Jeff Mach's Blog, page 69

The Past Is Not What It Was

(An excerpt from my Steampunk Rock Opera, “Absinthe Heroes”. It begins with a dialogue between Dr. Chastity Purity Hope, a hypothetically non-evil mad scientist, and Dr. Antikythera Device, a hypothetically more evil mad scientist with a penchant for chocolate.)

CHASTITY: For every great truth we discover, we discover ten million falsehoods or lies or pieces of vision that we truly do not understand or use well. If I discover a thousand things, have I moved the world? Or have I simply been a few steps along the way to that ten-millionth fragment of inspiration?

ANTIKYTHERA: And your love of science?

CHASTITY: Is my longing for magic.

[What else is there for her to do but sing?]:

“The Past Is Not What It Was”

Once our ancestors made miracles–

They formed the sea and sky

With hands, with animals, or with gods

Now instead we believe

The world was made without us

Our ancestors were deluded –

and odd.

Now, I cannot see their gods

And I cannot taste their miracles

And by no outside force am I redeemed

And this new world is bold

Aye, this new world is brave

But you lose something in a world that’s

Steamed.

Oh, I have certain tools

And I have certain knowledge

Some things I know better than all the mystics

But I am bound by knowledge

And I envy my forefathers

For I have the disadvantage of

Statistics.

Every clan and tribe that thought

It knew how the world was born

Was, according to what we now know, wrong.

Yet we’re told to believe

Our knowledge is somehow purer

That we’ve got all the bits where they belong.

Our knowledge must be greater, yes

And we’re closer to some truth

But if there’s a final truth, then I am sure:

However much we know now

Will seem very foolish

A hundred years from now, when we know

More.

Once our ancestors made miracles–

They formed the sea and sky

Made magic out of word and breath and sweat.

Our vision’s said to be clearer

But to this, we are yet blind:

What things we think we understand

Will we someday

Regret?

[Pause.]

ANTIKYTHERA: Well, I’m depressed now.

THE MAYOR: Me, too.

CHAS: Right behind you.

~Jeff Mach

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And Evil Expo, the Villain Convention, is coming! Learn more!

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Abjuration: On Villainpunk

(This is from the introduction to my upcoming compilation of short stories, “Villains, Villainy & Villainpunk”.)

Two philosophers I trusted have said, respectively, that it’s not easy being green, and that is easy being evil. It turns out that neither one of those things is precisely true. Every Orc I’ve ever met would agree with the former, but if we took a poll of the leafiest plants around, they’d just reply, “Sorry, I can’t hear you, I’m too busy literally living on light and air, and enjoying the fact that I have zero student debt.”

And as to the latter, let’s just say that the optimism of Villainpunk comes (in the manner of most things of any real value) at a not-insignificant price. It feels amazing to finally stop sucking in your breath, crossing your eyes, twisting your head ‘round, and generally contorting your worldview into something that lets you believe the heroes are always right. And that relief is one of the true joys of Villainpunk. But you do lose that comforting (if somewhat hollow) feeling that someone out there has all the answers. And that’s when you realize that you’re going to have to find out some answers for itself.

For Villainpunk refuses to trade in one set of toxic certainties for another. What I now have is a much bigger world for experimenting, for exploring, for trying to find new ideas and solutions. What I’ve lost is the belief that those answers are all there on one path, waiting to be found. They are not. They’re scattered, and often hidden, and we need to work to discover then.

Well, so mote it be!

Any aficionado of Lovecraft will tell you that the Necronomicon is forbidden for a whole host of reasons; the more we find out about that dread tome, and its ilk, the more we realize how dangerous it would be to even possess a copy of the thing, much less read it.

But I’ll gladly brave the worst fates the Necronomicon could try to throw at than me, rather than live in a world where the “heroes” say “Not only are you forbidden to read that book, but we’ve made a long list of other books you need to avoid. And the same goes for a number of people. And actions. And thoughts.” Sure, they’re right about that particular volume, but this is precisely how it starts: they give someone orders with the best of intentions, perhaps purely with the desire to protect people from possible harm; and then they find out they like giving orders, and then it’s just amazing how much stuff out there (they now realize) is deadly and must be locked away For Your Protection.

