Call of Cthulhu Part Three: October 3, 1925

Those of you who have played (or read) Shadows of Yog Sothoth will notice that I have taken certain liberties with the text. Such as setting it in New York instead of Boston. This required a lot of hasty rewriting of the game’s text props on my part. This will also not be the last time that I take liberties with the game to suit my needs.

October 3, 1925

The game begins with a slight retcon. Not only has Vincenzo Bernouse been invited to the Silver Twilight Lodge, but so have Dr. Reese Black, Judge Ezekiel Putnam, and Mr. Kane Eastman. Each of these individuals has been permitted to bring a “plus one,” which was my way of getting the entire party to go.

Meanwhile, across town, Mikhail Dimathias, who is investigating the disappearance of his friend, James, finds an invitation to the same get-together. The invitation is accompanied by a note from one Johnathan Scott, the Noble Philosopher of the order. The note, written in stilted and archaic language, asks James Clark, Esq. to pass the invitation along to a man of “impeccable social standing and moral fiber.”

Vivian, concerned about this random social club she’s never heard of before, decides to do some research. She discovers that the Order of the Silver Twilight is not on any social registers anywhere. Ron, meanwhile, cases the joint itself, and finds it to be a nice, if still under construction, building.

On the night of the soiree, everyone arrives at the Lodge to find that it is staffed by very big, very dangerous-looking men who, despite their very nice uniforms, would not look out of place in a butcher’s shop or on a dock somewhere. Ron also notices that most of them are carrying concealed weapons. 

Vivian Gets Split from the Party

Vivian is immediately turned away at the door, because a) this is a club for boys, b) she is a girl, c) it is 1925. Vincenzo, upon seeing this, offers to forget the whole evening and just take Vivian home. She convinces him to stay and agrees to be escorted across the street to the Silver Twilight Auxiliary hall, where all the ladies who are members of the organization hang out.

This turns out to be the better option. While the men sit around, smoke cigars, eat, and talk about boring subjects, the girls get sozzled, gossip, sing, and listen to the old Victrola. Viv quickly befriends Deb Walsh, a woman about her age who seems to be the leader of this particular group of ladies. There is some discussion of what the ladies are going to do for the upcoming Halloween party, an event that is partially open to the public.

At one point, Vincenzo, after having been insulted by Barry Pollard (see below), comes over to check on his daughter. The ladies of the Silver Twilight Auxiliary all react to this quite favorably.

During the evening, Viv makes the acquaintance of another Auxiliary member, Angelica (also called Angie or Ange) Hutchinson. She is also roughly Vivian’s age. She is also very drunk and very angry. From Angie’s slurred speech and Deb’s vague comments, Viv pieces together that Angie was dating a member of the order who has since disappeared. She is sure he’s a two-timing scoundrel and a heartbreaker, and when she sees him again, she’s gonna kill him.

Meanwhile, Back at the Lodge

The gentlemen in the group are admitted inside and given leave to check their hats and coats. They are then free to wander the foyer and the two front recaption rooms.

Out-of-Game Note: I start showing off the map of the Silver Twilight Lodge, and several members of the party who are Masonic-adjacent in real life tell me that the layout is disturbingly similar to a Masonic lodge they have been in. So that’s weird!

There is a whirlwind of introductions. The group meets John Scott, Noble Philosopher, and head of the order. He is charismatic and friendly, but aloof. They also meet Carl Stanford, and those players who have played Arkham Horror cackle madly, because they now realize where this is going. They note that both Carl and John have matching, silver-tipped canes that they carry everywhere. They are also introduced to several other members (or soon-to-be members) of the order, including:

Barry Pollard: A dried up twig of a man who is the headmaster of an all-girls school. He is apparently very racist. He said something upsetting to Vincenzo which, according to Vincenzo, made him want to, “introduce the man’s teeth to the back of his throat.” Vincenzo was so incensed that he wanted to leave immediately, and wanted to have nothing further to do with the order.

Maximilian Reed: Carl Stanford’s driver and attendant. Basically, the opposite number to Giannis/Johnny Dukas, who serves the same function for Judge Putnam. This becomes pretty hilarious later, and almost looks like I had planned it.

Dr. Edward Call: A jovial surgeon who seems very nice. Upon his introduction, Johnny’s player snarked, “well, I know who’s gonna die first.” He bonded with Dr. Black right away. He also told the players that he had been to three open houses at the Lodge and thought he had finally made the decision that he wanted to join the order.

The group also learns that the order is “old, but new,” and that they have only recently acquired the Lodge hall. They are shown pictures of the state of the place prior to their occupation and renovation (still ongoing). Mr. Stanford tells them that they are mostly done with the renovation, but the third floor is still under construction and is off-limits.

After the initial meet-and-greet, the group attends dinner in the larger reception room. They all sit together at a table with Dr. Call and with Mikhail, who has managed to get himself into the party without anyone realizing he probably shouldn’t be there. There is a moment of awkwardness when Judge Putnam, a judge, thinks that he recognizes Mikhail Dimathias, a lawyer, from somewhere. Mikhail plays his cards very close to the vest, however, and tries to give nothing away.

A spirited discussion begins about occult and historical subjects. John Scott happens to walk by the table during this and seems visibly impressed with both Judge Putnam and Kane Eastman. He hopes that both men join the order and enrich it with their presence. Kane Eastman, who is Black, is a little shocked that “this sort of group,” would want “a person like him,” in it, and begins to become very suspicious.

At this point, membership is discussed. Joining the order costs $100. (it’s actually $1000 as written, but, c’mon, that’s a FORTUNE in 1925). Several members of the group express mild interest, while Dr. Call tells Mr. Scott that he will be writing a check by the end of the night. Kane, having heard of the Halloween party the order will put on, offers to have the Kane Eastman Quartet play there. He is referred to Mr. Stanford, who offers him $50 for the evening. Kane counters with $100. Mr. Stanford accepts without even blinking.

Dinner is served. Judge Putnam complains to Johnny that he is worried his food will be too spicy. He asks Johnny to talk to the servers and make sure they don’t put any of those “nasty foreign spices” in his food. Johnny, who is Greek, talks to their waiter in private. He asks the man, whose name is Jack, to add extra spices to the judge’s food, and gives him $5 to sweeten the deal.

We later learn that this is the equivalent of $75 in modern money. Judge Putnam’s meal is well and truly seasoned. He is in gastric distress for the rest of the night.

After dinner, John Scott gives a welcoming speech to the attendees. Several players notice that he peppers his speech with anachronistic verbiage, some of which are turns of phrase from the mid-1700s. Because they are players in a Call of Cthulhu game, this makes them immediately suspicious. Mikhail’s player is sure that there are vampires involved.

With the speech concluded, the party seems to be breaking up for the evening. The players are once again asked by Carl Stanford if they would, “care to join the order.” All the players say that they will think about it and reply later.

While waiting in line at the coat check, Mikhail spots one of James’ coats hanging on the rack with all the others. He convinces the busy coat room attendant to give him James’ coat instead of his own. The man helps Mikhail into James’ coat. Mikhail succeeds on his Luck roll. The coat fits!

The group steps out into the evening, just in time to see Viv and Deb carrying a very, very drunk and loudly screaming Angie out of the Silver Twilight Auxiliary Hall. Mikhail, hearing Angie screaming about her two-timing, disappearing boyfriend, suspects that she might have had a relationship with James. He hustles across the street to talk to her.

The interaction does not go well. Mikhail, partly out of desperation to find out what happened to James, and partly out of a need to see what Angie knows, presses her very hard. This causes Angie to lash out violently, smashing Mikhail in the face with her purse and breaking his nose. She then vomits all over the front lawn of the auxiliary hall.

This, conveniently, requires Mikhail to seek immediate medical attention, which means that he and Dr. Black get to meet and bond over his now askew nasal anatomy. Welcome to the group, Mikhail!

Johnny, seeing the carnage, decides to leave immediately and drive Judge Putnam home. Since Johnny was also Dr. Black’s ride, this effectively strands Dr. Black in the area.

