Templeton: "So what does your pistol do?"
Elson: "... it shoots bullets."
T: "Is that all?"
E: "Makes a great paperweight."
T: "Huh. Do your bullets do anything special?"
E: "I hear they hurt."
T: "What about your knife?"
E: "It's sharp."
T: "Your sword?"
E: "Long and sharp."
T: "Your hatchet?"
E: "Heavy and sharp."
T: "Boots?"
E: "Just heavy."
T: "Goggles?"
E: "Keep my face pretty."
T: "Belt?"
E: "Keeps my pants up."
T: "... and the other belts?"
E: "Next ..."
T: "Jacket?"
E: "Warm."
T: "Buttons on the jacket?"
E: "These days? Superfluous."
T: "Pocket watch?"
E: "Tells time."
T: "Gloves?"
E: "For punching."
T: "Kerchief?"
E: "Catches snot."
T: "Hat?"
E: "Stylish."
T: "... You confuse me."
E: "Well ... my pocket watch both tells time AND keeps a picture of my mother."
T: "AHA! Would you like it to also serve as a compass, barometer, and altimeter, as well as play music, hide a lockpick, and heat your drink?"
E: "... no thanks, I ..."
T: "TOO LATE!"
E: "... you frighten me."
T: "Your sword also squirts oil out of the pommel."
Author's Note: This also counts as our first bit of advertizing, as I posted it onto the Steampunk Fashion LJ Community.
Progress will be slow for a while probably.
I'll post again when everything's moved over.
A long while ago, Alarin and I sat down to talk about his cats, his sisters, Cathy Travis, The Bards of Subterra, and The Jabberwock.
We invite you to listen in.
*SPOILER ALERT*
As with all Character Focus episodes, this contains spoilers for plot elements that may or may not have been published either in this feed or at the Alternia LiveJournal community.
Originally published at Stories of Alternia. You can comment here or there.
We don't have a lot to do since the war. Was it really even a war? They came, we nuked, they died or left and, for the most part, so did we. Rumor has it some of the great underground cities that were planned actually got built. Not all of them got populated though.
Out here in the middle of nowhere Utah, we don't really care too much one way or the other.
We got bored quickly once the power went out. We switched to battery and crank operated radio until the stations switched to unmanned 24-7 Emergency Broadcast. Fortunately, we were near the salt flats proving grounds for some of the fastest land vehicles on earth. Miles and miles of nothing but flat, salt encrusted, dry ground.
There were a couple of cars, if you can call a rocket powered vehicle with wheels a "car", left there, abandoned. Me and my friend Jake tried the ignition on a couple: dead. We came back often with spare parts scavenged from our ghost of a town and got them running again.
The races were a great distraction until we rant out of fuel. And, of course, these things ran on jet fuel, and sucked it down like it was going out of style. Which, of course, it had.
We toyed with racing the abandoned cars we hadn't gutted in town, but after the rocket cars the little commuter cars just didn't feel exciting.
After a few months we managed to convert the rocket cars to using regular gas, but they were a shadow of their former speed (and thrill).
Then Jake hit on the idea of making them electric and using the government supplied mini-fission reactor from the radio station to power the cars.
It soon became clear that a nuclear powered rocket car was a Bad Idea. Especially for racing. After all, we had only the one reactor, so racing in general was out. We could do time trials, but then we'd either have to remove the power plant and remount it in another car, or we'd have to share a single car. Jake was partial to the 307 "Arrow," and I liked the 712 "Quicksilver," two radically different vehicles, so sharing was hardly appealing.
We compromised by cannibalizing. Over the next several weeks, with saws, torches, pneumatic drivers and a four foot wrench, we tore down the vehicles on site and rebuilt them as we saw fit.
We ended up with an unholy amalgam of the 307, the 712 and the 119 "Hornet." It had a roomy interior, with two sets of controls. I'd gotten used to the 712's setup, and Jake had fallen in love with the 307's scheme. Now each pilot could use his preferred controls.
Great men tend not to tell stories, but to live them, and have their stories told by others.
This is not the story of a great man.
This is the story of a man, any man you may have met on the street. You, the reader, may safely assume these pages can be summed up thus: A man was born, lived his life, and died at the end of his story.
This is a book about the details, missing from the summary.
