Moe Lane's Blog, page 668
September 14, 2021
09/14/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
Patreon!The drone’s radar sensors did nothing to help the mood, either. It was barely able to show outlines, which at least kept Tobias from crashing into the sides; but the deeper the drone got, the worse the shaft seemed. It was… off-kilter, like parts of it had been pushed out of line, but not all at once. And at the bottom was rubble, tumbled and settled. The drone carried a radar sophisticated enough to pick up anything man-sized or larger (in happier times, it had been used for moonquake emergency response calls), and as it drew closer to the bottom automated request were made to Tobias to start scanning for biological material.
He was hesitant to let it — the radar sweeps weren’t triggering a response (And just what’s supposed to be responding? asked a voice in his head), but Tobias felt an instinctive reluctance to try anything more intrusive — when he realized that there was another issue. The drone was starting to react sluggishly, like it was getting caught up on something. Only slightly at the moment, but it was definitely reacting.
The ‘Useful to Mine’ SNAKE EYES Honest Trailer.
I had no interest in seeing SNAKE EYES before, and I have none now.
However, the following movies (all of which were mentioned by Honest Trailers) sound interesting:
Warrior (2019)The Raid: Redemption (2011)The Night Comes for Us (2018)Cobra Vs. Ninja…which is itself a judgement on SNAKE EYES, huh?
RIP, Norm MacDonald.
Far too young. My prayers and condolences for his family and loved ones.
BREAKING: Norm MacDonald has died "after a long and private battle with cancer"
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) September 14, 2021
The influential comedian and former 'SNL' Weekend Update anchor was 61 https://t.co/wSbwGQ8Syp
Surprisingly*, COPS to be revived.
The new/old COPS is going be on streaming:
Fox Nation intends to launch a 33rd season of the show on October 1, when it will unveil four new episodes. Plans call for Fox Nation to drop a new episode of the series weekly on Friday nights. The streaming outlet will also show 15 episodes from the show’s 32nd season. As part of the launch, Fox Nation will offer a free one-year subscription to police, firefighters and emergency responders.
I’m going to skip over lightly The Stuff We Don’t Talk About Here and just point out that any show that has been on long enough to be eligible to run for the US Senate will likely have a fan base of some heft to it. Also: geez, but I’m old. Enough to remember this:
Yeah, COPS was coming back.
Moe Lane
*Not really.
FunCom has Conan.
This is not code language. FunCom is plugging Conan because FunCom owns Conan. Nothing else I could say would make more sense given what Funcom owns and what FunCom is doing at this moment*.
We are thrilled to announce we’ve acquired the IPs Conan the Barbarian, Mutant Year Zero, Solomon Kane and more! We’ll be merging these IPs into the studio Heroic Signatures where we’ll be working on various entertainment projects. Read the press release: https://t.co/1AVPDG1O1D pic.twitter.com/UTmebd10Ew
— Funcom (@Funcom) September 14, 2021
*Classical reference. God, but I miss Achewood.
September 13, 2021
09/13/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
Less work than I’d like, today.
Patreon!Tobias closed his eyes out of habit, before snapping them open again. This wasn’t Earth, where you could lose yourself in a total-immersion link and not have to worry whether your atmosphere might suddenly go somewhere else. He needed to keep one eye on the readouts here and one eye on directing the drone. It was approaching the wrecked torchship now, and things looked…
…they looked really, really bad. The ship hadn’t crashed onto the ripped-away hatch; it had been pulled into it. The bands encircling the hull were far too regularly spaced to be ‘natural’ — and that was the moment when Tobias instructed his hopper to start its preflight checks. He’d seen this holomovie, although admittedly it usually involved giant squids.
Tweet of the Day, We Already Knew This, But It’s Great To Have A Confession edition.
At least, I hope we all already knew this. It was pretty obvious, right? :Goes to check to make sure there’s nothing in the archives that would contradict that confident statement:
Confirming once and for all that Slate's "Dear Prudence" is really just "Penthouse Letters" for bored creatively frustrated hipster Brooklynites: https://t.co/r63wUFo9MR
— Jeff B. tried to do his best, but he could not (@EsotericCD) September 13, 2021
The GHOSTWIRE: TOKYO trailer.
This reminds me a bit of the Tokyo boards in Secret World Legends. Big surprise, huh? When you’re drawing on specific Japanese horror folklore, and setting it in the same urban area, you’re gonna get similar-looking monsters.
GHOSTWIRE TOKYO does look fun, though. Even though I’d prefer to have my trusty AR from SWL. 2022 release.
Item/Group Seed: Nega-Ohio.
Nega-Ohio
Strictly speaking, the name is N’Gh O’Yiehrh, and that’s as close as humanity can get to the correct pronunciation, thank God. Literally. Species that can pronounce it properly tend to develop nasty personality disorders. ‘Nega-Ohio’ works well enough as a use-name; inhabitants of it are typically referred to as ‘Interlopers,’ or ‘the Unwelcome’ if somebody’s feeling vaguely pompous.
The epithets are well deserved, too. Interlopers would like to invade, conquer, and enslave Earth, only the dimension they hail from is just a little too different from our own to let them make a proper go at it. They’ve still tried several times, only to discover each time that our native reality interferes with too many of their regular biological processes. A less malevolent species would have given up long since, but the Interlopers seem particularly determined to succeed.
Interlopers have a ‘range’ covering most of the Mississippi river valley and Appalachian mountains, although they definitely prefer the latter to the former. In the flatlands, they manifest as various cryptids, usually at night (UV light levels during the day are intolerable to them). It is unknown why they try to manifest in the open, as they are barely tangible and can barely move. Possibly it’s just bloody-mindedness, or the Interlopers are acting as scouts, or they’re doing something less comprehensible.
In the mountains, Interlopers can maintain their presence in our dimension for longer periods, and typically use that time to try to acquire human servants. They pay for services via the application of ‘sorcery,’ for lack of a better word. Interlopers can’t or won’t do very many beneficial spells, but they know any number of processes that can cause serious harm. Unfortunately, humans who spend too much time in the presence of sorcery quickly become physically and mentally warped, in increasingly unsubtle ways. Which is why Interlopers are always looking for more servants*.
But, as noted before, while Interlopers are malignant they are not powerful — at least, not on Earth. Presumably they are more dangerous in Nega-Ohio, which would probably have the same effect on humans as Earth has on Interlopers. More than one occultist has wondered if that applies to sorcery, as well. Could human Interlopers in Nega-Ohio be able to create powerful curses and entropy bombs? It’s an interesting question.
Well, it’s interesting to a certain kind of mind. One that is perhaps more likely than some to want to come to an arrangement with the Interlopers. Oh, they might not last long before their inevitable implosion, but that’s hardly any kind of comfort to their victims…
*A lightly fictionalized account of this can be found in the short story “One Other,” written by Manly Wade Wellman. Wellman was definitely familiar with Interlopers and other mythological creatures of the Midwest, and this story shows that it was either a personal familiarity, or he had access to reliable eyewitness accounts. Either way: Wellman should be considered authoritative but not inerrant on the topics of modern cryptozoology and apotropaic rituals.