Call of Cthulhu Part Two: Summer 1925

The gap between the first session of the game and the second was quite substantial, so I decided to write something up for the players in my group to help remind them of what had happened previously, describe what they had gotten up to in the meantime, and setting up for the next scenario.

The next scenario also introduces a new player to our group: Mikhail Demathis, brother in the Masonic Lodge and a New York City lawyer prone to clever problem solving and intuitive leaps of logic. Mikhail is the best friend of one James Clark, also a lawyer, also a Mason. Joining one fraternal organization wasn't enough for Mr. Clark apparently, because he also joined the Silver Twilight Lodge. He found out something he wanted to tell Mikhail, but, before he could do it, he mysteriously vanished.

Before we get to the meat of that particular issue, let's see what the summer of 1925, and its conclusion, provided for our protagonists.

Summer, 1925

Quite a lot happens in the weeks and months following the strange incident of Leroy Turner and his horn.

The Horn

It is buried in some out-of-the-way corner by Giannis, hopefully to never be found again.

Leroy Turner

He briefly becomes an inmate at Bellevue. He is treated and released several weeks later. 

Vivian, Ronny, and Doctor Black

They somehow make it back to Vivian’s house before anyone misses them, where they remain for the rest of the night. All three vouch for one another’s whereabouts. Vivian’s word, being as she is the daughter of the capo, is unimpeachable. This proves to be very fortuitous in the coming weeks.

Geoff's Addendum: This was something I had forgotten to mention last time. I'm not quite sure how, but at some point, before they went up to Westchester to look for Leroy, Viv, Ron, and Dr. Black all wound up at The Burnouse household. Vincenzo, Viv's dad and the boss, told Ron to keep Viv at the house and out of danger. 

When Vincenzo realized that the doctor was there, the conversation started out with a hearty, "who the hell is this? Who the hell are you?!" and ended with a, "you know what? I don't care. You stay here, too. Everybody behave themselves!"

As you may recall from the previous installment, they did not stay there, nor did they behave themselves. This will become important later.

Ron Pays the Piper

Word on the street is that one of Bonano’s made guys was beaten half to death and left in a rain barrel by somebody. It doesn’t take much for Bonano’s surviving guys to point the finger at Ron Deluca.

While at a speakeasy one night, Deluca is approached by several of Bonano’s men. He eludes them and leaves the area, hoping to lay low in Hell’s Kitchen until the incident blows over. He’s found three days later by Jimmy Bianco, one of Bonano’s most vicious surviving lieutenants. The encounter is brief and unpleasant.

The next morning, Bernouse goes out to get his mail and finds Deluca unconscious in one of his garbage bins. Deluca spends a week in the hospital recuperating, and says nothing about the encounter. When pressed, he claims that he took a few solid blows to the noggin and doesn’t remember a goddamn thing.

The Mob War

Boss Bonano is dead, killed along with several of his lieutenants in what appears to be a grizzly hit. The other families all point fingers at one another. Boss Bernouse, who has quite a bit to gain from Bonano’s death, is heavily implicated. The fact that his men (well, man) had run-ins with Bonano’s crew shortly before the hit did not help.

Luckily, the families believe Vincenzo and his daughter's story (mostly Viv's, if we're being honest), and his family is spared any reprisals. Bernouse takes on a neutral, fatherly persona as the rest of the families carve up Bonano’s territory, and Bonano’s surviving lieutenants fight for supremacy in the power vacuum.

In the end, Bonano’s much-diminished crew is now led by Jimmy Bianco—also known as “Big Grin,” due to a pair of very unfortunate mouth scars. Big Grin becomes capo thanks to a series of incredibly brutal raids that stabilize his territory with heavy casualties on all sides.

Bernouse comes out smelling like a rose, his reputation with everyone but Big Grin’s "family" significantly improved. It helps that he takes advantage of the power vacuum and the mob war to solidify his own ties with the legal and government entities in New York City. By the time mid-September rolls around, he’s practically a pillar of the community.

Small’s Paradise

The club stays closed for months, initially due to the murder investigation, later because it is on the front lines of a mob war and too hot to use. The club eventually falls under the protection of the Bernouse syndicate, and Vincenzo Bernouse uses his connections help Small restock the bars and spruce up the place. This wins him a lot of acclaim with the mayor and several other interested parties, as well as solidifying his power base as one of the strongest capos in Manhattan.

September

Things gradually return to normal by mid-September. The families still eye one another, but after the exhausting weeks of war, no one wants to break the peace. Everyone goes back to their usual routines.

On September 18^th, Vivian plays first chair violin in a sold-out orchestral performance. The performance is positively reviewed in the Times and other papers, and pictures of the musicians, including and especially Vivian, start making the rounds in society circles. It is not long before her now upwardly-mobile father starts getting requests from interested suitors.

On September 25^th, Vincenzo Bernouse receives another interesting request. As a man of prominence, he has been asked to join a, “society that works toward fostering brotherhood and community between all good, Christian men around the world.

  

The name of the society? The Silver Twilight Lodge. 

Call of Cthulhu Part One: Dead Man's Stomp

I'm running 7th edition Call of Cthulhu, and used the quickplay rules in order to generate characters with great speed and alacrity.

I should also note that this part, and likely the next one, are from before I started taking careful notes after game, so they'll both be a lot sparser on details.

I was originally going to run The Haunting, as it is not only a classic, but also a fun, claustrophobic tale set in a haunted house. However, I would up with a lot more players than I was expecting (definitely not a bad thing), and so decided that I needed to run a scenario that had a little more room for everyone to breathe. To that end, I decided to run my second favorite starter scenario, Dead Man's Stomp.

I have to say that Chaosium has stepped up their game for this edition. The scenario is still set in the 1920s (which is a bad time for a lot of racist/sexist/classist reasons), but the writers have fixed it up by setting it in Small's Paradise, a real nightclub in the 20s, as well as the only Black owned, integrated nightclub in Harlem at the time. So props for being awesome about history, folks.

The story begins in July, 1925, in the midst of a brutal heatwave. Despite Prohibition being in full effect, nightclubs like Small's Paradise have no difficulty acquiring top-shelf booze. The owner pays his taxes, as well as other fees, to keep NYC's mayor and the state's governor happy enough that nobody presses any charges or causes any problems.

The action begins with the players all deciding to go out to Small's Paradise one Friday evening. As luck would have it, they are all seated at the same table in the back of the main dining area, near the kitchen. Already seated at the table is Peter Mancuso, an accountant, who seems nervous and not terribly talkative.

Onstage is Charlie Johnson and the Paradise Orchestra, playing the hottest jazz licks for the assembled guests. People are dancing. Important people are pressing the flesh, and the governor and the mayor have just been announced at the door.

At about this point, Leroy Turner, a Black musician, sneaks in through the kitchen and tries to make his way up to the stage. No one is letting him past. Giannis (or Johnny), the judge's driver, respectfully makes way for the man and escorts him to the stage. As they go, everyone notices that Leroy has a strange, silver trumpet with an odd patina and four valves. Giannis also notes that Leroy is drunk, and overhears Charlie Johnson tell Leroy that he's late...again.

Leroy gets up on stage and starts playing the next song, a little ditty he wrote himself called "Dead Man's Stomp." He is on fire. The crowd loves it.

At this precise moment, a mobster named Joey Larson, who works for Boss Bonano, walks up to the players' table, draws his .45, and blows a hole in Peter Mancuso's head. Doctor Black, sitting across from the accountant, gets covered in innards. As people scream and panic, Larson flees out the kitchen door.

The players then realize that Mancuso is tapping his dead fingers in time with the music. They watch in horror as the corpse shambles to its feet and starts making its way for the exit. People scream in terror. It's chaos.

Things get a little hazy here. Some of the players stayed inside, trying to figure out what was happening, Giannis dragged the Judge through the kitchen door to the car, in the hopes of making a quick escape. One thing led to another and, several failed rolls later, Giannis had struck Mancuso's animate body as it was lumbering across the street, smashing it into a light pole and cutting it in half.

