Difference between revisions of "Scratchpad"

Revision as of 21:27, 2 August 2017

The Tangerine Dream Heist

An Ocean's Eleven-style heist operation...where every character and location just happens to be named after a Tangerine Dream album.

• Atem is the Leading Man, the brains of the operation.
• Phaedra is his ex-love interest.
• Le Parc is the eccentric gadgeteer.
• Melrose is the face-man.
• White Eagle is the ex-SAS recon/intel man.
• Tyger is your Leverage-style "hitter."
• Sorcerer is your computer guy.
• And Force Majeure is their mysterious benefactor that gives the orders.
• Their job is to case a trio of casino resorts called Lily On The Beach, Stratosfear, and Green Desert.

Consider me flapped!

"No, Ruby, you wanna know why I'm out? THIS is why I'm out!" I carefully placed the kaiken on her desk. "They sent me a message. Basically told me to butt out. Guy pinned a fucking death threat to my wall with this."

"Well, they can't exactly stab you to death now, can they? You've got their knife."

"That's not helping."

"Neither is you bringing a knife into my work place, Bass."

"I..."

"Look. Bass. I don't like to see you panicked." Ruby does something very un-Ruby-like and puts a consoling hand on my back. It's oddly warm, but doesn't stop me from flinching as she touches me. "This case is a huge opportunity for you! Whatever happened to being a professional? What could be more professional than working for the Organized Crime unit? Where's that unflappable, take-no-shits private dick you always were?"

"I'm not unflappable, dammit! Consider me flapped!" The office gossip chain starts gopher-holing from their cubes to see what I'm going on about. "I wanted to work the little cases, the stuff the cops didn't want. Ease myself into it."

"Says the guy that solved a kidnapping and a suicide-framed-as-murder for his first two cases! Come on, you're fuckin' better than this."

"But I'm dealing with....they're like the mafia! You disrespect them by going through their business, you lose a finger or...something..."

She grabs me and turns me around to face her. I'm having difficulty keeping eye contact. "Bastion. Listen to me. You are exactly the right person for this job. The cops can't touch these shady assholes because they'd stick out like a sore thumb right now. The family has them cornered. But you're a nobody. Just because someone stabbed your wall doesn't necessarily mean they consider you a threat. All it means is they think they can intimidate you for the cost of replacing some cheap-ass blade." She picks it up from the desk and turns it around in her hands a few times. "Look at this thing. Dinged up real bad, and the handle's rotting. They don't care about the knife, just like they don't care about you."

"Actually, hang on. What's this marking?" I point - carefully - at a spot on the blade bearing a character in Japanese. "What's this, someone carved their name in it?"

"No, no, that'd be too crude. Probably a maker's mark or something."

"Any idea whose?"

"I'd have to go ask some people. Don't worry, I know this couple...antique nuts, they run this consignment shop uptown. A husband-and-wife pair. The wife handles all the business, and the husband gets a real hard-on for verifying the authenticity of shit. Usually it annoys me, but I think it might be useful to you."

"What's their address?" I ask, whipping out my notepad.

"Don't worry about that. A knife like this, with a guy like you wandering around town with it? Recipe for disaster. I'll take it myself and let you know later."

"What, you think I'm gonna lose it somewhere, or cut myself with it or something?"

"No, I think someone's gonna spot you with it and get you picked up for carrying a deadly weapon, or worse, send one of their 'soldiers' after you. But those Japanese pricks don't know who I am, and I got a glovebox I can stash it in."

mage detective thing

"Oy, are you done yet? I got a bloody watch to get back to and I ain't as like to let a whelp of a spellbeggar like yourself to keep me from it." The Guardsman never once let his gaze wander from the robed man in the room. There was just no trusting a mage like that, he'd said before, but it was Guard Captain Montag's insistence that kept them here to start with. "There's naught to find, no matter how you search," he added.

"I'll thank you to stay quiet while I'm working," said Randulf. There was a peculiar...vibration, he supposed, coming from the back corner of this improvised hovel. It'd been a storehouse for a nearby tavern, but nothing tavern-related had been stored here for the last year. The room had been filled with everything from withered saplings to slightly pretty rocks (pretty, but not valuable). The victim, not sprawled in typical corpse-like fashion but seemingly already laid out as if in a coffin, was right in front of the only door. Yet, some kind of energy was coming from the opposite end of the building, from the inside of a crate that the victim had been sleeping in. The victim's own life force, perhaps? No, the victim is dead, Randulf told himself. If this is anybody's life force, it's more likely to be someone else's.

"You found something? Or are you making that face 'cause you're coming up with a good story for the Captain?" The Guardsman's eyes were largely hidden behind the visor of his helmet - the only proper armor the city's guards tended to have - but Randulf could tell he must have been rolling them impatiently. "Come on, then, you spent enough time in this rat hole. Let's get you back to the Captain so I can go watch someone who's like to actually do something."

