28 January 2010

Day in the Liff - El Generalissimo James Turner

“El Generalissimo James Turner, after fleeing communist oppression in the former-Soviet Republic of Eastern Canada, the Generalissimo took control of the small island nation of New Steveland, in the 67th military coup in the nation’s 4 year history.” – Paul Saunders, Narration, The Job

It was a bleak day that El Generalissimo Turner chose to launch his attack on the Haus of Phail, a building that had been stolen from the nearby Union of New Old Real Georgetown. Taking the Haus would be the final nail in the turbulent history of New Steveland, Turner would remake New Steveland into the Republic of Republic.

All was going well with the staged invasion of a stolen monument to a pre-Soviet Eastern Canada, until he brought out the “big gun,” a large nuclear rifle stolen from the Western Alliance of Eastern Members of the Southern North Sea Coastline. The order was carried out by his handpicked “Mover” troops, chosen after the Generalissimo returned from a trip with a pair shady gentlemen, expressing interest in acting upon some job.

The nuclear rifle was fired upon the Haus with gusto by the troops, hoping to see the greatness of the Generalissimo encapsulated by that one moment of triumph. The rifle was of a different mind, specifically, the rile thought “Hey, I’ve got a great idea, why don’t I miss-fire and kill the entirety of Mr. Turner’s troops, causing the Haus of Phail to continuing existing and provide both the idea of a curse upon the Haus, and the destruction of the good general’s name, reputation, and chance at keeping the record for number of coups in five years time firmly at the 90 of the Republic of the Leftmost Peninsula Over On That One Island made in 1892-7”

And so the gun did, the nuclear warhead simply thinking, “Oh, that is bullshit,” before exploding and killing the “crack” troops of the Generalissimo. This explosion ended the ceremony, and the attempt at finding and securing the peace in New Steveland.

James watched as the insane scheme broke into infinitesimal pieces, the Generalissimo after a pause, broke himself, and ran. He fled to island of Old Steveland to live and die another day.

20 January 2010

Day in the Liff - Introduction

In an attempt to force myself to write more, and thus hopefully experience some form of strengthening, I shall endeavour to enact this project, Day in the Liff, stand-alone short stories featuring characters from Loading Ready Run videos, my own mind, and any other location characters can be found. The stories should be, by nature, able to force me to put effort into maintaining this project. I have no excuse now.

In other words, I actually write things, go me.

31 October 2009

The Adeventures of John Wilkes Booth, Part The First

Based on a Concept by Corey Ayers and Brandon Michael Bolin


It was a pleasant afternoon in the theatre the president chose to patronize for the evening; he and his entourage had chosen a well reviewed edition of Our American Cousin to view, and unfortunately not featuring the equally well reviewed Mr. John Wilkes Booth. Even that decision had been made with the utmost care, Mr. Lincoln’s staff knew of the animosity the actor had toward the president, and wished to not spoil the evening for the president or for the actor.

This proved to be a mistake glaring enough to cause tragedy.

“Sic Semper Tyrannis!” shouted the adrenaline fuelled actor, he had prepared the next trick to truly confound the theatre. John Wilkes Booth lit his outer-cloak on fire, and jumped into the chaotic crowd. The crowd, as easy to influence off the stage as on, had taken the bait laid by Mr. Booth and his simple theatrics had been enough to cause pandemonium within the crowd, every man with a cloak was under suspicion, and people were trying to located the mastermind while fleeing the scene of the murder.

An officer on the balcony shouted at the crowd with great force, “Find a doctor, find a doctor, the President has been shot.” This man’s news was enough to shake the mob’s spirit to its core. If pandemonium had already broken loose, hell was now on the prowl in Ford’s Theatre. The people, who had been shouting about a man on fire and a gunshot earlier, were now mourning the president while even more frightened of the now incognito assassin.

Mr. Booth used this lack of order to his advantage, as had been his original plan; he quietly slipped out of the building through the actor’s section, where he simply had to shout the news at the top of his lungs to throw suspicion off of him as being into any dealings of a non-legal kind. This news brought new life to the pandemonium, and Mr. Booth worried that he had misjudged the mettle of humanity, and that his actions would cause both the chaos he wanted, so that his countrymen could rise in defiance, but also a spirit broken in everyway. The people he dodged as he headed toward the door were not only frightened, but they were listless, leaderless, and hopeless. These people would put up no fight to his people’s demands, but they would also be easier to lead, and easier to turn against his people. This was a variable he had not counted upon when he eliminated the tyrant lizard in man’s clothing.

