real beer.

Jarred jumped in his chair as a loud bang came from outside the walls. The motion sat him up enough that he nearly fell out of the broken recliner. With that, he shrugged, got up, and grabbed that
Miller Synth (now with real hops!) and headed over to the window to take a look outside.

He never made it to the window. A loud crash of breaking glass was followed by Jarred being sprayed with the remnants. A humanoid form followed the shattering glass into the apartment.

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word cloud courtesy of WordLe.com

Thinking on what I love and hate most about table-top RPGs was actually a lot harder than I would have expected. I’ve been jotting down notes all month, reading up on the other posts in this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, and trying to pin down what it is that I love about the hobby most. I’ve even dug into the academic literature to educate myself a bit on what the current thinking is on game culture and narrative gaming (there are some links at the end you may enjoy).

Well – not so surprisingly – I’ve found it’s not the game itself (or more specifically, any one system). Instead, for me it’s more about the things between the games: community, creative and intellectual challenges, living a gaming lifestyle, and creating a narrative – a collective daydream if you will.

We’ll see how much you agree…

1. Community

Just like playing sports, being trapped in an elevator with strangers, or bitching about work over the water cooler – gaming brings people together and quickly build community among strangers. Among friends, it becomes a life long bond. And studies have shown[1,2] that it’s the face-to-face dynamic that nails it: table-top games own virtual ones from a social interaction standpoint. Beyond RPGs – table top games in general (and… ok even “couchy” console gaming) are powerful mediums to build life long friendships. The kind where you can not see someone for months, years even, and then a single game is all it takes to reconnect. RPGs, in my experience, offer the best of this. Few things can compete with that (expect maybe the aforementioned trapped in the elevator experience).

2. Brain Skillz

Gaming is food for the brain. Your brain loves it – which is why you love it. IT’s why I love it. RPGs spark your imagination and work those math skills in really basic (but important!) ways. Gaming sharpens your brain—every time you play. It’s a great way for both left and right brain people to meet up and exercise those noggins too. Heck, there’s even a dating service based on gaming! RPGs also have the added benefit of sharpening your brain every time you plan on playing too. That’s why not everyone is a GM – it’s work to do it well, the good kind of work. All that characterdungeonmonsteradventureraygun designing keeps you sharp – and your friends know it. That’s why being called a geek is now an endearing term among gamers. It means: “you’re smarter than me“.

Which we are…

… because gamers have Brain Skillz.

3. The Secret Handshake of the Table-Top Gaming Subsculture

Nowadays, this is a fallout effect from #1 above (“Community”), but it’s something that’s been the subject of study for over 20 years[3] so I think it’s roots are elsewhere. Nonetheless, you know that moment when you figure out someone you just met, or perhaps even someone you have known for a while, is also a table-top gamer like yourself? You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s like this secret handshake that just magically happens, and then BING! the curtain gets pulled back and you both silently realize “Oh Snap – you’re a gamer too?”. It usually goes like this: you say something that vaguely references something “gamey”, and they respond in-kind with a similarly vague comment. It’s confirmed. This person, even if you have just met them, is Made of Win. This is awesome, and one of my favorite aspects of being a gamer and living the gamer lifestyle. (There’s an excellent, albeit old, discussion of this over at Story Games)

4. Playing the Book, and Changing the Story

People who know me understand that, first and foremost, I’m a “story gamer”. The specific RPG system I play means far less than the narrative. That’s what draws me back to the table. As a GM I love shaping and designing the events around the narrative the players are creating. As a player, few things are more fun for me than feeling like I’m part of an Epic that challenges, or even breaks, the framework of someone else’s story. This is like playing the great book you’ve just read, or changing the story while your reading it. Computer RPGs still don’t have this down. With a cRPG, you’ll always be on the rails; confined to what the designers created (until at least they develop programatic approaches to narrative generation). Being part of the narrative is probably what I love most about RPGs, so I’ll stop here while I’m ahead.

Further Reading Elsewhere

1. Underwood RW “The friends that game together: A folkloric expansion of textual poaching to genre farming for socialization in tabletop role-playing games” Transformative Works and Cultures v2 (2009)
2. Caplan C, Williams D, Yee N “Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being among MMO players” Computers in Human Behavior 25:6 (2009) p1312
3. Fine GA “Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social World” American Journal of Sociology Vol. 91, No. 5 (1986), pp. 1219
4. Dormans J “On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules” Game Studies 6:1 (2006)

What is it that you love most about table-top games and RPGs? What’s your secrete gaming handshake?

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Visit the original post, A Fork in the Road: Concluding the Revolt, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

“He leads them like a thing

Made by some other deity than nature,

That shapes man better.”

— Coriolanus, IV.6.

A feast was laid in the commodore’s cabin on the airship Camilla, upon a long table lit by gas and flickering alchemical flames. Some had cautioned the commodore against having so much fire abroad a wooden ship, but he was determined to meet face-to-face with what he feared.

Noise above: the ring of metal, and an impact that rattled the ceiling. The diners – admirals and politicians all – half-rose in their chairs. Commodore Aufidius was first on his feet.

“The sentries would have given the alarm, sir,” his first lieutenant said. Aufidius turned a glare on him, and he added, “I will go check, if you—”

Before he could finish, the commodore was striding across the cabin, taking up his swordbelt from the chest and wrenching open the hatch. A dark shape blocked out the fading twilight above, drawing back as Aufidius climbed the steps.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, emerging onto the quarterdeck, and then stopped short as he saw the three sentry automata strewn before him, the gears in their appendages spinning uselessly. One emitted a few sparks and went still.

Aufidius peered at the intruder on his quarterdeck: he stood in the shadow of the mainmast, a bulky figure framed against the fog-shrouded lights of Antium below. “What have you done to my sentries?”

