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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Apr 18, 2023 7:07:37 GMT -5
Coming soon...
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Apr 18, 2023 10:35:08 GMT -5
Will we have an ATWQ King Kong vs Godzilla?
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Sept 4, 2023 10:22:05 GMT -5
To: Mitchum From: HF File Under: Theft, accounts of; kidnapping, accounts of; arson, accounts of; murder, accounts of; etc.
cc: IShq
Compiler's note: the following materials were found in the Clusterous Forest, in journals belonging to the first Hangfire. They have been added to by the second Hangfire, but I don't exactly know where one stops and another begins.
There was a town, and there was a boy, and there was a plan. I was operating in the town, I was following the plan, and I didn't think the boy could stop me. I was wrong. I was old enough to know better, yet I was wrong. I should have asked "Is it monstrous to use a monster to fight monsters?" Instead I asked the wrong questions. More questions than I can count, really. This is an account of them all. I was tired, more than anything. That was why I did everything. I was tired of greedy corporations exploiting nature in the sake of profit. I was tired of my good deeds being for naught, so tired it crept into my voice. And I was tired of searching for the one I loved. But that day I was tired of travel. There are no roads to Stain'd by the Sea, and only a truly insane driver would drive across the seashore. I had walked from Killdear Fields all the way here, and while they were close enough together that breaking a dam or two would connect their waters, a human walks much slower than an ocean, as I knew from my neighbors who'd drowned. I stood on a thin strip of stand above a cliff that was once a beach. Someone had built a sandcastle here, thinking it would be washed away overnight. It had stood here for years. I kicked it over. That was would institutions that stood for years deserved. As I looked out at the desolate wasteland that was once an ocean, I asked the question written on the cover of this manuscript. It was the wrong question. The question I should have asked was "Is the town behind me already as dead as what's in front of me?" But in my pursuit of revenge, I'd overestimated my opponents. I see that now, but now it's too late.
I walked into the library. Libraries always made me think of civilization, of people so immersed in the knowledge they already had that they wouldn't go out to the wilderness to learn something new. I went up to the librarian, a disreputable looking sort with wild hair and a bizarre jacket. "Well then young lady, have you been good to your mother?" he asked. "My mother died in the floods," I told him. "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion," he said. "I'm looking for a book on local legends," I asked him. "The Bombinating Beast is probably the most famous monster in Stain'd mythology. It's-" "No, you moron. I mean legendary people. Celebrities, local heroes, that sort of thing." "Oh. Well, there's Colonel Colophon, the war hero, and Dame Sally Murphy, a beloved actress. You can read about them in the History and Theater sections, respectively." "They will do nicely," I said, and I headed off deeper into the library.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 4, 2023 15:44:08 GMT -5
I'd forgotten your inital post, so I'm glad this is continuing.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Sept 4, 2023 18:15:03 GMT -5
The first Hangfire, does that mean Hangfire's a title? I like that idea.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Sept 18, 2023 16:23:52 GMT -5
The bell at Wade Academy hadn't rung for many years. As I stood atop the tower in that abandoned school, banging on it with all my might, I idly wondered what the townspeople were thinking. "Oh no, I might get salt lung!" Wrong! "Oh no, the water pressure is coming!" Wrong! "It's the Bombinating Beast!" Wrong! The pamphlet I'd written and mailed out in advance should have left them confused and easily scared, just as I'd intended. Deciding three wrongs was enough -although I'd eventually revise that to four- I left the academy and climbed down the cliffs that were once the beaches of Offshore Island. Pushing my way through the Clusterous Forest and getting slime all over my mask, I climbed up and onto another beach. This one was on the peninsula connecting Stain'd-By-The-Sea to the mainland, a lawless region that contained only one major facility of note: Colophon Clinic. It was a common tax-avoidance scheme to build hospitals in the middle of nowhere, with Ahab Memorial Hospital in the Finite Forest and plans for a new one in the Hinterlands. Say what you will about my friend Flammarion, but he had a keen mind for business. As I knocked on