Vivian pursued Leroy backstage, only to discover that he had taken the fire escape. She did find a card about a funeral that Leroy (she assumed) was not only invited to, but hired to perform at. A handwritten note informed him that the funeral was in "New Orleans style," and that he needed to be on time.

The rest of the next day was spent gathering information about the victim, the shooter, Leroy Turner, and other strange things that were happening. Ron Deluca, a made guy for the Burnouse family, came into his own by tracking Larson to a Bonano Family front and casing it for evidence. He didn't find any, but he did beat the crap out of one guy and shove him in a rain barrel, so that's something!

Kane Eastman attended the funeral of Frederick Fayette, a prominent Black businessman who died of natural causes. Leroy Turner and Charlie Johnson are also there, along with hundreds of other mourners. The assemblage processes with Fayette's coffin through the streets, while Charlie and his band play some rousing New Orleans tunes.

When Leroy Turner launches into Dead Man's Stomp, however, the now animate Fred Fayette smashes his way out of his coffin and pummels his way through the crowd, to the shock and horror of everyone around. Fred only stops his rampage when he runs into his grieving wife. She calls him by his name and he quietly dies again, collapsing into the street.

Kane pursues a fleeing Leroy Turner, catches up with him, and demands answers. Leroy will only talk if alcohol is involved, so Kane buys him some and convinces him to tell him what he knows. Leroy says that the horn was a gift from Louis Armstrong, which Kane flat-out does not believe.

Leroy eventually leaves, insisting that his story is true, only to be picked up off the street by Joey Larson and some of Bonano's other guys. The players get to live out their fantasies of "following that car," tailing Larson up into Westchester County, to a small garage in the middle of nowhere. Those that have weapons draw them and approach.

Looking in through the garage windows, they see Bonano himself standing there, surrounded by several of his top lieutenants. Leroy Turner has his waist and legs securely bound to a chair, though his hands and arms are free. Bonano is in the middle of angrily questioning Larson, asking him how dragging him out into the middle of nowhere to listen to a jazz musician has any purpose or makes up for Larson shooting Mancuso in a crowded establishment.

"I told you to scare him, you idiot! Not shoot him!"

Larson goes on to plead his case, saying that he's been following Turner and that Turner's music can raise the dead. Bonano draws his pistol from his shoulder holster and says, "okay, let's see a little demonstration."

Larson draws his gun, but before he can clear leather, Bonano guns him down. He then puts the silver trumpet in Turner's hands and encourages him to play. To the shock and horror of everyone involved, Larson's corpse struggles to his feet.

At this moment, the cavalry charges in. Giannis uses his shotgun to blow the trumpet out of Turner's hands (critical success, by the way, so Turner wasn't harmed at all). They also mowed down Bonano's men and killed Joey Larson again.

In the midst of the battle, Ron Deluca, who is setting himself up as a force of unchecked id, knocks Bonano to the ground and smashes his head in with a sledgehammer.

The group is very careful to leave no witnesses. They take a now thoroughly rattled Leroy back to the city and Giannis buries the horn in an undisclosed location.

As they are driving away from the carnage, all of them briefly spot a figure in a hat and coat standing by the roadside. The figure smiles widely at them as they drive away.

My Call of Cthulhu Game

I have been running a tabletop Call of Cthulhu game for a while now. I initially ran the group through Dead Man's Stomp (a classic that I love) from the quickstart rules, before deciding to have them face off against the Order of the Silver Twilight from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth.

I'm actually using the sixth edition of SoYS, with conversions, because I don't believe that there's a current version of it for seventh edition Call of Cthulhu. It is not the greatest of the Call of Cthulhu campaigns (hello, Masks of Nyarlathotep), and it has quite a few rough spots. It is also not really designed for the beginner Keeper/game master. The first adventure has no rails to speak of and no real suggestions about what the players should do or how they are to find out about the Order's shenanigans and stop them.

The story of the game has gotten super intricate, in part because there are seven players, all with their own interests and baggage, and in part because, since there's no rails, I'm pretty much letting them  do whatever they want, even if they only ever tangentially blunder into the plot. It sounds like a mess, but it's really not. Everyone, including me, is having a great time, is loving the characters, and is really engaged with whatever story it is that we're telling.

Since so much happens each game, and since I am trapped at home due to the pandemic, I have been flexing my writing muscles to provide detailed recaps of each game session. I have also (as of the third game) started to allow the players to take one action between games. They tell me what they're doing and I write up a brief-ish response of what happened. Then they spend the first part of the next game speculating and worrying at one another.

The story told through these writings is a surprisingly fun and interesting one. Because I need validation, I have decided to share the story of my Call of Cthulhu game through blog posts. It is my hope that other people will enjoy these stories just as much as the players do.

But first, let us start off with our players. Starting with Dead Man's Stomp, we have:

Dr. Reese Black: A physician and surgeon in his mid-thirties. Has a private practice and sees patients at both New York Hospital and Bellevue. As is typical of most surgeons, he is somewhat socially incompetent.

Kane Eastman: An African-American jazz singer and musician. Leader of the Kane Eastman Quartet. Has a very deep and mysterious interest in the occult. Always has an interesting approach to get around even the most intractable-seeming problem.

Judge Ezekiel Putnam: An elderly, somewhat Puritanical judge in New York City. Lives on a large piece of private property in Staten Island. Cannot abide much in the way of excitement or spices, but is otherwise in excellent health. Will probably outlive us all, so long as no one sneaks anything outrageous (like pepper) into his food.

Giannis "Johnny" Dukas: Greco-American Great War veteran who has been hardened by his many experiences. He currently works for Judge Putnam as a driver, manservant, and cook. He lives on the judge's property, in the carriage house. He keeps a shotgun underneath the front seat of the judge's car.

Ronald "Ronnie" Deluca: An Italian-American who is also a mafioso in the Bernouse Family. Due to being mixed-ethnicity and having a little bit of an anger management problem, he has not risen very high in the ranks. However, he is a long-time friend of family head Vincenzo Bernouse, and is the godfather to Vincenzo's daughter, Vivian.

Vivian Bernouse: An Italian-American mob princess, who knows the ins and outs of the family business despite her father's best attempts to shelter her. She is college-educated and a skilled violinist. She has played a number of concerts in New York City and has gradually begun to make a life for herself outside of the family.

Their adventures begin...in an upcoming post!

The Final Flight of the de la Torre

GEOFF NOTE: This is the introductory text for the Invictus LARP, a rule book that I created for fun. It is meant to take place in the same world as the Mystwood LARP, but many thousands of years in the future, after Humanity has developed space travel and hyperdrive. It's a pastiche of Warhammer 40k and Traveller. 

This is the flight recording of the final moments of the Dreadnought de la Torre, whose heroic crew won an impossible victory for Humanity. Portions of this recording have been redacted or altered per New Terran Republic Governmental Protocol 1193-1A, for security and safety reasons.

COMANDER VAAL: We have a lock. The package has been picked up. Repeat—the package has been picked up!
CAPTAIN LUMIA: Excellent work. Energize stasis field.

Electrical discharge. Screams. The distant sound of tolling bells. Chanting in an unknown language.

VAAL: Captain, stasis field is collapsing! The Princes are breaking…
LUMIA: Divert all reactor power to the hold. Keep that field up!
BRIDGE CREW: Ma’am, the system’s overloading. It’s shorting out!
VAAL: They’re out! Marines! Ready weapons. Concentrate fire. Hold the line. HOLD THE LINE!

Sounds of battle, screaming, ritualistic chanting.

ALIEN VOICE: SUB-CREATURES! YOUR DOOM IS AT HAND!

INCOMING TRANSMISSION: De la Torre! This is the Arcada! The entire Chaos Fleet has changed course. Heading for your position.
LUMIA: Roger that, Arcada! It’s because we’ve captured their Princes. They’re confined to our hold right now.
ARCADA: What the [REDACTED]! How in the…
LUMIA: We can’t contain them with our stasis field. My marines are trying to take them out.
ARCADA: Understood, de la Torre! We are scrambling to assist. Hold out as long as you can.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION #2: This is the Nedeni. We are en route as well.
VAAL: Captain, we’re giving them hell, but they’re still advancing. We’ve sealed the hold, but they’re…

Interruption by screaming, explosions. 