"If that's the way you feel, Guardsman, I expect you won't be likely to listen the next time I tell you I've caught you a murderer." Randulf rolled up the sleeves of his robe, revealing the tattoo-like markings up his forearms. "No, I've found a curious energy here. The victim, there, you've already checked that he's dead, yes?" The Guardsman only nodded in reply. "What I find curious, though...usually the recently departed leave some shred of their life force behind, close by their mortal form. It's how High Priests and Chosen are able to revive fallen comrades."

"That never sat well with me," the Guardsman said.

"Yes, I gathered you weren't a particularly spiritual type." Randulf swept his tattooed arms slowly about the empty crate, as if to feel something that wasn't there. "But no. Whoever murdered the man over there--" Randulf gestured towards the corpse with his head, as his arms were busy-- "either did it long enough ago that his spirit has already departed this plane, or more likely, was so thorough as to kill his spirit as well as his body." Randulf's right arm stopped, as if being pulled to that specific point in space. "Hmph. This is interesting."

"What's interesting? It sure ain't interesting ME!"

"To be fair, Guardsman, you don't seem to be interested in much beyond hitting things with truncheons." He focused as hard as he could on that specific spot. "It's as I thought a moment ago. This is someone ELSE'S spirit. Someone who isn't in this room."

"Eh?"

"I didn't think I'd be so likely to see it used in a murder...body-swapping is difficult magic at best. But our victim - if he even IS a victim - isn't the owner of this spirit. Which means, barring usage of soul-vessels or the like, we've got this spirit's body walking around with the dead body's spirit inside it. Someone's either very confused, or trying to fake their own death."

"Well, tell it to the Captain. You done now?"

"As done as I can be, I fear." Randulf wrested his arm away from its strange pulling sensation and unrolled his sleeves. He scrawled a quick note in his tome and nodded to his accompaniment. "I'd best make my report. If Captain Montag is as receptive as you've been, I doubt that'll take long."

otherthing.rtf

The horizon, to Lynia, was a reminder of how far she'd come, for no matter which direction she looked, she could see nothing of her kingdom. Not a single landmark or point of reference could be found, and the constant haze made it quite difficult to even see the nearest sand dune. Lynia sat upon the sand, hot as it was from the constant sun, and peered at the sky. //The sun would be much better to navigate by if it would just stop moving.// Her view was full of nothing but sky; the sun looked to be flying circles around her. She tried to stand again, supporting herself on the ornate quarterstaff which was the only thing she carried, but merely tripped and fell on her face. //Then I shall crawl,// she declared, but hardly managed a few feet up the dune before collapsing again. Lynia inhaled a sharp, ragged breath, only managing to remind herself how badly she was in need of water.

Everything about this excursion was badly planned. Lynia, not having ever left the protective confines of Upper Caynea save for a few trips, simply had not thought about the perils that lay outside the city wall. Neither ferocious beasts nor angry brigands had appeared; what did her in was a simple lack of hydration. And yet, all she had thought to bring with her was a simple flask of water and the heirloom quarterstaff that she had taken from the Royal Treasury. The flask had been empty for a while - the precise amount of time was not something she knew or cared about - and the staff was little more than a walking stick to her now. Lynia rolled on her back, looking back at the sky again. //This is what I wanted, isn't it? I wanted my father to worry about me more than his pointless war, and worry, he shall, if I've perished to this heat. I just wish I'd managed to do anything of use before expiring...//

Lynia felt a sleep-like urge come over her. Tired, she was, but sleep meant nothing. As her body grew heavy, she no longer felt a need to stand and walk. //This is it, I suppose,// she thought to herself, shortly before losing consciousness.

But the feeling did not last long - or at least, Lynia was not aware of it lasting. It felt like only a short time had passed, but soon, she once again became aware of the heat on her body, and a stinging sensation on her face. Though she made a valiant effort to open her eyes, the blinding light from above made this quite difficult, so she held them shut instead. The stinging sensation returned, but now she felt more aware of it making a sound, sort of the same sound she remembered hearing at royal court, as her father had slapped the petitioning merchant.

The slapping sound came again, with another sting on her face. "Ow," she declared through her dusty mouth.

"You're awake." The young man, clad in leathers that were obviously crafted for practicality over fashion, says it as if he's been waiting forever. "You were moaning in your sleep...I hardly blame you, though. You've been out in the sun so long that I'm amazed you haven't caught the desert fever."

"Th...tha..." Lynia cannot even finish her first word without entering into a coughing fit. Grains of sand spray from her mouth, into a feebly raised hand. The man, perhaps anticipating it, stands off to the side, holding a small canteen that he offers as soon as Lynia has finished coughing. She greedily snatches it from his hand.

"Hey, whoa there. Take it slow. Don't drink too....fast...."

She quaffs the water fast enough that she nearly chokes on that as well, but the drink is enough to clear her throat. "I'm sorry," she finally says with some difficulty.

The man feels Lynia's forehead with the back of a hand; she jumps slightly, unused to the touch. "The temperature's gone down, at least, so you haven't caught anything...you're just exhausted. I'll probably ask you later why you were trying to cross the Caynean desert on foot, but for now, let's start with something easier." He stands as straight as he can, then bows elaborately. "My name is Bren. My people call me Wagonmaster."