the door of the clinic, leaving slime all over the knocker, I realized that with my dark coat, mask, and sliminess I must look like a monster from one of those books I would read to- no. I must not think of her. Opening the door was a woman who was good with a knife and better at following orders. "I'm sorry, the colonel isn't seeing visitors right now," she said. "Please leave your name and I'll see if I can arrange a visiting time." "My name," I said, "is Hangfire." "Oh. You'll want to speak with the doctor." And with that, she pulled up a rug decorated with a beast I then thought was fictional and opened a hatch emblazoned with letters that stood for a secret organization that stood for all that was right in the world: IS. The Inhumane Society. At the bottom of the trapdoor was a secret room containing only a rotund man who bristled with arrogance. "You know, 'Hangfire', there's no health reason to wear a mask like that," he said, "from your letter it seemed you were an intelligent person, but now I see you're just a pretender. The Inhuman Society has faired perfectly well under my rule, and-" "There's a very good health reason," I said, "if somebody was to shoot you in the face with a poison dart, you'd want to have your face protected. And I wouldn't call atrophy to two members who squat in a perfectly good hospital torturing one man who represents only a small part of what we oppose fairing perfectly well. The Inhuman Society needs to become more unified, becoming a single plan with many parts, waiting for the moment to strike. Anyone who knows about music boxes knows what that's called. A hangfire. I am your Hangfire. Now, report to the Swinster Pharmacy and pick up the boxes in black cardboard labeled 'Beekabackabooka'. It's time for you to put your doctorate to good use." "Actually, I never graduated medical school."
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Sept 30, 2023 11:00:11 GMT -5
Dear Dame Sally Murphy, Do you remember your brother, Will? When the war came to Stain'd-By-The-Sea he was but a child. He was flying a kite when it got tangled in a tree. He was still trying to get it out as the enemy advanced, and would almost certainly have died if a brave colonel didn't run in and disentangle the kite. You have always admired that colonel. I would know, because my associates have personally thrown out the "get well soon" cards you've sent to Colophon Clinic. Yes, you read that right. Colophon Clinic is not a safe place for your brother's savior, and if you don't do exactly what I tell you to, Colonel Colophon will die in a botched surgery. Come to the old Sallis mansion at high noon tomorrow. Sincerely, Hangfire
I slid the letter into the mailbox at Colophon Clinic on my way out. Delivery around here was very fast, so she'll be at the mansion in a day. I still wasn't sure what to do with her, but a great actress will be very useful whenever I need to trick someone. I can imitate anyone over the phone, but soon this town will be so poor that nobody will be able to afford their phone bills. With Flammarion and his laudanun already heading towards Ink Inc. as their new apothecary, Dander making sure Colonel Colophon will never heal, and the postman making sure I gain a new member of the Inhuman Society, I felt it was time to remember why I did this.
I stood at the curb and hailed a taxi. My driver was a middle-aged man with a cough, who asked if I wanted to see baby pictures of his two sons. I declined. I told him to take me to Killdeer Fields. When we pulled up, there was nothing but a lake. The water that had once lapped at the shores of Stain'd-By-The-Sea's beaches had been drained, and now filled the town I'd called home. Looking at it, I asked the question written on the cover of this manuscript. It was the wrong question. Not because I should have asked a different one, but because I already knew the answer. Ink Inc. was the answer.
Gazing into the dark water, I jumped in fright. There, so deep I could only see a shadow, was a sort of question-mark-esque thing. It was vast, terrifying, and unknowable. If I had every tool I used in my studies as a naturalist, the most advanced scientific equipment ever invented, and all the time in the world, I still don't think I could truly understand what I saw that day. It is the greatest unknown in my life, more than any wrong question I could ever ask. Only one question could be asked, looking at what I saw, and it's "What Is That?" which I'm not sure is wrong. I certainly asked that, as I stared into the abyss, and decided I would try to answer it. I ran back to the taxi, and when the driver asked where I wanted to go, I told him "the library." It was time to learn some Stain'd Myths.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 4, 2023 14:37:48 GMT -5
Are you imply that pip/squeaks father is a member of vfd?
