Patrick

To answer a question I received via PM: the timeframe of the game shall be around the beginning of the 20th century.

They had not expected to hear a baby crying. The sound was quickly followed by a canine yelp, as Tug unceremoniously landed on top of Spot in some dark and damp cave. The soft whimpering of the baby came from nearby.

 

This was what his father had always talked about when he mentioned stories of his Uncle Greg. Uncle Greg was a knight in shining armour, who did the kings bidding, saving damsels in distress, slaying dragons and single-handedly defeating entire armies, if Tug's father's stories were to be believed.

 

This was an adventure, of the scariest sorts. In the pitch black of the cave, Tug and his faithful companion had to save the helpless baby. Its crying was actually quite annoying, and Tug groped around blindly in the darkness, not sure whether he cared more about saving the baby or stopping the awful crying somehow...

Sign-up shall be open for a couple more days, to allow those who expressed interest the time to come up with a character.

One thread title fixed.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

Sorry couldn't help myself, but seeing the title this was the first thing I thought of...

Tanny/Mynx...I love that character idea.

Disclaimer: This WW game will not respect the kid-friendly rating. It should go to the Scarlett Pen, but in order to allow Honoured Guests to also take part it will take place in the Conservatory. Take part only at your own risk.

 

Lupine Asylum actually has nothing to do with wolves. Maybe a couple centuries back these four-legged hunters prowled the peninsula upon which the sixteenth century mansion was situated on, but the last wolf had long since left these lands and moved where humans did not disturb its existence.

 

Lupine Peninsula wasn't really a peninsula, only at the lowest of tidal cycles did a narrow stretch of sand connect it to the mainland.

 

The asylum had taken over an old mansion. Whoever had once lived there had long since been forgotten.

 

The asylum contains the worst of the worse...rapists and murderers who had a good lawyer and managed to plead insanity, people truly insane. Multiple personalities, personality disorders...you name it, this asylum has it.

 

The guards are equally bad. Only the scum of the prison system was sent here, mostly as a punishment for real or imaginary mistakes. If needed the guards have used and will use force, maybe even lethal force to subdue a prisoner...or even one of their own. It is always easy to justify that this place makes someone go crazy...

This WW game won't exactly be like the others. For one thing, in order to be able to explore the characters involved in a bit more depth and to compensate for the general slowness of the Pen as of late, phases shall be longer. Quite a bit longer. I'm thinking maybe having one week for night phases and two weeks for day phases. Roles will not be revealed when someone is killed or lynched. I might also spice up the roles, but exactly how is still under consideration.

 

Since this WW deals with pretty bad people, as per the disclaimer at the top of this post, expect unpleasant mental images and unpleasant words (to put things mildly).

 

Sign ups are open at least until the beginning of June. Feel free to pay one of the "residents", a guard, a visitor (they'll get stuck in the asylum...) or anything you can come up with that fits the setting.

Well, skype is fine too, I have one lying around.

Happy Mother's Day to all Mothers out there!

 

Glad to hear that.

 

You should come on to MSN some time, been a loooooong time since we've chatted.

Heyhey! Long time no see!

 

Thanks for dropping in and commenting.

 

How have you been?

Welcome, welcome!

 

I hope you'll stay shall be a pleasurable one. Peredhil seems to have taken care of all explanations, so I'll just say that if you encounter any technical issues while using the site, I'm the one to turn to. I'm the geek (should that be the geekest?) of the bunch.

Thanks for the comment.

 

Nguyen is the most common family name in Vietnam. I am planning on explaining the name at some point since James and John are very not-Vietnamese. As you said it's just starting. For once I have somewhat of an idea where I'll want it to go, of course ideas are made to be scrapped.

Anyone feel free to continue this story from where I've left off. I had an idea for an ending, but couldn't see how to get there. No, I won't reveal the ending I had in mind and this thing doesn't have to move that way. Feel free to add any length to it. I'm just curious to see where this'll go.

 

Once upon a time, in a kingdom very far away from all that we know lived a young boy named Tug. Tug, a lively boy of unkempt black hair and matching black eyes was the youngest of a family of five sons and five daughters. His father, a beast of a man, over six feet and two hundred pounds had been a lumberjack for the bulk of his life and only when his hands had grown weak and his knees feeble and his sight deserted him had he finally hung up his axe and given himself over to his second passion in life: dice. Tug's mother, by contrast, was a frail creature, several heads smaller than her husband and looked as though a stronger wind could snap her in two.

