Sworded Tales

Later that evening Elizabeth limped home cursing the boy for what he had done.  The chill wind blew her wet hair into her eyes as streams of anger ran down her face.  The night was deep and dark, and the girl did not notice the inky apparition traveling beside her.

Elizabeth started, noticing the slate colored companion that lurked at hand.  It spoke to her in a soft murmur, “Fear not, Elizabeth. I am here to help,” and with slick certainty the girl acquiesced, accepting its arm to help her walk. Continue reading

I live in a world of shattered fragments.  We all do in truth, but I think I tend to dissect and reassemble the reality around me in a more fervent and chaotic continuity than most.  Bits and pieces floating about and woven together, snipped and tucked, burnt and recreated to better suit.  All of this morass is my own personal primordial ooze.  Good stuff.  Lovely stuff.  Enough to drown in.

I am forever uncovering snapshots of my gaming life, the history of those who I have created and destroyed, loved and lost, worshipped and shunned.  Oh, there are so many I have shunned.  So, so many.  Point being, I often marvel at how a simple glimpse into a past thought process can recreate the picture of what I was planning to do, what essence I envisioned.  Don’t get me wrong, I also come across those doozies that are seriously like W-T-F is this and that rekindle nothing, only continue to sleep the stink of rotting fish.

Not this one though.  This one brought a nostalgic smile, and that is often enough to make my day.

Satheris – Level 3 Eladrin Wizard Continue reading

A long time ago, there was a young girl named Elizabeth who lived not too far from this very lake in a small cottage.  A truly beautiful creature if ever there was one.  Long flowing sunrise hair, slim and lithe, with a smile that shattered dreams.  Young Elizabeth would often times spend her afternoons frolicking around the lake, chasing butterflies, or skipping stones.

Living around the other side of the lake in a run down hovel was a boy just about Elizabeth’s age who was called Horace.  He always spied on the beautiful girl when she passed near his dwelling, watching her and following her any chance he could.  Horace was enthralled with her magical nature and with the way the sunlight danced across her hair.  He had dirty brown hair, and often time people would make faces when they saw Horace coming. Continue reading

Demonmauler

Demons walked the days, and no one could see them but Gabriel Trask.  His years preaching the word blended together, but he carried on as his mind continued to decay.  He was cast out for his beliefs, shunned by those he sought to protect, and still he walked on.

Infernal forces were massing.  The City thrummed with their blood, and the air reeked of ash and sulfur.  In the desperate days before mankind drowned in hellfire, Gabriel Trask’s prayers were answered.

God offered the artifact to him, shining with the purity of the heavens.  Gabriel reached for the weapon but hesitated, questioning his faith to the calling.  The hand of God waited patiently, and a voice echoed with infinite serenity.

“Demonmauler must once more rise against the coming darkness,” God uttered with perfect conviction, offering the weapon to him, “You have been chosen.” Continue reading

Lisa Nelson worked part-time as a bank teller for a local branch in Wichita, Kansas.  Living at home with her mother and father, Helen and Glenn, her twin sister, Abbey, two German shepherds, Zeus and Cabal, a cat, Lena, and four goldfish, allowed her to concentrate most of her time on her studies of botany at one of the local colleges.

Alexander Smith was a messenger who happened to befriend Lisa while delivering several packages to the bank.  The two teens hit it off magnificently and began dating soon after.  Two and a half months later, Lisa was pregnant.  Distraught with fear and uncertainty and against her parents’ better judgment, she decided to have the baby.

One Thursday evening about six and a half weeks into Lisa’s third trimester, she was unusually agitated.  Alexander had not arrived at her house to take her to dinner.  She tried calling, but his phone had been disconnected.  She feared the worst.  Standing there in her bedroom, tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared out at the starlit sky, the gibbous moon casting a hollow glow on everything in the back yard.

Had Lisa waited another three seconds before turning from the window, she would have seen the shadows come to life and move towards the back porch of the small ranch house, but she was across the room and out the door on her fleeting gymnast feet heels of her hands wiping the tears from her cheeks. Continue reading

Cherry Charges

The money was always good for an exotic dancer named Cherry Popper. The hours and the maw pawing of hands? Not so much. Especially where the mob was concerned, but a girl got by no matter how many greaseballs tried to liberate her from her tassels.