“They got in my way.” The voice was deep, familiar in a way Aufidius felt in his bones, but could not define.

“Who are you, sir?”

He took a step forward into the light, stiff and halting as a man injured or—“Why, don’t you know me, Aufidius?”

Or not a man at all, though from a distance he might pass for one. He was dressed in cheap shirt and trousers like a dock-worker, sleeves rolled up to his elbows despite the evening chill. Each sinew stood out prominently, the bronze skin faintly gleaming with reflected light. His golden eyes rotated as they focused, taking in the eyepatch across Aufidius’s face.

“Caius Martius,” the commodore said, as though it were a name rather than a functional designation. From martial, the word for war. It lay like a burning brand on his tongue. “First soldier of the Eastern Confederacy. Called the Scourge of Corioles. What in hellfire’s name brings you here?”

“To die at your hand,” Martius answered, slow and word by word. He had not been made for fluent speech. “If so you would take your revenge. Or else, to do your country service. If you would have me.”

A thrill flamed through Aufidius, sharp as the stroke that had taken his eye. “Sir,” he began, and then, forgetting himself: “You marvellous creature! I have dreamed of nothing else.”

#

The admirals were hesitant but pleased when Aufidius brought the Scourge of Corioles back into the cabin with him, holding him in friendship by the sharp joint of his elbow. They were more pleased yet when Martius told them how he wished to strike back against his former nation, and would give them all the intelligence they needed to reach the heart of the Confederacy, behind its defences of mountain and deceptive cloud.

The food was carried away, for Martius would not eat it, and maps were spread out over the table, the conference lasting long into the night.

“You will share the command with me, of course,” Aufidius said, not giving the admiralty time to object, and Martius nodded gravely.

At last, the grandees descended satisfied to their homes in Antium, and the two of them were left alone. Aufidius fetched the brandy-bottle from the sideboard and poured out a glass, offering it automatically.

“You forget,” Martius rasped out, almost seeming to smile. Aufidius shrugged, and drank it himself. It was warm in the lamplit room; he unclasped his uniform coat and draped it over a chair. He could not remember ever feeling so glad, not even when the Camilla was first given him to command.

“They exiled me, the damned rogues,” Martius said after a moment, staring down at his hands on the table, springs tight across his knuckles. “They made me to serve them, and then they said I did it too well, and they exiled me, like a rusty sword dropped on the scrap-heap. Some called for me to be broken down…decommissioned in the public square.”

Aufidius exhaled, almost a gasp. “How could that be?” When he had seen him last, Martius had been wreathed in hellfire on the bridges of Corioles, single-handedly burning a swathe through the city – as his sword had burned across Aufidius’s face, cauterizing the wound it made. Martius had passed through the alchemical fire as though through fog, shining and untouched. He looked…older now, if that were possible, but still immeasurably strong.

“I am not invulnerable,” Martius answered, marking his thoughts. “Strike the right place and the whole mechanism goes: a clockwork toy you give your children. No government would dare make something they could not destroy, at their puny pleasure.”

“And your creatrix?” Of course he knew of the famous Volumnia. Unnatural, for a woman to yield such power. The Confederates were barbarians, for all their advances – they had no concept of the proper bounds between the home and public life. And yet it paid to know one’s enemies – that was a lesson Aufidius had learned well. “Did she not speak for you?”

“She did,” Martius allowed. “But she is one among the Council of Fifteen. The bastards outnumbered her. They have always feared me.”

“They were right to do so,” Aufidius said, a note of admiration in his voice. “And now you will have your vengeance. Together, we’ll burn the Confederacy to the ground.”

Martius did not answer, eyes unblinking on the dawn beyond the cabin windows. The two of them sat like friends and watched the sun rise, while the commodore turned the empty glass over in his hands and thought of the future. He could see it stretching out before him now, bright as a river of flame.

#

They cast off for the East soon after – Camilla the flagship, with the heavy-weight She-Wolf and darting Amazon behind her, their bellies all packed full of men and machines. The Volscian-made sentries and soldiers could not compete with Confederate designs, but they had surprise on their side, and intelligence, and the Confederacy’s own best weapon.

Aufidius was always happiest in flight, the wind in his face, the engines below more felt than heard, the steady hum of propellers behind. He stood on the deck of the Camilla, and did not startle to feel Martius coming up behind him.

“Why,” asked his voice, deep and artificial as the ship’s engines, “do you wear that embroidered bauble across your face?”

Aufidius touched the patch at his left eye. The Antium Ladies’ Institute had given it to him, as a token of esteem for his heroism at Corioles. “Most people do not care to see the wound.”

“No,” Martius said, “why do you wear that? Why not this?” And in his hand, he held up the eyepiece he must have found in Aufidius’s cabin.

This, did not come from the Ladies’ Institute. It was a bronze thing, carefully wrought with tiny levers and gears, fitting over the side of his face. It would replace his missing eye, he had been told, though in truth it did far more than that when he wore it. He could focus on a signpost a mile distant, or see a man’s shape by its warmth in the darkness, or glimpse the tiny movements of an automaton’s workings.

“I prefer not to,” Aufidius said shortly. “It feels…foreign.”

“How will it not, if you do not wear it? You mean to use it in battle, do you not?”

He shifted on his feet. “I should be a fool else.”

“Do you fear to be like me?” Martius asked, rumbling and quiet in his ear. “You needn’t worry. You could never be like me.”

For that, Aufidius had no answer. “Train with me,” Martius told him, less a suggestion than a command. “Train with me, and wear the device.”

#

They sparred belowdecks, for it would not do for the men to see one of their commanders bested. A balcony protruded near the bottom of the ship, screened from above by the curve of its great belly. The wind was stronger here, the green patchwork of land clearly visible through the grill at their feet.

