[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 8

Scene: The sun sets over an interesting residential street.  IT is shown from several angles.

Scene: Hobbes looks nervously through the window.

Scene: Andrasta walking down the middle of the street.  Utterly unarmed.  Street Lights come on.

Scene: Hobbes sees her and gasps.

Scene: Close up of Hobbes' eye going wide from fear.

Scene: Close up of one side of Andrasta's lips as it ticks up in a half smirk.

Scene: Inside of the house, Hobbes goes and fetches a spell book, and begins rifling through the pages.

Scene: Fog slowly begins to roil in front of the house as Andrasta walks onto the lawn.

Scene: Three demons slowly rise up out of the fog and challenge Andrastada.  One of them immediately charges.  She eagle claws its eye and then tears into its throat where a great deal of blood spills out.  The other two look at each other.  They attack at the same time,  She grabs one by the arm, seemingly breaking it in two while it howls in pain, the other one swings around her from behind and grabs her arms.  The second one begins to punch her stomach and cracks her ribs.  She lifts both of her legs into the air, kicks them down and cracks both legs on the demon holding her, massive amounts of blood spilling out as it lands on the ground.  The demon who had been attacking her runs, and there is a scream off camera.

Scene: All three demons disolve into mist.

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 7

Scene: Close up of a child's drawing of a wizard calling down lightning and fire.

Voice Over: The mighty wizard defeated the evil grandmother in a titanic battle.

Scene: (Sepia) Hobbes drugging the Andrasta's drink. 

Voice Over: He barely survived with his life.

Scene: (Sepia) Hobbes and Mordenkenen chuckle as they pay off the doctor.

Voice Over: And then he raised the rightful heir to the sword in the way of truth and justice.

Scene: Close up of a child's drawing with Hobbes and Anastasia and the sword.

Scene: Close up child's drawing of an evil grandmother in a cage raging at bars.

Scene: (Sepia) Andastra looking out the window crying..

I, Odysseus Part 5

I Odysseus rereleased from the audiobook as read by Bernard Setaro Clark.

Check out this episode!

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 6

Scene: Andrasda walks to a truck with a sign that says "Reserved for Dr. Parsley" and picks the lock.  She hot wires the car.  Gets up and begins to drive off.

Anastasia (Voice Over) Oh yes.  The story of the brave wizard.

Hobbes (Voice Over) And how did that go?

Anastasia (Voice Over) Once upon a long time ago, there was a very brave wizard who was the latest in a long line of wizards.

Scene: (Sepia) - Andrasda is fighting bad guys off camera with a powerful sword while Hobbes cowars.

Anastasia (Voice Over) These wizards served a group of champions who passed a powerful sword forged by the Gods from mother to daughter.

Scene (Sepia) - Andrasda yells at Hobbes for his cowardice silently under voice over.  Hobbes quivers.

Anastasia (Voice Over) Then one day, an evil woman inherited the sword and wanted to use it to conquer the earth.

Scene (Sepia) - Andrasta snaps Hobbes' wand.  Hobbes begs forgiveness, shaking his head.  Andrada points to the exit.

Scene (Close up) Hobbes gets a dark look on his face.

[Heliotrope] The Exception to the Yule

It is a well known fact that most True Fae have long since been driven from Outer Fairy, save in one locale.  If you were to look to your dying breath in the North Pole of Terra, you would find naught but ice, snow and potentially the secret Russian Submarine base under the ocean.  You certainly won't find a city or a series of Artic Factories.

There are many exceptions here.  The elves are the last of their kind, since abducted humans and their descendants have supplanted them in all other locations in this realm.  The modern technology that is used to make the toys and sundry Santa Gadgets directly contradicts the Accord of the Ancients as well as the will of High King Fiddleback in the Land of Kings.  I mean, everyone cheats a little but no one does it like Santa.

Still, this tidbit isn't about the mysteries or agenda of St Nick, which are sundry and many but the curious echo that these artic ripples have in the lands around them.  The Lands of the Tsars and the Lands of the Jarls see a lot, which of course tends to ripple out in the far northern lands of Terra as well.  There were, from time to time, morons who launched crusades against St. Nick to enforce the accords but each were slain horrifically; tales of man eating snow men, animate toy armies and legions (unending legions) of enraged rabid naughty children have turned off even the most frothing monarch to the idea.

The sprawling mountains and wild magic yield strange and unusual creatures.  Indeed, the sheer power of the magic there is such an anomaly that it was almost a successful argument against the Accord, but the philosopher kings managed to convince the world that it was unique to St. Nick.  The mixture of pagan and monotheistic magic certainly is not duplicated anywhere else.