Cherry took to the pole with a finesse and ferocity that hinted at talent buried deep within her genetic past. Headlining at the Barracuda Lounge brought about the performances which eventually landed her in the lap of Damiano “Cheeks” Mancini.

Dodging the mafioso’s advances for months lasted until their dance culminated with a public slap to the face that sealed her fate. Her next performance was supercharged with a pole that rocked her with electricity when she grabbed hold.

The scorched body that disappeared off of a stainless steel morgue tray wound up in the Rogue Isles with a new name and a new plan. The latent energy burning within her multiplied each day, and soon she would return to the Rogue Isles to give Cheeks his sweet goodbye.

Continue reading

Lt. Douglas Heller was listed as missing in action during his second tour of the Vietnam War in 1968.  Elizabeth Heller never quite tackled the adverse loss of her beloved and developed a drinking problem which lead to her spiraling downfall.  Raising two children while her husband disappeared in a dense jungle in some foreign country had not been her idea of the perfect family.  Her alcoholism led to dancing at a local bar that catered to the more carnal side of the Salt Lake City populace.  Prostitution followed shortly thereafter in an effort to maintain some financial stability for her children and to fuel her vices.  A faulty method of birth control left her pregnant with a son in the spring of 1973 to an unknown father.

Joshua Malcolm Heller was born February 3, 1974, five weeks premature, following a devastating car accident which hospitalized his mother for two weeks.  His older half-sister of six years was psychologically traumatized, and his older half-brother of eight years perished. Continue reading

Samurai Maia

“Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amidst the storm.” –Samurai Maia

Her origins were as much a mystery to her as to those who witnessed her arrival in the ringing aftermath of a fearsome bolt of lightning.

The locals had referred to their recent climatology as the Season of Storms, despite the inaccuracy of all other means of weather prediction.  So the rains came, and the flooding washed away the transient.  The hail peppered the landscape, and the winds set afloat all that was not earthbound.

Amidst the entire fury of the world, Maia appeared in a moment of stunning serenity, arriving bearing nothing but the slender blade clenched tightly in one hand.  Glancing down at the singed earth between her bare feet, she raised her head and stepped away from the spot, joining the fray with the zeal of ancient warriors of old.

Long Division

The Ministry of Autonomous Teaching in the Home was a short lived research project after complications surfaced with the initial prototype. The government funded effort focused on creating a cybernetic intelligence through application of nanotechnology. The Long Division unit was engineered to educate basic arithmetic values in a small scale setting, but the AI quickly exceeded the program parameters and began reapplying its fundamental code on a progressively larger scale. Continue reading

Deep in the Andes mountains along the border of Chile and Argentina beneath the shadow of the menacing volcano Copahue, an ancient legend has been passed down for hundreds of generations. The archaic religions, in what is now the Neuquen Province of Argentina, tell of a great spirit that burns beneath the towering mountains, guarding the edge of the world from that which lies beyond.

The tremors that regularly shake the villages of the Neuquen, flex a little more violently than usual as dawn creeps across the lush landscape. The steamy clouds of acidic vapor lingering above the cratered summit reach ever skyward as hot gasses spill from hundreds of new fissures in the volcanic crust. In the nearby homes below, silent prayers are whispered to ancient gods in hopes of soothing the mountain spirit back to sleep. Little do they know that forces are in motion which will change their lives forever.

Today, powerful energies will coalesce deep within the heart of Mt. Copahue preparing to bring the volcano back to fiery life.
Today, the gateway which has been closed for over a thousand years will be split asunder.
And today, a legend will be reborn. Continue reading

A largely nomadic people, the Strongheart Halflings are roaming clans of culture and vitality, dotting the southern landscapes of Faerun with their memorably militant ways.  One of the sacred places, the Wild Rock Oracle upon the Arnrock within the Lake of Steam, serves as neutral ground and a focal meeting point for all the Strongheart clans, friend and foe alike.  Every three turnings of the seasons, a new clan is selected to serve as the oracle’s keepers and protectors.

The Hearthblade clan, renowned for their facility with crafting and employing a wide assortment of Halfling sized pole arms, was serving as keepers of Wild Rock during their first summer season when the Crimson Pox came upon the land.  With little warning, a red speckled fever erupted, the living began to die, and the dead began to rise and wreak havoc upon their kin. Continue reading