A retelling of a short story written by myself for an old Horror fanzine. That story focuses on a particularly eventful evening in the life of freelance photographer Pamela Grey in the world of the Dark Conspiracy RPG. In this story game you take the place of Pamela. 

The world you live in is much like today's, only a little worse.  The rich are richer, the poor are poorer, and the gap between is so much wider. So much is controlled by the mega-corporations and rich interests that large swatches of the ever expanding urban sprawl are marked as "Outlaw Territory, Enter At Own Risk" - where even the police don't go, either for fear or lack of resources.  The middle class has mostly disappeared except for the lowest echelon of corporate execs, and legislative changes have allowed many that would have previously been on the public dole to instead sell their vote to corporate interests in exchange for support. Crime is up, as are disappearances, theft, and violence. Even as bad as the world has become, there are persistent rumors that even worse things lurk in the shadows.  Many neighborhoods have abandoned houses that everyone knows better than to enter, and even in the outlaw where the police fear to tread there are rumors of entire blocks that no one but the mad or the most desperate are willing to risk going into after dark.

You and Susan, your significant other, are doing ok.  Her job with Aprico has afforded the two of you a small place in a small gated community owned by the company. A prized place in the vanishing middle class. Your home is close enough to the gates that you can still easily indulge in your favorite hobby, walking through Chicago with your trusty camera in hand, particularly at night.  The sale of these photos as art pieces to the ultrawealthy, facilitated by Susan's contacts, has helped with sporadic lump sums of money.  Susan pays the bills, but your money pays for luxuries and splurges.

In the twilight one often finds isolated moments of beauty and mystery that would never been seen in the daylight, and you work to capture these moments in the perfect clarity of your lens. You know the risks of being out alone at night outside the gates, but even Susan has had to admit that the last couple of pictures you sold would not have been possible if you hadn't been out there.  To help comfort her (and yourself to be completely honest), you recently bought a large knife to carry with you, just in case.

So, come explore the night and see what waits for you in the dark.

The job listing was simple "Earn 100K » in your sleep!" Having not been able to find a steady job for over a local year and half, you jumped at the chance.

Now, eight months later by the clock on the pod, you have suddenly been awoken from hypersleep to fulfill your role as the emergency backup crew of PrimObs 80085. There is no sign of the regular crew, and even worse, no sign of the rest of the backup crew, so it is up to you to determine what happened and hopefully get a message back to sector command for rescue.

Entry for EndMaster's Prompt Contest 4: Prompt #27) A story involving a space station.

This work is currently being rewritten to include an additional successful ending. If you find a path that appears to dead-end, please come back and try this story again soon.

An entry for MHD's Fairytale contest, this is a retelling of the old Appalachian Fairy Tale "The Little Princess of the Forest".

Come listen to the telling of one of the wildest fairy tales I've ever heard.    This story was originally told by Marshall Ward for a fairy tale collection, and has stuck with me ever since I first heard it.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.  Grab a seat and listen up, as it starts like this...

You have made your way through the city, state, regional, national, planetary, sector, parsec, arm, 64th-, 32nd-, 16th-, octo-, quarter- and semi-finals to arrive with a guaranteed spot in the Finals of the 169th cycle IntraGalactic Culinary Challenge brought to you by Mag King and Gal-actic Robotics held on RecStation 420 in the Lagoon Nebula. When those magnetronics need to sing, 🎶🎶 Call on Mag King 🎶🎶! Do you need a handy robot pal? Everybody wants a Gal!

You face a varied array of challengers and an even more diverse panel of judges to win over in the two round Final. Before each round, you will have time to plan your dish and explore the features of the station. Who knows, you might even find something to help in the contest! Judges and contestants are randomly selected with every read-through, and finding things is done by a random function of your stats, so every new read is a fresh game.

This was originally going to be an entry for EndMaster's Promt Contest 4, but I ran out of time and quickly wrote The Backup

This is a storygame conversion of the Minion Hunter Board Game (and Minion Nation expansion) by GDW, based on the Dark Conspiracy TTRPG by GDW and Dynasty Presentations, with some modernization updates by myself, and is set in the same world as my "A Night in Chicago" storygame.

This is a simulation of a complex boardgame and while I have done my best to add some narrative to the events, it does not have a standard ending that you are working towards.  Every movement is a "round" in the game, and while you are developing your own stats and equipment, the forces of the Dark influences are advancing their plots.  The story ends when one of the main Dark Minion races (ETs, Fae, Morlocks, or Nukids) gains 20 plot points, or you defeat enough plots to run out the plot deck.

Full rules are detailed within.  Give it a try and see if you can save Dark America from the corrupting influence of the Dark Minions.