VAAL: Captain! We can’t stop them! They’re carving their way to the bridge.
ARCADA: De la Torre! Be advised, we are taking heavy fire! Six Annihilators closing fast. Shields collapsing. Wall shields holding, but…
HELM: Captain, I read the six Annihilators and…a dozen other ships. They’ll be on us any second.
LUMIA: Damn it. Helm. Set course for local system point, mark zero-zero-zero.
HELM: Ma’am? That’ll take us into the…
LUMIA: That’s an order lieutenant. Vaal, can you still hear me?
VAAL: I hear you, captain!
LUMIA: You have my condolences. You know I wouldn’t waste…
VAAL: (chuckle) Forget it. I never wanted to live forever.

More explosions. Static. Screams.

ALIEN VOICE: WE ADMIRE YOUR HUBRIS, BUT YOUR RESISTANCE IS IN VAIN. YOUR FLESH IS OURS TO SCULPT. YOUR SOULS SHALL BE THE FUEL FOR…

VAAL: All units, advance! Slow them down! Put your hearts into it! Come on you [REDACTED]!
NEDENI: We’ve sent a general distress, de la Torre. The fleet’s mobilizing and moving to your position.
HELM: Captain…coordinates accepted. We are coming about.
LUMIA: Thank you, Nedeni, but that won’t be necessary. Tell the fleet to pull back and get out of here.
NEDENI: De la Torre, I don’t understand. Say…Oh [REDACTED]. What are you doing?!
LUMIA: What we have to, Nedeni! Tell the fleet to keep those Annihilators off of us just a little longer.
NEDENI: (unintelligible)
HELM: Captain, hyperwarp engines are cycling up, but the automatic safety interlocks just engaged. We can’t…
LUMIA: Disengage safety interlocks. Input override code [REDACTED].

ALIEN VOICE: YOUR DEATHS ARE INEVITABLE. YOUR WORLDS ARE OURS TO DEVOUR.

VAAL: Captain…are you there…We…lost…most of the company…our heavy primordials…I’m sorry…we…
HELM: Safety interlocks disengaged.
LUMIA: No apologies necessary, commander. You did well.
VAAL: Thank you…captain…
LUMIA: Helm, engage hyperwarp on my mark. Three…Two…
VAAL: You want some, you oozing, mutie [REDACTED]? Well, take THIS and THIS! AAAH!

Gunfire.

LUMIA: Mark.

Sisyphus and Tantalus

It was Sisyphus who discovered how to break the system, completely by accident.

Out of sheer, defeated boredom, he started pushing the terrible boulder along different approaches to the summit. The end result was always the same, as was foreordained by the gods, but at least the view sometimes varied.

One such variation saw him pushing the boulder over the loose and yielding scree on the steepest side of the mountain. This earned him taunts and heckling from his minders, but Sisyphus didn't particularly care. He had done this millions of times already, and knew that he would not succeed.

But then, oh, when he at last reached the summit, and the boulder slipped away from his careful grasp, it rolled and bounced zig-zag down the side of the mountain, crashing and scattering smaller stones, until it landed with a splash in Tantalus' pool.

This gave Tantalus a brief reprieve in two ways. The sudden injection of the stone caused the pool's water level to rise abruptly, so that it splashed into the old sinner's parched throat. The action of the water also carried Tantalus up and up, as if he were a ship on an angry sea. There was only one wave, and it was not very high, but it was just tall enough for Tantalus to knock some of the tantalizing fruits off of the bough above his head.

Sisyphus stood at the summit, mouth agape. He was happy that Tantalus had been given a respite, however brief, from his suffering, but he was jealous that no similar reprieve would ever fall upon him.

And then he smiled, because he realized that it had.

Their minders pointed and laughed at Sisyphus, mocking him for his foolishness. Then, when they had at last calmed themselves, they hoisted the dripping stone from Tantalus' pond and moved it over to the sandy field where Sisyphus was foreordained to begin his every ascent.

While they laughed, while they primed his eternal torture so that it could resume, Sisyphus stood upon the summit in the cool sunshine, no longer laboring.

Chaos Eclipse: Part Three

The third and final installment of the Twilight/Beautiful Creatures/NCAA 2017 fanfic requested by Meg.

This was fun! Hooray!

---

            It was Edward's hardest basketball game ever, and, in a way, it was also the most fun.

            He had no idea what the crowd, or what the people watching the game at home on TV, were seeing, but he guessed it wasn’t anything like what was actually happening. They’d be stampeding or screaming or…calling their congressman, maybe? Did people still do that?

            No time to think about that; he needed to concentrate. Lena matched him in speed, somehow, seemingly everywhere at once all the time. It took all of his hunting skill to keep up with her, shadowing her so that she couldn’t get near the basket or pass to her open teammates. By midway through the first half, he realized he was playing a game within a game. Cut off from his teammates, focused entirely on the Caster, he gave everything he had to make sure that her blatant cheating didn’t cause a blowout.

            He was used to going up against other vampires and their weird powers, as well as the occasional werewolf, but he always had the benefit of his telepathy. Lena was blocking him somehow. Like Bella, she was inscrutable. Unlike Bella, she was clearly enjoying herself. She faked him out more times than he cared to admit, dribbled circles around him, stepped in just the right way so that he collided with her, causing him to both fall and foul. And colliding with her hurt. His skin was supposedly diamond hard, but smacking into Lena felt like being hit by a freight train.

            And even when she wasn’t out-thinking him or out-playing him, she used her magic to frustrate him in other ways. There were ten Lenas on the court, each with their own ball. There was one Lena, but she had wings and did loop-de-loops in the air before perching deftly on the top of the backboard.

            Even with all that, it was nice not to have to hold back, whether out of fairness or for the look of the thing. It was exhilarating, even to the point of what drunkenness must feel like, to throw off the mask and push himself to the limit. He leaped to the rafters, ran as fast as he could, sank a three-pointer from the opposite court.

            It was also fun because it was a challenge, and a different sort of one than keeping his powers reigned in all the time. This must be what his other teammates felt like when they went up against a bigger and better team. This must be what the coach meant when he talked about how adversity made you stronger, because you had to reach inside yourself and find the will to continue onward.

            He was playing the best basketball of his unnaturally long life, and even though Lena kept laughing at him and mocking him in her southern twang, Edward couldn’t help but smile a little.

            A few minutes into the second half, he thought that he had the Caster girl figured out. He noticed the pattern to her movements, the tiny microseconds where her attention was divided between weaving spells and sinking shots, and he pressed the advantage.

            He was feeling quite confident until it started torrentially down-pouring indoors. Edward took a header on the slick court, cracked his skull on the boards, and slid out-of-bounds, taking the ball with him.

*

            There was a long, fuzzy moment of black spots and disorientation. He came around to see the assistant coach and the team physician kneeling beside him.

            “What’s your name, son?” said the physician.

            He blinked. “What?”

            The assistant coach and the physician looked at one another. “I’m trying to assess you for brain injury. What’s your name?”

            “E-edythe?”

            “Okay,” said the assistant coach, “take him out.”

            “No, no, wait,” said Edward, hopping to his feet. “I’m Edward Cullen. I’m from Forks, WA. The president is…” not Woodrow Wilson…don’t say Woodrow Wilson, “that Donald Trump guy, but I kind of wish it was anyone else.”

            While he talked, the physician stood, took Edward by the temples, and peered into his eyes.

            “How do you feel, Cullen?”

            Edward glanced back at the court. Lena quirked a grin at him and tossed him a wave. “Good, good. I’d like to get back out there, if that’s okay.”

            “You’re sure?” said the assistant coach.

            “Sure, I’m sure.”

