Tag Archives: undead

Lodestar

Polaris

Here’s a “Word of the Day” exercise, using the word “Lodestar.”

For a refresher, “lodestar” means:

1. Something that serves as a guide or on which the attention is fixed

2. A star that shows the way

3. Polaris (a.k.a. the North Star)

Obviously, what that word needs is a zombie apocalypse.

 

Lodestar

“Mama, I thought you said we were there.”

I pat Bitty’s shoulder while scanning the horizon. The sun is setting behind naked trees. The sky is glowing orange and red. My fingers clench around the shotgun pump.

Nothing on the road but our wagon. Nothing in the trees. No moans on the wind. We still got a chance.

Jonathan, my eldest, pipes up. “This is Lodestar, ain’t it?”  O.B. gets excited.

“Daddy’s getting that all sorted, Ji. You boys hush now. Watch your sis.”

Bitty fell out of the wagon yesterday and split her lip. Nothing serious, but her crying attracted attention. Dad only had seventeen shells left, plus a few boxes of nine-mil. Can’t be wasting it ’til we know for sure.

Knockers whinnies and stamps his feet, eager to be on the move. His ears twitch at a sound nearby.

I hear the voices now and then. The men on the wall don’t sound friendly. Dad isn’t happy neither.

“Supplies, at least,” he says. “That’s all we’re asking. Give us a chance to buy or trade.”

Can’t hear the response, but I hear the laughter, and it’s enough.

I pat Bitty again, I think to comfort me more than her. She sucks her thumb and looks around.

It isn’t even the husks I’m worried about. Can’t trust people anymore neither. You meet someone out in the open, you best keep eyes on target and hand on steel, because you know they’re looking for a clear shot at your back.

I see the bodies again. I try not to, but they keep floating to the top of my mind every time I stop watching the land. Found what looked like a family of six today. We told Bitty and O.B. to close their eyes… told them it was the husks. We told Ji too, but he’s too sharp to believe that.

I’m sure he saw the tracks. Boot prints. Probably saw the bullet wounds and clean-cut flesh. Husks got claws and teeth and that’s it.

Ji’s smart, no way around it. At least he had the good sense not to talk about it in front of the other two.

Everyone’s got needs, I know. I just wish folk could be folk again, with welcoming smiles and warmth in their eyes. Lord said “the love of many will grow cold.” But I don’t think no one expected it to be this bad.

I try not to think about the sweet smell of barbecue that comes wafting our way on the breeze. This town might eat well tonight.

Well… not ‘well’ maybe, but they’ll eat their fill for a change.

The silence catches me off guard. I panic for a moment until I hear Dad plead with the gate-men. He’s carrying, and they know it. They won’t pick a fight with him.

Probably.

Ain’t seen any husks in four days, at least. Even then it was only a handful on the horizon. Nothing creeps me out more than the slow pace as we roll by in silence, eyes glued, watching them for a reaction. That time, they just lumbered around out there, near a farmhouse. Think I heard a few pigs squeal.

Guess even husks can’t resist bacon.

“What’s so funny, Ma?”

I hear Dad getting angry at the men. “Sorry, Ji. Right now, not a damn thing.”

I already know what’s next. I hear him stomping our way, cursing under his breath.

He hops up onto the driver’s seat and takes the reins from Ji. “Idiots. ‘You got nothing we need.’ Pish! How about extra hands to work the land? Extra weapons to hold the wall at night?”

Ji’s shoulders sag. “This ain’t Lodestar, is it, Dad?”

Dad sighs. Sounds like Jesus giving up the ghost. My heart breaks, and I hear him sniff.

No, no tears. Can’t have that in front of the kids.

“I’m sorry, hon,” I blurt out. “I thought I might’ve read the map wrong.”

He doesn’t move, but I hear him take a deep breath.

“This ain’t Lodestar, boys,” I explain. “We’re almost there, but it’s still a few days north. I thought we made better distance than we did these past few, and I got messed up.”

Ji squints at me, but O.B. lights up.

“Think they’ll have rabbits there,” he asks, “like back home? I wanna get a big fluffy grey one, name him Mister Carrots!”

Bitty laughs, and I manage a smile.

“I bet they just might, O.B. Let’s get moving and we’ll know soon.”

The wind picks up. The sky is all deep violet and maroon. We’re further north than we ever expected to be. Well into Canada by now, or what used to be Canada back when names and borders meant something.

“Tell me ’bout Lowstar!” Bitty squeaks.

Dad inhales deep, ready to put the burden back on his shoulders. Then he turns, red-eyed but grinning.

