Happy Holidays to You and Yours!

Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas!

I received the most wonderful gift today...



A copy of Tales of New Babbage Volume 1, with a retelling of my story "The Sulphurstick Girl"! All proceeds go to the server costs of the city! A perfect stocking-stuffer for your little urchins, in addition to the lump of coal she's been begging you for!

The Pendulum Swings Back: Dungeon Crawl Classics

Locked away securely in the Special Library of the Arcanum are pages from an obscure and ancient tome that records a time before monks and sorcerers and psionicists and artificers. Before half-orcs and half-elves and gnomes were known to Man. Because it is incomplete, it is known as the Nth Appendix of the Lore of Sötu.

Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) by @GoodmanGames is a D20 system devolved to it's 1974 origins. No Feats, no multiclassers, demihumans are classes unto themselves. Critical hit and miss tables and spectacular spell fumbles abound. Should your player survive his origins as a peasant recruit (highly unlikely...bring a mob!) and learn magic, your player cannot customize the magic. The magic customizes you.

I will be running a beta-test starting in December. The game itself is available in February, along with mutations such as the d14 and d17 (I actually did own a d30!) I will be recording the results.

The Strange Case of the Writer of New Babbage

I was happy to be a part of the cure the Steelhead epidemic, even if indirectly. Future-Mindy had the antibodies in her blood with which to devise a vaccine to that particular strain. After that mishap, I was eager to return to my research in the comparatively quiet environs of the Wulfenbach Consulate in New Babbage (and possibly escape the wrath of Tensai and her explosives).

However, when I reached the smog-clouded port of New Babbage, I soon that there was some sort of emergency. There were a fraction of the usual revelers at the local tavern. And for revelers, they were quite dour and heavily armed. I was ready to quietly pass by when I over heard them complaining about time-travelers. That certainly got my attention.

They told me that a construct appeared in the Town Hall, whom they called The Writer. It immediately began scribing a tale, last page first. In that tale, the local heroes...Mayor Tenk, Chief Urchin Loki, and in this case I stretch the term to its limit by including Dr. Obolensky, as well as the fellows in that tavern were fighting an unearthly force called the Dark Aether. Even with the full might of Dr. O's mecha, Lord Smashington III, New Babbage fell, with the sole hope being a time machine sent back to warn us.



Already elements of the story have come to pass. Hordes of one-eyed crustaceans with claws that can rip through timbers have assaulted the townsfolk. The clergy of the local Church of the Builder have designed energy "blunderbusses" to stop them, apparently without the knowledge that their inventions were already described by the Writer's pages. According to the Writer, the next wave to attack Babbage will include kraken-like creatures from the deep, and a gloating, barely humanoid arch-nemesis.

I summoned Nova Sakigake and her companion, now known as Doctor Six. I showed them the Writer and its works, and asked them what conclusions they could draw from both their chronometric experience and depth of knowledge of the Mythos.



While there was insufficient information to pin the Dark Aether behind a previously known threat, Nova was able to suggest some weapon blueprints for dealing with the monsters. Examining the Writer and his prose, I have drawn the following conclusions:

The Writer appears to be made by a local Spark from locally abundant resources, possibly from the Clockwinder himself. I daresay it appears to be hastily made. It does not respond to stimuli except to rewrite its tale, adding more to the beginning until, it is assumed, our timeline and its own point of origin intersect. The story is...not edited well. There are misspellings and incorrect punctuation, as if the tale was dictated and hastily written. I noted the word "colour", we can assume the author is not American.

There was no mention of either the Masons or the Wulfenbachs, somewhat out of character for both of our organizations to be absent in a crisis of this magnitude. Could the Writer be from the same timeline as Future-Mindy, where the Masons were relegated to jailers of "Necropolis!Steelhead"?

Perhaps it's time to dive the Bloodwing's Revenge into the ocean depths and intercept the inhuman mastermind behind the Dark Aether before it reaches the city.

Artwork: Dr. Mason and the Absinthe Fairy by @dechanique

Commissioned and drawn at Interventioncon 2011 by Deanna Echanique, the same lady who designed my current icon. If you're not reading her steampunk/fantasy/erotica series La Macchina Bellica, bloody well you should when you get home from work!

Steelhead: Necropolis Now!

I cannot tell you when the plague finally overcame me. It was a seamless transition in my delirium from caring for my single patient to caring for everyone else that would soon succumb. If this contagion is unstoppable, as I feared, we need to establish a graveyard. As is the case for the Haitian variety of zombie, the first one to establish themselves in a cemetery (prime real estate) is called the Baron. And if Patient Zero refuses to take responsibility for leading those he has infected...

"I was the first to call a town meeting in Steelhead, and so shall I be the last! A new dusk arrives for this, our fair city! Now for our agenda!"

The room was quiet save for the echoes of my own ranting. I knew it would soon be standing room only.

"Motion one! The dead shall rise and walk among the living! Resolved! Motion two! The dead shall rise and eat the living! In progress!"

Though my vision was starting to blur sightly, I could see the Founder staring through the window, his arms crossed grimly.

"What's the matter, Old Man?" I shouted. "Why won't you come in? Prior agreements? Oh such a pity! Qlippothic and Ash won't stop me...I can override them! Koen and Amarantis? Let them join me by my side! Where's your precious angel, I wonder? Cowering in his Shanghai tower?"