Mr. Booth was finally let out into the street, the people shouting in terror and confusion could be heard behind him, so Mr. Booth took the direction that led away from the terror and started to walk. His plan called for him to meet with an ally at the edge of town and follow the ally through the houses of various fellow conspirators. This plan was still in place, and Mr. Booth expected to find his ally waiting for him at the road to Richmond, and the road to Freedom. On Mr. Booth walked, dodging confused and scared looking faces, lost without their tyrant the people of D.C. were in mourning almost as soon as word got out.

As Mr. Booth rounded the corner, he saw a group of soldiers hassling a group of men go towards the theatre, “Sir, sir, I wouldn’t go that way, haven’t you heard? The President has been shot in the theatre down the road, anyone on the street from that direction is to be picked up and questioned.” This turn of events shocked the actor; the warm gun was sitting in his coat’s pocket, and he would most assuredly be called into suspicion. Mr. Booth looked around him, he was flanked by storehouses erected to support the Army of the Potomac, and one such storehouse entrance was located not thirty feet from where Mr. Booth found himself standing, jauntily strolling to the storehouse door, Mr. Booth planed to cross the interior of the storehouse, and climb out of the building via the ventilation windows that stood at head level for Mr. Booth.

When Mr. Booth entered, he found not a near empty storeroom, but a man in an Army uniform sitting at a table in the centre of the room. This man had not yet noticed the entrance of Mr. Booth, but that would not last for long. Mr. Booth would just have to approach this man and hope he had not yet heard the news of what was expected of Union officers by the hysterical officer from the theatre.

In his haste to deduce a way out of his conundrum with the officer, he almost failed to realize the man was sitting in front of something rather large. The device was rather large, he gauged it as roughly the same size as a large coach. Emblazoned on the side of the device were the letters “TESLA-3,” which Mr. Booth was unable to recognize as anything other than a designation of name. He concluded that the device was called the Tesla-3, and that the man in the officer’s uniform was its owner. As he had never seen anything like the Tesla-3, he presumed it wasn’t a Union weapon, so he felt safer continuing the distance to the “officer.”

The man behind the desk looked up and waved Mr. Booth into a seat across from the man.

“Ah, you must be Mr. Booth,” said the man behind the desk, without waiting for a reply he continued, his voice growing colder and less magnanimous with ever word,” Allow me to introduce myself; I am a man of wealth and taste. I would like to employ you and your, esoteric, skills. Specifically, Mr. Booth, I believe you are the perfect man to pilot this current project I am working on, so I ask of you, Mr. Booth, Are you a Patriot?”

“Good sir, I am a man who stands by his principles. My principles guide my actions, not the authority of the men who claim to represent the interests of my community,” Mr. Booth said slowly, drawing on each word as a reprieve from the verbal knives the man across from him spoke with.

“Mr. Booth, are you a Patriot?” the man repeated, with more animosity in his voice.

“Good sir, I have answered the question.”

“Are, you, a, Patriot?” the man enunciated each word carefully, as if his accent was preventing communication between the parties.

“Sir, I do not need to take this, I am leaving,” Mr. Booth said with force while rising from his seat.

“Mr. Booth, Yes or No, are you a Patriot?” the man had stood up, and Mr. Booth could now see the pistol aimed at Mr. Booth’s chest, Mr. Booth sat back down quickly, “Good, now, answer the question Mr. Booth, are you a Patriot?”

“Yes, I am a patriot.”

“And whose cause do your serve?”

“I serve the cause of the Confederate States of America; I serve the cause of the South.”

“Good, now that that is over with, Mr. Booth, follow me into this cab, and I shall show you the necessary steps for you to complete this project for me,” the man picked up a cane, and Mr. Booth noticed for the first time the condition the man’s uniform was in, the edges were fraying and the colour was faded, it had been a trick of the light that he had earlier mistaken this criminal for an officer. Mr. Booth noticed the man’s laboured gait, as if he had seen combat long before and was feeling the true effects of a bullet wound. He said to Mr. Booth with mass ferociousness, “Mr. Booth, I implore you to join me in this carriage so we may continue our business elsewhere.”

