Pyrrhic Defeat » Creative Misadventures

Creative Misadventures

Here you’ll find mainly short fictional works, but also dialogues, some creative non-fiction and a novella or two. And god help you if stumble upon any poetry… its simply Vogonic.


Oresteia Twine Game

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This was my first experiment with Twine and a choice-driven narrative.
Since it was a first try, I wanted to rewrite something that already existed in another medium (the Oresteia) and I thought Greek tragedy was a good candidate. In the best Greek tragedies (most notably Oedipus), you feel an oppressive sense that the characters have NO control, no choice that would save them. I thought this would be fun to try express in a medium that is all ABOUT choice!
Ancient Greek plays are famously unfair: the narrative rarely has any interest in showing why a character deserved their tragic fate (or, sometimes, our morals are so distant from the Ancient Greeks that the playwright’s attempt to do so backfires). I take this to be part of what makes Ancient Greek plays worth reading! In a modern world vibrant with moral black and whites, it’s startling to enter a story that is dismally, amorally, grey — there is no good or evil, just victims and witnesses. The characters suffer because that is just what it means to be human: to strive, make the best decisions we can, and still be haunted by them.
That pessimism is what I thought would really come to life in a game. I strove in this Twine game to give the player powerful choices, to really empower you to save Orestes (which it is possible to do! there is a “good ending”!), but to see those choices come, again and again, to naught. Not because you made the wrong choice, but because some situations lie beyond solution.
Let us hope we encounter them only in fiction.

In progress notes: This is v.1, so all the endings are live but the rest is still very much under construction. Right now, I’m planning on re-writing the dialogue to be more conversational and adding more dialogue choice to the middle of the game.

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    • Two Villanelles For Love

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    Villanelle: Love’s Declaration

    I wish your life was mine to tell,
     To scribe each day with utmost care
     And so I write a Villanelle!
    Your eyes a dance of caramel
     That taste delight with every stare
     I wish your life was mine to tell
    I pen your laugh, a silver bell
     As bright as song, too soft to tear
     And so I write a Villanelle!
    Your voice, once raised, a righteous swell
     Your hands, contrite, a bashful pair
     I wish your life was mine to tell
    One day we’ll build a citadel
     Inside our stained glass hearts may lair
     And so I write a Villanelle!
    I’ve writ your joy and its impel
     Each line a cup for us to share
     I wished your life was mine to tell
     And so I write a Villanelle!

    Villanelle: Love’s Rumination

    I fear I might lose you as well
     My ardent light in sinking lair
     And so I write this Villanelle
    The brightest stars only foretell
     A blank page death, entropy’s snare
     I fear I might lose you as well.
    Your eyes of burning caramel
     I wish to taste with every stare
     And so I write this Villanelle
    Your laugh, too short, a dying swell
     Your hand and mine, too rare a pair
     I fear I might lose you as well.
    Upon your tears I wish to dwell,
     Those sparkling mirrors to ensnare
     And so I write this Villanelle
    Anxiety, love can’t dispel
     But which is ruler, which is heir?
     I fear I might lose you as well
     And so I choose a Villanelle

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  • Atlantis, A Player’s Guide A player’s guide to a custom Dungeons and Dragons setting I’ve been writing: sort of an Ancient Greek/Science-Fiction/Fantasy mash-up. Ancient…

    • We Left Him In The Wasteland

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    We left him in the Wasteland
    Under canopy of mammoth bone
    And the tepid remains
    Of other species overthrown.
    He fell, stumbled perhaps,
    And faced the flooded grave
    Of some dead and fallen star.
    In the pool, not even a wave.
    We left him there
    For we could not see
    What paroxysm seized his mind
    And refashioned it an endless plea
    What antithesis he found in reflection
    What evil puzzle of the soul
    He would not say
    and we cannot know
    The glee of his spite
    His despair, like a vow
    We could not eulogize
    For none of us knew how
    He was our brother 
    By blood and by corps.
    Now, a raw unending sough
    Crying “I will bear this pain no more”

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    A Nightmare of Speed

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    This nightmare has followed me for a long time.

    The nightmare happens entirely in a car, and I’m the driver.

    Sometimes I’m alone, sometimes there are others. Sometimes it’s my whole family, crammed and talkative in the back seats. Sometimes it’s a friend on the passenger side, telling me about his day. Sometimes it’s an old intimate, sitting right next to me, looking outside and thinking about what went wrong and what went right.

    I am always driving. Driving fast to somewhere important. A dentist’s appointment that started ten minutes ago. Going to buy butter fifteen minutes before the supermarket closes. A meeting at work that can’t start without me.

    I guess those things aren’t that important after all. I have other dreams about saving the world or meeting Her by chance at the beach. These destinations aren’t like that, not life-changing, just urgent. If I don’t get there in time, something bad will happen. So I’m driving fast.

    I’m a terrible driver. In the dream and in reality. I got my license when I was 18, drove my dad’s old SUV to college and then didn’t touch a steering wheel again until I was in my mid-twenties. I just never got much practice, I guess.

    I don’t see why anyone even likes cars: they’re ugly, expensive and bad for the environment. I don’t get the appeal. Besides, they’re dangerous. Did you know 37 thousand people die in car accidents every year? You know how many die on bikes? Barely half a thousand. For public transport? Less than a hundred.

    So I’m in this car and I see a light coming up and I go to slow down, but I press the gas instead of the brake. The light stays green. No big deal, I think, just a little embarrassing. I try to brake a little bit just to make sure I’ve figured out where it is. I hit the gas again. Now we’re going even faster.