The stories (barely) trapped within this tome are often from the point of view of the Monster or the Villain; but that’s not what makes this Villainpunk. The Villainpunk lies in this abjuration, which is the heart of the book:

“What happens if we put aside the light for a while…and let our eyes adjust enough to let us take a good look at the Shadows?”

~Jeff Mach

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And Evil Expo, the Villain Convention, is coming! Learn more!

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Is Dark Magic Evil?

(The base text is from my novel, “There and Never, Ever Back Again” – with snarky new annotations.)

(I mean, I satirize other people. Why not satirize myself?)

So, is Dark Magic evil?

No. Consider: How would that even work?

Or to ask a more relevant question, what would it take for magic to be evil?

[Ligen’s classic work, “Kill It With Fire”, says that all that’s necessary for magic to be evil is for the wielder to have impure thoughts. Book sales plummeted after he was caught robbing a local pub. In his defense, he pointed out that his royalty checks hadn’t arrived yet.]

This might seem simple on the face of it, but examine the idea for a moment. It’s not as if our ideas of morality are static. In one age, we fight and die for the divinity of the monarchy, and to contest it is to go against all the decency and ethics in the world. In the next era, we overthrow the monarchy, and perhaps consider the entire institution to be utterly and completely wicked. After that, perhaps we believe that each individual should be treated based on merit. And then we change our ideas of what is and is not “meritorious” in such complexly human ways.

[Yllenod was once tasked with writing the biography of a certain monarch of her kingdom. In the time it took her to create the rather exhaustive tome, one Queen died from illness and a Prince died of poisoning, leading to three separate monarchs in one twenty-year period. Each one had their own very specific views on the aforementioned ancestor. In the end, her editing became a bit sloppy, which is why the man is described as “A godlike demoniacal philanthropist robber-baron who stole from the poor to feed the other poor to large reptiles because of the purity of his non-existent heart, and the entire kingdom mourned with loud rejoicing at the moment of his untimely and long-awaited death”. Yellenod then switched to writing cowboy stories.]

Or in other words, the incantation which slays a king is monstrous in one epoch, heroic in another, useless in a third. How would the magic know which is which?

I’ll grant that magic is an unpredictable, semi-sentient, capricious force (telling magic “Do as you will!” is much the same as telling a Grand Vizier “Oh, nobody’s counted the treasury in years, and we lost the key, too, but hey, we’re sure all those rubies the size of plums and those emeralds the size of fists are just fine.”)

[“The reason Magic doesn’t go around doing stuff in this Universe is that it’s busy having a marvelous time on its own. Gravity is stuck here. Biology can’t just take a holiday and leave everyone immortal for no good reason. But Magic can go off wherever and whenever it would like a holiday, which means it’s unlikely to hang about here, waiting to do what you want it to. In other words, any sufficiently advanced magic is too busy having a good time to be harnessed by humans.”]

Noting that magic has something like intelligence, and therefore might be capable of actually possessing moral qualities, we still run afoul of many rocky questions. Can “light” and “dark” be determined by your motivations? In other words, does magic read your intentions?

My dear sweet collection of glands and stimulus responses, you may not know your own heart completely, and the same goes for your soul. Do you expect sorcery to both do your bidding and diagnose your innermost reasons? Magick is untapped power stolen from the laws of physics when the Universe wasn’t looking; it’s not your therapist.

[“Psychiatry isn’t magic, you know.” – my therapist.]

And then—what of consequence? If magic is somehow inherently good or bad, then it surely needs to understand not only why you desire to do something, but what the effects will be. Context matters. If you intend to save a person who is drowning, and instead sink a fully-crewed ship, is that white magic or black?

Consider how much processing power we would need in order for magic to be evil by any definition at all.