Mr. Booth had decided that it had been decided long before he had stepped into this room that he would follow the man into the Tesla-3, and Mr. Booth had decided that if he were to defy whatever power sent him to this location and time, he would receive his response to his insubordination in a rather mortal way. The answer to his short debate was simple, he chose to live and to serve this odd man who was armed with cane, pistol, and Tesla-3.

20 October 2009

It makes sense in context, kind of.

The Death of His Majesty King Brandon I of Vineyards was a quiet sort, his goal of a moon base had succeeded, and humanity was on the moon, this allowed him to join Comrade Stanislav in death, and presumably in a new game. The now corpse monarch made no such mistake as to trust the word of a demi-god, and Q was the least trustworthy of the all.

The former monarch awoke not in a fire-and-brimstone hell, which was a plus in his mind, but he awoke in a dark room.

“Why am I being narrated?”

Quite simple, you are now in my domain, the question is why?

“Well, I reached an agreement with Q that after my stint as a world leader I would be removed to a place that wasn’t the future or past of the moment I had been whisked away to become a world leader. I guess this is a compromise.”

Well, ah, here it is.

“What? Here what is,” he said into the nothingness nervously, “What? What? If anyone can hear me, let me out of here, help me.”

The frantic calling of this former monarch was too much for this Storyteller to handle. I chose to break one of my covenants with the writer, by picking up an old book; I flicked through the pages searching for the location of the story for, there, SDN World III, the Union of the Low Countries. The man now twitching in the centre of my domain was to become the Chairman of a Syndicalist Commune, the leader during a time period where the countries would be ruled by other elites from a clique, commanded by Q to lead countries of their creation through the fires of war to final victory as the leaders of the world.

So, let us see into that world for a bit, shall we?

“Huh, ah,” Mr. Michaels awoke from his slumber on the desk with a start, he felt a great pain in his forehead but he could not figure out why. In sixteen days he would go from a lowly Trade Union bureaucrat to the autocrat of the Benelux, he lied to himself at no time during the process of ensuring his victory in the election, he was rigging a system to place himself at the top of an allegedly democratic system. If his predecessor had not done similar he would have felt a shred of remorse, but democracy in the Union died long ago, he was just to keep the country from going with it.

These were noble words for a man whose autocracy had just begun, who knows; soon he may look upon his younger self and laugh, what noble words for such a tyrant.

He looked upon his notes he had been reading previously, the splitting headache only just subsiding, the notes were about the invitations to a International conference to be held in The Hague. This was not what he remembered; he turned to the wall that in his office would always hold the massive television that would be constantly playing the latest from VNN, or ShroomSat broadcast. The wall was there, but there was no television, there was only a radio sitting upon an end table.

This sent the Chairman’s mind into overdrive, Q had chosen to alter the deal, and the Chairman prayed Q would not alter it further. He was back in the game, and this game was new. He sat back down to try and reorganize his memories, the memory of his previous life was still flashing before him. He remember the moon base, FASTA, the FUN, the MESS, the Civil War, he remembered it all, but he could not remember this reality, he could not remember how he had made it into this position, or what the position actually was.

He would have to look at the facts he instinctively knew, the year was 1924, the last days of 1924, and he was in an office in The Hague, in a Union of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. He was originally an American citizen, though he was now a citizen of the Union. He had previously been the Minister for Security for six years for the previous chairman, where he had obliterated and rebuilt the Union’s government to the point where he would be the Chairman after the death of the incumbent. He could recall, slowly, his actions that led to the murder of the former chairman, and the words spoken to him by that same man whom he would later kill, “This, Mr. Michaels, is why I have chosen you to be my heir, to be my political switchblade, to paint the room in the guts of both the enemies of the state and my enemies. Not because you issue any personal loyalty to me, but because you would only kill me when you know you can do better.”

Mr. Michaels, now sure in whom he was, where he was, and when he was, stood up to pace a lap around his “new” office. The office was a simple office, nothing of note was hung on the walls, and nothing on the desk seemed to mean anything. Reports littered the desk, and folders sat half-opened. The desk was the desk of a bureaucrat, not a showman, or a politician, simply a worker’s workspace, optimized for operations at the cost of appearance, et cetera.

The office, devoid of personality, was also the office of a spymaster, of a man whose projects were based in the liquidation of assets, human. Mr. Michaels, as the former monarch/chairman-elect should refer to himself as, was a former Minister for Internal Security, like the FBI, the KGB, and other policing units within a country, his position was politicized. He was the end result of dirty Trade Union practices, he organized strikes, order assassinations, prepared riots, extorted employers, beat enemies, and other deplorable, but necessary actions to maintain the function of the Syndicalist State.