“It’s going to be the best, Bitty.”

He speaks in a hushed tone. We need to give the kids hope. We need to avoid attracting husks too.

He’s trying.

“It’s where everyone’s headed… all the good folk. They got walls a foot thick and taller than trees, to keep the husks out. They got fresh water, ’cause there’s a stream running right through the town. They even have some greenhouses to grow fruit.”

“Mmmmm!”

“You remember strawberries, Bits? I bet they got big red strawberries. Maybe even a raspberry patch like back home.”

They keep talking kind of quiet, and I reminisce. Home. Seems like ages ago that we pulled out of Alabama. Summer seemed a good time to travel, and all the talk said Lodestar was in the West Virginia hills. Then we got there, and they said it was on the shore of Lake Erie. Then we got there, and got a new map.

Not that we needed a map, really.

The sky above is almost all black.

Bitty whispers, “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…”

And there it is. The North Star, pointing the way to hope.

Dad is putting on a strong face, and Elizabeth is happy, so the boys are content even in the midst of all this. They huddle in blankets and watch in awe as the sky fills with stars.

I wish I felt the same sense of wonder, but I can’t shake one thought:

We’re running out of “north” soon.

Game Design Tip

So… in between writing projects and talking with my kids and chatting with my wife, I decide to unwind from a busy day by shooting down some planes in the latest Ace Combat game.

I’ve always been a fan of Ace Combat games, despite their lack of realism. Sorry, modern fighters don’t get to carry 200 missiles.

But this… this isn’t unwinding. This is winding me up to a rage.

I cast “Conjure Sukhoi, Rank 5”

Video game developers, please take note. Conjuring Su-27s in mid-air right over my airbase each time I shoot one down is NOT the same as making a challenging level. A four-ship formation of Su-27s can’t simply appear behind the transport I am required to protect. In real life, they have to come from somewhere, and we’d probably have indications of that long before they are 100 feet off the tail of the transport.

That’s actually how it went.

I shot down the two or three fighters that were chasing my ally.

A fighter magically appeared behind my aircraft to chase the transport.

I shot him down. Another Su-27 appeared to my right.

I shot him down. Another appeared off the transport’s nose.

“He turned me into a fireball!
… I got better.”

I was shooting him down when the transport landed, and the process repeated itself from the beginning, as I now had to save a second transport.

Then a third.

Then a fourth… but this time it was ground forces that popped up out of nowhere.

There’s no reward in this kind of game design for doing well. I don’t get a breather from constant attacks by killing everyone. They just regen right in my airspace, like some horrible Weapons School exercise.

That’s not challenge. That’s punishment.

And while I’m ranting at video game developers (who I know will never read this–leave me alone, this is cathartic), here’s one more tip:

Ground forces also don’t just rise up from the dirt a thousand feet from the base border… unless I’m actually fighting the zombie apocalypse. I don’t remember the cutscene that came before this mission, but I’m pretty sure there were no zombies.

Ace Combat: Bath Salts

Maybe Lego is Eevil too

For the sake of writing some blogs related to D&D, I liked the idea of pointing out some of the awesome products Paizo has produced, calling them “eevil” as a joke, because DANG IT STOP TAKING ALL MY MONEY GIVE ME THAT NEW MAP PACK AND THOSE MINIS.

Today, as a favor to my two older boys, we went to www.Lego.com in order to sign them up for a free magazine.

One of them is obsessed with Ninjago — a fighting game with Lego men holding weapons on special bases that spin like tops.

One of them is the true Lego maniac, the boy who grabs me every day and pulls me to his room to show me the new robot / spaceship / pirate / helicopter / Firefly-class playset he’s built.

Yes, really. My son and my daughter cooperated to build themselves a Serenity playset.

Sooner or later, I’ll post about our attempts at Lego D&D, and I have several pictures of some of the pieces we used to make that possible. I’ve included one as an example.

Lego Kaalistera
Lego D&D Assassin

Anyway, I made a horrible discovery on the Lego site.

As if Lord of the Rings sets — with a little Lego Gollum (squeee!) —

Let’s try that again.

The link is worth checking out, if you’re interested in the sets at all. They have videos describing the sets and all the special features meant to match the movies. The designers (some of whom seem hilariously out of their element doing that whole “trying to interact with people” thing) even take some time to play with the sets.

And again, Lego Gollum.

As if those weren’t enough reason to waste all my disposable income for the month, now I find that they’re going to be putting out a line of Lego Monster Hunters.

