WILD BLUE YONDER

[Doc Nebula]

My vacation was such a conflicting morass of sensation and emotion that I would need to write a novel about it.  Now I'm back and dealing with other stresses, like my very first piece of [poop] car, which is an experience most of us po' folk go through much earlier in life than I am going through it.  Plus unpacking.  Plus work tomorrow.  Which could be worse, I could have come back and had to go to work the very next day. 

But, while I'm grateful and pleased that I do not have to get up at 4:30 AM tomorrow to catch a bus at 5:30 am to get me to work at 6:50 a.m. to start my shift at 8 a.m., which I've been doing for the last 18 months since I started this job... tomorrow I will get up, go out back, climb into my piece of [poop] $1900 car and drive myself to work at the other end of this sprawling [poop] heap of a city, for the very first time.  After driving this car home from the mechanic an hour ago, which was the first time I've driven a car in months.

So, I'm stressed about that, too.

At least I have Tuesday off, if I survive to see it.   And under the same presumption, I get to run my RPG this Sunday. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah, I hear you; life, alas, carries (too much) suffering and annoyance as the price of doing business.  [shrugs]

If the POS actually RUNS reliably, I'm confident that this will save you a lot of your finite time, likely save you piles of money in the long run, and disperse much more stress and annoyance than it brings.  IF it's reliable, which is admittedly a pretty big if.  So a sincere good luck with that. I think it's the smart play.

[Doc Nebula]

The POS was in our price range, and being sold by a friend who desperately needed the money.  She told us she hadn't driven it very much and seemed unable to answer most questions about it, even simple things like "How do we get to the windshield wipers to turn on?"

She was up front about there being some issue where she had to use a wire on the battery to get the engine fan to run.  But we took a mechanic with us to see the car and he told us he could fix that, no problem.

Turns out the fix was for him to install a little switch down under the steering wheel.  I start the car and flick the switch, which starts up the fan. When I turn off the car, I flick the switch again to turn off the fan.

He says the problem is a short in the wiring going to the fan, and to fix it so it runs the way it's supposed to would be a $500 repair  Which nobody knew or could have warned us about when we bought this thing. 

So now I have a car where, if I forget to flip this switch when I start it up, I'll burn out the engine.  If I forget to flip the switch when I shut the car down, I'll drain the battery.  No pressure.  And to get it fixed properly will cost half a grand. 

Plus, I'm not sure at this point how to turn the windshield wipers on.

Also, the gas tank is on the passenger side, whereas every other vehicle I've ever fueled, it was on the driver's side.

Anyway, I'm just nervous about this whole thing. 

So here's the prologue to the story this thread is supposed to be about:


Prologue
Signs And Portents

The tower was known as Wulfram, and was commonly believed to have been originally erected by the Romans, in the second or third centuries A.D. That belief was erroneous, although a decade later, in the autumn of 1955, carbon 14 testing would seem to confirm it.

In point of fact, the long ago thaumaturge who had overseen the tower's construction had placed spells of preservation on the stones designed to slow the tower's natural rate of decay by a factor of one hundred. The tower was not, as believed, nearly 2,000 years of age; in actual fact, it was closer to 200 millenia since its first foundation blocks had been laid side by side.

The original thaumaturge himself, the Empress whose patronage he enjoyed, the Empire that Empress had somewhat lackadaisically ruled, and the very peoples who comprised that Empire had all long since lapsed back into forgotten dust, and those few surviving ruins of that Empire not scattered about the floors of various oceans were not known for what they were... for the simple reason that Greco-Roman architecture had closely aped Atlantaean.

And so, Wulfram was falsely thought to have been raised by Romans, although it should be noted that the unmortal wizard currently residing there knew nothing of any of this, and would not have cared if he had.

The pentacle was drawn, as prescribed, in the menstrual blood of a human virgin - not at all easy to find in Germany late in the year these absurd so-called Christians labelled as 1944. The Jewish girls, of course, had all been futtered to a fare-thee-well, and as for the little blond frauleins - well, there was a saying about rape and the willing. Had been, actually, since the time of the Druids.

The ageless sorceror sniggered to himself as he recalled just what young German girls were willing to do for a man in uniform these days. His SS trousers might be borrowed, but the equipment inside was all his... and still functioned more than adequately after three thousand years, oh yes.

