[ Art ] Termwise Sketchbook [04 Jun 2004|05:21pm] A collage of various things I've doodled in my note book this term. In the EtA? gallery because that's what most of the images are. A :: Elle and Nails from Et tu, Assiah?. B :: Sam from Et tu, Assiah?. C :: Lee from Et tu, Assish?. D :: Lokken and Sam from Et tu, Angelus?. E :: Lokken/Elle (probably Elle because of the steel ear things, but they're pretty interchangable). F :: Nails. G :: Lee from Et tu, Angelus? MEK'd out to the max. Mostly mucking about with wing attachment design. H :: Miscellaneous character in freefall. I :: Headshot of the character from H. Randomly MEK'd girl/boy with telephone plug pigtails. Drawn while watching some part from a movie in which a guy explains why barcodes are the Mark of the Beast (in England, anyway). J :: Loqia back from the Softwall. Note shaved head, leather-wrapped plait and antennae. [ direct link ] [cloned from void s t a r] post comment

[ Art ] Eaten! [06 Apr 2004|12:59am] This was going to be my first post on blackstatic, the new oekaki board for void-star.net, but no-oo-oo, the stupid program decided to eat the damn thing. Good thing I take screenshots of everything. Or maybe not... this is pretty shit-tacular. Dunno what the hell I was tryin' to do... been a long time since I've done 'oomans, I guess. Ah well. [ direct link ] [cloned from void s t a r] post comment

[ Storytime ] Golgotha Tenement Blues [14 Feb 2003|02:06am] He'd been fourty days and fourty nights newly freed in the world when he decided to destroy it. The rage had been boiling in him since the beginning of time, he thought, but only now -- after his thousand years under the earth -- did he feel compelled to act upon it. Which was how it was when he went looking for the Voice. It was the best place to start, he thought. The place wherefore it began so should it end. ( Read more... ) [cloned from voidstar] post comment

[ Storytime ] Jehova [09 Jan 2003|05:35pm] Continued from here. The boat had been sailing for a long time before Nails finally hit a shore. He stepped out, pulling his now-hat out of the water as he did so. He was back in the mists, but this time they had pulled awya in front of him, leaving a long, swirling, mist-walled tunnel stretching out ahead as far as he could see. Nails sighed, and began to walk, boots cruching on shale like bone. Walking down a corridor... ( Read more... ) [cloned from voidstar] post comment

[ Storytime ] Dog Soldiers [31 Oct 2002|05:25pm] The van lurched dangerously sideways as something the size of a small car began crashing against it mercilessly. The phone forgotten, Sam scrabbled for a gun in the chaos, then another as the first yielded nothing but empty clicking. "Shit!" Eventually, and with skull-crushing fate, the top of his head came into contact with the butt of a pulse rifle. It would do. Two shots through the side of the van and the barrage stopped, leaving Sam sitting on what used to be a wall, the rubble of their journey strewn all around him. Outside, something sniffed carefully, and he could hear the soft crunching noises as feet the size of plates paced around the van. There was more than one; well, of course there was, the Dogs always hunted in packs. Maybe if he was very quiet... Metal screamed, and Sam was greeted by a set of huge claws that had perforated the side of the van not two inches from his head. He lunged aside quickly as the claws were brought down in a wide, jagged line right through the place formerly occupied by the left side of his body. A short, undiginfied scrabble later, and he was crouched in the centre of what was beginning to feel more and more like a large tin of dog food. The claws changed their arc, turning inward, intent on cutting some kind of hole in the structure. Ironically, none of the van's doors were locked, but Sam was reasonably sure that the Dogs weren't particularly smart... Either that or they just liked taunting him. At any rate, a mass of gunmetal-grey fur had appeared just behind the rend, and one mad, red eye was just visible beyond. Sam took careful aim -- a little hard to do considering his position -- and fired. The loud electrical burst of the rifle was submerged under the outraged howl now being admitted from somewhere outside the van. Dogs were tough, though, and a single shot from a pulse rifle wouldn't slow one down for long. Hopefully, the shot had been true and hit the thing's eye full on; Sam doubted he could kill these things, so was more intent at simply dirving them off. Hopefully, if they discovered he wasn't such easy prey they'd leave him alone; at least for a little while. Another dull metallic thud and an alarming buckling in the roof indicated that the Dogs must have decided height was an advantage. More shrieking metal heralded the return of more claws and Sam grinned dangerously. This was a different one than before -- the fur behind the jagged slits of metal was a dappled brown -- and Sam waited until the thing had gotten a good slab of the van's roof away before emptying half a dozen shots into the thing's face and chest. Blood and drool and fur came cascading down into the van, and Sam cursed from the sheer mess of it all. The brown Dog fell prone across the top; jagged metallic spears of its own making pinning it there for the time being. One half-blind, one pinned... how many more were there? Sam listened carefully, but couldn't hear anything substantial over the wails of the pinned Dog atop him. Either they'd gone, or were simply waiting. Well, they weren't the only ones with a hunter's patience. Carefully -- and quietly -- Sam arranged himself into a reasonably comfortable position, and began preparing himself for the long haul. [cloned from voidstar] post comment

