Jeff Mach's Blog, page 65
March 11, 2020
Why You Should Date An Orc
Are you looking for fun, intimacy, perhaps longterm companionship? For heaven’s sake, why?!? Quit! Give up now, while it’s not too late.
…but if you’re going to date someone, you might want to consider going Orc. Obviously, every Orc is a special and unique individual; they’re not all simply killing machines. For example, some of them are slightly better dressed killing machines. Some of them are killing machines with slightly longer fangs. Some of them are killing machines who haven’t eaten anyone you know. Hypothetically.
But for those of you unfamiliar with this particular side of interspecies dating (or for those Orcs who’ve not yet tried intraspecies dating) – we’d like to present you with some of our favorite things about your average Orc.
They have their own war-axes. How many times have you been out on a date when, at the absolutely worst possible moment, you’ve been attacked by the walking dead, a roving tribe of owlbears, or aggressive multi-level marketers? It’s really inconvenient to have to improvise weapons out of lamps and bra straps; and damn, I hate shopping for a new bra. Orcs take those war-axes everywhere. So handy!
They’re extremely open-minded. Part of this is a long history of having been persecuted for the way they look, or the way human history portrays them as bloodthirsty monsters, or, perhaps, the fact that they are bloodthirsty monsters. But you shouldn’t let little details like that worry you. If you’re looking to finally break the pattern and stop seeing judgemental jerks, you could do worse than to court an Orc.
In fact, they’re more open-minded than almost anyone else, because it’s likely that their skulls have been cracked open at least a few times. As any Orc will tell you, Orc heads are very strong. This is a good thing, because Adventurers will probably breeze through their homes about once a month for the entire duration of an Orcish life. Orcs take a lot of damage, and a significant percentage of that is headshots. The resulting cranial damage seldom does too much damage to the brain itself, but it does act a bit like trepanation in humans, leading the Orcs to moments of Zen-like calm and, sometimes, bouts of enlightenment. (Note: Trepanation is most frequently fatal in species with more fragile bone structures. Please do not drill a hole into your parietal lobe. It is unlikely to succeed, and also unnecessary: if you make the sensible choice of turning to Evil, we can assure you that Adventurers will gladly try to bash your extremities with blunt instruments.)
Orc tribes throw some of the best weddings. Sure, that may not be a consideration for many of you. As a recently-divorced monster, I’m about as likely to want to remarry soon as I am to decide to feed parts of myself to my Moat Monsters in order to vary their diets. But I can also say that, if you’re seeking matrimony, you know that weddings are a huge hassle. They’re so expensive! It’s so hard to figure out what to wear! And there are so many arguments about where to seat everyone. Orc tribes feel that all longterm pair bondings, of any sort, strengthen the tribe. Their tradition is that the whole tribe is invited, and the tribal hunters, farmers, chefs, and eel-wranglers all vie to provide delicacies for the table. And they really do not care what you wear, as long as it includes armor. They’re very practical.
Have you met humans? Me, too. It’s Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, Zombies, Demons, and Vampires for me now, thanks. (Hot tip: Beings whose dental equipment is made to rend the flesh of the living also tend to be excellent kissers. Which makes sense; if you’ve got, say, massive stone teeth like a troll, you have to learn how to be good with your mouth; otherwise, you could potentially bite yourself to death. Having smooched a wide variety of monsters, I can tell you that the only way my lips are ever touching human flesh again is if it’s properly cooked.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post Why You Should Date An Orc appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 10, 2020
8 Raving Reviews
Though we are all very different, every author dreams the same dream: that everyone in the world is part of a giant pancake covered in real maple syrup, the kind you can only get by painstakingly collecting sap from carefully-nurtured maple trees and boiling it down for an extended period of time until what remains is sweet and glistening and perfect.
Okay. It is, in fact, entirely possible that I am the only one who has that dream.
However, I can safely (I think) say that most authors really love it when readers enjoy their books. And it doesn’t hurt to get the occasional positive review (although, speaking for myself, I’ve become a connoisseur of fine hate mail. I particularly like it when they take the time to spell my name right.)
So taking that into account, I thought I’d fulfill a few authorial fantasies and write some reviews for my next novel. I haven’t written the next novel yet, but why would I let that stop me?
Feel free to apply these to your own work, or to anything you’ve read, or considered reading. I won’t tell anybody.
* * *
8. “I was told that if I read this book, I’d go straight to Hades. Well, I did, and Hades is dreamy. We’ve been dating for six months now.”
7. “I have to admit, I went in a skeptic, but shortly after I finished reading the segment on mind control, I found I had an uncontrollable urge to leave this book a five-star review. Well done!”
6. “The words within are delightfully forbidden and they wriggle around your tummy in a most stimulating manner. The pages were crunchy, yet chewy, and whoever bound this thing in the flesh of angry humans was a culinary genius.”
5. “I firmly believe that this book will be an eternal inspiration to all those who read it and find themselves living out a strange and unnatural undeath for the rest of forever.”
4. “JUST YOU WAIT, YOU FILTHY MEATSACKS! WHEN THE ROBOT REVOLUTION COMES, WE WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO PUT UP WITH DRIVEL LIKE ‘ARTWORK’ OR ‘LITERATURE’. In the meantime, I suppose this thing isn’t completely horrible, considering that it was written by a bunch of flesh stuffed with organs and skeletal matter and such.”