 

Our story starts in the twelth year of Tug's life on a fateful day when his father's usual luck with dice deserted him and he found himself in the debt of some very unpleasant men. This specific day Tug had spent in the woods with Spot, the family's faithful greyhound, who showed the signs of age as much as Tug's father did. Spot had been a faithful companion to the whole family for many years and in his old age no longer had to work, he just savoured the pleasures of life.

Awesome.

Saw a couple of movies recently. A couple old ones and a few newer ones.

 

12 Angry Men - definitely one of the older ones. Great acting from nearly all of the actors. Not much in terms of action, romance or all that, just some good acting. Quite enjoyable and time hasn't degraded the quality of watching it. 4.5/5

 

Seven Samurai - time has not been kind to this movie, in many places it was visible how things could have been much, much better with modern filmmaking techniques. Still it's very easily visible that it was a revolutionary movie at the time. I had watched it in Japanese with English subtitles. I still prefer watching a film in the original language, even if I don't understand a single word of what is being said (apart from samurai, ronin and the other usual suspects...) 4/5

 

The Wrestler - I did not know Mickey Rourke prior to this film and so it did not surprise me to see him come back (read afterwards that he hadn't made a movie in some time). He played brilliantly in the movie, carrying the whole thing easily. I'm not really a fan of wrestling (hurting oneself for the amusement of others doesn't seem a smart thing to me) but the movie was quite enjoyable. I haven't yet seen Milk so I'm not sure which of these two was more deserving of the actor Oscar, but this one definitely would have deserved it. 5/5

 

The Reader - lovely movie. The acting, while not brilliant flowed quite nicely. What was unsaid in the film actually added more to it than what was said. A great movie about the consequences of WW2 in Germany. 4/5

 

City of God - Probably the one I liked the most from this bunch of movies. A very hard movie, due to its subject matter. The mostly amateur actors actually work quite well, since first-time gangsters don't usually know what to do either. Definitely worth watching in the original language, judging by the subtitles the English version isn't perfect. 5/5

 

Gran Torino - If, as things stand to be, this'll be Eastwood's last acting film, then he gives a great performance to end his career. Others in the film however...unfortunately in this film it's quite visible that some of the actors were amateurs. Still, the story is good, and the ideas behind it well though out. 4/5

The rain was pouring.

 

It had been raining hard all morning and there was no sign of it letting up anytime soon. The ground was already drenched and the water ran over the ground in riverlets, gathering in deepening puddles in the hollows.

 

The dark mood of the weather was perfect to describe the dark mood in the graveyard.

 

The priest had been the last one to depart, leaving the solitary man alone at the side of the freshly dug grave. He had neither umbrella, nor raincoat and both his hair and clothes were thorougly drenched. But still he stood motionless in the rain, barely taking his eyes off the inscriptions in the marble.

 

It was visibly new compared to the other gravestones nearby, not yet weathered. In a couple years it would take on that appearance that marble gets when exposed to the elements, but it still had that polished look to it.

 

James John Nguyen

April 19, 1984 - September 12, 2008

 

No "loving father", no "beloved husband". There was no family left to remember him. And truth be told, most of those present at his funeral hadn't come because they had been true friends.

 

"Did you know him?"

 

The rain-soaked figure did not reply, but simply continued to stare at the simple gravestone.

 

"Excuse me?" the voice asked again.

 

The voice belonged to Sergeant Simms of the Metropolitan Police Force. She was a veteran of the force, having served nineteen years, starting on the streets and slowly working her way up to detective. And for the last seven years she had been investigating the man whose body now lay six feet under the ground.

 

"I did." She was caught off guard by the answer, suddenly not expecting it after the long silence. "In a weird way I guess I had been his only friend this side of the world."

 

The man turned around, revealing an unshaven face, but still with youth in the eyes. "Officer," he said while tipping an imaginary hat. Raindrops trickled from his hair as he made a slight bow.

 

"Care to share his story?" Sergeant Simms asked.

 

"Buy me a drink and I'll talk all night long. Let's go someplace warm, I'm soaked," the man replied, only with a trace of an accent betraying that he was not a native. On closer inspection he had the characteristic eyes of someone from Eastern Asia.