But concentrate, concentrate... when one returned to physical existence after five millenia of unchosen exile to a nether dimension, physical sensation was very distracting... and being easily distracted was an unwise trait in a wizard, oh yes.

The ageless sorcerer reached with blood-daubed fingers into a pouch slung from his broad black leather belt and brought out a shining handful of finely ground powder. Methodically, then, he sprinkled the silver nitrate in the carefully wrought lines of blood. The blood itself, properly shaped, would confine the demon and its magics, but many sorcerers overlooked psionics, which was another matter entirely, and required other materials.

All done then? The ageless sorceror glared around the subterranean chamber one more time, seeking aught amiss. The floor was frost-heaved pavingstones, laid down by the bloody Romans, doubtless; it had that look of old mathematics to it, in the way the identical squares all fit in once-exact symmetry.

The walls were honest brick, equally ancient, with gnarly roots protruding from rotted mortar. The ceiling was rock, cut crosswise by torch-blackened oak beams, supported by near-petrified wooden pillars reaching down to the stone floor at canted angles. The pentacle was drawn in the floor's central clear space. Intact skulls, carefully gathered by strutting Hitler Youth brats from disemboweled Jewish cemeteries, stood sentry at each cardinal compass point, the swastikas he'd carved on their foreheads glowing dimly in the smoky candlelight. All was ready, oh yes.

One was tempted, after enough time, to begin to be careless, to take things for granted, to allow habit and rote repetition to dull one's faculties - in short, to cease to pay attention. He'd performed this very same ceremony twice already tonight; Asphaetock Rast and Brimanus Ghath had both verified his information. But three was a mystic number, and moreover, Himmler, that cold prissy accountant, would want three confirmations before he'd authorize a bare pfennig to the project, so the pentacle must be drawn yet again, and the preparations must once more be gone through step by painstaking step, and now...

The chant of summoning came easily to him, of course, although he forced himself with unflinching discipline to pay the most exquisite attention to each and every syllable. Then came the timeless pause, when, even as many times as he had done this, he could not help but worry that something had gone wrong. Millions of so called mages over thousands of years had performed these or similar rites and received no response at all - which was, if truth be told, greatly preferable to receiving many of the possible responses, but still... when the day came that the Neverborn ignored his summonses, he might as well cut his own heart out beneath the nearest standing stone...

With a rattling bang and a bellowing roar, a tower of brilliant blue flame appeared at the center of his pentacle and hovered there, hissing. The sorceror kept silent; he knew the demon - which styled itself Zarkanish, Lord of the Blue Flame, or something equally adolescent - was carefully inspecting the pentacle for flaws, just as he was very aware that he himself was betting his unending life that there were none to be found.

"I was busy," Zarkanish said, finally, in a voice like a crackling bonfire.

"That's life in hell," the ageless sorceror cackled. "I doubt whoever you were doing will go very far in your absence."

"You're ignorant," the column of azure fire spat. "This one had a particularly musical quality to its screams, and its spiritual orifi were pleasantly unpolluted. Helpenis will have made off with it by now, or Sodomius..."

The sorceror didn't bother to note those names; he'd done business with both in the past. "Well, the sooner you answer my questions, the sooner you're back home again with your little diversions," he said briskly. "Here, now," he held up a black and white photograph showing a famous American bandleader playing a trombone, "tell me what you know of this."

A column of blue flame does not have expressions that most humans would be capable of interpreting, but the sorceror carefully noted the various patterns rippling across the demon's surface. Interest - even greed. "It is a crude image," the demon sputtered slowly. "Without substance... but it holds some of the essence of the true object. Very well. The form is unfamiliar to me, but nonetheless, I discern that it is a likeness of the current visage of Yodiab, the Horn of Power, forged by Michael at the Great Throne's command, given in to the charge of Gabriel, lost to Earth in the Dawn Times..."

"Used by Joshua at the battle of Jericho, yes, yes, yes," the sorceror interrupted. "Very well." He began the chant of release; was somewhat surprised when the demon interrupted him.

"Wait," the Lord of the Blue Flame cried out, "I would have further speech with thee, o mortal mage."

The sorceror's eyes narrowed. "Without specific malice, nor secret ploy, nor vicious strategem, sworn by thy Creator Adonai and the true name thou wert never born to?"