            “All right,” said the physician. “I’ll let you back in there, but the second. Cullen, look at me. The second you get dizzy or start to feel sick, call a timeout and get out of there, you got it?”

            “Yeah,” he said. On the court, Lena was sticking her tongue out at him.

            “Yeah. I get it.”

*

            Zags lost 71-65, but what a game!

            At least, that’s what Edward kept picking up from the minds around him. His fellow players were disappointed of course, but the game had been so close right until the end that, while everyone was down, no one felt like they had done a bad job at playing.

            Amusingly, it wasn’t even Lena who beat them. Edward had gotten her locked down in a corner right at the end of the game, but that didn’t stop Justin Jackson from turning a three point lead into a five point lead with ten seconds to go. Only someone with superhuman strength and speed could make up the difference with so little time left on the clock, and, while Edward could have done it, he knew it would be wrong.

            So the Zags lost 71-65. But what a game.

            He commiserated with his teammates, assured the coaching staff and the physician that he was really all right, really, and hit the showers. Long, long after the crowds had left the arena, Edward shouldered his gear bag and headed back to where his teammates would be staying.

            He bumped into Lena right outside the back door. She held out her hand.

            “Good game, Eddy.”

            He shook it. Her hand felt small and fragile in his, but he knew the girl behind the hand was anything but. “Don’t call me ‘Eddy,’” he said. “But, thanks. Good game to you, too.”

            She released his hand and brushed a stray hair out of her face. “So, what are you doing right now?”

            “Crashing, I guess.” He leaned in and said, in a lower voice, “or, pretending to.”

            Lena laughed. “Well, listen, if you’re just going to lie in bed and pretend to be asleep anyway, do you want to come hang out? There’s this good coffee place down in…”

            “I don’t drink…coffee,” he said, smiling despite himself.

            “Right, no, I guess you wouldn’t. Well, we could just hang around. Talk, you know?” she moved in closer—uncomfortably close, now. Edward could smell the sweet aroma of her blood. “See what happens?”

            He stepped back. “I appreciate it. I mean, I had fun, even though we lost, but…I just got out of this kind of messed up relationship and I…”

            She laughed again. “I’m not talking about a relationship, Mr. Cullen. I’m talking about sex.”

            “Sex?”

            “Yes!” she said. “You look so shocked. Jesus Christ, what are you, Mormon?”

            “No, no,” Edward replied, holding up his hands as if to ward off her accusation. “Of course not. I just assumed that maybe you…I mean, you’re a literal magical girl…I figured you had a boyfriend.”

            She shook her head. “Not in this continuity. Thanks, mom.”

            “Oh. Well. Uh. Sorry.”

            “It’s fine, it’s fine.” She took him lightly by the hand. “So. How about it? You share, I share, we see what happens?”

             Edward looked up at the moon, breathed in, breathed out. He realized that, for the first time, he couldn’t quite remember what Bella looked like.

            “Sure,” he said at last. “There’s just…this is embarrassing, but there’s just one more thing.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Well, I’m super strong and nigh invulnerable, and—”

            Lena smirked again. “Floorboards in there tell a different story, buddy.”

            “Ha ha. Shut up. Anyway, you’re a Caster, whatever that is, but you’re also just a human right? I’ve hurt way more people in my life than I’d care to admit. I don’t want to hurt you, too.”

            “Oh, emo kid, you wish,” said Lena. “I’ve got plenty of ways to protect myself. Besides, you’re not the biggest badass out here right now, or have you forgotten already.”

            Edward ran a hand through his hair. “I might have. Probably the brain damage.”

            “Ha! Well, listen. I can’t kiss unprotected mortals without causing them to experience painful shocks and, if I ever have sex with one, I might just shoot so much electricity into them that I give them spontaneous heart failure.”

            “You say that like you’re boasting,” said Edward.

            “Maybe a little.” She looped her arm around his. “Come on, corpse boy. Let’s see if you can ride the lightning.”

END

New Darkness: Part Two

In which the fan-fiction on Meg's behalf continues...

---

            Edward had played baseball for almost as long as the game had existed. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but still, he’d played a lot of baseball. Unfortunately, the baseball tryouts weren’t until spring, and Edward couldn’t imagine playing the game with anyone other than his family.

            He didn’t quite know why he tried out for basketball. If pressed, he would have said that he was in the standing in the front of McCarthey Athletic Center, checking out posters put up by the various intramurals groups and sports teams and…before he knew it he was in line to sign up for the tryouts.

            The coaches were more than a little dubious, and he guessed he didn’t blame them. The problem with being superhumanly strong is that the physical world leaves very little for your body to work hard against. I mean, unless you were Emmett and you threw trees and rocks around for fun. Compared to the other players, he was on the shortish side, on the scrawnyish side, and—due to being a sophomore and admitting that he had never played basketball before—was more than a bit on the inexperienced side.

            His vampiric powers, even consciously dialed back to almost nothing, gave him at least the appearance of natural skill, however. He was fast, agile, and never seemed to get tired. The coaches also seemed to appreciate that he did all the drills, came to all of the practices, didn’t give anyone any lip, and was pretty good about working with his teammates.

            He knew that he could be even better than this. His telepathy would always put him one step ahead of his opponents. His was literally so fast that he could do easy layups while the other players on the court seemed to literally be standing still. But that was no fun. Like baseball with the family, playing basketball was more about doing things with people. Of sharing a common interest. Of working to a common goal. You didn’t just do that by being an unstoppable, godlike, ballhog.

            Edward wasn’t sure that his teammates liked him either, and it took all of his willpower for him not to use his mental abilities to check. But soon, he started receiving friendly slaps after a good play (although he was always worried that someone was going to break their hand on his flawless chest), and good-natured ribbing in the locker room. This latter was a new sensation, and it was difficult for him to adjust to it. Edward knew they weren’t actually making fun of him, but the old, protective rage proved to be a beast that was hard to kill. He tried to smile, to laugh it off, hoping that his return barbs weren’t too envenomed and that they didn’t drive too deep.

            The season started and Edward, despite being a seemingly respectable member of the team, sat on the bench. He seethed inside, but less so than he would have back in Forks. He wanted to play, but he was competent enough at math to know that the team had a lot of players, and they could only play five of them at a time.

            The coaches finally started putting him in at the end of games, when Gonzaga’s victory was almost assured. He showboated a bit more than he promised himself he would, but there was something about the energy on the court, the surging scream of the crowd, that got his venom pumping much more than mere bloodlust ever could. In his first two outings he left the other teams flatfooted and sank a half-dozen seemingly impossible shots.

            Gonzaga decided to have him start shortly thereafter.

#

            Edward had dialed it back as much as he could when he started playing regularly. He had come to respect and really enjoy the camaraderie of his teammates, and he wants to make sure they had a chance to shine as well. So he passed the ball, set up shots so his teammates could score, screened the other team, and even fouled and got fouled a time or two, crashing theatrically to the boards, acting, what he hoped, was the part of a fragile, moderately injured human.

            Back in Forks, his family had started watching the game, sending IMs and emails from their Apple products whenever Gonzaga won. They were all convinced that he was the lynchpin of the team, and Edward could not convince them otherwise, no matter how strongly he argued the point. He guessed that they were just proud of him that he was doing so well—and Jasper was impressed he hadn’t eaten that Israeli player from UCONN yet.

            All of that led them up to this night—the big game in the Final Four against the Tar Heels. Only one of them would advance. Edward, of course, hoped that it would be the Bulldogs. There was no way of knowing, though, especially considering that the Huskies’ women’s team (lady Huskies? Edward wasn’t sure) just had their more than 100 game winning streak broken. Freakish, but anything could happen.

            He did not, however, realize that anything included a slender, dark-haired girl wearing street clothes walking out with four of the Tar Heels. About the only thing that looked even remotely athletic on her were the broken-in Converse on her feet. She played idly with a necklace that was obviously homemade and strung with junk—something that would no doubt cause someone an eye injury over the course of the game.

            The girl squared off with Edward as the first half began. He looked around frantically—at the refs, at the coaches, at the other players—but no one else seemed to notice or care how out of place she was.