[ Storytime ] Ordinary World [16 Oct 2002|11:02am] Twenty paces and an about face. Twenty paces back, and... no van. Nails frowned, though -- if he was honest with himself -- he couldn't exactly say he was surprised. Entropy field, right. He risked a glance down at the fingerbone; it was idling at the moment, his concentration on it broken. "Sam," he commanded it, and the thing began spinning wildly out of control. The undead remains of one eyebrow went up. "The kid," he suggested, and instantly the spinning stopped, the bone pointing dead straight back in the direction he had come from. Right then. He struggled to remember everything he knew about entropy fields, (dark, so dark... a flash of red and) and about the Blood Road in particular. Something to do with the sense of self; that's what the mist was, loss of all visual sitmulus as to location. Only faith would get you out of it. The larger the group or mass moving through, the less it congealed; that's why Nails could no longer see past his waist now he was away from Sam and the van. Will was everything in this place of pure potential, so... Crouching down, Nails unwound another bone from his hair -- something long and pointed and not human -- and drew a rough circle in the silvery shale around his feet, roughly an arms' length away from his body the whole way around. "This is my island." For a moment, there was nothing, then the mists pulled back violently, leaving Nails standing on a small hump of shale in the middle of a calm silver sea. Well, it was a start. He picked a handful of small rocks from under his feet, pocketing all but one. "This is the moon. It will show me the way." He threw it high into the mists and waited. Another violent roil and they pulled back, revealing a low-hung crescent just tipping the horizon. Under the glow of this new beacon, Nails pulled his hat off his head, removing the feather from the band and resting it inside, before floating the whole thing on the gently lapping shore. "This is my boat," he stated, and it was; a small black craft with an iridescent feathery sail. He unwound another bone; this one flat-ended. "And this is my paddle." The ivory oar materialised in his hand. Gently, he stepped into the boat -- it rocked a little, but seemed secure -- and, keeping one eye on the moon, set off. [cloned from voidstar] post comment

