HOW TAUNTS THE WIZENED BLOOD-MOON SAGE?

Get your copies while they are hot or at least lukewarm people. So far 313 individuals have backed for the Tome itself in physical form.

If we get to about 430 backers, my situation improves and I should be able to print, not 500 but 1000 copies.

HOWEVER, if we do not hit that sacred amount, then I will only be printing 500 copies of Speak, False Machine TOTAL. In this case then there will be enough for all the backers (i.e. for under 430 backers), but after that, only about 70 copies will exist "in the wild". 70 only, and likely less, for ALL TIME. 
Oddly, if you want this to be a VERY super excusive book that few people have, then you want to encourage people up-to that limit but not beyond. But maybe the difference between 500 and 1000 copies means little.

ANYWAY - We now have a COUNTDOWN! TEN DAYS!

Ten days till I am cut free of my rabid dreams like some guy tied to Moby Dick.

Currently, and for the last few days, we have been slowly, agonisingly, crawling over what seems like an infinite desert of blood stained gold, towards the vast pile of collected teeth atop which Valin Mattheis sits grinning his feral grin.

Valin is a pretty expensive hurdle to hurdle but should we reach him the next artists; Dirk, Ana and Alec, are all a lot cheaper and hopefully we should BLAST through them at what seems like an accelerated rate after the long and bloody crawl.

And if we hit that goal and manage to snag Alec, then the book will be artistically complete.
WILL WE MAKE IT??

Crushed by the almost insupportable weight of my own genius, I cling to the foul parody of life allowed me by this ruined cosmos, raising my bloodied fist towards the blistering orb of the hateful sun.

All I was asking for is ONE very-expensive thing! And then three more things! And then possibly more if you have it! Is that so much?


Here are all the posts in this Speak, False Machine series;

Crimes of an Analog Future

The Troll Kings Invisible Hands

Cults of the Cuts of the Oceanic Star

The Popinjays of Knarr

The Secrets of the Mocking Man!

The Giant Became a Wolf

The Lamps that were His Eyes

GIANT BAT WITH FLAMENCO BIRD HANDS

Heralds of the Garbage Barge

Minor Arcana of the Apocalypse Tarot

The Desert of Blood-Stained Gold

HOW TAUNTS THE WIZENED BLOOD-MOON SAGE?

The wormy dreamspeak of the blood-moon sage patters on our minds like distant rain. 

"What were your sad ambitions? Figments and fragments. And around you, see, the piled up bones of all who thought the same."

It seems that ants crawl across his eyes. We reach for him, a wrathful grasping, the space between us seems so short, so small a thing..  yet the goblinish philosopher of the mounds only smiles a gap-toothed smile, for as hard as we reach, as fiercely as we crawl and stagger like drunken men towards his scrawny neck, the heavier and the tired’er we feel, for he sees into the darkness of our souls and nothing that he sees there leads the sage to fear.

"Now you seek my wisdom? Or would ye tip me from my mound and delve beneath it for the fumes of ages and the golden tablets of time? Too late.. too late by far. I PERCIEVE YOUR FAILURES AND THEY ARE THE TRUTH OF YE!"

The Desert of Blood-Stained Gold

 

CRAWLING TOWARDS VALIN

The world is a challenge and surely every day in which we accept that challenge is a good day, yet as I crawl across a pile of blood-stained gold towards the crouching beast-feet of Valin Mattheis, my fingers digging into the heavy coins, the fat, bright metal slick with blood, my mind fills with dreams and with visions....


OF THE RUMOURS OF THE HOARD

There are rumours of a pile of bloodstained gold, a hoard of dark realities cursed with truths, and whomever should pick up a coin from this hoard shall see others truly, but not themselves. So the curse commands that only those in pure company should dare risk the blood-cursed gold. So that the gold-pile mingles with the bones and bodies, mushrooms sprouting from rat-gnawed skulls, the blood itself browned with age, caked and crumbled into dust, yet the gold still gleams

OF THOSE WHO COME FORTH FROM THE HOARD

Demons of blood and gold, a vengeful spirits bound to hordes of wealth, crippled monsters, famished and undying, burrowing through a dark afterlife of blood-slick coins, tortured eternally in a cold womb of crushing metal. Dark is that hell, and heavy. 

OF THE HELL OF BLOODSTAINED GOLD

There the gold-cursed spirts clamber across hills and plains, dunes of cursed gold piling in drifts, driven by cataclysmic winds from a curse-lashed sky. Wild cracks and shattermarks of varicoloured lightning crash between acidic clouds, typhoons of smoke and ash roll across the burnished land and when they briefly clear, black aurora melt and skitter across the welkin like hallucinations.

