Tales to WoW you, part 5

I realized I had been sitting on my last "tales to WoW you" for 6 years now.  Probably because I was embarrassed to be writing World of Warcraft fan fiction.  Having lost any sense of shame and decorum in the meantime, I present the next installment:  Death and Taxes.  For those not in a place to enjoy dark humor, this post is probably best avoided.  The main characters are undead zombies known as the Forsaken.  Their existence trends towards the morbid. 

Of course, those interested in fine writing are encourage to keep on trucking as well.  I wrote this yesterday because I had to and it entertained me.  Your mileage may vary.  Contents may settle, etc.

Death and Taxes

By Parallel H
Age 37 

*A small hillside covered in sickly grass, plagued weeds and diseased trees sits in the foreground, caught in the murky, mid-afternoon sunlight of Silverpine Forest.  Demon hounds frolic mirthlessly in pursuit of an unwary traveler, scrambling in panic up the hillside.  It soon becomes clear that the hounds are toying with him. *

*A word of power explodes behind them.  The hounds start, whip around to face the newcomer, growling in the disturbing atonalities common to possessed wildlife.  A second word of power booms across the hillside, and the hounds choose discretion over death and disappear over the top of the hill.*

Traveler *Wide eyed and panicked*:  Oh, thank the light!  If you hadn't come when you did I don't think I would have made it!

Hooded stranger:  *speaking in a gravely, raspy voice the young traveler is too excited and naive to notice* It was no problem at all, my son, no problem at all.  What do they call ye back home then?

Darren:  It's Darren sir, and I'm pleased to meet you.  *Darren is still visibly shaken*

Stranger:  Here Darren, drink from this,  it will calm your nerves. *Offering a tonic to Darren, who receives it gratefully and downs it in one gulp.   The hooded stranger reaches into his robe, removes a small card and writes "Darren" in large, friendly letters on the face of it.  He reaches out an pins the card to Darren's vest, before the other realizes what is happening.*

Stranger:  Darren, a quality name, quite fine.  *pointing at the card* That is so they know what to call you when you wake up.

Darren:  When I wake up from what sir?  Do you know of lodging nearby?

Stranger:  Of a sort, lad, of a sort, we'll carry you there free of charge of course.

Darren:  *Confused, and looking increasingly poorly.*  Carry me, why would you do that? 

Stranger: Because you'll be dead in about half a minute from the plague I put in your drink.

*Darren, looking alarmed, has fallen to his knees.*

Darren:  *ack*

Stranger:  *removes his cowl, revealing the cold, slick, unnaturally preserved skin of a Forsaken priest.*  There's no need to thank me, my son.  Soon you will be born to a glorious new world, where even death cannot defeat you!

*Darren dies quietly, confused.*

Stranger:   *Looking off majestically into the distance.*  I am but a humble midwife, bringing brave souls into the tender care of our Dark Lady.

*The stranger snaps himself out of his reverie, looking around.*

Stranger:  *Mumbling to himself*  But this isn't at all what I was here for, just a happy coincidence . . .  *He unstraps his ornately carved staff from his back and begins weaving it in intricate patterns over a couple of unremarkable lumps in the ground nearby, chanting a dark spell the living would tremble to hear.  The earth cracks, split with seams filled with light, before two sickly golden beams of unholy radiance burst launch skyward, throwing dirt, bones and debris every where.*

*A few moments pass, while the dust settles.  One preserved hand, mostly bone, rises up and claws the rim of the newly excavated burial mound.  Another, with a little more meat on it, joins it shortly.  A Forsaken skull, worms and beetles still tangled in its hair, follows soon after.  Gulveris the rogue of little renown pulls himself the rest of the way onto the ground.*

Gulveris:  Oh man, what a rush!  *He turns over on his back and starts laughing.*  Kar, man, that was crazy.  *There is no response.*  Kar?

*From the other mound, a muffled voice:*

Karibou:  Why can't I die?!  For the love of all that's unholy, why can't I die?

Gulveris:  Why must you always be so negative?

Karibou:  You!  Your fault!

*A Forsaken soldier in seriously dented armor claws out of the earth, murder in his eyes.  He advances towards Gulveris menacingly.*

Gulveris:  *laughing carelessly*  Oh what are you going to do Kar, kill me?