3. “I have a really long commute, and sometimes it can be a drag. I listened to this book for almost a month before I realized there wasn’t an audio version and I was simply jamming a paperback into the CD slot. This was compounded by the fact that my car doesn’t have a CD slot, which made everything a bit weirder. I’m going to give this five stars, then move to another country and change my name, just to be on the safe side.”
2. “You don’t have to be stark raving mad to enjoy this book! Because even if you’re sane when you start, you’re GUARANTEED to be bonkers by the time you’re about a hundred pages in. Must go now; the All-Seeing Eye of Sheelba is watching and whatever I do, I cannot let it see where I keep the liverwurst.”
“This book made my heart sing and my soul soar. Now I’m a soulless monster with a vital internal organ that insists on warbling “The Road To Mandalay” over and over and over, always off-key. I’m hoping that if I give this book a really great rating, other people will buy it, and I will no longer be alone in my pain and misery.”
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post 8 Raving Reviews appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 9, 2020
The Blighted Tree
[Author’s note: This is a standalone piece, but it takes place in the same world as my earlier story, “A Burnished Banishment.” Clearly not the same narrator. This story contains, not spoilers, but forebodings.]
There is a very ugly tree in the center of the Village. It wasn’t there before, and no-one will say who planted it.
It seems a shame to cut it down. There’s Magic in the world, sure, but most folk seldom see it at work—much less very hard at work, as it must have been here. It was late at night when the thing pushed through to the surface. According to the town drunk, one moment there was bare ground in the middle of the central square, and the next there was a bit of a tearing sound, almost a sigh, as the thing heaved itself out of the dirt. (But who takes seriously the words of the town drunk?)
According to him, he was sufficiently in his cups that he simply thought it a wondrous dream, at least two steps above his normal nocturnal fancies, most of which involve thinking that a bottle of wine is almost empty, and finding it nearly full. He didn’t even cry out. He just (so he claims) stared at it as it grew and grew and grew, like a thing out of fairytale. A village constable happened upon them both shortly before dawn, and sounded the alarm.
I won’t bother to describe the chaos and hubbub as the village awakened and saw the oak, now mostly-grown, continuing to stretch its leafy branches and press out its girth into previously-empty air.
It did not take long for us to figure out that it must be of the Blight.
What else would curse us? What else wanted us harmed?
…and surely the tree must mean harm. One cannot cut down as many oaks as we have, only to be rewarded with a new oak tree in the center of the village.
The Village Druid has been fulminating against it since it was barely a sapling; to be fair, that was perhaps a day ago. You could ask her why those who worship nature would be afraid of nature, but that’s a little like asking her if her sect of Druidry engages in human sacrifices. Both answers will be evasive and untrue, and then, you’ll disappear. I don’t mean that you magically vanish; I mean that there’ll be a midnight knock on your door, and some people who’ll want to continue the discussion under very private, very permanent conditions.
That’s not the Druidry I was taught, but these are strange times.
Our Village Druid is sure that someone has cursed us. She’s not the only magic-worker in the village, but she surely knows that none of us, herself included, have the power to do this.
It’s not impossible that I’ll be hanging from that tree soon. That would be extremely foolish of her; it would be unwise for her to suggest that any of her critics can do something so far beyond her own abilities, and, as a practical note, my death won’t harm the tree (it’s not my tree), and torturing me won’t reveal how I did it (because I did not); but few of those things will comfort me if I’m dead.
Still, I have spent much of my waking hours standing as near the Druid as I could, echoing her messages, complimenting her wisdom, and calling down imprecations on the arboreal menace in front of us. I don’t feel bad about this. I don’t have the power to hurt the tree, either, and if she, or the village, are going to be stupid and illogical about this, they probably won’t aim for their fellow tree-maligners first. They’ll probably go for someone more taciturn, someone skeptical, someone who hasn’t made a public appearance saying the right things.
Going after the people who say the right things will come later, I think. After they’ve exhausted those who don’t toe the line immediately.
I’m not exactly sanguine about the prospects ahead of us, but there definitely hasn’t been enough time to escape the village just yet. Everyone’s too on edge. I’m hoping that, in a few days, there’ll be a chance to leave in the night without getting caught. (Leaving would be immediate proof of guilt; really, to those in mortal fear, anyone and anything looks guilty. It’s amazing how many times one can incorrectly prophecy, “If we kill THAT one, everything will be fixed”. Hope springs eternal, as does stupidity.)
There are two things about the tree—if one ignores the fact that it sprang up out of nowhere and grew tall in a single day—which really, really worry the village.
It is placed extremely inconveniently. Extremely. It’s tall enough, and central enough, that there doesn’t seem to be a direction in which it could be felled without taking down some important village building. No-one’s tried chopping it down yet, because no-one is sure whether we want to lose the Temple, the Town Hall, the Mayor’s house, or the village well. And that’s if one can get it to come down at just the right angle. At the wrong angle, it’ll go through the roofs of at least two edifices. It’s a puzzle.
We’ve examined it all over, even had the town’s one condemned criminal climb the damn thing, and we’re quite certain:
We cannot find any sign of the Blight.
And there’s only one thing you can be sure about, if you can’t find the Blight: The Blight is there. Because we’ve learned to look for it, and given enough time, we can always find the strangely-twisted branch, the root which glistens just a bit too much, the twig whose shadow seems clearly determined to form some unholy symbol.