            “Hey,” she said, speaking in the low, honeyed drawl of the Deep South. “Get your head in the game, Cullen.”

            “But…you…” he said.  “How?”

            “I’m a Caster, you filthy blood incubus,” said the girl, breaking into a radiant smile. “And all these guys think I’m Isaiah Hicks. You don’t, though, because you’ve got powers and you’re cheating.”

            The whistle blew. Edward moved to cover the girl, listening to the omnipresent roar of the crowd, the high-pitched squealing of sneakers on wax. All of a sudden, the ball was in the girl’s hands.

            “Well, I’m Lena Duchannes, bitchbag, and if you can cheat, so can I.” 

Beautiful Twilight: Part One

This is a fan-fiction post for my friend Meg, who recently posted on her Facebook wall:

The NCAA Final Four is the Carolinas vs. the Pacific Northwest. How bad is it if I'm imagining a Beautiful Creatures / Twilight crossover with college basketball? #thisiswhymybracketbursts

One of my other friends responded, "this sounds like fan-fiction in the making," to which Meg replied, "Geoff Bottone! We need you!"

There was a lot of back-and-forth on her wall regarding this potential fan-fiction, including what it would be like and, of course, how slashy it would be. I participated in the discussion, laughed it off, and went about my day.

But then, like most writers, I had an idea.

This idea was hampered by the fact that I have never read Twilight or Beautiful Creatures. That said, I've read a lot of critical evaluations of Twilight (mostly from the ever-loving Mervin), so I at least know what the plot is. I had to Google Beautiful Creatures and discovered that it was that book that got turned into that movie about that girl who is a witch who will be claimed by good or evil.

And, I figured, maybe that was enough. Besides, fan-fiction writers don't give a shit about canon--Ron's a Death Eater! Harry is goff as fuck! Uh. Magenta-haired self-inserts! Kirk/Spock!--so maybe I didn't have to, either.

So, here is my non-canonical, unapproved fan-fiction involving Edward Cullen, Lena Duchannes, and the 2017 NCAA Final Four. Part One.

This one's for you, Meggles. Hope you like it!

---

            Edward did a double-take when a young woman came sauntering out onto the court with the other team. Of course, being a vampire, his double-take wasn’t even noticeable by the humans on his team, on the other team, courtside, or in the stands. It was a brief flicker of movement, eldritch in its beauty, which could have only been caught by a high-speed camera.

            The young woman, human-appearing but definitely not fully human, smirked at him. Whether this was a coincidence, or whether she had actually seen how she had rattled him, was unknown to him.

            Also, just like Bella, he couldn’t read her mind.

            Bella.

            Why the hell did everything still remind him of Bella?

#

            The last couple of years had been the longest of Edward’s already unnaturally long life.

            It turned out that Bella hadn’t really been in love with him at all—more than anything else, what she really loved was being a vampire. Once she had all the venom she ever wanted coursing through her veins, she became increasingly withdrawn. Their house, and here he smirked at the pun, became a mausoleum. She spent more and more time out in the wilderness alone.

            He was so used to knowing what other people were thinking that the complete isolation from Bella drove him almost completely mad. He didn’t know what she was thinking, and he couldn’t make her tell him what she was thinking. Every day was like a tug-of-war, with Bella ultimately snapping at him over some trifle or storming off into the woods.

            One day, she just didn’t come back.

            He tried to fill the hole left by her departure with other things. Long drives up to Alaska, spending time with his family, trying to rebuild a shattered home for his daughter, that sort of thing. He didn’t realize until it was too late that Renesmee was already lost to him. Bella had been poisoning his daughter’s mind from the start, and Jacob, her betrothed—and really, how messed up was that—continued to feed her piles of anti-vampire propaganda that the werewolves had been clinging to for years. Yes, sometimes we kill and eat people, but you werewolves freak out and hurt the ones you love. No hypocrisy there.

            Once Renesmee had left to go on a motorcycle tour with Jacob, Edward was left alone in his house with only his own thoughts and his memories for company. After the initial, months-long bout of self-pity (which might have been accurately portrayed with a sequence of blank pages with just the month names written on them, like chapter headings), he began to realize that he needed a change in his life.

            A really big change.

#

            He left the quiet fastness of Forks and enrolled in college again—this time at Gonzaga. He decided not to go in for another sciences or medical degree, instead pursuing something that he realized had become lost to him—the Humanities.

            He played piano for one of the campus bands, took courses on painting and sculpture, tried to wrap his head around post-modernism and post-post modernism, and tried very, very hard not to use his powers. He refused to take it for granted that all the answers that life provided were in the heads of other people. Humans didn’t have that ability. Humans had to deal with uncertainty and mystery—something he had long ago forgotten about until Bella reminded him.

            So, when he got a C+ on his all-night essay on Nietzsche and the Overman, a critique, comparing and contrasting using passages from Crime and Punishment, he went back to his dorm room knowing that he had at least come by his middling grade honestly, instead of yanking all the good ideas from the smug philosophy major two seats in front of him.

            College was hard this time. There were a lot more people at Gonzaga than he was used to, and their overactive, late-teen brains were a wild static of chatter. He had been able to filter out most of the noise with effort, but that just left him feeling more lonely and isolated than ever. Not knowing what people were thinking made interacting with them extremely difficult. He often wondered if he had made a good impression on anyone, or if they all thought he was a cold, unfeeling creep.

            Edward was feeling particularly low at the beginning of his second year at Gonzanga. He was about to throw in the towel and go home, but something changed all that.

            And the change was this: on a whim, he decided to try out for the basketball team.

Grey the Mercenary: The Rules

I recently came across Chuck Jones' Rules for his Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons. It's an impressive list, and it really works to both define the characters and focus in on the types of stories that he wanted to tell.

I realized, while reading it, that I had cultivated my own rules for the Grey the Mercenary stories, even though I hadn't been consciously aware of doing it. Because I think it's interesting, and because I feel like showing off, I now hereby present to you, Gentle Reader, the rules that govern Grey.

*ahem*

• Grey is never the point-of-view character in his stories. (There may be one exception to this.)
• Grey must feature in every story, but he is rarely ever the focal point of the story.
• The protagonist of each story must work to solve their own problems.
• Grey will assist the protagonist, but will never, ever solve the problem by himself.
• Each protagonist should be unique, and come from a different background. This facilitates Grey's wandering nature, but also allows you to explore numerous areas of the setting.
• A small amount of Grey's backstory should be revealed in each story.
• Different protagonists will describe Grey differently, as a reflection of their own beliefs and mental states.
• The Saints, Prophets, and Ancestors can be oft-mentioned by their adherents, but should never do anything.
• True magic is extremely rare, and is always tied to Life somehow.
• The three big factions (Commonwealth, Company, Insurgency) should be presented as shades of gray with the occasional streak of black or white.
• The stories take place over a long period of time, but they all should have similar settings and tech levels (18th century with a bit of steamy punk thrown in there).

So there you have it. I hope that was at least mildly interesting for you. We'll see how well I adhere to these rules down the road.

The Misadventures of Mr. Foppish, Rabbit Extraordinaire

I've written a lot of LARP lore and in-game documentation in my time. I'd like to think that they're all reasonably good and interesting, but some of them are definitely better than others. Only a handful have made it into my favorites pile, however.

This is one such piece of lore. It's a series of several BGAs (between game actions), in which a player read several different chapters of The Misadventures of Mr. Foppish. Ostensibly a children's book, it can actually teach the reader advanced Viramancy (disease magic), if they know what they're doing and read between the lines. What follows are the silly stories I wrote--the special skills that the player could learn are in another document, to which I do not have access.

You can see that I got increasingly into writing the stories as I went along...

NB: The stories have been slightly edited for punctuation, spelling, and grammar, and also to pad out the running hat gag to it's natural conclusion.

