Character Creation Chain

[Interference]

The Pantomime Man

Does the sound of that name chill your heart, freeze your soul? Have you, in the quiet of the night, thought you'd heard a footfall outside your window and wondered if you would be next to turn and face the horror?

No, that wouldn't be you. Oh, no. You won't be taken in by such childish tales of doom and dread. Oh, no. You wouldn't.

Can you hear that creaking floorboard? That dry, wooden creak from somewhere behind you? What extra weight has put the joists under such pressure when none but you are there? Would you be the one who turns, would you look? Do you dare to look at what's behind you?

How could you be taken in by the fairy tales that speak of him? And yet, each tale, each story through history, that has survived the passage of time to emerge into your sphere of consciousness, how can they all be lies, how can they all be mere fairy tales? Yes. Yes, even you. You would dare to look. Oh, yes. You would.

It's behind you!


Dark Neddy the Forlorn Mower

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

Dark Neddy the Forlorn Mower

Neddy sits alone in the lighthouse most evenings watching the tide gradually creep its way up to the rocks. There have been stories... fables, no, rather legends, or maybe folktales, or, er, um... anyway, there's been accounts of strange sounds coming from the lighthouse in the wee hours of the morning. A humming like noise, or a droning, moaning, groaning that vacillates between a C-sharp and a B-Flat. Some even say that Neddy isn't really there anymore, because he was involved in some highly advanced quantum physics experiments in the lighthouse when he disappeared into a microscopic black hole that he accidentally created, and the sound is really the lighthouse being de-materialized from inside out. If it isn't harnessed it will soon consume the entire Earth and part of Cleveland too.

Anilindoria the Nexus of the Crux

 

[Interference]

Anilindoria the Nexus of the Crux sits at the crossroads of the Universe playing guitar. People frequently come to him for lessons, pleading with him to help them with some screwy deal they've got going with the Devil that they want to get out of, but Anilindoria just says, "take up chess, man, it's a damned sight easier to learn."

Because he has never, therefore, actually been heard to play his guitar, no one has yet figured out that he's total crap at it, anyway, and they might just as well parcel up their souls and Swift Post it to Hell to save themselves the pre-anguish hassle.

Jerry Thomann

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

Jerry Thomann

Jerry never listens to a single thing anybody says. Well, he listens, but he doesn't comply with requests. He lives his life trying to be the opposite of everyone around him. It gets particularly amusing when his little brother starts trying to copy Jerry, because then Jerry has to do the exact opposite of whatever he was doing when his brother started to copy him, and then he has to change again when his brother copies that. They tell me this is just a phase he is going through, and that he will behave a little better when he turns four. Of course then his younger brother will turn three and it will start all over again. Oh well, kids will be kids.

Sister Jasmine Ann Relish

 

[Interference]

Sister Jasmine Ann Relish

Few nuns have songs written about them, few have films made of their lives, an exceeding few have nightclubs named in their honour, but Sister Jasmine Ann Relish has all of these and a line of pickles named after her, because Sister Jasmine Ann Relish is a name anyone would trust.

How unfortunate, then, that she is the perverse invention of Toby El Foguinn, the most evil man in the five counties south of what has become known as the Styxx Line.

Still, people read her books and listen to her interviews and are inspired to do fabulously good works which somehow manage to make El Foguinn richer and the Devil just a little bit happier.

So it's not all bad.

Esther. daughter of Moab the Moabite and Shi the Shi-ite

 

[Talysia]

Just popping in to say, it's a shame we've lost so many interesting characters to the crash. There were some absolute gems here

Carrying on from the last time, then:

Esther. daughter of Moab the Moabite and Shi the Shi-ite

 

[Interference]

Just to say --- Damn! Somebody did a really nice one for that, too, something to do with spider-creatures and cultural mores. A lovely piece or work, I hope I said so at the time

Anyway, I completely agree, Tal, but like when your computer crashes midway through a novel, after you've got over the angry thing, it makes you commit to making it even better than you remember - the Fates don't crash you without a reason .

The names were my suggestion, so it would be wrong for me to take them up, I'm afraid, so please forgive and bypass this off-topic insertion.

Static

 

[Talysia]

Oh, I couldn't agree more, Interference.

Ok, I'll give this one a go. It's been a while.