“A dangerous spot,” said Martius – approvingly, Aufidius thought. Since he revealed himself, he had foregone all clothing but a pair of cut-off trousers and a swordbelt, and had no uniform to remove. Aufidius shivered as the wind tugged at his own lawn shirt, but knew he would be warm soon enough. The eyepiece pressed on his temple; he slid it down, and saw in colours no living eye knew.

Without warning, he drew his sword and turned into an attack.

He had the satisfaction of seeing Martius draw back, making time to unsheathe his own weapon. It was no civilized duelling rapier but a broad blade, heavy and near-ruined by fire, but still wickedly sharp at the tip. Aufidius had bitter knowledge of that.

Steel met steel, the sound nearly drowned out by the ship’s engines and the buffeting air. They circled one another, testing with a few strokes and parries, trying their footing on the shaky metal floor.

Aufidius lunged, sliding his rapier along the other’s sword, forcing him back against the low railing. Martius stayed there a moment, and then slowly his arm began to lift, increment by increment, pushing away the blade. Only the eyepiece told Aufidius when his sinews were poised for the final thrust, and he stepped back in time, raising his sword to defend himself.

“Good,” Martius rasped. He came on, swinging faster than the human eye could follow, attack after attack. Aufidius parried each one, but he was breathing hard, sweat sticking the shirt to his skin.

So often, Aufidius had dreamed of this – though his dreams were of meetings in the field, surrounded by the dead and dying. He had imagined every way an encounter between them might go, and he had imagined winning, waking up panting with it in the night.

His throat burned and still he returned the blows, from one end of the platform to the other. His opponent did not flag, did not tire, did not make an error. His strokes were the same, every time, deadly with mechanical precision.

Grinning fiercely in exhaustion, Aufidius made a final reckless lunge, his blade under the other’s guard. It skimmed against Martius’s chest but did no damage, and he could not bring it up into another thrust.

Almost lazily, Martius hooked the rapier into the hilt of his sword and tugged it aside, wrenching it from Aufidius’s raw fingers. He glanced down at the blades, and then tossed them on the floor with a sound of disgust, moving forward once more.

It was not over, then. Aufidius stood his ground, humiliated and roused, as those vastly strong hands closed over his arms. They grappled, swaying in the wind with nothing but sky around them.

For a moment, he thought he’d found Martius’s weakness – an indent at his shoulder where the plates met, to hook his fingers in and pull; a booted foot pressed behind his knee. They tumbled to the grill as it rattled beneath them, rolling, but it was Martius who got him pinned, knees on either side of his hips, even as Aufidius’s hands closed about his throat.

“Do you yield?” Martius demanded.

“Yield?” he repeated, breathless, laughing at the ludicrousness of it. He tightened his fingers: the metal flesh was softer than he had expected, smooth and warm with power. Alive, though one could never mistake it for human skin.

Martius shook his head within the other’s grip. “You cannot kill me that way. Yield, Aufidius.”

“Never.” He struggled until Martius leaned down on him, chest to his heaving chest, blocking out the light and wind. There was no heartbeat, but he could feel something within, thrumming as the engines of the Camilla, the steady, relentless counterpart to his own hammering heart.

“Yield,” the soldier said, low in his ear.

A red haze settled over Aufidius. He changed his grip to pull Martius down still closer, though he would not say the word.

#

On they flew, the Volscian fields below replaced in time by jagged mountains. It was night when the ships passed over the smoking ruins of Corioles, and neither commander looked down to see it.

Once within Confederate territory, they travelled more slowly. Martius stood at the stern with his charts, guiding the helmsman between the peaks too high for the fleet to fly over. She-Wolf and Amazon followed behind, ready to echo every turn the Camilla made.

“To think, sir,” said Lucian, the first lieutenant, as he stood with Aufidius on the quarterdeck, “within a week we may be upon the Confederates’ capital, which none of us has ever seen.”

“Yes,” Aufidius answered briefly, frowning into the pale, hazy sunlight. Thick banks of cloud covered the horizon, broken and complex as towers.

“And all thanks to our new ally. Our new commander, I should say, since you have shared the honour with him.”

“Shared. Yes.”

Lucian watched him shrewdly. “He takes a great deal of authority upon himself, sir, it is true.”

“He is…less careful of my person than I might wish.” Aufidius tugged the sleeve of his uniform jacket lower over his wrist, where a dark bruise was forming: he had heard the whispers among the crew, and did not want to give them fuel. The line dividing pain from pleasure was a fine one between them, and more and more, Martius crossed it. Either he did not know his own strength, or knew it too well. “But that is his nature.”

“Will we build such men one day, do you think?”

Aufidius shook his head. “There can be no other such men.”

#

They sacked their first Confederate outpost the next day. Unassisted, Aufidius might have thought it just another patch of cloud, wreathing the top of a crag. Martius showed them how to approach at night, the lights of the fortress guiding them through the cloud cover. The Volscian ships left the crag burning as a beacon.

“They’ll be panicking now, the councillors,” Martius said later, leaving Aufidius breathing hard against the wall, his skin marked with fingerprints and ashes. The heat of battle had reminded him of Corioles, when he had met Martius among the flames. “Let them panic.”

With each day, with each fortress attacked and each harrying patrol repulsed, the chief city of the Confederacy grew closer. “We’ll come at them from above,” Martius said, at a meeting in the commodore’s cabin. “Our ships over their Capitol. It will mean some dangerous flying, but their artillery won’t be turned that way in time. A few licks of hellfire on their precious town, and they’ll surrender.” He barely glanced at Aufidius for confirmation.

The winds were high, the evening of the final attack, the sunset an angry red behind them. Aufidius held tight to the railing, hands clenching to pilot the Camilla himself, as he had done in his youth. It was hard flying, but his own position was harder.