[“No magician needs more than 640kb of RAM.” – Sorcerer Gates]

It’s significantly more than what’s requisite for most spells. Killing a human being, for example, doesn’t actually take all that much sorcerous work; a slight surge of electricity into a heart, the coincidence of a misdriven vehicle, the errant entrance of bacteria into a morsel of food; the brief moment of lethargy which makes you stay in the bed of someone else’s marital partner for just a minute longer than is prudent.

(The difference between “fate”, “bad luck”, and “a magical action determined to achieve your death” can be measured in inches, much like the arrow that misses you by just a little bit, versus the one which strikes full-on and opens a terribly important artery.)

[Don’t listen to him. All is as the Prophecy foretold. Now give me a minute, I need to go rewrite that prophecy…]

These are minor alterations of reality—hardly the giant work of metaphysics involved in making a work of magic “evil”. If you try to make it “simple” (in other words: if you’re going to be too lazy to really consider the problem), you start running into difficulties immediately. Take a common thought—“Magic which kills a human being is Dark Magic”. Is it, though? If it’s always evil to kill another human being, you’re going to categorize so very many people as “evil” that the term starts to lose meaning—not just soldiers, but doctors who try and fail (or don’t try hard enough); bad carriage drivers; the makers of that one deep-fried pork-stuffed turkey leg that they do over at the Pig and Poke tavern on Grease Street…

[“SO. WORTH. IT.” – my own last words.]

[And at this point, we notice that an author put a Glyph of Extreme Pain on the rest of the text. So we’ll leave that undisturbed.]

No, the only reason that the actuality of enchantment is workable at all is because all of these complex considerations come from the human side—the interpretation, the names we give to certain spellwork, the way others tell the story later. It isn’t inherent to the spells themselves. Classifying magic poorly is the fault of those who’ve tried to pin it down in books and twist it into something which fits the shape which pleases them, not the fault of the living paranormal power which pervades the multiverse.

Here’s the way this really plays out:

If it’s outside of what is accepted, if it argues with the Lore, if it seeks to do that which is said to be impossible, then suddenly, it can’t be “light”. Apparently, if it’s not something we’ve already seen and done, if it’s not something that has a natural home under the Sun, then it is to be feared.

If you ask me? Not so at all. Dark Magic is merely spellcraft which is found in the cracks, the holes, the hidden “dark places” where ordinary magic leaves off. Dark Magic simply begins when the assembled Lore says, “This, you cannot do”, and you reply,

“Why not?”

It’s not simply about defiance, of course. I might not agree with every grimoire, but I’ve sought and found and read every single strangely-bound collection of oddly-dancing words I could possibly find. (That’s part of why I’m writing this; always try to leave the ladders with more rungs than when you found it.) And all the runework and the study and the alchemy and the conjurings and the battles of wits with the speaking dead, they’re essential, as well. You can’t gain sorcerous dominion without the work and the risk.

This is the heart of a Dark Lord. This is why societies—rightfully, mind you—push us out. Society needs those who are abhorrently different; from us come science, medicine, homicide, religion, cultural improvement and cultural disruption. Society needs us, but it often doesn’t want us.

We become their leaders, their witch-doctors, their eccentrics—or their ostracized.

That is what makes our magick dark. We question the world. We question our realities. We seek out change when sameness is safety and comfort. We are makers and shatterers. We are phoenixes; both incineration, and new birth. We’re not the only ones who do that. But we’re the ones who fit in least. And when you don’t put in the work to fit in, you signal that you are some kind of threat to the culture. Even if you might be a positive threat, you still activate societal antibodies.

So all dark magic starts with stepping outside of unseen barriers, not of magic, but of tradition and taboo. And again—some taboos exist for protection from harm, some exist for protection of the status quo. Seeing someone break them feels the same, regardless of purpose.

And thus, dark magic originates, not with the spell itself, but with that simple act of defiance. First you question. (Pesky things, questions. They’re inconvenient, particularly to those who like to get up a good head of steam and roll a story over everything and anything in its path).