It was just supposed to be a quick run down to the bodega. Ten minutes, tops. Then you saw something in the alley, and now everything has been turned upside down.

This is incomplete. Sorry, I just ran out time.

Entry for Sherbet's Summer's End Synergy Contest

Did you miss a paragraph between the second and third here? You don't mention anything about the Dolls until the third paragraph so they see to lack connection to anything else going on in the story. You also have several internal contradictions that will be difficult to resolve in the story later.

1. How was the moon self-sustaining before any people got there? Also worth noting that it is more than self-sustaining as it can support multiple moon nations and war production, while still being productive enough to also fulfill all basic needs of all citizens.
2. There very next line indicates that the Moon continued building for 15 years before the Earth declared war. There is implication of a one-world government, and after spending however much it costs to setup a fully automated self-sustaining colony, why would it wait so long to respond to independence with a declaration of war? If there are multiple moon colonies funded by individual countries, that would only accelerate the response of the capitalist countries of Earth to this loss of investment.
3. Why would Haploo and Tergon go to war if everyone on the moon has gone full communist and agreed to share everything? What is there to war over?
4. The sentence "Peach on the Moon besides the Earth-Moon ware was made" is very funny to me.
5. If anything a sudden massive drop in the population would accelerate the nuking as there would be fewer people to protest against it. Why would things slow down, especially since there would be groups blaming the dolls on the Moon, even more so if there are no dolls on the Moon?
6. Where did the Demon Dolls come from and how did they get so widespread so quickly?
7. If they are so indestructable, why would they need a boat to get into China? They could just march out of the sea on to any shore.
8. The current population of the US is 340 million people. 53% of that is 180.2 million people. China's current population is 1.4 billion. 18% of that is 253.62 million people. That means just in those two countries these dolls have somehow killed 434.8 million people (2024 numbers, not accounting for the significantly larger population that will be there in 993 years. How were the demon dolls not the sole focus of everyone left on Earth far earlier? That has got to be more death than caused by the Moon people, so why would you not sue for peace?
9. How are the dolls so indestructable? While flexible fabric, thread and stuffing might ignore bullets, and with proper treatment could probably shrug off flamethrowers and some chemical weapons, with how deadly they are, there would have been nukes used on earth to try to stop them by this point.

The setting has potential for several interesting stories to take place in it, but you will want to address some of these problems before you move the plot too far forward. The initial setup actually reminds me a lot of the history from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".

We all arrived at the abandoned Research Post. It was a massive symmetrical structure of granite set among a grassy rolling hillside near a small pond. The anacondas immediately slithered into the underbrush, looking for wild things to hunt as we marched towards the closest entrance to the building, the north door. By the time we had gotten to it, one of the anacondas had picked a fight with both a cheetah and a bear.

Tattered banners flapped in the breeze on flagpoles to either side of each of the doors into the complex. Ancient alien printing could be barely made out on the shredded and tattered fabric, but without more context it was impossible to decipher what they may have said. The door opened with surprising ease. A long hallway with regularly spaced doors extended before us. Two light columns still shown towards the end of the hall. We spread out with the melee fighters taking the lead and the shooters covering them.

As Endmaster and the other melee folks opened the first door to reveal a small courtyard. The flagstones that had been laid were still mostly in place, although weathering and who knows what else had exposed a few spots of bare earth. As they were looking, with a meowing cluck, a genetic monstrosity recognizable as some abomidable chickencat launched itself from the shadowy ceiling. Anthraxus, Milton and Fresh all got hits on it in rapid succession and dropped it before it could be a threat. A quick peek showed that the other door also opened onto a small courtyard, in even worse condition than the first.

The next two rooms proved to be filled with ruined ancient equipment and unidentifiable steel slag chunks. Other than the light tubes, nothing seemed to be even worth salvaging. All the internal electronics were rusted and corroded, but at least no other monstrosities were lying in wait for us.

Finally, we opened the southern door to reveal the heart of the research post. A huge archowomb, a unbelievably complex machine used to develop and force grow massive genetic hybrids. Based on some research I have done this is a key requirement for growing the crowning jewel of genetic manipulation - the archotech centipede. Given our slow research progress, this would be a VERY long term objective, but would pretty much remove all military concern for most things. It and a mechanoid chip, another critical piece of genetic manipulation hardware, were the only useful things in the center of the base. The westernmost door was oddly cold, and we intiially overlooked the doors that opened into non-cardinal hallways, so we decided to head east first. We had barely stepped into the eastern hallway when were were greeted by the baleful neigh and skitter claws of a massive Spiderhorse. Endmaster led the charge and the shooters opened fire. During the fight Endmaster was knocked to the ground, dropping the food and medicine he was carrying and losing his right hand.