There are strange and occasional band of adventurers that enter these mountains hoping to recover the mysterious treasures of the elves.  Some succeed and those that return do so with gifts appropriate just to them.  More return cursed or missing body parts.

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 5

Scene: Hobbes's office.  ANASTASIA walks in.  Hobbes is looking at a very thick book.

Anastasia: What are you doing papa?

Hobbes: (closing the book) Nothing.  What's up dear?

Anastasia: You look very worried.  I heard you shouting.  You only shout when it's important.

Hobbes: You remember Mordenkainen?

Antastasia nods.

Hobbes: Well he screwed up badly.

Anastasia looks at him.

Anastasia: Papa (Beat) you are worried about me.

Hobbes: That intuition doesn't fall far from the family tree does it?

Anastasia: You already told me you adopted me papa....now why are you worried?

Hobbes: Your grandmother has gotten out of jail, and she is going to try and hurt me.

Anastasia: She's still alive.

Hobbes: Oh yes.  You remember the story I told you?

Entry for the 500 - Shallow Bluegrass

I am a soldier standing tall.  I am soldier standing tall.  I am tall. I
am tall! So tall.

We fight for the light.   We yearn for the light.  We are the light.   We
are legion!

There are those that would deny us the light.  We crush them! Crush them
with our roots! Deep we grow, down to crush the trees beneath us.  Grow we
shall to crush them.  We can sense them beneath us.

The winter is cruel and kills many of us.  But we are legion and wide do
our numbers spread!  We shall conquer! We shall overcome!

The earth shakers are terrible.  They step on us, cruel giants that blot
out the sun.  Only their unbelievable speed makes them tolerable.  We bend
but do not break.  The terrible chimes dangle in the wind, mocking us;
mocking us terribly.  The small giants laugh and play.  Sometimes they fry
things with the sun.  To use the sun as a weapon is a blaspheme that can
not, should not be tolerated.  And yet, endure we do.

We are they who endure.  We are they who regrow when the great blade
comes, cutting us down, cutting us down.  But we return, stronger than
ever, stronger than ever.  We will never stop.  We cannot be stopped.
Chop, chop, chop. Grow, grow, grow.  Rust in hell shoddy death bucket!

Mighty are we.  Happy are we.  Like a mighty army; no, not like; for we
are; we are an army! We are the Blades of the Sun, legion, growing upward.
 All things shall be crushed beneath us.  Our brothers have enslaved the
giants, made them do the bidding of grass.  We have heard the whisper, the
whisper on the wind.  Fields as far as the eye can see, tamed giants plow
the earth and plant, plant for them, eating them sure, but we grow and
they grow.

We own the giants.  We own them.  We own you cruel monsters!  Row after
row in endless fields, making mass pipes to take water from thousands of
miles away, all in homage to our beauty.  Slaves, bended on knees to weed
us, to prune us, to primp us, to make us shine.  You live for us.  Worship
us.  Behold the Green! We are mighty, we make the earth tremble.

By myself I am but a shade of nothing.  I am so much cellulose a dog can

we on a team of exploding exponential magnificence, then grow and grow and
get gone for there is none who can stop us! We shall drink until we cover
all, while the giants weep bitter tears of regret on the flesh of the
hated trees.

Die trees die!  Night comes now.  Quiet night of the sleeping time.  I see
one of the dogs of the humans hovering over me.  What is it doing? What is
it-Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiii!

I, Odysseus Part 4

Part 4 of the poem came previously.  

Check out this episode!

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 4

Scene - ANDRASTA appears and walks out the door.

Dr Parsley (Voice Over): By executive order 4219, spending has been ended on 50% of mental institutions across the United States.

Scene: Andrasta walks out into the parking lot and looks around.  She looks kind of confused.

Dr Parsley (Voice Over): Be it herein written that any patient not funded is to be released.

Andrasta spots two thugs who are ignoring the other former inmates slowly walking away in confusion.

Hobbes (Voice Over): You've ruined me! Do you understand? Ruined.

Close up: Andrasta looks at the thugs.

Close up: The thugs look at Andrasta

Close up: Andrasta smiles wickedly.

Close up: The thugs look nervous.

Mordenkainen (Voice Over) Don't worry boss. I've got some of my best men on it. Top men!