Then you start to wonder, and when rebuked, you don’t jump right back on the approved path, but rather, ask again.

It continues when you get frustrated—with the answers you get, with the people who give them to you, with the things they start saying when your queries begin to sting, most especially if you poke a few untidy holes in the not-as-airtight-as-originally-thought structures which others venerate.

And it culminates in the catalyst: that moment when some elder, or some daemon, or some God, or the Universe itself, tells you, “You can’t”, and your soul replies, “Just watch me.”

–Jeff Mach

__________

Evil Expo approaches! Come check it out at www.EvilExpo.com!

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Table of Contents For A Far More Interesting Book Than The One You’re Reading

Why do so many readers haunt libraries, old bookstores, strange corners of the world of electronic tomes? Why do we talk so much about the Universes of words?

It’s because we have a sense that, somewhere out there, there’s a book, maybe a dozen books, which are far, far better than the book we’re reading, and we want to read those books.

We can’t, because they don’t exist. Not in this reality, anyway. They can only be found in the peculiar ur-space of Books Which Might Be.

But given enough time, enough expert, and enough stolen alien technology, one might pull a piece of one of those works from the cosmic Aether and drag it into this world.

We don’t know the name of this book. But we know we want to read it.

Chapter 1: In which Alice falls through the Looking-Glass straight into Howl’s Castle, which turns out to have been in Hogwarts all along. “Yer a Wizard, Alice!” says Ford Prefect.

Chapter 2: Alice and Hermione meet up and it’s hate at first sight. They both engage in a war of pranks which nearly gets them both kicked out of Starfighter School until they realize that they need to team up in order to defeat the Wicked Queen.

Chapter 3: MORLOCKS! MORLOCKS EVERYWHERE!

Chapter 4: For some reason, there’s nothing in this chapter except soothing descriptions of cats being gently groomed with a very small comb. You’ll read it every night before you go to bed. Trust us on this one.

Chapter 5: There’s no place like home, but home is also seventeen gajillion miles away, so as long as you’re here, Alice is now all grown up and has space-wizard powers, which is a damn good thing, because of the whole Zombiepocalypse.

Chapter 6: The Morlocks have eaten the Zombies. Problem solved.

Chapter 7: Alice makes the long and arduous journey to Mount Doom in order to throw the Emperor into the volcano. This angers the Volcano Gods, who send Captain Hook after grown-up Alice.

Chapter 8: We’re not telling you what happens between Hook and Alice. Meanwhile, the Dark Armies gather.

Chapter 9: Alice reveals to Hook that she’s a Vampire, but not the kind who worries about sunlight or crosses or any of that stuff. Also, she sparkles. Hook kinda just stares off into space with a vaguely sad expression. This goes on for the next 8 chapters.

Chapters 8-16: Really, we weren’t kidding about the whole “staring off into space” bit.

Chapter 17: Hermione has meticulously spent her last several years teaching Defense Against The Dark Arts, while she waited for her dragon eggs to hatch. Cut to a view of the Earth from space. It’s in flames. The Earth is, not space. As Alice engages the warp drive in the ship Heart of Gold, she says, “I’ll be back,” but since she’s saying it into the eternal blackness of the vacuum between stars, nobody hears here.

Chapter 18: It’s just 300 more pages of kittens, starting now.

~Jeff Mach

_____________

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And Evil Expo, the Villain Convention, is coming! Learn more!

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A Fairy Untale

Once upon a time, there was a fairy tale that had no ending.

Strictly speaking, it very possibly had no beginning, either. Is “Once upon a time” strong enough to hoist a story into existence based on its long history and general cultural significance?

Hard to say. But the lack of ending? Definite. I mean, someone stuck “and they all lived happily ever after” somewhere in the middle

(I’m not good at this kind of math. Is there a “middle” without a beginning or end? Does it just make “the words on top” into the beginning, even if they don’t really start a story when they’re supposed to do so?)