[ Storytime ] Lost [14 Oct 2002|02:50am] The ghoul had been gone for a good twenty minutes when Sam's cell buzzed. He flipped the thing out of his pocket unthinkingly, bringing it up next to his ear only to be greeted by the shrieking of static. Frankly, he was surprised the thing still worked at all, out here amidst the dust of old wars. "Le Chevallier," he inquired into the static, curious. The ID came from no known number. "The adoni ha'aretz is nervous," came a distorted, but female, voice through the buzz of white noise. "Whatever you've got, hold onto it. Keep running, and don't look back." Then the line clicked dead and all Sam was left with was a beeping piece of plastic. He folder it up, pushing it back into the pocket of his tunic, and shifted his gaze back out into the fog. It was giving him a headache; his eyes needed something to focus on, not this depthless infinity, so he shifted them back to the inside of the van. The phonecall had surprised him, but he knew better than to dwell on it, especially out here. Getting strange, annonymous phonecalls was all part and parcel with being a grey. You simply noted them down and left it at that. The ha'aretz could panic all it liked, but it couldn't send the Protectorates after him if they didn't know where he was. Or how to get there. He sighed, glancing at his watch. 25 minutes. The ghoul had said he could track down their missing cargo blind in the fog using... weird ghoul mumbo jumbo, or whatever, but now Sam was getting uneasy; how far could the kid have gone? Thankfully, the howls had nearly died down; one or two mournful voices still raged every now and again, sometimes closer, sometimes not. Sam wondered what they'd do to a lone ghoul, lost in the mist. Not to mention the kid. Sam shuddered. The worst part was, he was getting hungry. Thirty minutes and he decided to go looking. Nails had taken a beacon with him, and Sam was hoping like hell it would still work out here. He found the tracker buried under a pile of blankets and shook it awake. For a long time the screen was blank, then it gave a few tentative beeps. Dots appeared on the screen; one for the van, right underneath the center of the field which indicated Sam's current location. A hazy cone extended out to the... Sam wasn't sure of the directions out here, since the compass had gone offline, so he nominated that direction as west. That would, he figured, be just about right for the direction Nails had taken in the five or so feet before he was totally obscured in the mists. So the tracker wasn't completley useless. Every single piece of common sense and ops training in his entire body was screaming at him that this was a bad idea; nay, the worst idea, but what else could he do? The van was... dead. It had stubbornly refused to start when Nails had first suggested he track the kid. Sam had poked around under the bonnet for a while, trying to find a problem, but could see nothing wrong. Eventually, Nails had suggested bitrot. Some places just made technology break down, he'd explained, before launching into a long lecture about quantum chaos and entropy fields. Sam had half-listened; Red Ops agents lived and breathed tech, and it looked like this one hadn't lost all his memory of it since his death. Eventually, Nails had taken the beacon and disappeared into the fog, following what looked like a fingerbone tied to a piece of hair. Sam had been skeptical. He was halfway through holstering guns when his phone rang again. He picked it up, bracing himself for yet another burst of static, and was surprised when all that came through was a clicking noise; like a cockroach eating only magnified a million times. "Le Chevallier..." The noise was... eerie. "Hello?" The clicking continued. Sam's brain began churning up images of maggots and dark, moist places in long-forgotten basements. It was almost... hypnotising, in a way. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there when the wailing started; impossibly loud and devilishly inhuman. Gut instinct took over, and Sam had thrown the phone to the other side of the van and put a clip through it before calming down. "Shit!" His heart was beating far, far more quickly than it should have been. Suddenly, the inside of the van was feeling far, far to cramped. It took him far longer than he would have liked before he had talked himself into lowering the gun, and it was only then that he heard it. Right on the edge of hearing, a slightly clicking sound, like beetles on stone. Cautiously, he bent down to examine the shattered cell, he stretched his fingers, and had almost touched it when something the size of a small car hit the side of the van, and everything went sideways. [cloned from voidstar] post comment