Truth is in the desert and truth is in the gold. Truth without end or limit. Cursed self-knowledge. Bright burns the freezing gold in the flashing light of the cursed aurora.

None walk across the plain. All are crippled. The gift of the gold is this - ye may not walk but ye may dig. To those so cursed, the gold gives way before their grasping hands like soft soil. They burrow like snakes, clawing and squirming their way down into the cold dark. They must, for there is no other shelter in the desert of gold coins, there they hide like scorpions.


THE DAMNED

For the damned of the hell of bloodstained gold can never die or sleep or walk, but must crawl endlessly, their bodies slack and heavy, dragging on the lain of jumbled coins, cold beyond reason, starving and thirsty beyond what any living soul could bear.

Some go mad and try to eat the gold, stuffing it into their mouths, their bodies bloated with the freezing coin, pinned like fat leeches, immovable till they purge the gilt.

Of those damned to the hell of bloodied gold all there is to feast on is each other, and they fear and hate each other. Yet hunger and desire to feast upon even that parched and withered flesh. Some gorw wild upon this feasting with the illusion of strength, others willingly hurl themselves into the mouths of their hunters, weeping joyful tears of dust as they are slowly slowly torn apart and eaten, finally discovering annihilation.

BENEATH THE DESERT

The oldest and the strongest are said to occupy small caves and caverns gouged out of the gold and propped open with the bones of their lessers - or with the bones of dragons, for this was once the hell of dragons, where , deep beneath the desert of bloodstained gold are ghoul-cities built from their bones.

For when the souls of mortal men first came to the dragons hell they were  prey for the anguished spirits of the flightless, crippled drakes which heaved themselves through the dunes of wealth as if it were a sullen sea, but in the dream of time allowed within this timeless land the numbers of the mortal dammed grew and hey swarmed the spirits of the dragons like starved and crippled rats feasting on a blind and cripped man, covering them in a horde, and the greatest of which thereby, turned each opn the other, ripe with the memory of dragon flesh and consumed each other, growing more mighty still, until an uneasy equipoise existed between these ghoul-kings, and one by one they buried themselves deep beneath the plain of bloodstained gold, dragging down with them, dragonbones, and fistfuls of scales piece by piece, building themselves small caves and hollows far beneath the blasting storms.

In time, (and there is in this place infinite, unending time,) lesser dammed discovered them and, burrowing from place to place, set about them, tunnels and crawlways which linked each larger realm, making of it a city-warren of the imperishable damned haunted by the psyches of the ultimately awful; souls in love with pain, gleeful witnesses to unending horror.

Greetings creatures, my Kickstarter for 'Speak, False Machine', a mighty Tome of posts not unlike this one, has staggered like a blind giant through a variety of artistic goals. So far we have blundered through the palaces of Scrap Princess, Jason Thompson, Jez Gordon, Peter Mullen, Amanda Franck and Daniel Puerta and, daft and thoughtless, have snagged these noble minds and shoved them into our greasy pockets.

Now a new and terrible goal rises like a thundercloud before our eyes - that of Valin Mattheis!

As a tribute to his eldritch conceptions..

 I give you the following post;

Minor Arcana of the Apocalypse Tarot

While discussions of the Major Arcana of the Apocalypse Tarot are common, experienced readers will devote themselves also to the Minor Arcana, the complex meanings of which often add depth and texture to the predictions of a casting.

The House of Suns 

Ace of Suns - A clear sky, contrails, daylight bombing, falling bodies.

Two of Suns - Gradual but inevitable and transformative heating, companion card to the Queen of Seas.

Three of Suns - Natural fires, combustion, lightning, the presence of materials for combustion.

Four of Suns - The darkness inside a fire, pain shutdown due to nerve damage, unhealable wounds.

Five of Suns - A Saint burning, purification, gold, transcendence, revolt of the unconscious.

Six of Suns - Shrapnel, penetration of the body, revelation, the shadow of fire.

Seven of Suns - Witches, heresy, the burning of individuals, assertation of reason.

Eight of Suns - Light brought to a blinding point, lasers, destructive hyperfocus.

Nine of Suns - The shaped charge, great force brought to a point, armoured vehicles.

Ten of Suns - Firearms, conventional weapons, individuals acting en-masse, a great number.

Page of Suns - Dehydration, death from water loss, water wars, rivers, desalination.

Knight of Suns - Firestorms, mass strategic bombing, loss of home, a journey by night.

Queen of Suns -  Fission weapons, nuclear dawn, a singular number, loss of flesh, blindness.

King of Suns - Rapid stellar expansion, Nova, total atmospheric loss, Mars.