Esther. daughter of Moab the Moabite and Shi the Shi-ite

All Esther wanted to do was to forget her past. Her childhood had been very complicated, and the second she had turned eighteen she had left to find her way in the world. Her idea was to reinvent herself, somewhere far away from her hometown and busy enough for her to blend into the crowd without standing out. The city had been the best place for that.

However, her appearance ensured that she would never go unnoticed. She had long, lustrous hair and big, dark eyes, a combination which made her the object of many young men's attention within a very short space of time. It was so different from the way things worked back home, so when she met up with him, she felt a little out of her depth. What exactly was it he wanted?

(Okay, so there aren't any spider-creatures, but I'm a little rusty at this.)


Archie Biggins

 

[Interference]

Archie Biggins

I never met Archie, but I met the dancer that shot him. Her name was Honesty Farley and, I kinda reckon, no reason not to believe a woman with a name like that.

According to the dancer, Archie Biggins was something of an oddity, even for round that neck of those woods. Nobody ever seen him take a rifle into the hills or wet a line in the rapids, but he never went hungry, by and large, seemingly. And he never dug a furrow or sowed a seed, so it was a big question going around about how he got to look so well fed all of the time, winter 'n' summer.

"How'd you eat?" the dancer asked him once, so she says.

"T'rough da mout'," she says he answered her.

So, anyway, time wastes on and a year passes before anyone gets the idea into their head to find out. Man's name was Arthro Floss, a trapper from the yellow country, and he the way the dancer tells it he was a pretty much as mean as you'll find anywhere. So this morning Arthro says to anyone with a sober enough ear, "Danged if he ain't eatin' peeple up there in his fancy cabin with his fancy habits," and nobody who was sober enough to listen was sober enough to mention to him that there'd likely be people missing, if that was going to turn out to be the case.

Even so, and nevertheless, Arthro Floss takes his rifle and his best hunting dog, the one that sniffed out the McFarland kid when the cave fell on him the year we had that storm that bust the dam, and he took the trail up to Archie's place saying he'd find out what was going on and he'd bring back the word or the body of the man responsible.

This is how the dancer tells it, anyway.

Arthro came back a week later, smile on his face for maybe the first time ever in his life. Maybe. People range round him asking what's the word, where's the body? Arthro just smiles and says, "No word. No body."

A couple of days drift past, the first one with everyone saying what a mystery it all is and how they can't live another minute without knowing. The second, everyone was pretty much getting over their hangovers.

So the dancer took her gun and went to visit Archie and she knocked on his door and waited till it opened and she was looking into his eyes before she said, "What gives, Archie?"

I don't know if her story's the truth of if she's on the magic dust again, truly I don't, but is seems Archie took her out the back and showed her what gives. She says he called it the Fount of Holy Foreverness and that it gave him everything he ever needed for hunger or for thirst. She says he said he'd never known an injury last more than a day after he drank from his fount. Since he started drinking, she says he said, he's been healthier than anyone. From what she said he said, seems he thought to live forever because of it.

I asked the dancer if she believed him. She just looked at me, all smiling like the way some God-folk do and said, "Far as I know, he still ain't recovered from that bullet I put through his head."

I bought her another drink.


Howard Trenchcoat

 

[Talysia]

*applauds Interference* That was impressive!

Howard Trenchcoat

There was never a private investigator like Howard Trenchcoat. Possibly the most inept detective there was, he nonetheless got surprisingly good results, even though his clients thought him a mildly delusional, accident prone individual who would likely get himself killed one of these days. He didn't even look the part - being short of stature and somewhat unremarkable.

The name had been his idea. Howard Golightly, his real name, didn't inspire what he considered to be a good private investigator name, so he changed it. He even put an advert in the phone book displaying his skills (which were largely fictitious, but he reckoned that if the people in the books he read could do it, then so could he). Howard spent a lot of time reading crime thrillers.

And then, one day, as he was sitting with his feet on his desk, a woman walked into his office. It would eventually be a case that would change him greatly.

Desmond Falstaff

 

[Interference]

*bows humbly to Talysia* Thank you Tal. Now, if I can just I do justice to your set up ....

