3/22/2023

1/14/2026 10:26 PM

1013

3

13 wins / 9 losses

Architect

A night in Dark Chicago

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 Backup

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 ending where you are able to actually escape the station. If you find a path that appears to dead-end, please come back and try this story again soon.

The Little Princess of the Forest

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...

169th Cycle IntraGalactic Culinary Competition by Mag King and Gal-actic Robotics

unpublished

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

Made of Star Stuff

unpublished

The Sun has become unstable and the models say we likely have less than a few thousand years to find a new home. The Confederation of Nations (CN), the overarching world government, has appointed you as the new Director of Exploration and Resettlement and charged you with finding a safe place for the population of the world to move too if the long-shot Solar Rejuvenation project fails. In this role, your decisions will determine the ultimate fate of mankind. Can you find a way for humanity to survive?

Minion Hunter

unpublished

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.

 

 

 

 

Witness

unpublished

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voting will end on this on Sunday 1/18

Ideoligions are one of the most complex aspects of Rimworld. This article goes into depth about the various aspects of it. Suffice to say that an ideoligion is defined by it's structure, memes/precepts, and style.

The varous structures define the ideoligion's relationship with god-figures, and some of the open up specific rituals. Our current structure grants access to the "symbol destruction" ritual as a general mood-booster, like a party. This structure does not have any other impact.

The memes/precepts have a much bigger impact on the actual practice of the ideoligion and there are a ton of them. Some of them, such as Cannibal, Blindness, Tree connection, or male/female supremacy drastically increase the difficulty of the game. Memes are really just collections of precepts.

Finally, we could select a style. As mentioned elsewhere, the style really just impacts the kinds of clothing folks will wear and what certain weapons and clothing looks like.

Sorry, been distracted trying to wrap up a storygame so I can start on my contest entry. Anyway, on with the next episode!

No need to wait on things, with the resounding decision of the prior vote, we go straight to the role change ceremony for End. Everyone gathered up, with EndMaster and Mr. Nobody having a deep conversation as they walked together. EndMaster delivered a long and stirring speech, thrilling the crowd. He showed real vulnerability, spoke to his hopes for the role, and wrapped up with a note about how his cooking skill will allow obstacles to be overcome. Everyone enjoyed it and left the ceremony with a notable increaes in thier mood.

With that requirement out of the way, everyone took a break long enough to eat something. Suranna used the break to continue working to convert StarGirl to Cystianity. Once everyone had a moment to rest, we moved on to the next voted directive, performing a void provocation ritual to summon a new anomalous entity. Milton let the ritual, but all the main members joined in.

As the power of the ritual swelled, the air seemed to pulse and warp around the participants. An odd droning filled the air. Several of the animals in the near by pen were drawn to watch the strange workings so far beyond their ken. The ritual completed and the energy rushed out from the ritual circle. A dark psychic pulse called to strange entities that we have not yet encountered.

After the ritual everyone dispersed, although some interesting conversations were started. Based on prior experience we were expecting that we had a day or so before whatever we summoned showed up. This proved very wrong as we almost immediately saw strange translucent figures dashing across the fields and between the trees.

It took some doing to find one as the ghost-like entities were very fast, but we finally spotted one running across the stone field to the north of the pen. Just seeing their invisibility inaction opened the kernel of an idea of how to use some bioferrite to build an interference module that will provide some coverage for our folks in a firefight. Perhaps we will research that next, once we finish our current topic of electroharvesters.

Because of their speed and invisibility, it was hard to tell when the assault finally ended. For all their speed and spookiness, the ghosts proved to be not very dangerous hostiles. While they miss frequently and don't do much damage even when they hit, they can really absorb a lot of damage.

Unfortunately, when you finally defeat a ghost, they just evaporate. This means there is nothing left to capture like with the fingerspikes earlier. On the plus side, one of them drops a dark shard when they are defeated. No idea where they were hiding it, but these will be useful for other anomalous constructions later. Literally as soon as we popped the last ghost, we were hit with another raid! Two assholes from Byttenden came charging for us, but I have a feeling our ever increasing number of guns will make short work of these primitives.

To make sure it is handled as quickly as possible, everyone gathered up and advanced to meet the raiders before they even crossed the river. The fight was over almost before it began, even with the raiders trying to split up at the beginning. We weren't able to capture either one as they died from their wounds during the fight. After the fight everyone retired for the evening and spent the morning relaxing before we turned to our last voted action, the skip abduction.

Milton again lead the ritual. The mad ramblings of the ritual seemed particularly powerful. Dark energies swirled around and a form began to appear within the ritual circle. With a flash and loud bang the figure solidified. As predicted by the vote, it was a horrible inverse mockery of our fallen friend RK, KR. At least he had good armor.

KR has a good spread of skills, but with his main interests in shooting and melee combat and his abrasive attitude he really is the opposite of RK. Just like anyone grabbed this way, he will be in a coma for a few days. He is hauled to the cell next the StarGirl, who's conversion is still ongoing. She is very close to breaking, however.

Arriving unfortunatly too early to be able to take advantage of it, a pair of traders from Eastern Eumonla, one of which is KR's uncle, wander in. It is very unlikely they will still be here by the time he wakes up. Even worse, they didn't even have anything worth trading. They must have said something persuasive, however, as shortly after they arrived Crosswell decided that the time had come for her to leave. This is unfortunate as it will still be a bit before StarGirl is fully converted and recruited to make up for her.

