Random Musings

Hello World!

I have been persuaded to start a blog in order to share with you a joint story-writing venture that me and my good friend Kobal are undertaking (CogniSump - link at the top there ^^). He's way ahead of me on all counts, but it seems a shame to let him get all the glory by himself.

I can help him get all the glory by being the tarnished coin in the hoard of otherwise brilliant ideas.

Prepare to be underwhelmed.

You have been warned.

RandomJaxx

Ooga drifted along the battlement, attempting not to let his ‘feet’ float too far above it. To his minions, The Dark Lord Sauestazon, Ruler of Great and Terrible Mountain Mountain, Bringer of Gloom, strode along the battlement, pointedly ignoring the rapturous cheering from below, and trying not to let his ‘feet’ float too far above it. His helmet turned towards the Sunset horizon so that the glowing red nucleus of his consciousness, divided now into two eye-shaped blobs, could see whether that damned and blasted dragon had returned yet. The sky had already faded from pink to deep blue, and still nothing. If he could have sighed, he would have, but he couldn’t, so instead he mimicked the actions of the humans he had observed in such situations. It seemed to calm what passed for his nerves. The humans had evolved a whole host of simple coping gestures for their brief but exciting existences. They were fascinating.

And squishy. And excitable, and suggestible, and a plethora of other ibles, just waiting to be ibbled. Or nobbled.

Except that along with a need for ale and a penchant for stories, the humans had also evolved a long-term survival instinct that constantly thwarted his attempts at a real reign of terror. Long ago, when he had first arrived in this hot little speck of a universe, they had been crude and ape-like beings, intent only on finding the next banana and fighting over breeding stock.

But they had grown, changed, adapted to their newly dangerous environment. They had questioned, fought, gotten drunk, and then done the unthinkable.

They had imprisoned their god.

Ooga shuddered at the memory, even as it sent a thrill down what currently passed for his spine. They had captured their own god, the force that had congealed this universe around itself, and imprisoned him in what was to all intents and purposes, a thought.

They had all got together, and believed him captured. Incredible! For it had worked, although exactly how had remained a mystery. It had seemed as if the god had simply... retreated.

And the magic had arrived. If it could be called magic. It had certainly been magic to the humans, but Ooga knew it for what it really was: a suspension of this reality, something that he himself could manipulate, if only for a limited time.

Something else still seemed to be holding reality in check, preventing the total collapse of this universe, which suited Ooga just fine, even if it worried him a little.

Now he had free reign; the freedom to torment the humans with as many of their own nightmares as he could weedle out of them, or meddle in affairs of state, or play grand and hilarious tricks on the unsuspecting. Sometimes, he even tried to scare the dolphins, but their fears were fairly straightforward and grew repetitive after a while.

He turned the helmet back to regard the massed fiends below, and a fresh round of cheering erupted. He could sense that their black little hearts weren’t in it, though. It had become clear to all that either a Hero had arisen and slain the beast, or that reality had reasserted itself. Dragons did not exist. Not great big, fire-breathing ones, at least. Little ones tended to last longer, especially if they vaguely resembled some likely evolutionary conclusion.

He threw up his hands; midnight black, skeletal, and slightly translucent (for he could only expand so far before the smoke-like particles that made up his body were spread so thinly that photons could shoulder their way through*). Silence descended, or as near silence as the rabble were likely to get.

‘Fr...’ he began, but no, friends wouldn’t do. Brothers? Inaccurate. Children? Too familiar. ‘Scum!’ he bellowed, and a few lone souls, or possibly soulless entities, whistled their appreciation. ‘Initiate plan B. No, wait.’ He thought for a bit. ‘Plan F.’ He thought a bit more. ‘Plan F1347A, phase B.’

Muttering greeted this announcement, as it always did. To those that had been recruited from the ranks of ordinary creatures, such as humans, their Dark Lord’s projects often seemed to lack a little... flair. The humans’ stories never involved administration, although they did involve plotting. Ooga, somewhat more logical than the humans, found this odd.

‘Scum,’ he repeated, ‘the dragon has failed us, but do not despair! We will still be victorious. We will build a new creature, fearsome to all men of these lands. We will build something better! Meaner! More devious than you could possibly imagine.’ Cheering. ‘More fiendish!’ Louder cheering. ‘And more magnificent!’ He let the applause swell and die before continuing, allowing an evil grin to flicker past where his lips should have been. ‘We will build,’ he intoned, pausing one last time for effect, ‘a woman.’

*And it got really embarrassing when his helmet started slipping down. Not in the usual manner, but through his head.

**To a human, he would appear solid at only five feet tall. Unfortunately, humans seemed ridiculously impressed by height, so he put up with semi-transparency the way a power-dresser puts up with a pair of high heels.