Desmond Falstaff

She. She looked good, and that doesn't begin to paint the whole picture. She looked really good. Still not enough. Spillane would capture it in a line. Hammett wouldn't need that much ink. Chandler would nail it in a comma. I'd need a book.

I ask her when she last saw the guy she said was her husband and she looks it up in her pocket diary. I wonder how close they are and make myself hide the hope in my eyes that have drifted to the area surrounding a diamond-encrusted leopard broach. Then I ask her what he's like, her missing husband, this Desmond Falstaff (she uses both his names anytime she mentions him).

I get the picture. He's the older man and even before she shows me the mug shot I'm already seeing him fat and oily with piggy-pink hands and face. I don't guess about the moustache and the pointy beard. I think I maybe laugh when I see them. I ask her does he often disappear for a week at a go and she says never and looking at her I can see why not. But he goes out - I make it sound like a question. She says he has a box at the dog track and a seat at the casino.

I say I'll make a few calls and giver her my rates.

Girl at the dog track, her name's Ellen - cute, not my type anymore - tells me about the guy they call The Cheap High Roller. Says he doesn't even blink slapping bets with multiple zeros in back, but never buys a drink or leaves a tip. She tells me she's never seen him there with anyone other than what she takes to be his business acquaintances. No girls? No dates? No, the only broads are too old and rude to be anything other than a necessary encumberance. I drop her a score and ask her out. She declines.

Dave watches the door at the casino and sees everything else besides. He uses the word "gregarious" like someone just gave it to him for Christmas. Big tipper, this Dessie Falstaff. I try to see a man going by the name Dessie in the picture and don't see it. Women? Every night, Dave tells me. Young, old, expensive, cheap, all varieties. I get the feeling Dessie likes women a little too much, maybe. Big tipper, Dave says again and this time he winks and I feel like slapping him but he's a sight bigger than me - most people are. I drop him a fin and go.

The bullets miss me by a mile but I duck anyway. I catch the number of the sedan and get a glimpse of a fat man with crazy-looking face hair leaning out the back window. I already have the gat in my hand and fire off seven shots. Two hit their mark. One hits the guy driving. The tyres burst and the car hits a wall. I pull the fat guy out and try to drag him away before the car explodes or something, but I'd need to be two of me to make it. The car explodes. Only the blast hits us and we land about twenty feet from the wreckage, him on top of me, which I could have done without.

I ask him what the hell he's shooting at me for. He starts to tell me his story. By the end of it, I think I want to leave his wife, too ....

Saffron Fordenham

 

[Precision Grace]

Saffron Fordenham

Pinching the ends of her petticoat, Saffron Fordenham stepped into the ice cold North Sea. The shiver never came.

Saffron gave one last thought to the life she was drowning away, nothing, not even a casual sorrow to warrant this act. Maybe that was the problem.

She had given it plenty of thought. She studied the books on the subject and consulted experts on the topic. She pondered her situation from all angles. She even tried crying. But, eventually, it always came to this. And now there was nothing more to do but give in, for it was giving in, and not giving up, as her husband will no doubt think eventually.

So she did. She gave in completely, and floated into delicious freedom; freedom from everything, freedom from life.


Bugsnacher Fellywent

 

[Talysia]

Bugsnacher Fellywent

Bespectacled and bearded, Bugsnacher Fellywent could frequently be seen wandering around forests or parks with a wildlife identification book in one hand and a flask of coffee in the other. Wildlife was his life - for years, the animals and birds around him were his only friends, as he had been teased as a child for his lack of height and studious nature.

Every morning, he woke early so that he could hear the dawn chorus from right within the heart of the forest - hearing it in full surround sound, he called it. Bugsnacher could correctly identify just about all of the birdsong he heard, and even most of the animal noises, so when he heard something unusual, he consulted his book without delay.

There it was again. It sounded very faint, almost like a cross between a vixen's cry and a hawk's shrill calling, and it was coming from somewhere close to the town. Thumbing through the pages of his book, Bugsnacher couldn't find a match to the sound he'd heard, and he shook his head in amazement. Could this be something new? Something unseen in the forest so far? It certainly sounded unusual enough.

Getting up, he put his flask in his backpack and started hiking towards the source of the sound.

