Dungeons and Dragons – Curse of Innistrahd Episode 29
Magic is a fickle thing. All practitioners know this whether their origins are holy or otherwise. Their intricacies twist and unravel into infinite threads of possibility, from which those lucky strands that are able to be made manifest coalesce as force. From mana to spell. From spell to action.
Viktor hated magic. Not the power it gave him, no that was useful. That let him be more than his skinny frame could be as he trudged the dark hills toward the sleeping giant of the windmill. What he hated was the esoteric rules. They way it pushed back against him. He drifted up the tired worn wooden steps to move to rap on the door.
He had done so much correct and so much still escaped him. The circle he made failed, sending wait staff in pieces to his yards. His undead creations limited and small cramped up in the attic, mostly the bodies of cats he took from the town. But he had practiced and learned. He waited, heart in throat as the noise of shuffling footsteps approached him. Hopefully those sacrifices were enough to prove himself, as the door creaked open.
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Deadlands – Fallen Flags Episode 2
Dear Diary, or whatever one is supposed to say in the entires to their journals: I believe I’ve tracked down the group of people surrounding my employer’s gun to a small town in the center of what is now known as the Disputed Lands. My employer has warned me to be careful, as this area marks both a hotly contested territory for the great rail companies, as well as one of the far edges of my jurisdiction. It’s unlikely that the local authorities will be much help – doubly so because word is traveling through town like a brushfire in May about some sort of haunted fort along an apparently unusually dangerous river. These things are, of course, no matter. Finding them is objective one, and tradition dictates that one should visit the local tavern for information. What, dear Diary, is the worst that could happen?
-Recovered from a dust-stained page in the diary of an unnamed debt collector, written mid-August, 1877
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Dungeons and Dragons – Curse of Innistrahd Episode 28
What does it take to be evil? Was it a lack of morals, like a Shadowgrange shopkeeper charging exorbitant prices for his goods to eek out what riches he can, knowing that the land is dying? Or is it a lack of compassion, the same as a young wizard who had been trapped for so long, using and taking what can further his endeavors and ignoring aught else? Perhaps it is a lack of faith, seen in the cruel blades and sharp eyes of the Stensian hunter and the Vistani assassin? Or maybe a lack of loyalty, held in the plotting vampire with the face of a friend working in the shadows against her keeper? A lack of flexibility, seen in an inquisitor furious at the burning of her town raging against a power she knew not how to face?
Or just perhaps, a lack of fear. Of defeat. Of seeing something as impossible, no matter the costs, no matter the loss? Like a tinkerer searching for an answer feverishly to recover lost love and like an old man in the body of a beautiful tyrant wishing for drive and the soul and image of someone he thought he lost. Committing crimes in the name of the impossible that seems so possible. And that hope sometimes makes all the difference. But perhaps again, maybe this drive was their good.
Who knows what evil is listener, until you stumble across it? Perhaps we will find out.
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Deadlands – Fallen Flags Episode 1
The year is 1877, and the end of Summer is nearing fast. One of the warmest on record, we’re told in the margins surrounding yet another set of “suspicious disappearances” and “freak accidents.” At least in all the papers that used to be worth the paper they were printed on. Nowadays, it seems like the tabloids are the more reliable source. Eleven years ago, the West Coast fell into the sea, leaving spires of so called Ghost Rock. This material proved far more powerful than coal, attracting rail barons, industrialists and scientists alike to the new maze of waterways. Since that day, ghost stories, legends, monsters, myths, have been exploding across the States. And as near as anyone can tell, the truth is becoming stranger than fiction. Back east, the cemeteries are even reportedly cracking open to leave otherwise decisive battles in this War Between the States stalemates, leaving no end in sight. Both sides, North and South, have laid out a bounty, offering immense wealth and connection for whoever first builds a railroad across the continent to what used to be California. Sometimes, in pursuit of these Rail Wars, the ambitious rail companies hire agents, both to deal with these new supernatural phenomena, and with each other. And worst of all, one of those agents has one of my employer’s guns. August is going to be a long month.
-Recovered from the diary of an unnamed debt collector, written mid-August, 1877.
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Dungeons and Dragons – Curse of Innistrahd Episode 27
Hell is real. To what extent is unclear, but the church needn’t have fables of fiends when they came unbidden all too real cackling in the night. There were holes that the Cathars knew about, gaping mouths of flame and sulphur. They dispensed the biddings of chaos and torment, crazed devils in seemingly infinite amounts and scheming demons to never truly be slain. They were portals to so much malign. And from a young age, Lady Wachter was enchanted.
It was one trip on an urgent journey that her mercantile father took her through the Needle’s Eye, her seat in the carriage barely raising her eyes above the draped windowsill. It was there she saw its activity: The Ashmouth, the maw of stygian forces glowing with an ambient menace. It lit the darkening earth in a warm and consuming radiance that felt as though it threatened to draw her off the teetering peaks. Only her father’s shouts roused her from her encompassing focus, as he bellowed at the teamster to move them faster away from the leathery sounds of wings.
She never forgot that feeling. She swore to find it again. There was so much out there. And she needed it all.
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