“Hellfire,” he whispered, as the city emerged like a stormcloud before them, “it truly is an island in the sky, as the stories say.”

“It’s anchored to the mountains,” Martius said, coming up behind him and resting a hand lightly at his waist. “Built on a platform. A cunning design.”

“And the clouds?”

“Steam, from the furnaces in the underbelly. Powering the patricians’ hypocausts and their little toys. If I had been built to serve them with drinks instead of their enemies’ heads, they would have never exiled me.” The bitterness in his voice left a tang, like metal.

“They did wrongly. We will show them that.”

“Yes.” He paused. “Come below? There is a map of the city.”

For a moment, even yet, Aufidius wavered. “I am needed on deck,” he replied. “We’re about to begin our ascent.”

The Camilla tacked up into the wind, her engines straining, rigging snapping with each gust. The vast She-Wolf had come up alongside them, decks bristling with men and automata; Amazon, more easily blown off course, laboured in their wake.

Cannon-fire broke the night, blooms of sunrise amid the darkness; a bolt of lightning arched in the clouds above. For an instant the ship was bathed in uncanny light, in which Martius looked like a statue of stone instead of bronze.

Aufidius loved this kind of flying, wild and reckless, pushing his ship to the limits of its power. He barely heard Martius calling for him.

“Your eyepiece,” he shouted sternly. “You have forgotten it again!”

Cursing, Aufidius slid the thing down over his head, and almost gasped. It was as though the clouds, which had been so dark and impenetrable, suddenly parted before his gaze, and he could see all the lights of the Capitol shining below. It was as beautiful as the engravings showed it, laid out in an orderly grid of brick and marble, with three-lined avenues and buildings of domes and columns. Martius stood at the railing in front of him, gazing down, poised as though his body were one large spring.

Lightning flashed again. The sudden radiance lit the bronze of Martius’s back, and there—

A flaw. Just below his left shoulder-blade, a tiny join only enhanced vision could perceive: the vulnerability that would have allowed his makers to destroy him. Aufidius had searched for it, on all the nights of their journey, but his human eye could never have noticed such a small thing, his questing fingers could not have felt it.

The fleet broke out of the cloud-cover and stopped, with beautiful precision, the three ships hovering in formation above the bright dome of the Capitol, their engines stirring the tree-tops.

“Shall we fire?” Aufidius called, hating himself for the question. Every Volscian man and automaton stood ready with cannon and hellfire, to destroy the streets below as their own towns had been destroyed.

“They’ll surrender,” Martius said confidently. “They are too craven. I will deliver this city whole into your hands.”

Aufidius was about to protest, when he saw the white flag of parley rising tremulously over the Capitol. “What are their terms?” he demanded of the signal-lieutenant.

“They wish to treat with you,” the lieutenant translated. “With Caius Martius, Scourge of Corioles. If you will land, the Council of Fifteen would discuss—”

Martius interrupted, slamming his fist down so hard the console rattled. “Tell them we are not fools or children, to discuss terms with the likes of them. Ready the hellfire.”

“It is ready,” said Aufidius.

But more signals were coming. “They say they will send three of the Council up, to meet with you in person.”

“No,” Martius said. “No councillors.”

“They will send Councillor Volumnia, alone.”

Martius turned to Aufidius, and there was something almost desperate in that look, so far as his face might show emotion. “Might we not hear their terms? One woman would be no threat to us.”

“They are stalling for time, man!” Aufidius burst out. “Can’t you see that? They are waiting for their artillery to be in position, and fobbing us off with promises meanwhile. We must fire.”

“I would hear what she has to say,” Martius told him. “Lower the gangway.”

#

The councillor was a slight, prim figure in shirtwaist and narrow skirt, her grey hair knotted at the nape of her neck, arriving flanked by two sentry automata. “Martius,” she said, as soon as she had stepped foot on the Camilla, “what are you doing?”

He stood before her, stony and implacable; he had put on full uniform while they waited, new epaulettes gleaming at the shoulders. Aufidius could not guess what effect her arrival had on him. It was hard to imagine this small woman having built such a creature, but the steel in her voice held a familiar note.

“I will have revenge, madam,” Martius told her, “for the way I was treated.”

“How you were treated? It was your own stiff-necked pride caused that, when you refused to yield to the Council! You had been given honours, title—”

“Title!” Martius exclaimed scornfully. “The Scourge of Corioles. Do you know what a scourge is, Councillor? It is a whip – a tool for beating those you scorn or fear to touch. I will be your scourge no longer.”

“You’d be the Volscians’, then?”

“I went to them freely,” he said. “And they give me the respect I was due. I am a commodore, an equal to Tullus Aufidius. In your army I was never more than a soldier, obeying an old general who cowers to face me now.”

“Ah, yes.” She took a step toward him, her voice gentler, almost tender. Aufidius had often wondered why, in constructing the perfect weapon, she had made him so very near to a man in form. It made him queasy to think of. “Well, you have made your point. But must the city burn?”

“It must all burn,” said Martius firmly. There was no talk now of terms, of surrender. If it had been any other of the Council, Aufidius might have raised the question himself.

“I created you,” Volumnia said. “I am the closest thing you have to a mother. Would you see me destroyed?”

For an instant, he seemed to waver. Then he shook his head. “You may have assembled these parts, Councillor. But I am the author of myself.”

Volumnia did not seem deterred. “I am continuing my research, you know. There may be more like you – children, for you to mentor and train.”

“More playthings for your army, to be used and discarded at will! No, I will never let that happen.”

“Would you see me beg?” Graceful despite her years, she fell to her knees. “Spare us, Martius.”

“I…” He took a halting step forward, then another. As Aufidius watched, he raised one hand and rested a metal palm against her wrinkled cheek. “I cannot.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” Her eyes, gazing up at him, were blue and grieving. They gazed at each other, and then she lifted her arm and touched a spot on his breast, where a man’s heart might have been. “Go, Martius. Leave, now, and never threatened to harm us again.”