Lynia ponders for a moment; this Wagonmaster may or may not be one of her father's agents. "L-Lyssie. My name...is Lyssie."

"Lyssie?" Bren appears slightly puzzled as he takes a seat on a small stool near the futon. "That's an unusual name for someone like you." He crosses one leg over the other. "But you know, the desert is an unkind mistress to those who aren't prepared. Is there some reason why you were out there on your own?"

"I..."

"You don't need to tell me what it is. I just want to know if you had something in mind."

"The oasis," she replies at last. "Had to get...to the oasis." She coughs some more, reminding her to take another drink from the quickly-depleting canteen.

"Bad choice, this time of year. I hear those Rigan barbarians attacked it again recently. My wagons tend to avoid the area if they can help it."

"Rigans? That's not what I heard from..." She stops herself short. "Er...where are you headed next?"

"I'm not sure we're going your way, milady. We're headed back to Lower Caynea; festival time is soon, and our dancing troupe tends to make the most money then."

"Back to...Caynea? I can't go back to Caynea!" She tries to sit up in the futon, accidentally falling back down and almost dropping the canteen. "I need to leave!"

"If you've got some kind of bounty on you, I can assure you we'll have no part of that. I'm not going to sell you out, but I'm not going to aid and abet, either. But I doubt that's what your problem is."

"Well, I..."

"Joining us is one thing, but we have our own schedule and our own destinations in mind. You'd need to be someone very important indeed if you wanted to influence that."

Lynia shudders a bit in the bed. "Oh, no..."

"But let's be honest with ourselves. If you truly have a strong reason to not return to Caynea, I can't possibly live with myself if I just throw you back to the desert, especially not with all the bloody vagrants and barbarians out there at night. But there's another reason why I can't do that to you, and it has to do with that name you gave me."

"What's wrong with my name?"

"Well, that's an easy one: it isn't yours."

lewd!.rtf

Lynia arose from the futon, aware of the mess she had made moments ago, lost in the throes of pleasure. Now in a sitting position, Lynia looked down at her partner. Mere days ago, Eillis would have been "just a servant" to her; with recent events in mind, though, Lynia supposed that her servant would not have been opposed to this sort of service, even under different pretenses. She admired Eillis's slight frame, unclad as it was, taking in all the details that would otherwise be covered or moving too quickly to notice. Eillis was still young, and it showed in the way her body didn't so much curve as jut in straight lines, with a shy shadow where her breasts would go. Lynia held her hand in front of her face and compared their skin tones. Eillis had been outside the palace more frequently than she had, and her soft, lustrous skin was a noticeably darker tan; Lynia's by contrast, was pale enough that she was clearly visible in this state, even in complete darkness.

Quiet moments passed as Eillis continued to sleep, tired from the evening's events. Lynia, still sitting over her, could not help but envy the girl. Her life had been so much simpler, just following orders and staying out of the way. Lynia had no orders to follow, and nobody that would care if she were in the way. She almost wanted to cry, and that she did. At least one tear of joy landed on the young servant girl's stomach, rousing her from her sleep.

Eillis raised her head from the flat futon, yawning a bit. "Ah...is it morning?"

Lynia, hurriedly wiping away the rest of her tears, lowered herself prone next to the girl, sharing in bodily warmth. "It's still dark out. We have plenty of time."

"I'm so tired, though," Eillis giggled quietly. "I know you don't want this to end, milady, but..."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Eillis...I didn't realize how I'd been overworking you."

"It is hardly 'work' in this sense, milady." One of Eillis's arms draped itself loosely over Lynia's slightly more curvaceous form. "I am only disappointed that you hadn't asked me sooner."

Section G: Other Stories Possible in Shantania

[23:06:10] <wildweasel> an adventurer is about to defeat an evil lord, but towards the end of the battle he's mortally wounded as he kills the lord. the adventurer finds himself alive after blacking out for a while. when he enters town, people fear him, and he consults a priest to find what his problem is - turns out, he did die, and his ghost inhabited the evil lord's body, in the lord's last ditch effort to stay alive himself
[23:06:39] <ContraVania> Hmm... creepy.  
[23:06:40] <wildweasel> the adventurer finds that he is sharing the body with a small scrap of the lord's soul, which implores him on occasion to do nasty things to the people he loves
[23:07:02] <ContraVania> This premise sounds vaguely familiar, but original enough that I'm unable to match it to anything.
[23:07:46] <wildweasel> he finally finds someone who can purge the extra soul from his body, but unbeknownst to the adventurer, the person in question is the wizard who helped the lord attune his body in such a way in the first place
[23:08:32] <wildweasel> the wizard lives up to his promise to "purge the extra soul" - that soul ends up being the adventurer's, and the lord's body survives to build his strength and make a future attempt at world domination
[23:09:03] <wildweasel> i don't know why i called this idea a fairy tale
[23:09:23] <ContraVania> It's a very good "this is why life blows" story.  lol