Lorelei Fischer

 

[Interference]

Lorelei Fischer


She looked at the wafer that had been placed in her hand and mused. This was her third communion and she still found it difficult to believe that this slim bit of tasteless polystyrene - well, that's what it looked like - could turn into meat in her belly. Not only that, but the very specific meat of the flesh of the dead prophet. After her first communion she had tried to make herself sick to see for herself that it had actually happened, and that the wine had indeed become Jesus' blood. She hadn't seen any sign of it in the mess of puke that she'd later had to clean up in the bathroom sink.

After her second, she'd tried again, this time about an hour sooner following the ingestion, and still seen nothing unexpected.

Today, she thought, would be the day. She had brought a bowl. As soon as the communion was over, she would absent herself from her parents' side and run outside to throw up the result. She would separate the flesh from the blood into separately prepared containers and she would take these to her brother who would use his chemistry set to isolate The Christ's DNA.

Then they would clone Jesus and become famous.

She took the wafer from her hand and put it on her tongue.


Extreme Sandy Paul

 

[Zubi-Ondo]

Speaking of extreme, I'd say Lorelei Fischer had the wierdest case of Bulimia I've ever heard of.

Extreme Sandy Paul

Sandy Paul wasn't your every day street addict. She didn't need to stick needles in her arms. She was the daughter of wealthy Florentine Pogen, and she got a double rush out of extreme sports. Besides producing the extra adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins and serotonin she could get right in her own bloodstream, she could scare the hell out of her parents. When Sandy's escapades reached their ears, or the local newspapers, they would call her. "But I named a line of my famous cookies after you darling!" was her fathers worn out plea. "How could you take such terrible risks dear? You know we love you."
"Hah! That's a laugh." Sandy would reply. "So that's why I never saw you when I was in grade school? You promised you'd come to that play I was in, and my soccer games, but when I looked in the stands, all I saw was the other kids moms and dads cheering for their children. I finally figured out a way to get your attention." She stated with a sinister smile. "Well, gotta go. Today Im going windsurfing attached to the back of an F-16 fighter plane. See ya!"

Halbert Langenbright

 

[Interference]

Halbert Langenbright

Scotland breeds some mighty warriors, even today when the need seems a long time gone. These incredible men and women spend their lives in anticipation of invasion or war that never comes, of heroic deeds that no longer need doing, of trials and of quests no more required as long as we have Wiki and the Internet.

Bookish, smart and none-too-wise, Halbert Langenbright has taken it upon himself to chronicle these non-eventful heroes and their daily deeds among the wild heather and stony brays, as they battle and struggle with the marauding fishes of the loughs and bring law and order to the sheep and goats inhabiting their lands, in as exciting and enduring a manner as he can muster which makes his meisterwerk, Various Volumes Of Modern Highland Heroism (MacMillan), a must-read for every retro-Jacobite and post-Caledonian in the land with a penchant for dull reading.

Willis Lawless, the Justice Adjuster's Mate

 

[Peter Graham]

Willis Lawless, the Justice Adjuster's Mate

Scotland a "land with a penchant for dull reading"? It has been said, most recently by Interference in the last post. But obviously, the critics of Alban literature have never experienced firsthand the light-hearted frivolity of Thomas Carlyle or the sonorous sublimity of the poetic works of William McGonagle.

But there could be no denying that Willis Lawless had to deal with the most boring reading available in Scotland. He worked in a damp, lightless cellar in the bowels of Holyroodhouse as the Justice Adjuster's Mate - or Assistant Verbiage Tinkerer of the Statutory Instruments and August Pronouncements of the Scottish Legislature, to give him his proper title. His job was to go through endless tracts of secondary legislation, making quite sure that the text was stuffed full of anachronistic Victorian verbiage and that any line or word that might accidentally make sense to a casual reader was removed or twisted into a lumpen mass of Latinate nonsense, ideally including the wording "hereuntoinbefore mentioned" wherever possible.

Willis' boss, the Justice Adjuster Pursuivant, was Donald MacWiddle of Fairbriggs, fifth Earl of Strathnumpty and the twenty third MacWiddle of MacWiddle. Donald had not attended for work in over eight years, preferring a life of hob-nobbing with royals at Balmoral, propping up the bar at Turnberry and vigourously servicing his mistress, the once-iconic sixties glamour model, Trixie Poodlejubblies.