Ponderously, he turned. There was a new blankness in his face, though Aufidius could not have said how he could tell the difference. “We go,” Martius told him. “Command your ships.”

“Go!” Aufidius cried. “When we are on the brink of victory? When all the Confederacy lies helpless at our feet?”

His voice did not alter. “You have had victories enough. We go, now.”

“I’d do as he says,” Volumnia said dryly. She had regained her feet, leaning on the edge of the console. “For our artillery is aimed at you now, and without his help, it will burn all your ships to cinders.”

#

Aufidius fumed as they left the Confederate city behind, standing at the bow with his lieutenant. “What am I to tell the Admiralty?” he demanded of the clouds. “That we came to their doorstep and wavered? That Caius Martius suffered a malfunction, just as we were on the brink of conquest?”

“In another man, you might have called it mercy,” Lucian said quietly.

“He’s not a man,” Aufidius spat. “It was a fail-safe the witch built, that was all. When you make a weapon, you do not want it to be turned against you.”

“And yet, he remains with us. He may still be of use in our wars.”

“He is too dangerous to be of use. Who knows what other secret commands lie hidden inside him? We cannot take his word. He has no word to give.”

“Then what will you do?” his lieutenant asked.

“What I must,” said Aufidius, hearing the heavy tread upon the deck. Martius had removed his uniform jacket once more, to show the sculpted bronze armour beneath.

“Aufidius,” he began, almost pleading, “you understand why I spared them, do you not? If it was your own mother—”

“Oh, I was moved withal,” Aufidius said, with stinging sourness. “And yet – I pawned my honour for your truth. Deferred to you in all things, shared the command with you, served you with my person. I shall be made to answer for it in Antium.”

“I will entreat for you,” Martius said, “in any court you name. Give me pen and paper, and I will write to your Admiralty with a full account of what has passed here. I swear, I will absolve you of the blame.”

“And I’m to be absolved,” Aufidius said slowly, “on the word of a traitor?”

“Traitor!” A crowd had gathered, soldiers curious and disappointed of spoil. The cry went through them like a thunder-clap. “Will I be branded so again?”

“Have you another word, for one who abandons his duty at the sticking point? Who gives up an assured victory, to see an old woman kneel?” The words gathered strength as he spoke them, like sparks catching fire. “But then perhaps we were wrong, to expect any true service from a machine above its station.”

“Machine, you call me?” He looked less human than ever, staring at Aufidius with his golden eyes turning madly, but he sounded nearly hurt. “You, of all people, should know—”

“I’ll hear no more of this,” Aufidius said sharply, feeling release like a lanced wound. “Arrest him, men. He slaughtered our children at Corioles.”

“I’ll not be taken like a dog!”

“Will you fight? I’ll apprehend you myself.” He drew the small, thin dagger from his sleeve and approached, reaching for Martius’s left shoulder. His eyepiece told him where to strike – the spot was a light, a candle flame, pulsating and fragile. The bodkin fit it as a key inside a lock, sliding deep and deeper, wrenching the delicate mechanism from its place.

Martius fell—a wall collapsing, with none of the rough grace that had sustained his body in motion. The Volscian soldiers edged back at the sound, gazing wide-eyed at the Scourge of Corioles lying stretched out upon the deck before them.

And yet he was not like a sentry whose engine had failed, winking out between one moment and the next. He lifted his head with an effort, and breathed Aufidius’s name.

Aufidius knelt, his fingers empty of the dagger. He had no justification to make, but only inclined his head, listening. He felt more kindly toward Martius now, suddenly, than he ever had while at the other’s disposal; the compassion was a foreign thing, blooming in poisoned soil.

“There must have been a world,” Martius whispered to him, “where you and I could have been brothers.”

“That world is elsewhere,” answered Aufidius. After a moment he stood, for there was no need to close the unblinking golden eyes. The last of the sunset had faded, and they flew on toward darkness. “Now I have done it,” he said aloud, “I am sorry for it.”

“He was nothing human,” offered his lieutenant. “You’ve said so yourself, sir.”

Aufidius shook his head. “Perhaps he was too much so. His sin was pride, which we would keep all to ourselves.” His sin was loyalty.

“What’s to be done with the body? The engineers at Antium—”

“Bury it,” he said shortly. “Over the lakes, as is our custom when a pyre can’t be built. I will not give him to the vultures, to make other—” He stopped, wrenched the eyepiece from his head and let it fall atop the still bronze breast, costly as an offering. “To make monsters from.”

END

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The Alloy of Law, by Brandon Sanderson

It’s no secret that I’ve become a bit of a Brandon Sanderson fangirl – I’m waiting for The Stormlight Archive to arrive at my local bookstore. So I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that I might have let out a little squeal when I found out about Alloy of Law after finishing the Mistborn trilogy (which I reviewed previously here at Nevermet Press). Alloy of Law is not a sequel to the trilogy, instead it is a stand-alone novel set 300 hundred years after the events of the trilogy.

One of the first things that stood out for me was Sanderson’s letter to the reader. In it he mentions that he often wondered why technology seemed to stand still in worlds with magic, and what would happen as technology developed in those worlds. Alloy of Law is thus – or at least as I read it – an exploration of what would happen. This exploration of a world with developing technology and magic was one of the best parts of the novel for me. Especially the way the protagonist, Wax and his buddy Wayne use a combination of both. Sadly though, there isn’t a balance of the two something I suspect would happen in any such world.