[ Storytime ] Council [06 Oct 2002|04:06am] The disembodied voice found Wayne through the curtain of darkness. "So, you say they've vanished?" She swallowed harshly, staring intently at the floor, fist held tightly over her heart. "Yes, your graces. They fell off the radar somewhere in Turn." "I see." A slightly different voice this time. There were ten of them somewhere, she knew, out there in the darkness. The adoni ha'aretz. "What of the ghoul?" "He goes by the name of Nails. We believe him to be James Maher of the Red Ops division. Maher... disappeared during an investigation spearheaded by le Chevallier during his work as a grey. We never found a body, and assumed he was dead." "I see. This 'investigation' was...?" Wayne tried not to show her discomfort. "Le Chevallier was investigating a series of seemingly disconnected ritual murder/suicides dubbed the Jehova Project. Maher was sent in as part of a backup team to a site believed to hold specific connecting evidence to all the cases. His team mates made it out alive. I'd suggest Maher was the lucky one." What she was trying very hard not to say -- or even think -- was that the only reason she'd sent Nails off with Sam to the Great Dark was that he had suspected a link between the Jehova Project and the madness gripping the Dead. Whatever they'd found out there had bought down the wrath of this very ruling council she was now reporting to. Something was very, very wrong. The voices continued their questions. "Did this... Maher and le Chevallier come into contact while Maher was alive?" "No, your graces. Not that I'm aware of." "I see. You say le Chevallier was assigned to this 'Jehova Project'; why, then, did you see it fit to send him off to investigate what must have seemed an entierley different matter?" "His work with the Jehova Project was obviously causing le Chevallier a great deal of stress. At the time, a trip out to the bayou to subdue some hungry dead seemed a small task. Ghouls go rogue all the time; it was supposed to be routine." Which, asides from Sam's suspicions, was almost true. "Are you aware that the Dark Lord has no knowledge of either a James Maher dying or a 'Nails' ever having been rebirthed?" Something began ticking at the back of Wayne's brain. "N... no, your graces. I was not." After a while, she added. "How is that possible, if I may be so presumptuous to ask? I though the Dark Lord had complete control over the dead of Assiah?" "Yes, well. So did we. Unless he lies to us. Do you believe he would?" The question sounded so innocent. "I... I don't know. Not even the lich lords presume to know the mind of the Dark Lord." A self-made ghoul. Was that even possible? "Very well, then. It would seem we have ourselves a little mystery, then. Would it not?" "Yes, your graces. I will assign as many agents as I can spare to investigate further." Of course, Wayne thought, with rogue Jehovas popping up all over the city and the madness-plague in the Great Dark, perhaps she wouldn't have so many to spare after all... "Very well. Your report has been most... useful. Please keep us informed of your progress." "Yes, your graces." "You may go." Wayne rose unsteadily to her feet, being sure to keep her face downturned as she exited the Temple. She shuddered as she walked down Temple Road, taking a left at Court Street and making a beeline for the head office of the Protectorates. It had come over dismal in the last few hours; a strange silvery fog had crept into the air, and the sky was overcast and bespoke corrupt rains later on. Bad winds blowing over from the ruins of the Dog Plane, Wayne assumed. As if to confirm her suspicion, somewhere off in the distance a dog began to howl. One after the other, more and more joined in, until the air was thick with howls. She shuddered as she remembered the tales her grandmother use to tell, when the Fog of Netzach would roll off the Blood Road and the people would huddle away from the howls of the Great Hunt. That had all stopped generations ago, of course, but on days like this, the tale still had the power to run chills up her spine. By the time she had reached the doors to the head office, she had broken out into a brisque trot -- cursing her stupidity all the while. The second she put her hand on the door, the sky opened and it was no longer safe to be outside. [cloned from voidstar] post comment