‘What does he mean, a woman?’ asked Imp 79641, wringing one tiny, spindly hand, the other being employed holding a torch. Above him, Matchlock didn’t even pause as he checked something off on a clipboard and waved a supply cart through the gates. Matchlock didn’t usually demean himself by carrying out manual labour, but the Great Lord had discovered his latest avoidance tactic and insisted.

‘Mmm?’

‘I said, what does his Darkness-ship mean by us building a woman? We’ve never assigned genders to creatures before.’

‘What does it matter?’ asked Matchlock, flipping open the cover of the next cart. ‘A little closer would you? Good, thank you.’ He flipped the sackcloth back into place and retreated out of the way as a massive, iron-rimmed wheel rumbled past, narrowly avoiding Imp. The smaller man - or creature, since imps have no gender - fought to stabilise the torch, and wondered briefly why the Great Lord hadn’t created larger minions. Or even minions that could engage in a little sex every now and again.

‘I’d just liked to know,’ he mumbled, following the tall man to the next cart. ‘I mean, if we’re to carry out his bidding and all, I fink we should at least have the right to know what is planned, so we can make a judgement about...’

The back of the clipboard caught the side of his head and sent him tumbling across the floor of the cave at the same time as a hand snatched the torch from his fingers. Matchlock bore down on him as he tried to get his bearings. Too late, Imp realised that the Dark Lord’s right-hand-man might be a little grumpy about his punishment.

‘I can’t kill you,’ he purred, long face flickering in the agitated torchlight. ‘But I can make your life hell.’ He wedged the clipboard under his arm and rummaged around in his robe, producing a coin. ‘Here.’ He flipped it at the stricken Imp. ‘Go and buy me an icecream. And don’t get mugged on the way.’

Imp stared at the large gold disk as it bounced and rolled towards him. He’d not get far lugging that around! But as he caught the flashing, tumbling disk, Matchlock retracted a boot and Imp fled towards the weak glimmer of daylight at the far end of the cave before the kick could land.

Ooga watched the tall human advance across the immaculately swept floor, black robe fluttering about his ankles in mimicry of Ooga’s own smoke trails, and felt a slight pang of envy. Ooga had never had much luck with clothing. He could manage a helmet - could not manage without a helmet now, if truth be told - but even a cape caused considerable issues of concentration if worn for more than a few hours. Oh, he could form his particles into a parody of a cape, or indeed any other item of apparel, but he then had to make sure they moved in the wind or bent when he sat, or did any of the other things that real clothing did by itself. Generally these days he went naked, or at least bare, save for the helmet. He had given up trying to make his body too detailed. When he added male genitalia, most of the humans simply laughed. Female, and they stood mesmerised, waiting to be struck down by his minions. And that was no fun.

Most people seemed to have given him the male honorific, so he accepted it as inconsequential, and formed himself thus.

Matchlock snapped to attention before the throne and proffered the clipboard, a smug smile on his admittedly well-formed lips.

‘My Lord,’ he oiled, ‘I have completed the tasks set for me and, as I am sure you will see, to the highest standard. Now if you could see your way clear to re-assigning me to my post, I can...’

‘Yes yes,’ said Ooga, curling a tentacle of smoke around the proffered document and drawing it towards himself. ‘Please carry on; you are reinstated.’

‘Thank you, My Lord. Now, about this next project...’

‘Phase B?’ said Ooga absently, lifting the sheets and scanning for errors. Anything that would allow him to punish Matchlock further.

‘Yes, Phase B. I was not aware...’

‘Mmm?’ Everything seemed to be in order. Damn.

‘There is no Phase B...’

‘Mmm?’

‘There is no Phase B, My Lord. Not to my knowledge.’

‘Really?’ Ooga placed the clipboard on a pile beside the throne and slunk down the steps towards his faithful but far too presumptuous servant. ‘I’m sure I mentioned it.’

‘No, My Lord.’

‘Oh, I am sorry. Well, Matchlock; we will be building a woman. I have plotted, and now I have a plan.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, My Lord, but... a woman? How...’

‘All will be revealed, my dear.’

‘When, My Lord?’

‘Such impatience!’ Ooga allowed himself to appear amused, as a parent at a child’s mistake. ‘Here, I need you to do something for me. I need you to find something - It is quite rare, but crucial to my plan. If we can’t find it, there will be no point in my explaining the plan anyway.’ Because I’d have to change it very slightly, he added to himself, although Matchlock didn’t need to know. He drifted over to an antique cabinet and reluctantly retrieved a sheaf of papers. He had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but Matchlock needed to be kept out the way or he’d find a way to scupper the whole project. Not intentionally, but by being the kind of evil personality that would simply kill everyone for being idiots before they had completed their tasks. Or by distracting Ooga with his silken words and grandiose schemes. The man didn’t seem to realise that being an evil overlord required the kind of attention that only a god-like entity could give.