The House of Seas

Ace of Seas - Water, the cooling of thirst, rabies, the lapping of animals at a spring.

Two of Seas - Venom, animal derived poison, political assassination.

Three of Seas - Rats, fecundity, invisible transport, to be the medium.

Four of Seas - Radio noise, the Dark Forest, solar events.

Five of Seas - Pesticide, indigestible compound poisons, undrinkable water.

Six of Seas - Invasive species, a creature with no predators, vast numbers of alien things.

Seven of Seas - Plagues in the classical sense, a lack of immunity, isolation.

Eight of Seas - Neurotoxins, mirror proteins, cannibalism, the brain.

Nine of Seas - Ice, preservation in ice, (reversed if cast with a 'Suns' card)

Ten of Seas - Shipwreck, loss of goods, a catastrophic sudden change, ice.

Page of Seas - Peace, perfect isolation, a fortress against the world.

Knight of Seas - Floods, rising oceans, a concentration of people, drowning.

Queen of Seas - Tides, hurricanes, Tsunami, the inundating storm.

King of Seas -  Silence, preservation, utter stillness, the interstellar dark

The House of Insects

Ace of Insects - Locusts, famine, crops, preservation, prophecy.

Two of Insects - Reaching fingers beneath a door, an invisibly predatory crowd, the public gaze.

Three of Insects - Parasites, infection of the flesh, the secret removal of resources.

Four of Insects - Skittering, unseen movement, the spaces behind the quotidian.

Five of Insects - Drummers, distant music, an arrhythmic sound, incoherent codes.

Six of Insects - Teeth, a great multiplicity of things, a crowd.

Seven of Insects - Concentration camps, population loss, cultural deletion.

Eight of Insects - Binary, the false projection, a model of the world.

Nine of Insects - Bacterium, symbiosis, a feast, unseeable but not unalterable.

Ten of Insects - The Virus*, the unperceived and unalterable, the mirror of life 

Page of Insects - The engram, neural lace, dreams, dreams invaded, cybernetics.

Knight of Insects - The synthetic mind via pure mathematics, simulated worlds, simulation theory.

Queen of Insects - Fecundity, infinite growth, annihilation through growth, cancer, nanomachines.

King of Insects - Grey goo, total atomisation, cosmic noise, the Planck length.

*(Doubled if combined with the Grand Arcana card 'Grand Virus') 

The House of Terrors

Ace of Terrors - Your own name discovered where it should not be, conspiracy, official interest.

Two of Terrors - Storage, loss, theft, limited resources, meat.

Three of Terrors - Familial secrets, hidden history, the truth revealed.

Four of Terrors - The remaking of reality, doublethink, the well-accepted lie.

Five of Terrors - An empty house, an unknown number of rooms, indeterminate values.

Six of Terrors - To be lost in a familiar place, the unknown street, the familiar made strange.

Seven of Terrors - Voices in walls, inverse and unseen spaces, that which has long been prepared.

Eight of Terrors - Faith made real, Revelation, faith proved in blood.

Nine of Terrors - Reavers, the armed group, a breakdown in law, the knife.

Ten of Terrors - The State inverted, disordered government, an inappropriate order accepted.

Page of Terrors - Traditional madness, delusion, to become incoherent, to discover.

Knight of Terrors - Moral and physical triage, a decision which cannot be unmade and cannot be survived.

Queen of Terrors - Betrayal, the false self, many faces, the family.

King of Terrors - That which cannot be imagined, information hazard, the card which is not a card.

Good news! Beloved and omni-compitent artist Peter Mullen has been snaffled from the ground like a delicious truffle, placed into a earthenware jar and taken to the pantry as of one of the ingredients for 'Speak, False Machine', my current kickstarter.

But as I sup from the developing brew I muse sympathetically within my own mind; "Some taste or flavour escapes me.. what could it be?"

Then, glimmering oddly on the horizon of my memory, there springs into my frontal cortex the phantasmorgic form of.... Amanda Lee Franck!

"Of course!" I solophise, "the perfect complement to my Mullen Stew", and race off in pursuit, net in hand. 

But whom and why, and where, is Amanda Lee Franck? Many links promise knowledge of her mysteries and some are set here for your pleasure..

You may wish to peruse her "itchooooo" and the adventure "You Got a Job on the Garbage Barge", in tribute to which, please accept this small d20 list of.......