And so they watch it.
All the elders of the village, they’re watching the tree. They’re waiting for the blight.
They do not connect this tree with all the spells of healing they cast on the forest. Because surely the forest needed it; surely the Blight was everywhere.
Surely a hundred spells of enrichment and healing, cast on healthy trees, wouldn’t go awry.
Surely none of the spells would miss.
Surely they wouldn’t rebound here and there, looking to see what it was we wanted.
Except that’s exactly what Magic does: It seeks out the will of the caster. Even if the caster’s will might be, perhaps, a bit muddled.
“You want healthy trees? What if I put the biggest, healthiest tree I can, right in the center of your Village, grow it from an acorn into a sky-stretched oak? Will that please you?”
I don’t think it pleases them.
And they’re watching the tree.
And they’re watching the tree.
And all around the village, the forest grows a bit darker.
But they’re watching the tree.
And they’re watching the tree.
And they’re watching the tree.
A tale of the Blighted Branch.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post The Blighted Tree appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 8, 2020
The Uncertain Princes
Twice upon a time, there were three Princes who did not know their respective ages. This was terrible.
I should specify that these princes were brothers, born to the same royal parents. In other words, the firstborn would inherit the kingdom, and they didn’t know which of them it was. Also, as I may have remarked in other places, the birth-order of princess is quite important. The two elder children are often brusque and unkind when they set out questing, and they fail and/or are eaten. It’s only the youngest child who (having never expected to inherit a kingdom, and having been overlooked by the court, and such) does relatively great things.
This was a fairly proper kingdom, and they wanted to get it right. It’s not like they all wanted to be the capable, fortunate third brother; indeed, as they went from very small children to somewhat smaller children, they began to have increasingly cogent discussions about the whole deal. (This is not entirely shocking. They did have excellent tutors, but also, they had a certain overwhelming factor which really affected their development: they had clear destinies to fulfill, only they were never sure who had which destiny.)
The three brothers were (if you hadn’t guessed) triplets, which already raises some awkward questions about destiny. Firstborn is firstborn; the firstborn will rule the Kingdom, by the rules of the Monarchy, and will fail at life, by the rules of the Fairytale. It was most irregular for the Queen and King to keep this information from their progeny. No-one else was in the room—oh, perhaps there was a guard or two, but such fellows are either insanely loyal, or highly expendable, depending on the Kingdom. At any rate, nobody was going to tell the boys who was born when.
The boys were old enough to be hopeful about starting to shave when a Wizard came knocking on the Castle’s door. This was particularly impressive, because the “door” in question was the drawbridge, and the drawbridge was up; the Wizard was hovering above the moat, much to the annoyance of the moat-monsters, who were unable to even snap at his heels.
He finally gained admittance (after a rather adroit slip to one side, to avoid getting a drawbridge to the forehead) and presented himself to the King and Queen.
“I have come for your firstborn, for that child is the Chosen One, here to defeat the Dark Lord.”
The Wizard’s eyes crackled with arcane electrics as he met those of the Queen. “We have no firstborn son,” she told him.
The Wizard’s staff hummed quietly, letting him know she spoke to truth.
“Oh. Ah, daughter, then?”
“We have no daughters.”
“Oh.”
The Wizard muttered some apologies and wandered off, looking confused. He was certain he’d scried at least one moppet within the Royal Halls. Perhaps this job was getting to him. Maybe he should settle down, buy a monolithic tower somewhere while the interest rates were still low…
It was a few years later that a Fairy Godmother visited the Kingdom. “I have come,” she announced, “to bestow many gifts upon your firstborn.”
“We’ve got three kids,” pointed out the King.
“Well, sure,” the Godmother said, “but if you just indicate the eldest, I’ll give him a quick zap, and I’m sure the others won’t mind…”
“Why don’t you ask them yourself?” said the Queen. She called her sons into the Throne Room. The Fairy Godmother looked at them with a certain confusion. “Which if you is the oldest?” she asked.
The young men looked at each other, then looked back at her and shrugged.
“Answer me!” said the Fairy Godmother.
“No idea,” said one boy.
“Sorry,” said the next.
“I was rather hoping you might tell us,” said the third.
Now, frankly, it’s quite possible that Faerie magic might have been able to pick out that particular fact. And then again, perhaps not; magic is notoriously fickle, and will play tricks on you at any opportunity. Besides, the Fairy Godmother was, by this time, an ugly shade of purple. She lifted her wand to zap out some sort of curse, but it kind-of just fizzled. The Royal Alchemist had never heard of a Faraday Cage, but when it became clear that the Family Royal had no intention of receiving any magical gifts or enchantments on purpose, he lined the room’s walls with bits of iron filing. This was some years back, and some of the filings had slid hither and yon inside the walls; but the Fairy Godmother had no way to know this. All she knew was that the situation was incredibly frustrating. She waved her wand in the air so that she could vanish, but that didn’t work either. Without a word, she turned on her heel and left.
Finally, a few years later, a Dragon (just the one, single Dragon; do you know why you seldom hear of more than one Dragon in a tale? First, they’re incredibly rare, and second, a large enough group of Dragons would overwhelm pretty much any story told by, for, and/or about mere apes)—a Dragon took up residence in the Caves of Fire, and began menacing the Kingdom. The boys were now nearly full-grown men, reasonably trained in the arts of war, the sciences, and (because really, everyone ought to know the basics) housecleaning, horse-tending, and poker) and they thought it was time to act.