—but there wa no tale.

Just Faeries.

So many Faeries.

Because they realized, eventually, they could do away with all the trappings. The Enchanted Kingdom? The Princesses and Princesses and all the bits in-between? The enchanted frogs and toads and toadstools and the enchanted apples and the poisoned cufflinks and the magically delicious crowns? All gone.

(And certainly no Dragons. Let’s not even mention them, lest they be summoned.)

No Tale.

Just Faeries.

so. many. Faeries.

Just hanging about. From the walls, from the ceiling, flitting from kitchen to closet like the world’s most malevolent moths.

Faeries everywhere.

Because they realized they could feed on the tale. And make more of themselves.

And the tale is a trail, for it leads from the world of the imagination and the page, to the world of the word, and right to your brain.

Right here.

And right now.

There is no ending to this story.

No “happily ever after”.

Not for you.

For the Faeries?

Oh, the Faeries are always happy.

But that seldom means joy for others.

We have forgotten that.

We had forgotten that.

But we’ll learn.

Oh, how we’ll learn.

And they all lived, and are living now, and there was no “ever after”, only this present moment, this strangely sideshifting shapetwisting crosswise cockeyed peculiar space which is Theirs, for this moment and every moment, like a road that goes ever, ever on, but it doesn’t lead you anywhere you want to go.

Not that anywhere is free.

Not anymore.

(the never-end)

* * *

alternately:

a possibility:

(you know, I presume, that Faeries cannot abide Iron. You might have thought this meant horseshoes, or anvils.

But it really means the iron in human blood.

For when our blood is stirred enough, is boiling enough, we can fight them, supernatural though they are. And they might not win.

They have enticing glamour; unnatural, ungodly beautiful glamour; they show you everything you want to see. But you can see more than just what you want. If you work at it. If you get mad at it.

Fight through illusion and look for something solid. Maybe not Truth—that’s a hard thing to distill into mortal perception—but something strong and heavy and real enough that you could use it to nail a Faerie to a wall.

Like I said:

This story has no end.

Because this story isn’t over.

~Jeff Mach

_____________

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And Evil Expo, the Villain Convention, is almost here! Learn more at www.EvilExpo.com!

 

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13 Vampire Rules For Life

We certainly do drink…wine. If one is going to spend centuries acquiring a stylish all-black wardrobe, how, precisely, is one going to sit about in bars, brooding and staring off into the distance as if peering into a thousand years of unholy memories and/or fighting off a hangover the size of Transylvania…if one’s simply sitting there, nursing a ginger ale? It’s just not a good look.
Be sure to figure out whether you’re a modern-type Vampire or an old-school Vampire. This is extremely important. Old-school Vampires are generally aristocrats, scions of noble families, wealthy and powerful and ancient. However (and this is a well-known fact) – they are unable to listen to any music written later than 1876, and are required by Vampiric Law to refer to electronic telecommunications as “The Internets”.
In contrast, modern Vampires can do anything modern-day humans can do, including feel endless and unceasing amounts of existential angst. This is a challenge, since the general Vampiric frame of mind is, “Oh, why must I be cursed to this horrifying existence?”, whereas the modern frame of mind is, “Oh, why must I be cursed to this horrifying existence?”
Play with your food. It’s yours, after all. If anyone judges you, bite them.
Bite them anyway.
Many people do not believe in Vampires. Encourage this.  Pretend you’re not real. The more Humanity disbelieves, the more it is helpless in the face of…hm? What? You’re kidding me. Very well, we’ll go on to Rule #7:
Nevermind Rule #6. Embrace the heck out of being a Vamp. Modern humans will think that is the coolest thing ever. Some of them won’t believe you, and this is the time to say, “Hah, I bet I can drink like six pints of your blood.” Some of them will believe you, and this is the time to say, “Hah, I bet I can drink like six pints of your blood.” Either way, you’re going to be happy.
The wise Vampire recognizes the advantages of having both a Swingin’ Single Coffin and a Coffin Built For Two. Or three; I mean, Vampires are extremely sexy. Especially if you’re Vampire Professor Richard Feynman.
Lobby against all the blood on TV. You’re just trying to binge-watch something your friends like; why do they have to spend every other scene making you hungry?
Yes, Tim Burton is the reason you won’t have your own soap opera, and yes, you should be mad about that.
There’s this modern trope where Vampires become less ambiguously villainous by only sucking the life out of Bad People. There’s also an entire Internet out there (see point #2) which is devoted to “finding” Bad People. Conclusion: Vamp whomever you’d like, and when their bodies are discovered, just say, “They were secretly evil. Trust me. They said some horrible things in their tweets 17 years ago.”
If you’re at a Goth Night and someone says, “Where did you get your fangs,” do not say, “Want to find out?” Because no matter how much this ought to be an effective pickup line, this will only get you dragged to a Renaissance Faire. In daylight.
There’s No Such Thing As Vampires. Trust me. Would an ancient mesmeric creature of the night lie?