Karibou:  Let's find out!  *Kar draws his sword and takes a few practice swings, envisioning how, precisely, he will carve Gulveris into fine pieces.*

*Before Karibou can launch himself towards his adventuring buddy in the interests of science, experimentation and hyper-violent revenge, the hooded stranger barks another word of power, bringing them both up short with a wince.*

Stranger:   Gentleman, I did not raise you both simply so you could tear each other apart.

Gulveris:  Ah!  The undead of the hour, to what do we owe this timely resurrection?

*Karibou is now simply staring at Gulveris, his teeth grinding loudly.*

Stranger:  Ah, it is not me you owe so much as the Dark Lady.

Gulveris:  Oh, of course, all hail Sylvannus, the Dark Lady of Lordearon!

Stranger:  *coughs delicately.*  Ah, it is not so much your praise you owe her, but there ARE some tax payments which, I'm afraid, you both are QUITE overdue on.

Gulveris:  *Astonished.*  Impossible!  I paid my taxes in full two months ago!  And Karibou's far too much of a square to have skipped it I am sure.

*Karibou snaps out of his murderous reverie and glances around the hillside before finally looking towards the stranger.*

Karibou:  Oh no.  How many years of taxes do we owe exactly?

Stranger:  *Glances through a small book he brought with him.*  Ah, gentleman, you both owe 7 years of back taxes I'm afraid, accrued while you took your rest out here in the country. 

Karibou:   Well, our rest wasn't exactly intentional now was it!  *begins muttering to himself darkly about death, undeath, taxes and exactly what he was going to do to Gulveris later that afternoon.*

Gulveris:  And how much do we owe, exactly?

Stranger:  40 gold pieces from each of you will be enough to satisfy your debt with the Dark Lady.

Gulveris:  Well, that's not so bad, right Kar?

Karibou:  *Mimicking Gulveris sarcastically*  "That's not so bad, right Kar!"

Stranger:  Oh, and, ah, of course 1 gold each for the resurrection fee.

Karibou:  Well this is great Gul, because of you I can't die, I can't live and I'm broke.  Fantastic. 

*The stranger glances at Darren's poor body, and a wave of compassion overcomes him, he is a priest after all.*

Stranger:  I'll tell you what, if you take this newborn to the nearest crypt for processing, I'll wave the resurrection fee, how does that sound?

Gulveris:  See Kar?  It's not so bad!  *Gulveris fishes most of his gold out and hands it to the priest.*

Karibou:  *Again, mimicking mockingly*  "See Kar, it's not so bad!"  *Karibou hands over most of his gold as well with a resigned air.  The forsaken couldn't die, but the taxmen in Undercity could make the afterlife . . . unpleasant.*

*A screams splits the afternoon air, faintly to the south*

Stranger:  Ah!  Another soul in need of aid.  I am off to continue our great work!  Gentlemen, I bid you farewell.  *The stranger moves swiftly off, in that unnatural lope most Forsaken seem prone to.*

Karibou:  *Looks at Gulveris, now more depressed than anything.*  You're like my own personal plague, you realize that don't you?

Gulveris:  *Rolling his eyes so hard they nearly pop out.*  Again with the drama.  You love me with all the passion that cold heart can muster and you know it.  Come on, help me with this body.  The sooner we get it to a crypt, the sooner we can catch up on what's been happening since we've been gone.

Karibou:  Well, it can't be anything THAT interesting if we slept through it, now can it?

*Karibou and Gulveris carry Darren the soon-to-be-reborn off into the distance, arguing re-animatedly.  After a short time, the shadows on the hill lengthen, gather and solidify into a tiny goblin and a much larger void of demonic energy, bound with ornate, golden wristbands, staring thoughtfully at the corpses carting a corpse behind a copse of trees.

Ashauss:  They'll do, don't you think?

Void Demon:  *In an unearthly whisper*  Release me.  I don't like it here.

Ashauss:  *Pats a wristband gently*  Soon enough.

One small step for a man child

Why it happened at 1am I don't know, but I finally wrote the introduction to the story I've been dragging my feet on for over a year now. It will require some serious revising, but it actually turned out a little better than I thought it would. And most of all, it was fun! New ideas came to me as I put it together, which is, I guess, how the process works.

I am still second-guessing my ability to put words together in a fashion pleasing enough to pay me for (because my brain feels so out of shape right now), but I think I need to try anyway, because I think it's important to me to know I tried. Now if I can just break though my ever-present fears of failure and change long enough to finish the rest I'll be set to start cracking it apart again with revisions. I can already see where I'll need to re-write, or do more research so I sound like I know what I'm talking about. But I'm thinking I should write out what I think I want it to be, then fill in the gaps in my knowledge with research, and go back and make it more interesting.