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Oct 4, 2023 19:29:01 GMT -5
Yes.
(Querty is in town before Lemony gets there, so he needs someone to observe. Plus, there's something mysterious about Mr. Bellerophon's "sickness" that could be explained by VFD shenanigans.)
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Post by Resemblance on Oct 19, 2023 7:40:02 GMT -5
A very splendid story so far. You have given Hangfire(whichever one that might be) a distinctive writing voice, which I appreciate.
I'll wait to post any theories until I can gather more information, but I have suspicions as to who wrote the opening paragraph.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Oct 19, 2023 18:15:29 GMT -5
The bizarrely dressed librarian rang a bell as I walked in. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but I talked first. "I'm looking for a book on a question-mark shaped ocean entity. I'm a naturalist, but I have no clue what it was when I saw it." The librarian looked around as though checking for eavesdroppers before speaking.
"It is my personal philosophy that in every library there is a book that answers the question that burns like a fire in the mind. This is true in your case, but the book is not one that wants to be read. I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but I refuse to deprive someone of knowledge that I can easily give them. Come into my office."
He lead me to a back room of the library. Back when this building was city hall, this was half of the mayor's office. A wall cut the room in two, with the other half over in the police station being its jail cell. This was poetic justice, a phrase which here means "the mayor was a horrible person back in the day so he deserves to have his office turn into a place for keeping horrible people." It was his plan to put a statue of Colonel Colophon outside city hall that made me leave Killdeer Fields and join the Inhumane Society in the first place.
The librarian had redecorated the place. There was now a strange-looking telegraph machine on a shelf where the flag of Stain'd-By-The-Sea had once been. The librarian was typing quite furiously into the machine. Looking over his shoulder, I saw:
To: Lois Dressing From: DQ cc: VFDhq Please fwd the report on the GU. Code phrase "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion."
Out of the machine came a great deal of noise, followed by a great deal of paper. The librarian looked it all over before grabbing a black marker and redacting many sentences. He handed the pile of papers to me. "Burn this after you read it. We're going to switch all our documents to invisible ink once we get a good supplier. Now don't tell anyone!"
I went out into the main library and sat down at a desk. The front page of the report said "Knowing The Unknowable: Our Very Few Deductions About The Great Unknown". As I read it, I saw it was all mostly filler text. Whoever wrote this knew no more about the entity than I did. They had reports of many sightings, from one by the passenger ship Pericles off the coast of Peru to one from the submarine "Q" in the depths of Lake Lachrymose. I did find one passage interesting:
"Marine expert and historian J[Redacted] has noted the similarities between the Great Unknown to the Bombinating Beast of ancient Yamgraz mythology. The beast was a ferocious creature controlled by a wizard who used a specially carved statue to imitate its buzz. However, key differences like how the Bombinating Beast is never depicted with an independent dot below it indicate this is probably a coincidence. ANNENDUM: Recently, on [Redacted], our agents found DNA samples on Sontag Shore that match perfectly with the Bombinating Beast, indicating it's a real creature and not a cryptid, a word which here means some monster people think is real even though it isn't, like Bigfoot or Santa Claus."
If an organization like whoever the librarian worked for couldn't solve the Great Unknown, I knew I couldn't. But this Bombinating Beast... As I walked out of the library, I grabbed a book on Yamgraz mythology. For the first time since I was putting... her... to sleep, I was excited to do some reading.