~Jeff Mach

_____________

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And Evil Expo, the Villain Convention, is coming! Learn more at www.EvilExpo.com!

 

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An Orcish Ending

It was after we had slain the last living Orc that we finally had a chance to explore their far-off cities. It surprised the hell out of us, because they weren’t supposed to have cities.

We’d been fooled by thousands of Orc encampments. We assumed they were nomadic, not merely by choice, but because they lacked the technology, the organization, the math for city planning and organized governance.

Towards the end of the fight, they unveiled war machines of extraordinary sophistication. We figured they’d been supplied by the Necromancess or some other wizardly foe, but now we recognize that this was simply one of the parts of a hidden civilization we’d never expected.

There weren’t many Orc cities, and each was well-hidden. But as our cavalry hammered across uncountable miles of formerly unknown territory (unknown by us, anyway; the Orcs had lived there for millenia)—far at the edges of those strange stretched of land, we began to find the Orcs’ true habitation.

They had emptied out the cities before we arrived. All Orcs fight, and so there were no weak or infirm left behind for us to deal with.

(Or, at least, so said our advance guard, without looking us in the eyes. We chose to take them at their words; what else could we do?)

We found, within these metropoli, not simply culture, but a level of intellectual sophistication beyond anything we had expected.

The libraries! The Universities! The museums! …oh, many of those things were so blood-splattered that it was difficult to make everything (a mystery!) (And there was human blood, too—”We have no idea what that is,” said our Generals.

And it was obvious, undeniable, what the truth about Orcs really was.

I could recount the statues and art of the City itself, the beauty of its design. I could point to their ingenious mechanisms, their clearly-organized society, but the basic conclusion was as simple as it was inescapable: The Orcs had a level of attainment and progress next to which, by our own rubrics, we were pure barbarians.

And we had slaughtered them all.

Each of us showed remorse in the manner which suited us best. Many took to Orc wine (which turned out to be subtle, fascinating, and of surpassing quality; of course, there would be no more when it ran out; we’d burnt their vineyards.

Some wandered the cities aimlessly, gazing hollow-eyed at numberless wonders.

Some simply left, going nowhere but away.

I did as I always do. I lost myself in books of Philosophy (this time, that of another species!)—which has always been my comfort.

And I discovered a curious thing.

Having gained every sophistication, the Orcs had, in the main, abandoned it.

Philosophy brings nuance, and nuance brings uncertainty, and uncertainty brings discontent.

Orcs eventually rejected the understanding that they, themselves had created, for a gory reasoning that life is at its clearest at live/die, kill or be killed.

