PotM: The Fall of Shanlinn Firehand

There you are, thought Shanlinn Firehand as the Captain of the Watch, Vikor Creuller, swung out from the back of an oversized jaguar which had grown a police car around its spine. He was massive, nearly eight feet tall and half that wide, armed with baton and pistol and various other tricks hidden beneath his long black leather coat. 

She'd killed the two guards who had been following the Moon, though, and none of the rest of them knew she'd been anywhere near him. She had to be a tempting prize; they'd been hunting her for decades, now. The dagger in her hand was a potent weapon, but not so potent as her sword; she was betting that even Viktor wouldn't note its absence until it was too late. 

If this had been an ordinary operation, she would have had an escape route mapped out, with a half-dozen others as fallbacks. Instead, what she had was desperation and sacrifice.

Viktor studied her for a long moment, held at bay at the back of an alley by a group of guards with spears. "Take her," he said. 

"Dawn," she answered, and let the Sun flow through her. 

It was a blessed death, the light searing in this ever-dark city, carving through the City Watch, their bestial vehicles, and a substantial portion of the park beyond. She hoped the Moon had made his way through; she'd given him as much time as she could manage. 

Four decades of gradually-increasing nightmare would end for her, here and now, and her sword was safely in another's keeping; she held to the hope of being reborn. And for this select group of suborned assholes, she would bring a fiery death. 

PotM: Victims -- aren't we all?

Warden Viktor Creuller looked down at the body in the box. It was dead, of course; a perfect stab wound, right up under the ribs. So very, very precise. Oh, the knights are going to pay for this... 

There were only a few of them left, Shanlinn Firehand chief among them and despite her origins the most adept at evading his patrols. This should have been a standard encounter, one of his men preventing the citizens from trying to help each other. Now that man was dead, and the murderer... 

Vanished, he admitted to himself, clenching his teeth. No tracks, no traces, for all that old man Telomere had called the intrusion in. The upper floors of the tower were empty, derelict; a few long-dead bodies, but no signs of life, hidden or otherwise.  The murderer might have been Shanlinn herself -- she was known to use a dagger, betimes -- but he didn't think so. No, this was something else. Something new. Something Braderick Cytosene -- old man Telomere -- had sensed in his city. 

There were back ways, of course, but the Watch stood guard over those. The streets would still be busy; a bold murderer might travel that way. Or, there might be a nearby bolt-hole, hiding the perpetrator away. 

"Sir! Sir." The Watchman who stopped beside him was one of the constables. "We have her. Shanlinn Firehand.  We have her cornered down by the park!"

Viktor grinned. "Excellent," he purred. "Have your fastest beast carry me there." 

That was a mistake

I did it. I did the thing I shouldn't have done. I knew better, and I did it anyway.

Folks, I looked at the news. 

That was a mistake. 

I was immediately treated to video clips of the President of the United States of America spouting a steady stream of bullshit that sometimes veered into outright nonsense -- as in, "those words do not mean anything when you put them together in that order". This, while everybody else at the table just sat around nodding along. I don't see how it's possible to see that and not conclude that that the man's health -- both mental and physical -- is visibly declining. And on national TV, yet.

Meanwhile, we're winning the war with Iran (we aren't), they're begging to make a deal with us (they aren't), we have a plan to decisively end this conflict if they don't fall in line (we don't), the Strait of Hormuz will reopen completely any day now (it won't), and the economy hasn't taken a massive hit (it has). All of this while spending about a billion dollars a day, after decades of being told that there was no money for healthcare, housing, infrastructure, education, or anything else that might actually help people.

So now the Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for another $200 billion just as we're slashing medicare, and congress has apparently zero information on how they plan to spend it. 

 Y'all, I'm so, so very tired.

 

StV: Meanwhile in Downtown Dallas

None of this should have been complicated. The bank vault was walled in reinforced concrete with a heavy steel door, impassable except that Antaeus could slide through from below and punch the door off its hinges from the inside. That would set off the alarm, of course, but the Witch of the Mists could offer cover while Evil Gecko slid in and helped Antaeus bundle up the take. After that it was just a matter of walking out, while the mists foiled cameras and any guards on site.

It was the spotlight glare cutting through the mists that was the first sign of trouble. The masked figure that dropped down in front of Antaeus was next, but Antaeus punched her into the next block. 

"This way!" called Evil Gecko, as Antaeus hauled their spoils clear of the bank and The Witch of the Mists held her position, hiding them. 

Gecko lifted a manhole cover, and motioned Antaeus down. "That way," she pointed. "Three ladders, then come back up. Spider should have a van waiting."

The Witch of the Mists came up beside her. "Hold your breath and drop," she said quietly. "I'm going to make it very unpleasant up here."

Evil Gecko nodded and dropped down the manhole, rolling as she landed at the bottom. Likely the witch would be climbing down after them, and... yes, that scraping was the manhole cover being pulled back into place. Whatever band of heroes they'd run afoul of, there was a decent chance they'd gotten away. 