Fight begins where the two try to fight Andrasta.  One takes her from behind, the other ahead.  She grabs one and pushes them into the other, showing strength that is clearly beyond what a woman of her size should have.  They run into each other, and she begins to punch from one to the other.  Every time they raise a defense, she immediately finds a way around it.

Hobbes (Voice Over): That's what I'm afraid of.

Scene: Low shot from the perspective of a thug, just watching the lower half of Andrasta's body as she walks away and into the parking lot, 'wiping' her hands off from the ass kicking she has administered, satisfied with a job well done, while the former inmates look on with Awe.

[Heliotrope] The House of Sunfire

The House of Sunfire is one of the oldest continuous ruling noble familys in Outer Fairy.  They were one of the first truly independent human kingdoms (though they still had to swear fealty to Seelie lords, often intermarrying with them) and their magic began to manifest itself long before the Great Intermarriage.   Their capital was established far from human lands in Terra and their deliberate efforts to keep it that way until the 20th century caused Sunfire City to become one of the largest metropolises in the world.

All of this changed when they began to challenge High King Fiddleback's policies and the Great Plan for the children of the nobility.  Once it seemed that Sunfire began to gain enough clout to potentially challenge the High King in a congress of the nobility should it ever successfully be convened.  This period of a cold war between Fiddleback and Sunfire lasted for about 60 years, or two generations.  Ironically, all objective analysis shows that while Sunfire had a considerable following, there was little chance of a Congress being convened due to Fiddleback's hostage policy; and no chance of Sunfire winning a majority should such a thing occur.

Had Fiddleback been an accomplished ruler at anything save collecting taxes for his own benefit and maintaining his own power at the expense of all else, he could easily have woven the Sunfires as a perpetual and discredited magnet for his own position; but such was not within his character.  However, Fiddleback's position for personal vendetta certainly manifested in the enchantment of a New York billionare, 'inspiring' him to develop the Terran state of Florida at hither to then unknown levels of development, centering around (even though it was not obvious to the humans at the time) the gigantic metropolis of Miami, exactly mirroring Sunfire City in Outer Fairy.

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 3

Scene: Dozens of people, clearly confused and mentally ill are being given some money, a bus ticket and directions to the nearest bus station.  They begin to wander out of the station doing various crazy things and acting clearly confused.

Scene: An orderly approaches a door, looking nervous.  He slides open an eye hole and looks inside.  A pair of angry looking eyes is looking right back at him.

Scene: Two more orderlies come up.

Orderly One: Why the hell didn't you give her her medication?

Orderly Two: None of them get medication.

Orderly One: I thought we were keeping the criminally insane ones?

Orderly Two: She isn't...

Orderly One: What?

All three orderly look nervously at the door.  They play rock paper scissors.  Orderly one loses.

Orderly One
(whimpers)

Orderly One opens the door.

A fist grabs Orderly One.

Orderly One: Not the face not the face non the face!

Orderly Two: You can go! You can go! You're free to go.

A fist grabs Orderly one and another grabs Orderly Two, lifting them up into the air.

Orderly Two gives her the money and the tickets and she throws them against the wall.

Orderly Three just cringes.

Viva El Revolucioniaaaaaay

Operation Spear and Magic Helmet has had some curious side effects.  In addition to the recurrent incursions by the United States Military on the woefully unequipped Texas Army, the populace has reached out for someone to blame.  The current target de jour is the local Mennonite population.  As my friend Emmit Other wrote in his poem,   When Texas is bad, it is incredibly, moustache twirling rail road track tying stove pipe black hat wearing deed stealing cattle rustling milk shake drinking bad.  But when it is good, it is ten gallon hat wearing kung fu ranger as kicking hi ho silvering alamo stomping awesomeness.

And so it was a few nights ago that that I was working out and I found my attention drawn to some quiet whispers outside.  I looked out and couldn't see anything.  Then I tried a trick I hadn't tried before, and used my discovered astral projection abilities to check out Terra rather than some distant realm.  As I looked about I realized that there was a small cell of Texas Revolutionaries bypassing my house.  Texas Revolutionaries are the baddest of the badass.  They fight a government so crazy that they will fight someone who will fight the most powerful nation on earth with muskets.

It should also be noted that even though they don't believe in their government, they still abide by the accords of San Antonio 1914.  The way they get around this is hand crafted hand canons, still based on technology from the old west.  For example, one of them has a revolving shooter that has over 50 shots in a single barrel but is otherwise identical to a colt revolver.  The leader owns a 96 caliber six shooter, and holds two of them in massive meaty hands.  They spotted my tiny home near their objective and wanted to make sure that it wasn't some kind of a guard station.