[ Storytime ] 25 Miles From Home [03 Oct 2002|06:27pm] Nobody ever found Route 7-10 by choice; unlike 8-10 and 9-10, 7-10 had, as far as anybody was aware, no static beginning anywhere in all of Assiah. You didn't find the Blood Road, it found you. It had certainly found Sam and co. Sometime during their mad flight from the Protectorates (the Protectorates, for godssakes; Sam never though he'd be a fugitive from his own people) they'd been aware of a fog closing in, the buildings in the streets began looking more and more cramped together, as if more than one was trying to occupy the same space in time. The people sitting on the porches of the strange, looming houses began to look... wrong somehow. At first the fog and strange archetecture had meant Nails mistook the landscape for one of the towns scattered along 9-10. They were near Temple Road, he assured. Soon they'd hit the bayou and within reach of asylum from the Dark Lord. But something in the young ghoul's words sat wrong with Sam, and they never did find the Great Dark. When the fog began closing in so thickly that they couldn't even see the strange houses and their leery inhabitants anymore, Sam pulled the van to a halt. "What's wrong?" Nails' milky-white eyes glowed from the back of the van. In the dim silver glow from the fog outside, Sam could just make out the ghoul's broad, lipless grin turned down with concern. At his side, their cargo -- the thing which had started this mad flight in the first place -- clicked and cooed curiously. Nails seemed to think of something. "Have we hit the bayou yet?" "We're not on Temple Road," came Sam's curt reply. He gripped the back of the seat furiously to hid the shaking in his hands. "Those weren't the satelite towns back there." Nails cocked an eyebrow, tilting his head to the side slightly in a curiously birdlike expression. "Then what were they? Where are we?" "Golgotha," Sam said, watching Nails' face fall into slack horror at the mention of the Skull Place. "We're on the Blood Road." All six foot nine of ghoul jumped to its feet at once, and there was a large crash as undead skull hit the roof of the van, and another as it came down again. When Nails had picked himself up again, he cried, "You've got to be joking! There is no Blood Road anymore; it was destroyed years ago to stop the Dog War..." his brow furrowed "... right?" Sam nodded. "But we're on it all the same." He opened the door and stepped out of the van to the sound of Nails cursing profusley in the Dead Tongue. The fog was thick out here to the point that he was having trouble seeing his feet; let alone any distance in front. The radar in the van was reporting total flatness for miles around, but Sam didn't trust it; not in this place. Keeping one hand on the side of the van, he walked around it, wrenching open the back doors to find Nails being gently reassured by the source of all this trouble. "Come on," he said. "You and the kid get out for a bit, stretch your legs. Don't get too far away from the van, though. If we get lost out here, you can bet we ain't comin' back again." Nails nodded slightly, though he still looked completley terrified, and unfolded himself from the back of the van. The kid followed, looking slightly bewildered as it did so. Of course, Sam had no idea whether or not it was a kid, though it certainly looked youngish. Human enough, apart from the strange cartoon cat-ears poking out of the shaggy blonde hair at either side of its head and the small feathery white wings fluttering against its back. Sam hadn't even decided whether it was male or female. It certainly couldn't just tell them. He sighed; if the thing didn't look so damn... familiar he would have been happy to have taken it right back to the Council, but the way it looked at him... He shook his head; he was doing it again. Staring at the thing... the Council's science experimen gone wrong. And now Nails was looking at him strangely. "You okay, boss?" "Fine," he growled. "Just wondering how the hell we got into this mess." "And how we'll get out?" Nails looked hopeful. "Not even." "Aw hell... I had a nice little job going back at the bayou and everything. Took travellers out fishing and stuff, you know? Ever caught fish in the Great Dark?" "I don't fish." "More your loss, then. Real good fish these were... the livelies loved 'em. I was thinkin' of opening a hire place, you know. Right on Temple Road; Nails' Fishing Joint. Could have a restraunt and everything... sell real bayou food and all." "I dread to think of what you dead freaks eat..." Nails looked indignant. "It's not all maggots and human flesh, you know." He sighed. "Anyway... that's what I was going to do." Sam thought for a moment. "Why'd the Dark Lord send you down for this job?" he asked finally. "The first thing you learn when you die," Nails began, "is that you never ask for the motives of the Dark Lord. Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time, I dunno. After all, it doesn't take much to deliver a message." "Wayne back at the center says you used to work for Red Ops. Back before..." he trailed off. Asking a ghoul about its life was like walking through a minefield. Fortunatley, Nails didn't leap up and attempt to eat Sam's brain, or even fall into a pile of rotting body parts. He just shrugged. "Maybe. I dunno." Eventually he asked, "What about you? What did you always want to do with your life?" Sam frowned. "I dunno... work for the Protectorates, I guess," he said. "Which I am... was... doing." "But after that?" "Retire? I dunno. Never thought about it." A pause. "Or enver thought I'd have to." He pointed to the dark grey brocade trim around his uniform jacket. "Grey Ops agents usually don't last very long." "So why'd you get into it in the first place?" "Didn't. They came for me; I was an orphan. Grew up in a Protectorate-sponsored orphanage. Been trained to be a grey since I can remember." "Oh. What happened to your parents? I mean, if they're dead I can, you know, look for them... or whatever. When we get out of this." Sam shook his head. "They weren't dead when they left me on the Council's doorstep. If they're dead now, I don't give a flying fuck." Nails shrugged. "Just offering." There was another long silence in which each simply fell into their own thoughts. Something was niggling at the back of Sam's brain, however. Something he couldn't shake off. Finally, he gasped. "What?" Nails jerked out of his nevel-gazing to stare at Sam with quizzical eyes. "The kid," Sam began looking around frantically, straining his eyes to try and make out a damn thing through the silvery fog. "Where the hell is it?" Nails looked around. "Aw hell..." In the distance, the wolves began to howl. Originally written as a response to the latest project, though it sort of ran away with itself. [cloned from voidstar] post comment

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