The demon quickly repeated the ancient oath, in hisses and sputters, stumbling only slightly at one of the Great Names in such context.

"Speak, then," the sorceror said, reassured.

"Twas I who stole Yodiab from Gabriel in the War of Dawn," the Neverborn spat. The sorceror made no reply; demons, of course, were always making ridiculous claims. "I lost it in a capricious gamble to the Renegade in a time long gone, and I greatly wish to recover it."

The sorcerer smoothed a hand over his raspy face. "This does not coincide with my desires," he replied. "Those I currently deal with wish to use the Horn of Power against their enemies, and will not happily surrender it to imps of dubious lineage like yourself."

The pillar of fire whirled furiously. "I hear your mother's spirit has been offered for auction by Asydsemyn, o necromancer," it hissed viciously. "Perhaps I will trade something for a few millenia of her time."

The ageless sorceror snorted. "You won't enjoy it, she never was good for much," he replied earnestly. "But then, she has been dead for three thousand years; perhaps she's learned something by now."

The demon shuddered with rage; then the fires of its person visibly calmed. "I will lend you some power to aid your undertaking," it roared finally. "In return, you will deed the Horn to me, once you and those mortals you serve need it no further."

The sorceror's visage darkened. "I do not serve," he said loftily. "These people pay me for my abilities but in truth, they are far from my equals. And we will need the Horn for a lengthy period, I don't doubt."

"Mortal time?" the demon hissed scornfully. "Even you, who count yourself ancient in that measuring, have barely begun to ripen by the measures of the Neverborn. The Horn will come to my hand soon enough."

At the top of the worn stone stairway leading up out of the tower's cellars, the wizard pounded heavily on the iron-reinforced wooden door. There was a muted clatter of wood on stone - that would be the guard's stool falling to the floor as he scrambled to his feet - and then, the rasping scrape of a heavy iron bolt being drawn back from on the other side of the door. The ponderous slab of ancient, smoke-stained oak swung open silently on well-oiled hinges, and the SS guard on the other side snapped a razor-perfect military salute to the sorceror as he walked out into the hall.

The wizard could not help but smirk at that. The guard, and his entire unit, had all done concentration camp duty prior to this assignment. All considered themselves to be hard, tough ubermenschen; elite soldiers, capable of dealing with anything or anyone... and all of them, to a man, had treated him with thinly veiled contempt when they had first seen him in his 'honorary' SS uniform with its equally 'honorary' obersturmfuhrer rank insignia.

Although they had saluted him, they had punctiliously avoided military salutes, using the extended arm salute of the Nazi party instead.

Over his first few days he had cycled all of them through the downstairs chamber two at a time, 'standing guard' over the various sacrifices and summonses he had performed to properly consecrate the tower and its environs to his usages. Their contempt had long since been replaced by more gratifying responses.

Now the sorceror studiously ignored the salute, contemptuously turning his back on this tall, broad-shouldered specimen of Aryan masculinity.

"Send a girl up to my quarters," he said casually as he strode away. "One of the younger ones, Fritz; you know what I like."

The guard's name was doubtless not Fritz - none of the SS guards names were Fritz, which was why the wizard always called them that. He was sure it annoyed them, just as it would annoy this current one to have to hike down to the small mountainside hamlet two or three miles away and get him a girl, no older than 13, for his use tonight. But they were very careful not to display that annoyance in any way, oh yes.

"Jawohl, herr oberst," the guard replied crisply, closing the door behind the wizard and throwing its bolt efficiently enough to keep his hands from trembling overmuch. At least the hellish fellow hadn't asked him to bring the girl down to the cellar, as Olaf had been ordered to do that morning. The guard had done many things to people - boys and girls, men and women - but those had been Jews and other subhumans, enemies of the state... and even at his most drunkenly creative, the guard had never imagined doing to someone what Olaf had described their current commander doing with the little blond madchen that morning.

Another young girl for tonight... but she wouldn't have to be a virgin, which would make it much easier. And tomorrow, when the fiendish weiskopf was done with her, the guard would take the girl back to the barracks for a while. She'd probably welcome the embraces of a few dozen normal men, however rough, after spending the night with the magus.

Despite such occasional fringe benefits, though, the soldier thought, he would never be more relieved than when this assignment was finally over. And if he lived to be a thousand, he never wanted to lay eyes on Herr Myron Moulton again...