[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.