I’m jumping the gun here. Let’s start with the premise. It’s 300 hundred years after the events of the trilogy – a reminder:  Kelsier died sparking a revolution; Vin killed the big evil only to find out he wasn’t the big evil; Elend becomes king, loses the crown goes to war, dies and becomes a Mistborn; Sazed finds some disturbing information; there’s a big battle; the world gets rearranged and those still alive start anew. As usual there is some unexplored areas, and places that a lot of people don’t go to, in the new world it’s called the Roughs. The Roughs pretty much is the wild unexplored West. Given that it’s the wild West it’s obvious that with our magic there’ll be some guns. I’m not really a fan of Westerns so I wasn’t that excited about the novel, but fortunately although it starts in the Roughs, and there are mentions of life out there most of the hijinks occur within the capital city.

We’re introduced to Wax, a sheriff, while he’s hot on the trail of a serial killer. As to be expected something tragic occurs while he’s on the hunt – to be fair without it there wouldn’t be as much character growth as there was. Shortly thereafter Wax has to return to the city to resume duties as a noble heir. At first he tries his darndest to avoid getting drawn back into the law enforcement game, but his hand is forced, especially when his fiancé gets kidnapped (I tried to avoid spoilers, but this is a little one that shouldn’t impact you’re enjoyment of the story).

So we have guns, but what about the magic? Well for starters Feruchemy isn’t a Terris magic only, it’s known about and used by a few. Although those few must have the ability to use it, much like Mistings and Mistborns of the other novels. Now though Twinborns are the rare magic users, as the names hints at Twinborns are those who can use both Feruchemy and Allomancy. Our hero, and his buddy, are both Twinborns, as well as the villain. Aside from this growth in magic, as hinted to Spook at the end of Hero of the Ages other metals have been discovered and used for Allomancy.

Five take home points:

1. The Western feel adds a lot to the development of the setting, differentiating, yet still having it feel like the familiar world of the trilogy.
2. Guns . Guns are the great equaliser between those with magic and those without; although some of the newer metals help swing things in the magic users favour.
3. There are some great references to the characters from the trilogy. Keep an eye out for the ones related to Spook; they’re bound to give you a laugh.
4. Wayne, a slapstick sidekick without any of the annoying bits.
5. *Spoiler alert* Cameo appearances.

If you’re looking for the same feel in Alloy of Law as there was in the Mistborn trilogy then the novel won’t deliver, but if you want adventure and a new yet familiar world then read this one. Not to mention the bonus fangirl points you’d get .

Visit the original post, Clockwork Reviews: Alloy of Law, by Brandon Sanderson, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

North entrance of the chapel.

Chapel of Saint Alberic (1), the adjacent rectory and the campus tunnels running under these buildings house the Ouroboros University’ seminary, one of its major colleges. Here paladins, clerics and others engage in religious studies.

The Chapel

The chapel possesses Carolingian architecture and is 800 years old – it predates the formation of the university – and at the time of its first consecration served as home to shrines to three gods of light and law, one from the human, elf and dwarf pantheons. Following a war about 500 years ago, the structure saw a dedication to only the human deity (a god of law appropriate to the campaign). It retains a slightly rounded triangle shape to its floor plan – each side of this triangle once sported a shrine to a different deity. The worship hall dominates the structure, with small offices, storerooms and hallways scattered throughout. A balcony faces the worship hall over each of the entrances. Narrow spirals staircases lead up to the balconies and bell towers and down to the campus tunnels.

Situated on the north wall is an elaborate pipe organ, the largest for leagues around, which is also living construct popularly known as “Pipes.” While an excellent musician and judge of character, Pipes (too merry to be ominous) does not always accurately assess a given situation – sometimes when people are plotting something in the back rows, it bursts out with romantic music.

A domed ceiling stands over the worship hall. Large tiles of polished marble cover the walls and floor, with decorations and candelabras of ornamental and polished brass. Murals and frescos adorn the ceiling. About a century ago, a dour tempered canon (2) plastered over the old art, much to the displeasure of the art (3). Maintenance in recent years declined and so a roof leak went unrepaired. During a recent rainstorm, much of this plaster pealed fell of the interior of the dome, revealing the original art for the first time in generations.

The revealed murals across the ceiling depict a number of things; sprouting from the north wall is vast and fantastic tree, while arching up from the south-east wall are lines of marching text and from the south-west walls humans battle as they both avoid and seek an unsettling black circle. The original art, though damaged by time and water, is strikingly vivid and credited to someone known as Patrick D (4).

Elves and eladrin from their embassy assert the tree is a reference to some of their oldest stories, that all the world is a dreaming tree, all the limbs, leaves and flowers dreaming all the other flowers, leaves and limbs into being so that they may also dream. Time and weather damage have destroy large sections of the tree and left much of the rest of appearing to suffer from some blight.

Dwarves in the city confirm the marching columns of text are passages from dwarf holy works, which say “Embrace Death” and “Tomorrow is the death of today.” The dwarves lose respect for anyone to whom they must explain this concept. Sadly, time and water erosion have damaged much of this section, leaving few passages legible.

Human historians say the mural depicts a battle over a sphere of annihilation between forces dedicated to a god a light and a god of misery. The “good” humans won, keeping this fearful artifact out of the hands of evil. Text in this area reads the sphere of annihilation is a blind spot for the gods themselves – they can neither see it nor into it and thus can do nothing about it. “What can you do about the things of which you are always unaware?” Ouroboros University currently keeps the sphere in a laboratory where it is undergoing study.

A line of text, alternating in elvish, dwarvish and human language runs along the base of the dome, calling upon people to “beware” the coming of the “Devoratrix Spes” (or “devourer of hope” in dwarvish), the “Парене Утре” (pronounced parene utre, or “burning tomorrow” in the human dialect used at the time of the chapels construction) and the “Tuo Tuskaa” (“brings the pain” in formal elvish). Expects identify this with a red figure appearing in each of the three sections of the murals.

For “safety reasons” access to the worship hall is limited to approved seminary faculty and students.

