Moe Lane's Blog, page 658
October 4, 2021
Been looking for Book Fairs/conventions in MD to vend in.
Slightly slow going, alas: I don’t want to drive three hours, and I definitely don’t want to spend two hundred bucks on a table when I’m not going to make that money back. If people know of reasonably-price book fairs in Maryland, feel free to let me know. I’ll also happily participate in book signings at local bookstores! Aside from the sales, it’ll help get my name out.
Introducing the homemade NERF Scorpion!
That’s scorpion as in ‘muzzle-loading field artillery,’ because that’s what this thing is. Although admittedly it uses pressurized air instead of torsion energy.
Via GeekTyrant. And let me be clear about this: this is a proof-of-concept canned-air siege weapon. At half power and a 45 degree elevation it can lob a PVC and plastic projectile 250 feet; the (blunt) missile can crack a concrete block at full strength, and point-blank range. I may steal this idea for my next Morgan Barod novel. Or at least figure out how to hand-wave it away.
Moe Lane
10/04/21 Snippet, THE JOB’S THE JOB.
Meetings!
Patreon!What? Amanda Green called me back within an hour. Every client I’ve ever known will spend a hunk of time convincing themselves that they really wanted to hire me. Or they decide that they really don’t. Nothing I’m going to say will make a difference, so why should I stay on the line while they’re deciding?
Ms. Green was one of the apologetic ones, like needing the services of a supernatural plumber was a moral failing on her part (sometimes it is, but those people either never clean up after themselves, or they’re dead). I let her get a few apologies out before I steered the conversation to actually having a face to face meeting. She wanted one right away, and didn’t blink when I gave her my office address. That didn’t say anything one way or the other about how serious her situation was, but it spoke wonderful volumes on her willingness to pay.
I was expecting a forty-something woman with nervous eyes and a perpetual look of worry on her face to show up at my office late that afternoon, and that’s exactly what I got. But I was also expecting her to wear useless New Age jewelry, all crystals and clunky stones and maybe a dreamcatcher necklace. I was half-right: she might have been wearing tacky occult jewelry, but it was real tacky occult jewelry. Ms. Green here either knew her business, or knew somebody who did.
Good thing I don't log in via Facebook!
Check out my books! Moe Lane
Facebook is still down.
I think I may some comments about this at the next SCA baronial meeting. It’s not anybody’s fault on the baronial level, or even really the kingdom’s: but we’re far too reliant on Facebook. And I got a newsletter due tomorrow.
October 3, 2021
Item Seed: Shade-Scourges.
Shade-Scourges
Description: a square pyramid made out of clear yellow crystal, with elaborate wires embedded and spiraling into a center ball. The ball occasionally flashes dark blue, or green. At each lower corner of the pyramid is a small depression, sheathed in some metal. If a person picks up the Shade-Scourge using their thumbs and forefingers, they can hear the ball screaming.
Not every necromancer is evil, but almost none of them are nice. Anger one, and they’ll make you wish you hadn’t. Infuriate one, and they will make you wish you were dead. Appall one, and mere death will be the nicest thing that happens to you.
Shade-Scourges? Case in point. The item traps the soul of a recently-dead person before it can go to its fate, and torments that soul. Forever… or at least until the accumulated death energy powering the artifact runs out. And that’s the tricky bit; because the death energy comes from all the people that the soul personally murdered in life. It doesn’t have to be directly — the first Shade-Scourge was constructed to capture and torment Emperor Leopold II, and it’s still working a century after his death — but it does have to be murder. Simply killing people in battle, or executing them after a trial, or anything else besides the deliberate unjust taking of a human life doesn’t count.
Oh, and breaking the Shade-Scourge has no effect on the soul. The pyramid is simply there to allow regular people to savor the screams.
What does one do with an item like this? What can one do? Tormenting souls like this is awful, and it doesn’t become any less awful when it’s done to mass murderers (at least, that’s what the angelic calculus says, and it’s exquisitely designed to quantify ethical and moral questions*). But the spell structure was deliberately designed to be as difficult to sabotage as possible without getting into ‘karmic backlash’ territory. Stopping the spell prematurely is a task for a top-shelf magical adept. As in, ‘one of the ten best in the world.’ And they all have fairly full schedules. Saving the screaming shade of Stalin is not likely to be on their priority list.
Maybe just not touch the corners? Not that anybody knows whether or not having an audience makes things worse. But it’s something, right?
*Life gets weird in universes where Good and Evil can be actually graphed out.
So. Diablo II Remastered. Talk me into it, or talk me down?
Either is plausible: I played that game a hell of a lot when it first came out: Necromancer all the way, my droogies*. I could be playing it again. But do I really want to get sucked into Diablo II again? …Scratch that question, because the answers obvious. Is it really a good idea?
Moe Lane
If you’re wondering: I told myself that I had a bunch of spirits on hand on the other side of the Veil who just needed bodies. It was unfortunate that there were such… visceral special effects; but me and my guys were there to save the world, man! My guys wouldn’t hurt a fly! Unless it was demonic or something, sure.
10/03/21 Snippet: The Job’s The Job.
Here we go.
Patreon!There are more people in the field of supernatural investigations than you’d think, but the ones that actually know there really is a supernatural to investigate fit into three broad categories. You get the people who are fascinated by the stuff and can’t wait to learn more about it, the people who want to burn anything more esoteric than a tarot deck, and you get people like — well, me. The supernatural is this thing, you know what I mean? Not wondrous, not soul-destroying, it’s just there and you have to take it into account when you’re going about your day. Sometimes you need a professional to help you with that, just like you’d call in a plumber if you can’t unclog the drain yourself.
That’s me. Clara Solomon, supernatural plumber. The last name’s real, by the way. I’ve been actually thinking of changing it professionally to something less dramatic.
Patreon Microfiction: The Reserve.
Yeah, there’s a lot weird in “The Reserve,” starting with the massive temporal paradoxes involved. …And I wanted to make a joke about ‘paradoxen,’ except it’s perfectly reasonable to make the plural ‘oxes.’ Weird that ‘oxen’ is the exception, really.
Anyhoo…
Patreon!