BGA: Reading the Misadventures of Mr. Foppish

On the surface, this book is merely a collection of whimsical tales centering on the adventures of one Aloysius X. Foppish, Esq., a lepus of considerable means. The tales are simplistic, but engagingly written and entertaining. Much of the action revolves around the titular character’s preening self-importance and vanity, and how those character flaws tend to get him into a great deal of mischief. Fortunately for Mr. Foppish, he is surrounded by a number of animal friends of sturdier personality, who frequently assist him when his schemes come to their ill-conceived ends.

To the trained eye, the book is much more than a series of amusing anecdotes about a rabbit squire. Woven deftly into the text are instructions on techniques of advanced Viramancy. The first story, “Rompknoll’s Banquet,” provides a lesson on one such technique, which appears to be the basis upon which most of the subtler aspects of the Viramancer’s art are based.

At the beginning of the story, much is made of the strong bonds between Mr. Foppish and his rabbit friends. The author writes that Foppish and his cohorts have even developed a series of secret signs such that they can easily identify and communicate with one another.

This proves to be the key point upon which the story hinges. Rompknoll (depicted in one of the book’s many lavish illustrations as a cloaked and hooded badger), playing to Mr. Foppish’s considerable ego, tricks the squire into gambling away the rights to his estate. Mr. Foppish, cast into exile from his familial lands, can only watch in horror as Rompknoll moves into his posh warren and invites all manner of sycophantic hangers-on to celebrate in a decadent (and inheritance-annihilating) masked banquet.

Mr. Foppish, the reader learns, is not particularly clever. He does, however, have a number of friends who are clever. By means of his friends' secret signs (as described previously), he is able to locate and communicate with his loyal companions and infiltrate the masquerade party. Thanks to the strength of the bonds with his friends, the level-headed thinking of the fetching Ms. Stoat, the sacrifice of Mr. Foppish's favorite hat, and the timely inversion of a soup tureen, Mr. Foppish drives out the ne’er do wells, punishes the wicked Rompknoll, and reclaims his ancestral home.

BGA: Reading The Adventures of Mr Foppish, Rabbit Extraordinaire

The saga of Aloysius X. Foppish, lepus of means, continues in the second story, "the Kapelo of Kendello." The story opens on the eve of a most excellent party, hosted by one Mr. Vole, whose wealth and taste rivals those of our hero. Everyone who is everyone has gotten an invitation to the soiree, and all are expected to wear their very best.

Mr. Foppish, consumed by vanity, wants to wear something so fantastically fashionable that it will put the haberdashery of all the other party-goers to shame. After trying on everything in his considerable wardrobe, and visiting more than a half-dozen tailors, Mr. Foppish despairs of finding anything suitable. That is, until an owl apprentice-tailor of unsavory disposition reveals to our hero the location of the Kapelo of Kendello.

The Kapelo is described as a hat of singular appearance. The lavish illustration that accompanies the story depicts it as being utterly festooned with feathers, bells, gemstones, fans, lace, crenelations, and buttresses. It is locked away, of course, in the ruins of an old weasel warren. Mr. Foppish's quest to acquire the hat for his party costume takes him across muddy rivers and through thorny hedges, causes the absolute destruction of his second-favorite hat, and lasts a full eight pages.

Mr. Foppish emerges with the Kapelo squashed firmly down on his aristocratic pate. Buoyed up by the opulence and uniqueness of his new accouterments, he hopes to be quite the sensation at Mr. Vole's party. And he is. Alas, far from being the belle of the ball, Mr. Foppish is reduced to a laughingstock--the Kapelo being so hideously ridiculous that the entire populace of the gala is reduced to hysterical fits.

Mr. Foppish's plight is further magnified by the fact that he cannot remove the Kapelo. This is illustrated by means of a humorous drawing, in which the lepus attacks his hat with a fire poker, to no avail. After the laughter has died down, the other party guests seek to help Mr. Foppish with his problem. The levelheaded Ms. Stoat soon discovers that if she offers her own hat to Mr. Foppish, she can remove the Kapelo and put it on her own head.

This leads to a scene reminiscent of a fire brigade, in which the party-goers all line up to exchange hats, passing the Kapelo out across the dance floor, and through the doors to the garden. It comes to rest, at last, on the statue of Mr. Vole's late father, which dominates the garden. Mr. Vole himself must briefly contend with weight of the statue's stone hat, but otherwise, the tale ends on an positive note.

BGA: Reading my bunny book again.

The chronicles of Aloysius X. Foppish, distinguished lepus and squire-about-town, continues in the third story, "Mr. Foppish's Pocket Watch." The eponymous watch is a treasured heirloom of the Foppish family, handed down from father to son for generations, and quite highly prized by the current Mr. Foppish.

The story opens with Mr. Foppish bored of the staid pursuits of polite society. Desirous of action of a rougher and more common fare, he journeys to a tavern down by the wharves that is frequented by a "certain class of individual."Though initially wary of the salt-of-the-earth types that frequent this establishment, Mr. Foppish finds himself quickly accepted into their ranks. Within half a page, Mr. Foppish and a company of weasels are carousing and drinking by the fire.

Talk soon turns to gambling, and Mr. Foppish finds dice pressed into his manicured paw. The steady flow of drink, along with a string of quite improbable luck, puts Mr. Foppish into such high spirits that he bets every bit of wealth in his possession on a final throw of the dice. He loses his wallet, his fine ascot pin, his third-favorite hat, his riding cloak and, of course, the pocket watch. Left completely destitute, and without funds to pay his considerable tab, Mr. Foppish is ejected into the streets post-haste by a pair of badger dock hands.

Mr. Foppish slogs home, only to be discovered on the roadside by the winsome and charming Ms. Stoat. With some wrangling, she coaxes the whole story from him and, infuriated by the cunning of her distant, lowborn cousins, concocts a plan whereby Mr. Foppish might regain his family honor and heirlooms.

After a whirlwind tour of a late-night haberdashery, as well as by a convenient encounter with a troupe of mummers, Ms. Stoat disguises herself and Mr. Foppish as two lowborn weasels of sullen demeanor. This is, of course, much easier for Ms. Stoat than it is for Mr. Foppish, but so long as he keeps his watch cap tight upon his ears, none shall be the wiser.

They return to the dockside tavern and infiltrate the sneak of weasels, finding them still laughing over their easy victory of the foolish young squire. It is here revealed that the weasels have conned Mr. Foppish by cunning use of a pair of loaded dice, which are hollowed out and inhabited by two dormice of the criminal underclass, who, by virtue of a cunning system of pulleys, can make the dice roll however they desire. The two dormice and their dice disguises are illustrated.

This admission so enrages Mr. Foppish that he lets fly with fisticuffs at the rapscallions! A move which, as anyone who knows of the ferocity of weasels can tell you, is extremely ill-advised. His disguise in disarray, himself pinned against the crude, stone hearth, it is only the timely intervention of Ms. Stoat, a lantern, a pair of tin forks, and the noble sacrifice of Mr. Foppish's third-favorite hat that saves the day.

In the aftermath, the squire and his lady friend flee out into the rising dawn, the pocket watch restored to its rightful owner.

BGA: The Misadventures of Mr. Foppish, Rabbit Extraordinaire

The escapades of Aloysius X. Foppish, Esq., a lepus of means, continues in this next tale, entitled, "Madam Stuffley-Ermine's Annual Garden Social and Tea-Tasting Extravaganza." It opens with our eponymous squire boarding a carriage, bound for the party of the year. Seated across from him is a huge and lumpy parcel, enmeshed in canvas and lashed into the carriage with taut cords. As Mr. Foppish urges the coachmouse to greater haste, he gives his parcel a loving pat. This, he is sure, will simply dazzle Madame Stuffley-Ermine and her esteemed guests.

Mr. Foppish arrives fashionably late and begins making the rounds. The author spends a great deal of time describing the exquisite arrangements of flowers, all put together by Madam Stuffley-Ermine and the lesser, unnamed members of the Garden Club. Fully a page is dedicated to the description of the tea-tasting gazebo, with its porcelain pots arranged in such a way that the jets of steam issuing from their spouts fill the air with a complex tannic bouquet.