He was born on an unremarkable day in an unremarkable town to unremarkable parents. His was an easy birth with no complications, strictly by the book.
It was an inauspicious beginning, and his relatives joked he was destined for great things, realizing in the backs of their minds that if there was ever a man born to lead an utterly unremarkable life, it was this boy.
His parents gave him the name Mark. He was the younger of two children and grew up in a comfortable suburban neighborhood. He rode the bus to school and earned average marks, graduating from highschool with a B- average.
It's been far too long since I've posted any new fiction here (or anywhere, really) and all the stories I have almost-finished are a) not finished, and b) too long to finish quickly and post tonight.
Given that, I figured I'd start something new, officially.
This is a scene that's been bouncing around my head for months, and is actually the reason I decided to tie The Wayferer in with Hammer & Axe & Anne.
Inspired by the Heather Alexander tune "Healing Chant" off the Merlin's Descendants album.
It contains spoilers for what will happen to my Mystic Frontiers gang (Hammer, Axe, Wayfarer) so don't read it if you don't want spoilers for something that will be in a longer story sometime between "soon" and "later." Also, there's singing.
</INTRO>
( Vignette #1 )
First, a new podcast episode: What Inspires You? #2, over at Karak Speaks True.
In this episode,
Second, See that user icon on this post? That's right, baby. We've got a logo for Alternia Comics! (website to be updated soon-ish)
This logo is thanks to my friend TestMAD over on the irc network Thinstack.
And that brings me to the third new thingie. Alternia Comics has an official IRC chatroom, on Thinstack of course.
If you don't have an irc client, or don't want to bother installing one, you can head over to the Thinstack Network page, find the entry for #alterniacomics, and click on it. This will open up a java chat window and bring you to the chat room.
If you do have an irc client, you can tell it to connect to irc.thinstack.com port 6667 and /join #alterniacomics
Hope to see you there! :)
Ivan looked across the dance floor at Warren Meyers - the White Blur - dancing to "Standing Still" with his girlfriend.
"Doing what?" Ivan asked.
"Dancing!" replied a confused and astonished Protanya. "I mean, they're really good ... they're BOTH really good."
"So?"
Protanya gave Ivan a "duh" look with those luminous green eyes of hers. Ivan had seen incredibly destructive energy beams blast forth from those eyes, so he always flinched just a little when she looked at him that way. "Isn't Warren's girlfriend deaf?"
Comprehension struck Ivan soundly. He looked back at the dancers in question, remembering hearing through the cape-vine how Warren had saved the young woman's life, but in doing so went so fast while carrying her that her eardrums were burst open. Even so, she was so grateful for what he had meant to do that what he had done accidentally seemed unimportant. Warren kept most of it private, but one thing led to another and now here they were, a pair of young lovers dancing in each others' arms.
"Huh. I guess you're right. I have no idea."
-----
Tracey was a dancer. She loved to dance- competetively, in the clubs, on stage, wherever the music took her. Right after she lost her hearing, her first thoughts had been how that part of her would be lost now. With no way to hear the music, her body could not respond. She could go through the motions, but it would be cold, mechanical, and purposeless.
Tracey still couldn't hear the music, but it hardly mattered, now. She could see Warren's eyes, feel the warmth of his hands, and - most importantly - dance to the beat of the vibrations he was making with his super speed to guide her.
Tracey couldn't hear the music, but thanks to the wonderful man holding her and the amazing things he could do - the amazing things he CHOSE to do - she could still feel alive on the dance floor.
This is a story called Without Time. It started as a story that would introduce the character Tempo, and introduce readers to the World of Heroes and First Line in general. This was my second take at Tempo’s origin, and I’m still not happy with it.. and realized during final edit this story retcons some of White Blur’s history, but not in a huge way.
In case you missed it, here’s a link to Episode 20, since it’s a few posts back…
Check out Mur Lafferty’s Playing For Keeps podcast novel
Sushi Hours Music
KarakSindru.LiveJournal.com
I apologize for taking over two months to get a new story episode out. I’ve started a daily audio blog, so hopefully that’ll get me back in the podcasting swing and get episodes out more regularly.
Originally published at Stories of Alternia. You can comment here or there.