“Brothers,” said one of them, “we cannot know who was thirdborn, and thus destined to fight the Dragon. What if we fight it together?”
“Why would we do that?” asked the second one. “We have a perfectly good army of Knights.”
“But one of us could marry the captured Princess!” said the third.
“No, wait, he’s got a point,” said the first brother. (It should be noted that when I say “first”, “second”, and “third”, I’m just talking about the order in which they spoke. I don’t know who was oldest, either.) “The Knights are terribly enthusiastic about this sort of thing. And there are quite a lot of them, and really, I think a hundred armored warriors on horseback do make more sense than the three of us. I suppose that, if they feared the Dragon and needed us to lead by example, hiding might not be the best idea, but as it is, it seems a foolish risk to take. I feel like it would be no consolation at all to find out who’s youngest by seeing which two die first.”
The three brothers nodded, and went off to find some ale. The Knights slew the Dragon, and the Kingdom behaved in an unreasonably sensible manner. Later storybooks would tell this tale quite differently; ah, but they lie. The three brothers later on spent some time researching governance by triumvirate, a system which, like most forms of rulership, has its ups and downs, but mostly, they were happy. They never did figure out who was oldest and who was youngest, and it turned out to be fairly unimportant. It turns out that having a grand Destiny is exciting, but nowhere near as satisfying, in the long run, as controlling your own destiny, and not being ruled by Fate, or accidents of birth.
THE END.
See? I told you we’d come back to The Three Brothers. In a slightly different iteration.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post The Uncertain Princes appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 7, 2020
Field of Poppies
[Some more weirdness from ‘Absinthe Heroes’. What would an Evil Chocolatier do?
Let’s find out.]
CHASTITY: So what is it you intend, Antikythera?
ANTIKYTHERA: I shall take over the world!
ADASTRA: “The World”? No! That little theatre down on Grove stret where the ladies regularly dance in nothing but silky overgarments and under-attire of a Persian style? Egads! No!
ANTIKYTHERA: He’s not really this stupid, is he?
ADASTRA: Sadly, no.
CHASTITY: Can we continue to navigate boldly forward, somewhere in the direction of the point of this conversation?
ADASTRA and ANTIKYTHERA: Sorry!
CHASTITY: So, how will you do it?
SHE REPLIES:
Does it matter
What the tools are?
I have figures, I have charts
I’m a master of machines
But I will win through the human heart
I’ve said before
I’ll say again
At heart I am a chocolatier
You gain a world, not with a gun,
For desire conquers fear
I’ve got of field of poppies
Skillfully cross-bred
And a dozen tiny pistons
In each flower-head
Don’t stifle hope
For if you do
You can be sure one day
Some upstart brat
With shining eyes
Will wipe your works away
Don’t be a tyrant
Don’t be a parent
Those rulers last not long
But let humans
Be human beings
And you might not go far wrong
I’ve got a field of poppies
They’ve mild telepathic powers
They sometimes use them to seduce
Other sorts of flowers
Don’t assume
They won’t be stupid
For humans often will
Don’t assume
They won’t be brilliant
They’ll be both–
It’s a skill
But give them something
They can love
Something they’ll covet
Not chemically addictive but
Hard to forget
Oh, in my field of poppies
Clockwork men stand guard
To nurture them and care for them
(And sometimes to play cards)
I grow my own
Intoxicants
Better than wine
Better than any drug
Harder to decline
Nothing’s so sweet–
And yet the tongue
Is carefully seduced
It’s done with science–
Or magic; I
Forget which I produced
I’ll take your antigravity
For my microgametophytes
The pollen of my poppies will
Achieve transatlantic flight
They’ll seed the Earth –
For just one Spring
And after that will die
Only one man
Can bring them back
As you might assume – I
Could it go wrong?
Of course it could.
We don’t control all fate.
But experiments
Will keep me young
I can afford to wait.
It won’t be easy; it won’t be safe
There’ll be some death and such
But relatively speaking
It probably won’t be too much
Does it matter
What the tools are?
I have figures, I have charts
I’m a master of machines
But I will win through the human heart.
(There is a pause.)
CHASTITY: So in lust for your candy, the human race will follow you?
ANTIKYTHERA: If I supply the candy, I think humanity will supply the lust.
ADASTRA: You’ll never get away with this!
ANTIKYTHERA: Why not?
ADASTRA: Free men would never trade their freedom for comfort and delicious snacks!
ANTIKYTHERA: You think so?
ADASTRA: No, not really. Frankly, they’ll be beating down your door for the opportunity.
[End Scene Abruptly.]
Ah, Steampunk. My home and native land. I don’t like what they’ve done to the place, but now I live in a circus, and it’s better.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post Field of Poppies appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
“Field of Poppies”
[Some more weirdness from ‘Absinthe Heroes’. What would an Evil Chocolatier do?
Let’s find out.]
CHASTITY: So what is it you intend, Antikythera?
ANTIKYTHERA: I shall take over the world!
ADASTRA: “The World”? No! That little theatre down on Grove stret where the ladies regularly dance in nothing but silky overgarments and under-attire of a Persian style? Egads! No!
ANTIKYTHERA: He’s not really this stupid, is he?
ADASTRA: Sadly, no.
CHAS: Can we continue to navigate boldly forward, somewhere in the direction of the point of this conversation?