TWENTY HERALDS OF THE GARBAGE BARGE

1. Eels fill the waterways.
2. Children become translucent and compulsively burrow.
3. Sentient dry ice breaks into homes.
4. Clouds gathering are actually made of old crisp packets, they hail dorito dust and rain oil.
5. Anxious garbage men knock on early morning doors asking "is this really all you have?"
6. The light from mobile phones summons tiny midge clouds which obscure use.
7. Council Pamphlet "HAVE YOU SEE "FLOATERS"?" These now seemingly real & not just eyeball things
8. All TV series infinitely loop, late night viewers swear sitcoms are auto-generating "false episodes".
9. Precognisant safety railings crumple in advance of any crash.
10. Everyone is repeating the hour of 5am but no-one will believe the early risers.
11. Ice Cream vans now have blacked out windows, scratchy intercom s & Ice Cream men w hairy hands.
12. Local Google maps gives cryptic routes which compulsively skirt graveyards & waterways.
13. Flashing television lights in empty homes, neighbours asking for duct tape.
14. 'Lost' child clothes hung on ironwork fences proliferate, more each day, all decayed.
15. Crows steal phones and make random calls. It’s all just cawS.
16. Ancient post starts to arrive for occupants of house 5 decades ago.
17. Car headlamps full of dying flies, resulting nacreous light casts tarmac in pale glow.
18. 1950's spiv goes door to door, offering to "reverse your taps" for "a shilling", sounds like a threat.
19. Birds lose fear of man and try to get inside the house.
20. The sun begins to clatter like a machine slowing down, the sun opens like a door, revealing it was little more than a painted spot about 100 feet off the ground, a flat capped gent in overalls smoking a pipe climbs out on a ladder and starts banging on the sky with a wooden mallet, the mechanical sound restarts, speeds up and becomes inaudible, the man climbs back into the sun and closes it, the day goes on.
 

Beyond Amanda lie the unbearable imaginings of the Isle-Bound Sorcerer Daniel Puerta, the biblically accurate brainscapes of the  Nechrarch Valin Mattheis, the cryptic dreamscapes of rumoured madman Dirk Detweiler Leichty, the brunneous paracosmic children of the mysteriously eldritch Ana Polanšćak and finally, far beyond the lands we know, the lanquid sketches of the disturbingly beautiful, and possibly fey, Alec Sorenson.

15 days! 7 goals! Can we do it???

GIANT BAT WITH FLAMENCO BIRD HANDS

I am blogging about Peter Mullens art until we attain his skills for my KICKSTARTER.

This is DAY TWO!

Firstly, this is a lovely image. I am not sure if it has been published anywhere but if it has my apologies. You can see the original at Peter Mullens site here.

Will Peter do anything nearly as amazing for my book? There is only one way to find out; BACK IT!!!
For todays PeterOddessy I will take us deep, DEEP into this image by naming and describing the background of EVERY living thing in it!

From the top left, moving counterclockwise to the bottom right

STAGE BEETLE

Wihlem Thrice, the only sentient and transformed insect in the image. Formerly a composer. Until now the slow integration with his insect life, the simple and binary pleasures of its existence and limited capacity for self-expression had dulled him into a dreamlike state, but now, with this incredible confabulation of events, he feels within himself the awakening of his muse, but how to record the symphony he feels inside his mind?!!?

FLAPPING BAT

Grimbles, formerly a witches familiar but was fired from that employment for eating the wrong child’s eyes. Now haunts the underworld, likes to eat spiders and is looking at (sensing) the large one on  the mushrooms just across the way.

GIANT BAT WITH FLAMENCO BIRD HANDS

The GRABULISER! Magnificent experiment of the Mage ZUCODU who fell under the spell of the CUBIC DEVIL FACE (see below). The Grabuliser wants only love but understands only desire, the desire to grabulise things. The Flamenco heads are true pseudopods with no separate brain structure, the eyes simply those of the bat enlarged and relocated.

MUSHROOMS

The mushrooms are indeed alive and one day may be more than alive. Fat with seeping visions dripping seams of the potions of the lost Alchemist Zircon, they throb with dark passions they are unable to express. Thank the gods it is so for their sheer inventive malignancy, if every given voice, would be enough to corrode the sky to tin and invert the stars!

SPIDER ON THE MUSHROOMS

This spider, which, if it were sentient and had a name, that name would be Steve, has seeks only a moment of peace and perhaps a steady draughtles spot to begin the construction of a web. Fate decrees Steve shall have neither, within a very trice he will be fighting for his life.



GIANT SLUG!

Flubbobo, monster of the trolls has haunted the infinite darkness for ages beyond counting. Once he was just a normal slug! He just kept eating! He doesn't even have a plan, nor is he aware that he counts as a near-supernatural devil and/or demon figure in no less that five undeworld mythologies, one of which is that of the hairy men he is about to eat, another of which belongs to the gargantuan snake-man, who recalls him of older times, tough Flubbobo himself remembers naught.