These florid descriptions are accompanied by a two-page illustration showing the garden grounds, with the gazebo in the center. Two working-class rats dominate the foreground as they haul Mr. Foppish's mysterious package to a central table.

The parcel, Mr. Foppish proudly exclaims, is a rare, succulent plant that grows only in a far-off shard. With thumbs in his lapels, he struts before the heavily laden table, informing a now rapturous crowd that he has spared no research or expense in bringing the wondrous plant to his estate. With a flourish, he slices the restraining cords and whisks off the canvas, to reveal a monstrosity of leaves, tubers, thorns, spines, spires, fruits, barbs, and rhizomes. The crowd oohs and aaahs in appreciation.

Mr. Foppish, lost in the praise of the crowd and his own exposition, swats the body of the strange plant with a proud paw. At the impact, the plant begins to quake and tremble, to such an alarming degree that the now fearful party-goers begin to take cover behind ribbon-covered tables and decorative hedges. Our beloved squire, alas, is oblivious to their retreat, and slaps the plant once more as his speech reaches a crescendo.

At that, the plant detonates, firing volleys of spines and barbs in all directions. Teapots shatter. Flower bulbs explode. Guests scurry to the deeper parts of the garden, while vicious thorns hiss and buzz all around them. Several, alas, find their mark, ruining fine garments and causing any flesh that they penetrate to both swell to hilarious proportions and turn a fetching shade of magenta. Mr. Foppish's fourth-favorite hat meets an ignominious demise, first perforated, then impaled upon the breast of a garden statue.

Whilst cowering tactically beneath the gazebo, Mr. Foppish discovers the hiding place of the fetching Ms. Stoat. The always present-minded Ms. Stoat enlists Mr. Foppish's aid in a daring plan involving a biscuit tray, sugar tongs, a chafing dish, and two heaping fistfuls of Dyrel's Lace. In a climactic, enchantingly-illustrated scene, Mr. Foppish's left arm and right leg are wounded and double in size and the troublesome tuber is reduced to harmless pulp.

In a satisfying denouement, Madam Stuffley-Ermine puts on her most regal airs and, with the help of her dozen amphibian tea-butlers, brews a soothing draught that takes the sting out of even the most embarrassing of the wounds, restoring everyone, including Mr. Foppish, to normal.

The story ends on a sad note, with our favorite lepus banned from all major social gatherings for the next year. As illustrated in a final picture, Mr. Foppish sits at the curb outside of the Stuffley-Ermine estate, riddled hat upon his head, a wreath of ruined flowers crammed down over his shoulders. The lovely Ms. Stoat, immaculately coiffed despite the trouble, offers him a hot cup of tea.

BGA: The Misadventures of Mr. Foppish, Rabbit Extraordinaire

The adventures of Mr. Foppish, our much-beloved squire, conclude in this final tale, entitled, “The Marriage of Mr. Foppish.” Herein we learn that the goodly folk of the town have decided that Mr. Aloysius X. Foppish, Esq., being a single lepus in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. That such a thing has never occurred to Mr. Foppish proves to be no barrier for the elderly Widow Stellarmole, whose proclivities for matchmaking are known to all and sundry.

Once the Widow Stellarmole has set her sights upon the bachelorhood of Mr. Foppish, there is nothing our poor lepus can do to shake her off the scent. Every garden party turns into a series of interviews with hopeful ladies. Every walk in the park leads to ambush by the Widow, armed with a sachet of headache-inducing perfume and an armload of ladies’ visiting cards. A short trip to a haberdasher’s to claim his newly-blocked, fifth-favorite hat turns into a convoluted chase in which several young ladies, spurred on by the Widow, endeavor to be the first to invite him to the Autumn Ball.

Midway through this chase, which is charmingly illustrated across the bottom of two facing pages, Mr. Foppish happens to bump into the fetching and clever Ms. Stoat. This has the unfortunate effect of scattering her parcels and his hat across the lane, which necessitates a brisk and comedic retrieval in the face of the advancing horde of potential paramours.

The end of the chase finds Mr. Foppish and Ms. Stoat (each wearing the other’s hat) hiding in the stables on his estate. Despite both their heightened emotions, the pair’s mutual respect for one another, and the repeated mention of both the Autumn Ball and Ms. Stoat’s complete availability to attend said Ball, the obvious questions go unasked.

A short time later, we discover Mr. Foppish out on a very careful walk in the early morning hours, the better to avoid the machinations of the Widow Stellarmole. On his sojourn, he happens across the path of a Ms. Larkpeak, a gentlerabbit of bewitching demeanor. He is so entranced by her presence that he spends hours in the park with her, too enchanted to flee at the first sight of a happily sighing Widow Stellarmole.

Several pages are devoted to the courtly romance of Mr. Foppish and his new paramour. A gown for the Autumn Ball is ordered. The social scene is taken by storm. The winsome and cheery Ms. Stoat is by turns less cheery, for she sees something rather untoward in the blossoming relationship. Ms. Larkpeak is not at all kind to Mr. Foppish, frequently upbraiding and mocking him when she thinks no one can hear. Curious, concerned, and driven by emotions hitherto unexplored, Ms. Stoat does some investigating on her dear friend's behalf. She discovers Ms. Larkpeak has taken steps to gain control over Mr. Foppish's finances and holdings. All that remains to seal the deal is for him to take her paw in marriage.

Despite being confronted with these accusations and piles of accompanying evidence, Mr. Foppish seems only too ready to discount the advice of his levelheaded friend. Gravely concerned now, and suspecting the most despicable of sorceries, Ms. Stoat prepares to go to war. Her plan involves nothing less than a peach-colored gown, a diamond hair pin, pretty but extremely comfortable dancing shoes, an invitation to the Autumn Ball, and a pouch containing fine dust that is proof against all enchantments.

Another pair of facing pages is given over to a lavish illustration of the Autumn Ball. Everyone is there in their finery, including the teary-eyed Widow Stellarmole, who has caught the attention of a stammering elder frog. Dominating the picture are the handsome lepus and his paramour, dancing beneath a sky full of strange stars.

After the first dance, our beloved lepus tinkles his knife upon his glass and asks for everyone's attention. He proclaims that, after much thought, he has asked Ms. Larkpeak to join him in matrimony. The guests are agog. The Widow Stellarmole cannot leave off of joyous weeping. Ms. Stoat, pragmatic as always, takes this opportunity to approach the blushing bride-to-be and upend the contents of the pouch upon her head.

The lady vanishes in a puff of smoke, standing revealed as the duplicitous badger Rompknoll! There follows a brief digression, refreshing the reader's memory about the first story in the book, in which the villainous Rompknoll makes his initial appearance. Then, chaos! The villain attempts to flee, widows clutch their hearts and implore the gods to mercy, scandalized guests scream and point, a diamond hair pin is wielded to good effect in a desperate duel, and a young squire of means drinks down several glasses of wine in too-rapid succession.

At the end of the most memorable Autumn Ball in a century, the villain is carted away in chains, leaving the very sheepish Mr. Foppish standing quite close to the blushing and vindicated Ms. Stoat. After a fumbling of courtesy, the two come together for the final dance, a gesture which makes the Widow Stellarmole faint with joy. The book closes on this final scene, with the future of our dear lepus unknown, but decidedly bright.

Introducing Grey the Mercenary!

I've said this just about everywhere else, so I might as well say it here: I published a novella on Amazon.

It's called A Street Rat of Salagena: A Grey the Mercenary Tale. It's the first in what, I hope, will be a series of novellas featuring the interlinked adventures of a mysterious, bad-ass swordsman who goes by the name of Grey.

In this, the first installment, Grey crosses paths with and helps out an orphan of Salagena, one Suzanna de la Calle. She is on the run from slavers, who are intent on abducting her for some nefarious purpose. Grey helps her to escape and then works with her to get at the roots of a strange conspiracy in Salagena.

You can check it out on Amazon, if you like, by clicking the image below. You can also find it on Kobo! Thanks in advance!