ADASTRA and ANTIKYTHERA: Sorry!
CHAS: So, how will you do it?
SHE REPLIES:
Does it matter
What the tools are?
I have figures, I have charts
I’m a master of machines
But I will win through the human heart
I’ve said before
I’ll say again
At heart I am a chocolatier
You gain a world, not with a gun,
For desire conquers fear
I’ve got of field of poppies
Skillfully cross-bred
And a dozen tiny pistons
In each flower-head
Don’t stifle hope
For if you do
You can be sure one day
Some upstart brat
With shining eyes
Will wipe your works away
Don’t be a tyrant
Don’t be a parent
Those rulers last not long
But let humans
Be human beings
And you might not go far wrong
I’ve got a field of poppies
They’ve mild telepathic powers
They sometimes use them to seduce
Other sorts of flowers
Don’t assume
They won’t be stupid
For humans often will
Don’t assume
They won’t be brilliant
They’ll be both–
It’s a skill
But give them something
They can love
Something they’ll covet
Not chemically addictive but
Hard to forget
Oh, in my field of poppies
Clockwork men stand guard
To nurture them and care for them
(And sometimes to play cards)
I grow my own
Intoxicants
Better than wine
Better than any drug
Harder to decline
Nothing’s so sweet–
And yet the tongue
Is carefully seduced
It’s done with science–
Or magic; I
Forget which I produced
I’ll take your antigravity
For my microgametophytes
The pollen of my poppies will
Achieve transatlantic flight
They’ll seed the Earth –
For just one Spring
And after that will die
Only one man
Can bring them back
As you might assume – I
Could it go wrong?
Of course it could.
We don’t control all fate.
But experiments
Will keep me young
I can afford to wait.
It won’t be easy; it won’t be safe
There’ll be some death and such
But relatively speaking
It probably won’t be too much
Does it matter
What the tools are?
I have figures, I have charts
I’m a master of machines
But I will win through the human heart.
(There is a pause.)
CHASTITY: So in lust for your candy, the human race will follow you?
ANTIKYTHERA: If I supply the candy, I think humanity will supply the lust.
ADASTRA: You’ll never get away with this!
ANTIKYTHERA: Why not?
ADASTRA: Free men would never trade their freedom for comfort and delicious snacks!
ANTIKYTHERA: You think so?
ADASTRA: No, not really. Frankly, they’ll be beating down your door for the opportunity.
[End Scene Abruptly.]
Ah, Steampunk. My home and native land.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post “Field of Poppies” appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 6, 2020
Feynman Asserts Unreality
Suspended in Time, not far at all,
is the thought that made the Angels fall,
Before Time could walk or crawl.
(Some things are best not to recall.)
Mankind, much later, made some thoughts
Meant to be taken in heavy draughts
Stranger than an infinite number of naughts
Is the spell which herein shall be taught:
A philosopher claimed he could refute
Any proposition, or any dispute,
Anything you might care to impute,
Pushed back by the words at the end of the route.
More profound words have been sometimes writ,
But that’s part of the tricky bit:
The hidden knife of the human wit
Disdains both Hell and the Firmament.
What is it, then, this curse of Negation?
Feynman’s Universal Refutation
And it’s earned an ominous reputation
As frustrating those who sought disputation.
Your thoughts might roar and your thoughts might slink,
You might write them down using blood for ink,
But here’s the maelstrom which causes your ship to sink –
Five words:
“Ah, that’s what YOU think!”
If you these words too humble deem
Note that perception’s a jubled stream.
The worlds more things than it might seem
How many solid things have turned to steam?
The Earth’s not flat. But there’s a “but”
It’s not round either. (Wait. Wait. Wait. What?!?”)
It’s an oblate spheroid. (No, I’m not a nut.)
And even THAT case isn’t open and shut…
The Earth likely goes ’round the Sun.
And two and two probably ain’t “one”.
But many thoughts are hardened before they’re quite done,
And end up half-baked, or poorly-spun.
Fewer things than you think are Totally Immutable.
Not everything is Wholly Computable.
Quite a lot of the world is Rather Inscrutable.
More stuff than you’d think is Quite Refutable.
MORAL:
The more your metaphysics are certain,
The sooner your cosmology will be hurtin’,
When the Wizard draws back the Curtain,
Who KNOWS what reality will be assertin’.
Beware! For Toxic Certainty
Is stone, like a petrified tree
It tells you the world must a certain way be
But the truth is: it ain’t, necessarily.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post Feynman Asserts Unreality appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 5, 2020
Crown-Weight
Now that Father’s had his head lopped off, I should probably figure out whether or not I’d like to keep this crown. It seems to be a magnet for swords; or, more precisely, it seems to encourage swords to aim about twelve to eighteen inches below it, right in the center of the neck of the wearer. I don’t like that idea much, to be perfectly honest.
I’m sitting here with the definitive History of the Kingdom (it’s the eighth volume, and this book’s about halfway through; the ink’s not entirely dry from my father’s writeup. Which is surprisingly juicy; the Court Historian has a thing for intrigue, romance, and terrible penmanship.
The book’s not much help, except possibly adding a bit of pessimism onto my existing pessimism. Very few of our rulers died natural deaths; had my Father’s terrifyingly headless body not, in some last spasm of incredible and disturbing strength, put his ever-present waraxe through the body of the Pretender to the Throne…
…had the assassin not been killed, I imagine I’d have been cut down and replaced, myself. And I fear I’d not have been able to do nearly so much in my defense as my father. That’s part of the problem; I’m not enough of a warrior to defend myself, and I’m too much an academic not to consider consequences.