Stretched Thin

"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."  ~JRR Tolkien (Bilbo Baggins)
The Fellowship of the Ring

I'm not feeling quite myself lately. I have trouble getting motivated, staying focused, and doing work... but also writing, playing video games -- I haven't touched a Playstation in like two months -- and even reading. (And I've had some really fascinating things to read lately, several of which have been a big help in keeping me cheery.) Dungeons and Dragons remains a high point, whether I'm a player or the Dungeon Master, but while that cheers me up for as much as a day or so, I go back to being sort of blah afterwards. 

Is it because of this thing at work where we're no longer allowed to attend conferences out of state, and have to do battle with a committee to get permission to make an exception? Maybe, partly. I mean, flashbacks to my last job there, and also I'm enrolled for a conference in early April and I still don't know if I'm attending, which is an additional bit of stress on top of the part where attending a conference at all is weirdly stressful for me.

Is it personal/family stuff? Secondborn is going to have to repeat tenth grade next year, but I think at this point we're just kind of relieved to have that sorted out, and she made the selection on where she would attend to do that -- and seems pretty cheery about it. We've the D&D campaign going again for her and her friends, too. Plus, Firstborn is home for Spring Break. So I don't really think it's that.

Is it the unseasonably warm spring and associated allergies? Maybe, partly. I feel like I may have missed my window for a camping trip this spring, just because before long it's going to be too damned hot to go. I can't imagine what it's going to be like by the time May rolls around. 

Or is it watching our federal government -- which my tax dollars help pay for -- being run by the worst people in existence, and making unforced errors with easily predictable consequences that are now impossible to reverse? Because constant exposure to that shit -- and it is constant -- sure as hell isn't helping anyone's mental health. Even trying to be careful about how much news I take in, I find myself overwhelmed. (Not to mention how insulting I find it that this war-that-isn't-a-war is costing us incomprehensible amounts of money each day, after I've spent years listening to politicians try to claim that there isn't enough money to fund the postal system or provide public healthcare or offer public housing or pay our teachers more or-- Y'know, anything that might actually help people.)  And yeah, that's definitely a big part of it too.  

Anyway, if I'm a bit erratic in updating the Blog o' Doom here, that's why. 

Villain: Witch of the Mists

Name: Nadja Jane Whitaker
Alias: Witch of the Mists
Age: 38
Appearance: 6' tall, with medium brown hair and milky skin, blue eyes and a slender, leggy build.
Job: Thief

Nadja Whitaker was set for a life in law enforcement. She had a major in Criminal Justice, a minor in sociology, and a background which included both target shooting and various martial arts. She was on the cusp of getting hired by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department when her background check dug up an incident involving Anomalous powers -- back in middle school. She found herself rejected from the job, and blackballed from the entire industry. 

Enraged, she turned to crime instead, using her knowledge of the system and her Anomalous powers to pull off robberies, foil police, and make her mark on the world. She takes particular pleasure in bringing down dirty cops -- or at least exposing them -- and has been known to help protesters escape from kettling and other police entrapment. 

Her powers include summoning fogs -- harmless, nauseating, or deadly -- and assuming a mist-form herself, though that means leaving behind clothing and equipment. Outside of her profound dislike of law enforcement, she is generally easy-going, and likes to spend her days exercising and her evening drinking beer and playing pool or card games. She has been working informally with Antaeus and Evil Gecko lately, and Evil Gecko's non-violent ethos has encouraged her to stretch her powers far enough to develop a sleep mist that renders its victims unconscious.  

Valthor: The Ancient Book

"Oh, the last third of the book has spells, and we've been using those to build a lexicon so we can translate the rest of it. It's disturbing stuff: necromancy, and conjuration related to necromancy . What really interests me, though," continued the scholar, "is the first section. The title of it is something like, 'story' with markers for both truth and obscurity, followed by 'ground' or 'world', and then 'primacy'. Taken together, it's something like 'The Secret History of the First World'."

Sy, who wasn't a bad fellow for being a human and a priest of the Harvest Maiden, stiffened. Valthor managed not to glance at him, because he had a pretty good idea of why the cleric looked stung. 

Among the peoples of the daylight world and servants of the gods, it was generally taught that this was first and only world. To claim otherwise was generally considered heresy, though the degree varied somewhat from place to place. And there was a very specific belief, not uncommon in the court where he'd grown up, that the Harvest Maiden herself was the last survivor of the gods of the previous world.

Here, and particularly among the clergy of the Harvest Maiden, such a belief was not just heresy but blasphemy. In the court of his former home, the belief had been something else: it had been taught as a warning. 

No, he was definitely not going to bring that up with Sy. Not unless, for some unimaginable reason, it actually became important to know.

The scholar had finished reassuring the priest that he meant no insult, and that perhaps they should expect that a book of evil magics might also include a heresy or three. Sy had settled back, though he still looked disgruntled. 

Valthor couldn't blame him. Ominous didn't even begin to cover this.