A bell tower stands over each of the three entrances. People visiting the chapel often find themselves the subject of baleful, silent stares from a dozen screech owls roosting on the chapel and nearby trees.

The Rectory and the Tunnels

A system of tunnels runs under most of the campus buildings. University administration employs the tunnels for storage year round, while students and faculty use them to move around the campus during frequently savage winters, as the tunnels are always dry and in winter qualify as warm. Several tunnels connect the chapel and rectory to the rest of the campus.

The rectory is a long four-story wattle-daub building with balconies facing the chapel. It houses multiple offices, classrooms, storages spaces and the like. It is a dully-functional place.

Religious Orders

A number of orders part of the church are involved with the seminary and several members of the faculty across the University belong to one order or another. Most relationships are casual, members supporting the seminary whose responsibility is the education of people in the ways of the church, with the seminary hanging out banners honoring these groups and inviting them to give guest sermons and provide guidance to students. Further, most such group uses the seminary as recruiting grounds. Any group, in a home-campaign, dedicated to the same deity may be a part of the seminary.

Canon Mraz

Ouroboros University seminary, Canon Podul Mraz (LN human male cleric 16) possesses a cool temperament and a preoccupation with rules. While he does not possess any military background, he gets on better with the church’s military orders than does most of the civilian leadership. Cardinal and Grand Inquisitor Ludd, the church’s leader in the country home to Ouroboros University, named Mraz to the position of Canon, and Ludd carries a great deal of national political weight. For his part, Canon Mraz operates the seminary in a manner legally unimpeachable but also cold. He possesses a surprising amount of information about students, faculty and staff, information he uses this to deal with obstacles. Canon Mraz’s goals are known only to himself and Cardinal Ludd – and presumably the Chancelor of the University.

New Feat – Lay Person Religious Training
Prerequisites: Wis 12 and a semester of training at Ouroboros University for each replacement.
Benefit: You may replace any single feature or special power from your class with a feature or special power of equal power from the cleric class when you advance a level. This does not include cleric spells.
Special: Replacing eight features entitles you to call yourself a minor canon.
Note: Refer to the Cleric Class on page 38 of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook for more information.

Adventure Hooks

Iconoclast: Canon Mraz instructs the religious PCs (clerics, Paladins and any PC working to get that Lay Person Religious Training feat) to assist in the destruction of the animate murals decorating the inside of the chapel. The murals are legally not alive and are property, and views expressed by the murals on church doctrine and historical events are (subtly) at odds with the church’s current position on those issues. Canon’s Mraz’s view is cold and theoretical, though legally supported by the country’s secular government and the ecclesiastical body of the church. The views of the murals are Earthy, at times almost bawdy and practical. The murals do not wish to be destroyed. Complicating matters, the sentient pipe organ is legally alive and thus not property and thus destroying it would be an act of murder.

Watching You All the Time: Canon Mraz is a remarkably well informed man, knowing many things about many people which he uses to subtly blackmail people and coerce them into behaving. Even giving the gossip network and his position at the head of the seminary, he is too well informed. Where does he get his information?

(1) This is a reference to “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” by M.R. James.

(2) Canon is a special church term for members of the clergy responsible for following and teaching ecclesiastical rules among members of the church body, including following vows of poverty, chastity and dwelling with other members of the clergy when possible. The head of the Ouroboros University has been a canon since the rededication of the chapel.

(3) They are “sentient and alive” like most holograms from Star Trek – carefully recreations of notable saints, clerics and paladins matching the originals personality, knowledge and temperament but not technically alive. In any event, the dozen or so revealed on the old murals are surprisingly earthy by contemporary standards.

(4) It is beyond my ability to say if he ever did make it to America-side but he did spend time on this campus and in that time he made it a more beautifully place. Say thankee.

Visit the original post, Ouroboros University: Chapel of Saint Alberic, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Welcome back to Points on a Map!

In previous installments we learned a bit about the history and people of the Oasis of Del Foor and the settlement of Ashid. Now it’s time to ponder some of the possible ways to integrate it into your story – a few suggestions for entrances, exits, and plot threads.

There and Back Again

There are three ways your PCs may get to Ashid  from any one of the nearby oases or settlements in and around The Waste: on foot, by camel, or by horse. If your setting includes magic or modern conveniences, you might add flying carpets, planes, trains, or automobiles as well. The same methods of travel may be used again to leave the Oasis when it comes time to move on.

• On Foot – Not recommended. Though the desert people have adapted to life in the Waste’s extreme conditions, even they only travel on foot in the direst of circumstances. PCs entering Ashid on foot will be mistrusted and shunned for fear that they are scouts for raiding parties, thieves, or worse.
• By Camel – A camel can carry up to 300 lbs of water on its back in water skins and survive for up to 8 days with no food or water, making it an ideal traveling companion—if not for the bad attitude and the smell. Camels may be stabled for a single night or a few days with Bakhi El Tahad at Al Asfar Ibil (The Yellow Camel) near the Dawn or Dusk Market. They will be well tended by Bakhi and his staff.
• By Horse – Only the rich and powerful can afford horses, which require much more water than a camel and are often accompanied by a slower-traveling camel or two to carry the extra water necessary. Horses may also be stabled at Al Asfar Ibil as well, but may draw unwanted attention since horses are somewhat uncommon in Ashid.

Trade caravans traveling the desert routes will often employ a combination of camels and horses. The camels will be used for transport and combat, and the horses used for exclusively combat and scouting along the journey as necessary. Many caravans employ guards and scouts to protect people and cargo from harm, which may offer an opportunity for the PCs to travel the desert as part of a larger group.