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Post by Resemblance on Oct 19, 2023 19:43:53 GMT -5
To: Lois Dressing From: DQ I knew it.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Oct 31, 2023 19:57:34 GMT -5
The Sallis mansion was a decadent waste of resources. It looked as though Dot Sallis had inherited a perfectly good mansion and decided it was too small, and then grafting another mansion on clumsily. It was now fully abandoned. Dot Sallis had left town when the newspaper next door closed. She was an old friend of that family, and had left to help a reporter establish herself in the city. This left the mansion nice and empty.
"Wrong!" went the bell at Wade Academy. Nurse Dander had gone up this time, so my meeting could occur without anyone seeing my face. I checked my watch. It was a minute before noon. At noon exactly, in walked a distinguished older woman. She had a face showing obvious distress, and she wailed at me melodramaticly. "What do you want!?" she cried.
"Your cooperation," I answered. "I work for a Society. We mean to bring vengeance upon this town, and to do that we need something you can get. Tell me, what do you know of local legends?"
"I am a local legend," Dame Sally Murphy replied.
"Not like that. I mean stories like the Stain'd Witches or the Imitating Wizard."
"I was once in a play called Blood In Their Pens were I was the head of a coven of witches. It wrapped right before I started Watch Out For That Train Wreck!
"Have you heard the legend of the Bombinating Beast?"
"Of course! The Bombinating Beast was a terrifying monster that stalked the Yamgraz. When Lady Mallahan came here with the first ink prospectors, she slew the Beast and the wizard who controlled it. From the wizard's tower she took the magical talisman that controlled the Beast, and brought it to her lighthouse."
"That matches what I read, but it was vague on what the talisman was. I need you to infiltrate their lighthouse and find out what it is."
"What?"
"You're an actress, aren't you? Act!"
So we walled up the hill to the lighthouse. Sally Murphy knocked on the lighthouse door, and it was answered by a girl wearing a mask like we were. "Hello?" she asked.
"Hi," Sally Murphy said, "I'm from the Daily Punctillio, you know, the city paper? We were thinking about buying and reviving the Stain'd Lighthouse, so I wanted to inspect your facilities."
Although I couldn't see the girl's face, her body looked much happier. "Come in!" she cried. We followed her inside. As we looked around, I kept an eye out for a particular kind of wood. It came from a very dark tree native to Offshore Island, where legend said the mythical wizard's tower was. When Wade Academy was built, most of the trees were chopped down, but for one that was moved in front of City Hall. The wood from this tree had been used by Lady Mallahan to carve a cane that she gifted to Lady Sallis, a cane I'd found in the Sallis mansion. It had been used to make many benches and chairs that were originally furniture for Wade Academy but were moved to clinics and trains when the school closed. I had even found some in the Clusterous Forest and was carving a cudgel out of it in my spare time. Eventually, on the top floor, we found the jackpot.
It was a small statue, about the size of a bottle of milk, and it resembled a seahorse the way a hawk resembles a chicken. I turned it over, as though idly. On the bottom was something that looked like paper but to my trained naturalist's eye was clearly shed skin. I signalled to Sally Murphy that we should leave, and so we did. I told her to go to the Hairdryer Emporium and buy a mattress, since she'd be staying in the Sallis mansion for the duration. Then I hailed a taxi.
"Take me to the nearest town that has a telegraph office," I commanded the driver. He coughed in a way I took to mean agreement.
The nearest town turned out to be a quaint little village called Ophelia. It looked like a lovely place to live, like Killdeer Fields before the flood. I went to the telegraph office next to the bank and wrote out a telegram claiming that the statue was worth a great deal of money, addressing it to the lighthouse. I'd secured the means of control -or so I thought- now I just needed to find the Beast.
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Post by Resemblance on Oct 31, 2023 22:11:26 GMT -5
I take it Sally Murphy had a disguise of sorts? Moxie recognized her in canon. The salt lung masks possibly...but she wasn't at the beginning.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Nov 1, 2023 17:24:26 GMT -5
It's the masks. People carry them with them and put them on a soon as the bell rings, at least in my view.
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