And an army of followers who benefited from service during their lifetimes so they didn’t defect. For some reason, the universe - every universe - only allowed the creation of intelligent lifeforms with free will. Perhaps it had something to do with souls after all.

And as he watched Matchlock accept his new assignment with not an inconsiderable amount of whining, Ooga came to a realisation - something he had not considered before, since the man had up until now been an invaluable asset: Matchlock had deep-seated fears, despite his cool outward demeanour. He might argue and rage and grovel, and expect a level of awe and privilege far above that which he deserved, but he did so out of fear. Fear of being ignored; left out; fear of losing all he had gained or stolen or won.

And Ooga knew how to use fear.

‘Oh,’ he said, as Matchlock reached the door. ‘Have you seen Imp 79641? I expected a report from him too, on the torch stock levels.’

‘Imp?’ said Matchlock, momentarily succeeding in keeping his face straight. A good attempt at appearing as if he genuinely took no notice of the hordes of tiny workers that lubricated the Evil Empire Machine. ‘No I...’ Something darkened as he caught Ooga’s expression. Perhaps he realised that he couldn’t lie to his master. Not for long, anyway. ‘I think I did hear one of them mention something about... Icecream? I...’

‘Thank you, Matchlock,’ said Ooga, smiling benevolently. ‘You may go.’

Imp landed on his back in the cool grass, and the coin landed on his stomach, winding him. It didn’t help that the Mountain Land’s coins were twice the size of their Flatland counterparts, but pure gold made them heavy. And coveted. And conspicuous in a gray stone landscape, especially on a sunny day. He’d have to find a bag for it.

The meadows were easier to hide in, but its eagles no less experienced at survival. He rolled over and hauled the coin onto its edge, and then rolled it behind the rock he had just fallen off of. Imps might be immensely strong for their size, but physics affected everyone.

As he sat panting in the shade, he regretted not having another coin, so he could bore a hole through them and make a two-wheeled cart. A hammer would have allowed him to beat the metal into a rather impressive but ultimately useless suit of armour. Briefly he considered burying the darned thing - how much could icecream cost, anyway? - but a miserable string of other thoughts prevented it. For example, how would he find it again? The views to left and right revealed an anonymous pattern of broken ground as Mountain rose without ceremony through the fertile plains.

He stood again and succeeded in tucking the coin under one arm, wondering whether he could just run away. The Lord would notice, for certain, but what would he do about one little imp?

But what would Imp do? Where would he go? He knew nothing of the outside world save that which had been related to him by those that had been there, or from the drawings in the fortress library. As far as he could remember, Mountain Mountain rose on the sunrise end of the land, a short distance from the ocean. In the sunset direction, fertile fields and towns and villages littered the landmass until they reached the sunset mountain range, where the weather had become locked in a permanent winter.

He wondered why the Lord had not built his domain there, where the terrain looked much more threatening, at least in the woodcuts.

He also wondered what icecream was, but if it involved ice, the sunset mountains seemed the best place to start.

Ooga flowed excitedly into the Creation Room, flowed out, picked up his helmet, opened the door, and flowed in again. He felt excited, eager to see how things were progressing. The remnants of Phase 1 had already been cleared away, and the floor seemed alive with swarming bodies. The cast iron walls gleamed with a fresh coat of thick black paint. The heavy oak door showed a little charring, but it still had a few hundred years of life left in it. Imps dangled too from the craggy rock ceiling, chipping away at glassy deposits, and the air sparkled with a silicone rain. He would have to arrange some blankets - even imp bodies tended to degrade under unhealthy conditions.

‘Attention!’ he called, and his minions quieted a little. A few of them muffled sneezes. Ooga looked around the sea of eager faces. ‘You.’ He extended a stringy digit towards a spindly imp holding a short stub of cane. Its eyes widened. ‘Imp 95, isn’t it?’

‘Yessir.’

‘We have a vacancy for a keeper of the torches. Would you like to fill it?’

‘Oh yessir!’ The old imp hobbled forwards. ‘Yessir! Thankyousir. Thank you!’ He hobbled away and the rest of the imps let out a collective sigh of relief. Their master seemed to be in a good mood.

‘Where are the Type 3 barrels?’ Ooga continued, and the swarming resumed. After a few minutes the items appeared, carried aloft by a forest of tiny hands. ‘Over there, please. And the Pattern 17 stars?’ A wooden box appeared. He raised the lid, inspecting the tiny metal flakes within. ‘We’ll need more, I think. Imp 9847652, please see to it. Candles? Good. Fuses? Good. Matches? Where are the matches?’

He flitted around the vast chamber, checking supplies and ordering his minions, as any Dark Lord should in the absence of his right-hand-man.