Random Encounters: Crossing the Desert: While traveling in the desert, here are a few potential random encounters (roll d10):

1. You are delayed by a sandstorm, postponing your journey by anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.
2. Your camel was bitten by a snake and is slowed significantly.
3. You found scorpions in your bedroll and are suffering the lingering effects of their sting.
4. Your camp is attacked by a small group of bandits or raiding party.
5. You find a hole in your waterskin.
6. You are entranced by a flowering plant along the journey.
7. You are treated to a particularly clear night while camping on the journey, allowing you to count 1,001 stars in the sky.
8. You see a shooting star as the sun sets or rises, which your guides interpret as a good omen for the next leg of your journey.
9. You encounter a friendly caravan traveling the opposite direction along the trail.
10. You are buffeted by a steady wind, which makes visibility and breathing difficult for a few hours at a time.

Learning the Mysteries of Ashid

Once the party arrives and stables their mounts, they will be directed to Zahar Nuzi (the Inn of Flowers) for lodging or instructed where to set up camp on the edge of the oasis. They may then explore the rest of what Ashid has to offer. The inhabitants of Ashid will be polite to visitors, but won’t share much with the PCs until a bond of trust is formed. The older denizens who know about the disappearances will be afraid to speak openly about the disappearances and many of the middle-aged or younger residents are too focused on day-to-day business to notice much.

If they eventually meet Jibra Al Ghul or Madam Torha, they may be directed to the Citadel to speak to Bashi El Vaz and Bayim El Vaz. In turn, they may be introduced to the family patriarch, Roovi El Vaz himself, who may tell them the story if they gain his trust. However, after a century of paranoia and the recent troubles, that trust may be difficult to come by.

Random Encounters: Exploring Ashid: While exploring Ashid, here are a few potential random encounters (d10):

1. A small crowd of street urchins accost you, asking for handouts of food, gold, or goods.
2. You witness a thief’s sentencing in a public area. Depending on the crime, the thief may lose a single finger or as much as a hand as punishment.
3. You realize that you are being followed around the oasis by a solitary figure in the shadows.
4. A hawker quietly encourages you to visit the Tea Room at Zahar Nuzi or the refreshments available at Shariba Al Ghul.
5. You notice a woman frantically looking for her child, asking if anyone has seen the boy or girl.
6. A well-dressed man travels in haste with an entourage towards the Dawn or Dusk Market.
7. A group of men sharing a hookah in the shade of a palm grove invite you to join them.
8. You see a traveler escorted by armed men from the Baths to the Citadel while near the Baths you see an angry mob discussing something.
9. You hear yelling and see a tent on fire at the edge of the oasis. Instead of water, responders throw sand at the flames to knock them down.
10. A group of armed men on horseback charge through town as if on a mission.

Suggested Three-act Structure for Adventure

If you want to apply a simple three-act structure to the story of Ashid, here’s one possibility:

1. First Act
   • Arrive in Ashid
   • Visit the various shops, taverns, inns, spas, and businesses
   • Meet one or more of the key NPCs
2. Middle Act
   • One of the NPCs the party meets along the way suddenly disappears
   • If the party begins to investigate, they are encouraged to speak to the El Vaz family
   • They start to discover more about the disappearances and pinpoint when they began
3. Last Act
   • Discovery of the source of the problem. Revelation of the demon Beyesh and the cost of Ashid’s success.
   • Resolution – will they decide to remove Maaz Al Yad, attempt to destroy the demon, or destroy Roovi El Vaz, potentially sealing the fate of Ashid’s future?

Further Possibilities

• Simple Mystery – find the source of the disappearances
• Dispatch the Evil – remove Maaz Al Yad and/or Roovi El Vaz
• Guard the Tomb of Beyesh or attempt to banish the demon for good

GMs can do many things with Beyesh. If the party should be foolish enough to set him free, Beyesh could be an excellent enemy and the party could have to put the “genie back in the bottle” or destroy him completely at some point. But not before the demon has caused some havoc in the outside world.

Though Ashid is a small oasis size-wise, it might become a good central location for other desert adventures such as exploring nearby tombs and ruins, eradicating the local bandit problem (if one exists), or even helping El Vaz and eventually being granted space for a business or home.

Also, nothing says that the plight of the missing will reveal itself the first time the PCs visit Ashid. Perhaps the secrets of the oasis will reveal themselves slowly and the PCs will later wonder how they missed the signs.

Depending on the genre, setting, and system, there may be other places and businesses in Ashid to explore. You might find a gambling den or a brothel operating with Al Ghul’s knowledge. Or you may find a place of worship and insert an entire belief structure. Priests, monks, and prophets may add another level of intrigue to the stage that could help or hinder the PCs goals.

Ashid as written may be just as comfortable in a pulp campaign as a fantasy one, a Call of Cthulhu adventure as much as one in Spirit of the Century or Dungeons & Dragons. There are plenty of options to explore and ways to fit a desert scenario or two into many worlds and times.

You might find inspiration in movies like The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Stargate, the great Sinbad movies and tales, Lawrence of Arabia, and of course the classic 1001 Arabian Nights.

Resources

Here are a few more resources to explore:

• English Words from Arabic (The Metaverse)
• Fantasy Arabian Nights Names (Rolang’s Creeping Doom)
• 20 Most Incredible Desert Oases [pics] (Environmental Graffiti)
• The Web Site of The Siwa Oasis (Egypt)
• Oasis (Wikipedia)
• Wildlife in the Sahara (Temehu)
• Riding across the Sahra (The Lone Riders Guild)
• The Camel (Islam City)
• Camel Proverbs (Creative Proverbs)

Well, that’s it for now about Ashid and the Oasis of Del Foor. Next we’ll explore the world of the Floating Market and see what secrets may be in store.

Feel free to offer suggestions on other themes to explore in Ashid or other Points on the Map you might like to hear about. And I’d love to hear if you manage to fit Ashid into your own campaigns. Let us know in the comments!

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