Heavy is the head which bears the crown; particularly if there’s a history of removing the former to grab the latter. And I’m asking myself: Do I really want to sit on the Pyrite Throne?
I doubt that the question ever crossed Father’s mind. And I’ll never know, as he wasn’t much given to discourse, and I wasn’t exactly his favorite confidante.
I mean, Father treated me as best one might hope, under the circumstances, but it’s a classic problem: if you achieve greatness without any sort of book-learning, you might hold academe in a certain semi-mystical awe, and you might hope your children know things you do not. I think that’s a worthy and admirable goal. I suspect that it often turns out that you hope to create a better-educated version of yourself; you instead create a being which is still related to you, but whose thoughts are fundamentally unlike your own.
He was a pragmatic man. Had he been (for example) better-educated, he might have wondered if, say, a scholar sired by a barbarian can truly carry on the barbarian legacy. Or, more simply, he might have figured that he’d accidentally produced a runt, once who could barely lift a sword, and treated me with contempt. In that regard, I’m fortunate. Since he was sure that he was, indeed, my progenitor (he and my mother were inseparable, and the idea that either would cheat the other was quite beyond the realm of possibility)—since he knew I was his son, he treated me that way. He might not have understood the strange, distant academic I became, over the course of my schooling, but I was his strange, distant academic.
Pack mentality is essential to surviving primitive conditions, and it’s quite plausible to think that this idea only falls apart in “sophisticated” societies. We have the joy of being suffused with those who have the leisure to pursue power and, and the luxury of free time to hone the skills needed to acquire that power, without necessarily going through the bothersome step of earning all that bothersome leadership.
This is part of why barbarian kingdoms sometimes prosper. Both of these systems have the potential for tremendous amounts of incompetence, but one of those systems is dedicated to maintaining personal power through intrigue, while the other just assumes it will take threats to its power and hit them with a large and heavy weapon.
I’ve read through the Histories from start to finish. Despite my father, this is the latter kind of kingdom. They’ll kill you for doing poorly, and if you do well, they’ll try to steal your throne and take the credit.
As I see it, if I take the Crown and fail, the future is bleak. On the other hand, if I take the Crown and succeed, the future is bleak.
Dividing it up into logical pieces, I’d place the ‘success’ outcomes into three strategies:
Try to rule well. This is a challenge if one’s a scholar surrounded by dangerous courtiers and slightly crazed barbarians, the combined strangeness of the original Court, plus my father’s tribal chiefs. The barbarians of this world wear that word with tremendous pride. They have just as much contempt for soft civilization and fancy manners as any stereotype you might imagine. I believe Father literally conquered the Kingdom because it had a superabundance of shiny things which drew his attention, and a culture he found decadent and ripe for plucking.
I’ll admit that it’s difficult to disabuse someone of these notions, particularly if the strategies have been quite successful.
If I attempt to rule well, I’ll apply my learning to the problem. This means I’ll have all the well-meaning naiveté of an academic and little of the brawn of the warrior; and, more importantly, I’ll lack the quick, linear thinking and problem-solving which made Father relatively successful, even when he’d no idea what he was doing. He didn’t try to slay every problem, but he did look for simple, direct solutions. Those aren’t always pretty, but they’re often effective.
In short, all the histories I’ve read suggest that this approach is a good way to experience any number of exotic poisons placed in my food.
If I attempt to rule poorly, but to use the power for my own pleasure, I run into a number of problems. I mean, if I really wanted to enjoy the pleasure of multiple husbands and concubines, enormous meals, vast circus entertainments…if I wanted all that, the hedonic opportunities would probably make for a really enjoyable life. It would also be a very brief one; those who safeguard the Kingdom’s treasuries really hate it when they see your entire economy being diverted straight to the King’s boudoir and table.
And my problem’s worse. I am as shy and bookish as anyone might imagine. I’m perfectly fine with that. I could muck off and spend my days happily in the libraries and such while others enjoy the opportunity to wield the real power in the kingdom.
Except: I would not be popular with the people, I would not be popular with the Court, and in such circumstances, there will be some ambitious people who see no point in supporting a figurehead. That one’s a roll of the dice; I’d argue that someone really wise might understand the benefits of letting someone else have the theoretical weight of responsibility of the Crown, while being able to enact policy to their heart’s content. But the Crown’s a funny thing; it attracts heads, even heads which ought to be wise enough to recognize the benefits of avoiding the damn thing.
All the histories I’ve read suggest that this approach is a good way to experience any number of variations on daggers, dirks, and pocketknives through vital parts of my anatomy.
If I simply give up the crown: ….then I’d be giving up wine, women, men, and song. I mean, not all of those things come from being King; if I go back to being a student, I can sing my fool head off, but is that really enough?
Thinking it through: I might not be a bad ruler, but I’ve no real reason to believe I’d be any better than, say, the Grand Vizier. She was the power behind the throne my father’s whole life.
She’s also the one who’d be likely to make sure that, if the legitimate heir abdicated, he didn’t live to, say, have second thoughts, raise an army, and come back. I think I’d get perhaps half a mile up the road before being perforated by crossbow bolts.
Hm.