    I’m starting to really move up on the car in front of me and it’s only a matter of time till we hit … Continue Suffering →

    Atlantis, A Player’s Guide

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    A player’s guide to a custom Dungeons and Dragons setting I’ve been writing: sort of an Ancient Greek/Science-Fiction/Fantasy mash-up. Ancient Greek Gundams, Communist Dwarves, and extraterrestrial Israelites abound!

    Okay, yes, that’s a bizarre combination. No, I haven’t lost my mind (well, not recently); there is a method to this madness!

    I wanted to run a game where the players had a lot of control over the aesthetic of the world: realistic, traditional fantasy, science-fictional, etc. My solution was to create a charming, but undramatic, world (“Inciting Incident”? bah to that!) and allow the players to define the central conflict themselves. Perhaps they’re the first to discover magic, the first to make some technological breakthrough or the first to radically change the political landscape.

    This guide introduces the Mariners, effectively an adventurer’s guild for every walk of life: soldiers, scientists, priests, politicians, farmers, and so forth. Players make a Mariner and choose their qualifying accomplishment and a personal goal they had to surrender to join. These choices enable the DM to create an adventure where the players commit the Inciting Incident.

    In any case, this is still very much a work in progress, but you may enjoy perusing it anyway (or, be forced to, if you’re one of my players :P). Sharing your thoughts and feedback is also very very appreciated. You can download it below or see it online at the source.

    Current Revision Goal: Right now, my main goal is to get the word count down and add more reference art. After that, I may start reorganizing to highlight the good bits… when I find some.

    Age-of-Atlantis-Players-Guide-v2Download

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    I Wanted To Be a Writer

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    I wanted to be a writer
     To tell tales and make fun
     Of the world and all its peril
     But I was the one undone.
    I wanted to be a writer
     To prove that I could hum
     A tune of such beauty,
     It could never be unsung.
    I wanted to be a writer
     But I never learned to sing.
     And so I sit, miscounting meters, pondering
     Why I wanted to be a writer
     When all I can do is cringe.

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    A Villain’s Backstory

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    I wrapped up running a very long Dungeons and Dragons campaign last week. It’s been two years with the same characters, the same story, and the same goddamn unbearable amazing players.

    For the epic finale, I wanted an engaging villain who would be more than just a hit point balloon- that would engage the players in roleplay, not just rollplay. Sadly, the adventure’s prefabricated villain wasn’t quite up to snuff. Azarr Kul, from the classic Red Hand of Doom third edition adventure, isn’t a bad villain but he’s not that complicated (think Napoleon, but he’s half dragon and worships Satan).

    So I rewrote him. I kept the canon consistent, he still did all the things Dragon Napoleon did, but I wrote a backstory for him based on an incredible short story (find it free to read or listen to here) by Scott Sigler. The original story has an incredible economy of language: the paragraphs are tight, the sentences always moving the action forward. You almost feel out of breath reading it. I loved it so much, I wanted to try imitating Sigler’s style and story- so I wrote a short little origin story for the new and improved Azarr Kul.

    If I did this right, it should stand alone as a mediocre (if unoriginal) piece of fiction. Enjoy (but probably not):

    Coughing into the moonlit smoke around him, Angel was aware only of his fear. His eyes watered, but he could still hear. Shouting, marching, the crackle of houses burning, and, still distant, screams. The entire village was on fire.

    Angel turned away from the chaos outside his home, but his mother held him at the threshold. He wanted to run behind her, hide his juvenile body behind her height. But she held him fast.

    “Let go of him! We have to go and find Hector!” cried Angel’s grandfather, already peering into the fire and dark surrounding their home.

    Angel’s mother would let neither of them pass. She breathed slowly, in rhythm with the pulsing light of the fires.

    “My husband is … Continue Suffering →

    Lamprocles (Novella)

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    “Alas, my Child! That which saves the lives of others, proves thy destruction, even thy sire’s love; to thee thy father’s nobility has proved no boon”

    —Euripides, Trojan Women

     

    -399 B.C.-

    The first man he had brought death to was his father. He brought it to him in a dirty golden goblet, stained purple with the earthy poison it often held. His mother had forfeited the (not insubstantial) silver for the mixture, and the People had been kind enough to provide the goblet itself. Thus was Lamprocles, the fittest of his family, reduced to Death’s delivery-boy.

    Despite years of similar service for his mother, he was not a very fast courier: he moved towards his destination in a cautious stabilizing tread. This was somewhat necessary, as he had to overcome the city’s most recent scars- scattered mounds of splintered stone and shredded wood. As he climbed over these remains of the Athenians’ once grand wall, he kept his goblet-hand locked and extended, so as not to spill the mixture. Were he one year younger, he would have engineered such a spill rather than avoid it. He would have run in quiet tears to his mother and claimed there was an accident on the road or an incident at the herbalist’s store. She would have consoled and lightly scolded him, then turned to her father for another loan to pay for the second dose. She would have gone herself the second time, to beg the storekeeper for another mixture at a reduced price so that her children would not be hungry while they mourned. All the shame, dishonesty, and poverty, he would have endured- if only it bought his father the time it took to deliver a second mixture.

    But Lamprocles was thirteen years of age, and though not yet a man, he had begun to understand what it was that would make him so. Honor and Duty obligated him to guard the goblet with his life. He was more than willing to lay down his life- he had, in fact, planned to do so, to drink the hemlock himself … Continue Suffering →