Hooray! Finally an episode in 2008. This was originally going to be a segment in What Inspires You, but when I realized it account for about half of the almost two hour recording, I decided it would be its own show.
This is the Character Focus show, where Alarin and I talk about a specific character, his/her origins, and some stories of the character’s development. And other random things.
A few words of warning: There is coarse language, but not spoken in a mean spirited or hateful way, I don’t think … Also, it’s only lightly edited. After having this file for over a month and barely touching it, I decided to just post it and be done with it. If anyone complains, I’ll probably go back and edit it. Be glad I took out the part where I stepped away to get the laptop’s power cord, and Alarin started singing “Manah Manah”
Music is the song “Rain” by Afternights. Find their music on Kam’s web page: haoma.neonphog.com
Originally published at Stories of Alternia. You can comment here or there.
Just need to actually write it, now.
Making notes for later, as my energy is quickly draining.
Expect this story in the next few days.
They say every man has a story to tell.
( This is one. )
Blame
Warren blinked at the simple question. "Why? I run ... to save people. To stop bad things from happening."
"No," said Xiao Lin, known to his friends, and the world, as Runechild. "That is why you put on your uniform and call yourself the White Blur. If not these clothes and not this name, you would choose others."
Warren found it hard to argue with that. He found it hard to argue with Xiao at all.
"Now, think hard. Why do you run?"
Warren's brow creased. He thought back to the moment he realized he was ... fast. It was terrifying, but also ...
"The thrill," he said. "I love how it feels. I love how the world stands still for me. I love the wind on my face, the fantastic things I can do."
"And yet you fear to."
Warren clenched his fists and his teeth and tried not to cry. "Yes," he breathed.
Xiao was silent for a moment. It felt like the gathering of a storm ... or like sunlight breaking slowly through the clouds. Then he spoke, asking another question: "Do you know what speed is?"
Now Warren was a little insulted. Runechild was quick - could do things at speeds that caught even him off guard - but Warren Meyers was the fastest living thing in existence. "Of course I know what speed is," he said, showing his annoyance in his voice.
"And yet you know you can go faster than you have before. So I ask you, if you have not gone as fast as you can go, how can you know what true speed is?"
Once again, Warren was without an answer.
"True speed," Xiao began, finally teaching now that the student was ready to listen, "is not in how fast you can move, how quickly you can arrive at where you want to be, or how many times you can hit your opponent before he knows he has been hit. True speed is found in the imperceptibly inevitable."
Warren tried to understand, but Xiao kept on teaching.
"It is the changing of the seasons, the passage of years. It is the life of a child who is suddenly grown and gone. It is the full and grand sweep of history, the years and centuries that have all come and gone. It is when we realize we have fallen in love, but cannot discern when it happened. It is when the sun sets as you are not looking." Xiao pointed over Warren's shoulder.
Warren turned to see the last brilliant wisp of scarlet fade from a darkening sky.
"Catch that moment again, speedster," came the impossible challenge.
Warren laughed at himself.
It’s the inaugural episode of a new monthly podcast hosted by me and my co-conspirator in all this Alternia chaos, Alarin Avaril.
In this episode we:
- Set up the format for future episodes
- Talk about what’s inspiring us and where we get our ideas
- Discuss current projects and how we’re spending our time in Alternia
- Spoiler Section: This time we discuss the Paragon Spirits in Alternia. What they are and where they came from.
Music for What Inspires You is the fiddle tune Canebreak off Haoma’s fiddle album Salt River. Kam’s a good friend of mine since high school.
If you’d like to tell us what inspires you, the fans of Alternia Comics, you can send us an email (inspire @ alterniacomics.com)
Originally published at Stories of Alternia. You can comment here or there.
In the hands of most, the Edge of Thorns acts as a +4 Greataxe. A Ranger, Druid, or Cleric with the plant or animal domain, however, can unlock this ancient weapon's true potential. A wielder of this nature can cast the following spells as a lvl 20 Druid:
At Will: Detect Pits and Snares, Detect Plants and Animals
5/day: Entangle
4/day: Barkskin
2/day: Summon Nature's Ally V
Aditionally, all plants and animals recognize the wielder of the Edge of Thorns as a friend of nature and are considered Neutral, Helpful, or Friendly, depending on the circumstances.