His career, and his aforementioned discussion with the Chairman, led him to take the reigns of the country in an odd manner, after the death of the Chairman, he had expected the Deputy Chairman, newly elected Jeremy vanHumbeck, to lead the country to the end of the term, but the Deputy immediately called for an emergency Special Election for chairman, which Mr. Michaels’ Centrist Coalition won by allying with the right-wing Modernist Front.

11 October 2009

To Craft a Plot from Nothing.

Where to begin, where to begin? Ah. A MacGuffin, perfect idea me, a nice taste of coherent plot structure before I hit them with a complete lack of understanding of history, physics, or whatever other science I will choose to punch during my little jaunt.

To explain this MacGuffin, hence force simply titled the MacGuffin (not my idea, blame the writer’s obsession for that name, he insisted.), I will need to establish the nature of the universe I rule. It is a simple one, almost, but not quite, entirely like the universe the writer has only a passing knowledge in. The major difference is in the facets of the universe, I can see from here three different mutations along font of ideas the writer calls his mind, contorting to the bastard offspring of cyberpunk/fantasy novels; the combination of Star Wars novels, Larry Niven, and Dan Simmons that makes for a place with jedi and Odysseus; and Jeopardy/The Lion King. Well, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see those and just start with the story of the MacGuffin canon.

This universe has functional magic, in that it has one artifact, the MacGuffin that can perform feats of magic. That keeps it simple. The universe, though I will probably never have to use this bit, also has the possibility for Star Wars Hyperdrive level speeds, just because the damn writer can’t live without that cop-out. It also contains a personal, “Rule of Fictional Death Sequences,” in which I reserve the right to keep people alive for as long as I wish after death, mostly because I see the advantage of that plot wise, but in some reasoning as I don’t want it set in stone how long it takes a henchman to die from beheading, just to keep my heroes guessing.

Now, the MacGuffin’s magic, the artifact of such power an might it is named after the cliché used to describe it. The MacGuffin is a gun that shoots, fuck it, it is a wish fulfillment artifact, and it can make anything happen to the wielder. It is also an orange party hat, with a clock stapled to it.

The MacGuffin is sought by multiple factions, one of which I choose to focus on for this length of discussion, a faction I will now declare to be Chaotic Evil (look it up if you don’t get it), the World Freedom Expanders. The group is headed by a man simply know as Mr. -------, his name is known only to himself, and myself.

Mr. ------- has the appearance of the Monopoly man, and chose to cultivate this look to allow him to inspire even more confusion in his enemies, and world is full of his enemies. His group seeks to end all government on planet Earth, and if I my stories head in the direction I know the writer wants it to, on other planets as well.

Mr. -------‘s group is primarily antagonized by the Church and Army of the Status Quo (A Subdivision of Catholicism), an organization that wants to find the MacGuffin and either destroy it or hide it deep within the Vatican vaults to protect the public from the temptations of magic that isn’t of their design, or something, their pamphlet is a dry read. The Church and Army is much better fund, but the least fun group to focus on, not only because they don’t fail, they also actually have some sort of structure beyond, one gun yells at a bunch of hapless henchmen.

Which transfers nicely into Evil Inc. Corp. Ltd. A group of nutcases run by a hilariously megalomaniacal nitwit. The company previous to the nitwit’s involvement was known as North Atlantic Oil.

So, in summation, the MacGuffin, a party hat of infinite magic potential; Evil Inc. Corp. Ltd, drunk villains; The Church and Army of the Status Quo, cultists, ehhhhh; and World Freedom Expanders.

Now, to find the viewpoint character…

04 October 2009

Welcome

Hello.

I am your narrator, your presenter, your alpha... No, I shall not attempt to quote a work I am no master of. I am the storyteller, I am not a protagonist, antagonist, flat or dynamic. My words are the words of the story, and I plan to project only little bias into this work.

I cannot be reasoned with, I cannot be challenged, my word is law. Every event is as I, and I alone, say it. Reality follows my will. But I am not the writer, no, the writer is not I. I am just the storyteller.

My tales may make no sense, they may contain overarching plots, they may not. It is my choice to decide. I will try to keep them entertaining, but I make no promises that the translation from thought to word will make anything I witness consistent, true, or entertaining, I am just the storyteller.

I answer to nothing, I don't exist. I am just the storyteller.