There are vampires, swamp things, mummies, ghosts, werewolves, mad scientists with stitched-together animated flesh creations (a la Frankenstein)…

And zombies, just in time for the Zombie Apocalypse of 2012. (Lego Bath Salts not included.)

Briiiiiiiicksss….
Briiiiiiiiiiickssss….

And there are of course heroes ready to hunt these monsters and stop their evil plots (hence the name of the line). The heroes struck me as kind of “meh” but their vehicles and gadgets looked pretty sweet.

For the kids, I mean. They looked sweet to the kids.

Think of the children.

So, while tooling around the website, showing my kids all the things they will probably never own, my son points out the word “Video Game.”

ORLY?

Yes. LOTR has a Lego game coming out at some point.

And there’s Lego Batman 2, the mere sight of which was enough to explode my six-year-old’s mind.

And there’s a bunch of others that I won’t get into, because I haven’t looked at them yet and I don’t want to because that leads to using credit cards down at GameStop and children whining at me asking for the 360 controller so they can play while I “check out the game” as a responsible parent should, and then my wife has to intervene because “Why are the children crying and what happened to Justin’s birthday present–are you playing his game?”

Bad all around.

Of course, looking at these amazing sets coming out soon, I asked, “How much does blood plasma sell for and how much can I survive donating?”  And I had the natural “old parent” reaction of, “You kids don’t know how good you have it! Back in my day, we never had stuff like this!”

I actually remember the very first Lego set I ever saw or paid any attention to: it was probably 1983 or so, and as part of some church function, there was a gift exchange. I received a sweet little Lego space set, from the glorious days before Lego even had actual horses with their Castle sets.

Check out the steering wheel!                                  Every spaceship needs one.

 

In my search for a picture of the model, I found Brickipedia, which was a sweet stroll down memory lane.

I spent hours at my friend’s house orchestrating the destruction of Lego City. He had a few of the huge building play sets, like the gas station, police headquarters, fire department, and some kind of house. We got together a bunch of vehicles and began plowing them into the buildings from a distance. The game was that you couldn’t simply smash the vehicle into a building. You had to roll it from a few feet away. Bricks flew everywhere, but those sets were built sturdy. It took quite some time to bring those buildings down.

I remember working really hard to earn a prize from Sunday School in 4th grade. The deal was that the winner would get a $25 gift certificate at Toys’R’Us, and this was when the Lego Castle sets with Robin Hood style minifigures first came out. I ended up getting a camouflaged fortress that looked like a small hill with a tree, but had a secret door and hatch you could open up to reveal the hidden shelter inside.

I recall seeing new Kingdoms sets at the Base Exchange a few years ago, with giant trolls and angry orcs and and skeleton armies arrayed against the forces of good. On top of that, there was a dwarf mine, with a pulley and a forge and a little track for a mine cart to roll on. My wife surprised me by purchasing pretty much every set, and we had them built on the coffee table for a little while until the kids destroyed them.

Lego has been a part of my life almost as long as I can remember.

So if I’m willing to call Paizo “eevil” because I keep buying their products…

Then Lego must be the Devil, sparkling like a vampire from Twilight, with a Hitler mustache and Rick Astley’s red hair, singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” while dancing the Macarena in Nazi jackboots.

And they’ll still get my money.

So how about you? What’s your first experience with those eevil little bricks?

"Cakewalk"

A steady breeze fought against the summer noonday blaze and swept across the gentle slope at the feet of the Chornauren Mountains. Unfazed by the heat, a small form in tattered clothes struggled on its way, one foot dragging behind, twisted, making a rasping noise as it slid upon the rocky ground.

Must… reach… Khordûn…

There were a few leagues to go yet. This was the difficult part, the part where Neldon had failed so many times before. The northern end of the Chornaurens was dotted with mines, property of the dwarvish kingdom he wanted to reach. He had to avoid them as long as possible, to delay contact until he could reach the city gates.

But many other creatures made their homes in mountain caves, creatures much less reasonable, far less diplomatic.

Less reasonable than dwarves… Neldon thought with a chuckle.

Save energy. Don’t think. He gave himself one more thought, goal in mind once again. Khordûn.

The twisted foot scratched through dirt and gravel as Neldon struggled on.

The ‘Marches were mostly wide open spaces, untamed, difficult to traverse safely by day, perilous by dark. He had been lucky last night; the moon was waning, but it was still near full. Even that limited light kept many of the mountain’s denizens in their caverns, and so he had shambled along all through the night.