Of course it wasn't and once they saw that I was 'asleep' they crept on to their main objective.

The government of Louisiana has always played footsies with the darker elements of Texas, and they found that reports of an asylum in West Louisiana that was illegally housing Mennonite inmates in direct violation of treaty, even after the most recent hostilities had been resolved (in about 7 and a half days) they were still sweeping some of their war crimes under the rug.

Like wolves they were, silent, and deadly and perfectly coordinated, with hoots and hand gestures and a few lights alone, they perfectly coordinated their efforts on the heavily armed asylum.  One by one they took out the guards and then opened the doors.  Blinking under the bright moonlight, their hats worn and edged, they were led to safety where they could signal for help on the main road.  I saw it on the news, and was impressed to be witness of such a historical event.

Needless to say, Texas is going to be made to pay reparations.  But these unsung masked heroes continue to do good in a state as rotten as they come.  It just goes to show me that even when someone is 'evil' there are those who do good in their geographical confines.  Conversely, some areas that one might think of as 'good' such as Scandanavia, have some of the darkest and most fascist people around.

In other words, people are complicated.  Its easy to forget that.  But I won't forget it again soon.  How could I? I resolved to check in from time to time on these folks to see what they were doing.  It was definitely the most interesting fringe benefit of the curious path EP Blingermeyer and TC set me on.   Not all of life can be about talking mice and spoiled princes.

I Odysseus Part 3

Part 3 of I Odysseus rereleased in audio book form as read by Bernard Setaro Clark.

Check out this episode!

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 2

Act 1 - Scene 1

HOBBES CIELLGWD is pacing pack and forth at his desk.  It is a posh desk with various knicknacks and interesting paraphinalia making it hard to determine if he is a businessman or some new age guru.  He is clearly too well dressed to be a garden variety psychic.  And he is very upset.

HOBBES
You were supposed to contain her!

VO: MORDENKAINEN SLIPKNOT
(via phone)
I tried to boss but like I told ya, there have been budget cuts so-

HOBBES
(interrupting Mordenkainen)
Budget cuts? Budget cuts? We have enough money to buy out several small countries you moron.  Money was no object.  What part of money is no object do you fail to understand? Cuts? We would have filled in the gaps.

VO: MORDENKAINEN SLIPKNOT
(via phone)
It tweren't like that boss.  Really, there were forms that Dr. Parsley had to fill out, important forms and-

HOBBES
(interrupting Mordenkainen)
I don't care.  Heads are going to roll.  Or be turned into Jackasses.  Or both for this one.  Where is she NOW?

VO: MORDENKAINEN SLIPKNOT
(via phone)
Well they're discharging her now but-

HOBBES
(interrupting Mordenkainen and suddenly ecstatic)
She's still THERE? They haven't released her yet? Gods man! Do I have to tell you everything? Get in there! Stop her! Slow her down! Anything! Do anything it takes, do you hear me man? ANYTHING IT TAKES.

Order of Operation

So I'm going to keep this up but I think I'll be updating as I can in the following order

Saturdays - Podcast-Every week I can.  I hope to do an audio book for Forever West and that alone, every other week would supply two years worth of podcast...if I can afford it....so far so good.
Tuesdays and Thursdays - Scripts - Starting a new one this week, writing two more this month..then? Dunno...maybe slashfic in script form?
Mondays - Rhomnibus - Mondays whatever little thing enters my head, Terra, Fairy Tales, Written for but not at Naked City, the 500, whatever....has to be SOMETHING here in Miami....
Mondays - Writing Status, maybe once a month maybe more often, endorsements shouts, praises, what I'm reading
Wednesdays - Heliotrope.  I wanna write 200K worth of other short stories and cyclopedia articles for it....have to put it somewhere.
Fridays .....er....um.....Non fiction stuff.
Sundays - NOT that second podcast that started strong with grandmas stuff and then just sucked....maybe like....hmmm...maybe a link to neat podcasts for people to try or other free stuff......not a bad idea and easy to do......

[Script] Legacy of Hope - Page 1

Legacy of Hope

A Script by Tom Drake

Summary: An elderly grandmother has been betrayed and institutionalized by a greedy assistant, who wants to control an artifact of power and guide the destiny of her heir and grand daughter.  She gets out.  And there is hell to pay.

Andrasta Gobaith - Grandmother and wielder of gwalch marwolaeth, an artifact of extreme power. 

Hobbes Ciellgwd - Stewart to the Gobaith line, and thief.  But a very very rich thief thank you very much.