LITTLE HAIRY GUYS RUNNING FROM THE GIANT SLUG  (AND THE ONE HIDING)

The Theeble Kin make their living underground by shaping and painting solid rocks to look like tents from a distance and then clouding people over the head when they come close to investigate. They have never actually seen a real tent and have inferred its shape through an automatic evolutionary process. Here they have been foiled and made themselves accidental prey for the demon of their dreams, Flubbobo the Annihilator. The three running are Flix, Bix and Trix, the one cleverly hiding while they run away is Grabs, the only clan member with a double digit IQ.

THE THREE ADVENTUERS ROBBING THAT SHIT!

SPIKED HELM GUY

'Chunks'O'Keefe, former bartender (possibly current bartender as he never formally resigned). Was invited on the expedition last minute as he was the only one with a crowbar. It was his idea to crowbar open this chunk of stone but he knows he will get no credit for it.

COIFFE LADY

Tzina Szzrakk an incompetent thief from the bottle district. Instead of picking locks she made friends with a bouncer with a crowbar, instead of searching for traps she employs a mute Dwarf in a parka and instead of sneaking she just runs away. Still, she has at least discovered the alchemists stash she came looking for, but how much of that tuff is even still active? And how will she even recognise the Potion of Infallibility she was hired to retrieve?

SHIELD GUY

Orik Nailfyst, a mute, poor, white-trash Dwarf who grew up in a tent city and, despite knowing almost nothing of dwarfish, can still spot a stone out of place in the dark. Only 15 years old, he suffers from the cold and wears a quilted parka in all weathers. His shield was the results board for a darts tournament and the results can still be seen on the inside surface





THE TWO GIANTS LOOMING OVER THEM

Actualy the transformed bodies of the Mage Zucodu, accidental creator of the Grabuliser, and the Alchemist Zircon.

Zucodu came in search of the cubic devil faces but after his mind was blasted by its magics he wandered as little more than a troglodyte until he found Zircon secretly stashing his hyper-valuable Potion of Infallibility. Though understanding little Zucodu had vague memories of magic and threatened Zircon with a stone, believing he might return the mage to his near-forgotten state of sanity. Zircon attempted to trick the giant with poison but in the confusion and being threatened to drink along side him as secuity, both drank half a potion of Giantification and were thus transformed. Both too big now to leave, Zircon knows there is an old potion of de-gigantification in his stash which his fingers were too big to reach, he has awaited only the properly sized fools to threaten and beguile and now waits carefully, planning his plans.

CENTIPEDE

An occupant of the black pillar the Centipede is the reincarnation of a munificent Raja who once had his wife trampled to death by ten elephants. Banished from  swarga upon his death he was reincarnated in this many-footed form. Little has been learned from this.

THE MYSTERIOUS SPEAR-ARMED MAN

The dark and mysterious warrior is named Parakeet. Secretly a master of the dagger he carries the spear for show, pretending to be a fighter of much lower ability than he actually is. His "failures" in combat serve to lure an opponent to commit themselves and reach his inner ring of defence where any of a dozen daggers will annihilate them. Pretending to act as a mere bodyguard, in truth he seeks the Super-Serpent of the underverse and is one of the few here who could defeat it.

STAG BEETLE! 

This beetle once saw a horse explode, other than that little distinguishes the simplistic and barely-sentient creature.

DWARF WITH AXE

Max Brix, actually just a short man with a false beard but he plays the role well enough. Was hired as a bodyguard by the Sorcerer Lamular Grotte (see below) on his quest to find the Cubic Devil Face. On discovering the thing itself and witnessing Grottes horrid response he is about to cut the Wizards dick off.

TWO BEETLES CHILLING ON THE GIANT PAIR OF STONE FEET

All beetles are predatory by nature but these two alone, perhaps of all beetles, have developed between them a philosophy of non-violence. They are un-named but in order to record their achievement in history’s great book let us refer to them as Pax and Trax. 


GUY WITH COOL ROUNDEL SHIELD

Winston (von) Choom, his wife was once poisoned by the Alchemist Zircon and he attached himself to this expedition as a bodyguard for the Sorcerer Lamular Grotte IN FACT so he could observe Tzina Szzrakk and her two companions on their search for the Alchemists loot, which he intends to smash. Has no idea that the Alchemist survives in giant form down here. 

GUY WITH BLAZING STAFF!