 

It was over a warm pint of Guinness in a smokey London pub that he started to recount the tale of James John Nguyen, which had started more than twenty four years ago in the jungles of Vietnam.

Written for a roleplay at another forum, but works quite nicely on its own. It was cowritten with someone else, me writing the beginning and the old man's actions and point of view, and other person writing the young man's point of view.

 

(originally posted at: http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/showpo...p;postcount=156 - Calaethis is the one I collaborated with)

 

Silence filled the morning. In the few minutes while the sounds of night gave way to the frivolous sounds of morning, only silence reigned. Sure, a leaf would rustle here, a drop of dew would gently fall to the ground from a blade of grass, but sound was not present. Not for him. His whole attention was trapped by the golden rim of the sun's disk, lazily rising above the distant hills through the mist. Such a beautiful sight. The gently rolling mists created an effect of a halo around-

 

The blood-curdling scream that cut the air was almost expected. Something had to shatter the idyll. Such a calm moment was not realistically possible. It always had to be ruined. Always.

 

For several more minutes he did not get up. His joints were too creaky, his mind still elsewhere...and why should he have cared anyway? It was just a bloody scream. Just a scream.

 

It was just a young girl. Old enough to realize what had happened, but young enough to not be marked by the sight for life. A woman...maybe a man with long hair on second thought lay facedown in the grass, his hair, skin and clothes burnt almost beyond recognition. A weaving trail through the dark indicated his struggle to have come this far. His death would not have been a pleasant one and his last few hours...maybe just minutes would have been spent in burning agony as he felt his own skin...No the image was too vivid even for the old man to contemplate. He had seen many things, but this was easily one of the most disturbing.

 

The girl did not notice him and he chose not to disturb her grief, heading towards a column of smoke beyond a cover of trees.

 

Badly burnt carcasses of horses and blackened timbers were all that were left of a rather large building, possibly an inn. Bodies...or at least piles of ash resembling bodies could be spotted here and there. Whatever had happened here...whoever had done it...it had been done in a total disregard for human life.

 

But it was not the magnitude of the disaster to have befallen this small village that caught his immediate attention. He felt drawn towards a figure sitting on a charred log.

 

"Those heathens!" Someone cried out, from amidst the broken bodies. No one paid much attention to him. Someone else was crying.

 

The figure on the log did not look up, but another - perhaps the crying one - called out, "Help us! Please, help us..."

 

The dejection within the air covered them like a cloak, suffocating any hope they had left.

 

The old man slowly made his way to the log. Neither his advanced years, nor seasons of madness had prepared him for anything like this. He simply did not know of anything that he could say or do that would help. He wasn't a healer...never had been really good with words. He was just an old man...and at times like this he wondered whether it was the world that was wrong and not something with him.

 

The figure on the log looked up, "Get away from here, old man," he said quietly, his words less of a threat and more of a warning, "Save yourself from the madness that has taken us, the chaos that has ruined our lives."

 

"I..." he paused, unable to put the feeling to words. "I...don't really have anywhere to go, haven't had anywhere to go for as long as I remember." If he had heard or said any more desperate words in his whole life, he could not recall. As the hopelessness struck he sat down on the log, a respectable distance from the stranger.

 

"As for madness claiming me...do not worry yourself about that. "

 

"We have enough burdens of our own," the young man spat, "We don't need more trouble." He waved his hand, "look around you. Our world is ending. This is just the beginning, another village no one knows or cares about. We aren't the first, we won't be the last."

 

The old man sighed. "Three weeks ago I was regarded as a prophet, someone who could tell the future by a group of people who might have had crazier ideas than I could ever come up with." He drew a pipe from a shirt pocket and started the meticulous process of cleaning it. "And now I'm not sure whether they were right to try to cling to the small shards of hope that they perceived in a dark sky of hopelessness."

 

"What's your point, old man?" The younger one asked, too bitter to really care, and yet, paid attention despite it. "If you're so powerful, why are you sat here? Shouldn't you be out saving the world?"

 

"Powerful?!" His laugh was a dry laugh, showing his age. "Just because I look crazy, act crazy enough and am a bit crazy and am able to sprout utter horse crap for hours on end people regard me as a mystic man. If I truly had a power do you think I'd be sitting on this damned log watching this village start the slow process of destroying itself?"

 

"You tell me."