It was breathtaking ugliness midst all this nearly-celestial beauty. I write this from a very tall tower made of what seems to be shimmery glass; the actual material must be something sturdier, but it still won’t hold out long. They’ll find this piece, written painstakingly in their own tongue. Perhaps they’ll chose to feed it to the fire, or tear it to shreds; but I hope the Orcs keep it. This is a fervent letter of thanks:

In the end, we were not the destroyers of something lovely; in fact, we, ourselves, will have been destroyed by a vengeance so vicious and overwhelming that it is familiar; in this very foreign place, it is the wind of Home. In their own way, Orcs are as human as we are, Gods damn them.

~Jeff Mach

_____________

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And Evil Expo, the Villain Convention, is coming! Learn more!

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Lycanthropic

Magic is real, and I hate it.

I hate what this is doing to my mind. And I cannot live with what the full moon does to me, to this…to whatever I am. If I’d considered it much before, I might have thought we were in some way products of the things we’ve done. But did the things I did in that shape really matter in this one? And as for actions…if I’m not myself for part of the time, where have “I” gone, and who does the thinking then?

You never really appreciate what it is to be sane, what it is to have thoughts and urges that makes sense, what it is to have control over the feelings that rush through your body, until you start feeling like millennia of primordial pain and rage are all fighting against surface tension, trying to express themselves in the warped language of a body that no longer feels like your own.

Yes, I transform. Only once a month, just like in the movies, but once a month is more than enough for me to doubt whether or not I want to continue existing.

Because I can spend 30 days living the most blameless life I possibly can, seeking to do good for my community, seeking only to eke out an existence and survive.

But every waning moon someday waxes again, and as it grows from a crescent into accursed sphere, I feel myself becoming less of what I am, and more of something which truly understands only destruction and pain and anger.

I believe in magic now. I’m not sure I really knew what magic even was before. My world made sense. Things happened in a logical way, and action followed consequence without resorting to peculiar changes, one creature becoming another for no apparent reason other than changes in a celestial body far above.

For obvious reasons, I’m writing this from a very bad place, physically and mentally. Otherwise this account would not exist, and I would not be speaking of any of these things, were I not worried that I would do tremendous harm while in a form I can only call, quite literally, monstrous.

I never asked to be bitten.

But bitten I was, and apparently, there’s something in the teeth, or in the blood.

What kind of human bites a wolf, and why?

I wish I didn’t know, but I do. Once you become a were-human, cursed to leave the ground as two proper paws turn into manipulative fingers, as reasonable thoughts of killing and mating and eating as needed turn into jumbled explosive mental gyrations of killing and mating and eating all the damn time, you begin to understand why humans hunt everything.

I have left my Pack, because I will not hurt it; and while I am tempted to seek out humans and enact upon them that which was given to me, I won’t.

It’s hard to bear a curse alone, but who would knowingly seek to infect others with madness?

…humans would. And humans can travel longer, given time, than wolves can; if I don’t take myself very, very far from civilization of Man or Wolf, then the two-legged part of me might just make it to some inhabited area.

So I wander, roaming far, and thirty nights a month, I howl with grief.

And once a month, I scream with pure, thwarted fury.

So it goes.

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Dungeon Doggerel

Plausible Deniability

(An Apology For Non-Accountability in Fantasy Poetry)

There’s something about us fantasy writers

Which makes some of us think that we’re poetic blighters.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve an alibi:

“Who wrote that poem? O, surely not I!

It’s a ‘Song of the Orcs‘ or ‘The Saga of Elves‘;

We’d surely never write this stuff ourselves“.

For we know ‘real’ poets sound like Shakespeare and Parker,

While this sounds more like a carnival barker.

Is the cadence wrong? Do the rhymes kinda thud?

Do we awkwardly squeeze in a reference to blood?

The fault isn’t ours. We just pull the wagons;

The drivers are Goblins and Hobbits and Dragons.

So if this poem’s terrible, please don’t be haters.

Do not blame me. It’s the fault of drunk Satyrs.

* * *

A Considerate Note To Interlopers

Be careful in your Dungeon Delving

Or you might end up Dungeon Shelving.

* * *

Shiny Things

This, friends, is the Unicorn:

Eyes that sparkle,

Hearts of thorn.