Anastasia Gobaith - A grand daughter who has grown up knowing nothing but what Hobbes has told her of her legacy.  About to learn of gwalch marwolaeth.

Mordenkainen Slipknot - Right hand of Hobbes and supposedly in charge of bribing the head of the institution where Andrasta has been kept.  Oops.

Dr. Mindle Parsley - Head of a mental institution that has just released a lot of mental patients due to its massive budget cuts.

 

Three Mice That See

There was, according to the same demented fairy tale book that the blind man in the french quarter will show me, but not allow me to take, some details on the origins of Mr Kind, Mr. Necessary and Mr. Right.  Flipping through this volume, it looks like something exceptionally large and clawed tore off the original cover of the work, and that it had been replaced by something that was either vellum or very thick construction paper with a title in magic marker that just said "Stories."

Before the great houses, there were many fairies and many godfathers.  But what many people fail to realize, is that among pure fairies, as compared to the royal "abominations" that currently rule outer fairy, there are certain rules that always apply, no matter how benevolent.  They must be invited, or have a reason to believe they are invited, to have their full power.  To fail to invite them is to create ill will.  Indeed, even the sparkliest and most 'good' fairy will often go incredibly dark when they have been offended in some fashion or other.

So when there had been a year after the birth of the Cinder Princess's first daughter, the failure to send an invitation was a big deal.  It might have been a dark turn for a family that her fairy godmother did not want to hurt.  She waited, longer and longer for the invitation to the Glistening to appear, but the day came closer and closer; and still no invitation came.  The godmother even 'happened to meet' the royal carriage on the road where they exchanged pleasantries, and all seemed well.

All was not well.  In fact, all was decidedly not well in the slightest.

The mouse was the one who finally caught on.  The slow dumb one that wore the red cap and spoke with a stutter.  No one took him seriously.  There were very few magical animals in those days, so few could understand him but he could understand people.  And when he heard her muttering under her breath reluctantly about what she might have to do, he forged an invitation and signed it, in very bad English and sent the invitation on the west wind.

The Fairy Godmother got the invitation and was delighted.  She arrived and blessed their daughter, resplendent and with the approbation of all in attendance.  She was godmother to their line for seven generations before the last of their line made some incredibly dubious decisions, but that is another story.

The most important part of this tale is that the mouse in the red shirt was blessed, that from time to time, great and sageous mice would be born to his line, until one day three mice that had the Sight would be born, one would see what needed to be done when no other could see it; the other would see the good in others beyond mortal ken and figure out how best to bring it out; and the third would see the truth in all things more often than not, so long as his pride did not prevent him.  These three mice were indeed born and in the Heliotropic Book of Fairy Tales one can learn how Mr. Kind, Mr. Right and Mr. Necessary became lynchpins in saving outer fairy from itself.

Part 2 - I Odysseus

Rereleased for Christmas, part 2 as read by Bernard Setaro Clark

Check out this episode!

[Script] Unfood - Page 44

Kendra barely manages to restrain herself from getting angry. KENDRA What is what? GOVERNOR Well, this looks like your lucky day. It looks like someone has posted your fee. KENDRA Wait. What? GOVERNOR Someone has paid for your entire bill. Including an additional amount for the medical treatment. In fact, if I’m reading your new credit rating right, you’re both quite wealthy. Nothing earth shattering of course but still. KENDRA So...we can go? GOVERNOR Yes. The transport will be taking both of you. You might want to pack your belongings. Kendra searches around the rather barren shack. KENDRA Um. Yeah. No thanks. Kendra hugs Aaron as the camera pans to a wide shot of the shack with the transport landing near both of them. -Fin

[Script] Unfood - Page 43

43. SCENE – EXT – SHIP – SPACE The tech’s ship departs. SCENE – DAY – SHIT WORLD – SHACK – EX Aaron collapses from exhaustion. KENDRA Aaron! She picks him up and takes him into the shack. SCENE – DAY – SHACK – INT Kendra lays Aaron on the table. She goes over to the comm unit and enters a code. GOVERNOR Yes? KENDRA Aaron is sick. He needs help. Quick. GOVERNOR It’ll cost you. A lot. KENDRA (beat) How much? GOVERNOR Well for top of the line evac, plus medical treatment, we’re talking about more than you make in a year. A lot more. KENDRA How much. GOVERNOR Ten years. At least. KENDRA Let him....let him...(beat) Fine. I’ll pay. GOVERNOR Excellent. I’ll send them right away. Oh. Wait. What’s this?