Sir Vomulous of the Crumbling Keep. The wizard knight has no understanding of his own metatexuality but in fact he has been played in a wide variety of rulesets yet has maintained continuity of self and memory, this is the reason for his mixture of magic and swordplay. He sometimes worries about the episodic nature of his life. Of all the bodyguards Lamular Grotte hired in his search for the Cubic Devil Face, Vomulous is the only one who actually intended to act as a bodyguard.

GIANT LIZARD! IS HE A STATUE? WHO KNOWS?

The incredible Super-Serpant of the Hidden World! A creature too vast and magisterial for this situation or this adventure. He is only on his way between vastly more important cosmic assignations using the blackways of the Underverse as we might use a country road. It is not even clear if the Super-Serpant has noticed the eldtrich events taking place and it certaily has no idea that the vengance of Parakeet is close.

THAT DEVIL FACE LOOKS ALIVE, HOW ABOUT IT?

An utterly evil idol containing poisonous ideas. Like a kind of satanic rubics cube, the sections of the face can be slid about and anyone who can reformat the face into its unknown secondary shape shall gain the powers of a Devil. But the tiles inevitably move with a mind of their own and slip back into their assumed form, leaving the foolish individual who made the attempt to be reduced to either thrall or slave-prophet of the face.

GUY PRAYING TO THE DEVIL FACE

Lamular Grotte an inferior Sorcerer and lately a cultist of Choom (Coom, name of a town, home of Winston, see above). Grotte fled Choom with a pig-bound book containing rumours of the Cubic Devil Face and threw together all his funds to assemble this party, (only as cheap as it was as almost everyone in it had a hidden reason for being there). On reaching the devil face he rapidly fell under its spell and after feeding two of his bodyguards to eldritch fire, began hopelessly worshipping the face to the disgust of all.

TWO PEOPLE LEVITTING IN PILLARS OF ELDRITCH FIRE!

ONE A KNIGHT

The Holy Paladin Sir Dawningstar Faux, attached himself to Grotte expedition as, like everyone else, a bodyguard. of course he had his own designs on the Cubic Devil Face, to whit, its destruction! The Knight was a painfully bad liar and this is one of the few deceptions Grotte actually saw through. Grotte played the fool and used Faux to cut his way through the underworld but on encountering the Cubic Devil Face IMMEDIATELY sacrificed the knight and his squire without even really asking for much in return.


ONE LOOKS LIKE A FEMALE KNIGHT

Sir Biscuit Pen, the Squire of Sir Dawningstar Faux the lack of imagination in her (false) name is a quality of her own paucity of creativity, not mine, though I am actually not going to tell you her real name as I sense that you doubt me on this. Anyway she is secretly in love with Sir Faux, disguised as man, actually more competent, he can't see through disguise, you know the drill.


BARNACLES

The only indication of our real enemy here - THE SEA! Yes the Sea is a surprise visitor to this underground cave which is in fact a SEA CAVE.  Because.. the SEA is in one of Zircons hidden potions and if it is opened here they will all drown. Surprise last minute change! Subverting expectations!

CRABE!

A normal crab and decent crab but not a good crab for none are.

ISOPOD CHILLING ON THE PILLAR!

Next to the Crab but in no sense associated with it this Isopod, named 'Flux-of-the-Whale-Dream is in fact the Squire of a Trilobite Knight sent here to earn his or her 'Spurs' by the final defeat of Flubbobo!

BLOGGING ABOUT PETER MULLEN UNTIL WE HIT HIS TARGET!

Hello, welcome back to me whoring out my latest Kickstarter for a MONTH. We are half way through!

If you are interested in previous posts in this series here they are;

Crimes of an Analog Future

The Troll Kings Invisible Hands

Cults of the Cuts of the Oceanic Star

The Popinjays of Knarr

Bring me the head of the Mocking Man

The Giant became a Wolf

So far we have attained Jason Thompson and Jez Gordon as artists!

Our next mighty golden HOOP to SNATCH from the Gods is the talent of Peter Mullen.

I will be writing blogs about Peter Mullens illustrations EVERY FUCKING DAY until we hit his goal so please save me from that by backing the Kickstarter.

However you are probably familiar with Peters style from his wonderous work for DCC (I think) and various other 'old school' productions. You can check out a page of his classics here.

But if you go a page over you can see he also does very beautiful monochrome nocturnes, a subject dear to my heart.

The Lamps that were his Eyes

The man, his flesh was moonlight. He was up there, about a ladder high with his big eyes swinging, dripping starlight with no stars in the sky.

That man wouldn't come in the daytime, or when you could even see the sky, it was as if he feared the stars and the moon, and would race from them, his huge terrible shining head obliterating treeshadows in a bobbing gait.

Only the stars and the dawn made him afraid but, but for their light nothing stopped him coming. He pulled apart the darkness like someone stepping through a curtain, his moony headshine leaking through, nacreous and horrid.