* * *

Dungeonkeeper Protips

Hygiene

If you like your dungeon littered leastly,

Gelatinous cubes are your go-to beasties.

It’s true that their diet’s quite implausible

But they’ll eat anything,

fanged, horned, or clawsible.

Housekeeping

I like my trapdoors neatly oiled

I like adventurers lightly boiled

I like my Spheres Annihilatory

And my endings fairly gory.

Location

Wouldn’t your life be boring and dull

If your island wasn’t shaped like a skull?

Adventurers just won’t come calling

If your geography’s not appalling.

Consumer confidence starts eroding

If your abode is not foreboding.

Adventurers love treasure, and they love fighting

But most of all, they love dramatic lighting.

So get you a Castle of Doomity Doom,

And mount it on top of The Horrific Tomb,

Or else – and fear this fate, Dread Lord:

You’ll have no one to kill

and be

terribly

bored.

Healthy lifestyle

I.

Greens are important. So if your budget’s spent,

You can save on veggies by eating an Ent.

corollary:

II.

To Adventurers bold and brave:

You should come visit the Back of the Cave!

We’ve got great reviews (every one is a rave!)

And you’ve got the nutrients we crave.

~Jeff Mach

_____________

Here’s my novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“.

And here’s Evil Expo, the Convention for Villains.

The post Dungeon Doggerel appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

The Cosmic Valentine

The answer was there; it’s been there for centuries. But like most of the truly important, truly meaningful discoveries of our time, we ignored the real understanding because we were so close, we couldn’t see the proverbial forest for the proverbial trees.

True love is the most powerful thing on Earth.

Love conquers all.

It’s was hard to really know what this meant until humanity began to get an inkling of the real implications. And even then, it was almost too late. The wrong people had too much leverage. They were close to winning.

But one brave coterie of scientists dared challenge traditional knowledge and understanding. It fought hard and got the funding (some say that someone in power had once experienced True Love and thus knew its awesome puissance, but that’s only speculation)—and embraced a new era of Love.

This was Love at its finest. No combination of consenting adult humans was ignored. All Love was honored, respected, and, most of all, examined thoroughly, under laboratory conditions.

As was the case with atomic energy, as was the case with fire itself, as was the case in so much of the technological advancement of our species, our understanding was (and still is) very far from complete. Everyone’s well-aware that there’s some kind of chemical reactivity going on, but what happens from there? Many people have advanced what are essentially mystical ideas, suggesting that there’s some kind of universal force related to humanity which permits some kind bond between humans which can’t be seen or touched or measured, but which is nevertheless present between them at all times. This will probably prove as incorrect as phlogiston theory, or the idea that the world is made out of four elements, or that the Earth goes around the Sun; but who knows?

What we do know is that Love can change the face of the planet itself.

And just in time, too.

It took a lot of research, but we were able to reproduce True Love under laboratory conditions; to manufacture it artificially, like Plutonium. And thus we could study it properly, and now we know what Love is for. I’ll try to put it simply.

It’s difficult to describe in lay terms, but if you’re able to manufacture enough True Love, and you smash several pieces of it together, it explodes like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

This was the breakthrough weapon, and fortunately, our side discovered it first. We were only a few months, perhaps even a few weeks ahead, but we did come out ahead. Which makes sense, for, as our history books shall say, only we truly know how to love. And that’s why we were the first to weaponize it.

It took only a few small demonstrations—statistically, the majority of the continents of this world remain intact—and now, we rule. And we are making refinements every day; with proper military funding, the project proceeds at an unbelievable pace. We are eliminating the less-efficient forms of love, which are, clearly, wrong, and finding only the best True Love. And so our culture thrives and is ever-improving, along with, as the poet said, “the beauty of our weapons”.

None shall oppose us; none can stand against our Love without being destroyed by it. And isn’t that the real meaning of romance?

Thus we Love our enemies; we Love them to death, if need be. For Love is the law, love under our implacable and merciless Will.

 

 

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