Less than a day after the trading caravan and Crosswell left, a lightning storm rolled through the area. Several lightning strikes near the base had everyone out in the fields putting out fires. Much prefer regular thundershowers that tend to put themselves out. Despite that heat and tiresome work, everyone chit-chats while fighting fires. I'm not sure when it happened originally, but as I was looking over everyone after the fires and recent fights, I noticed that both Anthraxus and Mr. Nobody have developed fibrous mechanites. These things are both a blessing and a curse, as they boost manipulation, mobility and blood pumping significantly, while also increasing the amount of pain the bearer has and increasing the chance of bleed outs when wounded. With regular treatments they will eventually go away, but that is usually on the order of full quadrums (roughly a three month stretch) or years.

Between EndMaster's new conversion ability and Suranna's tireless efforts, StarGirl finally converts to Cystianity. Not only is this a notable milestone in making her a member of the staff again, but it also generates enough "ideoligion points" that we can tweak something about our own dear ideoligion. This could be as simple as swapping out the symbol we use, to changing some of the fundamental memes that define it.

Just as a reminder, our ideoligion is a simple one. Our structure is ideological, which means that we do not believe in gods and the moral structure of the universe is found in our grand narrative of social forces. As a fluid ideoligion we only start with a single meme - prostelyzation. This means that we gain ideoligion points whenever we convert someone to our faith. A list of the available memes are shown below.

Immediately after her conversion, Mr. Nobody gets to work with recruiting her to be a full member of the staff. While this and the normal day-to-day maintenance of everything keeps everyone busy for a day or two, it isn't long before we are raided by terrible genetic monstrosities! They are driven made with pain and hunger, and seek to kill us all.

The three monstrosities are pretty weird. One is a catbear, a cat-size bear, and another is a chickenbear hen, basically a bear headed chicken. The last is a rodent paragon, a genetically ideal rodent. They each move at radically different speeds, which turns what might have been a difficult fight into three separate, fairly easy fights.

The rodent paragon was much faster than the other two, but was only able to manage a single bite on Suranna before being killed. The catbear was even less effective, getting killed before it is even able to close with anyone. The chickenbear moved so slow that we actually had to go hunt it down instead of waiting for it to come to us. Unfortunately, because they are diseased, they are just going to rot and not be usable for anything.

Well, certainly a lively and combat focused update. After destroying the mutations, we were finally offered a new question, our first in nearly half a year of game time. The request is for fourteen shadecones, a style of hat, to be delivered to a nearby Eastern Eumonla settlement. They are offering two payment options: the first being some advanced components and gold, neither of which we have an immediate need for, and the second being a legendary newspaper and some uranium. The newspaper is another good thing to read for recreation and may have an emotional appeal for our transplanted Gazette staff. The uranium isn't immediately necessary, but it is a good trade item and will be useful later for weapons and armor.

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So onto the votes for this update. I think we will run through them in reverse order.

Vote One: Trade deal with Sparland.

• Option 1: Accept for the components and gold
• Option 2: Accept for newspaper and uranium
• Option 3: Accept for goodwill
• Option 4: Ignore the trade request

Vote Two: Ideoligion Changes. Please see the first comment after this post or the link article to see more information about the additional memes or styles we can add.

• Option I: Add Ritualist - gain ideoligion points for doing rituals, make anomaly research faster, but mundane research slower.
• Option II: Add Transhumanist - Makes adherents more likely to want body mods and dislike body purists, but also allows for a research specialist role that might compensate some of our scenario based research slowness.
• Option III: Add Mad Scientists - This is a mod added meme so it's harder to get hard information on it, but I think it also enables the research specialist role and will help compensate for our research slowness.
• Option IV: Add High Life - promotes more smokeweed usage (as well as other drugs). Mood buffs, but everyone that is high works slower at whatever they are doing.
• Option V: Add the meme suggested below.
• Option VI: Add a style instead. Little game play effect, but will tweak what the weapons and clothing we make and wear looks like.

Vote Three: Anomaly Research - We are almost done with electroharvesting. What should we look at next?

• Vote A: Interference module - this is a defensive device that will add some cover for our folks when they are near it.
• Vote B: Void sculptures - Uses shards to make sculptures that will improve ritual performance.
• Vote C: Summon animals - the other option from the last time we had this vote. Will summon a random group of animals (usually manhunters), but good for getting more meat and leather.

That one is mentioned in the wikipedia article.

Sorry, I missed linking to the actual article. Only the first was definitively convicted, although he was sentenced to a reform school instead of jail. The fate of the others is sparse or non-existant without more research than I am willing to do at the moment, although some of the older murderers listed in that article were also definitively convicted, with most being sentenced to reform school. It's not until you get into the 10 year olds that you will find them killing victims with blunt force, and even then the victims are younger than the killer.

I think that adds a lot of anecdotal evidence that the youngest child is not really a viable suspect for committing the murders here.

In the article Will references lists 4 6 year-olds convicted of murder, although only 3 include a summary.

• Mahan shot eight-year-old Cecil Van Hoose on May 18 1929. He was sentenced to 15 years in a reformatory, but his sentence was later overturned.
• He (unnamed boy) shot his six-year-old classmate, Kayla Rolland, at Buell Elementary School on February 29, 2000. His uncle, the gun owner, was charged with involuntary manslaughter.
• Cook intentionally set her two-year-old brother's clothes on fire while she was babysitting on February 27, 1899. The fire burned through the fabric and he died.

Can you once someone replies to one?

There are a few trusted folk that are not mods but have post editing capability.

Found some additional references that CrowsFault may have been inspired by as well.

https://x.com/CrowsFault/status/1502001835779014666?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

This appears to maybe be a play on the poem "Hope is not a bird, Emily, it's a sewer rat" by Caitlin Seida

That poem is a response to "Hope is a thing with feathers" by Emily Dickenson