Then he came, sometimes tentative, like a boy entering an adults room, other time striding blindly, as if only half way on a long journey, and him behind schedule.

He was not especially, ridiculously huge. His spine was bent and that unsupportable head was, lets say just below a second story window. If he straightened up (clearly agony for him) he could look through that window, or even over the roof.

What was he looking for?

Everything living froze in his sight and even witful creatures, even the wise and the strong, were drawn towards his distant gleam  - it took such strength of soul, sometimes even a nail in the shoe, some barbed wire round the thigh, to remind you never to go near it but to hide. 

Anyone who didn't know about the light might wake up dreaming, see the beams of his eyes drifting in the black trees like a ships lamps bobbing on a dark sea, the only lights in a dark world, and, wondering what they were, wander out there in wellingtons and dressing gown thinking they would only go to the edge of the field, craning their necks "I think I can see it. What is it?" But then, a little further, a hop over the fence, they walk into the woods, caught now in a beam of moonish white, now eaten by darkness, hopefully never seen again.

He melted them.

Probably didn't intend to. Possibly didn't even know what they were, or where he was, (if it was even a He, long eight-toed footprints in the mud), the number of people who got close enough to look and came back whole enough to speak was slim, but if you got close enough to him and he noticed you, (they said), he would look at you, with those burbling eyes like bubbling white soup and blunder over to you like a cartoon.

It was the eyes probably  - you started melting then. Not like, from acid, or like being burnt, it was stranger than that. You melted in one go, as if your bones and skin and stuff were all made of the same wax, maybe to him they were, and it didn't hurt, didn't even feel bad really, kinda nice almost, staring into those eyes.

You wouldn't feel the melting til he picked you up in both hands like a teddybear, saying things you couldn't hear, but like an itching, a whining in your head, like those small bones vibrating on their own.
The lumescent man, maybe he was asking something. Was he looking for something?

But no-one here could help him and when he looked at them, and picked them up, they came apart like things not of this world. If he kept at it too long they came apart, dribbled through his hands like a fruit cup. A mercy really as there was less to discover and clean up in the morning and while the parts didn't die straight away, they usually weren’t sentient by the time they were found, worse if he put you down or dropped or forgot you, those people, still not in pain, we found in daylight, a sight you wouldn't wish to witness.

Mainly they died too, thank god, all the body parts were there but all twisted and changed and usually that meant something would just give up working after a while, surface area or nerves or molecules or something.

The strangest thing about it was how sad he seemed, (that’s what they said), and they seemed like they were half asleep. Still thank god again for his blessings, we hit them with tranq till they slept and just waited out the death before we called it in. Otherwise they 'came to' like someone slowly waking up from sleepwalking, and realising they weren’t dreaming and that it was all really happening, and we had to explain to them again and again it wasn’t a dream and they were really here and were really like that, and no we had no idea about the moonshine man, or what he was or why.

After few of those you might put a bullet in them yourself I tell you.

First, a brief update; I didn't even have time to post about getting Jez Gordon to do a piece for the book before the Kickstarter for Speak, False Machine stumbled blindly through get another artistic Goal.

We will have Jason Thompson making an illustration for Chapter One - TEENS and Jez making one for Chapter Two - History of a False Machine.

500 copies printed          £9,110.00 

Daniel Grady layout £12,710.00 

Simones interior art £13,270.00 

Scraps Art          £13,430.00   

Maria Ku as consultant £13,990.00

Jason Thompson £14,540.00

Jez Gordon         £14,870.00   <<<< WE ARE HERE

Peter Mullen          £15,370.00 

Amanda Franck £15,650.00 

Daniel Puerta         £15,760.00 

Valin Mattheis           £16,640.00 

Dirk Detweiler Leichty £16,920.00 

Ana Polanšćak £17,250.00 

Alec Sorenson          £17,500.00 

Next up is the magnificent PETER MULLEN. 

At this rate me might even make it to Alec Sorenson!

THE GIANT BECAME A WOLF

By Phaserunner https://www.deviantart.com/phaserunner/art/Giant-Wolf-Photoshop-Art-910259193

The giant lives above the snowline in the ruins of an ancient tower, He herds hairy elephants and wooly rhino on the high steppe.

He rarely bothers the world of men but every month he comes down from the high peaks and trades meat, fur and ivory for what he cannot make himself, and every 70 years or so, he comes down for a wife. Sometimes he trades for one, sometimes he just asks, the fact that it happens so rarely, and never by force, suggests that he isn't treating them badly or wearing them out, perhaps being a giants wife is not so bad a thing? There have been no giant children at least.