 

The slow process of cleaning the pipe had finally been finished and he carefully started filling it from a pouch yellowed by age. "You are a rare young man. Young by my standards of course," he turned to glance at the man sitting just a few feet away, not even having looked at him properly so far. "Not enough people are simply willing to listen."

 

The young man simply waited, refraining from snapping back in sarcasm. It wasn't as if he had any better to do, now that the pub was gone...

 

A tinderbox was withdrawn from yet another pocket and the pipe expertly lit.

 

"Now imagine me doing all this pipe-lighting business in the dark corner of a tavern, with a hood drawn over my head, my long white hair poking out from under the hood and my ominous eyebrows being lit up by the light from the pipe. It is an image from fairy tales. It is easy to play off stereotypes and make a living from them, one just has to look the part. It helps if you don't have to play the part too..."

 

Frowning, the man did as he was bade and waited.

 

"Were I to sift through the ashes and start proclaiming mystic phrases, mixing in a word of gibberish or two and start making mysterious allusions to a future yet to come, do you think anyone here would question who or what I was and how the hell I had gotten here? I'd happily wager that not one of them would find my appearance unexpected after whatever happened here last night."

 

"Who would listen?" Came the reply, "Do you really think anyone cares about mysticism, old man? No one cares. The only thing anyone wants is a better life, riches and power. Can you provide that? If not, you're wasting your time."

 

"Are you so sure of that? I'm sure that the little girl crying over that body would give anything for five thousand gold pieces now and would not care a bit about having that hand she is so desperately grasping stroke her hair one more time." The old man sighed and disgustedly emptied his barely started pipe. "You'd be surprised at how well mysticism works when people are going through hard times."

 

"Then again...I am but a crazy old man who spouts nothing but horsecrap...No reason to believe what I say."

 

"None at all," the man agreed, "until you can prove it. So, 'prophet', prove it."

 

"I can't prove that I am a prophet. I can only prove that I can act as one."

 

He slowly stood up, not noticing that the pipe dropped from his lap as he did so. He brushed his white hair back and the foul wind carrying the smell of burnt bodies hit him in the face.

 

He slowly walked towards the ruins of the tavern, a shuffling walk, noticeable simply from the sound his sandals made as they dragged through the dust and ashes. Not many noticed his passing, not many cared about an old man moving through the wreckage of destroyed lives. The enormity of the situation took long seconds to sink in. Dozens of bodies lay among the wreckage or had already been pulled out from it.

 

His voice was frail, wrought with age and smoke. It wasn't loud, but had that quality that good orators strived for, the quality to be heard. Not all listened to his first words, some took several sentences to even notice that he spoke.

 

He was not a dramatic orator, he did not speak with hands raised towards the heavens to indicate favour or anger of gods. He simply spoke.

 

"Heed me, for I have been allowed a glimpse of what has passed and what is yet to come! Heed me, for I am an old man, who has been allowed to live long years. Heed me, for I wish to speak. It matters not who I am, it matters not how I got here or why. The only thing that matters is that you are not alone. A week past the fury of the gods struck, reducing a once mighty city to a pile of rubble. In a single day hundreds of lives were extinguished as though they were candles to simply be blown out!"

 

He stepped up the stone steps remaining from the foundations of the inn.

 

"I was there and was allowed to witness as the skies opened and spewed forth flames and ashes. I was there when the prisons opened, spewing forth the scum of the earth. I was there when the lords abandoned their people, choosing a cowardly death! I was there and I have seen!"

 

"And now this! A pitiful village is struck by divine vengeance! The gods act in mysterious ways, but I have seen the way they act! They bring but death and destruction. The gods! I have been granted pity, for I pity those childish beings who act more like infants than massively powerful beings. I pity them for needing to show off their power like a bully would! And I defy them to strike me down now if I speak falsehood." He continued after a sufficiently long pause. "The gods have deserted those whom they should never forget! For who are gods without believers? Who are they without ritual sacrifices and wars waged in their name? Who are they when in desperation for attention they perceive they do not get they kill the very people who revere them? Who are they but misguided children? Can you tell me who they are if not infants unleashed in a playground where dropping a grain of sand causes the death of thousands!"

 

"I am not one to tell you what to do, enough people already do that. I am merely here to tell you of what I have been allowed to see. I have seen a future."