He gave no response. Still as a statue.

"No matter. Time for a bit of old-fashioned necromancy!"

I lifted the huge tome bound in questionable hide and lowered it with a heavy thump on the podium. Frost grew in delicate lattices across the windows soon after I opened the pages.

"Let me see...ah, there it is. Lichdom!"

My voice strained through the opening syllables, but I could invoke the final request in English.

"Ancient spirits of Evil! Transform this decayed..."

"Floppy Dong!" shouted a voice from the main entrance.

I slammed the book shut immediately. This was not the sort of ritual that tolerated foolish pranks.

"YOU!" I pointed to the short redhead in the airshipman's uniform who stood at the doorway to the meeting hall. "You're not dead yet! Come back later!"

"I'm afraid this can't wait...Doctah Mushtash. We made a pinky-promise, remember? Qlippothic sent me back in time to make sure it comes true."

"What? What pink..." I noticed the glimmer of the steel washer I had neglected to remove. "Oh MINDY! Oh how sweet! You seem to have been cured! A marvelous testament to my medical skills! Now please, go back to your own timeline. Hell, take little Mindy with you before I decide to paradox you out of existence myself!"

She lifted a weapon and aimed it towards me. The glow of the serum chambers were brighter and bluer than my traditional formula, but there was no doubt it was an inoculation pistol. My own pistol!



"Oh I see how this goes!" I climbed over the podium and stared down at her, with the full hunger of the undead rising to the surface. "Didn't I ever tell you that Masons never get happy endings?"

The next moment it felt like an elephant had slapped me on the neck with its trunk, and I fell to the ground writhing. When I came to, it was she who was staring down me. I could not help but notice the washer on a chain around her neck.

"You look better already."

"Did you have to aim for the carotid?"

Steelhead: Quarantine

Bloodwing's eyes glowed like embers, piercing the darkness of this cloud-enshrouded night.

"I would barely call this a pestilence, Seventh Son. The symptoms vary wildly rom one soul to the next. This has all the signs of a curse."

I nodded quietly from behind the Soul Mask that the Founder recovered.

"Any sign of Loki?"

"The scamp who unleashed this havoc? Not yet. Xavael is circling the city to find him."

"But I must..."

"No." Bloodwing drew his blade halfway out of the scabbard. "Stay here with your fellow patient. Putter with your alchemy if you think you can find another clue. Perhaps you can find another ingredient for your precious serum so it will actually work this time. But you shall not infect infect another soul. If I wanted to live in the land of the walking dead I would have stayed in Erebus."

He slammed the door in my face before I could scream at him and dredge up one of his many failures, for which he may very well have cut me down on the spot. I simmered silently in rage at myself for not being careful enough. For refusing to believe that someday a plague would come for which even the famous Mason Reanimation Formula would not protect me from.

There was a single candle casting shadows about the room. Our eyes had grown to bleary to stand any more.

"Doctah Mushtash?" The young girl coughed and whimpered.

I returned to her sie, and used an alcohol-soaked towel to wipe another droplet of black pestilence from her mouth. Her sunken eyes stared balefully back at me.

"Are we dead?"

"I've died several times, child. This isn't death. And it's Dr. Mason, by the way."

She trembled beneath her sheets.

"Mindy. I want you to wear this. It will keep you safe." I removed the skull-like mask from face and placed it over her.

"Doctah Mason? You..look worse than me. Are you sure?"

I couldn't feel my face anymore. I suppose that's a blessing.

"I'm a lot older than I looked, Mindy. That serum I tried on you...it's helped keep me young all these years. But now it's not working. Time is catching up with me."

"I don't want you to die!'

I squeezed her gray, cold hand. My own hand seemed almost as thin as hers at this point.

"I am as scared as you are. But we will make it through this."

"Pinky-swear?"

"I'm not familiar with...ah...if you insist. Yes. Pinky-swear, then."

"Doctah Mason? What's your first name?"

"It's Darien, Mindy. Darien James Mason."

"Darien...can you keep a secret?"

I nodded. I leaned towards the dresser. Through cracked and shriveled lips a somehow drew enough breath to extinguish the candle.

Infection: Steelhead

Begin dictation.

Summoned the laboratory where the outbreak was created. Both scientific and mystical tools involved. Took *sneeze* samples, catalogued tomes in area of accident that were still legible. Summoned an imp to neutralize stagnant energies.



Profile compiled from *sneeze* psychic imprints and manifested in aether-hologram:
Patient Zero: Loki Gearhead
Race: Dark Elf
Talents: Spark/Mage
Symptoms: Necrosis, Depression.
Subject is at large and contagious. Spreading rapidly among local *sneeze* Excuse me...scamp population.



Patient: *cough* Mindy
Race: Human
Symptoms: Nausea (black, oily residue), Necrosis
First treatment: Reanimation Serum, maximum dose for height/weight ratio. Momentar *cough* effective, then necrosis resumed.



Second treatment: Healing invocations. No visible effect. *sneeze*



Ordered equipment shipped in from New Babbage Consulate laboratory. *sneeze* No apparent link between this outbreak and previous New Babbage epidemics.

No predatory/carnivorous *cough* behavior reported, but Loki displays cunning in avoiding capture.

Request assistance from all Masons and allies in capt....*coughing fit*

End *wheeze* dictation...