The spiderhorse was cut down before it could cause any other significant damage. Hoping to find some glitterworld medicine in the ruins the group focused on exploring side rooms while Endmaster bandaged up his own wounds. Unfortunately the only thing worth salvaging that was found was a package of harmonoboosters, additives used during genetic manipulation work to help insure the desired gene expression occurs. By the time everything had been explored, Endmaster has tended his wounds and was ready to keep going. Fortunately, the spiked club he was using only needs one hand.

We went down the south eastern hallway, which opened into a decrepit lab. There was a genoframe on the floor, a needed component for any kind of genetics work although this one was obviously shoddy and worn. As we were leaving, planning to return after we had searched the rest of the facility, a wolf with a massive thrumbo horn emerging from its forehead charged at us from some hiding spot in the ruined lab equipment. It got a couple of grusome slashes in on Suranna and TCat, but no permanent wounds before it was slaughtered. To the south, we encountered a very ape-like Humanoid paragon. While they may be talkitive and personable in some settings, this one was mad with rage and presumed hunger. Other than the chickencat, this was the beast most easy to deal with.

Conversely, the Mantistanis that we found in the freezer hallway to the west was a true terror. It was only sheer luck and carful micromanagement of the melee fighters that let us handle the worst idea of the geneticists that previously ran this outpost without any crippling injuries. The freezer of the base housed ancient batteries that still held charge and functional coolers that held the freezer at an unbelievable -300 something degrees farenheit. It was so cold, we could use the hallway outside as just a regular freezer. The last beastie we had to deal with was a Thrumbolope, a bizarre combonation of a Thrumbo and a Boomalope. As fierce as the Mantistanis was, this creature actually scared me more as boomalope typically explode with noteable force when they die. As this beast was even larger than a fully grown boomalope I was genuinely concerned that it's death might destroy a significant portion of the base.

Fortunately, this fear proved mostly unfounded. We were lucky to down the thrumbolope and have time to back well away before it bled out. The explosion when it died was enough to rattle the walls, but actually did far less damage than I thought it would. With all of the genetic monsters cleared we took some time to treat our wounds and organize the loot we recovered and some of the stuff we salvaged from the area.

Just as we were setting to trying to strip the place of anything worth hauling away, we found out that a pack of mechanoids were nearing our location. Fighting them is certainly not worth the risk so we have a suddenly shorted timeframe to scrap what we could. It was a shame that all of the genetic monsters here started to rot as soon as they dropped, as several of them would have provided dozens of meals worth of meat. Just as well, who knows what that might have done to our own genetics.

Even as we were focused on packing up everything we could, Rimworld never stops. Glancing up through the permanent but still always fascinating aurora in the sky, we could faintly pick out minute flashes of light as some number of spaceships flared into combat far, far overhead. While usually something we could ignore, there was always the risk that great flaming chunks of space debris could fall anywhere on the planet. Not that anything could be done about it as all of the colonists had left on this expedition, but I looked back at our home base. Much to my surprise, not only were there a few chunks of space debris that had landed near the base fortunately without starting any fires, but several survivors of the space battle had crash-landed in the general area. Unfortunately, they were all critically wounded and there was absolutely no chance of the gazette staff getting back in time to save them.

We finished gathering and organizing the loot and headed back for home. There was a surprisingly large amount of genetic manipulation supplies left in the base, as well as a sizable amount of hempcrete and steel. We loaded up as much as we could and left the area well before the mechanoid threat closed in. The march back took two and half days, and we chose to push for home due to low food supplies. We'll run back out to the nearby ruins soon enough.

Just a few hours before we got back to the base, we received notification of another delapidated genetics research lab nearby. Knowing what such a lab is likely to yeild should prove interesting to the drive to follow up on this second lab. I'm not sure when it happened, but apparenlty a couple of cargo pods dropped some simple wooden weapons near the base. Literally less than an hour outside the base a single british shorthair cat, driven mad with disease, ambushed the group. It was destroyed quickly, but not before it manages to scratch Fresh's foot. In the rush to get home, we did not take time to treat the wound. Of course this lead to a full blown infection by the time we actually got back home.

As everyone starts to unload the loot from the expedition and Fresh gets someone to look at her infected foot, the mood of everyone, even our prisoner convert Bezro, is hopeful and pleased. Bezro tagged along on the trip and was very well behaved. I don't know that any real progress on his conversion was made during the adventure, but having him along allowed for a little extra weight and made sure he didn't starve to death while everyone was gone. Just as we wrap things up for this update and plan for the next, an entire flock of ducks self-tames and comes waddling up to the base. Guess we need to build a pen real quick as ducks are a great source of both meat and eggs and breed quite quickly.