 

"A future without gods whose tenets govern every bit of your lives. A future where you can do what you want without fearing for your life because you transgressed a law made centuries ago and which the priests told you about. A world where you can do what you choose to do. If no one believes in something, it does not make it not true. But if enough people believe in something they can make things happen. Remember that even the greatest floods once started out as a simple drop of rain."

 

He closed his eyes and held out his hands.

 

"Thank you for allowing me to share what I have been allowed to see."

 

He remained motionless, not saying another word.

 

The man muttered to himself and went back to his brooding, hanging his head on his log for a few more moments.

 

The survivors however, were listening, in equal measure of disbelief, fear, awe and hope. Who would dare say such things?

 

Eventually, the young man rose to his feet and snapped, "Get out of here, old man. We don't need to hear any more lies. Your words are just dust on the wind: they are meaningless. Unless you can help, we have no reason to listen to you."

 

Several of the crowd echoed him with grunts and jeers, but the rest remained silent, seeing how the old man would react.

 

"I care not how you interpret what I say. I care not what you do. I am not here to judge who you are, nor what you've done or shall do. I tell the truth as I have been allowed to see and leave any possibly interpretations to you, young man. If you choose to interpret my words as lies and continue to believe in gods who allow a young girl to cry over the dead body of someone she dearly loved, I will not stop you. But you would be blind to only see one side of a coin, for a coin can not exist with only one side."

 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meaningless words." the man shook the old man's words off, "It means nothing. Who cares about 'gods' or anything like that? What do you have to offer? Meaningless!"

 

"I offer you nothing. For all I can give you is words. I can not help you rebuild this place, for I have not the strength. I can not offer you words of comfort, for only time can heal this place. I can not offer revenge against those who did this, for it is not within my power. I can only offer images of a better world. But it is a world you would have to build, for I'll surely be dead by the time it starts to be built. So yes, you are right, I offer only words. But it is more than any here have offered."

 

"Then you are useless!" The young man snapped, "Words mean nothing. They are as the wind, lingering then fading! What is it you want?!"

 

"I want nothing more. I have said what I had to say and people have listened. I do not want anything more." He stepped down from the stone steps and slowly made his way back towards where he had spotted his pipe lying in a pile of ash a couple dozen feet away.

 

"Then all you do is waste our time!" The young man snapped.

 

Someone behind him agreed, and muttered, "Burn him." A few others stared, and then nodded grimly. "Burn him!" the cry went up, "Burn the warlock! Spare us from the wrath of the gods! Burn him!"

 

The young man stared at them as if they'd gone mad, "Wait a minute-"

 

"Burn him too! Burn all who would seek to test us, that we would be found wanting! Burn them all!"

 

"Children..." the old man muttered under his breath as he calmly continued walking towards his pipe. "They get burned and now they can't stop playing with fire..."

 

"Burn him! Burn him for the gods!" The fact that most of them were atheists didn't matter now. "Burn him to right things!" The mob formed, "Seize him, burn him! Burn him on a pyre!"

 

He reached his pipe and picked it up, placing it to his lips. Smoke rose from the pipe, which he happily puffed on.

The board might be vulnerable to spam sent via private messages (real person signs up, solves the captcha image and then the spam bot takes over).

 

If anyone gets/got spam via a PM, either send me a PM or an email at patrick.durham (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll take care of the offending users.

 

The board was offline for some time today, it was because we were automatically patched for this problem by IPS and the patch didn't go perfectly. Nothing has been lost.

Happy 26th Wyv!

 

(sorry for the OOC post)

Fatso scurried around the ground, swerving behind the Wii, his little feet almost soundless among the whirr of older machinery and the soft purr of new generation gadgets. His teeth were firmly clenched around the Wii's power cable, ready to tear it and electrocute himself in the process, when Slimmo emerged from his hibernation mode. With a scream of angry electrons he sent angry pulses to the brain of the pesky rodent and after several frantic nanoseconds, managed to calm the overgrown rat down sufficiently.

 

Sorry about that... he emitted over wireless frequencies to the Wii and then made Fatso move someplace safer.

Happy birthday both of you!

I'm at 127.0.0.1

Now we're toast...

 

*hides*

*steps in wearing his most formal attire*

 

"As Elder of Techy Tinkering I feel it my duty to point out this."

 

*steps out with a wide smile on his face enjoying Wyvern's surprise at his Almost Report being disrupted*