Moe Lane's Blog, page 15
September 29, 2025
Geez, where did the month go?
It’s almost October! Or Spooky Month, as we call it in my house. Harvest moons and haunted walks and cool breezes fluttering through the leaves. Maybe one last hurrah with my youngest going trick-or-treat, but I think he’s feeling too old for such things. I’ve already started noticing dusk coming earlier, and the hint of future chills in the night winds.
Excellent. June is my favorite month, but October ain’t half bad, either.
Guillermo del Toro is dubious about his AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS passion project.
GeekTyrant relays the unsurprising but unfortunate update. Basically, Guillermo del Toro wants to do AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS properly, which would be far too expensive for Hollywood’s tastes. …To be honest about it, I can sort of see Hollywood’s point. GeekTyrant estimates a production budget of one hundred million; and while I love the idea, and would go see it opening night, I personally don’t have half a billion dollars to throw at the movie to cover costs. That’s just the facts on the ground, folks. I’m not loving it, either.
Moe Lane
PS: But this reminds me of what is apparently one of the cruelest things I’ve ever published here. …Fair.
Snippet the Last, IRONGHOSTS.
I’ll put the whole thing up tomorrow, after edits.
…
Omega bothered with neither the door, nor the wall, instead choosing to smash through the ceiling in a shower of plastic and metal. And she roared as she came. It was a bizarre roar, full of choppy shrieks and staccato grunts, all at a pitch and tone that Nat had ever heard before, and focused inexorably on Mu, now lying battered on the ground below her ‘sister.’ And disarticulated: Mu’s arm had snapped off like a twig in Omega’s vicious grippers, and the larger golem was shaking her roughly, screaming more of that bizarre cacophony as it popped off ever-larger pieces of Mu. There was a horrible delicacy in her dismemberment, though. Clearly Omega wanted her pound of flesh, and was willing to take her time in getting it.
It occurred to Nat later that he should have at least considered running away. True, it would have been pointless, but the thought never even crossed his mind as he rose, took aim, and spat out certain nonsense syllables while clawing at the intangible. For one horrible second his fingers found no purchase on the roiling aether around him, but then his arcane grasp firmed, and the power was flowing up through his fingers, and out of his mouth.
The magical bolt that struck Omega was a jangled, ugly thing, the product of haphazard training and only furtive practice. A Dominion teaching-mage would have scowled at the sight of it, and reached for his training whip. A Hersheyian Special Tasks Instructor would have coolly nodded, and penciled herself a reminder for instituting remedial training. But a Virginian wizard would have applauded, because it did exactly what Nat wanted; it got Omega’s attention, and in a perfectly dramatic manner, too.
Remember: The Tier goes up to $3 for NEW PATRONS ONLY on October 1st.
So if you have an existing $1 tier already, you’re fine. The raise in rate just applies for people who sign up for a tier afterward. And, yeah, it’s gonna be $3. I hate raising the price at all.
Patreon!
September 28, 2025
‘Beeswing.’
Beeswing, Richard Thompson
#commissionearned
The V/H/S/HALLOWEEN trailer.
My eldest is SO looking forward to this. He might not stay up to watch V/H/S/HALLOWEEN the moment it hits Shudder on October 3rd, but he won’t dally on watching it, either. It is his vibe.
It’s not particularly mine, but there’s enough overlap between our tastes that we can go watch horror movies together on a semi-regular basis. It’s nice.
Tweet of the Day, YAAAAAAR edition.
Engineers are vital to society. I like engineers. I married an engineer.
I still think that this is what can happen when you do not keep your eye on them, from time to time.
Blowing a motorcyclist in half with a broadside of Lithium Shot like I was at the Battle of Trafalgar https://t.co/S53U9VTxNc
— Video Nasties(@53gaDr3amca5t) September 27, 2025
Patreon Microfiction: Non-Standard Biowaste Disposal Protocol #517-23e.
Look, ‘Non-Standard Biowaste Disposal Protocol #517-23e’ is not very nice. But you try running a functional government in the middle of a decade’s-long world-spanning conflict where everything is free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. The USNA was a damned saint, compared to some of the other Great Powers out there. The government barely used orbital kinetic weapons on civilian ground targets at all, really.
Patreon!(More on this cosmic horror setting here for the RPG, and GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND for the fiction. Oh, and here for short stories.)
09/28/2025 Snippet, IRONGHOSTS
Getting there!
…
“Yeah. We’d need a good broker,” Nat said, “but you can hire those, if you’re willing to cut them in for a piece of the action.” He looked around. “Mind you, we’ll need to live through the morning first. Where should we be, Mu?”
“The main repair bay in the center. They let me enter enough times to keep my own parts in order, but they have, ah, guards warding that room. If I stay too long, they will know. One or the other will eventually come, but I do not know how long that will be. They deliberately do not keep a set schedule for their response.”
“Hrm. What would happen if you broke some of the tools in there?” asked Oxman.
“I tried that, once. They came most quickly, then. That was when I lost my legs.” Mu bobbed slightly, in the air. “I had to crawl for years, before I learned the trick of making my ghost limbs strong enough to bear my weight.”
“Some jobs you enjoy,” muttered Oxman after a moment of appalled silence. “Still, there’s our answer. No need for a fancy plan. We just set ourselves, go in, and smash. Good loot, or not.”
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