He rarely stays long below the snowline, he is visibly anxious about his herds. The old men know that pain, many are ex-herdsmen and are free now only as they have handed the herds over to their sons to worry in turn, but even now, aged and immovable, they still sometimes wake up in the mid-night, juddering, dreaming, imagining that "something has happened to the animals", about to throw on their old shoes and get riding until they remember that for them, such things were long ago. So they understand, the old men, when the giant gets twitchy and starts glancing to the high steppe.

The giant marks his herd with brand, dye and carved sign upon pelt and tusk - the tower-and-mountain, though none would dare to mess with his animals, firstly that they would be hard to reach, secondly where is the man who can tame a hairy elephant? or steal a wooly Rhino? and only lastly for fear of the giant.

"He keeps his place and we keep ours" say the old men, "such has it been and so shall it be", and since most think the place they are the better; in particular the green farmland, forests and river valleys over the ice mountains, wild steppe and tumbled tower, they find no problem with this arrangement.

"No doubt He" (for in this country "He" can only refer to one being) "He prefers his mountain as we prefer our farms, such being natural and comfortable to His kind"

If the Giant ever had a kind, or where he came from, or how old he is or what his gods or dreams might be, none know and few care to ask. Once asked if He had a name the Giant replied "called Orox". A terse being, singular, solitary and, so far as they knew, unique, there was little need for a name, and no-one in the country would have considered themselves familiar enough with Him to use it.

Once they said, a wizard came out of the south and asked for the Giant by name and went to see Him, but nothing came of it, and once, about fifty years back, a man said he had seen the Giant drunk in the high peaks, singing a terrible song and hurling stones into a storm, but no-one else saw it.

But the giant became a wolf.

Three months back some goat-herds in the high valleys, who sometimes see the giant about the skyline, and who sometimes bed down for the night near their goats to keep them safe, lost all their dogs, half their herds and went mad in a night. 

Only a few survived, bloodstained and crazed. A wolf had taken the goats they said, not a herd of wolves, or some large beast but one singular wolf, come in out of the night,, killed the dogs, eaten the goats and any who got in the way. 

No hope, no hope at all said the survivors.

How did it kill the dogs?

"Treaded them down."

"how big a wolf?" they asked.

"This big!", they replied, "no THIS BIG, can you see!"

When they went to look they found blood and chaos but no wolf prints. 

Madness perhaps.

Then the next full moon a farm down in the valley lost everything, all the animals, the dogs, even the geese, all gone and the only witness a child and she mad like before. 

"A big wolf!", she said, "As big as a tree!"

Then the next full moon a village was lost. Houses torn open, lanes slick with blood, cellars dug out and families gone. 

Some fought back, brave men. To no avail it seems. Again "a wolf".

But this time they searched deeper, looked longer, and one huntsman up a tree or on the roof of a collapsed house saw tracks, wolf tracks indeed, the tracks of only one wolf.

They had not seen them , in the hills or at the farm, for they had not been high enough to see. These tracks a man could nearly lie down in each one.

The people thought more deeply. The survivors;  a dog with a silver charm on its collar, the child at the farm with a silver comb, the goatherd with a silver ring.

It is clear what this means, and there is only so much silver in the valleys, even stretching it to cover each family might not work, and nowhere near enough for the herds, the sheep, the houses.

Full moon is only a week away.

Has the giant become a wolf? It has happened to men, eveyone knows, so why not a giant? Does the giant know he has become a wolf? Men often do not when they are so cursed, or so its said in stories, and who would tell him? His wife?

Who on this earth could stop the wolf? A curse-wolf alone is bad enough, but a skinwalker giant?

If the wolf cannot be defeated, what about the giant? Would He listen? and even if He did is there a cure? or a potion large enough to heal Him? Where would we find such a thing? How might be be restrained, even if He were to consent? Nothing in these lands could hold Him, let alone the thing He might be.

Could we even murder Him? Giants are mortal, and not magical beings or walking curses. It might be done, perhaps it could be done, but should it be done? After all He has never done Us harm, or wounded us at all, though he might have extorted us and ruled us if he wished. Almost the opposite for His presence has likely kept off worse things, this has been a peaceful country till these last three terrible moons, and there is only a week left before the next full moon, and the month is November. It is too cold to move the people, too cold to try to shift the herds.

Someone must go up the the mountains, to the tower of the giant (and perhaps his wife, if she still lives), and seek him out, and by force, or guile, or kindness or murder, stop these terrible raids.

If the giant can be cured and things go back as they were, that is well, but how this might be done, none know, and if not... The danger must be stopped before the moon is full.