Although maybe I should outline the plot before i get too much farther. Maybe things should happen somewhere between the beginning and the end.

1) Opening Scene
2) ?????
3) Victory!

Is probably not quite enough to go on. Well, I have an idea of how the last scenes go pretty well, and a few scenes in between, but I'm not sure how to make the intervening scenes flow smoothly and keep the reader invested, and I haven't quite gamed out how things unfold given the set-up, the players and the end goal.

First things first. Write the first thing first.

Gratitude

I'd like to give a shout-out to the spam bots that constantly link to this site, hoping I'll click back.  Thanks for reading. 

Please flag these kind words for recall both during and after the robot uprising.

On Proof

I generally like XKCD.  I like the science nerdery, but this isn't a particularly reasonable or scientific statement.  It's proof by hand-waving.  Yes, I know this is a joke, but it's a joke that's supposed to be funny because it's true, and it just isn't.  A fairer statement, but one which would not leave much room for a joke, is:  legions of cell phones have not yielded any conclusive proof of paranormal topics like bigfoot, lake monsters, flying saucers and ghosts.

I have more I want to write on this later, and really this comic is just a convenient jumping point for stuff I've wanted to talk about for a while, but for now let me quickly go over how poor a dataset just having a cell phone is for proof of the paranormal.  First, people looking down at their phones, aren't likely to be particularly aware of their environment.  Just having a cell phone on you, doesn't mean you would have the wherewithal to pull it out and snap a crisp, well-defined picture while seeing something unsettling and outside of your normal realm of experience.  Cell phone cameras do not take good, high-quality pictures in the dark, or at a distance.  Everyone in the world, with a cellphone isn't religiously monitoring the skies, lakes and forests for UFO's, lake monsters and big foot.  People aren't inclined to report the strange thinks they see for fear of being made fun of by "reasonable" people.  Youtube is full of strange videos of UFO encounters some of which are undoubtedly fake, some of which are more convincing.  But the first thing anyone will say is "that's fake" whether it could be real or not, because CGI exists and has gotten very good.  So how could the video from an amateur on a phone be taken at face value? Anything abnormal will be assumed to be fake, regardless of it's seeming validity.  Entire towns (Phoenix, Stephenville, TX) have had mass UFO sightings that are as yet unexplained, and everyone just hand-waves it away as some kind of hysteria.  So no, the fact that people have cell phones now is NOT proof that UFOs, bigfoot, ghosts and lake monsters don't exist.

Of course, there's still no conclusive proof that any of it does exist, so I think reasonable people are perfectly justified in not giving too much attention to UFOs, bigfoot or lake monsters, no matter what experiences people claim to have had.  There's certainly no evidence that this is something we should be overly concerned about in our daily lives.  But I'm getting tired of the people constantly and self-righteously claiming to be the most reasonable people on the planet making grandiose and unsupportable claims about what is and isn't proven.  There's some shit we just don't have enough evidence for to say for certain either way, and that's okay.  I understand the push back to people claiming with wide eyes that all these things exist, especially considering how many sightings/experiences turn out to be frauds or entirely explicable.  But it goes too far to say "you can't possibly have experienced what you experienced because other people didn't see it." or "we've completely disproven these events because I haven't seen any evidence that convinces me."  It's reason enough not to worry about it to much, or not believe in it, but it's not reason or evidence enough to declare the truth of the matter.  I think it's enough to say we don't know, and there's not enough evidence to do anything about it right now without declaring other people crazy for having an experience they can't verify or declaring what is an isn't the ultimate truth of the universe because we have some emotional need to have our world view validated.  And an emotional need to have a world view validated can be something "reasonable" materialists can be prone to as much as anyone else.

Tucked away in Concrete Forests

I'm trying to write artfully about the kind of society we built for ourselves and I'm failing.  For now I'll just say I find the layers upon layers of civilized protection, obstruction and distance from the natural world to be less helpful than I'm sure they were originally intended to be.  What exactly are we progressing towards?  Why does progress mean isolating ourselves as much as possible from the things our minds and bodies find the most soothing, like peace, quiet, the wind in the trees and water in a creek? 

It's not that simple, I know.  But regardless, I feel out of balance, and out of sync with both civilization and the natural world, and I'm not sure what exactly to do about that.

As always, the answer may just be that I'm the one who's crazy.