There was no pain, no sense of the withering heat, no thirst or hunger. There was only the next step forward… never turning, always pointed for the gates of Khordûn.

The word had come to mean “hope” to Neldon, and so much more than that. If he was to survive, if he was to escape his daily torment, Khordûn would be the answer. The elves of Lanaloth were too far away to the south, and the human settlements across the plains were too small to help– what few survived the Bloodsworn invasion during the winter. Aelwyn might hold an answer, but that was a day’s travel past Khordûn at a healthy pace.

In the distance, Neldon thought he heard the sounding of a horn, and he scanned the sparse growth for cover. A few paces to his left, the stony ground rose sharply about half his height, and the tangle of bramble there would help. He turned hastily, lurching forward.

His injured foot caught on the sharp rocks, taking him off balance. Unable to fully catch himself, he slammed into the ground and thought he heard another bone break, this one in his arm.

A second horn sounded, and he heard shouting, too distant to make out. He had no time to worry about the injury, let alone get back on his feet. Crawling forward, pushing even with his misshapen foot, he half-lurched, half-skittered into his chosen hiding place.

Panic set in as he listened for approaching voices. He hadn’t expected to be spotted this far out. Had he attracted too much attention on his last few attempts?

The deep voices drew nearer, and he would have sighed in relief if he could. At least they were dwarves, and not goblins or worse. Dwarves of Khordûn. My only hope.

If they would listen this time.

“…saw it over there, I think!” one voice called.

“Sure moved quick if it were one o’ them again,” said another, a female with a tone of authority. “Spread out, lads. Be lookin’ out for others. They raid in packs.”

They raid at night, fool. I come each time alone in the light of day.

Stop thinking so much! Above all else, Neldon knew he must not be detected. A few stray thoughts here and there would not arouse Palla-Nel’s suspicion… or so Neldon hoped.

“Ya see anything?” the leader called out.

“Just rock and thistle down here,” a voice replied from nearby. “Strange, don’tcha think it, Ma’am?”

“What’s that, Torhalin?”

“Well, as ya said, there oughtta be a pack of ‘em about these slopes if there’s a one. But there ain’t. An’ you heard Hammerhelm’s patrol talk how they saw just one the other day too.”

“A scout, then,” she replied tersely.

Neldon peered through the bramble looking for the source of the nearby voice. The dwarf stood four paces from Neldon’s little refuge.

“I just–“ the dwarf continued. “It ain’t good sense, to come scout in the daylight across open ground.”

She ignored him and stamped further up the incline. The dwarf shook his head.

My chance… Neldon thought. Khordûn…

“…help… …me…”

The raspy whisper was just enough to get Torhalin’s attention, and the dwarf looked about as Neldon whispered again. “Help… me… …please…”

“…quietly…” Neldon whispered, but it was too late.

“It’s over here!” the dwarf yelled, and the others came lumbering down the hill, chainmail clinking, axes and hammers drawn.

Neldon knew this attempt had also failed, but he clung to a small hope. He rose from hiding, and spoke as clearly as he could muster.

“My name is Neldon Darowdin, from the town Delfindor. Our town was destroyed by a lich, who is now attacking you by night. He has–“

“Shut up, ya bag o’ filth!”

The squad leader roared as she sprang through the air, hammer swinging down toward the decayed form. Neldon tried to dodge, but the stroke connected with his right arm, tearing the skeletal limb from his ravaged body, scattering pieces of rotted flesh down the hill.

“The lich, Palla, is–“ he continued, salvaging what remained in this opportunity. But her next stroke tore through his jaw, shearing skull from spine. As his head fell away, she spun back around to plant the spiked end of her hammer deep in the undead creature’s ribcage.

By luck, the skull landed upright, and as the sickly green glow of undeath faded from its eye sockets, Neldon watched the other dwarf closely. Torhalin stared back, lips parted as with something to say, brow furrowed considering this strange event. Perhaps the message would get through this time. Someone would recognize the name from decades earlier.

Neldon returned to the black, the empty void. There was an advantage, however small, to the psychic bond formed when Palla consumed Neldon’s body and became Palla-Nel.

Neldon reached out tentatively, listening for any reaction from the lich at the loss of one of its slaves. Palla-Nel’s focus remained fixed on digging deeper under the mountain, seeking… always seeking. Seeking what, Neldon did not know, but while Palla-Nel’s attention was diverted elsewhere, Neldon could take another husk and send it on his fool’s errand.

This was the easy part. Just one simple, overriding thought filling the new husk’s head as it lumbered off. Khordûn. Must… reach… Khordûn.