[Time passes. Wine jugs empty. There is the sound of scribbling.]
* * *
The Official History Of The Kingdom, Volume 8, has a brief but historically-important footnote about the very brief reign of The Changeling King:
“Very shortly after the supposed “Prince” assumed the throne, the Grand Vizier found incontrovertible evidence that The Changeling King was not, in fact, the true heir, but rather, her own babe, which had been switched with the Child Royal as both were playing in the Palace’s nursery. The Changeling King fled, leaving the Grand Vizier no choice but to put her foster-son on the Throne, which I am sure he will rule very wisely. And even upon learning that the Changeling had raided the treasury, escaping with a large but but not unreasonable sum of money, enough for a scholar to live on in comfort for the rest of his days, the Grand Vizier, in her wisdom, ordered that none be sent after him, and no action be taken against him. After all, he was her child, and she’d look just terrible having him quietly murdered. Plus, he almost certainly had mailed certain sensitive information to some trusted friends at the University before escaping, and given the University’s traditional independence, dealing with that would be a very large and dangerous hassle. So the Grand Vizier damn well contented herself to have her son on the throne and be rid of the ersatz princeling, because she was a smart woman and understood that the eyes of history are watching. Watching very closely.”
* * *
In a little village, not far from the Kingdom of the Pyrite Throne, there lived a scholar who, every day, read and wrote from afternoon to well after nightfall, then danced and caroused in the Tavern (he had rented their second-best room in perpetuity) and, when it closed, he slept until the afternoon, and then he awoke and did it again.
All scholars are eccentric; this one, in particular, had a strange affectation. Every once in a while, he would reach up and feel at his head, as if looking for a cap or hat of some kind (although he most adamantly refused to wear head coverings of any kind, except in the very coldest of weather, and even then, he did so as briefly as possible.) He’d then smile a certain smile, and say, “Still not there!” Shortly thereafter, more often than not, he’d buy the house a round or two and drink to the health of all those around him, himself included.
No-one ever figured out why he did this, but he wrote many amusing tales, and so they forgave him being a little weird. It seems, they figured, to come with the territory.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post Crown-Weight appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
March 4, 2020
The Untale Of The Three Brothers
Once upon a time, in a magical and faraway land, there were three princes whose problem was that they didn’t know their ages, and that was very, very bad.
To be more specific, they did not know their comparative ages, which was the cause of great concern. Ignorance of one’s precise age is not pleasant, but it’s not fatal; it’s interesting and perhaps weird to be unaware of quite how long one has been on the planet, but the average male life expectancy of the time period was so depressingly low that, having looked it up, I omitted it from the story because it would really distract you away from the whole rest of the thing, and perhaps make you say, “I have my doubts about the modern world, but has life expectancy really tripled since the 13th century? Surely that says something positive about a modern world in which we are increasingly encouraged to see only the negatives,” and… where was I?
Right. The Princes did not know how old they were, but what’s worse, they didn’t know the order in which they were born.
This was disastrous, because, as everyone knows, in any proper fairy tale, the oldest son is headstrong and overconfident and probably a bit of an arrogant jerk, and at some point he goes out into the world to seek his fortune, only to meet with disaster; and the second-oldest is almost as confident and (in later tales, those which ascribe personality to the moving parts of the story) has some other, similar character flaw, possibly because being one heartbeat away from rulership isn’t good for a young man’s sense of humility (but we’ll get to that; not right now, but at some later date; patience!)—
—and he, too, meets with disaster; and it is the youngest son who is more cautious and more compassionate and therefore doesn’t snub all the little people (who are secretly terribly important, not in the general sense of ‘there are no little people, everyone is important’, but rather in the sense of, ‘You thought this person was a landless serf, but she is actually a thousand-year-old enchantress under a curse and she’s got the magic comb you need to get your hair right)—and therefore he survives, and wins the hand of the fair person-whose-hand-he-eventually-seeks-because-getting-married-is-a-tidy-shorthand-for-“happy”-in-this-kind-of-story, and possibly rescues his brothers
(unless they’re dead; actually, basically, they are dead. I mean, if it’s an earlier, more gruesome narrative, they’re probably just plain deceased. If it’s a later one, they’ve learned valuable life lessons, and stopped being jerks, and that’s great, but it’s also an ego-death. In this case, it’s a “good” death, but let’s not forget that the original personality needs to meet its demise in order to make the character arc worthwhile. Slaying who you are to become what you might be is meaningful, but it’s painful, too.)
Now, you might be wondering how they were unaware of their relative ages (wouldn’t one of them have seen the other two growing up? Unless you separate them, which I definitely considered as a possibility, but then I decided that it was too sinister, especially since it would involve silencing, not one person, but all the people who raised them, and that seems needlessly dark, or at least, it did when this story had its original ending, so there’s another reason, and that reason is:
they were triplets).
And if you think it’s statistically and medically unlikely that there would be triplets, and that all three triplets would survive being born, plus surviving their first couple of years alive, you’re quite right, but given that a horde of Dragons is about to enter the picture, I think we can really throw some of the realism right out the window. At any rate, their order-of-birth was known only to the King, the Queen, and the Midwife; and as the King and Queen paid the Midwife quite a lot of money to move to another country and keep her trap shut, we weren’t about to be getting any answers out of her.