But Willis enjoyed his job and, as rain sheeted down from the leaden skies onto the streets of Auld Reekie, he splashed along Canongate, eagerly anticipating a full day in the company of the Scottish Offshore Fisheries (Registration and Classification of Hull Colours and Net Sizes in the Fraserburgh Cod, Haddock and Other Gadiform Fleet) Transitional Regulations 2008.

The Auld King O' Kirkcudbright

 

[Interference]

Brilliant, Peter This will be nowhere near the same calibre ....

The Auld King O' Kirkcudbright

An owl hoots, its head swivels. Vision that pierces the night transfers an image to the bird's brain. Wings spread, body leaning forward. Not so much a launch, more a controlled, guided fall. Victim squeals in horror and fright as talons grip it, tearing into it, killing it. Other owls applaud with respect and fear, "kirrrr" from the hawks, "cooooo" from the doves, "breeee" from the landed budgerigars. "Kirrr", "Cooo", "Breee". "Kir-", "cu-", "bri-" as they hail their monarch, the Owl King of Kirkcudbright.

(I might have misheard you there, Pete )


Stranded Alice, Marquess of Marx

 

[Peter Graham]

(I might have misheard you there, Pete )

That'll be my internet connection. It's coal fired and about as effective as Carlisle's back four....

Stranded Alice, Marquess of Marx

The annals of Irish history are, alas, littered with strife and oppression. Whether it is the Fir Bolg eating people, Brian Boru bashing up the Vikings at Clonmacnoise or Cromwell bashing up more or less everyone to sate his godless regicide blood-lust, the life of the average Irish land worker remained fairly grim.

Alice, Marquess of Marx, was one of the winners. She owned great tracts of County Clare and her hobbies included rack renting, evicting paupers and basically acting like the sort of feudal despot whom even the Borgias would regard with distaste and shame.

But when Parnell came to town and the boycotting started, Alice became stranded. Absolutely left high and dry. No-one would supply her with victuals or services of any kind and she was left to fend for herself in Marx Castle. In her last letter to her brother, she queried whether it was possible to eat one of the castle gargoyles if one roasted it for long enough over a jolly hot fire.

Two days after this letter was dated, Marx Castle burned to the ground. The gardens were unaffected, but for some reason the kitchen plot was totally bereft of bay leaves.

"Flying" Robbie Jenkins

 

[Interference]

(I suspect you of being an historian, sir, and I claim my reward )

"Flying" Robbie Jenkins

"Take it eeeasy, man," would have been his catch-phrase had he been a character in a highly-rated American sit-com or one of the lesser, lamer characters in The Fast Show. Fiction invents the kind of man he is and misses the mark by a wide margin, because "Flying" Robbie Jenkins was more than the personification of characterisation-shorthand, he was an honest-to-God hippy and, had his ego permitted such an uncharacteristic trait, proud of it.

But it wasn't the acoustic twelve-string guitar with its hand-painted spiral patterns and flowers that made him a hippy, not the brightly-coloured, though fading, square-patterned poncho, nor the sandals he wore in all weathers; or the drugs he had once used that gave him his calmness and his name; not the glasses he wore that didn't quite do the job so that he was almost always squinting at something with that far-away look in each eye; nor was it even the shoulder-length, now thinning somewhat, hair and untrimmed beard that he bore; it was his mind and his honestly-held beliefs. In his heart there was no room for anger, little cause for anxiety and a zero-tolerance for people who say "zero tolerance" in a sentence beginning "there must be" and ending in a variety of aggressive ways. Indeed, this was his only failing - that he found it too hard to love those with no love in their hearts.

But this seemed academic to him as, once he sought, he almost always found a trace of love, whether for a family member, a close friend, a long-deceased pet or of a sport or a style of music or a place they might frequent in the souls of everyone he met, bar one - but his is a completely different story and need not detain us now. Love is always to be found, he knew and often said.

And the love he found in others was always enhanced in them as they came to know him better, so that even the thugs who beat him and stole his record collection and left him for dead could do no less than to honour him and respect him with a pillow and a blanket to ease him in his passing so that as they left him, he thanked them and said to them, "Hey ... take it eeeeasy, men ..."

Stylish Stan Drummurd Nats