How he had missed this! The thrill of discovering fears, working out how to manifest them, and delighting in a scheme well executed. Help had been welcome, of course, and a companion with whom to revel in the success, but nothing compared to the feeling of getting one’s hands dirty, metaphorically speaking, and achieving a result through the direct application of hard work.

Matchlock had been many things over the years, but his greatest function had been as a subject in a study into human thought. He had conjured schemes devious in new and exciting ways, but he had limitations. He hadn’t been Ooga’s first right-hand-man, or even right-hand woman. Humans only lived for a short time, and when one died, another turned up sooner or later, seeking greatness or favours or revenge on their fellow humans. Most of them weren’t up to it and Ooga chased them away, but every now and again, one showed potential.

Sometimes they brought gifts, but Ooga needed nothing save entertainment, like this universe’s erstwhile god. Ooga couldn’t offer them anything other than illusion. Magic could work miracles, but the reality tended to snap back into shape at inconvenient moments, like a top-notch bowstring in the hands of an inept archer. Careful preparation and a really spectacular lightshow could sustain a creation until reality reformed around it, reshaping the past so that the creature had always been, since nobody needed the past after sentient creatures had finished with it, but more often than not reality simply created some way to destroy it.

Heroes, for example. They had ended quite a few of Ooga’s creations.

When science wobbled under the strain of magic, humans gave up trying to understand it and hit it with a rock or stabbed it with a sword. Those that didn’t often went mad.

Ooga drifted away from the bustle and down the corridor to the next door, which he remembered to open before entering. Beyond lay another Creation Room containing a circle of imp-sized benches and one rather plain wooden dining chair. On the floor sat four paperweights and a small cardboard box of thumbtacks. The walls were clad with cork, except where hatches had been cut into the stone. Ooga pulled back a cover to reveal a thick slab of crystal. He peered through it into the bustle next door.

Magic could only be performed by distracting the force that regulated reality. Some small tricks, such as conjuring a biscuit for one’s cup of tea, required only a simple snap of the fingers. Very few universes had failed to evolve biscuits, although some of them had never thought to fill them with tiny lumps of chocolate. In all universes, though, any conjured item would appear at a distance from the distraction relative to the size of the distraction. Someone had once described it as the Oooh, Look Over There Horizon. Perhaps someone would one day come up with a more succinct description.

The crystal viewing windows had been a stroke of genius straight away, however. Dragons required quite a large bang, and the fumes from the fireworks had killed off a considerable number of imps on the previous two attempts.

Doubtless his woman would require an even larger bang.

Matchlock didn’t mind that Ooga had nothing to offer but illusion. Illusion was all he wanted, or rather, the ability to create illusion, like his master. Any human could learn to manipulate reality, but after a decade in Ooga’s service, Matchlock could already conjure greater beasts on his own than any magician in history. He would sneak off every now and again to fight them. Testing the goods*, he called it.

He couldn’t seem to make them last very long, though. Ooga still had secrets which he seemed unwilling to impart to his most faithful servant.

He stared at the perfectly formed letters on the vellum sheet in his hand. Ooga had handwriting better than any printed word, probably because he did not write in the traditional sense. He simply lifted the ink from the jar using his bodily particles and brought it down exactly where it needed to be on the page.

The last two items on the list were causing Matchlock concern. He brought the candle a little closer and read them again.

A deserted village, long forgotten, high up in the mountains.

A family of tall people with a mysterious secret, legend or past.

It seemed a deliberate insult. Ooga knew everything about Matchlock, and now he seemed to want Matchlock himself to go and tell the world his secrets. To shame himself.

Matchlock rose to his feet, stalked towards the drinks cabinet, and poured himself a glass of rare and expensive liqueur. After a moment of thought, he pulled a pinch of something from his sleeve and dropped it onto the floor. There was a flash and a pop, and sparkles condensed out of the air. Matchlock picked up the small paper umbrella that had appeared on the sideboard and popped it into the drink with a satisfied grin. He probably shouldn’t waste the new powder, but its effectiveness gave him a delicious tingle of pride.

He slunk back to the table, sipping the drink. Spells took preparation, he knew, but did not understand why. Ooga had made the imps spend weeks in the library researching lizard anatomy and habitat, and a dictionary’s worth of really obscure words. Surely they could have just abducted a really talented artist to paint them a picture? Everyone knew what dragons looked like.

He shuddered at the thought of the imps rifling through books on female anatomy. That particular territory had been out of bounds to him since adolescence, and rightly so. He couldn’t see what all the fuss was about anyway; horrible squashy things, with their legs and hair and their... their... wily ways and... and...

He stopped and thought some more. The Dark Lord never said the woman had to be human. Perhaps he intended to build an elf, or a fairy?

He sipped his drink. It tasted of strawberries.

*Or evils, as it were.