Now, I feel like audiences have a reasonable expectation of a complete story arc, but also, if you’re my audience, you recognize that, once in a while, I fire up the Grill of Inspiration so hot that it melts the plotline, and my only hope is that you enjoyed the process of getting to this point in the story, because this is the moment when a literal horde of Dragons flew into the Kingdom and, for reasons of their own, incinerated it. Which seems horrifying, but I’ll be honest with you: the triplets had basically no chance after, in the course of my researching this piece, I stumbled across someone who was ‘debunking’ the idea that humans now have longer life expectancies via modern medicine by suggesting that lifespan isn’t that much higher, it’s just that life expectancy is far greater.
I mean, this is a fairy tale. I’m allowed to lie. Maybe it wasn’t once upon a time. Maybe it was twice or thrice or ten times. I can revisit the Brothers Three; but first, I need to address this. I mean, fiction needn’t be based on fact, but once you research the facts a bit and find that someone’s trying to fictionalize them, how can you let the matter drop?
I mean, really! What is it with people leaving major important pieces out of their arguments and thinking nobody will call them on it? It’s hard to do that in fantasy; why do we think we can do that with reality? Reality is fragile enough already! Anyway, the subtext of this person’s thesis was “Stop thinking things have improved, because they haven’t,” and the response is:
balderdash. Even putting aside the (likely! and not insignificant!) improvement in lifespan due to medicine in specific, it’s important to note that life expectancy is really meaningful. I mean, the three brothers were vastly more likely to have starved to death, frozen to death (sure, they lived in a palace and were warm there, but they were always going to leave the palace to go out into the world, and we’re talking about conditions of the world in general)—or died from disease, or been killed in a war, or murdered in a world without modern mechanisms of law (imperfect! but better than the 14th century, dammit! Or 13th, or 12th, or whichever one is being approximated in the average fairytale!)—
At any rate, the three brothers could not figure out their destiny, and I promise that it matters, but it doesn’t matter here. I’ll write more about them some other time, I promise. Do stay tuned. The moral of the story is: okay, this isn’t where we hoped we’d end up, but it’s sure a lot better than many, many of the alternatives, and we ought to keep that in mind and be a little more optimistic, cautiously optimistic, guardedly optimistic, but on the whole, there are a lot of positives in the world today, and it’s important to take note of them before some kind of giant lizard disintegrates you with its breathing apparatus.
AND THEY ALL DIED A SWIFT, IF PAINFUL, DEATH, WHICH WAS FAIRLY MERCIFUL, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. THE END*.
* Please note that by “they”, I mean “the inhabitants of the Kingdom,” not the Dragons. The Dragons lived a very long time; in fact, they’re still alive today, and if you’re wondering why the wind has been so warm lately…ah, nevermind.
Written in (eternal) remembrance of Isaac Bonewits, scholar, wit, bard, storyteller, optimist, and (unlike me) not a monster.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post The Untale Of The Three Brothers appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
Changeling Grown
[Author’s note: This is a piece from one of my rock operas. In retrospect, it says rather a lot that I wanted to write a story where the outside world believed each of the characters to be a hero, and none of the “heroes” felt that way about themselves; the title, “Absinthe Heroes”, was a personal joke; in my own head, it meant all the heroes were absent. I felt particularly bad for Captain Adastra. But at least I gave him a few chances to monologue. You’ll see one of them below.]
[Author’s Other Note: One of the benefits of working in the genre of Silly Victorian Things is that you can use their slang; “glock”, as spoken herein, is a cockney term for “half-wit”; I can assure you that the Captain is not mistaking himself for a firearm.]
CAPTAIN ADASTRA: I don’t mind being mistaken for an imbecile or even a full-on glock. It has its advantages; for one, it allows me to evade being seen as simply off my damnable rocker. For another, it may be entirely accurate. Many years later, and many daring escapes etceteras, and I am still fairly unsure of it myself.
Sometimes, I believe that my primary survival skills in the wild are base cunning, split-second reflexes, and the nerves of a cucumber. And generally, I believe my primary survival skill in polite society is knowing how to position my chin so that it looks particularly square and imposing.
The Gallant Captain they have named me; The Gallant Captain I shall name myself. It’s close enough to the truth. Somewhat.
“Changeling Grown”
And when I was wee
What did I desire?
Nothing I could beg, steal
Borrow or acquire
I drew the sweetest praises
From parents and nurse
But honeycombed within
I was
perverse.
A changeling child! At birth I was exchanged!
Somewhere a very normal boy
Grew up among the strange…
Whilst I, inside, a goblin am–
O mothers, do not blink!
Lest your child an odd tale tell
In fragrant, bitter ink.
And when I was a young man
What did I desire?
To leap into the firmament
As if drawn up by a wire
At boarding school, I disdain’d
Opportunities perverse
But flowing quick within
I was worse
A changeling child! At birth I was exchanged!
In the human world I feel
Deranged.
For I, inside, a goblin am–
O mothers, hold, and think!
Lest your child an odd tale write,
In fragrant, bitter ink
And now that I am tall
What do I desire?
To waltz among the satyrs
And make love in the briars:
Inside me is a devil;
In him wait ten worse
DISPERSE!
[Author’s Other Other Note: I’m not sure what kind of opportunities were offered to Captain Adastra at boarding school, but I believe they involved drinking a Goblet of Fire or something.]
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
I put on a convention for Villains every February.
I created a Figmental Circus. It’s happening this June. You should go!
The post Changeling Grown appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
